c I •^ ASIA X ^\^^^^^\\^^ VxW» >.\^ ^^ ^^ X \x VAX's •> ^\^A\V,.»5w.^ \ \ ■■ " ... ;- .ss^ ^- \ ^Jl x\\\ V \ \ -^V ^0«i5-j^J.^S ^x\^ \x\s^ VVW xs X \xV ^^ \^x\ \^ ''\'».*\ ■&\.x >«S - ..x\X X X XX* X \\\ ^xxxV \ s'W^'* ««> "\^Nn ^^ ^^^ QJocttEU Intueraitg Slibrarg itifaca, ^tm fork CHARLES WILUAM WASON COLLECTION CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE GIFT OF CHARLES WILLIAM WASON CLASS OF 1876 1918 606 DATE DUE PRINTED INU.5.A. BV 2060X47"" ""'"""""■"'"^ •"°|jf fn missions in the East; their method 739 299 WW B Cornell University ^^' h) Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924007739299 MODERN MISSIONS IN THE EAST THEIR METHODS, SUCCESSES, AND LIMITATIONS BY EDWARD A. LAWRENCE, D.D. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD D. EATON, D.D., LL.D. PRESIDENT OF UELOIT COLLEHE NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 18»S Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothsbs. AJl Hghta reeerveA, DEDICATORY LETTER FBOM THE author's MOTHER Never was mother blest with a more devoted son than Edwar( Lawrence. And when, at the close of his pastorate in Syracuse in the spring of 1886, he proposed to carry out his long-cherished plan of a mission tour around the world, he made it dependent on her cordial assent, which she was in too close sympathy with him to withhold. Thus my traveller set forth, keeping me so thoroughly informed that I almost travelled with him. Rumors were rife of the cholera in Corea and assassinations of Americans in China, yet through all these perils, and many others by land and by sea, he was graciously preserved. As has been intimated, he had always felt a strong interest in mis- sions, even as his tainted father had done, who, " more than thirty years before," writes Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, " broke loose from his travel- ling company against their strong protest in order to study the mission work, accompanying each missionary to his particular sphere, and visiting every school and chapel and native laborer." At every stage of his progress Edward's interest was deepened, and when I crossed the Atlantic to meet him on his way back I was struck with its intensity. It seemed to have become a very passion with him. In Germany and Holland, in France and Switzerland, in England and Scotland, always' and everywhere, it was his first object to seek out leaders in this great work, to compare views and experi- ences with them, and to obtain all possible Information. We passed two months in London near the British Museum, where he had free access to missionary literature, and where he renewed his intercourse with Mr. Wigram, secretary of the Church Missionary Society, with whom, on his visits to some of the missions of that society, he had trav- elled, and who assisted him in his study of the organization and methods of various missionary boards. He found no greater pleasure than to tell to interested listeners the story of his world-round journey. I well remember the special joy it was to him to discourse on this subject one Sunday in Scotland to a most attentive audience in an ancient church, from a pulpit about as high as the gallery which closely surrounded it. This was in Ellon, away up in Aberdeenshire, in the parish of Rev. Thomas Young, a fellow-traveller and beloved tentmate in the Holy Land. iv Dedicatory Letter His ardent desire to share witli others his gathered treasures led on his return to the preparation and delivery of a course of lectures. While still in Oriental lands he had written: "I am in the world of the past, yet I am more engrossed in the present and future than in all by-gone days. It is life that most interests and concerns me, and what people have been is of interest mainly in so far as it helps to show what they may become. I feel a growing desire to meet our college and theological students and to speals to them on many themes in comparative missionology. I believe I could in this way best utilize my studies and do most good." According to his own statement, found among his papers, and given as "Preliminary," he hoped to publish his lectures; and he had planned to revise them for that purpose. Alas ! in the very vigor of his man- hood he was suddenly called from earth, and that sorrowful yet consol- ing task fell on his stricken mother. I am glad to express here my great indebtedness to President Eaton and Mr. James Buckham, with others, who assisted me in this loving and grateful work, and to in- clude Edward's classmate and friend. Rev. Dr. Durant, who has pre- pared a valuable index for the present edition of the book. In those wonderful events that have been rushing on us like a flood in relation to China, Corea, Japan, and the Turkish empire, no one would have felt a keener interest than the author of this volume. He realized that great changes were impending in the Oriental world, which would upheave the very foundations, and open wide many a door to the entrance of the Christian missionary. Were he here, most earnestly would he plead that this opportune moment be seized. More warmly than I can put into words do I appreciate the reception accorded to this book. And of all the delightful things that have been said, none are more grateful than those which have come from our beloved missionaries. Can we doubt the author's joy in this fulfil- ling of his heart's dearest desire ? God grant that this volume may intensify interest and quicken efforts in this grandest of all causes the winning of the world for Christ. To the missionaries of various denominations in whose homes Edward Lawrence was made welcome in his journeyings from one country to another, from whom he always found it hard to part, and to whom he would himself have spoken lovingly on this page had he not been called to a higher sphere — to these missionaries of many lands and diverse tongues this book is gratefully dedicated by his sor- rowing yet rejoicing mother, Maroaret Woods Lawrence. LiKDEN Home, Mabblehbas, Mass., October 1, 1896. CONTENTS PRELIMINARY Page ix INTRODUCTORY xi CHAPTER I PROVIDENCE IN MISSIONS Continuity — Periods — Opportunity and Fidelity — Dispersion of Races — Teutonic Missions — Celtic — Slavonic — Methods of Mediseval — Cru- sades — Modern Opportunity — Missions of Latin Church — Origin of Protestant Missions— Nationalistic Missions — ^Ecclesiastical — Latest Impulses 1 CHAPTER II PEINCIPLES OF MISSIONS Aim — Scope — Motive — Call — Fitness — Fitting 30 CHAPTER III CHINA — COREA — JAPAN China: People and Civilization — Vitality — Conservatism — Protestant Mission Periods — Difficulties — Fuh-Kien — Shantung — Motives of In- quirers — Corea — Japan : Its Fascinations — Reception of Christiani- ty — Conference of Native Pastors — Missionary Retreat — Osaka — Roman Catholic Mission — Periods of Protestant Missions . . 57 CHAPTER IV INDIA First Impressions — Heterogeneousness — Caste — Hinduism — Moham- medanism — ^English Rule — Christianity — Periods of Protestant Mis- sions — Mutiny — Results — Ceylon — Tinnevelly — Marathi — Bishop Taylor's Work — Missions to Mohammedans — ^Neo-Hinduism — Char- acteristics of the Field 83 vi Contents CHAPTER V TURKISH DOMINIONS Egypt — Palestine — Asia Minor — Bulgaria — Dying Empire — Monothe- istic Religions — Corrupt Churches — Difficulties — Missions to Jews — Islamism — Oriental Christianity — Coptic Church — Missions in Egypt — in Syria — Marsovan — Constantinople Page 109 CHAPTER VI ENTRANCE INTO WORK Outfit — Travel to Field — Arrival — Disillusionized — Struggle with Lan- guage — Relations to Home Board and Churches — to Missionary Brethren — to other Residents and Visitors — to the Eurasians — to Heathen Customs and Religions — to Heathen Neighbors — to Native Christians . . . . 139 CHAPTER VII DEPARTMENTS OP MISSIONARY WORK IN THEIR VARIETY Itinerating — Preaching Places — Auxiliaries — Preachers — Classes Ad- dressed — Arguments and Persuasions — Diffused or Concentrated Evangelism — Education — Bible Readers — Native Ministry — Schools — Bible Translation — Christian Literature — Medical Missions — Mu- sical Work — Industrial — Paternal Care — Architecture — Mercantile Labors — Correspondence — Philanthropy — Matrimonial Agency, 165 CHAPTER VIII HOME REST OP THE MISSIONARY Celibate Priests — Married Missionaries — Social Relations with Natives — Representatives of Western Christianity — Failure of Asceticism — Antidote to Heathenism — Houses and Servants — Sanitaria — Fur- loughs — Salary — Pensions and Insurance — Trials — Perils and Temp- tations — Consolations and Joys 194 CHAPTER IX THE PROBLEMS OP MISSIONS Co-operation — Education — Native Church — Inquirers — Native Ministry —Independence of Converts— Organization of Churches — their Ori- ental Character — their Future — Literary and Doctrinal Problems — Other Problems— Desiderata 226 Contents vii CHAPTER X SKETCHES FROM THE MISSION FIELD Sakarazawa — Corea — Ceylon — Christian Village in India — Missions in Perspective — Spiritually Discerned — Tested — " Earthen Vessels " — Central Argument for Missions — Reality of Good Work — Dangers — Missionary Age-drift Page 256 CHAPTER XI THE CHURCH AND MISSIONS Independent Missions — Congregational — Associational — Ecclesiastical — Secretaries — Committees — Official Visits — Modern Opportunity — Results of the Century — Responsibility for Continuance — Present Appeal — Instruction as to Missions 283 CHAPTER XII THE SPIRITUAL EXPANSION OF CHRISTENDOM Spontaneous Expansion — Political — Industrial — Intellectual — Moral — Spiritual — Sporadic — Dawn of Universal Opportunity — Modern Dangers — Neo-Paganism — Heathenized Christianity — Other Dan- gers — One Safeguard 306 INDEX 331 PEELIMINAET The substance of this volume was first presented in the form of lectures in Andover Theological Seminary, on the Hyde Foundation, and subsequently in Yale Divinity School and Beloit College. The contents are based upon a twenty months' missionary journey around the world with the express purpose of studying the mission work of various denominations. Since my return I have given months of special attention to the subject, that the discus- sion might have a more permanent value than that of a simple report of things seen upon the field. I have hoped that in some ways such a volume might serve as a text- book for those who wish to look into the science of mis- sions. Edward A. Laweence. Baltimore. The hands upon thai cruel tree, Extended wide as mercy's span, Have gathered to the Son of Man The ages past and yet to be. One, reaching hachmard to the prime, Enfolds the children of the mom ; The other, to a race unborn Extends the crowning gift of time! James Bucehau INTEODUCTOEY There are few of us who have the opportunity of visit- ing many distant lands to make personal observation of the work of the great missionary societies. There are fewer still who have the training of mind, the quickness of eye, the breadth of judgment, the glow of spirit neces- sary for the large and accurate understanding of what such a journey has to disclose. Great is, therefore, the service done us by one who devotes disciplined powers to an undertaking of this kind, and places the results of much travel, observation, and thought within our reach. This service is rendered in marked degree in the present volume. It was natural that to Dr. Lawrence's Christian ardor and keenly scientific intelligence it should seem a thing most to be desired to study at first-hand the great work of the church in evangelizing the nations. For his ever- buoyant spirit the obstacles in the way were only such as it was pleasurable to overcome. At his own charges, un- trammelled by obligations to any society and with unusual catholicity of interest, he prosecuted the work he had set . for himself. When it was done he felt, as such a gener- ous nature must, that he could not keep to himself the re- sults of his experience ; they were too full of instruction xii Introductory and quickening to be merely lioarded. If others cared to see what he had seen and feel what he had felt he must share it with them. Hence the months spent in making careful record of it all in lectures and addresses ; and hence this book. A profound impression was made upon the audiences who heard these lectures from Dr. Lawrence's lips. Young students and venerable professors were alike fascinated and interested. The lectures were packed so full of facts and broad generalizations; they were put in such sinewy and picturesque English ; they were so genial, so thorough, so business-like, so inspiring, that to hear them was to attain a permanent and invaluable increase of conviction of the genuineness, the scope, the exigent necessity, the limitless possibilities of the foreign missionary work, embodying in itself the history and the prophecy of the church of Christ. It intensifies the interest of this volume that its author has been so suddenly, so unexpectedly withdrawn from earth, and that his voice is heard no more. Seeing him in the very prime of life, we counted on large service to be rendered his Master through many years yet to come of opulent, devoted manhood. But the Lord to whose " Come " and " Go " he ever rendered such simple-hearted obedience gave him sealed orders for the journey whence there is no return — the service transcending human experi- ence ; and with swift, unwavering obedience he turned his face heavenward and was gone ! A memorial volume is proposed, but it is fitting that a few words should here be said regarding his life and per- sonality. A grandson of Professor Leonard "Woods and only son of Professor Edward A. Lawrence, his was a lineage Introductory xiii of Christian scholarship ; and with naturalness and joy he entered upon his inheritance, receiving his academic train- ing at Phillips Academy, Andover, and at Yale College, and studying theology at Princeton, and then with Tholuck at Halle and Dorner at Berlin. The venerable Dr. Tholuck cherished a peculiar affection for this young American, ex- pecting of him high service for Christian truth. It was the thought of some who knew him intimately that he had special adaptations for the work of a teacher of Christian learning ; but ^his intensely practical and sympathetic nature unhesitatingly chose the calling of the pastor. It was a wise choice, and he was always abundantly satisfied with having made it. Into the work of the ministry he flung all his powers and attainments : his solid thought, his high enthusiasms, his wise and tender care of individual souls, his ability to organize and to select the fitting agents for carrying out his wide plans, his sociological researches, his philanthropic zeal and practical sagacity — all with the joyous abandon of the whole-hearted Christian leader. I have never known any one who combined in himself more perfectly the attractions of abounding health and vi- tality, the delight of living, keen enjoyment of Nature in her wilder and gentler aspects, quick and overflowing humor, with such regnant spirituality of thought and life, such absolute reality and sincerity of character, such filial devotion, such practical sense, such delicate sympathy. It was inevitable that he should draw to himself men and women of most diverse kinds, understanding them all and knitting them to himself in grateful love. Among the many tributes called forth by his removal from earth, the following extract from a letter by Pro- fessor Edward H. Griffin, Dean of the Department of Phi- xiv^ Introductory losophy in Johns Hopkins University, may be quoted as ex- pressing the judgment of leaders of thought : " It was chiefly as a preacher and as one active in many educational, philanthropic, and religious enterprises that I knew him. For four years I heard him preach each Sunday, and was witness of the unwearied devotion with which he gave himself to manifold labors, not only for those to whom he was under official obligation, but for any and all whom he could serve. Mr. Lawrence appeared to me, as I watched his career, one of the most unselfish, magnanimous, and chivalrous persons I had ever known. He seemed to leave himself out of account altogether, and to ask only what be could do for the happiness and welfare of others. There was a hopefulness and courage and good cheer about him which made him a natural leader. He had good judgment, excellent common - sense, and the tact which comes of blended justice and kindness. It is somewhat unusual to find so much aptitude for affairs combined with the interest in speculative thought which Mr. Lawrence had. One who was familiar with his earlier life expressed surprise on hearing of his sociological studies and labors, say- ing, ' That was not at all the bent of his mind at first. He was a thinker, a profound student of theology and philosophy.' It was his large sympathy with men, doubt- less, which accounts for his development in this direc- tion. "The conception of the Christian pulpit by which he was inspired was a singularly comprehensive one, giving evidence of the wide range of his interests and acquisitions. He was not confined, as so many preachers are, to a partic- ular class of subjects or a certain style of treatment. He spoke on all sorts of subjects and with much variety of Introductory xv method. And he was never more at home than in talking to students. " It is a pleasure for me to express, however imperfectly, my sense of the rare qualities which made this life so pre- cious a gift to those who were brought into contact with it. How impossible it is to suppose, when one thinks of the possibilities latent in him, that death ends all ! " ' That force, Surely, has not been left vain! In the Bounding labor-house vast Of being is practised that strength — Zealous, beneficent, firm.' " The following recollections of travel by one * who was sharer of a brief part of Dr. Lawrence's journeyings in the East may serve to help the reader feel more vividly in his presence and more intimately in his companionship while sharing in the following chapters his experiences and ob- servations in mission lands : " I met your son first at Cairo, Egypt, on his return from his world -round trip. I was drawn to him instantly, and was overjoyed in my loneliness to be able to make ar- rangements to have him as my tent-mate through the Holy Land. The combination of strength and gentleness in his face greatly impressed rae. He was absolutely devoid of selfishness. He was thoroughly equipped for the noblest service, physically, mentally, and spiritually. " After leaving Jerusalem we camped and chummed to- gether ' through the Land,' and occupied the same state-room on board a French steamer for a few days in the Levant. • Rev. Dr. Charles E. Robinson, of Soranton, Pa. xvi Introductory It is under such circumstances you test a man ; such journeyings reveal what is in one ; and they showed Edward Lawrence in the most winning light — gentle, cour- teous, humble, patient, learned, serene, and loving. He seemed to me physically tireless, and he was never so hap- py as when rendering some service to others. " At Nazareth, one Sunday, we left the camp and climbed the hill together. The songs we sang, the Scriptures we read, the prayers we offered, the view we enjoyed, are all delightfully associated with memories of him. An evening at Csesarea Philippi, under the shadow of Mount Hermou, comes back to me — the air tremulous with the murmur of the streams flowing out from the heart of the great moun- tain and vibratory with the song of birds and flooded with the full moonlight, when our quickened souls were silent, and we stood, as Browning says, ' In the heart of things.' " As I was at that time in delicate health, he cared for me as if we were brothers. Over the roughest roads and hardest climbs he insisted upon my using his horse and saddle, which were much easier than my own. His thoughtfulness and his ministrations to me through all the exactions of that journey on horseback, in tent-life, and on the sea were as delicate and tender as a woman's, and I recall them with the liveliest emotions of gratitude. In the closer association on ship-board, where we occupied the same state-room, I thoroughly appreciated and enjoyed his refinement and unselfishness. With the waking of every morning he would look over the side of his berth with his kindly smile, and reach out his hand to greet his ' chum.' " I have never known so intimately a whiter, nobler soul than his, and I mourn his death as the loss of one the church and the world could not spare." Introductory xvii It is a suggestive fact that after Dr. Lawrence's study of foreign missions on the ground, with the deep interest in them thus developed, he threw himself with new insight and ardor into the work of the city missions and poor relief at home. His pastorate at Baltimore was distin- guished by the amount and value of his service to the Asso- ciated Charities of that city, in which he became a leading spirit. He was thus a living illustration of the unity of mission effort and the oneness of the true missionary spirit. It was a beautiful culmination of this phase of his ministry that a considerable part of the last months of his life was spent in residence in the tenements, in order to study with utmost accuracy the life and needs of the poor, to come him- self and to be able to bring his young people into most direct and vital connection with them. Was it thus that his Saviour was bringing him into closest fellowship with him- self, and preparing him for the nearer vision of his glory ? When he was gone, the sermon that was found unfinished on his desk was from the text : " I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness." On the walls of the church from which he was called to the higher ministries of heaven has been placed a beautiful tablet bearing the inscription : EDWAKD A. LAWKENCE, D.D. Served his Master with all Zeal and Faithfulness IN THIS Place and in the Streets and Lanes op the City FROM June 9th, 1889, till November 10th, 1893, WHEN God took him. But a still more beautiful and significant tribute is tak- ing shape in the Lawrence Memorial Association, formed xviii Introductory to continue and enlarge the work which Dr. Lawrence in- augurated among the tenements on Parkin Street, in Balti- more. Here, in no merely figurative sense, will his voice still be beard; here will his consecrated purpose for the uplifting of humanity be felt more and more strongly as the days and years go on. Surely to him is accorded the blessing of those whose works do follow them. Edward D. Eaton. Beloit, Wisconsin. MODERN MISSIONS IN THE BAST CHAPTER I PROVIDENCE IN MISSIONS The original and sole Master Missionary is our Lord Jesus Christ, and as Lord of his kingdom he has put his own divine commission upon his followers. It is " Come 1" " Go !" two commands in one. " Come, learn of me !" " Go, preach the gospel !" His first command to his dis- ciples was, " Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men " ; his last, " Go ye and make disciples of all the nations." Discipleship and apostleship are one and inseparable. The instinct of true Christian life is everywhere the same. We learn but to teach ; we know of Jesus but to tell of Jesus. We commune with him but to communicate him. Even so are we sent as he has been sent. The commission is identical ; and it is in virtue of that final command and according to our fulfilment of it that we are to experience his fulfilment of the final promise, a promise made to a militant missionary church, not to one that is at ease in Zion. Just so far as his church accepts her responsibility for teaching all nations to observe all things whatsoever he has commanded her may she expect to hear the voice of 2 Modern Missions in the East him to -whom all authority has been given in heaven and on earth, saying, " Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world." Thus the church is a coin of divine minting. One side shows the likeness of its Lord, the other the map of the world. Both devices are so indelibly stamped into the metal that to mar either harms the coin, to efface either de- stroys it. The world is itself to be finally shaped into that divine likeness. Thns, Christ is at once Authority and Pattern, Inspirer and Organizer, Author and End of missions. Apart from him we can do nothing. Through him we can do, and teach all men to do, all things which he has com- manded us. Not only, then, is the Bible, in such a sublime sense as is just dawning upon us, the Mission Book of the World, the New Testament being the grammar of missions, but Christ has constituted every Christian a missionary, Christianity a mission religion, the church the great missionary in- stitute. Such is the divine idea. What now has been the fact in realization of that idea ? We interrogate history, which is not merely, as has been well said, " an excellent cordial for drooping courage," but is also a rod for presumption and a staff for inquiry. When we ask what place in the history of the church has Providence given to missions, we notice first the con- tinuity of missions. We distinguish certain grand mission epochs, and are apt to infer that these comprise the whole of mission history. But missions are no modern discovery, or rediscovery of what was lost in the fourth or the ninth century. There have been flood and ebb of the tide, alter- nations of enthusiasm and lassitude, of zeal and apathy, of conquest and apparent defeat. There have been times of Frovidence in Missions S forgetfulness, stagnation, corruption. Many false methods, have heen employed for the enlargement of Christendom. The spirit of missions, which is the spirit of Christ, has been debased with the lust of power, or the lust of gold,. or the lust of blood. The serpent's trail is seen all over the sacred path. The church, in its corporate capacity, has often done nothing or else has done all amissj Yet the golden thread has not been broken, the prophecy has not failed. The sway which Christianity exercises in the world to-day is the result of over eighteen centuries of continu- ous effort and achievement. It may well be questioned whether there has ever been a time since that world-wide commission was first given when its appeal has ceased to ring in the ears and find response in the hearts of some of Christ's followers, when at least individual members of the church have not been planning or winning fresh conquests for him. It is certainly true, in the words of Dr. Maclear, that "you can point to no critical epoch since the foundation of the church — whether it was the downfall of the Roman Empire, or the incoming of the new races, or their settle- ment in their new homes, or the bursting upon Europe of the sea-rovers from the north, or the moving of the Slavon- ic races to their present localities, or the discovery of the New World, or the present age, during which science has given to the political organism a new circulation, which is steam, and a new nervous system, which is electricity — when the spirit of missionary enthusiasm has not been rekindled just at the juncture when it was most needed." Precisely this was the anticipation of Jesus. " This gospel of the _ kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all the nations, and then shall the end come." He 4 Modern Missions in the East announces a continuity of efforts. So far from apprehend- ing that the removal of his bodily presence will interrupt or impede the progress of his kingdom, he allows its uni- versal aim to date from that event, and looking from Olivet around on all nations and down through all ages, " he claims with an absolute assurance the rise of a succession of heralds, who shall carry on a task hitherto unknown — ^the continuous proclamation of his gospel till the end of time." The vision has been fulfilled. From that day to this, with whatever exceptional interruptions, with whatever grievous perversion, a continual succession of men has gone forth from the church into the world, intent on the prop- agation of the faith, and the spread of the kingdom of Christ. There can be no question that in every one of these nineteen Christian centuries mission work in some form or other has been going on. We cannot always trace it directly, but we can see its results. The second and third centuries are covered with dense darkness, so far as the records go, but none were more intensely missionary. From that time on to the present, every century, I think, without exception, shows conspicuous names engaged in this work. These are some of them : Fourth century . Fifth ...Ulfilas. ... St. Patrick. Sixth . . . Columba. Seventh Eighth Ninth Tenth . . . Augustine. . . . Boniface. . . . Ansgar. . . . Vladimir. Eleventh Twelfth Thirteenth ... St. Stephen of Hungary. . . . . Bishop Otto of Bamberg . . .Raymond Lull. Providence in Missions Fourteenth century Fifteenth " Sixteenth " Seventeenth " Eighteenth " Nineteenth " . . John de Monte Corvine. . . Las Casas. , . Francis Xavier. , .John Eliot. . Carey. . Judson. But these are a few names out of hundreds known to us. And those are but a few out of tens of thousands known to the recording angel who in every century have braved peril and endured hardship that they might spread abroad the gospel. "The evidential value of the continuity of the mission enterprise," as Dr. Maclear styles it, is something not to be lost sight of. If it is an enterprise which has never died out, lapsing with the decline only to rise with the recovery of the church, then this fact alone would not only define its inalienable place in the church, but would also declare its significance and glory. Glance now at the various stages or periods in this con- tinuous mission labor. The usual division is into Primitive, Mediaeval, and Modern ; Primitive missions including the Apostolic and post-Apostolic, and terminating with the conversion of the Eoman Empire ; Mediaeval missions covering the next mil- lennium ; Modern missions starting from about the time of the Keformation. This division, however, is arbitrary, unwieldy, and inaccurate. The Encydopcedia of Missions makes these divisions : The Pentecostal Church, the Apos- tolic Church, the ante - Nicene Church, the Imperial Church, the Feudal Church, the Crusading Church, the Colonizing Church, the Organized Church. These repre- sent the state of the church rather than the stages of 6 Modern Missions in the East missions. There is another division by localities : Medi- terranean, European, Universal. The most natural and instructive division, however, seems to me that based on nationality. It is the meth- od suggested by Jesus himself, " Go, teach all nations," and outlining the plan of his kingdom's progress, "Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Ju- dea and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the «arth." First the sacred city; next the chosen people; then the mingling of Jews and Gentiles ; finally the world with all its nations. Guided by this principle, from our later standpoint we see the first stages blended, the last divided. We might classify them as Imperial, Tribal, Universal. Or more fully: 1. Eomanic; 2. Teutonic; 3. Slavonic ; 4. Universal. In the last class are to be includ- ed all extra European missions, whenever or wherever be- gun.* Providence in missions appears especially in the two factors which are to be found interacting wherever the church has done true service for Christ. These are, 1. Opportunity; 2. Fidelity. The sphere of the former is external, of the latter internal. Both are God-given, both to be humanly appropriated. God provides the op- portunity. He inspires the fidelity. The church must accept the one as the other. Both must concur, though either may precede; the opportunity, as has more fre- quently been the case, stimulating fidelity, or fidelity mak- ing a way where it does not find a way, thus creating its own opportunity. Nothing will better prepare one to take a part in the world - wide movement of to - day * Read Smith's Medimval Missions, Maclear, and Encyclopcedia. Providence in Missions 7 than to trace the working of Providence in the history of missions. The preparation for the first great opportunity hegan long before the summons to work. Through all the patri- archal and prophetic ages Palestine was a great training- school for missions. All that while God was training his people by seclusion to that purity and tenacity of faith which must be the inheritance of a religion which would win the world by conquest rather than by compromise. At the same time, all along, scattered hints of the uni- versal destiny of this religion were dropped as seeds in the heart of the people, which should ripen in the fulness of time. And centuries before this time came we can see God's hand making the Gentile world ready. The more we study those ages, the more shall we see the truth of the remark of the German historian Droysen, " Chris- tianity is the point towards which the development of the old pagan world moves, from which its history must be comprehended." In the ancient civilizations, as is the case in lesser degree with some of those of Asia to-day, religion and life were closely identified. The state ruled over both, absorbing the individual, creating its own gods. All the relations of life were subject to the state, and each separate state was bound up with its own local deities. Such compact struct- ures could be shaken down only by being shaken in all their parts. And how should these rigid systems be over- thrown by a religion which approached them from a lower level of culture, and seemed, in fact, indifferent, if not even hostile, to culture ; which appealed to the individual, in states where personality was swallowed up in patriotism, and claimed a universal and exclusive dominion among 8 Modern Missions in the East peoples crystallized into intense and hostile nationalities, and presided over by jealous tribal divinities ? God had his own way of rendering the triumph of such a religion possible. He made five casts of his hand. With each cast he broke down barriers. With each cast he threw out lines into all the earth, which, in his own time, he was to draw together into one great net that should hold in its meshes the fragments of disrupted kingdoms, the floating elements of dissolved nationalities, among which, in this new contact and oneness of life, the personal appeal and the universal claim could make their way. There were five great dispersions. The migrations of the Aryan race began the first or Aryan dispersion. From their primitive centre, whether in Asia or Northern Europe, they pushed themselves out into one after another of what were to be- come the great centres of civilization — into India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Gaul, and Russia. The afBnities of the peo- ples that sprang up in each of these countries were such that it has ever been easy for one common life to possess them all. In India to-day one feels the latent bond of re- lationship between the citizen of the United States and the Brahman. One after another the various branches of this great race yield to the power of the Universal re- ligion, which, originating in the Semitic race, has used the many scattered branches of the Aryan race as its vehicles and messengers in its triumphant progress around the world. The second, or Greek dispersion, which had its begin- nings in the nature of that people, was extended by the campaigns of Alexander, which were but the preludes to the journeys of St. Paul. The conqueror was God's ham- mer to beat down the walls with which the Persian Empire JProvidence in Missions & had hemmed in the restless, colonizing Greeks. Then God scattered these cosmopolitans broadcast. Under their pre- dominating influence, Alexandria and Antioch became cen- tres of trade and letters. Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, the whole section lying along the Mediterranean, was Hellen- ized. Their very downfall as a people and subsequent calamities dispersed them but the more, and thus broad- ened their influence. Says DoUinger, " The Greek school- master everywhere followed the Roman legionary." A new set of relations was formed among the crumbling na- tionalities, whose members were brought into close mental contact through Greek commerce, literature, philosophy, and language. That wide-spread classic tongue was thus preparing to be the receptacle of Revelation, first in the Sep- tuagint translation, then in the original version of the Gos- pels and Epistles, the only books of any of the great re- ligions that have been primarily recorded in any other than an Asiatic tongue. A third time God flung out his lines afar in the Roman dispersion, or distribution. Then in the west, as before in the east, kingdoms were broken up, peoples denational- ized, and both east and west men were brought into legal and political contact, while their roads by land and their ships by sea abolished distance and drew men into physical proximity. Two opposite processes were going on simul- taneously — disorganization and reorganization. But while the old pattern had been provincial, the new was universal. Well has Niebuhr said, " The history of every ancient na- tion ends in Rome ; the history of every modern nation be- gins in Rome." It is easy to see how in the Greek and Roman disper- sions God had set certain solvent agencies at work, which 10 Modern Missions in the East would disintegrate the old structures of pagan life. The power of each ancient state was broken, the prestige of the local gods was lost. Society was emancipated from the dominion of the patriarchal family. The very household was disintegrated to make way for personality, liberty, and private property. The great cities which succeeded to the ancient states were not grand enough nor exclusive enough to absorb the patriotism of their citizens. The vast Eoman Empire was not compact enough to have much hold on the loyalty of its subjects. Local religion, first shocked by the defeat of its gods, was afterwards corroded by Greek phi- losophy. Thus all around the Mediterranean the isolation and ex- clusion which had prevailed were changed to dispersion and concentration. Diversity and hostility were succeeded by uniformity and intercourse. But the former pride and glory had been followed by discontent. The old objects of love and worship, on which men's passions had been centred, were torn or melted away, and nothing had been found to take their place. Deep dissatisfaction prevailed. Men's lives were empty. They were sick at heart. Brought into close contact with one another, they were not united, but were at odds with both God and man. The unity of the Roman Empire was a mechanical unity, which could only hold the fragments of humanity in local and legal jux- taposition until the power appeared that should fuse them into one common life. What a marvellous mission field was thus offered to the gospel ! And what a marvellous Providence had prepared it ! It is God who tumbles down the pagan walls, it is he who melts away the icy barriers with the breath of his mouth. He makes the mission roads, and builds the mis- Providence in Missions 11 sion bridges. And when he calls the mission army forth, lo 1 already he has entered the enemies' camp, to make them faint and fear. He worked so then, he works so now, in India as in the Roman Empire. But there were two more dispersions. The fourth was that of the Jews. Not only their Babylonian captivity, but, later on, their own growing needs and tastes drew them into the movement of the times and scattered them, as the Jewish Diaspora, throughout the civilized world. In the ancient world also Judaism was an efEective leaven of cos- mopolitanism and national decomposition. Thus were they the condition, not only of the rise of Christianity, but of its incorporation into the heathen world. Their proselytes hung as a loose fringe to Judaism. Aroused but not fet- tered by its new truths, these Hellenists were just the fa- vorable soil for the gospel seed. Preaching almost always found its first audiences in the ubiquitous synagogues and houses of prayer. Every synagogue was a mission station of monotheism; and it was those who had been lately kin- dled by the teaching of the prophets who most readily ac- cepted the Messiah of whom these prophets spoke. Finally, with a fifth cast of his hand, God flung the Christians out. They were not long permitted to cling to the sacred city, but were even driven forth, houses falling about their heads, to wander out into all the world, often unintentional and unconscious missionaries, witnesses to the truth of the gospel among all nations. See how God's work is done ! Grain has been gathered from many distant scattered fields. By conquering hoofs it has been ground into meal, by governing hands it has been kneaded into one lump, the Eoman Empire. Now shall the leaven be put into the lump, that so at last it may become 13 Modern Missions in the East like unto the kingdom of God. Into the shattered, uneasy, inorganic Eoman world, there is inserted, by the labors of these few Christians, the life of one divine Lord, as the supply of all their needs, the centre of all their passions and affections, through the vitalizing power of which they may grow into one people and spread into one glorious kingdom. I have dwelt at some length on the preparatory work of this era, not only because of its intrinsic importance, but also because, in the study of the mission work of our time, I find myself every day more and more referred to that early period, as the type and the key to very much that is hap- pening now. And I am convinced that if any seek to inter- pret the opportunity of to-day in the vast empires of Asia, they must carefully study the way in which God prepared the great apostolic opportunity throughout the Eoman Em- pire. Droysen says, "The highest achievement which antiq- uity in its own strength has been able to attain is the fall of heathenism." Yet we may add that it did not do even that. For antiquity had not the strength to shatter its own rejected idols. The final blow came from the pierced hand. The apostolic fidelity needs not to be told. It stands recorded in the Acts and Epistles of the apostles. He who had created the opportunity and sent his Son, sent also the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Thereafter the persecuted church, for the first, last, sole time in its history, was the great missionary, needing no society for propaganda, for it was that itself. There is a mystery about the origin of many Christian communities, such as that of Damascus, Rome, Gaul, and Britain, which is explained only in this Providence in Missions 13 way. As is to-day alleged of the Mohammedans, every con- vert was a missionary. The merchantman, the servant, man or maid, the captive hostage or slave, the Christian wife, all were true to their opportunity ; all carried their faith with them, and even through silence proclaimed it to the world about them. Yes, the absent and the dead did the same work, when the story of the one exiled and the other mar- tyred for his faith proved to some inquirer the message of salvation. At the head of all these were the apostles and their companions, who waited for no compulsion to scatter them among the dispersed, but went forth like blazing torches to set the world on fire with Christian love. No sooner had these open doors been entered than the second great opportunity came with the irruption and distribution of the northern tribes. It was another of those great prov- idential migrations of population, of which history is full. It came neither too early nor too late. The work of Greece, of Rome, of Judea, had been finished ; the work of Jesus was begun. For four centuries, along a frontier of two thousand miles, the Roman and the Teuton faced one another. There was constant contact and interchange be- tween Christian Rome and the rude, hardy, simple northern tribes. Missionaries like Ulfilas and Severinus wandered forth among them, to find their hearts strangely unfettered and unoccupied. Captives were taken on both sides. The pagan captives learned in Rome, and returned to tell their countrymen, what they found the Christian captives had al- ready been teaching in the wild northern woods. Rome's hired legions, too, were constantly ministered to by holy men, who brought them, while they fought, the message of peace. It is touching to think of Bishop Ulfilas, with his Goths, refusing to translate for them the four books of 14 Modern Missions in the Emt Kings, because, forsooth, they needed the bit more than the spur. Thus the northern hearts were moved before they took Eome, till at last they came, they saw, and they were conquered, melting away into Christianity so quietly and so swiftly that hardly "a legend or a record remains to tell the tale." Here, among these primitive tribes, there were traits of personality, independence, and obedience, of man- hood, and yet more of womanhood, which made good soil for the gospel seed. Yet it was only au enduring fidelity that mastered this opportunity. It took all the fiery zeal of the Celtic Church, aided by the organizing power of Augustine and the Eo- man missionaries, on to the close of the seventh century to evangelize Britain. Winfred, called the father of Christian civilization in Germany, died a martyr on the shores of the Zuyder Zee. " Nor," says Dr. Maclear, " did his loving disciples and successors find the work less arduous, less liable to constant disappointment. The whole of the latter half of the eighth century is a record of alternate success and defeat. Now a fresh outpost is established, now it disappears before a desolating inroad of heathen Saxons. Now a church is built, now it is levelled with the ground by the same remorseless invaders ; nor was it till, with in- domitable determination, Charlemagne had pushed his con- quests from the Drimel to the Lippe, from the Weser to the Elbe, and thence to the shores of the Baltic, that the wild world of the eighth century could be lifted out of the slough of barbarism, and the civilizing work of intrepid missionaries could proceed with any real effect." There was yet another enlargement of opportunity when, after this long struggle with the Celtic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian tribes, the way was opened in the latter half IVovidence in Missions 15 of the ninth century to the Slavonian tribes. Here, too, it was only by the same bold, unflagging faithfulness that the gospel won the day. It passed quickly from Bulgaria to Moravia, and thence to Bohemia and Russia. But in Po- land, Lithuania, Pomerania, the fight seemed almost hope- less, the opportunity not to exist. It is passing strange to read that in a.d. 1230 "human sacrifices were still being offered up in Prussia and Lithuania in honor of Potrimpos, the god of corn and fruits, and Picullus, the god of the nether world ; while infanticide was so common that all the daughters in a family were frequently put to death ; ser- pents and lizards were oBjects of worship, and male and female slaves were burned with the dead bodies of their master, together with his horses and hounds, hawks and armor." Or, again, how terribly confused are Christianity and bloody paganism in the account that " when the body of Rolf the Ganger, who had accepted Neustria and Chris- tianity together for himself and his Norse followers, was to be buried, the gifts of the monasteries for the repose of his soul were accompanied by the sacrifice of one hundred human victims." Yet the work went on, though serpent worship was still prevalent in Lithuania in the fifteenth century, and though Lapland was not won until the sixteenth or even seven- teenth century. It was only constancy, devotion unto death, and a continuous pressure of the gospel upon the world, that accomplished the evangelization of Europe, even with all the providential preparations, dispersions, and migrations. Through it all, God showed that he could preserve as well as prepare. Speaking of the tenth century. Bishop Light- foot says : "I can compare the condition of the church at 16 Modern Missions in the East this epoch to nothing else but the fate of the prisoner in the story, as he awakens to the fact that the walls of his iron den are closing in upon him, and shudders to think of the inevitable end. From all sides the heathen and the infidel were tightening their grip upon Christendom. On the north and west the pagan Scandinavians hanging about every coast, and pouring in at every inlet ; on the east the pagan Hungarians, swarming like locusts, and devastating Europe from the Baltic to the Alps; on the south and south- east the infidel Saracen, pressing on and on with their victorious hosts. It seemed as if every pore of life were choked, and Christendom must be stifled and smothered in the fatal embrace. But Christendom revived, flourished, spread." The methods of these mediaeval missions were full of in- struction, both for imitation and avoidance. The missionaries were nearly all monks. They often went forth like Christ and his apostles, in companies of twelve, with a thirteenth as leader, and became pioneers of civilization as well as of Christianity, tilling the soil and subduing wild nature as well as wild hearts. Seven such companies of thirteen are named in the sixth and seventh centuries alone. Brotherhoods and sisterhoods had flour- ished among the Druids, and before them, and seemed con- genial to the soil. The communities formed by them were not unlike the Christian villages of Southern India, or the South Seas, or the Moravian settlements in Greenland or South Africa. The monastery was not one great building, but a village of huts on a river or island, with a church, a common eating-hall, a mill, a hospice, and a surrounding wall of earth or stone. Thither men came and invited others who could not maintain the habits of their new life Providence in Missions 17 in heathen homes. Here they concentrated their strength. They ploughed and fished, felled trees and tended cattle, cared for the sick and poor, trained the children and the clergy, went out as evangelists, lingered as pastors, returned and copied the Scriptures, while they received and pro- tected their new converts. Very unlike was this to the oriental or modern idea of monastic life. But lona and Lindisfarne seem to have been the type of just what was needed for those times. Throughout there was a striking absence of vernacular lit- erature, and great anxiety to retain the Latin language for the Scripture and liturgy, though the mother tongue was never entirely banished from the Anglo-Saxon service. Mir- acle-plays also took a prominent part in their worship. Con- versions were largely national instead of individual, and, as a result, frequently violent rather than peaceable, and some- times of short duration. In answer to the often-pressed command, " Coge entrare" — compel them to enter in — some milder spirits added, " verbis, non verberibus " — with words, not blows — but it availed little. When Clovis, Vladimir, and other savage chieftains were converted, there followed the wholesale baptism of their tribes. We read, for in- stance, how Russian peasants were driven into the Dnieper by Cossack whips, and baptized by force. Norway was converted in the tenth and eleventh centuries by the force and craft of its kings. It was only the Reformation that reached the heart of Norway. Charlemagne fought the savage Saxons into the kingdom of God, as well as into his own. It was always baptism or battle with him and many other Christian chiefs. It is not strange, then, that while England was evangelized in less than a century through the combined efforts of the 18 Modern Missions in the East Culdee and Latin churches, yet in various Saxon kingdoms in the south of England there was for some time a pretty regular alternation of Christianity and heathendom. A hea- then king, so the process is described, becomes Christian, and forthwith all his subjects are Christian. He returns to heathenism, or dies, and is succeeded by a heathen, and no Christians are found. Such is purely national conver- sion. Yet a Scotch writer says : " I doubt whether England now sends as many missionaries to all the world, as Eng- land at the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth centuries sent to Frisia alone. Certainly from Scotland not as many go out now as went from our shores at the beginning of the seventh century." This wholesale conversion of peoples may be regarded as a kind of national infant baptism, after which the baptized were handed over to the instruction of the church, i.e., of the clergy, for church meant clergy. Even in this way the conversion of Germany was a work of several centuries, from the second to the eighth. But northeastern Germany (Prussians and Slaves) was heathen until the eleventh and thirteenth. A startling interruption to the progress of the gospel broke in with the rise of Mohammedanism, which either extinguished the oriental churches, or depressed them into a tolerated insigniiicance. Already corrupt, they were in- capable of such a conquest over the infidel as the Latin church had won over the pagans. Then followed a movement, both in its character and its extent among the most remarkable that the world has seen. We may not refuse to call the Crusades a great mission movement, a great mission enthusiasm. However worldly motives may have mingled with the zeal of the Providence in Missions 19 church, however that zeal may have been misdirected and perverted, using the sword of the flesh instead of the sword of the Spirit, seeking the rescue of the tomb rather than of the faith of its Lord, yet it was a true uprising and outrushing of the missionary spirit of Christianity. The new life had been checked in its expansive work, stripped of its sacred places and original seat. It had been threatened at the very centres of its power. The iron walls were contracting with every century. Just because it was irrepressibly expansive, and with the instinct that it would be slain if it should be stayed, the hemmed-in cur- rent rose in a flood and dashed itself in fury against the opposing walls. Defeat ensued. With all their incidental benefits, the Crusades brought no mission conquests for Christ. The church was to win its victories on other fields, and in difEereat ways. The Crusades ended in the Inquisi- tion, which, despairing of the conversion, sought the com- pulsion of Moors, Jews, and heretics. Yet they may be counted among God's preliminaries. They opened the larger East, made Europe more cosmopolitan, prepared the way for Loyola and the Jesuits. The modern and world-wide opportunity began with the discovery of the new West, and the recovery of the old East. What a providential coincidence of the men and the dates ! Columbus and Vasco ida Gama ! Both seek the East. But the one sails out to America, the other rounds the Cape of Good Hope. Vasco da Gama takes up for completion that movement of dominion from the West into the East which was begun by Alexander and the Romans, attempted by the Crusaders, and is continued at this present day by the nations of Europe ; while Columbus inaugurated that movement of population from the East into the West 20 Modern Missions in the East -which is at its height in our times. Thus pagan Asia and tarbarous America were brought at the same time close to the heart of Christian Europe. It is another of those strange coincidences that even at the time when the univer- sal opportunity opened, the men were living who were to inspire the church with a new and loftier fidelity which should finally prove itself true to its responsibility. Within a quarter of a century after the sailing of Columbus the Eeformation had begun. The same century, too, which saw the world opened wide before the church, saw also a new and marvellous instrument for diffusing the truth put into the hands of the church ; an instrument which, when applied, did more to facilitate her communication with men of all classes and tongues than anything which has come to man since he first received the gift of speech. I mean the art of printing. That simple invention made it possible for the Bible to be for the first time in very truth the People's Book, and for a Christian literature to leaven aU ranks. As the Bible was the first book printed, so the press became the basis of our great world-wide Bible and Tract Societies. This simple instrument gives a more character- istic stamp to modern missions, in their difEerence from all that has preceded, than anything else that can be named. Closely connected with this, however, as a part of the great opportunity in preparation, was the revival of classic and linguistic studies in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies. It brought the church into nearer contact with the original Scriptures, fitted it for the acquisition of oriental languages, for appreciating the spirit of alien peoples, and for translating the Bible into all tongues. There was one other force which was needed to fully Providence in Missions 21 equip the churcli for its universal activity, and to draw the nations of the world together into a net, as the peoples of old had been drawn into the Graeco-Roman Empire. That was the power of steam, which was to bind the lands together with bands of steel, turn the oceans into a Medi- terranean, make the locomotive an emissary of God's king- dom, and the steamer a morning-star to herald the dav. That invention was not ready to begin its task of annihilat- ing space until the dawn of the nineteenth century. But it was ready in time, for not until then was the purified church itself roused to a fidelity grand enough to under- take the work for which God had been preparing this equipment. It was in 180"?, while the young men at Williamstown were praying and studying about missions, that Robert Fulton was making the first trip of the Cler- mont from New York to Albany. But the great modern opportunity which opened with the sixteenth century was presented to a corrupt church, a church not faithful to its Lord. How, then, could it ex- pect to establish his kingdom ? Yet in its own way that corrupt Latin Church did respond to the appeal, and vpith a spirit that differenced it at once from the degraded, oriental churches of the time. It proved itself a mission- ary church. It accepted the universal missionary idea. If its mission work had almost come to a stand-still in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it has never ceased since. It is true that a degenerate church cannot hope to lift men above its own level. It is true that these particular missions frequently served the Papacy rather than Christ, and policy rather than truth; that these mis- sion schemes were too often merely auxiliary to the con- quering and bloody schemes of grasping potentates; that 22 Modern Missions in the East having sown corrupt seed, often amid circumstances of horror and atrocity, the peoples, who throughout large countries and even continents had given a nominal ad- hesion to Christ, have been left in the darkness of brutal ignorance and idolatrous superstitions, the prey of an un- educated, tyrannical, and unscrupulous priestocracy. No doubt the Roman Church was making strenuous endeav- ors to recoup itself, by its missions, for its losses in the Reformation, the Jesuit order being founded in 1530, thir- teen years after Luther began his work. But it is also true that that church did, first of all, com- prehend the world - dominating destiny of Christianity ; that through many of its undertakings there has run a strain of high and heroic loyalty to Christ ; that there are no nobler records of saintly devotion on the mission field than those ofEered by some of its emissaries, such as the Jesuits in North America, and Xavier and his followers in India, China, and Japan. To-day, the self-denying auster- ity of the Roman Catholic missionaries is one of the things held up as a reproach to Protestant missions. We may be sure that more souls than we can number have found their way to heaven through the missionary labors of Roman Catholic priests. It is a strange fact that the Reformation which renewed the fidelity of a part of the church to Christ did not seem to kindle its zeal for missions. The Bible, after being so long shut, was open. There was the field. Where were the sowers to sow the seed? The reason commonly as- signed for this neglect is the fact that the Protestant cause was too much occupied in struggling, first for bare exist- ence, and then for the development of its life, to be able to attempt mission work. That is not a valid reason. It Providence in Missions 33 did not hinder the Apostolic Church from being missionary. We should not allow its cogency if applied to any of our local churches. Least of all would it account for the ab- sence of the mission thought. The truth is that the reform- ers did not even cherish the missionary idea, and that they were largely prevented from doing so by their being preoc- cupied -with theological controversies. The church needed to be brought yet nearer its Lord, and into fuller compre- hension of his plans, before it would be equal to the need. See now how successive waves of divine influence flood the church, and how each lifts it higher out of the low- tide mud of selfishness, until it floats free and loose in the great ocean of universal love. German pietism, headed by Spener and Francke, gives one grand uplift. It was dis- tinctively missionary in its character. Francke's plan for his institution at Halle" was that it should become a univer- sal seminary, where youths of all lands should come, where the gospel should be taught in all tongues, and whence messengers should return to evangelize all peoples. It was from Halle that the noble originator of Protestant missions to the heathen, the king of Denmark, after conference with Francke, in 1705, drew Ziegenbalg and Plutschau forth to the Tranquebar mission in India. It was Francke who issued the reports and had the control of the work. And it was here that Count Zinzendorf received the impulse which made him the head of the Moravian Brethren, started in 1722, and which to-day is one of the most thoroughly missionary churches in the world. For many decades after that, it was the land of the Pietists that furnished the men for missionary societies of whatever country. England might organize the wort and raise the money, but for many years the only men willing to go out were Germans. 24 Modern Missions in the East One more great uplift was needed before the church would be free. This came in the revival of Wesley and Whitefield. Wesley died in I'ZOl. It was in the very next year that William Carey preached his great mission sermon, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God ;" a sermon which proved the starting-point for the first purely English missionary society, and thus really began the era of modern missions. One of the strongest influences in preparing Carey for this work was a small volume of Jonathan Edwards's, published in the mid- dle of the last century. That same spirit had wrought in New England, resulting in the consecration out of which, early in this century, sprang our own societies. Thus, at last, the times were ripe. The work was there, the men were there. With new meaning the church could pray, "Thy kingdom come." Yet even when thus floating free, it is strange to note the timidity of missionaries in launching forth, and the various delays that are made be- fore they are willing to heave anchor and away to the open sea. The truth is that, with the exception of the Moravians, almost all extension of the kingdom of God prior to the time of Carey was dependent on the extension of earthly kingdoms. The mission enterprise was closely connected with political or commercial or exploring enterprises. It followed the discoveries or the trade or the conquests or the colonies of the leading powers. First, in modern times, came the supremacy of Spain and Portugal, and it was Spanish and Portuguese missions that flourished. The founder of the Jesuit order was a Span- iard. It was from this centre that various orders went forth to take possession of Mexico, Central America, Brazil, I*rovidence in Missions 25 Peru, and the West Indies, while Portugal planted the church in the East Indies. The sixteenth century com- pleted the triumph of the Roman Catholic propaganda. For then came the supremacy of Greater Holland, as mis- tress of the seas, and with it the spread of her missions to Ceylon, Java, and other islands. The sway of Greater Britain succeeded, and she and her American daughter have long heen leaders in missions. The French regime in North America was marked by French missions, in the same way. Now that Germany, supreme on land, has begun to aim at maritime power and is spreading her colonies through- out the world, we should expect to see her missions ex- pand. Nor is our expectation disappointed, for never has the missionary purpose been so strong and general in Ger- many as now. Old societies are revived, new societies are formed ; Church and State alike encourage them ; patriot- ism and philanthropy conspire to lend their aid. For it is contact that brings the sense both of responsibility and power. Contact is the great opportunity. Germany of the Reformation had no such contact with the heathen as had Spain, no such foreign development, or it might, too, have been a great propagandist. Much depends on the foreign spirit of a people, as well as on its Christian spirit. Thus in nearly all the movements of modern centuries, missions, like trade, have followed the flag, depending on the state for protection, patronage, and propagation, which expected aid the state has often freely, if not always wise- ly, bestowed. They have been purely national, often gov- ernmental missions. It is only the highest consecration that flings itself out upon the world, and makes alike its own contact and opportunity. The great development of 26 Modern Missions in the Mist the present century has come because the church has at last ceased hugging well-known shores, and has put out into the broad open sea ; meaning to circumnavigate the globe ; abandoning dependence on familiar landmarks; trusting, at length, to the compass, the midday sun, and the Master, who is with us in the ship ; glad of the shelter of the flag, •wherever it is found flying, but never lingering long be- neath its shadow. The resources of the church are not in any kingdom of this world, but in her Lord and herself. The Dutch, the English, and the Danish missions mark three stages of advance towards this ideal. When Holland was first mistress of the seas, she made her colonies gov- ernment missions. The result was 400,000 government Christians, and perversions ending the work even faster than conversions had begun it. In a little more than one generation after religious disabilities were removed, not a single professing Christian was to be found as a relic of the Dutch missions. The English in North America show the second stage. The conversion of the Indians was a leading aim in emi- gration. The colonial seal of Massachusetts in 1628 had the device of an Indian upon it, with a motto in his mouth, " Come over and help us." John Eliot, " the first of the great Protestant missionaries," did a wise and noble work among the Indians. But he and they all did it as minis- ters of English congregations, and their work was con- nected with and limited by the national influence. " The colonial churches, brought into contact with pagans, recog- nized the duty of trying to convert them ; but there was as yet no idea of making the preaching of the gospel the sole motive for entering heathen lands." In 1V21, Hans Egede sailed from Denmark for Green- Providence in Missions 27 land with the aim of evangelizing it. His method was peculiar, and marks the third stage, or transition from gov- ernment to ecclesiastical missions. He had organized a trading company which, under protection of the Danish government, was to join him in making a settlement in Greenland ; they with the aim of establishing the rule of their ccTintry there, while he established the rule of Christ. " In both objects he succeeded," says a writer. " He is alike the apostle of Greenland, and the founder of Danish sovereignty in it." It was just after this that the Moravian work began, and set the whole church an example by send- ing their members, untrammelled by nationalism, into every part of the world, "measuring their obligations not by the extent of a nation's sway, but by the extent of Christ's command." It is the difference between converting the negroes who have been brought to the United States, and establishing missions in South Africa. With this century, then, the true universality of the mission work was made clear and the work itself properly begun. The opportunity, however, has gone on enlarging. Captain Cook's voyages and death thrilled men with a fresh sense of the breadth and needs of the world, and it was the reading of his books which took many of the first missionaries to the South Sea Islands. The slave-trade led some to Africa. The British rule in India led others to that land. How full have the last fifty years been of new discover- ies, which have stimulated to fresh endeavors ! The de- ciphering of old inscriptions, the recovery of lost languages, the disclosure of ancient Scriptures and religions, the great geographical and political movements which have in rapid succession opened India, China, Japan, Africa, and Corea 38 Modern Missions in the East to our undertaking! The mind is overwhelmed at the display of the Divine power and plan, the heart is filled with wonder and with awe. Fidelity once awakened and turned into the field, the opportunity and fidelity act and react, each creating the other. When the first English missionaries went to India, there seemed no room for them. They were driven out to the Danish possessions in Seram- pore. But they pressed in upon the country until the Eng. lish people joined them, and broke the restricting barrier down. They made their way. Now, the great opportunity to reach the women of India and of China has come simul- taneously with the marvellous development of both wom- an's study and woman's work at home. The physicians and the teachers have been training here ; lo ! their -work is ready for them there. God has made great dispersions of peoples before, but never so great as now. Steam and electricity are vast cos- mic forces, pulsing around the globe, distributing and re- " concentrating all the elements of life with marvellous speed and power. These are now the agents by which God scat- ters populations in strange parts of the earth, and causes all races to mingle. Emigration, colonization, exploration, and commerce set everything in motion. These lines God is to draw together again into a net, in whose meshes all nations of the earth will be found. Our task is to see that they are interlaced in a divine confederacy. He is flinging Europe into America in the tides of immigration ; flinging the Chinese among all the isles of the sea and into our land by laws which legislation may retard but cannot repeal. Then he casts "England out into India to rule and to teach. He spreads Russia over a great part of Asia ; scatters the Anglo-Saxon people round the world ; pushes Europe down Providence in Missions 39 on Africa, to explore, to rule, and to save or to ruin it. Diplomatic connections bind us, where nothing else does. We are intertwined in cosmic relations. Our duties to mankind press upon us. Have we a iidelity to match ? Nothing can be more plain than that God is bent on the conquest of the world. He shapes history in the interests of his church. He has mapped out the world for his king- dom. We have not to-day to create the opportunity. It is here. We have not to draw the inspiring presence from afar. He is at our doors. All we have to do is to accept the double gift of the field and the force and go forth to overcome the world. CHAPTER II THE PRINCIPLES OF MISSIONS THE MISSION AIM, SCOPE, MOTIVE, CALL, FITNESS, AND FITTING OuK swift tour througli some of the great, central, criti- cal mission fields of the world is completed. Like a natu- ralist returning from an exploring cruise, we bring back with us a full cargo of specimen mission facts. But, as in his case, our labor is only begun. It is not enough to dump our load at port and call its total bulk the net gain of our trip. Our collected facts must be analyzed, classi- fied, labelled, organized. Their significance must be found, and, since this is a moral sphere, their application must be made. In other words, there is a Science of Missions. By an inductive study of the facts and experiences of the past and present, the near and remote, it discovers the under- lying principles which pervade the whole work. These teachings of experience it compares with the primal im- pulse of faith, from which the whole proceeds. Assur- ing itself of their congruousness and coincidence, it then reaches the illuminated standpoint from which it may re- survey and control the work. With ever-growing clearness it applies to each detail the principles and methods thus suggested by faith and confirmed by experience. The mis- sion undertaking becomes an orderly, continuous, organ- ized appropriation of the world for the Lord Jesus Christ. The Principles of Missions 31 In this chapter we shall consider such preliminary, fun- damental points as the mission aim, scope, motive, call, fit- ness, AuA. fitting. What is the aim, of Christian missions? This is the clew to the whole thing. The end shapes the beginning and directs every step along the way. Is the aim the conversion of sinners ? That is an aim of the church in all its operations, at home and abroad ; hence it is no characteristic mark of missions. Is the aim the conversion of the world ? That is far too vague. It says at once too much and too little. The mis- sion must not stop with the conversion of heathen. It must seek their edification and sanctification. It must not stop with individuals. It must build them up into a Chris- tian society. On the other hand, there is no warrant founded on Scripture, reason, or experience to suppose that the world is to be even converted, far less Christianized, through dis- tinctive mission work as contrasted with direct ministra- tions of the church. God's great agent for the spread of his kingdom is the church. In every land he operates through the church ; and missions exist distinctly for the church. They have both their source and their aim in that. They are the re- productive faculty of the parent church, the constituting agency of the infant church. Every church should work out into a mission ; every mission should work out into a church. The conversion of souls is a necessary part of this. The primary aim of missions is to preach the gospel in all lands, the ultimate aim is to plant the church in all lands. When they have done that, their work is accom- plished. Then the church of each land thus planted must 33 Modern Missions in the East win its own people to Christ. Tlie converts must convert. The new church must evangelize and Christianize. India, China, Japan are each to be turned to Christ, not by- missions, but by the Indian, the Chinese, the Japanese churches, when these churches shall have been securely planted by missions. This ultimate aim of missions was recognized in a tract published by the American Board in 1856. The Kev. Henry Venn, former Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, a little later expressed it in a classic form. The object of missions, he says, is "the development of native churches with a view to their ultimate settlement upon a self-supporting, self-governing, and self-extending system. When this settlement has been efiEected the mission will have attained its euthanasia, and the missionary and all missionary agency can be transferred to ' the regions be- yond.' " Yet this aim has not been clearly understood by our churches or our people at large. Very many false ideas about the work, entertained at home, very many mistakes made on the ground, may be directly traced to a miscon- ception of the mission aim. Our ideas of the work are apt to be too atomistic. We simply keep tally of the number of converts when we ought to be planning for the organization of young, healthy churches. We judge missions by the annual number and average cost of each convert, as if, quite apart from the infinite value of every soul, the worth of such converts as St. Paul, Clement, TJlfilas, and St. Patrick, or as Neesima, Nerayan Sheshadri, Ahok, or K. M. Banerjee, as apos- tles to their own people, could be computed by any mathe- matical process. The Principles of Missions 33 This atomistic idea is what renders it possible for the claims of souls at home to be set up in competition with the claims of those abroad. It is what gives the monot- onous aspect to a work which is of more thrilling interest than the winning of earthly battles and the founding of earthly empires. It accounts also for much of the unfruit- fulness and dependence of mission work. Another evil resulting from ignorance of the true aim is the pessimistic view often held of the undertaking. So many missionaries for so many souls! In China one for 700,000, in Japan one for 215,000. How can they convert the world? If missionaries were required to do this, a hundredfold the number would not suffice. But the mathematical method, though important enough in its way, gives no proper test of the character, progress, or promise of the work. Missions are but a step, though the first, and it may be the longest single step in the con- version of the world. The main part of the task devolves on the native church in each land. Our part is to organize individuals whom we may con- vert into an indigenous, independent, and expansive church, which shall be the type of a native and reproductive Chris- tianity. We are to found this church on Christ and the apostles, to train it from the start in the principles of self-reliance, self-control, and self-propagation. We are to develop its ministry, found its institutions, organize its work. From that point the attitude of the mission to the church, and of the missionary to the native pastor, is to be that of John the Baptist to Jesus: "He must increase, but I must decrease." The true spirit, therefore, of both mission and mission- ary is that of self-effacement. They must recognize from 34 Modern Missions in the East the start that their own part in the work is as surely tran- sitory as it is necessary. They must labor with all zeal to render themselves unimportant, and rejoice over nothing so much as to find that they are no longer needed and can be dispensed with. This temporary or scafEolding charac- ter of mission work forms perhaps its most radical distinc- tion from all work of the pastorate at home. One other question is peculiarly pertinent at the present time. Is the aim of missions the " evangelization of the world within the present generation " ? That is the rallying- cry of some brilliant, enthusiastic, and devout friends of the cause. Their contagious zeal has infected many others. The student Volunteer Movement is largely identified with this cry. The mission work is regarded as a simple proc- lamation like that of King Ahasuerus. Hudson Taylor, the head of the China Inland Mission, estimates that in China one evangelist could reach fifty families a day. Then 1000 evangelists in 1000 days could reach 50,000,000 families, or the whole population of 250,000,000 souls. Allowing two years for learning the language, sixty days a year for rest, and setting aside the present force on the ground for emergencies, all could be done in five years by 1000 new volunteers. The same method could be applied to the world. In this connection mighty outpourings of God's Spirit might be expected. What are we to say to this plan ? It is not altogether clear what is meant by " evangel- izing the world." Some construe it representatively as if the gospel would have been preached to all men when it has been heard by a few of their representatives in each country or community. But where is the warrant for this « The, Principles of Missions 35 Others believe that it must be placed before each indi- vidual, but without reference to results. " We have all responsibility for the proclamation," it is asserted, "none for conversion." " Every volunteer," said one of them at their last meeting, " believes that in this generation the gospel can be so presented that the responsibility for the salvation of the inhabitants of the world will rest on the inhabitants themselves." Contrast this with the Moravian maxim that you must teach men to count three before you can tell them of the Trinity, and with these words of Bishop Patteson, at work among his Melanesian islanders : " It is very hard so to speak of the gospel as to give the heathen man a fair chance to accept what you say. . . . There are no words which convey the ideas of repentance, sin, heart- felt confession of faith, etc. How could there be, when the ideas do not exist ! Yet somehow the language is to be made the exponent of such ideas." But the difficulties placed in the way of the mere comprehension of the gospel by the prejudices of civilized heathenism, as in India and China, are far greater than those presented by the igno- rance of barbarous heathenism. It is said that the Chinese language has 4000 words for vices, passions, etc., and none for spiritual graces. The proper consideration of this topic would demand an entire chapter. I can only mention a few objections to this conception of the great mission aim : 1. It ignores the time, labor, and skill required to present the gospel to the heathen as a mass in such a way that they may even begin to understand it. We are at least responsible for making the gospel comprehensible and, at last, comprehended. 2. It ignores or denies that measure of responsibility 36 Modern Missions in the East which we certainly share with God for fruits of our labor in conversion. 3. It ignores the aim of Christianizing the world as well as evangelizing it, and the fact that this will be best and quickest accomplished through Christian institutions and native ministry in each land. 4. And here I find the keynote of the whole. It stands in the service of certain premillennial ideas, with which it is entirely consistent, while with other views it is not consistent. If the conversion of the world may not be expected by present methods, but can be accomplished only by the visible premillennial com- ing of Christ ; if this advent waits for the proclamation of the gospel to all the inhabitants of the earth ; if this proclamation is to be made rather as witness-bearing to Christ than for the sake of its effects upon its hearers, and means outreaching, and not upbuilding of the kingdom, then, on these suppositions, the conclusion is perfectly legitimate. " Put the whole strength of the church into pure world-wide evangelization!" And such is the posi- tion an4 consistency of the leading advocates of this scheme. But my complaint is that some who do not at all hold these premises do commit themselves to these conclusions, which for them are inconsistent. We welcome the enthu- siasm for the service. We are sure that the work on the field will rectify many false ideals. But for myself I be- lieve that should this peculiar view of mission work domi- nate our mission societies, essential parts of the manifold work would be left undone, and the entire enterprise would be put back for a generation. Instead of the cry, " World- wide evangelization !" which accepts no further responsi- The Principles of Missions 37 bility and awaits but little result, I would substitute the motto " World-wide victory !" — the world for Christ ; the church in every land ; every church a witness for Christ ; every church more and more triumphant, till Christ, through the church, shall rule over all ! I count it the richest acquisition of my world-round journey to have reached some clearer discernment of this mission aim — the vital native church. Thus conceived, the cause of foreign missions is at once grand enough to arouse all the enthusiasm and employ all the energies and talents of the churches of Christendom, yet plain and practicable and feasible enough to com- mand the approval both of enlightened faith and of pru- dent business judgment. Such being the aim, what is the scope of missions? There need be no diflBcnlty in defining this. It is simply as broad as God's redemptive purpose ; as broad as human- ity. The church is to embrace all mankind ; it must prop- agate itself among all mankind. None are too near, none too remote, none too high, none too low for the gospel. The most savage tribes are within the sphere of its influ- ence. Weak, decaying races, whose extinction cannot be arrested and may even seem hastened by the touch of Chris- tianity, are still to be saved, and saved by the church. The proudest races and classes of Asia are within the gospel scope. There may be expediency in a certain order of time, in a certain proportion of labors among different races, varying both according to opportunity and to the relations of one race with another. But all who are not within the sphere of the Christian church, all heathen, all Mohammedans, all Jews, come within the range of mission effort. 38 Modern Missions in the East Does this scope include dead or corrupt nominal Chris- tians ? If at all, how far are missions to be carried on among such people ? Some consider this no field for the missionary, and would work only through the corrupt churches. Others would proselyte from them and place themselves in direct antagonism to their existing institu- tions. But, as throughout, so here, our clearly discerned aim will settle the principle. Christian judgment must decide each particular case. If a living church, in living contact with Christ and God's word, occupy the ground, missions are ruled out, even though the pre-existing church may have what we consider erroneous views and practices. But if the church be dead or corrupt, a scandal to infidels and pagans ; if it withhold the Word of life and the minis- trations of the gospel from the masses, casting a dark shadow over a people instead of shedding light upon them, then the field is open for missions. Whatever its historic connections, it has lost its spiritual relation to Christ, and is in some ways worse than no church, because it caricatures Christianity and makes it offensive to the moral sense of men. What relations the missions should assume to such putrefying churches will depend mainly on those churches themselves. If they will receive the new impulse of life that has come throbbing over to them from other lands, if they will let themselves be resuscitated and restored to living relations with Christ and his work, then, by all means, the mission aim should be to re-establish the old church. If, in spite of antagonism, any of those churches can be won into a return, through the stimulating and dem- onstrating power of small Protestant communities drawn out from among them and living alongside of them, then these new Protestant churches will have served their end, The Principles of Missions 39 and their missionary founders may be satisfied with a lim- ited growth, perhaps a temporary existence. But the dead church that will not be revived must be rooted out and broken up. And it will be rooted out, in time, by the expulsive power of the new life in the new churches. The Roman Church varies greatly in different lands. In many it is sadly degenerate. Yet it shows such possibili- ties of life and growth, of piety and power, that Protestant missions in Papal lands always seem to need some special justification. That justification they certainly have in Mex- ico, Central and South America^ and in Spain. In Italjf our main endeavor should be to strengthen the old Waldeu- sian Church and the new Free Italian Church, to help them unite and equip themselves for the work of simply occupy- ing their own land. France is not a proper mission field. The Protestant Huguenot Church is already living and thriving there, and our endeavor should be simply to help that in its growth. The work of Miss De Broen and Dr. McAll, so promising and important, is in fact simply auxil- iary to the French Protestant Church, and there seems little question that whatever men or funds may be sent from abroad, its operations will be more and more merged into the regular activities of a vigorous French Church. There are Protestant churches, however, that seem dead or slum- bering. The church of Bohemia is one of these, and the American Board Mission in Prague is seeking, amid many di£ScuIties, to bring the gospel to the people. I was favor- ably impressed with what I saw of its work. But we must be careful lest our judgment of a church should be mis- judgment, springing largely from differences of national temperament and from ignorance. There are those who think it important to have missions among the German 40 Modern Missions in the JEJast churches, while to the Koman Church the United States is still distinctively mission ground. To me it seems far wiser to plant the church in every land where there is none at all or only a putrefying church, and to leave it to the interaction of the great Christian bodies upon one another to bring about that mutual correction and inspiration which shall one day, we hope, make Christianity universal and complete at once. At most we shall do well in such lands to confine ourselves to strictly evangelistic and auxiliary operations. * What is the mission motive ? Let us first exclude irrele- vant considerations. The aim is again the test. No motive can be reckoned as primary which does not bear directly on the aim. The general improvement and elevation of mankind, their relief from poverty, ignorance, suffering, superstition, and oppression — all this is greatly to be desired and invari- ably proceeds from mission work, for Christianity always humanizes, always civilizes. Such results are incidental arguments for missions, evidences of their eflBciency, ex- pressions of their love, avenues for their enlargement. But while they reinforce, they do not constitute, the mission motive, being of a distinctively philanthropic, not mission- ary, character. All work, medical, educational, literary, or whatever else, which falls short of the soul, is not properly mission work, for that work begins with the soul as it ends in the church. There is a growing disposition to praise missionaries for the philanthropic or at least civilizing results of their labor. I have conversed with prominent European and American oiHcials in Asia, who have been forced by facts to abandon the attitude of opposition or contempt taken The Principles of Missions 41 towards missions a generation ago. They value and praise missionaries as the forerunners of civilization. Instead of ridiculing, they patronize missions. I suppose some do this because it has been discovered that the missionary creates a native demand for foreign goods. He is regarded as a cheap advertising agency by those who wish to intro- duce railroads and manufactures into any part of Asia. If every missionary in the South Seas creates on an average a trade of $50,000 a year, how much will be created by a mission in China or Japan ? What is the value to trade of the whole mission enterprises ? But the praise and the blame of such fall alike short of the mark. Something of the soul, something of the church, something of Christ has touched the heart of every true missionary, to kindle his sympathies and desires to one supreme passion. It is not in the philanthropic, but in the theanthropic realm that we must search for the great moving principle. The mission motive is not to be found in the desire for reactionary benefit to the church at home. It is pleasant to learn " what we get for what we give," and to discover the reflex advantages of generosity. It is instructive to see how surely the church that would live only for itself dies, and to learn that if it would keep its life it must give out its life. But I have never known a man to be drawn to the mission field by such a motive, or any mission society to be founded mainly for the purpose of keeping alive a dying church at home. My intercourse with missionaries of all kinds in all coun- tries has convinced me of the great diversity of their mo- tives. They vary according to temperament, training, the- ology, environment. Christ does not banish individuality. He cherishes and emphasizes it. Men's mission experi- 42 Modern Missions in the East ences difier as mucli as their religious experiences. They come to Christ from different motives, they go out on his work with different motives. An age peculiarly sensitive to the other world and its retributions may find its mission spirit first stimulated by terrible apprehensions for the future of the heathen. A humanitarian age, full of sentiment and feeling, will be deeply moved to secure their present spiritual welfare. When men come to distrust their own reasonings and feel- ings alike, and every argument is a matter of question, a loyal church will simply lean back on the command of its Lord. As the work proceeds and the church is thrilled with the vision of Christ and his spreading kingdom, it will more and more do all things for the glory of God. In general, when theology emphasizes the sovereignty of Ood, with legal and governmental relations and retributive awards, the whole trend of feeling and motive must be very different from what we shall find when the emphasis is placed on the paternity of God, with personal relations, ethical values, and spiritual consequences. There are motives that look Godward and motives that look manward. Godward motives are gratitude for his sav- ing grace, obedience to his command, loyalty to his pur- pose, love for his person, sympathy with his plan, zeal for his glory. Manward motives are gratitude for the conver- sion of our ancestors by missions, compassion for the con- dition of the heathen, educational and philanthropic zeal, and brotherly love for them as individuals and classes. Yet no one of these many motives, efficient as each may be, is really sufficient for the whole burden of the work. They are but varied manifestations of the one supreme motive which is the source common to them all. That The Principles of Missions 43 source, the motive of all motives, is the great theanthropic impulse that is born of contact with Christ. There is an inherent expansiveness in the gospel, a latent universality which puts its impulsion upon every faculty of the soul or church that it enlivens. It masters and sends them forth, not primarily by its appeal to reason or sentiment, but by the simple communication of its own outflowing vitality. The main source of missions then is not, strictly speaking, in any motive at all, but in a motor, in Christ himself as author, operator, and energizer of all divine vitalities and activities. Christ is the one motive power. He moves within us and moves us. He draws us into his life and bears us forth in the outflowings of his heart. He is the originator of all our regenerate activities, the director of all our operations. Author and Finisher of our work as well as of our faith. We can simply work out what God works into us of himself. " I have but one passion," said Count Zinzendorf, the head of the Moravian Church — " I have but one passion, and that is He, only He." Just as Paul, the Missionary, had said before him, " For me to live is Christ." Both passion and action are Christ. All other motives then are derivative and variable, roused to activity only by the Master's touch. It is as of old with Elisha and the child. As the prophet stretched himself out on the body of the dead boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands, so Christ lays himself upon the whole being of man and, by this vital contact with every part, he kindles life and movement in the whole. Nothing less than this impact of Christ upon the entire being with the pressure of his mission purpose can explain the strangely diversified sen- 44 Modern Missions in the East timents which actuate mission men and societies at differ- ent periods and among different classes. Not the com- mand of Christ, not the love of Christ, not the glory of God, not the peril, or.guilt, or possibilities of souls, no one of these alone is the great constraining force, but Christ himself in the fulness of his being. It is the expansive Divine Life that moves us in all its rich diversity. Trace back the history of any mission epoch to its source ; you will find that it starts simply in some fresh religious experience, the instinctive outcome of which, un- less hindered by special causes, must always be a longing for the expansion of Christ's kingdom. In beautiful agreement with these experiences of the past is the account given by Principal Moule, of Cambridge, England, of the meetings of Studd, Stanley, Smith, and others, just before starting for China with the university men. He writes: "A very large part of the visit of the young men was spent in addressing their fellow-students — not specially on mission work, but on devotedness to Christ. In meeting after meeting we had nothing of missionary appeal before us, except the very eloquent appeal of the presence of those who were just to go out to the ends of the earth for the Lord. The point they pressed on the meetings was this : ' Are you really ready to serve him anywhere ? Have you given heart and soul to him ? Have you given yourself to him, with all you are and all you have, to be his instrument, to be his tool, to be what he pleases you to be and to do ?' "This resulted first in a meeting where perhaps 200 uni- versity men were present to hear two Church Missionary Society secretaries give mission information. The further results are such an increase of men from Cambridge, plan- The Principles of Missions 45 ning to go out as missionaries, as was never known be- fore." This answer to the question, What is the mission motive ? brings us naturally to our fourth question, and one of great practical importance, viz., What constitutes the mission call? We have seen how the call comes to the church through a renewal of life within and an enlargement of opportunity without. I do not know that the call to the individual is very different. There are two parts to it, first the call to Christ, then the call to his work. It was in the very same day and place that he said : "Ask of me and I will give thee living water to drink," and " Lift up your eyes and look on the fields that they are white already unto harvest." There is but one response to be made — Consecration. Surrender the will. The rest is only matter of judgment, according to providential indications. Men have forced their way into the mission field against almost every pos- sible obstacle. This was the experience of Carey and many other pioneers. Others have been led along by providen- tial appointment where every step was taken against their own preference, until at last they, found themselves set down in mission work. God deals with men as individuals, and most diversely. There are calls and calls — some that are special, and some that are general. There are calls contained in repulses, and tests contained in invitations. Sometimes the soul breaks through barriers to respond to the inner voice that leads it on. Sometimes outward providences push on a reluctant or doubtful servant. Sometimes the call consists of the simple presentation of facts to the mind and con- science, which,when calmly weighed, seem important enough 46 Modern Missions in the East to decide the choice of the will and the work of the life- time. The mission field is then entered with precisely the same calm business spirit as that with which another would enter a mercantile employment, only it is done in the service of the King. God calls men through the reason as well as through conscience and providence and the Holy Spirit. It should be borne in mind, however, that the number of those to whom the mission call is addressed is and must be but a very small part even of those who enter the home ministry. The American Board has in the foreign field 461 workers, men and women (about one in a thousand of the Congregational membership). It calls for many more ; but circumstances, duties, and disqualifications of one kind and another make it plain to far the greater number that they cannot go. To those, therefore, who can go, and are in any way fit to go, the call for more men must come with ten- fold force. To the few who are at once able and willing to go there may come many a conflict before the matter is decided. There is room and demand for a great variety of talent abroad, far greater than in the ministry at home. But it is the very best men who are most wanted. The call is rather for more man than more men, and for the whole man. We want the men who can become evangelists of nations, heads of schools, fathers and bishops of churches, founders of institutions, creators of literature, leaders in all things. At their touch the kingdom of God is to spring forth. Those are precisely the men who are most called for at home, though seldom with so great ultimate promise as abroad. They will encounter many seeming indications of providence bidding them stay. The home church is here The Principles of Missions 47 to speak for itself, and it will often speak very loudly. Im- portant positions may be offered where much seems to de- pend on securing a particular man. The demands of home and friends will increase. But through all the clamor of these nearer claims the one who is called of God may hear a still small voice, as from a far distant shore, whispering, " Follow thou me." Sometimes he must even go in the very teeth of provi- dence, yet this may be only the testing of his purpose. There are just now some men inclined to the mission field who hold back because they fear that for one reason and another they may not be accepted. This, too, is a test- ing of obedience. I beseech you not to be deterred by this preliminary obstacle. Will you not pray and pray un- til the inclination grows to a purpose and an enthusiasm ? Will you not commune with God until light and strength come ? Then will you not present yourselves to the Board? If the door is closed you have done no more than your duty. The importunity of quenchless enthusiasm is what has opened heavier doors than ever closed before you. God rules and overrules, and the very damming up of the waters may prepare for a greater flood at last that shall sweep all obstructions away. But two further subjects remain to be considered by one who may be pondering the mission call : 1. What is fitness for mission work? 2. What the fitting for it ? The qualifications are spiritual, physical, mental, and social. In naming consecration first, I mean not simply the act of self-devotion to the mission work. It is possible that one lofty act of self-consecration might bring a very un- 48 Modern Missions in the East consecrated person to the mission field, and that, having nobly come, he might yet ignobly fall before the tempta- tions that beset him. What I mean is the spirit of con- secration which pervades the life, and has grown into habit and character. Necessary as this is in all of Christ's work, it is, if possible, even more indispensable in those who are to be, like the apostles of old, the primal sources of the spiritual life of whole peoples and great churches. Let not any one think that the very grandeur of the work will exalt and sanctify an unconsecrated person. I have seen in- stances of this, but it left bitter regrets for early misspent mission years. And I have seen the reverse, where the noble calling had been desecrated by secular, selfish minds. ^' Spiritual agents for spiritual work " is the first qualifica- tion to be laid down by every missionary society. The confidential instructions of the China Inland Mis- sion have the following words on " Counting the Cost :" " Candidates must be prepared to live lives of privation, of toil, of loneliness, of danger ; to be looked down upon by their own countrymen, and to be despised by the Chinese ; to live in the interior far from the comforts of European society and protection. They will need to trust God, as able to meet their needs in sickness as well as in health, as it will usually be impossible to have recourse to the aid of European physicians. But, if faithful servants, they will find in Christ and in his Word a fulness, a meetness, a preciousness, a joy and strength that will far outweigh all they have sacrificed for him." Much that is said here applies to only a part of our mis- sions. But the principle of counting the cost and of com- plete consecration applies everywhere. With all this there should be no marked defects of char- The, Principles of Missions 49 acter, such as extravagance, or impatience, or quarrelsome- ness, or wilfulness. Defects which are seen to be merely personal here will often be put down there to the fault of Christianity. Next comes the physical qualification of health. Mis- sion fields vary greatly in their climatic influences, some diminishing, others aggravating, bodily ailments felt at home, while they often create new difficulties. Vitality and powers of endurance are indispensable. No candidate should be finally accepted without a c^tificate from a dis- interested medical man, not his family phj'sician or chosen by him, but appointed by the committee, stating that his constitution and state of health are suitable to the duties of a missionary in the particular field for which he is des- tined. The same certificate should be required for the wife or children. It is the picked men who are wanted, as for an arctic expedition. I have known a few sad experi- ences, where men have arrived on the field physically unfit for the work they were about to undertake. After one or two or three years of unavailing struggles they have been forced to return home, time and money wasted, their hearts distressed, their places vacant, their work undone, they themselves disconnected, cut ofi from opportunities for fut- ure usefulness. Some wear themselves out in the first few years of getting ready for work. Among mental qualifications comes, first, common-sense, absolutely demanded both in itself and as the parent of so many other qualities. It brings self-knowledge and knowl- edge of others, self-control and control of others. It brings the power of adapting one's self to new relations and con- ditions, which is required in the missionary as in no other. Piety alone may not fit a man to work either with his 50 Modern Missions in the East brethren or witli the natives ; but if common-sense be added he will have little trouble. At home so much com- mon-sense has been organized into custom that we are all largely supported by the general fund, and some men get along with a very slender stock of their own. But on the mission iield, where Christian custom is yet in the making, the drafts on common-sense would soon overdraw a small account. Linguistic talent is one of the self-evident requirements. I have known missionaries who, after years of labor, could hardly construct one correct sentence in the vernacular. They were good missionaries too. Yet I think they would have served better at home. But important as is facility in acquiring a language, it is not so important as tenacity in holding it. To be sure and persistent in this case is more essential than to be quick. A full academic and theologic training is desirable. I cannot say that it is indispensable, for there have been great missionaries who have had little training and have been mostly self-taught. Yet in studying the growth of mission societies, especially in Germany, such as the Berlin, the Gossner, the Basel societies, one is struck by the frequency with which such societies begin with the principle of sending out untrained men, and the certainty with which, as they gain experience, they make increased demands for educated candidates, until now the require- ments of all except the newest enterprises are pretty much the same. The opportunities for self-development which come to the minister at home are largely wanting to the missionary. He must be prepared to cope with the keen- est intelligence of subtle heathenism ; he must gain not only respect but influence among his European fellow-residents ; The Principles of Missions 51 he must be ready to teach as well as preach, and in almost any branch. There are few who take this up as a life- work and are otherwise qualified, who would not find their usefulness far more enhanced by the added training than harmed by the delay of a few years in the beginning. And to many a wondrous quickening of talent comes from the mission enthusiasm.* I have known a marvellous develop- ment in musical alaility and in acquiring languages as the result of this enthusiasm. As the centre of all social requirements we may simply name love. Piety and common-sense will enable a man to get along with men, but they will not give him great power over them. He must love, not as a duty, but as an instinct and a passion. It should be love to the brethren, love to the natives, love to the heathen. No one can know what that means until he has been on the field and lived among the natives, whether Christian or heathen. That simple, genial, outflowing love will be the source of a power greater than any he wills or knows. It will be the secret of a beautiful character, and will win men to Christ because they have seen Christ in his servant. I will name one more indispensable qualification. It is that the one who goes out as missionary should be sound and strong in the faith. By soundness I mean something equally removed from doubt and dogmatism, something neither defective nor protuberant, the clear discernment and ready acceptance of the fundamental, living, working, practical doctrines and principles of Christianity as taught by Christ and the apostles. A shaky theology, one cut off from the main line of doctrinal development, out of tune * The question of lay-evangelization will be touched upon elsewhere. 63 Modern Missions in the East ■with one's time, representing only individual, accidental, or provincial peculiarities, would be a poor tool for the found- ing of Christ's kingdom in Asia — a far greater hinderance to usefulness, I am convinced, there than in America. Were I in any way to have part in the examination of can- didates for both missionary and pastoral service, acting with my present light, I should be far more critical and exacting, far less yielding to eccentricity and immaturity in the case of the missionary than of the pastor. It has been the stndy of the work on the ground which has brought me to this conviction. The pastor at home has but to con- tinue a work already begun, administering the legacy of the past. He is surrounded, instructed, corrected by the pervading sentiments of Christian communities. Abroad it is different. The missionary is the founder and master-builder of the native church. It takes the tone of its Christian life, its interpretation of Scripture, the color of its theology from him, and much which might be a harmless deviation at home because counteracted on every side, and discerned in its true nature and results, may prove a germ of mischief and dissension abroad. It is the peculiar, original, and pivotal position of the mission- ary that brings his need of special soundness in the faith. There is yet another reason why I should be more exact- ing in the examination of the missionary than of the pas- tor. The latter is subject not only to the scrutiny and criti- cism and advice of his brethren, but to the withdrawal of their fellowship in his association, or at a council upon a change of location. But when the missionary is once on the field it is most important that he should be left to free, un- trammelled development of his faith. If he have proved him- self thoroughly rooted and grounded in the gospel, sound in The Principles of Missions 63 faith and in judgment, he can be trusted to encounter the subtle philosophies of the East, and to shape the theological thought of the new church. By being strong in the faith I mean more than I can be- gin to say here. The missionary needs to have such a firm grip on the central truths of Christianity that, even should he experience a change in his views on outlying doctrines, he cannot be moved from the centre, holding that so strong- ly that no wavering at the circumference will shake him. He must be strong, not only to defend the faith, but to es- tablish it, impart it, and use it ; strong enough in it to hold its essence under every new form, to keep the same firm grasp upon it, though it assume Protean shapes within his hands. He needs to be one capable of seeing the deep meaning in the remark of Rothe, that there is nothing more changeable than Christianity, but that in this lies not its weakness but its strength. More than other men he needs to distinguish between the essential and the incidental, the transient, the historical, and the eternal in Christianity ; more than others he needs to know the true proportion of faith. Presenting it on the historic basis, and in the historic de- velopment which belongs to himself as a European, an Amer- ican, a New-Englander, perhaps, he must yet present it in such way as not to fetter but to stimulate the native mind, so that from the start, being rightly founded, it may find its natural Asiatic development, according to the traits of the Chinese or Indian mind, rather than be forever bound to the one-sided peculiarities of occidental thinking. To sum up: The faith of the missionary should be a , sound faith, having in itself the promise of life and healthy development ; a positive faith, not distrusting and consum- ing itself, but aggressive and dominant in its hold upon 54 Modern Missions in the East others, persuasive of tlieir minds, and constructive of both character and faith for the new church. It should be a deep faith, laying hold upon God ; a Biblical faith, resting on the foundation of Jesus Christ and his apostles ; a hroad faith, comprehensive enough to include Asiatic as well as European schools of theology ; a simple faith, suited to the intelligence of a strange people and an infant church ; a rev- erent faith, not dogmatizing beyond the limits of Revela- tion ; and a well-proportioned faith, placing main emphasis upon the central and fundamental features of the gospel, not carried away by any theological caprice or phantasy. A sound body, a trained mind, linguistic talent, and com- mon-sense, a rounded character and a loving heart, clear, firm faith, and consecrated piety — these constitute fitness for the mission work. There are degrees in them all, but I am happy to say that I have found on the whole a large fulfilment of these demands among the missionaries I have met. Last of all, how shall one who is in some degree fit be specially fitted for the mission work ? The European answer to that is different from the Amer- ican. At Berlin and at Basel, at Islington, London, and at Canterbury, as well as in other places, there are large mis- sionary colleges where young men are taken even in the beginning of their studies and trained for the mission work. This practice, however, has sprung, not from preference, but from necessity. In Germany and England alike the number of university men who have entered into the mission VFork has been extremely small. From Cambridge, England, only one missionary went forth before the year 1836, and thSt was in the year 1815. The only way to supply mis- sionaries at all was to train them in a special institution. The Principles of Missions 55 This has brought the question of missionary instruction to the front. But after some personal observation I am led to believe that the instruction given at these missionary semi- naries is essentially the same as that given in our semina- ries, only not so extended and not so good. If men of academic training can be secured, and that is happily the case in this country — where from the time of Nott and Jud- son and Mills up to these days of Forman and Wilder the colleges liave been originators of mission societies and movements — then there need be little difEerence in the gen- eral training of missionaries and pastors. Yet the choice of such a vocation early in one's course will lead a student to place special emphasis all the way through on whatever lies in the lines of his work. In his exegesis the mission purpose of the Bible will shine out brighter to him than to others. In church history he will bestow especial attention upon the expansion of the church, its relation to pagan systems, its organization in different lands. In apologetics he will ever be asking himself how to adapt the evidences of Christianity to the peculiarities of Buddhist, Hindu, or Mohammedan minds. The compara- tive study of religions in both their history and their phi- losophy will enable him to judge how apologetics should be recast for such purposes. In the study of dogmatics I think the one who is to be a missionary will feel a little more strongly for that reason the need of clearness and largeness of view. He will dis- tinguish a little more carefully between the essential and the accidental in our faith, the local and the universal, while he will ask that somewhere and somehow the science of mis- sions shall be opened up to him and to his coadjutors, on whose home support he must count. Geography and 66 Modern Missions in the East travel will become practical and sacred studies for his leisure hours, sociology will prepare him to understand the struct- ure of the strange societies and civilizations which will con- front him, and mission biographies and reports will mean more to bim than to any one else. Thus he will have, not so much different studies, as different meanings in the same studies. If to these he can add a course of medical lect- ures, unless he goes to Japan, and the study of Sanskrit or Arabic if he is to go to India or among Mohammedans, and a fair knowledge of sacred music, he will do well. Some experience in teaching is well ; also an acquaintance with tools for mechanical and industrial employments. Nothing of that sort will come amiss. It would be extremely valuable to him if he could take some time to study the history, organization, and methods of leading churches and societies in America and Europe. He is to be an organizer both of mission work and of churches. How full of instruction would he find the study on the ground of the organization of the Presbyterian churches in Scotland, or the comparison of the methods of the London Missionary Society and the Church Missionary Society with one another and with those of American soci- eties ! Or some .experience of the great evangelistic work of cities, such as New York and London, would show him how heathenism at home is being dealt with. The bitter cry of outcast London, the needs of the submerged tenth, would quicken his care for the more bitter needs of hea- thendom, the unemerged whole. CHAPTER III CHINA COREA JAPAN Japan, China, Turkey, Russia, and Great Britain are the five powers that sway the Orient. There is but little out- side of their dominion or influence. Two of them are nom- inally Confucian and Buddhist ; one is Moslem ; two are Christian. Asiatic Russia is both barbarous and heteroge- neous. The other four powers embrace within their rule all the great surviving non-Christian civilizations of the world. Into this preoccupied domain, however, another rule is en- tering, claiming absolute sway and universal empire in the name of the King of kings and Lord of lords. This king- dom of God has to-day its great battle-field, to-morrow its final battle-field, in Asia. Work and problems enough are found elsewhere, as in Africa and the isles of the sea. But in Asia alone does Christianity encounter compact, elabo- rate, venerable, defiant nationalities, civilizations, and relig- ions which, with great vitality and intelligence, dispute its claims and resist its progress. Therefore, if we would see the work of missions in its greatest intensity and grandeur, and in view of its sublimest coming victories, it is to Asia that we must go, and among the four great empires, excluding Russia, in their oriental dominions. It is a region of which the greater part has al- ready become practically a European colony, a fact deserv- ing to be borne in mind. 58 Modern Missions in the East Such was the conclusion of a pastor in the city of Syra- cuse, N. Y., when, in the spring of 1886, the way opened for a two years' study of the work of the church in evangel- izing the world. He surmised that this mission work must have greater breadth and complexity, and also a far closer connection with home life and labor, than is usually sup- posed. He believed that, as this century of experiments closed and the science of missions became fully established, there would be need of a more intelligent sympathy and a more active and varied co-operation on the part of the church at home with the church abroad. Therefore I set forth to study on the ground and by per- sonal inspection modern missions in the Orient. In this journey I went out uncommissioned and alone. I paid ray own bills and drew ray own conclusions. I carried circular letters of recommendation from the five or six Mis- sion Boards, as well as from Eoman Catholic functionaries. But the only introduction to the missionaries found nec- essary was an interest in their undertaking. I inspected work of all the leading denominations, including the Greek and Roman churches, and of five or six different nationali- ties. I saw them, not in the dress parade with which they greet oflBcials, and which, responsive to demand, they are apt to assume in missionary periodicals, but in their every- day attire and at their •joramon tasks. I entered upon this journey with one invincible preju- dice, a prejudice in favor of obedience to the Lord's com- mand to preach the gospel among all nations. Apart from this, my mind, so far as I can judge, was free from bias in favor of any particular method of accomplishing this pur- pose. I came home with a far clearer understanding of the principles and aim of this work, a far better appreciation of China — Corea — Japan 59 the need of it, its difficulties and its grandeur, and an in- creased esteem for the men engaged in it. To be dislocated from the environment of a lifetime and suddenly thrust into the midst of a people of uncouth as- pect and unintelligible tongue is an experience long to be remembered. The yellow skin, the almond eye, the bridge- less and diminutive nose, the beardless face, the shaven head and dangling queue, the blue cotton garments, flowing robes and baggy trousers, the mushroom hat and gunboat shoes, the inexpressive countenance and demeanor, and the back- handed way of doing everything — when we see these out- ward signs there can be no doubt that we are among the Chinese. But it is a very different thing to see a China- man, and to be dropped down in China. It is no longer the Chinaman who is the oddity and intruder. It does not take long to discover that you are the interloper and great exception. You find that you are thus regarded, until you begin to regard yourself in the same light. The former oddities have become ubiquitous and normal. They swarm about you. They seem to rush in upon yon through every pore. You see and hear and smell and breathe nothing but Chinamen. The whole three hundred and three millions of these beings seem to weigh you down and crush you. Are these the men whom our brothers are sent out to convert ? Gradually you discover that back of these strange phe- nomena — for a Chinaman is a phenomenon — strange laws and forces are at work, moulding all these elements to uni- form results. So, by degrees, it dawns upon you, with sometimes overwhelming force, that you have not merely entered among a countless mass of strange human beings, but that you are face to face with an alien civilization, vast, complex, mysterious. Wonder grows to amazement, curios- 60 Modern Missions in the East ity to awe, when you learn that this is in many respects the most remarkable civilization the world has known. Its antiquity seems like that of the eternal hills. The begin- nings are lost in the darkness of early Arcadian and Egyp- tian days. It saw the empires of the ancient world blaze up in all their brief brilliancy — Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Eome, Israel — it saw them die out and pass into oblivion, but it went its way unchanged. " And while the Britons still wore skins, the Chinese wore silks." Twenty-four hundred years ago Confucius put his sancti- fying touch upon the customs and institutions of the time, already ripe, and everything seemed to crystallize into eter- nally abiding forms whose sacredness only increased with their antiquity. A few inventions have been added. The substance of life is the same as then. But this civilization is not only ancient, fixed, elaborate. It has made itself supreme throughout Eastern Asia. While not possessed with that land-lust that has burned in west- ern nations, the Chinese empire is second only to Eussia in size, and is first of all in numbers. Over a territory one third larger than Europe, one will rules all those mighty millions ; one type of civilization is stamped upon them all. But the dominion of the Chinese mind extends even further than the rule of its will. Corea is bound by only the slightest ties to the empire, yet if you go up to the capital, Seoul, you find yourself in a Chinese atmosphere. Customs, language, literature, and society are saturated with Chinese influences. Until within a few years it has been the same in Japan. That remarkable country, which, happier than even England in this respect, has never permitted an invading army to land upon its soil, has yet been for centuries under the mas- China — Gorea — Japan 61 tery of Chinese civilization, which flowed upon the land through Corea, and found everywhere a ready and apprecia- tive, though by no means slavish, acceptance. Their classic books are Chinese. The words and characters of the Chi- nese language are as largely incorporated into their own as those of the Greeks and Latins into ours. Their art is sprung from Chinese or Corean sources, and their ethics are those of Confucius. Nor is this so ancient and dominant civilization of China in any sense effete. There is much, indeed, in first appear- ances to suggest this. There is a dirty, dingy, decaying look and an offensive stench about cities, roads, and buildings, whether houses, temples, or palaces, which seem to tell of an empire mouldering away. There is an oflBoial corrup- tion, too, which can be compared only to that in Turkey, and even that is probably not so systematized and universal. China seems one huge sponge, where every man is equally sure to be squeezed and bent on squeezing. Yet the grip of custom is only tightened by age, and the power of the cen- tral government is ever increasing. If left to themselves, there seems no reason why this vast empire might not go on for the next three millenniums as it has done for the past three. Back of all else lies the keen, strong, persistent mind of the people, their patient endurance, their domestic devel- opment and reverence for age and ancestry, their love of order, obedience to law, and confidence in government. They are sound and hardy in body, save where opium has made its recent ravages, and seem to have every business virtue except versatility and honesty. Even the last trait is not wholly wanting, for when a Chinese merchant of good standing says "Put-eebook" — "put my signature down in a book " — he will stand to the contract through thick and 63 Modern Missions in the East thin. I have been repeatedly assured by business men in China that, in regular commercial transactions, they would far rather do business with a Chinese merchant than with their own countrymen, because they could better trust them. To all this should be added that the Chinese are, next to the Anglo-Saxon race, the greatest colonizers in the world. The large islands and coasts of Malaisia are being occupied by them ; they are flocking into Polynesia and America. Hardy, thrifty, pei'severing, able to endure any climate in the world, they are to be the great agents for redeeming such lands as Borneo, Sumatra, and other tropical regions, where the white man sickens and the natives only vegetate, until pushed out by the enterprising Chinese. In no instance have I found myself forced to such a revi- sion of my former opinions and prejudices as in the case of China. The more I saw of this wonderful country the more I was astonished at its resources, delighted with its natural scenery, awed at its past, dismayed at its present, thrilled with hope for its future. Yet the upper heavens are shut to its ken ; the lower heavens and the under-earth, the present and the future, are peopled with ghosts, demons, and awful terrors. When you face this compact nation and begin to comprehend the vigor of its resistance, the bitterness of its contempt towards all that is alien, the tenacity of its co- herence — you will understand that despairing cry of Xavi- er, " O mountain, mountain, when wilt thou open to my Lord ?" How vastly difficult for individuals to detach themselves from this system of life, organized, civilized, intelligent, as vital as it is venerable ! All possible bonds and forces con- spire to hold the members of this mass together — the per- sonal, domestic, social, and civil ties, heredity and environ- China — Corea — Japan 63 raent, reverence for ancestors and love of country, all desire for gain or fame or affection, common morality, and religion itself. The change you desire means to them not only ex- ile, poverty, persecution, contempt, but impiety to their an- cestors, treason to their country, sacrilege to their gods. It makes them outcasts. In China more than elsewhere in the world, perhaps, the missionary must simply fall back on the sovereignty of God and the omnipotent love of Christ. General Grant, after his visit, said he realized that while progress in the Mississippi valley might be that of the avalanche, in the valley of the Yang-tze it could be only that of the glacier. But Napoleon at St. Helena, looking out on the vast empires of the world, which he had come to know so well, said, " When China is moved it will change the face of the globe." It is simply the hand of God that can move it, simply his breath that can melt the glacier. In the light of his pur- pose, what a field this is for missions ! what scope for the divine kingdom ! Let this people once become God's peo- ple, they will spread his rule over Asia and Oceanica, as the Teutons and Celts have spread it over Europe and America. Here are the greatest rulers, civilizers, and colonizers of Asia, with splendid business talents and a genius for associative development. As a Californian said to me on my way over, " We must drive them out or they will drive us out. They have all of our virtues and none of our vices." Referring as he did to business virtues and vices, the statement was almost literally true. Yet with all their attainments there is a certain pettiness, immaturity, and childishness about them which they have not been able to cast off. They are a dull, prosaic, commonplace people. They need the pervading ferment of a divine life. It seems as if China had been 64 Modern Missions in the East waiting all the centuries for the Lord Jesus to come and call ■ out, " Man, I say unto thee, arise!" There are three stages in Protestant missions in China. The first is from 1807 — when Dr. Morrison went out to Can- ton and Macao — to 1842. The walls of the Chinese Jericho rose impregnably before the missionaries in all those years. They could not march about them nor even blow their trumpets. They sat outside China, in the Malaisian penin- sula and islands, waiting for an opening to be made, learn- ing meantime how to blow their trumpets. It was wholly a time of preparation. But in 1842 English gunboats made breaches in the wall. Five treaty ports were thrown open, Canton, Amoy, Foo- chow, Ningpo, Shanghai. Then came the second or treaty-port period of restricted beginnings. Foreigners were prohibited from going into the country to propagate religion, and were huddled together at a few points along the coast. They stood in the open gates, but could get little further. The wall had not fallen. Early in the sixties, however, it tottered and tumbled through its whole length. Remember that the worship of heaven had hitherto been confined to the emperor, without a substitute. Then listen to these words of the treaty, as to the blast of the demolishing trumpet : " It shall be promul- gated throughout the length and breadth of the land that it is permitted to all people in all parts of China to propagate and practise the teachings of the Lord of heaven, to meet together for preaching the doctrine, to build churches, and to worship." The third period opened about 1865, when the various societies intrenched along the outskirts of China began to move into the interior and to make their labors as universal China — Corea — Japan 68 as was the Chinese tolerance. For twenty-six years this period of general aggressive work has continued. The main results already attained are the direct fruits of this work of a quarter of a century. No country in this world is harder to understand and de- scribe than China. The immense distances, the slow travel, the bad roads, the language — a miracle of unintelligibility and a marvel of diversities — make progress slow in journeys, study, or work. Long inland tours we shall have no time to take, but in our rapid trip we shall catch glimpses of certain shining points and centres of mission work. Here, far in the north, close to the Great Wall, is Peking, imperial, official, Tartar, diplomatic, final centre of all civil -service examina- tions, seat of the new imperial university, which is manned by western professors and headed by an American ex-mis- sionary, President Martin, near Tung-cho, the seat of our own college ; Tientsin, commercial emporium of the north, residence of that Bismarck of China, Li Hung Chang, and distributing centre for all the northern missionaries; Chefoo, the sanitarium of China ; Shanghai, the great centre for for- eign trade, the model settlement of the East, with its English and French municipalities. South of this we pass along by coasting steamer to Ningpo, Foo-chow, and Amoy, Swatow, and Canton, with Hong-Kong. Thus for about 2000 miles along the coast, from the Chinese Wall to Hong-Kong, there runs a continuous line of mission stations and out-stations. Now from Shanghai, at right angles to this coast-line and from the middle of it, for 1500 miles up the Yang-tze River — the Mississippi of China — runs another line with very few breaks. We can easily follow this line, as I did, for 700 miles, travelling on a luxurious Hudson River steamer as far as Hankow, the Chinese St. Louis, where ocean steamers 5 66 Modern Missions in the East take their cargo of tea. From these two base-lines mission- ary laborers move ever farther onward and inward into Shansi and Shensi, into Honan and Hupeh and Hunan and Szechuan and the other provinces. The province of Fuh-Kien was one of the first, as it is onu of the best, occupied. I visited its two chief ports, at each of which about twenty missionaries are stationed, with per- haps ten others in the whole province, or fifty for a popula- tion of fifteen millions. Foo-chow, for natural scenery, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In 1846 it was entered by the American Board, in 1847 by the American Methodists, in 1850 by the Church Missionary Society. The work of the last society seems thus far to have been more fruitful than that of the American Board. In the thirty years from 1850 to 1880 eleven missionaries had been en- gaged in the work. During ten years of this time there were only two male missionaries on the ground ; during fif- teen years only one ; never more than three. Eleven years passed without a single convert, during which interval two missionaries died, a third just as the first-fruits were being gathered, and a fourth later on. There were repeated and bitter persecutions of the converts. But in 1891 there were 8500 Christian adherents, nearly one-third of them being communicants, scattered among about 150 stations and out-stations. What immense results flowing from the guidance of a few-consecrated men! In the tenth year, " without one single conversion or prospect of such a thing," the home committee were on the point of abandon- ing the field. It was only the importunity of Mr. Smith, the sole missionary, that prevented the change. As that very tenth year was closing Mr. Smith wrote home, " I hope that a brighter day is about to dawn upon us. There are three China — Corea — Japan 67 men whom I really look upon as honest inquirers." Men who compute the cost of converts would be stunned at the expenses of those ten years, and no converts, only three in- quirers. It was medical skill that both sowed the seed and reaped the first harvest, gathering in four converts the next year. Yet of these four, three afterwards fell away from the faith. As the work grew, it was mainly spread by the na- tives. There are now over 100 paid workers and as many more volunteers. Most of the converts are from the coun- try and very ignorant; ignorance, uncleanliness, and irrev- erence being specified as the three greatest evils. Bnt in 1873 the native Christians, at a gathering of all their con- gregations, resolved that every adult Christian, whether baptized or not, should be required to give at least one cent a Sunday for the gospel. And just at the time of my visit came the noblest development of all this work. Early trained in self-help, these Foo-chow Christians began to ask what they could do to help others and prove by foreign-mis- sion work that they were a true Christian church. Natives of all missions were united in the plan. Among them was the well-known Mr. Ahok, recently called from earth, a Christian Chinese millionaire, deserving to be ranked with any of our Christian merchant princes. Corea was suggested as a good field. I found him just returned from spying out the country. He brought back a bunch of grapes of Eshcol, and told the people to go up and possess the land. They sent out two of their number to occupy it for Christ. But the work seemed hard and the soil barren. They grew discouraged and came home, reporting that the grapes were sour and the inhabitants giants, in whose sight they were but as grass- hoppers. But the people of Israel — I should say of Foo- chow — said, " We will send up taller men, who can reach 68 Modern Missions in the East the grapes and match the giants." These bigger men are still there, plucking ripe, sweet fruit from the spreading vine. Here, then, the Foreign Mission has built up a for- eign-missionary church. The circle is complete. Work of quite different sort goes on in the province of Shantung, in the north. Some twenty years ago. Dr. Nevius, of the American Presbyterian Mission, who had become dissatisfied with seventeen years' experience in Ningpo and vicinity, began work in Central Shantung on another plan, and without a native assistant.* For five years he toured over the same ground every spring and autumn, and for five years had not a single convert. There are now spread through the department of Ching-Chow-Foo, in connec- tion with the co-operating English Baptist and the Pres- byterian Mission, over 150 stations, with 4000 converts. Among all these there is not one pastor in the modern sense of the term. Twice a year Dr. Nevius made a tour among all these stations, accompanied by his one paid na- tive helper on a salary of less than five dollars a month. The stations are intrusted to the care, not of preachers, but of leaders, who are simply brethren among brethren, pursu- ing their calling as before conversion, and superintending the instruction and worship of their companions. In the sum- mer and winter these leaders journeyed 200 miles, to Che- foo, where they spent six or eight weeks in a Bible Training School, under the care of Dr. Nevius and Dr. Corbett, and then returned to impart to their own people what they had learned. The entire expense of the wflrk of Dr. Nevius for the year 1885, the year previous to my visit, apart from his own salary and itinerating expenses, was a trifle less than * Dr. Nevius has recently been called to a heavenly service. China — Gorea — Japan 69 $300. Thus, in his own words, " Experience in China shows that now, as in the early history of the church, Chris- tianity may be speedily and widely propagated by the spon- taneous efforts and silent influence of private Christians." A large proportion of the stations established in other parts of Shantung province have also originated without the use of native paid agents. . The next step after this tentative or- ganization under leaders is to ordain elders. There are nine- teen such churches in the Presbyterian Mission. No one is employed who has not already shown zeal in voluntary evan- gelistic labor. In all non-Christian nations, and nowhere more than in China, one learns to question the motives of those who come as inquirers. Much as this uncertainty is charged against missions by their foes, none recognize it so keenly as the missionaries. "I suspect every Chinaman who applies for baptism — every one," said the Scotch missionary, Dr. Mc- Kay, to a visitor who was itinerating with him. " There may be a quarrel between him and his neighbors, or a rich man may be oppressing him, or there may be a lawsuit pending, and he thinks that by joining the church he will get help from the foreigner, or at least he will see that one of his members gets fair play, and the advantage, if there is any." Yet with the full knowledge of all this, Dr. McKay reports in his mission, now fifteen years old, 2.546 baptized, two native pastors, thirty-eight stations, thirty-eight preachers. He says : " If the church in North Formosa was now left without foreigners oi* foreign help, I believe it would grow and prosper. The people know enough of the gospel to ap- preciate it, and at each chapel they would manage to find suflBcient to support a preacher, so that he might give him- self wholly to the work of preaching and teaching." 70 Modern Missions in the East Besides such difBculties as are common to all fields, there are others peculiar to China. Their national pride, their patriotism, conservatism, and superstition comhine to make them hate innovations as equally insulting, treasonable, im- pious, and dangerous. Their unreligious nature at once hin- ders a response to the spiritual appeals of Christianity, and permits them to worship vpith equal zeal at different shrines. Their self-righteousness quenches the sense of sin and also such religious longings as one finds in India. Their merce- nary spirit prompts them to serve the Christian's God purely for pay, or, as a missionary put it, to become the compra- dore of a church just as they would be the compradore of a business firm. Their imitative ability enables them to learn their lesson quickly and to preach with zeal and skill from love of nothing but money. This is the great diflBcnlty with native preachers. Buddhism, in which only the priests are full Buddhists, has taught them that one who takes up a religion should make his living from his religion, and they are only too apt to become Christians in order to make their living from Christianity. COREA Cross with me now to that strange country, Corea. Land at the open port Chemulpoo. Ride twenty-five miles over mountains and across rice-plains on a Corean pony, so low that your feet almost drag on the ground, into the beauti- ful, filthy capital, Seoul. What do we find there ? A people of eighteen millions, in a land full of ifndeveloped resources, tributary from time immemorial to China, influenced by Japan, terrified by Russia which longs to seize it, but struo-- gling for independence. It is divided between Progression- ists and Seclnsionists, with practically no religion save an- China — Corea — Japan 71 cestor worship, and is now accessible to Christianity. We find Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries — a few of them — tremendously overburdened by work. They are the king's and queen's physicians, heads of the royal hospital and orphanage. Three Christian men from Union Seminary, nominated by our government and paid by the Coreans, have charge of the government school. An American is for- eign adviser to the king. The laws against Christianity are still unrepealed, but the one convert whom I found there five years ago, seemingly in danger of his life, has now a com- panionship of between forty and fifty. After but three years' labor, a native church was formed with twenty-two mem- bers. Now there are at least two churches, and we read of the Coreans celebrating the week of prayer with the rest of Christendom. There has been nothing like this heretofore in Asia. It seems as if Corea might be won even more rapidly than Japan. The secretary of the embassy, recently in this country, is Dr. Allen, a former missionary, and one of my hosts. The common people are poor, oppressed, simple- minded, friendly to foreigners. But to have only a dozen missionaries for these eighteen millions is a reproach to Christendom. JAPAN The fascination which Japan justly exercises over the gen- eral tourist rises to inspiration if that tourist is a Christian seeking signs of his Lord's kingdom. The sight corresponds to one's dreams of apostolic and apocalyptic times, in which we see great kingdoms uprooted by the grain of mustard- seed, nations born in a day, and the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven in all his glory. Step with me from the California steamer to the first 73 Modern Missions in the East Asiatic soil at Yokohama. It is late Saturday afternoon. Early the next morning let yourself be whirled by these swift human steeds in that wonderful jinrikisha along to church. If you have eyes to discern the significance of small things, you shall have this morning a glimpse into the future of both Japan and Asia. The building is called the Union Church, and is of co;mmon European structure. At eleven o'clock Missionary Knox will preach to an English audience. It is now nine o'clock. As we enter, a native usher greets- us and shows us to a seat. We find ourselves the only foreigners in a Japanese congregation of 400. They sit there with grave decorum, as if Christianity were their an- cestral religion. We rub our eyes to waken from a dream. Are not we the heathen, the ones to be instructed ? How graceful and stately the pastor ifi his native dress, whose flowing folds put our clerical robes to the blush ! How awkward the assistant, also Japanese, but clad in European sack-coat and trousers, which in these surroundings look like relics of barbarism ! How strange the familiar tunes sung in an unknown tongue, under the leadership of that choir of girls drawn from a mission school I How attentive the swarthy listeners, how earnest and practical the discourse I How af- fecting the ensuing baptism, by their own countryman, of nine men and women, just renouncing their former beliefs for Christ, and of three children brought there by their Christian parents, themselves just emerged from darkness and error 1 Twenty years ago there was not a church in all this land, and hardly a convert, while Christianity was a pro- hibited religion. Now this church has all the solidity and maturity of age. It so happened that my companion, when I made this visit, was a Chinese just returning from Wash- ington, where he had been interpreter to bis uncle, the Chi- China — Corea — Japan 73- nese minister. We had found him on the steamer an intelli- gent, genial companion, an agnostic Confucianist, and thor- oughly sceptical of the progress of Christianity either in China or in Japan. But he was apparently no less affected than I at the sight of this large assemblage of Japanese Christians wor- shipping God in the same way as he found Americans doing in Dr. Gurley's church in America. One such sight as that is argument enough for the possibilities of Christianity in Asia. A truth flashes upon us here which I predict, as we see more of the mission field, will grow clearer and clearer; the truth that, after all, Christianity is an oriental religion. Perhaps, too, the query may come to us whether we occi- dentals are not the tyros and blunderers in our comprehen- sion of it, while the Asiatics may at some time resume their leadership in the kingdom of God. One month spent in Tokio and Yokohama will fill us to the brim with signs and proofs of the coming kingdom. With a missionary friend we may flit on Sunday from church to church, in buildings small, rude, and primitive, but crowded with native Christians, seated on their mats, men and women apart, and led by native pastors who are wholly or largely supported by native offerings. What gifts of continuance in prayer or preaching those pastors have, only surpassed by the gifts of audience which their hearers possess! In the week we pass from school to school, built and taught by mission- aries and natives. We spend the Commencement season there, seeing a public hall packed for the Christian exercises of grad- uation at the Union Seminary of Tokio. We sit as honorary members in the Presbytery of Tokio, where the stately pastor from Yokohama is moderator, where three-fourths of the members are Japanese, who are also the aggressive element, the few missionaries being conservative and cautious. 74 Modern Missions in the East We meet some of the Presbyterian pastors socially at the house of Missionary Miller, a house large and elegant enough to make hostile critics gnash their teeth, but a house built entirely with the private money of one who has consecrated himself and all he has to the cause of Christianity in Japan, and who makes his home a social and business centre for the broadening Christian life of Tokio. He has since given this beautiful home to be used entirely for the extension of Christian work. Next to our first sight of a Japanese Christian congrega- tion will stand, I think, a conference with some other native pastors in the home of one of their number. Our host is Pastor Kozaki, then at the head of a young, flourishing ■church in Tokio, now principal of the Doshisha at Kioto. We reach his house, by appointment, at eight o'clock in the morning. At our knock the door of the little bird-cage opens. Our shoes are removed and placed beside a row of wooden shoes. In stocking feet, we mount the slender staircase to the upper room. At half-past seven this bright morning they have gathered for their regular weekly prayer-meeting. Now they are ready to confer with us as to the kingdom of Ood in Japan. One of them is a Methodist, one the editor of the Japanese Christian Weekly. One is Pastor Harada, who since then has been studying at Yale Divinity School, and is now pastor of the leading Tokio church. The others are Congregational pastors from Tokio and its vicinity. We are the only Europeans. The room is bare. They re- sume their excruciating attitude of sitting upon their heels, but invite us to sit more conveniently, cross-legged on a cushion. What vivid memories arise of that morning conference with some of the first converts, now leading pastors in Ja- China — Corea — Japan 75 pan ! It is the day of the origins of Christianity. The church was not then half as old in Japan as Jesus was in Palestine when he began to be manifested to men. These first converts are the apostles and church fathers of Japan, yes, perhaps of Asia. They are men of strong and indepen- dent character, who of their own accord have brought Con- gregationalism from the south into Tokio, a Presbyterian field, and who call their churches Independent rather than Congregational. These churches are fully self-supporting, and glory in their freedom. There are important inquiries to which such men can give answers worth seeking. Pastor Kozaki acts as interpreter, while I put questions as follows, after which they discuss them for two hours: 1. How soon may we expect to see Japan adopt the form of the Christian religion ? 2. What possibility is there of the establishment of a Japanese State Church ? 3. What is the prospect of a speedy and general outpouring of the Holy Spirit? 4. What motive in Chris- tianity appeals most" readily and most strongly to the people of Japan ? 5. What advantages or disadvantages has the Roman Catholic Church in its work in Japan ? 6. What will become of the property of the temples as their worship declines? Of the answers, given with great caution and sagacity by the Tokio pastors, both Presbyterian and Congregational, I will only say that they have furnished me the key for the understanding of much that has since happened, as well as for my estimate of the future. Two other contrasted scenes will, perhaps, best serve to show the actual state of mission work in Japan. Late in July we leave the flat, beautiful, malarial rice- plains of Kioto, and seek a refuge from the oppressive heat 76 Modern Missions in the East of South Japan on the slopes of Mount Hiyeizan. It tow- ers 3000 feet above the city, and has long been held a sacred peak as the home of monkeys, monks, and Buddh- ist temples. But while many of all three have decayed, our missionaries have secured here a site for a camp with banflboo water-pipes distributing supplies drawn from a spring that bubbles up under one of these Buddhist temples. As we rise into the cooler air near the summit we come into noble forests, scattered about in which are the white tents of our friends. We hear familiar names — DeForest, Allchin, Berry, Gulick. Each has chosen a secluded or sightly spot apart by himself, yet near to the others. Japanese friends and servants flit from tent to tent. The ancient pilgrim paths to the shrines remain, even the great print of Buddha's foot being shown, and many a walk to the old temples, to springs, or to the peak is planned. The highest point in the camp is occupied by the chapel tent, where on Sunday our working brethren listen to the gospel from the lips of an American pastor. This camp is the vacation home of the missionaries. Here many of their burdens are rolled off, while they make fresh studies and new plans for the future. Hither the native brethren, left in charge of the work in the plains, make a pilgrimage for advice in perplexity. Here we have sweet communion with our brothers and sisters, who have given their lives to this work, and learn many a secret of missionary trials and joys, which finds utterance only in the relaxation and confidingness of these quiet hours. And here next week, the first in August, is held the annual meet- ing of the Japan Mission, with its reports, discussions, and plans for the coming year. This is Saratoga and Pittsfield combined, the native home society and the foreign society being alike represented. China — Gorea — Japan 77 Let us leave, however, on one of these hot days and drop down into the steaming plain, reaching Osaka on Saturday evening. We appropriate one of the empty houses, whose owner we have just left on the hills. As we pass through its deserted rooms we feel the need and the preciousness of the home objects treasured there — the pictures, the books, the piano, the knickknacks — so many reminders of distant Christian friends in a foreign land. Next day the servant draws us to church in the jinrikisha, leaves his vehicle at the door, and comes in to the service. Everything is native. Pastor Hori greets us and interprets our discourse. Now we are in Christendom again. But that afternoon we meet a man, a hero, who is one of the best exponents of Japanese Christianity. He has dragged himself from his bed in the hospital to come and dine with us. A rare, pale, sweet, strong spirit. He seems near the other world. Now he is there. Then he was still claimed as pastor by his church, though for months already dis- abled. This is Mr. Sawayama, whose life is written and placed beside that of Neesima as one of the martyrs of Christianity in Japan. He came to Ann Arbor years ago, among the first group of those who rushed forth to the gar- dens of the Hesperides, the new fields of western learning. He came as a Buddhist, he returned a Christian, seeking to serve his Lord and his people at once. The government de- sired his services, and the path to distinction was open. But a little band of native Christians had been fired by the en- thusiasm of their American teacher. Why should not they have a self-sacrificing, self-supporting church, independent of foreign subsidies? If only they could find the self-sacri- ficing pastor ! They called Sawayama. They could ofier for his support six dollars a month. He declined all other 78 Modem Missions in the East proposals, accepted their terms, and became the pastor of the first never-subsidized, ever self-supporting church in And now, after a few years' work, this tenant of the hos- pital was the outcome of it all. But not all the outcome. There were in 1891 in Osaka five independent Congrega- tional churches, three native ministers, four evangelists, 1208 members, and eight Sunday-schools, with 960 scholars. The contributions amounted to $3523 a year. Sustained by one or all of these are a hospital, a dispensary, four English schools for young men, and one remarkable boarding-school for girls, built, supported, controlled, and, for the most part, instructed by Japanese. Besides this should be mentioned mission work in a dozen places in Osaka, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, and in a dozen neighboring towns and villages. So much of outcome was already manifest. And the Christian city of Osaka that is yet to be will look back to Mr. Sawayama's short life as to one of its primal sources. He gave himself; he walked with God, and having done his great work, he was not, for God took him. But the work goes on. It is such instances as this that give faith for dark- est hours and longest years of mission work. They do not come often, but when they do occur they are typical and conclusive of multiplied approximative possibilities that shall fill the church. Our friend Ahok, the Christian millionaire of Foo-chow, and Sawayama, starving pastor at six dollars a month at Osaka! This Chinese and this Japanese now com- mune together in heaven, and speak of their lands that shall be Christianized by their own countrymen, each country, per- haps, locking in with the other for mutual aid in their com- mon work. The history of Protestant missions in Japan is short. They China — Gorea — Japan 79 were preceded by Roman Catholic missions, which have left heroic tales of martyrdom and a few thousand nominal Chris- tians, yet little else. Had they left the Bible behind them, the reopening of Japan might have shown us the same sight as we saw in Madagascar, closed under somewhat similar circumstances — a living, thriving, indigenous church. Yet even as it was, many descendants of the first converts have been discovered by the Roman Catholics. They had no for- eign priests or missionaries with them. They were almost entirely ignorant of Christianity. They worshipped the pict- ure of the Christian's God. Hardly anything but the name has survived. A French priest in Kobe told me of finding that the rite of baptism had been transmitted from genera- tion to generation in these Christian communities, being ad- ministered by the patriarch of each people, who handed down to his successor the secret formula of baptism. After much persuasion one of these patriarchs was induced to confide to my informant the formula with which he had been baptizing for many years. What was his horror to find that the for- mula had been corrupted ! Not in the name of the blessed Trinity, but in the name of the Holy Jerusalem, had whole generations of Japanese been baptized. " Will your church recognize such baptism as valid?" I asked him. "Ah no," said he ; " the church must have its rules. But then God is a good deal kinder than the church." That God cares for his church was shown in Japan, for about two centuries and a quarter after the capture of Hara Castle Commodore Perry sailed into Tokio Bay, and with him came Christianity. Fourteen years before the fall of Hara Castle that is, in 1624, all foreigners, except Dutch and Chinese, were banished from Japan. " By the century of intercourse with European nations," writes an author, 80 Modern Missions in the East " she had gained the knowledge of gunpowder, firearms, and tobacco smoking; the enrichment of her vocabulary with a few foreign words; some additions to her familiar forms of disease, and an inveterate hatred of Christianity. Content with these acquirements, and desiring no more, she retired from public gaze. The curious cabinet which had so sud- denly' opened, and into the secret drawers of which the eyes of Portuguese, Spaniards, English, and Dutch had so eagerly pried, was as suddenly locked and the key hidden carefully away for upwards of two centuries." The first stage of mission work began in 1859, when four ports were declared open, and three American societies made an entrance. These were followed in 1860 by the American Baptists, in 1869 by the American Board, in 1873 by the American Methodists. The first period was one of suspicion, ■danger, hatred, and persecution of foreigners. Christianity was still forbidden. The language was to be mastered, the hearts of the people gained. Little direct work could be ■done, except in teaching schools. Unfortunately, too, some positions of importance were assigned to foreigners who were intensely hostile to Christianity ; yet there were providential indications of coming good. Many of the leading Congre- gational pastors to-day are the graduates of Captain Janes's school. This American gentleman, employed as a school- teacher at Kumamoto, in Kiushu, led many of his students to Christ. The history of their conversion and persecutions would make a thrilling volume. More than thirty of them, called the Kumamoto band, entered the Doshisha at Kioto, and soon after joined the church. Twelve of them gradu- ated from the theological department in 1879, and are now leading in educational, pastoral, evangelistic, and literary work. Chin a — Corea — Japan 81 Another American, Mr. E. Warren Clark, was engaged as a teacher of science at the city of Shidzuoka. Arrived in Japan, he found himself forbidden to teach Christianity by the offered engagement, and bound to silence for three years. He had spent all his money, and was urged by many to sign the agreement ; but he refused. Unless the clause were struck out, he informed the government that he must decline to go on. " It is impossible," he added, " for a Christian to dwell three years in the midst of a pagan people and keep entire silence on the subject nearest his heart." The clause was struck out. He began the very first Sunday he was at Shid- zuoka, and conducted a Bible class the whole time he was there. When transferred to Tokio he held three Bible classes every Sunday for the benefit of different classes of students. With all the labor of missionaries and teachers, the first convert was not baptized until 1864. This was Yano Riu, the teacher of Mr. Ballagh. Up to the spring of 1872 only ten converts had been baptized in thirteen years. The first Japanese church was formed by Mr. Ballagh in 1872 with eleven members. With this event the second and present period may be said to have begun, when the whole country was practically laid open to evangelization. Since the above was written, Japan has fully come for the first time to an intense consciousness of itself as a nation. It has become distrustful of western nations, and deeply resents the ex-territoriality that marks it as only a semi-civilized land. This spirit has naturally appeared in the churches, and has led to many severe criticisms of missionaries. Added to this, the transition that Christian lands are undergoing theo- 82 Modern Missions in the East logically has manifested itself there, and has given rise to earnest desire on the part of leading Christians to examine for themselves the grounds of faith, and to adopt their own creeds in the place of those that are carried to them. These causes have checked the numerical growth of Christianity, but the spirit of Christ and his teachings are affecting every department of life in the whole nation. CHAPTER IV INDIA Amid great varieties of scenery and dialect, China, the more we understand it, presents itself to us as homogeneous and united in all its vast population, territory, and history. On landing in India the first impression of oneness is yet stronger. The monotony of those vast plains seems to repeat itself in the life of the people. But even hef ore you have penetrated to the Ghats in the south, the Vindhyas in the centre, or the Himalayas in the north — these amazing breaks into the monotony of the plains — you will have dis- covered that many seeming resemblances among the people are only apparent. Hinduism, it is true, spreads a veil of similarity over the greater part of India. But lift that veil and what diversities are disclosed ! The 280,000,000 who inhabit the favored central south- ern promontory of Asia, corresponding to the position of Italy in Europe between the Spanish and the Greek prom- ontories, do not constitute one people even as nearly as do the inhabitants of Europe. There, common ideas, a com- mon law, and a common Christianity have produced com- mon social traits and affinities. India, like Europe, is a continent rather than a country. But it is a continent of incoherencies, a mere geographical expression in fact. It is a whole world in itself, full of diversities, contrasts, and mutual repellancies — more like the old Boman world, which 84 Modern Missions in the East gathered all the odds and ends of creation within one net, than anything else we know. I emphasize this fact because no statement I had ever read or heard had given me an adequate idea of the hetero- geneousness of India. I learned it only in journeying up and down and to and fro through that vast congeries of lands and peoples. Once learned, I found I had in it the key to the history, and especially to the mission enterprise in that world of India. Ethnology you must study here as you would study geology. Race strata are superimposed one upon another in every possible variety and combination, now buried deep, now breaking through, contorted and erupted. Speech fossils abound in every variety. There are signs of great historic subsidences and cataclysms. Over the whole sur- face are spread striations and erosions and diverse mental and social marks of the glacial epoch when vast ice masses from the north overspread the country, grinding and level- ling and crusting the land with the sweep of Brahmanism which held India in its mighty grip. Now into this so strangely stratified mass of nationali- ties piled horizontally one upon another, conglomerated each with the others, there is introduced a new divisive force which cleaves society vertically, and splits it asunder by many fissures and chasms, even as the glacial ice is rent. It disintegrates society, yet at the same time reor- ganizes and reconstructs it on a new system, the cellular system building it up around a great variety of new social centres, each group being nucleated within impassable par- tition walls, yet all at base compacted into one solid mass. This strange principle, as cohesive as it is divisive, which at once triturates and cements Hindu society, is what we India 85 call caste, wliict has no parallel in any other land. The old fourfold caste-division of the books is largely fanciful and almost useless. Caste, as we find it in India, organizes a thousand mutually repellent social units, yet dominates them all with one idea. It springs not from one force, but from many, all of which are concentrated on one end. Eth- nological, political, professional, sectarian distinctions are all interwoven. The sense of social and religious privi- lege, the prejudice of race and employment, the exclusive- ness of trades unions, the limitations of benefit societies — these diverse forces are all combined into one in caste (the devil's masterpiece, as it is well called) — and then the system is stamped with the awful and irrevocable sanc- tions of heaven. Once on the ground, you find the Brahmans, indeed, al- ways representing the same haughty claims, the same Aryan blood, usually the same high type of development. But 1886 separate Brahmanical tribes have been enumerated, many of which will not eat or intermarry with one another. The number of tribes, clans, septs, castes, sub-castes, out- castes, religious orders and devotional brotherhoods, these primary social units of India, which at once unite and iso- late the people, mounts into the thousands, lowest in the scale being, from their employment, the leathermen, the sweepers, and the scavengers, who are also aboriginal in race. And the lowest are even more tenacious of the dis- tinctions which subdivide them than are those of higher rank. It is with this caste-power more than with any other that Christianity has to reckon. It has become a religion to Hindus, often the relic to which all religion has dwindled, as in feudal times Christianity frequently shrank to mere 86 Modern Missions in the East chivalry. " So long as I am higli caste," says my Brahman guide in the temple at Tan j ore, when questioned as to his faith in the worship of the stone bulls — " so long as I am high caste, I must believe." The servant who attends me to the Karli Caves will fast rather than accept the proffered share of my lunch. " Po- liteness forbids me to refuse, but my caste forbids me to eat," says the young Brahman student, my railway com- panion, as he sets the offered food one side. A government inspector goes into a native school in the Bombay Presidency, which has been furnished with all kinds of European educational furniture, even to the inevi- table cane. Just at the side of the master's chair is a great heap of hard and rugged clods of earth. " What is the use of these ?" " Oh, sir ! don't you see that row of boys sitting at the back, separate from all others ? Those .are low-caste boys, and I cannot apply the cane to them, because if I did I should be defiled ; but if any one of them misbehaves himself, I just take up a clod and throw it at him.'' Poor brave little Dr. Joshee died a martyr to her at- tempt to join western training to her native caste. It is this iron system that most dreads the prophetic shadows of the oncoming European life. Not many years ago the sacred city of Poona was spe- cially guarded against danger of defiling its lordly Brah- mans. No people of low caste were allowed to remain in the city, except between the hours of nine in the morning and three in the afternoon. During these hours of midday their diminished shadows permitted the Brahmans to walk the street without excessive fear of defilement from contact. But when the shadows began to lengthen and to threaten, their owners were compelled to leave those sacred men in India 87 peace of mind, and betate themselves and their shadows without the hallowed precincts. Caste is by no means an unmixed evil. It has features of the trade guild, the knights of labor, the assurance soci- ety, and the church. But it is itself a huge shadow, born of hours of dust, darkening and polluting the life upon which it falls — the grotesque enlargement and caricature of the truth that lies in the spiritual brotherhood of those who are Christ's. What a work for one life, to bear the light to them ! But' among these dividing, diversifying, often antagoniz- ing forces, there yet remains one to be considered — the religions of India. It is true that nineteen out of every twenty in this coun- try are either Hindus or Mohammedans, and that from fourteen to fifteen out of the twenty are Hindus. Yet this fact only hides the diversity. It is not enough to say that there are Hindus, Mohammedans, Jains, Sikhs, Parsees, and Christians in the land ! For under the veil of Hindu simi- larity there still exist all the original varieties of fetich, nature, hero, ancestor, and demon worship. These native religions are largely Hinduized, but not removed or truly reconciled ; and social customs correspond. Yet Hinduism, like caste, has its cohesive as well as its divisive side. I shall therefore treat it as forming with caste the first of a series of forces which have been steadily assimilating the heterogeneous elements of this Indian continent, and pre- paring them some day to be one land and one people. Here I must resort to that accurate and authoritative characterization of experts which 1 have found best descrip- tive. "The religion of the non-Mohammedan population of 88 Modern Missions in the East India," says Sir Alfred Lyall, " is as a tangled jungle of disorderly superstitions, ghosts, demons, demi-gods, and deified saints, household gods, local gods, tribal gods, uni- versal gods, with their countless shrines and temples and the din of their discordant rites ; deities who abhor a fly's death, and those who still delight in human sacrifices. . . . Brahmanism chiefly registers and confirms the cus- toms of lower races. Being itself an inorganic sort of religion, it has never attempted any sweeping reforms of the rude tribal customs, such as are introduced everywhere by Christianity or Islam. The word Hindu denotes no common religious denomination, but comprises a vast mul- titude of Indians who have for ages been absorbed, beyond all other peoples upon earth, in attempting to decipher the ways of God with mankind and the tokens of divinity." This is Dr. Hunter's definition: "Hinduism is a social organization and a religious confederacy. Socially, it rests on caste. Keligiously, it represents the coalition of the old Vedic faith of Brahmans, with Buddhism on one side, and with ruder rites of pre- Aryan and Indo-Scythic races on the other. . . . Hinduism is internally loosely coherent, but greatly resistant to external pressure." Dr. Murray Mitchell writes : " Later Hinduism is a jum- ble of all things : polytheistic pantheism ; much of Buddh- ism; something apparently of Christianity, but terribly disfigured ; a science wholly outrageous ; shreds of history twisted into wild mythology ; the bold poetry of the older books understood as literal prose ; any local deity, any demon of the aborigines, however hideous, identified with some accredited Hindu divinity ; any custom, however re- pugnant to common-sense or common decency, accepted and explained — in a word, it has been omnivorous ; it has India 89 partially absorbed and assimilated every system of belief, every form of v^orship with which it has come in contact. . . . Only to one or two things has it remained inflexibly true. It has steadily upheld the proudest pretensions of the Brahman, and it has never relaxed the sternest restric- tions of caste. It was in defence of these that it fought Buddhism to the death, finally expelling it from the coun- try, appropriating many of its benevolent features but none of its equality." In addition, it should be said that the worship of ninety per cent, of the people of India to-day is a worship of fear. The great mass are lifelong victims of a mental disease best called demonophobia. Their tutelary gods are those that deliver them from demons. Counting Hinduism with caste as a first unifying power, a second influence for unity has been the Mohammedan rule of the Mughal line, which, lasting nominally, though not really, for 330 years, established a uniform revenue and land system, and left 40,000,000 of Mohammedans in India. The third great power for unity came with English rule. From my own experience I can testify that tlie pax, lex, lingua Britannicm are mightily binding these peoples to- gether. For centuries Hindus and Mohammedans had been continually fighting, both among themselves and with one another. I travelled three times across the country from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, and found naught but peace. Where there were soldiers, they were resting in their barracks — though 50,000 of them are English when the full force is there. The administration of justice by the English courts and collectors I found everywhere honored by the natives, who. 90 Modern Missions in the East if they do not think their conquerors easy or agreeable, uniformly acknowledge them to be just. In December, 1886, I attended in Calcutta the second an- nual convention of the Hindu National Congress, represent- ing political associations all over the country. It was an assembly from many nationalities, languages, and religions. At the social reception I conversed alike with men from British India and various feudatory states — with Hindu, Mo- hammedan, Parsee, and Christi/m delegates. With the ex- ception of a few speeches made in Hindostani, the official language used throughout the entire session of the congress was the English language. Scientia et Universitas Britan- nicce make out the five points of Anglicism about which the new Indian life is forming. Until of late India has never had a history, not only because the Hindus have never had the historic sense to write one page of it, but yet more be- cause they have never had the national life to create one year of it. Far different from China and Japan, patriotism for the country at large has here been an impossible senti- ment, and has been usurped by a narrow and fanatical pride in Brahmanical caste or in Mohammedan rule and religion. But now, under British sway, the idea of one country, one people, and one common life is more and more possessing the minds of men, and leading them to a true unity which as it approaches will bring independence as well. But there is a fourth integrating force which is yet more important and powerful than all others combined. That is Christianity. Hinduism gives but a superficial similarity to wildly in- congruous things. Like all heathenism it coagulates rather than integrates. The Mohammedan rule added but one or two touches of likeness. And the main unifying power of India 91 the British dominion springs from the Christian basis on which to a greater or less degree it has always rested. " Christian morality," says Sir- Henry Maine, " has penetrat- ed even further than Christian belief, and affects the mo- rality of the modern indigenous literature." And the English administration of justice, which the same writer declares to have been the most powerful of unifying agen- cies, affording a moral basis from which a new set of moral ideas has been diffused among the population — what is that but the substance of Christianity, wrought out through centuries of growth into the social life of England and Christendom ? There is much in the Indian annals of Eng- land which may cause her and her friends to blush and to grieve. Yet it is true that more and more as time has gone on her voice has spoken Christianity ; that her repre- sentatives in India, whether through the pressure of public sentiment at home or more nobly through the purpose of their own hearts, have done Christian deeds and exerted a Christian influence. See Sir Peregrine Maitland, Commander-in-chief of the Madras Army in 1837, lay down his office and his salary of £10,000 rather than pay official honor to the idol to whom the East India Company has hitherto been officially mar- ried ! And see the burst of indignation which arose all over England, and finally compelled the Honorable John Company to carry out reforms already decreed ! Once more see Sir John, afterwards Lord Lawrence and the savior of the Punjab, when collector of that province, enforcing the new reforms ! See the land-holders come up to him day after day for the new lease they are required to take, and hear each of them as he agrees to it repeat aloud to the Englishman the new Trilogue of the English govern- 93 Modern Missions in the East ment, " Thou shalt not burn thy widows ! Thou shalt not kill thy daughters! Thou shalt not bury alive thy lepers !" the light of Sinai meantime blazing in the eyes of this modern Moses ! The more study that is given to the British Empire in India the more will certain striking resemblances to the Eoman Empire appear ; and, I will add, the more the con- version of the Roman Empire is studied the brighter will seem the light and hope for this country. Protestant missions in India still stand in their third period. The first begins with Ziegenbalg and Plutocho in 1Y05, and closes with Carey and his associates, the last and first being alike under protection of the Danish kings, whose descendants are now near to the throne of England, and may soon wield the sceptre of India. The second period begins in 1813, when India was thrown open to mission work by the labors of William Wilberforce and his followers, and continues until the mutiny in 1857. Of this mutiny it is truly said that it divides all Anglo- Indian history into two parts. Understand the mutiny and you understand India. The immediate occasion of this catastrophe is well known, but the real causes lay much deeper. The East India Company had been sowing the wind; it was now to reap the whirlwind. It had leagued itself with idolatry ; out of this unholy alliance came its death. Lord Lawrence and his coadjutors were the Christian heroes who saved India to England. And what Lord Law- rence years after said to Bishop Wilberforce on the sub- ject was this : " I believe that what more tended to stir up the Indian mutiny than any one thing was the habitual cowardice of India 93 Great Britain as to her own religion. It led many to think her atheistical, and so not to be trusted ; and others to be- lieve that under a veil of indifEerence she hid some deep scheme to make India Christian." The mutiny did its work. First of all it killed the com- pany. That company had been created through the doub- ling of the price of pepper by the Dutch. It was destroyed, and the grand empire which had sprung up out of those pepper grains came near being lost to England through the grease on the bitten end of cartridges, resented as defile- ment by both Hindu and Mohammedan. On such small things do great empires swing. The mutiny also resulted in direct government by Eng- land. It brought the needs of India to the front ; it abol- ished compromise with heathenism ; it established an offi- cial neutrality in religious matters which has proved most advantageous to private aggressive mission work, and thus it opened the present third period jf missions, which have ever since assumed vaster proportions, and reaped richer harvests from the former sowing. To give any general idea of this work in its immensity and variety is quite impossible. In 1851 there were 91,000 Protestant Christian adher- ents in India. The increase in the next three decades was at the rate of fifty-three per cent., sixty-one per cent., and eighty-six per cent., making a total in 1881 of 417,000. At the close of 1889 the total was estimated at not less than 800,000 for India, Burmah, and Ceylon, an increase for India alone of probably seventy-five per cent. In 1890 forty general, besides a number of private, missions were at work. These are represented by 816 ordained mission- aries. British societies naturally predominated, forty-three 94 Modern Missions in the East per cent, of the whole number of adherents in 1881 be- longing to the Church of England. The Church Mission- ary Society's operations alone are carried on in fifteen of the great languages of India, besides Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic. It has its outposts all along the northern frontier, ready to advance into Afghanistan, Thibet, and other un- occupied parts of Central Asia. It is also scattered over all the country. The American Methodists are concentrated in the north, in Oudh and Eohilcund. It is one of the most vigorous of young missions, and particularly successful in Sunday- schools. Bishop Taylor's work, or the South India Confer- ence, however, is scattered all over the country. The American Baptists are in Burmah, Assam, and the Telegu country. The American Presbyterians are in the northwest prov- inces and the Punjab, besides having a small disconnected Marathi work at Kolhapur. The American Board is in the JafEna Mission of northern Ceylon, in Madura, and in the Marathi country around Ahmadnagar and Bombay. Tamil is the language in Jafina and Madura, and Marathi in west- ern India. The London Congregationalists are mainly in Travancore, southern India, and Bengal ; while the Salvation Army I found in Ceylon, Madras, and Bombay. There is the Arcot Mission, one of the three mis- sions nobly manned and managed by the Dutch Eeformed Church. It is called the Scudder Mission, for six out of the ten Americans there are Scudders, and is one of the best examples of a well-cared-for rural evangelistic work. There is the remarkable Telegu or " Lone Star " Mission of the American Baptists. Founded a little over fifty years India 95 ago, for thirty years there was hardly a ray of hope. Thrice the mission was on the point of being abandoned. At length, in 1867, the tide turned, and a church of eight souls was organized. The report for 1886 gives 27,500 church-members. Land with me, if you please, at Tuticorin, the nearest port in southern India to Ceylon. It is November. We are in the luxurious life of the tropics, shadowed by wav- ing palms, softened by the touch of ocean, cooled by the breath of far-away winter. The missionary quarter, with its English bishop and college and Roman Catholic church, somehow reminds us of the quiet, studious air of Andover or Amherst. If we enter this spacious temple we shall find the Catholics celebrating the mass. At the entrance sit trumpeters, who blow horns at the elevation of the host. Inside on a sand floor, with but one or two benches along the side, are about twenty-five dusky worshippers, mostly women, enveloped in white robes, prostrated on their knees, with heads bent to the earth and rosaries in their hands. Within the altar-rail are twenty-five youths giving the responses. The European priest goes on with his service as usual. There seems a strange intermingling of pagan and Christian elements. It is easy to see that this service may have a peculiar attraction for those brought up to worship the Visible — and also peculiar dangers. But we ride by rail thirty-six miles west and south to Tinnevelly. What is the meaning of this crowd and ex- citement at the landing-station ? Of these scores of beam- ing, intelligent Tamils with their gay costumes rushing towards us, headed by pale, white-helmeted Europeans? Why, we have with us Mr. Wigram, Secretary of the 96 Modern Missions in the JEast Church Missionary Society of England, and his son, mak- ing their official journey of inspection round the world, which just along this stretch happily coincides with ours. They are whirled oS to Palamcottah, the head of the mission three miles away, while we follow more leisurely in a bullock bandy. What a sight as we enter Palam- cottah — this Christian village on pagan soil, home of the Shanars, or palmyra -climbing caste, who draw out the juice of the tree for drink or sugar ! It is arched and festooned with flowers and mottoes of welcome. We have come on a gala-day, in which we may share. We sit at the table with venerable Bishop Sargent, since gone to his rest, then fifty-one years in labor at that place, with only three visits home. For the first time, in the evening we hear the gospel preached by Christian Tamils in their native Kirtan, a chant with low 'cello accompaniment, breaking out now and then into joyous song with full native orchestra. We meet with the bishop and the sec- retary in a gathering of 200 native helpers, who have come from all over the district for this occasion to tell of their work and get fresh help and instruction. We visit the girls' schools, see the large church thronged at a morning service, then take bullock bandy again and travel sixty miles overnight southward to the great Travancore Mission of the London Missionary Society at Nagercoil. Now what is the history of this Tinnevelly Mission? How did it come to this ripe, rich fruitage of 73,000 baptized Christians? In 1776 we may see Schwartz baptizing at Palamcot- tah a Brahman widow, who soon after builds the first church in Tinnevelly, just about 100 years ago. Then we find a community of 160 Christians in charge of a India 97 native pastor. A Lutheran missionary spends the last nine years of the century there, dying at its close. But the whole country is almost hidden from our eyes until one of the East India chaplains, going there in 1816, finds 3000 Christians dispersed in some sixty villages, under the charge of one native pastor named Abraham. They were mostly mechanics and Shanars, or cultivators of the cocoa- nut and palmyra tree. Not until four years later does Rhenius with another Lutheran missionary come to the field. Then he blazes through the entire district for nine years, and whole villages place themselves under Christian instruction. The field is divided between the Church Mis- sionary Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. But in 1835, in the Church Missionary Society portion where he labors, we find over 11,000 Christian ad- herents scattered through 261 villages. And now to-day in the Tinnevelly district there are under the charge of the two societies 100,000 adherents, or one in eighteen of the entire population in 1500 villages. In about half a century the seed has multiplied itself tenfold. That half -century has an inspiring history. There is the story of the Christian villages formed by the native philanthropic societies, which purchased houses and lands as a refuge for converts persecuted by their neighbors, and perhaps forbidden by their landlords to erect a place of worship. Among these villages are Grace Village, Gospel Village, and Good Town. Most remarkable was Mengnana- puram, or village of True Wisdom. " Scarcely had it been founded," we are told, " when Rev. J. Thomas settled there." It lay in the midst of a sandy desert, over which the land wind from the mountains swept, parching up the country and enveloping everything in clouds of dust. The natives 7 98 Modern Missions in the East called it " saba nilam " (soil under a curse). Mr. Thomas at once dug wells and soon created an oasis. The physical change was typical of the spiritual. Wonderful was the fulfilment at Mengnanapuram of the prophecy that the desert shall blossom as a rose. To-day the finest church in southern India stands in the midst of the village, often containing 1400 worshippers. Both societies had large ac- cessions in the terrible famine of 1877-78. Help was given to all alike, but, as Bishop Caldwell wrote, " the conviction prevailed that whilst Hinduism had left the famine-stricken to die, Christianity had stepped in like an angel from heav- en, to comfort them with its sympathy .and cheer them with its effectual succor." In one year 20,000 were added to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 10,000 to the Cliurcli Mission- ary Society. In spite of some lapses to heathenism the ■work prospered. There have been times when a strong missionary force was on the ground. In 1869 the Church Missionary Society alone had eighteen men, each in charge of a district. But now there are no English district mis- sionaries. Several years ago Drs. Caldwell and Sargent were made assistant bishops, one for each of the two so- cieties. The Church Missionary Society has five or six Europeans set apart for educational or evangelistic work. But all the districts and churches are in charge of native pastors, of whom there are one hundred and five. Every year the Church Missionary Society is withdrawing one- twentieth of the amount it formerly paid for native work. Every year the churches are coming more and more to self- support. Let us next look in upon the Congregational work in the Marathi Mission in western India. It began with the India 99 arrival at Bombay, in 1813, of Gordon Hall and Samuel Nott, just at the time when India was opened to missionaries. But the soil seemed barren, as this later record in the Mission- ary Herald shows : " Twenty years of the existence of this mission have elapsed, and the number of true converts from idolatry has been less than the number of valuable lives that have been sacrificed in the rescue." In 1831 five men and women moved from Bombay to Ahmadnagar. It was in a strange place that they began their work. The English surgeon had established an asylum and hospital for the indigent. Here the poor, lame, blind, and leprous were fed and cared for in little huts or " lean-tos," sloping up against the mud walls of the city. And here the Amer- ican missionaries began to preach the gospel, with the assistance of Babaji, an efficient native helper. In this de- spised, sick, leprous community it was that the first fruits appeared. Three of the five workers had been removed by sickness or death, leaving only Mr. Read and his wife. He was himself one morning half despairing when Babaji came up and said, " Sahib, here is a man who- wishes to speak to you." It was one of the poor outcasts. " I wish to be baptized," he said. Being asked why, he replied, " I am a great sinner. My mind is very dark, and I wish to be saved through Jesus Christ." In a few months he and two other inmates of the poorhouse were baptized. A few months later Babaji came from his morning visit to the workhouse in an ecstasy of joy. " The poor people come about me inquiring, 'What shall I do?' They are all risen up, have their loins girt, and are ready." Six- teen were soon afterwards received into the church, which was now organized independently of Bombay. Disaster after disaster followed. Mr. Read and his wife were 100 Modem Missions in the East driven to the hills by ill -health. When they returned in a few weeks they found Babaji dead, their hired house burned, their mud -wall chapel unroofed, their people in despair. But the work went on. Soon schools were es- tablished, native pastors trained, the work spread through all the districts north, south, east, and west. Look at the mission to-day. I found about 3000 bap- tized persons connected with it, scattered among 250 vil- lages. There were XllQ communicants in twenty -seven churches, all pastors being supported entirely by native money. At Ahmadnagar I found eight common schools with 398 pupils, one station school with forty-eight boys, one girls' boarding-school with 161 girls, 151 of whom were Christians, one mission high-school but a few years old, just blossoming into a college with 290 male pupils, and one theological seminary, of which Rev. Robert Hume, at that time absent, was the faculty. The tithing principle is applied in this mission and is claimed to be a great success, about all the native helpers giving every month one-tenth of their salary. The great lack here is enough men to push the work forward to a completion of the mission stage. A peculiar and most instructive work was started by Bishop William Taylor. In the fall of 1871 this remark- able man, who had been laboring as an evangelist all over the world, began preaching through missionary interpreters to the Marathi people in connection with the work of the American Board in Ahmadnagar and Bombay. To his surprise a number of English-speaking people, who came to see the " wonder," were awakened and converted. They called him to be their pastor and evangelist, and soon he found himself in charge of 100 new-born souls. That drew India 101 his attention to the needs of the English-speaking people of India. They are of two classes. First are the Europeans who in government service or in business have settled down in India. Exiles from home and freed from home re- straints, they have too often become a reproach to the Christian name they bear, yet have been greatly neglected by all Christian bodies. The second class consists of the so-called Eurasians, that mixed people born of European fathers and Asiatic mothers — Indian, of course, in India. In Ceylon, in the old Dutch time, they were called burghers ; after that, East Indians. There are 150,000 of them in India, mostly in the cities, as well as a constantly increasing number in China, Japan, and all open ports where foreign soldiers, sailors, and merchants have access. This unfortunate class, inheriting, if not, as some claim, the vices of both races, at least not the best traits of either, is apt to be despised and neglected by all. Yet they are intelligent, often well educated, extremely sensi- tive, and European in dress, language, and modes of thought. If thoroughly trained and Christianized in character as well as name, they might become important agents in giving the gospel to their countrymen. It is this second class that is largely represented iu the Taylor Mission. In accordance with his self-supporting theory. Bishop Taylor declined to be helped or supervised by the mission- ary committee, while receiving money for a transit fund, and asking ordination of his men from the bishops. The sainted George Bowen, before that connected with the American Board, and Dr. Thoburn, connected with the North India Methodist Mission, both joined the Taylor ■work, which soon received the name of the South India Con- ference. In the course of fifteen years it has spread all over 102 Modern Missions in the East India, and as far away as Singapore. It has occupied most of the large cities, and thus secured important strategic points for future, usefulness. In the conference of 1886 it reported twenty -seven churches scattered through India unaided by foreign money, ministering to Europeans, Eura- sians, and Indians. There can be no question of the usefulness of the work. Yet whenever I met its representatives I found them over- burdened, sometimes half-crazed, by the double labor ex- pected from most of them, constantly preaching in English and managing English churches, yet continually called upon also to preach and work in the vernacular among the natives, and frequently supported by salaries which gave a livelihood only as eked out by private teaching. It seemed an impossible task that had been attempted, which might be carried on for a time under the inspiring leader- ship of William Taylor, but must sooner or later be modi- fied. And modified it has been. For the South India 'Conference, feeling that it was not able to improve the opportunity it had itself created, in the session of 1886 made a change in so far as this : It has asked the Meth- odist missionary committee to appropriate , money in aid of its work, on the principle of encouraging self - support by giving as much for native work as the South India Conference raises in India. This aid has been promised up to the amount of $10,000. So far I have spoken altogether of the work among the Hindus. There are, however, other fields to be entered. Attention has lately been drawn to the Mohammedans. There can be no question that the most favorable field for work among them is India. Political influences, which oppose even their education, to say nothing of conversion. India 103 elsewhere, make them here most accessible. And while they have yielded least of all religions to the solvents of western thought, they are not unaffected. It was as- serted at the Calcutta Conference in 1883 that in North India there have been in proportion to the amount of labor bestowed five Moslem converts to every Hindu convert from the three high castes of Hinduism. In one mission station in North India, out of names on the Baptismal Reg- ister no less than 225 were converts from Mohammedanism. I have myself in Bombay addressed through an interpreter a company of Mohammedans, who came into the vestibule of the native church to attend a meeting known to be es- pecially for them, and who listened with attention, respect, and assent. Of the 50,000,000 Mohammedans over whom Queen Victoria rules, not one-tenth, it is claimed, are descendants of immigrants. And of this number about one-half live in the single province of Bengal, where they seem to have been converted, not by force, but by favor and protection against their rich Hindu landlords. In this province there are therefore more Mohammedans than Hindus. But in 1883 there was not one male missionary working in Ben- gal who knew the Arabic language, or of the Moslem con- troversy, or was specially devoted to work among the Mo- hammedans. Yet they are said to be the despised, down- trodden, poor, and illiterate portion of the population. I conversed in Calcutta with the Rev. Jani Ali, a Christian convert from Mohammedanism and a graduate from Ox- ford, who since the conference had been appointed to that special work by the Church Missionary Society. The same society also has a special high-school for Mohamme- dans in Madras. Conversions had not been known in the 104 Modern Missions in the East school for years, though many boys left school favorably inclined to Christianity. And Jani All's labors were being neutralized by the fact that some former converts and help- ers had just gone back to Islam. In Bombay also the Church Missionary Society, and, so far as I know, that society alone, is laboring directly for the Mohammedans. They have but two catechists with one European worker. Yet there are 180,000 in the island of Salsette. I have compared India to the Roman Empire. One of the resemblances appears in the growth of scepticism, which is imported from the West, and does not go very deep down in any Hindu mind, though it may destroy his old morality without adding anything new. Much more important is the rise of what corresponds to Neo-Platonism, and may equally well be called Neo-Hinduism. It assumes many different forms. The Hindus are a too essentially re- ligious people to be long content with the bald scepticism which might amply satisfy the keen intellect of a self- righteous Confucian. In one way or another, when lifted above their degraded idolatries, they seek after God. It is the most pathetic sight I saw while away. Some press back to the old Vedic books, and declare themselves the most orthodox of Hindus. Others rejoice in the pres- tige, and ally themselves to the labors of European Theoso- phists, who, headed by Colonel Olcott and Madame Bla- vatsky, assure the Hindus that the same essence of religion is at the heart of all religions, so that we need only use what we have to be satisfied. Others set up religious societies on their own account, where they preach the Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man, while a larger number follow the leadership of India 105 some religious genius lite Baboo Keshub Chundcr Sen in some Soma], advanced like tbe Brabmo Somaj, or reaction- ary like the Arya Somaj — societies which in some form or other have planted themselves in most of the chief towns of North India. All these are symptoms of the times — per- haps transient, but important symptoms. They indicate the breaking up of the old, the anxious search for the new, by those who are not willing to be without God, and who be- lieve that God must have manifested himself not alone ia western dogmas, but in forms apprehensible by the orient- al mind. For the time the work of the Somaj may seem to conflict with the work of Christianity, as the rival preachers are often brought into sharp opposition to one another. But the Somaj seems to me rather to register a certain mood of the Indian mind than to indicate its rest- ing-place. At the same time it must be remembered that those who will neither reject nor accept Christianity in its entirety, but try to rest in eclectic systems, partly Christian, partly heathen, may make these systems into towers of ofience to Christianity and of defence to heathenism, turning its own weapons against Christianity, and making the older religion a far more formidable opponent than ever before. That is undoubtedly what is going on in -India to-day, and one im- portant reason why there are fewer conversions now than once among the high-caste Hindus in our mission schools and elsewhere is because these various forms of Neo-Hinduism offer a half-way house within the lines of Hindu toleration for those who are dissatisfied with the old, yet not ready to eut entirely loose and embrace Christianity so long as they can find a seeming substitute. " We shall all be Christians in fifty years," said a Hindu, 106 Modern Missions in the Most " but it may not be your kind of Christianity." It is suf- ficient surely if it be that of Jesus and his apostles. And plainly enough the spell of Christ's influence is being cast over some of the finest Indian minds. Said to me Mozoom- dar, the leader of the Brahmo Somaj, as we stood near the almost worshipped memorial shrine of Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen, " What India needs is Christ." Mohini visits Boston and commends the epistles of St. Paul to the admiring groups of ladies who gather around him. On his voyage back he so reads himself into the Gospel of John that the resolve grows strong within him to present this Christ to his countrymen. Distrust the Hindu mind as much as we may and must, it is plain that God's spirit is at wort bringing this people to himself. My three months in India and subsequent study have combined to impress some points upon my mind as among the characteristic features of the field. 1. India is a land of villages and rural populations. Of seventy million inhabitants in Bengal fifty millions live in villages of less than 500 each. In all Bengal out of 264,- 765 towns and villages only forty-seven towns contain more than 15,000 inhabitants. China is a land of great cities as well as of numerous villages, but a journey through India shows the difference at once. A rural population can never be thoroughly evangelized save by its own people. The development of a simple native ministry is the key to success in India. It is the part of foreign missionaries to direct this development. 2. Nearly one-fifth of the population, or over fifty mill- ions, mostly in the villages, are still lingering in the rude aboriginal religions. They form a dense, dark, wavering India 107 mass on the outskirts of the great faiths of the world, who within the next fifty years are to be absorbed into either Hinduism, Islamism, or Christianity. Each is at present slowly appropriating some portion. The greatest successes of Christianity have b^en among these classes. Whose shall they be at the end of the next century 3 3. Five millions of the brightest minds in India are be- ing emancipated and illuminated by the secular science and civilization of the West. They stand at just the opposite end of the scale from those last mentioned. Their number annually increases. They are and are to be the leaders and rulers of the coming India. They are the university men, the office holders and seekers of to-day. The Indian na- tional congresses annually held represent them. They are sceptical yet religious, and not to be satisfied without a national religion. All sorts of substitutes for and compro- mises with Christianity are now being attempted which can hardly long satisfy them ; they are or must become pecul- iarly open to the living gospel of Jesus Christ, though they may long reject the dogmas of Christianity. The Christian culture of the West must meet Secularism East or West and conquer it, thus helping to bring about great popular movements into God's kingdom. 4. The advantages for work among these Indian peoples are unparalleled. Providentially placed for a time in the charge of a great Protestant nation, whose rule favors every form of mission labor, they are easier of access than the people of any other great country. They are in- fused with our own Aryan blood ; they are filled with new aspirations ; they are the most religious people under the sun. Thev will not sway the world like the Chinese, but they will perhaps leaven it more. 108 Modern Missions in the East The churches of India are to save India ; but we are to build up the churches. It is this that creates the pressing call for reinforcements to our missionaries, staggering dis- mayed under the opportunities we have prayed for. Think of Rome in the third century, when a few wise, brave men, fired by zeal for God, could gather the dissolved and floating elements together into the foundation of Chris- tian Europe and Christian America ! Then think of India to- day approaching the same condition, with her currents and eddies and sweeping tides moving ever more swiftly ! A united, nationalized, regenerated India will be a triumph for Christianity, like its grand conquest of Europe. Hap- py,' thrice happy, is our generation, that we may have part in this glorious work of winning India for Christ ! CHAPTER V THE TURKISH DOMINIONS The passage from India to Turkey brings a much greater change than is indicated by the sail of a few days from Bombay to Suez. It is the change from one world to an- other ; from the outer, oceanic, barbarian world to the inner, Mediterranean, Roman world; from the orient to the. Oc- cident ; from heathendom to the outskirts and suburbs of Christendom ; yes, to its ancient centres, the scene of its early conquests, its battle-field, its lost domain, of its defeats and degradation ; at once its cradle and its coffin, where it has long lain rotting. Nothing that we have seen is so heterogeneous and so problematical as these Turkish domin- ions. The ends of the earth meet here, and are tangled into a worse than Gordian knot. Just as the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe gather here together and gaze at one another, so the great powers of Christendom meet at Constantinople, and contend in subtle diplomacy or in open war. These lands, stretched out in a most grotesque gerry- mander around the great, central, classic sea, how many and how diverse are their claims and their charms ! First, we come to Egypt. We gaze at its sphinx and its pyramids. We stand dwarfed beneath its colossal statues and its obelisks. We wander through its temples and its torchlit tombs. On the postal boat we steam hundreds of miles to the great cataracts, up the benignant, mysterious 110 Modern 3Iissions in the East Nile, creator of Egypt, its source ever being jnst discovered, yet remaining ever hidden. Here, for the first time, we encounter an idolatrous polytheism which is absolutely de- funct, with not even a memory lingering, but only deserted temples, and signs and pictures cut in the rocks. What shall be the future of this most ancient of lands, seat of the earliest civilization, host of the Israelites, as Holland, though in a more friendly way, was the host of the later Pilgrims on their route to the promised land of New England? This land, tributary to the Sultan, but held fast in the organizing hand of England, inherited by the Coptic Christians, but dominated by the Moslems — what is to be its destiny ? Then we pass to Palestine, the thrice holy land. Estab- lished in the Prussian Hospice, right in the heart of the old city, we explore the streets and haunts of Jerusalem, where the Moslem sentinel keeps peace between the warring Christian sects as they quarrel around the sepulchre of our Lord. We journey up and dtiwn through the land, sometimes alone, sometimes with a large company, and ever the question urges, Who is to possess this land when the Turk goes? Greeks and Latins, Russia and France, vie with one another. The Moslem keeps his hold, and all is peace at the mosque of Omar. Back of all the Jew lies in wait, or presses on tow- ards his old home, while all over the world are millions of those who claim the Hebrew land for the Hebrew people. What shall its future be? Off from Beirut at last, our steamer skirts the shores of Asia Minor. There come dreamy nights on the moonlit sea, busy days, exploring each port where we stop. Cyprus, one of Lord Beaconsfield's dazzling gains for England ; Mer- sin, the port of Tarsus ; Rhodes, alive with memories of the knights of Malta; Smyrna, gay, crowded mart, surviving The Turkish Dominions 111 upon the site of many mined cities ; the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, where Europe and Asia kiss one another ; on past Constantinople and along the northern coasts, through the stormy waters of the Black Sea. The whole of this Anatolia is a rich, varied, important country. On one side was Troy, on the other Armenia. Greek colonies fringed the coasts and thronged the islands. The fabled Amazons were in the north and the kingdom of Mithridates. Many ob- scure tribes occupied the rich, high plateaus. Over these plains marched Alexander and St. Paul. And here, to-day, is the real home of the Turk, who, not camping under arms, as in Europe, has settled down in the land, and forms the mass of the agricultural population. All over the lofty plains rove the nomad tribes of Turcomans, Yourouks, and Kurds, while the Greeks and Armenians are mainly found in the towns, holding most of the trade in their hands. The land has never had a history, yet has great possibilities. More and more the Turk, as he sullenly withdraws from Europe, establishes himself in Anatolia, centring around Brousa, first capital of the Ottoman Empire. Will it be its last capital, and will the Moslem long hold the whole of this land? Will the Armenians, busy, thriving, pushing, ever again be a people with a local habitation as well as a name of their own ? Or will the keen, subtle, ambitious Greeks reclaim the commerce and dominion of the land ? Or will some European power assert a protectorate over the whole country, threading it with railroads and developing all the vast resources it contains ? Finally we are back at Constantinople. We find ourselves thrilled with its memories, charmed with its beauties, dazzled with its splendors; but disgusted with its filth, dismayed with its degradation, utterly perplexed with its problems. 113 Modern Missions in tJie East Turning our back on all this, we wind, by slowly moving train, through the Balkan peninsula. At last we breathe the free air of Bulgaria. Here, for the first time, there is hope, resolution, achievement, success, and constitutional government, though still much fear, trembling, and uncer- tainty. Yet there is light on the future. Its lines are clearly marked out, if only this brave people may be left to them- selves. When we glance at Roumania and Servia, on our way up the Danube, we have somewhat the same hope for them. And now that we have surveyed the Turkish dominions, what is the prospect for them all ? What is the power that can take hold of these heaving, yearning, restless, striving nationalities, break the fetters that bind them without and within, and shape them into true nations, living members of the human race ; no longer enslaved, scattered, quarrelling, or corrupted peoples, but freely allied with the brotherhood of mankind, bound up with the kingdom of G-od ? I reply, the whole hope of these lands lies in Christianity — a Chris- tianity that is pure, vital, spiritual, ethical, intelligent, prac- tical, aggressive, dominating the whole of life. The ever-growing impression that Turkey makes upon a visitor is that of a shattered, dismembered, dying empire. We have seen no such sight in all our tour around the globe. It has been a long process, for it began two centuries ago, when, in 1683, the tide of Turkish invasion was stayed un- der the walls of Vienna. Since then, not to speak of the earlier loss of Spain and other countries in the west, frag- ment after fragment has been torn away in the east. One after another the Sultan has lost Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Bessarabia, Servia, Greece, Moldavia, Wallachia, Bos- nia, Bulgaria, Roumelia, Thessaly, Algeria, Tunis, Cyprus, The Turkish Dominions 113 and Massoah. Other countries, like Egypt, are held by for- eigners, under the euphemistic description of " Temporary occupation, under the sovereignty of the Sultan." In the few strips of Europe which the Turks still hold they are, as they ever have been, parasites, living on the pillage of Chris- tians. As this pillage is stopped they depart for Asia. But wherever they depart the question arises, What shall come after the Turk? In all these complications religion is and has long been a leading, if not the main, factor. In the different forms which we meet here, there are some striking resemblances and greater diversities. Every form is intense and tenacious. We have just come from lands where idolatrous polytheism prevailed. Here everything is monotheistic. Three great religions, with their variations and combinations, occupy the field. Two of them are intensely unitarian. One is the most exclusive, the oldest, and least changed of any great re- ligion. Another is vehemently, iconoclastically non-idol- atrous. One alone is idolatrous, and that one is Christian- ity. These three have all sprung from the same root, and exhibit the three forms of false development. Judaism shows arrested development. Islamism shows perverted develop- ment. Christianity shows corrupted development. All three are book religions, and are the only book religions. All three are personal religions, in that they go back to a per- sonal founder, though only in Islam and Christianity are the founders the real bond of life and centre of allegiance. Two of them, those just named, are intensely missionary religions, there being only one other. Buddhism. Judaism, rigid and exclusive; Islam, arrogantly and persecutingly tenacious; Christianity, defiantly and degradingly corrupt — this is the field into which our evangelical missions have come. 8 114 Modern Missions in the East There is one other feature which causes great difiBculty for these missions. That is the doctrine of the myste- rious inaccessibility, unintelligibility, and untranslatability of the Scriptures. Judaism has the least of this. It can never be forgotten that it produced the Septuagint. Islam has much more, for the Koran, being held, as it stands, for eternal and uncreate, may not be translated into any other tongue. Yet as it is the one text-book of more than one hundred millions of our race, it has been called the most widely-read book in existence. Corrupt Christianity has car- ried this doctrine to the extreme, and keeps the Bible a sealed book. The national churches hold mainly to their an- cient versions, and will allow no other. The consequence is that most of the people and many of the priests understand neither the liturgy nor the Scriptures. A young converted Albanian described to me with great feeling the behavior of an assembly of his countrymen when for the first time from his lips they heard a prayer which they could understand as well as the one to whom it was addressed. They seem to have thought that a prayer which they could understand God could not, and so it would never reach heaven's throne. The divisions, antagonistic and exclusive, among these corrupt churches form another peculiar feature of the field. An impartial historian states that there are in Turkey four- teen distinct sects of Christians, all of whom bate one an- other. The line of division lies not so much along doc- trines — though the sects are often identified with various de- funct heresies — as along national and political lines. There is the Greek Church, headed by Russia, the Gregorian Ar- menian, the Syrian, and the Coptic, or ancient Church of Egypt. The Church of Rome has made other divisions, mainly through political inducements offered to the op- The Turkish Dominions 115 pressed, or through ecclesiastical concessions, granted in re- turn for acknowledgment of Romish supremacy. In attempting to understand this motley field, two princi- ples of the empire must always be kept in mind. One is the Mohammedan principle, which allows non-idolatrous peo- ples to retain their religion on payment of a poll-tax, at the same time freeing them from military duty. The other is the Turkish principle, which allows different nationalities to remain distinct, but requires them to be represented before the Sultan by a political or religious head. There is no as- similating power tending to unify these many races and re- ligions, like that of the British, or even the MughaJs, in India. The consequence is that all these separate units form a conglomerate state, binding religions and nationalities to- gether in a repellent contact, ready to fly apart into frag- ments the moment the external fettering bond snaps. The population under the immediate rule of the Sultan is estimated at twenty-two millions, with about ten millions more in the tributary states. Distribute these millions among the adjacent parts of three continents, among three great, hostile faiths, two of which, at least, are split into warring sects, Christianity being at once most divided and most corrupt ; distribute these same millions, once more, among fifteen or twenty distinct nationalities and races ; place them all under the rule of a hated, bigoted, once mighty, but now decaying, dynasty, held in its place only by the jeal- ousies of European powers — there you have the field pre- sented to missions in the Turkish dominions. Remember, too, that many of these races are not fixed, but roving, such as the Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, Armenians, Jews, and Gypsies ; that they often regard one another with settled antipathy ; that many of them cherish dreams of future dominion 116 Modern Missions in the East throughout these lands, and you will not wonder at the mot- ley crowds, the polyglot speech, the conflicting aims and claims, which you everywhere encounter, especially at such centres as Cairo, Jerusalem, Smyrna, and Constantinople. Of the forty-nine Protestant societies for Jewish missions, employing about four hundred workers, with an income of $500,000, there is naturally a good representation in Turkey, centring in Jerusalem and Palestine. It is estimated that in Palestine there is one missionary for every thousand Jews. My impressions of the work as I saw it in that country are not hopeful. Perhaps half a dozen societies are laboring specially for this people, though until within a few months nothing was attempted by any American church or society. Nor was there any missionary who could speak in Hebrew with the rabbis, which would seem a quite indispensable qualification. Now Ben-Oliel has undertaken work of this character in behalf of the Presbyterian Church of America. I visited various mission schools for the Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere ; I saw the medical work carried on among them ; I also inspected the schools of the Jewish Alliance, where young boys are taught useful trades. There were a few alleged converts, and a number of the school children who apparently accepted what they were taught. Some of the sects seemed to bid high for new converts, but the re- sults were usually doubtful. The missionaries labored more from the spirit of obedience than from hope. The Jewish home was in the end more powerful than the Christian school. Above all, the prevailing type of Christianity was not of a kind to recommend the gospel to outsiders. The best work seemed to be done by those who had no special purpose of proselytism, but only aimed to show Christian love to the Jews by works of kindness and relief. Of this The Turkish Dominions 117 sort was the Children's Hospital, carried on by Dr. San- dreckzki and his wife. Still more efiective and winsome are the example and devotion of that eccentric and visionary company of people called " the Americans." These Ameri- cans, also called " Overcoraers," form a little community of twenty-five, brought to Jerusalem under the leadership of Mr. Spafford, a lawyer from Chicago. Their object was to await here the coming of Christ. I took tea with them Sunday, and spent the evening. There is a singular peace and sweetness about them. They toil not, neither do they spin, bat simply love God and man. Dr. Sandreckzki tells me of their nursing with the utmost devotion sick strangers who fall in their way. Their house is open to all with wonderful hospitality, and is a resort of Jews and Mohammedans as well as of foreigners. So long as the Jews are ostracized, hated, persecuted, ex- pelled from their homes by Christians, and so long as Chris- tians show to the Jews a religion divided and corrupt, there can be little hope of gaining more than a few exceptional individuals to the cause of Christ. And what conversions are accomplished will be mainly brought about by putting the New Testament in the Hebrew tongue into their hands, as can now be so well done in the admirable translation of Delitzsch. There are few phenomena in history more surprising than the rise and spread of Islam, this strange faith which "stamped out Christian life in northern Africa, quenched the pure light of Christianity already flickering, it is true, in the ancient churches of Revelation, conquered and held southern Spain for nearly seven hundred years, holds now the whole of the sacred places of the East, put life and vital- ity into the Indian mutiny in \8f)1, kindled the Afghan 118 Modern Missions in the East wars, nurses Mahdism as the possible weapon for scourg- ing Christendom and regaining its lost domains, and shows everywhere in Africa a marvellous power for both fighting and proselyting." With all that may be said for it, Islam is a mental and moral cul-de-sac. There is no progress in it or beyond it. Only by retreating from its Mohammedanism, from its Ko- ranolatry, from its violence, sensuality, and debasement of woman, and by getting into the stream of eternal life, can there be divine knowledge or salvation for any of its peoples. To aid in bringing this about there should be found to-day successors of Raymond Lull, described as the only man who, until quite recent times, ever succeeded in converting to the gospel any considerable number of Mohammedans residing in a country under a Mohammedan government. There have been a few such successors, as Dr. Pfander and Bishop French, the latter of whom has recently laid down his life at Muscat, in the tropics of Arabia, just as he was setting forth alone with two native servants and a tent to itinerate throughout that fanatically Mohammedan country. But if one- thousandth, one ten -thousandth, part of the men and means and zeal once flung into the Holy Land to save the sacred places from the Moslems were now ready to be put into the work of saving the Moslems themselves, there would be plenty of crusaders to-day to succeed where those bloody crusades failed. Yet should such a crusade be now organized the question would remain as to the method of attacking this defiant faith. Two great obstacles would at once confront them. The first is the political and social intolerance of Mohamme- dans. Among them heresy is treason. The subject sects may change as they choose. The conversion of a Moham- The Turkish Dominions 119 medan is proscribed. The Sultan may promise freedom never so often. It is always interpreted to apply to Chris- tians, not to Moslems. I have seen a converted Moslem in Turkey. It was a woman, who, after great persecution, was living in comparative freedom at Marsovan. There may be occasional instances of the same kind ; but if the convert is a man, suddenly he disappears. He is drafted into the army and sent to a distant part of the empire, whence he never returns. In India all this is different. But so long as the Sultan is in power, and especially while he is alarmed for the safety of the faith, as at present, there will be but few pub- lic conversions. I found a so-called free-thinker in one of the Turkish towns who seemed to be held in all honor. What was hidden under this name I never learned. A few Moslem children may be found in Christian schools. More than that can hardly be expected. The intolerance of a Moslem is more bitter than even that of a Hindu, and is far more powerful. Even the political break-down, which is so sure to come, can hardly change that sublime, withering, anti-social scorn which Islam is said to beget. The second hinderance in the way of any modern spiritual crusade is of an entirely different kind. The greatest ob- stacle in the way of Christianity is Christianity, if we have any right to apply that term to the putrefying corpse which bears the name of oriental Christianity. Mohammedans say, " We have lived among Christians for 1200 years, and we want no such religion as that." A missionary writes from Cairo : " The commonest Moslem fellah feels himself far superior to the most learned Christian from a religious and moral point of view, for he considers the latter an idolater, worshipping three Gods, and pretending that God was born of a woman ; while be knows that Allah is one, and him 120 Modern Missions in the East alone he worships." No carefal observer of the peoples of Turkey can fail to see that those found in the deepest depths of drunkenness, deceit, irreverence, and corruption are oftener Christians than Turks. Plainly, then, our first work in this empire is to convert the Christians. Until we can make some impression on them, and so remove this stumbling-block out of the way, we are fatally handicapped. Events are loosening the polit- ical bonds. Only God's spirit can loosen the bonds of this dreadful example. Not, indeed, that we are to give up all special labor for the Turk. Something is constantly being done in this line. But two things should be well remembered. The first is that the still hunt will best reach the Moslem. "Tell every church-member and every presbytery and every missionary society to say nothing upon this subject ; tell them to be silent," is the injunction of one of the oldest missionaries in Turkey. " To talk much here in America of the ' wane of the crescent' causes the men of the crescent over there to wax hot." A missionary writes that the efEorts made a short time ago to limit the sale of the Turkish Scriptures were in no small degree the result of the frequent references in the jour- nals of Europe to the breaking up of Mohammedanism. " I think I express the opinion of every American missionary," said Mr. Dale at the pan-Presbyterian council at Belfast in 1884, " when I say that it is not advisable to organize special societies for work, and especially ecclesiastical work, among Mohammedan peoples. These missionaries believe that more individuals of any one class will eventually be reached by working among all classes. Efforts may be put forth, not as an attack upon Islam, but as a work of individual conver- sion and training ; not as aimed at Islam as a creed, but at The Turkish Dominions 131 individual hearts which need a Saviour. The very limitation of work to a single class and the declaration of that fact is sufficient to arouse the fiercest opposition." The second point to be observed is that, quite apart from the scandal of oriental Christianity, these same churches hold the key to the situation for the present and the future. The power to hinder or help the progress of evangelical Christianity lies right in their hands. If they choose to op- pose the work of our missions, the heads of the various Christian communities have but to make a few insinuations to the Moslems and their wrath is excited at once. -This con- stantly occurs. If they cannot stir up the Moslems, they can stir up their own people. In all my travels through Asia I came but once upon the scene of a recent riot. That was in Smyrna, the seat of one of the seven churches of Asia. It was an attempt by Christians to mob their fellow-Chris- tians. It was stirred up by priests in their pulpits. It was stopped by Moslem troops, on the appeal to Constantinople of the American consul. The spread of gospel teaching among the Greeks had been so great as to alarm the eccle- siastics, who incited their people to disturbance. I have among my relics a stone thrown by the mob into the house of the friend of my boyhood, George Constantine, at a time when his wife was alone in her home, and the angry mob sought to force their way in. Months later Mrs. Constan- tine died, virtually a martyr to her faith. On the other hand, if oriental Christians once accept the pure gospel for themselves, and seek to diffuse it among others, none have such opportunities to reach Moslems. They live right among them, in daily contact, and with full under- standing of their neighbors. The example of lives and com- munities regenerated by the gospel would do more to con- 123 Modern Missions in the JEast vince and convert Mohararaedans than all other evidences of Christianity. Once let the Greek or Armenian Christians be touched by the glow of Christ's love for souls, planted in the midst of them as they are, they vi^ill have such facilities for evangelization as no others could have. What plainer prov- idential indication could there be that they are the means through v\fhich their former conquerors are themselves to be conquered by the love of Christ? When Protestants first came to Turkey, the Turks, on see- ing their worship, sometimes exclaimed, " Why, these are Moslems!" " I can worship here," said a Moslem in India, on entering a Presbyterian church, where he found no cross or other symbol that might seem an image. When the east- ern churches have cast ofE the terrible burdens of ignorance, idolatry, and immorality, and have been revived and imbued with a missionary spirit, then, and not until then, may we hope to reach the Moslem masses. Then, and not until then, will there be bright hopes for the conversion of the eastern Jews. Jewish rigidity, Moslem intolerance. Christian degra- dation and Christian possibilities, then, form the all-sufficient reasons why our missions in Turkey, which first aimed at the Turks, soon came to concentrate their labors mainly, though not exclusively, on the Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, and other Christian peoples. Among non-Episcopal churches it has become almost axi- omatic that the oriental churches need this direct missionary labor. But the Anglican Church has certain parties and prel- ates who bitterly criticise and oppose the proselytizing ef- forts of American missionaries among eastern Christians, They have made, and are still making, earnest efforts to re- vive the dead churches, and at the same time to preserve the integrity of their organization, and regard American raeth- The Twrhish Dominions 133 ods as schismatic and harmful. It is well, therefore, to look more carefully at the condition and needs of the oriental churches. In Egypt is the Coptic Church, venerable in its antiquity, and honorable for the martyr-testimony it has borne, in past times, to the Christian faith in the face of Mohammedan compulsion. But a church can never live on its history. There are 350,000 of them to-day among 4,000,000 Mos- lems. They hold the Eutychian heresy of asserting but one will and one nature in Christ. But their heresies are far more fundamental than that. In customs the)' have almost wholly conformed to the Mohammedans around them, their women being veiled in public, and at home before male vis- itors. As a rule, they are ignorant, degraded, immoral, their priests -being little different from the people. Their services, as I saw them in their great church in Cairo, and as they are carried on through the land, consist almost wholly of recit- ing the Scripture and liturgy and celebrating the mass. But the Bible is read in the ancient Coptic tongue, understood, as a rule, by neither people nor priest. One who has spent years among them writes that in many places little difference was to be found between Moslem and Christian, except that the Mohammedan said, " There is no God but God, and Mo- hammed is the apostle of God," and would obstinately re- fuse to taste of the intoxicating araki ; while the Copt would say, " In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," and would squander his means and injure his mind by daily po- tions of this Arab whiskey. " Certainly,'' says this writer, " as to lying, malice, licentiousness, desecration of the Sab- bath, profanation of God's holy name, and bribery, the Copt differed nothing from the Mohammedan." This was their condition prior to all missionary work. 124 Modern Missions in the East Connected with the Coptic, as her daughter, is the Abys- sinian Church. The six or seven million people of Abys- sinia form both " the only Christian nation in Africa, and the only savage Christian race in the world." They are hardier and more independent than the Copts, partly because not under the dominion of the Turks. But they are none the less ignorant and corrupt. Here, as with the Copts, there is no image-worship, but the more worship of pictures and the Virgin. According to Bishop Gobat, they are divided into three parties, so inimical that they curse one another, and will no longer partake of the sacrament together. It is one single point that disunites them : the unceasing dispute con- cerning the unction of Christ. We have already passed along the Turkish coasts, from Egypt through the Black Sea, to survey the lands and peoples. Now what of the missions in this same territory ? In all there are over 400 stations and out-stations, with 100 ordained missionaries, 150 organized chnrches, a membership of 15,000, and 30,000 pupils, and an annual sale of 60,000 Bibles or portions. Every important seaport has either a force of missionaries or an evangelical congregation with pastor or preacher. About seventy such centres are occu- pied, and from them the work spreads out in every direc- tion. In Egypt we find the United Presbyterians, who since 1854 have been laboring among the Copts. Almost without competition from any other society they have held the field, and now all along the Nile from Alexandria to the First Cataract at Assouan they have extended their churches and schools. Three thousand five hundred and seventy-one communicants are distributed among eighty-six stations, and contribute about $7000 a year for church purposes. In their 27i6 Turkish Dominions 135 schools are over 6700 pupils, of whom 800 are Moham- medans daily receiving Christian instruction. A large part of the cost of the schools is paid by the Copts. From first to last they have baptized some sixty Mohammedans, all of whom were the result of indirect labor, and none of whom have apostatized. The work has been specially blest to the women of Egypt, not one of whom could read when the mission began, while now one in every 700 can read with understanding. With some of the ladies of the mission I visited Coptic homes where the Bible had been opened, and I found that the veil had been dropped from the face and the heart alike. Almost without competition, I said. When I was in Cairo a new scheme was on foot. It was a high -church English college, called, in memory of that great Englishman, Gordon College. The very plan of it was enough to make that hero rise from his grave. The Ritualists had gone to the Coptic patriarch, and sought to curry favor by assuring him that they had not come to oppose him, but rather to co- operate with him, and help undo the mischief done by the American Presbyterians. While I was in the city came the meeting of the Presbytery. A Coptic ex-monk, who, had he remained in his church, might have become its patriarch, but who preferred to be a Protestant pastor, being present at the Presbytery, improved the occasion to call on his quon- dam friend, the patriarch. He found the English Ritualists already there, and not being himself taken for a Protestant, heard much of their conversation. They were rather coolly received. When they regretted the divisions made by the Protestants, the patriarch said, "We are all one in Christ.'' They enlarged on the misfortune of having his people drawn away to the Presbyterian services, but as they 126 Modern Missions in the East departed the patriarch turned to his friend and said with much bitterness, " They talk about my people being drawn away to the American services, but do you know where my people are who are not drawn there ? They are in the grog- shops, sir !" Such was the forced tribute paid by one who was more intelligent and honest than most of those about him. Our steamer stops at Latakia, where the Reformed Pres- byterians are at work among the Nusairiyehs. At Damascus we find a vigorous mission of the Irish Presbyterians. The Church Missionary Society has several important stations in Syria. But the main work done in Syria is that of the American Presbyterians (North). Who can help being thrilled as he contemplates their great centre at Beirut, with its noble college, and the busy printing-press, and the de- voted band of veterans and pioneers ? In 1890 there were in this Syrian mission thirty-nine American laborers, 205 native, 1658 church-members, and over 6000 pupils. Over $7000 a year has been contributed by the native churches during the last five years. About 400,000,000 pages of Scripture have been distributed since the beginning of the work. Beirut is an Arabic centre for all Moslem lands among the fifty millions who speak the Arabic tongue. Similar encouraging facts might be told about the mission to the Nestorians in Persia, a field consecrated early in the century by the martyr labors of Henry Martyn, and entered upon by the American Board in 1834, but transferred to the Presbyterians along with Syria in 1871. But this lies beyond the limits of our field. Scattered throughout Asia Minor are the stations of the American Board. I need not remind my readers of the gen- The Turkish Dominions 137 eral features of this work, of the five theological schools, six colleges, and forty-one boarding and high schools, of the over 19,000 pupils under instruction, or of the 122 churches with a membership of nearly 12,000. The future of new states and of revived nationalities and churches lies in these regions. The making of them is largely in the hands of the missionaries. It can hardly be called too much that the American Board expended there last year $230,000, or that it keeps 184 of our brethren and sisters on the ground. See the shining of those great Christian colleges all over Turkey, at Assiout in Egypt, at Beirut in Syria, at Aintab, Marash, Harpoot, and Marsovan in Anatolia, brightest of all at Constantinople, where Robert College faces both Europe and Asia. A personal visit to one of the mission fields of Turkey will best show us what is being done. It shall be to that paradise of missions, Marsovan. The May meetings in Constantinople are through. They have gathered men from all over Asia Minor and from Turkey in Europe for their annual conference about their work. Now they set out on their return, and we are invited to join them, that we may learn the truth of the things we have heard from their lips. An English steamer is just setting forth for Batoum, and is willing to make a contract with us by which we take their first cabin and they agree to turn aside and land us at Samsoun. We improve the oppor- tunity to chaff our missionary group upon the extravagance with which they travel, chartering private steamers for their special use, etc., but are glad to avail ourselves of the reduc- tion in fare thereby secured. On through the Bosporus, out upon the Black Sea, along the grand mountainous coast of Asia Minor we sail, and soon are in the custom-house of 138 Modern Missions in the East Sarasoun, on the south shore.' Then for two days we sweep on over the coast range to the interior. The party consists of Dr. Herrick and Mr. Fowle returning, the one to Marso- van, the other to Csesarea, Mr. and Mrs. Biggs with five children on their way back to Marsovan, after an absence of two years in America, and the " globe-trotter." At Samsoun itself we have an interesting mission station in charge of Babusinian, a native Armenian, who, after graduating from Union Seminary, New York, was so devoted to his people as to settle down here on a salary of about $500 and a house ; and here he still continues. Our vehicles for travel are four Turkish arabas, a kind of smaller emigrant wagon or prairie-schooner, and one light covered spring wagon or carryall, specially imported from America. The ladies and children ride in the carryall, the rest of us recline on mattresses spread out on the spring- less arabas, or take to our feet. Our drivers are Moham- medans, who, as it is Eamazan, the Moslem Lent, must fast from dawn to sunset, abstaining even from water and to- bacco. We experience all the miseries of Turkish khans, slightly relieved by comforts of our own, and still more by the bravery and patience of the one lady of our party. And we delight in the ever-changing mountain scenery, with continual glimpses of the Black Sea and its coasts, as we climb up and around the mountains, reaching a height of three or four thousand feet. It is a classic region. Here the Amazons are fabled to have lived, so that the very cocks would crow, " Women rule here." Here was the dominion of the great Mithridates, and, near by, the older Hittite empire. In Amasia was born Strabo, the great geographer, while close at hand is the spot where Cassar wrote those immortal words, "Veni, vidi, vici." Will our missionaries TJie Turkish Dominions 139 be able to record their victories in the same land in the same language ? It was Saturday afternoon as we drew near Marsovan. Fifteen miles away the greetings began. Old friends and servants appeared in the villages through which we passed. Then, while we were lunching in a khan, the school -boys from Marsovan began to pour in. Plunging along on their steeds, they approached, fez on head, blankets and pillows heaped on their saddles, kicking their clumsy stirrups against their foaming horses' flanks. Some were on donkeys, some in arabas. A hand-shake with each and a welcome, and they passed on. Thus we were attended by a cavalcade of twenty horsemen, besides all sorts of rumbling conveyances. As we came to the last hill that hid the town a singular sight await- ed us. Far away on its crest were six strange figures, which at first seemed so many trees, arranged in regular order. As we approached, the trees became animate, and out against the blue sky stood black waving forms. They were almost like the Spectre of the Brocken, and stood like a row of bricks, as if the fall of one would bring down the rest. But they turned out to be a part of the theological class, posted on the hill to welcome us. Then they sprang down the slope to greet us closer at hand. Soon the town itself came in sight among its vineyards on the opposite quarter of the plain. Our train was met by a much larger train of horsemen and arabas. Then my companions exclaimed, "Here is Mr. Tra- cy !" " There are the ladies !" " There is Mr. Smith on horseback!" "There are the Armenian professor and his wife and the pastor, on horses too !" " And here are the boys and girls !" Everybody sprang out. The right ones embraced, the rest shook hands, and all went on together. Finally, close to town, the infantry came out on foot to meet 130 Modern Missions in the East us — men and women and babes in arms. There must have been three or four hundred. The Greek students sang a hymn to Mr. Riggs, to which he made a reply in Greek. The Armenian students, not to be outdone, gave speeches and hymns, to which he replied in Armenian. Then on the whole procession moves, skirting the Turkish town, rising to the highest point of the plain, where we see the white mission buildings shine conspicuous, close to but just out of the town. There our first journey ends. Here we are, then, at a mission centre, in the midst of this noble, mountain -girt plain. What has it to tell us of the mission work? Much, very much, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. The city of Marsovan lies 2600 feet above sea-level, in the midst of a noble plain, clothed with vineyards and grain- fields, girt about with mountains 2000 or more feet higher still. It lies sixty miles from Samsoun, its seaport, and the whole region has a population of some 350,000, of whom 70,000 are Greeks and 35,000 Armenians, the remainder be- ing Moslems. Forty years ago — 1852 — two missionaries and their wives came here to labor. Before the close of the first year a church of ten members was formed. Various la- borers came and went, but in 1863 it was made the educa- tional centre of the mission. Year by year the out-stations multiplied, until now there are twenty places occupied, eight of them cities, six towns, the rest villages. Most of them are at least twelve miles apart ; all but two are over twenty- five miles, or a day's journey, from Marsovan. Some are five days' journey from that centre. In 1890 there were in this field 3025 counted as Protestants, 792 church-members in five churches, and $5508.80 paid by the people themselves for church, education, and benevolence. The Turkish Dominions 131 See, now, how the wort is done. Right in the heart of the old town we find the church. On Sunday we meet here a congregation of 800 to 1000, closely paoted together on their mats or rugs on the ground. It is a plain, plastered, whitewashed building, with two low railings running length- wise of the audience -room, to separate the women on the two sides from the men in the middle. The men wear the fez, coats, trousers, and coarse shoes, most of which last are left at the door outside. The women wear sacks and skirts, with or without stockings, as the case may be. Some place a white handkerchief of long -cloth over the head, others a red shawl, the latter being the finer thing. The face is not covered, but the shawl is drawn close about it. This gives a striking look of uniformity to the congregation ; and as nearly all are sitting on the floor, they are densely packed together. Is this, then, the mission church, and the scene of the missionary's labors ? By no means. Here are the missionaries and their families seated among the con- gregation, as attentive listeners as any. The pastor is Mr. Filian, a native Armenian, who has studied in America and is now entirely supported by his own church. In 1890 he came to America again to solicit funds for the enlargement of his church, just as many a pastor comes here from the West. It was by him that I was asked to speak on missions to his people, just as I am asked at home. What, then, is the work of the missionaries? It is wholly outside of this church, which they planted and fostered, and then resigned to those whose it is. Their work is institu- tional, evangelistic, supervisory. Let us look at the institu- tions. They are all in a group just outside the town, where we first dismounted. The central institution is Anatolia 132 Modern Missions in the East College. Starting in 1881 as a high-school, it graduated ia 1886 into a college, which has a field all to itself of a coun- try nearly twice the size of New England. But it would be a great mistake to regard this as wholly a missionary college. It is in charge, like Robert College and many other such in- stitutions, of an independent board of managers, five of whom are missionaries appointed by the American Board, five Ar- menians appointed by the native members of the Pontus Evangelistic Association, the president of this managing board being an Armenian. The catalogue for 1892 shows that four of those now giving instruction are American, seven are Armenian or Greek, and two natives more are soon ex- pected on the faculty. There are in all 117 students, in- cluding the preparatory department. Attached to this is also a theological school, more directly in charge of the mission- aries. There is, besides, a large girls' boarding - school, un- der charge of three American ladies, assisted by several na- tives. The labor of the missionaries is not strictly classified ; on the contrary, one must hold himself prepared to teach anything under the sun. I found Mr. Tracy teaching first the Bible, then English from Irving's Sketch Book, then In- ternational Law, and finally Hopkins's Outline Study of Man. Mr. Smith taught theology in the seminary, next took up the Fourth Reader with a young class in the preparatory, then went over for a class in the girls' school. Mr. Riggs, who takes Greek as well as Armenian and Turkish, told me he had occupied every chair in the college. In addition to this, each of the missionaries is doing work in translation, commentaries, treatises on theology, etc. But, after all, Mar- sovan is only a centre of work. A tract of country about 36a by 120 miles is the evangelistic field to be cared for. In every one of the out-atations a church is to be founded and The Turkish Dominions 133 brought to independence, until it becomes a centre for its own portion of the larger field. Come with me if you do not shrink from a mountain ride on these hardy ponies, and visit one of the stations, only a day's journey distant. Amasia, once the Mithridatic cap- ital, would be the most interesting for scenery and archaeol- ogy. But as we have not time to visit more than one sta- tion, we will rather go twenty-five miles over the mountain to Vezir-Kopri. As almost every missionary has at some time or other been robbed in the course of his travels, it is important to take a guard. So, first and foremost, rides the zabtieh, or mounted Turkish policeman. He carries a mag- azine gun and a heavy sword, and is very important in all the glory of his uniform, which of itself ought to frighten ofi the marauding Circassians. Then comes Mr. Smith, my host, next an Armenian student from the seminary, who is to preach, and I follow last of all. We ride away from the Marsovan plain, up over the mountain range, through show- ers of rain, for which the long-threatening famine makes us very grateful, to a height where we have the view of another rolling plain, over which are scattered many Greek villages. At this height my Armenian companion suddenly turns to me with an exultant question, " How do you like the tur- key?" It is not Thanksgiving-time, but I can think of only one meaning. I answer that I like the turkey very well if it is well cooked. " Oh, you do not understand," interposes the missionary, amused at the amazement of the questioner. "He means, 'How do you like the country of Turkey?'" "Ah, yes, I like it well, if it were only well governed." An hour this side of our destination an araba rolls along towards us, out of which emerge six young men who have come forth to meet us. Their enthusiasm is very touching, 134 Modern Missions in the East though we prefer our steeds to the pounding of the araba, to which they invite us. There is no time to speak of the thor- oughly hospitable, oriental, and delightful way in which they entertain us for the next three days. It affords an in- sight into the simple, natural life of the interior, which it would be hard to get on the coast. We are mainly con- cerned to-day with their church. There was no pastor set- tled here at the time of my visit. The community had not been doing its share towards the support of one, and it was thought healthy for them to be taught his value by absti- nence. But in 1890 a man came to take charge of this Protestant community of 150 souls. See what he does and can do. He is the teacher of all the non-Moslem children in the place, and has fifty pupils. He is the only doctor in a town of 1,500 population, a centre of 160 villages. He was a tailor before he became teacher and preacher, and, as he has a sewing-machine, he makes coats sometimes for his parishioners. Perhaps he wears the same print shirt on Sunday, without collar or tie, that he wore on Saturday. All the more he seems the Lord's own man for the place. His salary is about $20 a month. Some years ago the people purchased an old Turkish khan, with a number of outlying buildings. Here are to be their church, school, and parsonage. Here they are still worship- ping in the old khan, though building is going on. There is an early prayer-meeting this Sunday morning at half-past six, service at half-past ten, and again at half-past four. Come with me in the afternoon. The " globe-trotter " has been asked to speak on missions, which he is always ready to do. A closely-packed congregation of 350 Turks, Greeks, and Armenians is assembled, men and women, as usual, di- vided by a railing. Around me at my feet on the semicir- The Turkish Dominions 135 cular platform sit a dozen of the pillars of the church. Mr. Smith is to translate for me into Armenian. Just as I am starting, the student who has come to preach in Turkish stops me to suggest that, as there may be some there who understand only Turkish, it might be well for him, after each sentence of my speech has been put into Armenian, at once to translate it into Turkish. I reflect. The English original will take half au hour, the Armenian translation at least as long, and how much longer it will take to put it into Turk- ish — the main motto of whose people seems to be " Yawash ! Yawash!" (Slowly! Slowly!) — I have no means of knowing. Then the double interval between my sentences, sent wandering such linguistic distances, might perplex or over- whelm me. I advise him to remember what is said and tell it to them in brief after I am through. At that time, on inquiry, he found that all but half a dozen had understood Armenian, so he simply told each to tell the story to his neighbor. But what is this annoying thing that is happen- inc while I speak ? A dozen prominent citizens, as I have said, are seated on the edge of the low platform in a semi- circle at my feet. Just at the left, among them, is a man at whose house I have called, and who has expressed great interest in what I am going to tell them. But every time I begin to take up ray story he carries on an undertone of constant conversation with his neighbor. It is very audible and very embarrassing, especially because of its thoughtless- ness and rudeness. I looked severely at him, but with no effect. Then I gave it up and tried to ignore it, though it continued to the end. But when I had finished I expressed my surprise to Mr. Smith. "How can you explain it?" "Oh, you don't understand." That is perfectly plain. "You see, that man's neighbor is a Greek, who understands 136 Modern Missions in the East nothing of what was said. So, as fast as he caught each sentence from my lips, he turned and gave it to him. That is how he came to be talking all the time you were speak- ing." Then I understand. And I learned two lessons. One was of charity, and now if I see one of my auditors whisper- ing to his neighbor while I am speaking, before I have a sin- gle thought of blame I wish to be sure that he is not report- ing or applying my sermon to his less appreciative neighbor. The other was a revelation of mission methods. This is the way the gospel is to spread. One man shall pass it along to the next. From one tongue to another it shall slip from language to language, and each sermon of the missionary be multiplied by the natives far beyond the thought or under- standing of him who spake. Thus the foreign missionary works hand in hand with the native pastor and layman. A few disciples go abroad with a few loaves and fishes, and what are these among so many who starve for lack of bread? Bat their faith multiplies both the food and the la- borers. Each who receives becomes a source of supply and a distributer. Soon the work is passed over to the people of each place, and there is bread enough and to spare. The Protestant community in each of these districts is always more energetic, enlightened, and prosperous than its neigh- bors. Thus the work must ever go on of transferring those who are simply adherents to the number of disciples. When I reached Constantinople once more, it seemed as if I had come from another world, so great is the contrast be- tween the provincial interior and the splendid cosmopoli- tan capital. But not all its resources could have tauwht me so much about missionary work in Turkey as I learned from those few days in a country station in the interior of Asia Minor. The Turkish Dominions 137 When I was in Constantinople I felt the restless tossings of long-enthralled, nationalities awaking to the new destinies that might be theirs — Armenians thirsting for their lost country and dispersed people ; Bulgarians panting and striv- ing for freedom in a Greater Bulgaria; Egyptians claiming independence ; Jews praying for a return to the land of Da- vid and Solomon ; Greeks dreaming strange dreams of a greater and united Greece, yes, even of an eastern empire restored to them, with Constantinople as its centre. I saw the Turk, still defiant but apprehensive, dimly conscious that the end is near at hand, lamenting the sins of his people — such sins as that the women do not wholly veil their faces, that the men do not slay the infidels. I discerned the subtle plotting of diplomacy to guard or gain the Queen City, and so the empire of the East. Everything seemed then, as now, uncertain. It might be peace, it might be war; but all were sure that the old was breaking up, whether to make way for inrushing floods of destruction, or for better days and nobler nations, none could tell. Then I went to the most sacred and vital spot of Stamboul, not to St. Sophia, which, with all the lights and prayers of Ramazan, testified only to the degradation and defeat of the purer by a coarser faith, which had become God's scourge. I went to the Bible House, and there first, while all was shaking about, I felt that I stood upon a rock, the very Eock of Ages. The old city had fall- en because it was built upon a shut Bible ; this city was about to fall because it was built upon the Koran. But here on the open Bible was being reared a city which hath foun- dations, whose builder and maker is God. Entering the Bible House, I found there a company of American missionaries, and of Greek, Armenian, and Bulga- rian pastors, with native professors from Robert College, and 138 Modern Missions in the Mist women teaching in the girls' college at Scutari. They had gathered from remote parts of the empire, and were planning for their work throughout wide-spread countries. Here I saw the future open before me. The storm might come and the flood sweep away every house that was built on the sand. But this house was built upon a rock. And these men had laid foundations broad and deep, which no flood could under- mine. To carry off the flimsy, tottering structure on the sur- face would but reveal the deeper rock-work they had done. Come what might, the Bible work in all those lands was the basis on which the newer life must rest. And so I sat quiet at the heart of things and on that foundation of things, and while our men discussed the need of this station and that station and the appropriation to be made for each, I seemed only to see builders fitting stone after stone into its place in the walls of what was to be a great city of God, which should gather • within it millions of those debased Christians and bigoted Mohammedans born into a new faith, a city where St. So- phia should be reconsecrated to Heavenly Wisdom, where every mosque should become a church and every church be free from idolatry, where the seraglio should be a college for Christian women, where the Sultan's palaces should be school-houses and libraries and art galleries and asylums for the needy, where the veil should be lifted from the face of women and from the hearts of all. I seemed to see the whole of these Turkish dominions growing into this likeness to the city of God. CHAPTER VI ENTRANCE INTO WORK The field has been surveyed, the consecration has been made, the call received, the preparation secured, the mis- sion designated. Next comes the outfit. It were well if every large mission should follow the example of the Con- gregational mission in North China, and publish explicit suggestions as to what a family should bring. In fact there is room and need for a compact mission manual con- taining the boiled-down experience of missionaries in both spiritual and material things.* The missionary sails from the Atlantic or the Pacific coast, and the ocean voyage may be to him a most fruitful season. Things, however, are greatly changed from the times when several months were spent on the way in sail- ing-vessels ; months which brought to Judson and others such changes of belief as afEected their whole life. Yet even to-day one may make his steamer an Arabia, and he may there win friends both for missions and for Christ. Some will make an attack upon the language, but let them not imitate an industrious companion of mine on the Pa-, cific who learned 300 Chinese characters upside-down. If the journey is overland through Europe, the Opportunity * Such a work for one country is to be found in the Indian Mission- ary Manual, compiled by John Murdoch, London. 140 Modern Missions in the East to study English and Scotch and G-erinan churches should not be neglected ; if across America, a sight of western home-mission work will inspire the missionary. The first landing may be at some central port like Con- stantinople, Beirut, Bombay, Yokohama, Hong-Eong, or Shanghai. Happy are those who then experience the joy of welcome, rest, and counsel in the home of some veteran in the work, like the Hepburns, the Gulicks, the Chalmerses, the Humes, the Dennises, or any of the Constantinople families. Friends come out to the steamer, and eager hands of welcome are extended. You are the one who is wanted. You are seized and spirited through the hubbub of arrival, while the unexpected, ungreeted "globe-trotter" may be left to struggle helplessly with the native boatmen, baggage-men, couriers, hotel-runners, and custom-house offi- cers. What delightful days of hospitality and Christian in- tercourse before you enter your own quarters or set out for your station in the interior ! That first sight of mission work will always be remembered, and those first friends on the ground. You are brought right to the heart of the enterprise, and in the most loving way. Meantime you purchase and pack your furniture, your provisions, your whole outfit for the interior. Then you set out for your own field. Here a new hap- piness awaits you. It is the welcome of those whose life you are to share, both the missionaries and the natives. I have experienced the welcome given to a visitor, and have participated in that given to secretaries and to missionaries. I see it all before me now — the swarthy, beaming, intelli- gent faces of the native Christians, who greet you at the steamer landing or the railroad station, or who come steam- ing out miles along the road to meet you. They must all Entrance into Work 141 shake hands, a new art, perhaps, and the more diligently- cultivated. They must know your honorable age, your honorable name and family, and if you are in China you must be ready before long with your Chinese name. Many of them marvel that one who looks so intelligent should know nothing of their language. In most places where you go at first, mission buildings are already pro- vided, and you may soon be settled down at work to remedy that ignorance. But somewhere along here will come to most an ex- perience that is not down on the programme. It may come earlier or later — it is pretty sure to come. One who described it as he entered Asia Minor calls it the Battle of Issus. It is a battle, by whatever name. Forewarned is forearmed. Your choice of the mission work has been made with all seriousness, but probably in the glow of consecration. The need, the opportunity, the command, the example have all pressed upon your heart. The missionary life has seemed to you the noble, heroic, consecrated life. With readiness to make every sacrifice you have devoted your- self to it. That supreme ideal has for years risen up be- fore you and drawn you on. But now that you are on the field the reality seems very different from what you had expected. It is at once easier and harder. Many discomforts and difficulties you had anticipated are perhaps not encountered at all. The houses are far more comfortable than you had supposed, too com- fortable, perhaps, you think ; the surroundings are more pleasant, the community more civilized. But the disillu- sionizing process has begun ; the work, after the first glance at it, seems dull and commonplace. Business has settled 143 Modern Missions in the East down into a regular routine, with little of the spontaneity you looked for. The great fields you behold. There is some seed-sowing ; but you see little fruit, and much that you do see you do not wholly like. You detect grave de- fects in the work, and the worst is that the missionaries seem to acquiesce in the evil. Then you discover that not only are the native converts as a rule greatly lacking in Christian attainments, stained and scarred with the marks and wounds and sores of hereditary and acquired heathen- ism, but the missionaries themselves, whose names you have revered for years, are human, and many serious faults mar their life and their work. You have looked for whitened fields ; you see the tares choking out the grain. Yon have looked for springing life ; you see deadening routine. You have looked for spirituality ; you seem to find a secularized work, with unaspiring workers, common- place aims, and even petty jealousies. Thus you become thoroughly dissatisfied with much that is about you. This painful view of the great subject may come any time within the first two or three years. But however or whenever it comes, the main thing is to go through the struggle, not to draw back. If you go through it, this dis- satisfaction with others will extend to yourself. Perhaps it began with this. You now see the real ditficulty of the work. It looked easier to convert the world once than it now looks to convert this keen, shrewd heathen teacher with whom you spend an hour daily, or these heathen chil- dren who come to the schools, or these haughty Mandarins or Brahmins whom you meet every day, and feel that they amiably despise you. You question whether you have the right spirit, after all ; whether you can ever reap any fruit from such soil as this; whether you are worthy to be in- Entrance into Work 143 trusted with such a charge. The whole burden of heathen- ism seems to press upon you and crush you ; even your friends seem far from you. You wander alone ii* a spirit- ual wilderness, where your soul hungers for food and finds none. Just then the tempter slips his most subtle insin- uations into your ear: harsh criticism of others, false doubts of yourself, questionings even of your faith and your God. Living for months close to the heart of missionaries on the field, I have beheld those who had just come out of this fight, and were looking on new heavens and a new earth, "for they had seen God working all around them through the errors and the faults of men. And having thus found God they were at peace. The struggle with the language begins at once; I should rather say languages. I seem now to catch the sound of all the tongues I heard in the two years of travel, and it makes earth seem like a wild Babel. Yet all are one to the ear of the Father. All have a tragic note of sin and a secret strain of need. And every day all grow more musi- cal with' the sound of salvation. For God has given to his church the gift of tongues, and with the tongues the Holy Spirit to make this Babel a Pentecost, this tower of dis- cord, confusion, and separation a temple of union, peace, and love. It is a hard task for most to learn an Asiatic language. Even if but one is undertaken, it- has various forms. There are the written and the spoken language, often very differ- ent. Of the spoken, there are the common and the cultured forms. If one learns the latter, the people on the street npay not understand him ; if the former,, he will be laughed at when he speaks in the pulpit. Often one language is 144 Modern Missions in the Hast not enough, especially in India and Turkey, while in China one must learn different dialects of the. same language. Archdeacon Moule, in Shanghai, receives inquirers in a room stored with maps, pictures, books, and all kinds of baits to draw thoughtful Chinese to the gospel hook. He is constantly attended by a native assistant, who speaks, and needs to speak, nine different Chinese dialects. The Chinese is so interwoven with Japanese that any one who would master the latter must know something of the former. In parts of Central and Northern India, Hindostani is al- most as important as the Marathi, Bengali, or Punjabi, to say nothing of the benefit of reading the Sanskrit for the sake of Hindus, or Arabic and Persian for Mohammedans and Parsees. Dr. Goodell's first winter in the East was spent in the study of the Turkish, Armenian, and Arabic languages. What he -writes at this time from Beirut would apply to very many parts of Turkey : " We almost daily read the Scriptures in ancient Greek, modern Greek, ancient Ar- menian, modern Armenian, Turkish- Armenian, Arabic, Ital- ian, and English, and frequently hear them read in Syriac, Hebrew, and French. Seldom do we sit down to our meals without hearing conversation at the table in Armenian, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Italian, and English, and prayer daily ascends from this house — I hope to Heaven — in all these languages excepting the Italian." The languages used for communicating instruction in Kobert College and the Girls' Home at Scutari are Turk- ish, Armenian, Greek, Bulgarian, and English ; and to show that this is not peculiar to the coast, at Anatolia Col- lege, at Marsovan, all of these save Bulgarian are used, while in that same region, including English, French, Entrance into Work 145 and German, fourteen different languages may be heard every day, each used as the vernacular of some class of people. It is not necessary for every one to be a linguist or trans- lator. But it should be a uniform rule, with rare exceptions, to learn the vernacular of the section where one is to labor. And the work needs to be done thoroughly. I have seen veteran missionaries whose usefulness had been impaired all their life because they neglected the language in the first few years. One should lay broad foundations, and refuse to be diverted even by pressing calls from this study of the language. Nor will it be enough to have a teacher and many hours of study. To this should be added con- stant intercourse with the people. There should be a sol- emn purpose to take possession of the language in the name of the Lord, not making slipshod, slovenly business of it, but mastering it as a bright, keen instrument ready for the service of the gospel. One can have great sympathy with that good blunt Tamil deacon who, at a union meeting, is said to have prayed for the missionaries in this wise : " O Lord, thou knowest that these dear missionaries understand Greek and Latin and Hebrew from their infancy up, but thou seest what work they make with the Tamil. We be- seech thee, O Lord, to have mercy upon them." It is said that a missionary had once been preaching with great ear- nestness in Tamil (as he thought) to a large audience for about half an hour, when an old woman in the congrega- tion rose and begged that he would tell them in their lan- guage what he had been so eloquently describing in his own. A friend of mine in Tokyo was suddenly called on to dismiss a native congregation. The amazement of the audience may be imagined when in the name of the Trini- 10 146 Modern Missions in the East ty they heard him pronounce over them the formula of ' baptism instead of benediction. Such mistakes are certain to occur. " I never learned to speak a thing rightly," said Dr. Mullens, at the Liverpool Conference, " without having first said it wrong." Impatience to get at work should be firmly repressed, except as work can be done in the very process of acquir- ing the language. A large number of societies provide for language examinations during the first two or three years, before passing which the candidate shall not be considered a full missionary. The China Inland, which requires least at home, is most rigid on the field. Men are to be stu- dents or probationers for the first two years in the field. " At the end of that period," say the regulation^, " should they have approved themselves, they will be recognized as junior missionaries for the next three years. But if they have proved unstable, unable to cope with the difficulties of the language, to bear the climate, to harmonize with their brethren, to adapt themselves to the Chinese, or have oth- erwise shown themselves unsuitable, the directors and council will make the best arrangements in their power to facilitate their retiring." All this toil and delay are very different from that joy- ful evangelism which the young missionary has pictured to himself. " It is dull work," writes one, " to pass the day saying Ting, Tang, in a hundred different tones." The further one goes in Japanese or Chinese, the harder seems the task. " To thoroughly master the Chinese would re- quire," it is said, " a head of oak, lungs of brass, nerves of steel, a constitution of iron, the patience of Job, and the lifetime of Methuselah." In view of this serious delay at the very entrance to the Entrance into Work 147 work some have been disposed to pray for the gift of tongues, that they might begin at once. But it requires little observation to discover that this is a providential de- tention, in itself almost the salvation of missions. There are mistakes enough made as it is. If novices were able to begin at once, knowing nothing more about the people than they do when they land, there would be terrible con- fusion. But the study of the language compels the study of the people ; the study of the people brings adaptation to them, and all this results in that practical wisdom which is one of the secrets of success. " The soul must be ac- climatized as well as the body and the tongue." As time goes on in the study of the language, the mis- sionary begins to realize that he has entered into many new relations which have no real equivalent at home, but which define and guide his work abroad. 1. There is his relation to the home board and the churches. At home a pastor is, in his work, practically independent of any authority outside his parish. For his character and general orthodoxy he is responsible to his brethren ; other- wise he is free, leading and consulting his church, to do his work as to him seems best. But for the missionary the source of both supply and authority is at home. He is sent out by the society or the church, as the case may be, and is kept there by them, subject to their control. Their policy may be right or wrong. They may wisely allow to each mission large liberty in shaping its own course, acting mainly as an inspirer of new measures and a final court of appeal ; or they may, mistakenly, try to direct everything from home. " It has pleased God," says one, " that even mission boards shall be able to learn by experience." But, as a rule, the mission board has had its experience ; the 148 Modern Missions in the JSast young missionary has not. The latter may hesitate, delay, protest, against what he believes a mistake ; he may suc- ceed in bringing about a change if he can show sufficient reason ; but if not, he has the choice to yield or resign. In such respects the relation of the home missionary to his society differs radically from that of the foreign mis- sionary to his board. Though, perhaps, nominated by the society, the home missionary is usually called by his own churcb, and paid, as a rule, only in part by the society, and has but a transient and loose relation to it. He is more the pastor of his church than he is the agent of his society, while the constant aim on every side is to cut all ties of de- pendence on the society, and form complete and permanent relations between his people and himself as their settled pastor, wholly devoted to and supported by them. The native churches, however, pay the foreign missionary nothing. It is not intended that he should be in any way dependent on them. His relation to the home board is, in its very theory, permanent ; his dependence on it complete. It is the peculiarity of this relation which forms a rea- son, too little considered, for special claims which he has on the home board in the way of support and provisions for the future. But I mention it here mainly to enforce the fact that the foreign missionary always is, what the missionary at home never is, the agent of his society. This fact should determine his allegiance before he enters on its work. Home methods may concern him little, but he should know and heartily indorse its general foreign pol- icy before he accepts his appointment. Then he should yield good, loyal allegiance to its principles and methods. He will find any wise board eager for all the light on mis- sion problems it can receive, and he will cheerfully comply Entrance into "Work 149 ■with their suggestions and co-operate with their plans. They, on the other hand, will hold him the nearer to their heart and sympathy because he is so dependent on them. All this is well expressed in words quoted from the London Missionary Society's instructions : " Be honest and can- did to us respecting your work ; help us to understand it by faithfully reporting its dark as well as its bright feat- ures. Do not exaggerate the good nor conceal the bad, that while we rejoice in your successes we may sympathize truly with you in your trials." 2. His relations to his missionary brethren. These, too, are apt to be little thought of in the first consecration to the work. They are oflScial and personal. The working force on the ground is organized into the mission. Accord- ing to the degree of liberty allowed by the board, the mis- sion determines more or less of its own operations. The new-comer may find that his brethren want him for a very different place from that which he supposed he should oc- cupy. He will discover that his own plans for work are to be laid before the mission ; that his estimates for the ex- penses of his station must receive the approval of the mis- sion before they can be presented to the home board. He will learn that rival, sometimes conflicting, claims of differ- ent stations are to be carefully adjusted in the interest of all by the mission at its annual meeting. His estimates will often be curtailed, or even cut off. Many a fond plan may be nipped in the bud, either because it is deemed un- wise, or because there is not money enough to go round and the less important must wait. There will be many les- sons to be learned in this respect, much discipline to be en- dured. But harmony and co-operation are even more es- sential abroad than at home. 150 Modern Missions in the East Missionaries have mutual relations -with each other, aris- ing from the peculiarities of mission work, which do not exist between incumbents at home. The leading idea at home is, or at least often seems to be, that each parish minister should work up his own sphere of labor according to his judgment, and that there should be no interference in the work of brother incumbents. The leading idea in the mission field is that all the brethren within a district of reasonable size should regard themselves as partners in the work, carrying the division of labor no further than con- venience may require, and without violating the principle of combined action, which should be prominently written over the gateway of every mission. There is too much work on hand to allow men much time to quarrel about theology. But there arise in every mission vital issues which cause great differences of opin- ion. Coniiicting methods sometimes bring serious dissen- sions and almost rend a mission asunder. One party ad- vocates continual enlargement with liberal use of foreign money ; the other party wishes to avoid the use of subsi- dies from home and leave development largely to the na- tive church. One party thinks educational work far the most important ; another considers it a diversion of funds and advocates extensive evangelization. Some would do great things at the centres in the cities ; others find coun- try work both cheaper and more fruitful. The work is so closely connected that harmony must be reached. Blessed, then, are the peacemakers and the peace-keepers ! Still more closely is the missionary bound up in personal relations with his brethren. Alone in a foreign land and in the midst of heathenism — the common foe on which they are making a united attack — men are much more thrown Entrance into Work 151 upon one another than they can be at home. But the pe- culiar character of their work, the habits of dominance that are engendered by intercourse with an inferior race, the protracted isolation from his countrymen which is often a missionary's lot, and the personal eccentricities which are thereby developed — all these things mate fraternal inter- course often exceedingly difficult. In a central station perhaps four or five families are thrown together within the same compound, but a few steps apart, wholly depend- ent on one another for society, counsel, assistance. It is a severe test of fellowship. In a community so closely knit together, how much mischief one man of overbearing, quarrelsome, or suspicious disposition may do ! How much harm one woman of petulant temper or selfish or gossiping habits may occasion ! I suppose every mission has its hid- den scars, where the work has been hurt by the incompati- bility of some of its members. The treasure is in earthen vessels. The great wonder is that with such feeble instru- ments as we find ourselves to be so much can be accom- plished. But it is just by these tests that some of the grandest men have been developed. As a dear friend in the field said to me, " If missions never accomplished any- thing more than the discipline they give the missionaries, they could be regarded as abundantly fruitful " ; and I have never seen anything more suggesting the society of heaven than certain mission communities. The common purpose, the common life, and the common faith had woven their lives together into a richer fabric than any of the precious oriental silks. There is also a relation to the adjoining, sometimes over- lapping, missions. As a rule, too little, I think, is known of th-e operations of other societies. There are often serious 153 Modern Missions in the Mist questions of comity, in matters of extension and discipline, which require careful judgment for their decision. Some societies are more fraternal, others more exclusive and in- trusive. The main difficulty occurs in large cities. But there mission prayer-meetings and conferences bring men of the various societies together on a platform of mutual acquaintance and common worship which greatly facilitates the settlement of such questions. 3. There is a third relation to which little thought is usual- ly given at home. It is that to other European residents or visitors. There are few places where some of this class are not to be met. Merchants, diplomats, and missionaries are usually found together. In some places, like Seoul, the capital of Corea, and Peking, China, the diplomats and mis- sionaries, being almost the only foreign residents, are quite intimately thrown together. The ports of Japan and China abound in foreign merchants, and there are many foreigners in the employ of those governments. India is full of Eng- lish officials, civil and military, while Turkey is the border country where the occidental wave sweeps in upon the Ori- ent. Besides this there are some 50,000 English soldiers in India, and European sailors swarm into every port all round the world. There are English and American officers on Chinese and Japanese steamers ; there are visiting men- of-war from the American and European fleets. There are tourists of one kind and another continually looking in on the most accessible ports. Now to all these the missionary must and should have some relation, especially to the resident part of them. These are people of our own race and faith, usually of our own tongue. They are set out in a foreign land, under circum- stances of peculiar spiritual destitution and of peculiar Entrance into Work 153 temptation. They certainly have great claims on the mis- sionary. They are nominal Christians. As such they must prove a blessing or a curse to mission work. Far more nu- merous and widely known than missionaries, they are nat- urally taken as representatives of Christianity. Only too often they are misrepresentatives. Unconsciously they be- come the great stumbling - blocks. Nominal European Christians in a heathen land are too frequently like a ship sunk in the Suez Canal, blocking the way. Often con- sciously they show themselves /o«« of the work. Sometimes the missionary is in their way. He is a silent rebuke to their life, perhaps an obstacle to the success of some of their schemes. I know of slanderous stories against mis- sions which find only too easy an explanation in the ex- posure made of swindling schemes of foreign merchants by missionaries, drawn in altogether unwillingly to give their candid judgment — maybe as to the proper price of pig-iron — for the protection of native officials and merchants. But in this same class are men who have become great friends and helpers in the work. " If all Englishmen lived such lives as Donald McLeod," said a Hindu, " India would soon be a Christian country." The missions in the Punjab were started by, and have been largely sustained through, such men as Sir Herbert Edwards, Sir Robert Montgomery, and the two Lawrences. An old Indian civilian, last of all Commissioner at Amritsar, resigned his post not very long ago to become honorary — i.e., unsalaried — missionary of the Church Missionary Society. The Marathi mission is in re- ceipt not only of money but of personal help from certain English officials. Every central station of the Church Mis- sionary Society in India has its large corresponding com- mittee, composed of friends of the society residing in the 154 Modern Missions in the East vicinity. These men — English officials, merchants, diplo- mats—are a great support to the whole work. None can do so much for or against missions. Soldiers and sailors must be gathered under the wing of the gospel. I do not undertake to say how this work can best be done. If the church at home and the missions abroad will only recognize and assume the responsibility for their exiled and wandering countrymen they will be guided to the wisest course. I look back with special pleasure on the Sailors' Homes in Yokohama and Han-Kow, in Bombay and Smyrna and Conistantinople, and I am glad to testify to the good work I found done among the soldiers and sailors in India by the Salvation Army. 4. There is another still more neglected class. I mean the Eurasians, those people of mixed European and Asiatic parentage, a large, peculiar, and dangerous population, tow- ards whom we owe compensation for the vices of our countrymen. There are in India 300,000 English-speaking nominal Christians, either European or Eurasian. In Cal- cutta alone are more than 10,000 Europeans and Eurasians; in southern India 30,000 Eurasians (census 1871), fifty per cent, of whom were Protestants. In many respects the two constitute one class. It is a very sad fact that mission work is hardest and most barren in just those fields where it encounters most Europeans. That fact enables one to comprehend the remark of an intelligent Hindu made to a visitor in India : " It is not more Christianity that we want in this land, but more Christians." " When you return home by the Isthmus of Suez," said an excellent French priest whom I met in Kobe, "you will find more religion lying along the banks of the Suez Canal than you ever saw Entrance into Work 155 in one place in your life." " How can that be ?" was my amazed response. " Why, all the Europeans who come out here take off their religion as they pass through and leave it on the banks, where it lies till they go back and put it on again." But a change is going on. I have heard of one English government station where there was for a long time nothing to distinguish the Sabbath from the week- day but the flag flying from the citadel. England is aroused on this subject, and is sending chaplains and special mis- sionaries to minister to these classes of people. I found Dr. Chester holding an English service for such residents every Sunday evening at Dindigul. " It is only recreation," he said. Bishop William Taylor, as we have seen, has shown by his special missions in India that Europeans and Eurasians may be gathered into self-supporting and evan- gelizing churches. The Eurasians in India have held im- portant government positions, though they are now being crowded out by educated Hindus. But they must have some important and atoning part to take in the evangeliza- tion of India. They are inured to the climate, acquainted with the vernaculars, familiar with Hinduism, bound to an hereditary Christianity, and more or less instructed in it. Though lacking independence and firmness of character, they might often be employed as assistants. Many women are thus used for Zenana work. A Eurasian ministry should be raised up for Eurasian churches ; each mission must de- termine its own attitude to these classes, which may be rendered hostile or auxiliary to the great work. 5. Most prominent of all, of course, are the relations into which the new-comer is brought with those whom he has come to seek — the native populations, corrupt Christians, Mohammedans, pagans, as the case may be. The direct 156 Modern Missions in the East labor among these people will occupy other chapters. I speak now of the personal and social relations to them. Under this head may be included one's relations to — (a) Heathen customs and religions. (6) Heathen rulers and officials. (c) Heathen neighbors. [d) Native Christians and churches. (a) A question which will press heavily on one looking to the work of foreign missions, and which greatly occupies the Christian public at large, is, " What attitude shall the mis- sionary assume towards heathen customs and religions?" It is not possible to give any full discussion to the question in this place, but there are a few considerations which may be offered as preparing the way for a decision. (1) It should be remembered that this is not at all a new question, but as old as Christianity itself. In contrast with the exclusive attitude of Judaism, which acknowledged no relations with other religions, Christianity, by its claim to be the "universal religion," enters into relations with them all. The question how far any and all of them are prepar- atory and prophetic, how far obstructive and antagonistic, and the question how far Christianity is complementary and comprehensive of them all as partial, or contradictory and exclusive of them all as false, assumes at once the greatest importance. Both exegesis and church history, therefore, must be made to pay tribute to the missionary. The attitude of the early fathers and apologists and mis- sionaries will be found most instructive, especially such contrasts as are afforded by Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen. The instructions of Pope Gregory the Great to the missionaries in England, and the history of Entrance into Work 157 Roman Catholic contests in China respecting ancestor wor- ship, should all be studied. It may appear that no one at- titude represents the whole truth, and that it will only be when Christianity shall have recapitulated or gathered up into itself all things that it can tell what part each religion has played in the work. (2) The history of the propaganda of other great religions should also be studied. In Hinduism and Buddhism we have the example of comprehensive, in Mohammedanism of ex- elusive, mission work. Hinduism and Buddhism have swal- lowed everything about them except one another and Islam, and in these cases the repulsion has been reciprocal. These are most instructive lessons in the results of each policy. (3) The actual practice of heathen religions should be studied as well as their sacred books. Usually the heathen are worse than their books, though sometimes they are bet- ter. At any rate, it is with living Hinduism and Buddh- ism, with living India and China and Turkey of to-day that we have to do, rather than with any earlier, perhaps purer, forms. Read Mohini's translation of the Bhagavad Oita — the best of all Indian books ; but read, also, Wilkins's Mod- ern Hinduism — a plain statement of existing practices. With every disposition to recognize whatever of truth and good may be found in the great oriental religions, I have been more and more led to the conviction that it will rather harm than help our cause to minimize the difEerences between Christianity and any other religion. If we make the differences slight, and say to men, " You have but to come a little further, get a little more, and you will be Chris- tians," one of two things will surely follow. Either — and this will be at present most frequently the case in India and China — the one appealed to will respond, " If the difference 158 Modern Missions in the East is slight, since the change to me will be so great in leaving my ancestral faith and encountering certain persecution, I will take the chances and stay where I am." Or — and this would more frequently happen in Japan — he will say, "I come," and bring all his heathenism with him, presuming that it will be quite consistent with Christianity. The Japanese are sensitive to-day about being called heathens, which is a most hopeful sign. But it will not mate them any less heathen to call them Christians until they become so through allegiance to Jesus Christ. In AsSa, as in Eu- rope and America, Christianity is strong, and is to remain so, through the imperiousness of its claims, and through the absolute assent and exclusive loyalty which it demands. Be the effect of other religions what it may, whether Juda- ism or Mohammedanism or Hinduism, whether preparatory or obstructive or both at once, Christianity treats every one of them as a usurper on the throne and a misleader of the human heart from its true allegiance. (4) The great power of its claim lies in the fact that while allied with reason and humanity, it is yet super-reasonable and superhuman. Elements of truth there are in paganism, but they are there organized into the service of falsehood. There are luminous waves of light in every one of these religions, yet they are polarized and darkened by other un- dulations. There is but one centre, and only when men stand at the focus and burning - point of light does the flame kindle. The work of Christianity is conquest, not compromise, and the missionary of the cross may exercise a wise in- tolerance towards all else which claims man's homage. I cannot do better than to quote from the one among all others perhaps best qualified to speak on this subject, one Entrance into Work 159 who, besides giving nearly a half-century of study to east- ern languages and religions, has of late repeatedly visited India, to see and study it with his own eyes. Words are the more important because, when compared with utter- ances of the same author before he had visited India, while he knew only the books, they show a marked advance in positiveness of tone. They are, in fact, accompanied by a recantation of former different opinions. They are the words of Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford. He had just held up the two statements that " A sinless Man was made Sin " and that " He a dead and buried Man was made Life " as unmatched in any other book of any other religion. " These non-Christian Bibles," he says, " are all developments in the wrong direction. They all begin with some flashes of light, and end in utter dark- ness. Pile them, if you will, on the left hand of your study table, but place your own Holy Bible on the right side — all by itself — and with a wide gap between. ... It requires some courage to appear intolerant in these days of flabby compromise and milk-and-water concession. But I contend that the two unparalleled declarations quoted by me from our Holy Bible make a gulf between it and the so-called sa- cred books of the East which severs the one from the other utterly, hopelessly, and forever ; not a mere rift which may be easily closed up ; not a mere rift across which the Chris- tian and non-Christian may shake hands and interchange sim- ilar ideas in regard to essential truths, but a veritable gulf which cannot be bridged over by any science of religious thought ; yes, a bridgeless chasm which no theory of evo- lution can ever span. Go forth, then, ye missionaries, in your Master's name ; go forth into all the world, and after studying all its false religions and philosophies, go forth and 180 Modern Missions in the Mist fearlessly proclaim to suffering humanity the plain, the un- changeable, the eternal facts of the gospel — nay, I might almost say the stubborn, the unyielding, the inexorable facts of the gospel. Dare to be downright with all the uncom- promising courage of your own Bible, while with it your watchwords are love, joy, peace, reconciliation. Be fair, be charitable, be Christian, but let there be no mistake ; let it be made absolutely clear that Christianity cannot, must not, be watered down to suit the palate of either Hindu, Parsee, Confucianist, Buddhist, or Mohammedan, and that whoever wishes to pass from th'e false religion to the true can never hope to do so by the rickety planks of compromise, or by help of faltering hands held out by ha)f-hearted Christians. He must leap the gulf in faith, and the living Christ will spread his everlasting arms beneath and land him safely on the Eternal Rock." [h) The missionary's relation to native rulers and offi- cials varies greatly in different countries. It is closest in Japan. In Corea and China it originates mainly in medi- cal work. But however it may come the missionary will learn to cherish no great expectations from simply oflBcial favor and to beware of certain great perils. As a rule, official life is still so corrupt that a man can hardly occupy a high position and be a Christian. There has been and will be great danger of mere official, political Christianity in Japan. And one must watch himself lest personal honors and emoluments divert him from his highest labor as an ambassador of Christ. (c) With heathen neighbors one can often be on terms of good-fellowship. Such intercourse should be cultivat- ed wherever the Christian character can be fully main- tained, for the argument of a Christian life may reach Entrance into Work 161 many a heart where the ears are closed to gospel invita- tions. (d) One other point remains to be considered : the relation of the missionary to the native Christians and churches. Eight here the beginner encounters, perhaps, his greatest surprise. He has been greeted with efiusive friendliness by the natives ; he sees many evidences of their affection for, as well as dependence on, the missionaries. He does not understand how it could be otherwise, considering the benevolent errand on which they have come. Yet as he gets a little deeper into the work he is very sure to encounter feelings, and that on both sides, quite the opposite of all this. On the part of the missionaries he will find that the gulf of nationality or race is seldom bridged over, and that there lingers more or less disposition to treat the natives as members of an alien and inferior race. In some countries the people are in a conquered or dependent position ; in nearly all the Christians are dependent, and he will feel that this has operated unfavorably on many missionaries, begetting in them lordly, perhaps overbearing habits, as constant association with an inferior race is almost sure to do. He will find that missionaries, especially in China, re- gard their own native agents with frequent suspicion. In India distrust and dislike of the natives, combined with the domineering attitude of a conqueror, are very often the English official attitude. There is almost no social in- tercourse between the official and native circles, and the missionary home is too often infected with the same spirit. On the part of the native Christians he will almost uni- versally detect a cringing disposition, especially among the native paid helpers. The dependent spirit of the native leads to the mahap (mother - father) theory : " You, the 11 163 Modern Missions in the East mission, are the father and mother of us all. Everything shall be as master pleases." They recognize their inferior position, yet are too much used to it, and too really de- pendent in character as well as position, to resent it ; but when they enter into the pay of the mission they become ambitious. The mission seems to them a great wealthy in- stitution. They think the master assigns their salaries, and has only to write home to get all the money he pleases. When the desired increase of salary is refused, they grow dissatisfied and rebellious. In the cities of Madras and Calcutta I found the native Christians in a chronic state of discontent and complaint. The new-comer will be grieved at heart by what he sees. The matter has sometimes been discussed in general conferences, and once, certainly, in the Punjab Conference it came to a very bitter outbreak of the native pastors. In part it will appear that this unfort- unate state of things is necessarily connected with the em- ployment of numerous native agents ; in part it is inevitable, from the relations which must exist between a European missionary and an Asiatic. I defer the conclusions to be drawn from those facts to a later chapter, and now only ask how this bitterness can be avoided and the best relations possible maintained. In Japan the natural independence of the people has defined these relations from the start. The missionaries are equals and helpers, not lords. The troubles prevail most in China, India, and Turkey. With complaints in Turkey we have become unfortunately familiar. How can this be avoided? For answer the student has but to go to the same spot where the evils are found — the mission field. There are men who, so far as possible, have abolished all sense of dif- ference, and have made the natives in every country feel Entrance into Work 163 that Christianity unites more strongly than race or class can separate. One household in which I was a guest shines out as offering a home to any and every native Christian. I seldom sat at that table without finding some native brother at my side. In the breaking of bread there was union of hearts ; yet in that very mission fastidiousness and separateness were once the custom. My friend came, could not yield to such narrowness, and adopted the other course, despite remonstrance. Finally his example has told on others, and now prevails in the mission. I sat at a veteran missionary's table at Madras with his family and six or eight native helpers, although this was the first time such a thing had occurred in that family. In Japan I had delightful intercourse with native pastors at almost every missionary's table. But so far as I can now remember, in my two months in China I never sat down at a private table with a Chinaman save once, and that was in the Chinaman's own house — Ahok. In the instructions of the Church Missionary Society we find the following : " The mission- ary who desires to gain influence and win souls for Christ must thoroughly identify himself with the people among whom he labors." Now see how one of their missionaries carries out these instructions. A guest myself at his table, I learned to know his hospitality. Bishop Sargent, at the head of the mission of the Church Missionary Society in Tinnevelly, said : " It is not enough that we think we have love in our hearts ; we must show it. We have fifty-eight native cler- gymen in Tinnevelly, and I make it a rule to try and have every one of these men sit down at table and sup with me once every six months. On the first occasion, after dinner, I said, ' We must allow one hour for a few short speeches 164 Modern Missions in the East from those who have anything to say.' The first one that got up touched me to the heart. He said : * I see in the event of this evening a most powerful argument in favor of our holy religion and of what it has done for us. Here are about fifty men of various castes sitting down together in peace. Fifty years ago you might as well have expected to see fifty royal tigers sitting down in peace at the same meal as to see such a sight as this.' Besides this, every month, in any district I visit, I meet all the clergymen of that district at a common meal. Every time a native min- ister likes to see me he calls at Palamcottah, and I have a servant to care for him, and a room where he can stay, and meals are provided for him." The secret of the true relation to the native Christians is love. If this becomes a personal, paternal, or fraternal love — if the missionary makes them feel that he cares for them as individuals, he will not fail sooner or later to win them. All missionaries need what Christian Friedrich Schwartz eminently possessed — " a sanctified and vernacularized in- tellect." CHAPTER VII THE DEPARTMENTS OF MISSIONARY WORK IN THEIR VARIETY The variety of Work on the mission field is one of the surprises which await the visitor and the beginner. First in our expectation, though not always first either for the mission or any missionary, is evangelization. The seed must be sown far and wide ; next a few converts may Ke hoped for ; then come the congregation and the church. It is a happy thing for a young missionary if, after a year or two of hard study of the language, he is permitted, in company with some veteran, to enter on that great work. Evangelization is the proclamation of the gospel. Confu- cius says, "The philosopher need not go about to proclaim his doctrines ; if he has the truth the people will come to him." Jesus says, " Go out into all the world and preach the gospel." Evangelism may be either localized or itinerant. In the former case the proclamation is made within easy reach of the mission-house, and centres about a church. In the lat- ter case it is made while travelling for that purpose, whether slowly or rapidly. The important features connected with either of these forms are : 1, the.facilities for travelling; 2, the place for preaching; 3, the auxiliaries employed ; 4, the persons speaking ; 5, the classes addressed ; 6, the argument and persuasion employed. I would I could sketch the picture of the evangelists of 166 Modern Missions in the East the gospel as in various lands I have seen them setting forth upon their tonrs. There are railroads for them in Japan and India, where they, perhaps, ride third-class with the natives. The iron horse is pushing along in Turkey, and, like the fabled camel, has his nose thrust into the Chinese tent for the space of a few miles. All along the Chinese coast and 1200 miles up the Yang-tze Kiver steamships are plying back and forth in every direction. But steam can seldom bring them to their real itinerating country-field, so we see them taking other conveyances. In Japan it is the basha or stage, with its brutal driver — whose beating - stick one finally seizes and flings away — or the light, skimming, comical jinrikisha, or Pull-man-car, with its one or two wiry, tireless little runners, who slip them along thirty, forty, or even fifty miles a day, over excellent roads, to the place of work. This jinrikisha, the invention of a missionary for the comfort of his wife, after having spread all through Japan, is on its victorious way around the world. It has swept along the coast of China, and intrenched itself at Singapore and Penang. I found a jinrikisha company, limited, just under way at Colombo, and have heard since of the arrival of this oriental bicycle in northern India. Wherever in the tropics coolie labor is common and roads are fair, it has a sure future. When next I visit Egypt I expect to find my comical donkey-boys grasping the shafts of the jinrikisha. In China men jolt over execrable roads in springless mule- carts; they bestride donkeys, ponies, or mules, or they are carried in a chair by two, three, or four shouting coolies. One interesting figure that rises before us is Dr. Nevius, in his far-famed wheelbarrow. "It is unique," said the doctor to Secretary Seward, his guest. "Yes, and will The Departments in their Variety 167 remain so, for nobody will ever want another," was the reply. But the prophecy was false, for there come many requests for duplicates. On one side of the great central wheel sits the doctor, on the other side his native helper. Before them is a good-sized box for their books and traps, and over them a large sun-umbrella. A coolie behind and another in front hold, balance, and direct the barrow, while a pony ridden by a third coolie draws it up and down through holes and ruts and ditches and river - beds, over stones and logs and obstacles of all sorts, far into the interior of Shantung province. But the water-ways are best in China, and on any of the great rivers and frequent canals we may see the missionaries, often with their families and native servants and helpers, fitting up the covered house -boat as a home, where for weeks or even months they sleep, cook, eat, write, study, and receive calls, their crew meanwhile poling, rowing, dragging, or sailing them from one village to another, as they sow their seed beside all waters. Sometimes they have the luxury of a sail-boat, and I have even seen steam-yachts. But of these the Chinese Government is suspicious, and they may be forbidden. Across the hot plains of India we may see slowly creeping the missionary bandy, drawn by humped, straight -horned, tail-twisted bullocks, a covered two-wheeled house-cart, where one may sleep by night on mattresses, as well as ride by day and night. Or it is the northern ekka or tonga, horse- drawn, something like the Irish jaunting-car. In Turkey one is happy if he can mount a sure - footed, hardy Syrian horse ; otherwise — unless, indeed, like Dr. Farnsworth, he have a light, strong American wagon brought straight from home — he must ride in the Turkish araba or four-wheeler, 168 Modern Missions in the East drawn by horses, perhaps driven by a Mohammedan, who during the fast of Ramazan will neither eat, drink, nor smoke from day's dawn to sunset, but will spend all the more time by the way in feeding his horses. Across the plains of Bul- garia the missionary will ride in the paiton, or two-horse phaeton, introduced by the Russians. In none of these countries is there any real difficulty in travelling where one will. In Turkey the teskireh, or local passport, is annoyingly indispensable, and a special firman gives one prior claim to post-horses and other privileges. In Japan, too, passports are required, and a little ethical doubt is involved in the use of them. Only three objects of travel outside the open ports are recognized : health, science, and trade. Travelling for the last purpose is forbidden ; for the others it is sanctioned. Shall such passports be used for mission purposes ? A late change, however, expressly recog- nizes missionaries. There are charming little inns in Japan, with poor food, bad smells, and a graceful hospitality that covers all blem- ishes. There are worse inns and worse smells, with better food and colder manners, in China. In both countries Buddh- ist temples are sometimes used, as they commonly have guest-apartments connected with the temple. English-man- aged travellers' bungalows, with European food and Hindu rest-houses, are found all over India, while flea-bitten and filthy khans, with fairly good, food, abound in Turkey. But the best thing of all, especially in India, is the large tent, which may be pitched in a grove near some central village. As the evangelist may be out for months, he has his whole family with him, his books, his furniture, every provision for health and work. " Day by day he sallies forth with the message of peace on his lips; he takes his station on the The Departments in their Variety 169 steps of some idol temple, or, it may be, under some spread- ing tree ; the people flock around and listen to the word of life. . . . Partly from curiosity, partly from desire of in- formation, numbers of persons visit the missionary in his tent, and not infrequently, sitting in the tent door, he preaches to a little knot of visitors with more comfort, and, perhaps, more effect, than when he preached in their villages. His band of helpers, too, scatters itself about in the adjoin- ing villages, and brings to him every day the report of their work." The variety of platform from which he speaks is as great as the variety of his travel and housing. From the fejjce of the mission-compound in Bombay, supported by a school- boy choir, he may address a motley crowd upon the side- walk, while the passing street-car shows faces all agape with curiosity at the sight. In the cool of the morning in the same city, without need of license from magistrate — for preaching of the gospel is freer in Bombay than in Boston — he may stand in an open square and proclaim the good news to a few score of Hindu coolies, with a sprinkling of Moham- medans, who interrupt from time to time, until he stops their mouth with a song. You may see him address more docile Moslems in the vestibule of the native church, or high- caste Hindus in a little upper room of their own dwelling. In Calcutta he has an English open-air service every Sunday in Beadon Square for educated Hindus — a service in which you may join. You meet an old Hindu, who tells you he used to be a helper to the Unitarian, Mr. Dall, but is equally ready to aid the Scotch Presbyterian, Mr. McDonald, or the American evangelist. Dr. Pentecost. In Madras you stand with Mr. Phillips, of the London Missionary Society, under a shed just off the street, and hear the Moslems addressed 170 Modern Missions in the East again. You go to the bazaars or market-places and find, as at Allahabad, a Presbyterian open chapel, in which and from which the thronging masses are daily reached. In Peking, Han-Kow, and Canton are scores of these street chapels,wheve for four or five hours a day the gospel is preached or talked or sung by the missionary or his helper. Merchants and la- borers drop in for rest or from curiosity, hear the news, and go out again to their business. At Han-Kow, a great trade centre, representatives of nine provinces may be seen at such audiences. The great Indian melas, or religions festivals, where thousands and hundreds of thousands are often gath- ered tpgether, give a remarkable opportunity for preaching. A crowd is drawn to any spot, leaflets are distributed, songs sung, the difference between Christian and Hindu worship explained. In Japan there are great theatre - meetings, or some Buddhist temple is opened ; or, in Turkey, perhaps some old Christian church. The tea-house becomes a chapel in Japan ; the rest-house in India, the khan in Turkey. Everywhere private rooms of inquiring heathen are turned to account, while many audiences are gathered in the bustee or mohulla, the common enclosure of a group of families. One mission reports twenty-two such places in Delhi, India. You may imagine your substitute abroad talking from his gospel-boat to a group of people on the shore ; or marching with his helpers through the main street of the village, until, in the public square, he has drawn a crowd together, with whom he then begins a conversation, addressing the head men first, perhaps, with questions and answers, until the talk becomes general. My friend, who has been but a few months in China, lunches with me at an open tea-house, on the way to the Great Wall. As we finish our meal he looks around for a moment at the group of inquisitive people who have The. Departments in their Variety 171 pressed themselves closely but not rudely about us. Then he mounts the stone seat, and, secure in my ignorance of the language, gives his first gospel talk to the Chinese. " You will be near the mark," writes one, " if you imagine the gos- pel-messenger, in a straw hat and pea-jacket, sitting on a broken wall — there is always a broken wall handy in a vil- lage — or on a door-step, or on a form at the front of an eat- ing-house, conversing freely with a score of Chinamen, all of whom, perhaps, bear some mark of their occupation, while a number of boys in very scant clothing thrust themselves to the front, and a few women linger at a distance, just be- yond the range of hearing." In fact, there is hardly a place, open or covered, where the proclamation is not made. House, tent, shed, shop, the- atre, and temple ; train, boat, car, chair, and saddle ; tea- house, inn, khan, and bungalow ; street, square, field, lane, and grove — all places are made to ring with the gospel-call by the helraeted, coated, trousered, booted, bearded, white- faced European, everywhere the symbol of advancing power and life. There are various auxiliaries. The Mason