ASIA **^HE ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ CHALLENGE TO h 4^ U i^ h U, CHRISTIAN MISSIONS*. R-E-WEI.SH-MA. (Darnell Inittctaitg Slibrara Stlfaca, ■New ^ark CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE GIFT OF CHARLES WILLIAM WASON CLASS OF 1876 1916 Cornell University Library BV 2063.W46 The chaiienae to Christian missions :tnis 3 1924 023 021 409 A Cornell University y 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/cu31924023021409 THE CHALLENGE TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS WORKS BY THE REV, R, E. WELSH, M.A- In Relief of Doubt. By Rev. R. E. WELSH, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. New Edition, with Introductory Note by the Right Rev. A. F. Winnington-Ingram, D.D., Bishop of London. Dr Ingram writes :—" This little book deals with that vague atmosphere of doubt which is so common, and dispels it by its clear and pointed arguments ; and it is written in so racy a style that none could put it down and call it dull." Scotsman, — ** A sensible and closely reasoned argument against scepticism." Methodist Times. — " Nothing has appeared for years that is so well calculated to meet the average difficulties of the average man." VIGOROUS SERMONS TO YOUNG MEN. God's Gentlemen. By Rev. R. E. WELSH, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. ^d. Methodist Times. — " A good, wholesome, suggestive book." British IVeekly. — "A frank and manly book ; brings a young man face to face with life. " CoULSON Kernahan. — "Free from 'professionalism,' manly in purpose and utterance, pure in its fearless outspokenness. A robust book for men, written by a man who has the courage born of conscience and conviction. Here, surely, is a book to which they will give heed." The People and the Priest. By Rev. R. E. WELSH, M.A. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. The Times — " This is a timely, and, on the whole, temperate plea. Mr Welsh puts the Protestant point of view briefly and sensibly." Samuel Smith, Esq., M.P. — *' I have read with great interest your admir- able book. It puts the whole question with wonderful brevity and lucidity. It is the question of the day for English people." Manchester Courier. — "Anyone desiring in a short compass a clear statement of the points at issue cannot do better than purchase a copy of this work. They will find it very readable, and so plainly written as to be easily understood." H. R. ALLENSON, 2 IVY LANE, LONDON, E.G. THE CHALLENGE TO oS* ^ CHRISTL\N MISSIONS jfi. MISSIONARY QUESTIONS AND THE MODERN MIND BY R. E. WELSH, M.A. LONDON H. R. ALLENSON 2 IVY LANE PATERNOS- TER ROW E.G. ^ ^ 1902 TO "THE GROUP" THIS BY-PRODUCT OF MENTAL COMRADESHIP ; AND TO THE WISTFUL MEMORY OF A BROKEN PURPOSE. CONTENTS I Page Introductory : Where the Question presses i The Storm-centre — The Missionary in the Critics' Den — Points of View : Diplomatic, Mercantile, Agnostic, Prophetic — The New Horizon — The Challenge and the Defence— The Fire that Christ has lit. II Political Complications : Is the Missionary the Troubler of the Peace ? . . -23 Lord Curzon, Lord Salisbury — Relentless Propagandists — Missionary Strategy — Souls and the Commonweal — Why the Missionary is Suspected— Foreign Agents Provocateurs — Cat's-paw to France — Law- suits — R. C. Dictatorship — Secular Forces and Missions interlinked. Ill Many Races Many Religions: "East is East and West is West " -41 P. and O. Theology — Zone System of Race- religions — Heathen Britain Christianised — Christ of the East in the West — Miss Kingsley, Kipling — Christ Catholic — A Pantheon the Death of Christianity — The Inevitable Break-up — The Salt of Secular Civilization. viii Contents IV Page Good in Every System : The Cosmic Light— and Dark ...... 55 Bibles of the East—" The Light of Asia" — Confucius, Buddha — Fragments of the Truth — Cryptic Prophecies — "Some Better Thing " — Christ's Treatment of Hebrew Beliefs — " Things-as-They-Are " — Bovine Content — Elect Souls — Cake of Custom — Mrs Besant and Pagan Morals — The New Creation in Christ. V Liberal Thought and Heathen Destinies -71 Dr Morrison — Where are the Convert's Heathen Ancestors ? — Carey, Xavier — Relenting Hearts— The Child leads the Way — Via Media — Spirits in Prison — Principles of Judgment — Salvation B.C. — Symbols of the Unseen — Attitude is Destiny — Unknown Issues. VI Can the Missionary Motive Survive: Does Liberal Thought cut the nerve of Missions? ..... 87 Apostolic Motives — The Human Cry — The True "Damnum" and True Salva- tion — The Child Again — The Urgency of Christ. VII Chequered Results: "Counting the Game" 95 Civilians' Verdicts — The Cost of a Con- vert — Laying Foundations — Sunk Capi- tal, Future Returns — Indian Census : 30 p. c. — Korea, China — Have Literati Believed ? — Stock of the Coming Race — Christian Public Men in Japan — " Christ Rules India " — J. Russell Lowell. Contents ix VIII Page Chequered Results :" The Mission-made Man " in Miss Kingsley — Spoiling the Natives — Wastrels and Saints — White Men's Pre- judice — Child-races' Slow Ascent — St Jerome on Barbaric Britons — Happier Raw ? — Progress by Unsettlement — The March of Civilisation — Government Education — Liquor and Lust — R. L. S. — The Best the Enemy of the Good? — Fire-tested Converts — The Power of Christ. IX The Men and their Methods -143 Comfortable Missionaries — Wise Men and Zealots — The Best for Abroad — Mr Julian Ralph v. Capt. Younghusband and R.L.S. — Questions of Policy — Dying Races — Industrial Training. X The Aim: The Coming Kingdom . . -159 " Outgathering " v. "National Chris- tianisation " — Livingstone — The Second Advent — Prepare for Permanency. XI The Return- Value of Missions . .165 Daring Faith — The Miracle proceeding —Moffat's Vision— Dr DuS— The Social Boon — New Verification of Christianity — The Triumph over Paganism — The Dynamic Love of Christ. X Contents Appendix A Page The Powers and the Priests in the East . .175 Recent Literature — France, Germany, and Roman Catholics — Foreign Priests as Magistrates — Lawsuits — Other Sources of Offence. Appendix B Checks to Progress in India .184 Mr Meredith Townsend's Asia and Europe — Europeanising the Asiatic — Caste — Convinced but Unconverted — A Prince — Mr Kidd's "Unborn Generations." I INTRODUCTORY Where the Question Presses I INTRODUCTORY : Where the Question Presses With three different types of men, the minister of state, the modern man of liberal mind, and the civilian doing business or travelling among native races, the work carried on by the foreign missionary is usually a sore point and a storm centre. The utterances of British statesmen and international events have been thrusting this problem before public attention. When a Prime Minister, an Indian Viceroy, and press correspondents abroad deal gravely with the complications created by mission work as " one of the practical public questions of the day," it is clearly a living issue of the time which cannot be ignored. Is not the missionary the troubler of the international peace, the source of racial embroilments ? This issue has been expressly raised by Lord Curzon of Kedle- ston as publicist, and by Dr Morrison, famous as traveller and press representative in China. At the same time, the missionary cause is being called to the bar of the modern mind 14 The Challenge to Missions and required to justify itself in the light of liberal thought. The discovery of good things in the bibles of the East, world-travel, com- merce, and the spread of broader Christian sympathies and scientific knowledge have ex- panded our mental horizon and dispelled the old romantic conception of the heathen. A kindlier view is taken of ancient Asiatic re- ligions and of heathen destinies. The citizen of the world, too — represented by the late Miss Mary Kingsley, traveller in West Africa, — has pertinent questions to put, concerning the actual effects of the work, which demand courageous consideration. On the veranda or the stoep after dinner, and on board ship, what is said as to the " mission-made " native by the average layman who knows life among dusky races? The subject is often on the lips of civilians, military men, ships' officers, traders, travellers, and ladies who have had experience of native servants. Many of them are frankly critical of the missionary and his converts. Some, while disappointed with the results of the work, are silent because reluctant to say any- thing against well-intentioned Christian effort. Only a few of them are warm supporters of the missionary cause. Home-keeping churchmen, while quietly faithful to the enterprise, are secretly staggered Introductory 1 5 to find that so many come back from business abroad with greater or less hostility to missions. Hence, even in the Church there are numbers, and outside there are many, who " don't believe in Foreign Missions." Missionary work is challenged on the ground that— 1. Politically it is objectionable. 2. Religiously it is superfluous. 3. Morally and socially it is unsatisfactory in its outcome. From various classes of men, intelligent or shallow, come questions such as these — Are not missionaries the source of racial embroilments and social disturbance i Why should we interfere with the religious beliefs of other races ? Is Christianity the thing that will best suit them .? Can it possibly be indispensable for their salvation ? Do not enlightened views of heathen destinies take away the reason for missionary work.' Does it not unsettle and spoil the native and produce but poor results ? Missionaries know that they and their work form a frequent dish in the den of the critic. They do not mind that. The Church or the Society which sends them out may mind as i6 The Challenge to Missions little. All of them are too busily engaged upon their immediate duties to give heed to what aliens say — aliens whom they perhaps set down summarily as either worldlings or enemies, as in numbers of cases indeed they are. And certainly the final answer to both friendly and hostile critics must lie in the unfaltering fulfilment of Christ's great com- mission, in the unconquerable vitality of the cause. The workers must not halt in order first to satisfy objectors ; the work itself will answer for them better than all arguments ; there are no apologists so effectively defending the faith as those who are living it and spread- ing it. They feel that they are " doing a great work " and " cannot come down." Yet something is due from them to honourable questioners. Answer must be made when sinister facts and grave problems are set before us. It is noticeable that missionaries in confer- ence are occupied throughout with their opera- tions and their experiences, and take no share in the controversy which their work raises in the outside world and in some corners of the Church. And those at home who have nothing to disturb their satisfaction with the work are, quite naturally, interested for the most part in quotable cases of converts and in missionary sketches. Is there not even some prejudice in the Introductory 17 Church against anyone who holds parley with the critic, or who engages in discussions which appear to doubt the wisdom of current methods or examine the theology and social results of missions ? The case in these respects is closed by a foregone conclusion. The Church, however, must not close her ears to what is said, on the one hand by sea- going people and men in the consular and mercantile service, who look at the practical outcome of the work, and on the other by men who go deep into the problems of pagan life and religion. Much of the criticism current is doubtless the irresponsible gossip of clubs and camps and open ports. Much of it comes from objectors who dislike all natives and carry over this dislike to the work done among the natives. Much of it is second-hand, the echo of common prejudice caught up by easy people of the world. Underlying some of it there is secret revolt against work that condemns the treat- ment meted out by too many white men to the native, and that " spoils " him for their use. Yet, as truly, it is quite unjust to ascribe all criticism to these sources. There are weak points and stiff problems in mission work and its ethical outcome in the native character. Occasionally a strong and courageous mission- ary speaks out on the subject — witness what B 1 8 The Challenge to Missions Dr Stewart, of Lovedale, has written concern- ing the misuse and disappointing results of the higher education of Kaffirs.^ There are also questions of missionary policy and methods which are at any rate proper subjects for frank debate. And the traditional view of pagan religions and heathen destinies exposes the enterprise to easy attack and calls for correc- tion and reconstruction. Some deduction from criticism must be made when it comes from people who have no great store of religious convictions, or who, like certain men to be named in the following pages, are infected with the sceptical spirit. Mr Michie's Missionaries in China, the feeder of so much other censure, has to be read in the light of the author's disappointments and alienation from the Christian community, and of his ties with Li Hung Chang. Certain press- men, whose journalistic animadversions have been consumed by multitudes of home readers, write out of an agnostic mind. We have to allow for the personal equation in the sceptic's standpoint, and must keep our judgment well in hand. Yet, even if the critic speak from the agnostic, the detached, the irreligious, or the worldly point of view, we are not to put. his report or his argument quite out of court, as though he ' 7X« Experiment of Native Education. Introductory 19 had no~ right to give his evidence. Others have listened to him, and we must do so also, if only for their sake. In any case, some of the statements advanced against the work proceed on a basis of clear facts, and must not be waved aside or ignored. These facts must be balanced by other facts, and shown not to affect the cause as a whole when a larger outlook is taken. Many are critical because they are ignorant of the work, or do not see the wider bearings of it and the price to be necessarily paid meanwhile by the Christian Church as the condition of ultimate success. They must be supplied with informa- tion and carried to the higher point of view from which the far look is taken. It is not Miss Kingsley, Lord Curzon, and Dr Morrison alone — I take them only as spokes- men of a considerable public — who force this question on us. It arises in the mind of many within the Church because the first romantic period of missions is over, and they find that the campaign is to be more protracted and costly than they expected. The glamour of the early venture is somewhat spent. The conquest of the pagan world is not to be achieved by a flying column. The Church has to brace herself for operations which will prove taxing and will last through many generations. Backward tides will check the onward flow of 20 The Challenge to Missions the age-long movement. This discovery not only gives the critic reason for his question- ing, but it also makes many a Christian draw- breath and pause wearily to discuss the whole campaign. Early illusions about the enterprise, then, have been dispelled. A time of hesitancy may follow ere the Church takes it up again in steady persistence and enlightened faith. Even if it were only a case of meeting criticisms from without, we should set ourselves to realise the true nature of the work, to take a wider measure of the missionary cause as it is inter- laced with all human interests, and to set pagan religions, as related to God and the Christian faith, in better perspective, and see them at the modern angle. Like all truth, the Christian cause has a habit of going on its way independently of men's praise or blame. It needs no defence. And we do not come forward with any apology for the missionary enterprise. The primary basis of the work and the religious motives which inspire it remain unalterable. No fluctuation of thought and no criticism can affect our Lord's universal love and world-wide mission. The devout Christian heart knows a secret and possesses a divine intuition which make this cause a necessity. A fire has been lit which nothing can extinguish. Introductory 2 1 Yet something has to be done to interpret the missionary cause. The task as here out- lined is of much too great a magnitude to be fully overtaken in a little volume of ten brief chapters. It will be enough for the writer's purpose if, without going into confusing detail, he can ventilate the subject, and contribute even a little towards the provisional solution of current missionary problems. II POLITICAL COMPLICATIONS Is the Missionary the Troubler of the Peace? II POLITICAL COMPLICATIONS : Is the Missionary the Troubler of the Peace ? Lord Curzon has said of the missionaries : " It is impossible to ignore the facts that their mission is a source of political unrest and frequently of international trouble, and that it is subversive of the national institutions of the country in which they reside." ^ He is confessedly echoing the faithful- challenge of that candid friend, Mr Michie, of Tientsin, who holds the aggressive missionaries mainly responsible for the civil entanglements and the outbreak of race-hatred which time after time have brought such confusion and loss in the Far East.^ According to him they have driven on their religious propagandism without considering the difficulties they were creating for the Chinese authorities and the foreign legations. In their meddlesome interference with the functions of the magistrate, in their intolerant defiance of ^ Problems of the Far East. ' Missionaries in China, by Alexander Michie. 25 26 The Challenge to Missions native traditions and prejudices, in their "war to the knife" against native faiths, they have disregarded the religious customs and institu- tions of the people, have denationalised the converts, and will continue to constitute in the future the chief obstacle to friendly re- lations between the foreign communities and the people of the country among whom they reside. They have pushed far into the interior, claiming the shelter of treaties which were wrung from the Government under threat of naval guns. When native animosities have broken out and imperilled their lives, either they have appealed for protection to their own Governments, or their position has compelled these Governments to come to their rescue. In the French Chamber a similar view has been expounded. Lord Salisbury tells us plainly that " at the Foreign Office the missionaries are not popular." There are plenty of men ready to extend the charge and say, "the missionary is at the bottom of all the trouble, and will continue to be so as long as he is not restrained." The summary, loud-sounding answer might be given that Christ's work must go on at all costs ; that His kingdom is the greatest of all Great Powers,- with an imperial mission that is paramount ; that He is a factor in all human issues, and lays His hand on all institutions Political Complications 27 and customs for their reform ; that, if His agents are charged with creating social and civic confusion, it is only the old complaint, " these men turn the world upside down." In Mr Michie's own words, "men of every shade of opinion recognise the dynamic force of a religion which splits up nations as frost does the solid rock." He admits that " the mission- aries cannot cease their operations." " That governments should fight," says Lord Curzon, " or that international relations should be imperilled over his (the missionary's) wrecked house or insulted person would strike him as but a feather's weight in the scale compared with the final issues at stake — viz., the spiritual regeneration of a vast country and a mighty population plunged in heathenism and sin." And certainly in the last issue such " spiritual regeneration" does outweigh every other con- sideration. We are bound, however, to take the larger statesmanlike view of the work as it affects the public life and ultimate progress of the communities in which it is prosecuted. Unlike certain missionaries who have overlooked the civic side of the Christian kingdom, we must not consider merely how to "gather out" a number of " souls " from a doomed world, but, like our Master, must link spiritual work with the commonweal. We must take the far look, 28 The Challenge to Missions and consider what will ultimately work out the joint social and moral well-being of each com- munity. Many of the most influential missionaries act upon this wider view of the Divine Kingdom. But undoubtedly there are some of them who have an eye for little beyond individual " souls." These are the men and women likely to make ruthless assaults on all traditions and customs knit into the fabric of the social life, and to disregard the offence and the complications they create. At home there are the same two classes of religious teachers — (i) those who make an outspoken frontal attack on every public and social evil, careless of prudential considerations and of the impediments which their vehemence may raise, and (2) those who spread Christian principles and rely on enlightenment of conscience for the gradual undermining of social and public evils. Publi- cists like Lord Curzon have good reason for calling upon missionaries of the more relent- less class to calculate whether their present intemperate methods may not arouse an undue amount of prejudice, and raise obstacles which in the long-run will impede the progress of the cause. But the misguided earnestness of the few who, with all their good intentions, are unwise and aggressively intolerant is no argu- ment against the quiet, steady, many-sided Political Complications 29 work carried on by the large better-class of missionaries. Among so many in the field, so variously prepared, there must always be some who are tactless, blindly'making mistakes. Are diplomatists themselves universally patterns of wisdom, and have none of them followed a policy which has excited native prejudice and created disturbance? In both cases the im- policy of the misguided few hampers, but must not silence or cripple, the work of the wise. And even the wise (by nature) have to learn by experience. From the very essence of the Christian enterprise, however, some measure of social disturbance and even political unrest is in- evitable. And the Church does unflinchingly hold that, after a policy of prudence has been followed, these troubles must be faced and borne, that nothing — to accept Lord Curzon's charge — is of such moment to the races of mankind as their moral regeneration, which, as in our own history, may involve ferment and disruption in the process. Coarse pamphleteers among the Chinese literati issue gross caricatures of Christianity and charge the missionaries with the foulest crimes and vices. Such things cannot be averted under any Christian policy. Orphan- ages and medical missions are accused of kidnapping children and turning weakhng 30 The Challenge to Missions infants to hideous medical uses. Only by continuing their beneficent work among multi- plying numbers can these humane agencies wear down blind prejudice. There are many such misunderstandings and animosities which are unavoidable until time and experience have dispelled them. But against some native prejudices, it may well be, sufficient precautions have not been taken in the past. Lord Curzon is admittedly correct when he says : " The institution of sisterhoods planted alongside of male establishments, the spectacle of unmarried persons of both sexes residing and working together both in public and private, and of girls making long journeys into the interior without responsible escort, are sources of misunderstanding at which the pure-minded may scoff, but which in many cases have more to do with anti-missionary feeling in China than any amount of national hostility or doctrinal antagonism." Even the Western handshake and the friendly kiss are grounds of suspicion. Mr Julian Ralph demands that on this account all women missionaries should be withdrawn from China. This cannot be; yet every reasonable effort should be made, even at the sacrifice of freedom of movement and social intercourse, to defer to native concep- Political Complications 31 tions of etiquette and modesty. But most missionaries have already learnt prudence in these respects, and some misunderstanding will be unavoidable until the Asiatic is brought to a more just and enlightened appreciation of the Christian domestic relationships. Much offence has been given, at first un- wittingly, by the choice of sites for mission buildings where the fing shut or good luck of a native house or grave has been spoilt. In Tokio, Pekin, Canton, and elsewhere cathedrals and churches have been erected on high situations where they have been like an "evil eye," offending the earth-supersti- tions of the citizens ; and some of these have had to be removed for this reason. Even rail- way lines have had to make a ditour in order to escape any seeming dishonour to the graves of the dead. Most missionaries have learnt, a few may still have to learn, to treat the sacred things and even the superstitions of the people with proper forbearance and without signs of brusque contempt. On the other hand, what can the missionary do to disarm the popular suspicion that he bewitches his neighbours and is the cause of their ailments and of droughts and floods? Much of the hostility which the censors ascribe to Christian missions cannot be averted by the most prudent care, and 32 The Challenge to Missions must be faced and weathered in patient goodness. But is the Christian religion the real ground of native hostility ? In some measure, especi- ally at first when the missionary's motives are not understood, it is. That is to be so far expected, for reasons already indicated. But that accounts for only a fraction of the antagonism aroused, as the greatest journal in the land, at a recent crisis, argued vigor- ously and proved. For evidence take the fact that, when native officials executed murderous edicts and refused safe conduct to foreigners taking refuge under their care, missionaries who took flight were in many instances harboured with the utmost friendliness by the humbler classes of the people, and even sheltered and helped on their perilous way by minor officials and priests who in the act were at their risk disregarding superior orders. In short, there has been no popular fury visible in such crises. The missionary in certain countries is hated, not usually to any appreciable extent on account of his religion, nor on his own personal account — he is found to be harmless and kind — but because he is suspected of being an advance agent of a conquering foreign power. The people cannot easily understand his purely benevolent aims — especially where he has not Political Complications 33 been tried by time and experience. Why has he come ? For business ? If not, then for what purpose? The answer, simple enough to us, only breeds mystery in the native mind. As Lord Curzon tells, the treaties by which the missionary travels and resides in the country were wrung from a reluctant government by shrewd scheming or armed force — witness the dishonourable interpolation in the Chinese text of the French Convention made in x86o. " Christianity," says Mr Michie, " is therefore inseparably associated with the humiliation of the empire (Chinese). The missionaries bear the brunt" of the animosity. Their presence is a perpetual reminder of the hated "foreign devils," and seems to threaten foreign domina- tion. Like all strangers, et dona ferentes, they are suspected of hiding treachery behind their gifts, of creating a foreign disloyal party, and of being spies and forerunners of the foreign army.^ ^ Since these pages were composed a Secretary of Legation and Acting Minister at Pekin, Mr Cliester Holcombe, has written : " It is far too commonly believed that missionaries are at once the main cause and the special object of the anti- foreign feeling so universal and so intense throughout China. The facts sustain no such belief. Missionaries as such have had little to do with this bitter hostility to foreigners. They have suffered heavily from it, but it is not of their creation. Christianity is objected to, not so much because it is Christi- anity, as because it is a Western religion. And those who preach it are objectionable to the Chinese, not as preachers but as foreigners." {The Real Chinese Question.) 34 The Challenge to Missions No wonder they are looked on as political agents. The molested or murdered missionary has been used as the convenient excuse for military interference or for demanding "con- cessions." Under this false cloak Germany concealed her policy of "grab" when she seized Kiao-chau : would that she were solitary in such practices ! France has openly employed the Roman Catholic mission as a mere cat's-paw. Roman Catholics have for two centuries sought political power in China. With the sinister help of France, they have lately compelled the Chinese Government to grant them an independent status and authority as high officials of the empire. Is it known to the British public that the Roman Catholic clergy have secured the right to sit on equal terms beside the Chinese judge, to impose their own verdict on the magistrate in every case in which one of their converts, or even one of their friends, is involved ? When certain Roman priests travel, they travel as high officials, armed, and accompanied with a retinue of armed supporters. They have equipped many of their converts with arms. It is to the Romanist missionary that the shady character goes, who for his offences wants protection against the strong arm of the law. When the priest takes the offender Political Complications 35 under his wing, the case must be disposed of as he dictates. He can enter the courts and defy native authority.^ " Bishops are entitled to demand interviews and conduct affairs with viceroys and governors, and priests with prefects and magistrates, just as if they were possessed of ministerial or consular rank."^ They have established an imperium in imperio. Lord Curzon declares that this is the chief fear of the Chinese Government. That in- dividual missionaries of the Roman Church deserve honour for their personal devotion and work is not in question ; it is the policy, not the individual, that is here accused. ^ See Appendix A., p. 175, for ample confirmation and still graver statements given, since these pages were set up, in H. C. Thomson's China and the Powers, A. R. Colquhoun's Over- land to China, A. H. Smith's China in Convulsion. See also Dr J. Ross's Situation in China, and The Chinese Crisis by Gilbert M'Intosh. ^ Referring to the resentment against povperful bodies creating an imperium in imperio, the Times, in a remarkable pronounce- ment on the above lines, declares that "a distinction must be established between the missionaries of the different Protestant denominations and those of the Roman Catholic Church." The latter have displayed the same fortitude and devotion as the former. " But the claims set up by France, and more recently by Germany, to exercise a peculiar protectorate over Roman Catholic Missionaries, and indirectly even over native Roman Catholics, and the methods by which that protectorate has in cases been exercised, must give some colour to the charge that, under the cloak of religious propaganda, political objects have not infrequently been pursued and achieved." (November IS, 1901.) 36 The Challenge to Missions Such facts as the above are known to the natives all over the land. And it was under compulsion from France that these arrogant claims were successfully pressed. Is it any wonder that the people, who, at first, class all missionaries together, see in their persons political emissaries, and distrust and hate them accordingly? Is it not natural that some of the most shifty citizens should seek admission to the convenient Roman fold ? The hostility of the Chinese to the foreign missionary, which is raised in the secular press as the hue-and-cry against the whole work, is ten times more due to this overbearing domina- tion of native authority and insult to native justice by the Roman Catholics, backed by foreign forces, than to any other cause. Let the blame be laid on the right shoulders. Let it be known that Protestant missions have never sought, and have refused to accept, privi- leges so subversive of Chinese rule. " In China," says Lord Curzon, " it not infrequently happens that a shady character will suddenly find salva- tion for the sake of the protection which it may be expected to confer upon him." But Protestant missionaries have refused to take up the legal cases of their converts ; they will not have their churches turned into a cave of Adullam. They will not champion even the Christians whom they believe to have justice Political Complications 37 on their side, lest they encourage others out- side to attach themselves to the mission for the sake of the protection expected. Their policy, however, does not avert the animosity which the different tactics of the Roman Church have brought down upon the whole missionary propaganda. It takes the Chinaman some time to discriminate between the innocent Protestant and the Roman offender against native authority. It is charged against the missionaries that they clamour for a gunboat and the avenging sword when they are molested and in peril of their lives. But comparatively seldom has such an outcry been heard from Protestant mission- aries. Quite as often it is the foreign Power, whose subject the missionary is, which feels compelled to go to his relief or to teach the Chinese a lesson over his sufferings. It would usually be as near the truth to say that the foreign Power takes advantage of the mission- aries' case for its own political ends. Now that a new progressive and more hospitable spirit is being displayed by the best Chinese leaders, it is significant that they are turning to enlightened missionaries for their help, and making use of the works of Western learning on history, science, and social economics, which the missionaries have trans- lated into Chinese or have specially written. 38 The Challenge to Missions Already there are signs that enlightened native leaders will call to their aid in certain social and educational matters the best class of foreign missionaries, as Japan availed itself of the invaluable services of Dr Verbeck when it awoke from its mediaeval sleep and opened a new epoch in its history. Political complications do indeed arise at times as the indirect outcome of missionary work in certain countries. But the converse is not less true, and true, not in China alone, but in every foreign nation. The Christian cause is constantly complicated by the action which governments, politicians, armies, and civilians take in their relations with yellow and dusky races. This has been seen repeatedly in the making of treaties, the waging of wars, and the general policy of governments — in, for example, the French conquest of Madagascar. To be more specific, take for illustration the Government system of education in India (of which more will fall to be said later), the Cantonment system, the opium trade forced on China (which now cultivates the poppy but remembers the deadly wrong), the Glen Grey Act in Cape Colony and other laws which make it hard for the Kaffir to hold land and which drive him into locations, the settlement of the endless Native Political Complications 39 Question in other countries besides South Africa, and the Liquor Laws adopted by the authorities. In these and many other matters of political policy the interests of the Christian cause are involved for better or for worse. Every public action works round for the benefit or the detriment of the moral and social life of the people, and in many ways affects the prospects of Christian work. It is easy to see how, for example, any unjust treatment meted out by Powers nominally Christian to dark-skinned races of the world conveys to their minds a hostile and false im- pression as to the true character of Christianity. Not with politics only, however, is the missionary cause interlaced. What experience have native races had of foreign residents generally, of prospectors, soldiers, and mercantile men ? How have traders as a class behaved to them? Some industries have been started among them which have become instrumental in their develop- ment. On the other hand what has been the effect of the cheap and fiery liquor supplied to them on easy terms? The Europeans and Americans sent out to train native forces, to act as magistrates, or as professors in colleges, and to build railways — what influences and habits, wholesome or deleterious, have they carried with them ? Has the advent of public 40 The Challenge to Missions men and men of business been accompanied by the dissemination of sceptical literature, creating the impression among the enlightened that the modern white man does not really believe in Christianity? Later in these pages it will be shown how these questions have to be put in the same breath with the missionary question. Enough to indicate here that the Christian cause, abroad as at home, is interlaced with the entire political, civil, commercial, and pro- fessional life by which it is accompanied. The world needs, not only missionaries and Bibles, but sound rule, honourable diplomacy, in- dustries, and fair trading; and upon these hangs much of the success or failure of mission effort. Ill MANY RACES, MANY RELIGIONS "East is East and West is West" Ill MANY RACES, MANY RELIGIONS: " East is East and West is West " Kipling, when he put in everyone's mouth the dictum, " Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," condensed what many silently think or frankly say — that the gulf dividing different races cannot be bridged, that the East has its own religions which suit its peoples as our religion suits us, and that it is not for us to interfere with what they believe. Men of a philosophic turn call in ethnic science to certify that the various religions of mankind are racial products, and cannot be transplanted and universalised. Like their rice, clothing, and languages, the faith that has grown on Asiatic soil is the proper faith for Asiatics. You will hear it under the punkahs and on board ship — it is a sort of P. and O. theology : " These Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese have religions of their own that are adapted to their conditions and mind, as we have one that fits us. Why should we foist our ideas on them, disturb their beliefs, and undermine their 44 The Challenge to Missions customs and simplicity?" Jonah was possibly the first exponent of the principle ! This point of view commends itself to the modern travelled mind by its look of liberal, cosmopolitan wisdom. It places the religions of mankind on the zone-system, relates them to climate and latitude ; and it has all the more attraction for the world-wise because of being, in a double sense, latitudinarian. I, But, to take first the practical answer, solvitur amhulando : it is too late in the day to bind Christianity within racial or geographical limits. History has settled this controversy in advance. To begin with, Jesus was not of Aryan birth, with our white face ; His religion was not a product of Western soil, native to our land ; it was of Oriental, Semitic origin, as foreign to Europeans at the time of its emergence as it is to Bengal or Mongolia to-day. When St Paul's vessel crossed the .^gean Sea, it cleft asunder for ever the supposition that Christianity is unsuited to different races. In that short voyage it was transplanted as far as the East is from the West, as far as Hebrew thought was from the Greek and Roman mind ; and that was as far as Thibet, Japan, and New Guinea are from Great Britain. When the Gospel bridged that Middle Sea, it potentially bridged all racial distinctions all the world over. We ourselves are among the alien races whom Many Races, Many Religions 45 Christianity has conquered and suited. It was the chief means of hfting our pagan ancestors out of barbarism, and has transformed our personal, social, and national existence. There is something inept, cool, if not ridiculous, in Britons viewing Christianity as an Anglo-Saxon property and not suited to remote alien peoples, when we, a foreign race, owe everything to it ! Those who oppose foreign missions on this plea are hopelessly, gloriously in debt to missions in past times for all the blessings funded in their hearts, hopes, homes, liberties, and en- lightenment. What if early Christians had adopted this racial policy — the very policy of the Judaising Christians who disapproved preaching to the Gentiles — and had argued, "Greece, Rome, and Britain have their own religions which suit their conditions ; we have no right to carry on a propaganda among them and disturb their beliefs " ? Happy for us that they saw deeper and ignored race-distinctions ! Of all races in the world the Anglo-Saxon may well believe enthusiastically in what Christ can do for every human race. What he has done for us He can do for others — if we allow the same number of centuries in which to reap the slow harvest of moral regeneration. Let it be reiterated, written in large, illuminated letters : we ourselves are the fruit of Christian missions, the living disproof of the race-religion 46 The Challenge to Missions plea. That fact alone meets a hundred questions. And the past century's experience of mission- ary work among every race of mankind goes far to confirm our own experience. We have taken many hundreds of years to ascend from barbarism to our present state of enlighten- ment; but already, within one or two genera- tions, tens of thousands in all parts of the world have been visibly elevated in personal character, and in domestic and social life and economic conditions. Here the objector to missions has shifted his ground. It was first argued that it was vain to offer the Gospel to raw, barbaric races, that Christianity was too fine and exalted for them to be able to appreciate and profit by it. But after the transforming work effected in Tierra Del Fuego — which amazed Darwin and made him a subscriber to the South American Missionary Society — and in Fiji, the New Hebrides, Uganda, and elsewhere, the argument is reversed, and it is now said that Christianity is just fit for raising the savage races, but is not suitable or required where ancient and philo- sophic religions are rooted in the life and mind of the people. It is certainly the " publicans and sinners " of the world-races that have been the first to receive the gospel — the Bantus, and Ainus, and Many Races, Many Religions 47 Karens, and low castes in Asia. It is among the " wise " of the world-peoples that we find the stiiifest task. Yet among no people of the earth has Christianity failed to win victories of a decisive and convincing character — except perhaps the doubtful case of the Jews and the Mohammedans (is this because they are our "near relations," or because it is a case of "arrested development," or pharisaism repeated ?). Signally in Japan, but in India and China also, the racial barrier has been successfully overcome, not only in the conver- sion of tens of thousands, but also in the visible transformation of the domestic and social life of the little communities where Christ has shown His renewing power. There is indeed a sufficiently deep gulf between the races, which needs to be kept in view in adjusting the form of mission work and the expression of the message to the several races. The apostles to be sent out to the East must have aptitudes for acquiring difficult languages and wisely appreciating Buddhist and Confucian modes of thought, able to lay broad foundations for a slow process of Christianising great nations. Those who evan- gelise the child-races must follow simpler lines and may be men of more limited intellectual endowments. And possibly Christianity as recast in the different mould of the Eastern 48 The Challenge to Missions mind may turn out a somewhat different thing from ours in its type and creed-language — as witness the recent trend in the Christian Church of Japan. At the same time, as the English language, built for the concrete Western mind, has not resources enough to hold and express some of the subtle ideas of the Asiatic mind, so that full translation is sometimes impossible, it may be that only the mystical Asiatic mind will be able to interpret and fully realise the Oriental and mystical quantity in the Scriptures, which after all are of Oriental mould. The Eastern races, seeing it on the side that faces the East, may have their contribution to make to the deeper comprehension of our own faith — each a beam to bring for the great world-temple of Christ. But all the more may we confidently expect that they will be suited by a faith which arose on their own soil. {Cf. Appendix|[B., p. 184.) Yet, on a larger view, Christ is not the son of the Jew, neither the son of the Orient nor of the Occident, but the Son of Man, with an appeal to the human instincts which are uni- versal throughout the whole earth. Those who argue that the religion of the West is not adapted to the Eastern, and who quote Kipling's catch-word, should hear him out to the end of his verse ; they would find him swiftly reversing their argument. Many Races, Many Religions 49 "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till earth and sky stand presently at God's great Judg- ment Seat ; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth." The surface differences naturally strike us as enormous ; but all are of one blood — for proof, take the signal fact that children spring from the union of a man and a woman of the most diverse races. Miss Kingsley told the mission- aries that the difference between the Africans and themselves was a difference, not merely of degree, but of kind. But when black and white " stand face to face," when they get down to the deeps of their being, they show ultimate identity in their moral fibre, the same desire for love and good and life, the same sins — in Byron's language, " New times, new climes, new arts, new men ; but still The same old tears, old crimes, and oldest ill," — and the same craving to know the Unseen and be delivered from death and from the fear of its mysteries. With all differences of tongue, there is one language they all understand, the language of love, a bit of kindness. And it is the discovery of a great Heart of Love reigning in the Unseen, love that suffers in order to save, love that cleaves the gloom of the grave with D 50 The Challenge to Missions the promise of " another day " — it is this in Christianity which has its universal appeal for all men of all breeds, for all wistful, weary human hearts. If the advocates of the P. and O. Theology had deeper insight into the naked needs of all mortal men alike, and especially if they had a keener sense and appreciation of what Christ has been and is to ourselves as our one Hope and the secret of our best life, they would have full faith in the universal address of the Christian message. 2. Moreover, under the theory that Eastern religions are for the Asiatics and ours for ourselves only, we should be landed in a sort of Pantheon, and our faith in Christianity as an absolute verity, even for us, would gradually pale and die out. Buddha for Burmah, Con- fucius for China, Christ for the West — that is to create local divinities, and local divinities are pagan, involving either veiled polytheism or pagan pantheism. The Hebrews, who at first conceived Jehovah as their race-god over against other gods, escaped from polytheism only by at last learning to universalise their Jehovah as God of the whole earth. But they failed to universalise the scope of their religion. And when Christ revealed the universal Father loving "the world," it was left to St Paul to carry out the principle by proclaiming Christ to be for the whole of Gentile heathendom — Many Races, Many Religions 51 and it has taken the Christian Church nineteen centuries to rise to the height of this world- wide outlook. If Christianity were not for these outnumber- ing millions of the race in the East, and only for us, it would suffer shrinkage in its scope, and therefore in its truth and power ; it would shrink in the eyes of its own disciples, dwindling down to be one of the wistful dream-fictions of the human Aberglaube. Ceasing to be universal truth, with world-wide values, it would sink to the level of a provincial, parochial cult. Our faith in it could not then long survive. Buddha for the whole world we can understand ; but Buddha for the East and Christ for the West conducts to a loose and easy pantheism secretly infected with the agnostic spirit. A Pantheon, where each com- munity allows the others to have their several divinities, means ultimate death to the faith of each in his separate religion. " Heresies," said Lightfoot, " are at best ethnic ; truth is catholic." Hence Christianity is ruled by an imperialistic policy. Lord Curzon condemns " the selection of a single passage from the preaching of the Founder of the faith as the sanction of a movement against all other faiths." But, far from depending on the command, " Go ye into all the world, etc.," the missionary movement 52 The Challenge to Missions lies knit in the very structure of Christ's per- sonality, work,| and teaching. Not only is the greater part of the New Testament a collection of missionary literature — the "Acts of the Apostles " being a record of primitive mission operations, and the Epistles mostly mission- aries' letters to the little companies of converts gathered out of the pagan community — but the universal love of the universal Father — " God so loved the world" — the sacrificial suffering of Christ for mankind, the sublime ideas of the incarnation and redemption, with the vast vision of the whole Christian revela- tion, are out of all proportion to the limited, local scope allotted to it by this race-theory. Why all these supreme wonders and divine agonies of love, if the scale of their applica- tion be not world-wide? Our own belief in it would become thin and feeble, and melt away. The very build of it, the bare truth of it, requires its universality and calls for missions to the whole world so greatly loved. Talk of " Little Englanders " ! Are not they "Little Christians" who vote against carrying Christianity to other races .' Moreover, it is impossible to leave these peoples alone in their simple faith and un- scientific traditions. Our commerce, with its ships — like shuttles weaving the web of a common lot and life — with its explorers, pro- Many Races, Many Religions 53 specters, traders, and railways is penetrating to the recesses of every country. Our science, taught in their schools and books, is under- mining the foundations of their superstitions. They are sending their most intelligent youth to be educated further in our colleges and law-schools. Over 100,000 of the most re- ceptive minds in India bear the mental imprint of the foreigner's tuition, and they go out into the community with their old faith shaken at its base. The Indian Government, by pro- viding state education for India's youth, is as much responsible for this result as are the missionaries. The Government policy, indeed, is more perilous, for it supplies teach- ing in secular knowledge alone, and is thus breaking down the old altar without pro- viding anything to take its place. Western civilisation is marching irresistibly upon the people. Its new ideas, foreign habits, revolu- tionary knowledge, are invading their ancient preserves and even showing in their temples. We could not insulate them any longer, even if we tried. The old is bound to break up in spite of us. The new wine of the West will burst the old bottles of Eastern beliefs. And what is to enter in and save the moral life of such lands when Hindu and Buddhist mytho- logy and Chinese ancestor- worship are dis- credited in the eyes of the awakened millions ? 54 The Challenge to Missions If we do not give them pure Christianity before the complete break-up comes, how are they to escape agnosticism and soulless secularism ? The sceptical literature of the West is already to be seen in the foreign bookshops of the cities of the East. Already large numbers of the disenchanted are finding a refuge in the sterile negations of unbelief And, bad as a false or half-false religion may be, a godless, unspiritual secularism is incalculably worse. It is the plain finger of God pointing the way of the Christian Church. So vital to our common well-being is Christianity that we tremble to think what will befall us should that saving salt lose its savour in our life. And if that materialistic civilisation is not to carry degrading corruption among the dark- skinned races, it must be accompanied by the same saving preservative ; we must even be well ahead of it with the moral power of the Christian life. IV GOOD IN EVERY SYSTEM The Cosmic Light— and Dark IV GOOD IN EVERY SYSTEM : The Cosmic Light — and Dark Now to go a little deeper into the problem. The pioneers of a hundred years ago viewed all non-Christian religions as unmitigated error, either black superstitions or diabolic inventions and blinds. Since their day the " Sacred Books of the East" have been translated and the cream of their contents collected in popular summaries for the casual reader. The science of Comparative Religion has arisen. Sir Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia" has blazoned Buddha's heroic, compassionate endeavour to find a salve for the misery of men's lust for life. Mr Henry Fielding, in " The Soul of a People," has ex- quisitely interpreted the mystic Buddhist ideal as seen through Burmese eyes. We have found ethical rules of a high order — reminding us of single items in the Sermon on the Mount — in the Persian, Indian, and Chinese Scriptures, profound speculations about the mystery of human existence in Hindu religion, and laws of family gallantry towards parents in Con- fucian teaching. S7 58 The Challenge to Missions Many in consequence have been asking and still ask whether, after all, these Asiatic races have not religious and moral light serving their needs sufficiently well ; whether, then, even though our faith be ideally the higher, there is any urgent reason for thrusting it upon them and upsetting their satisfaction with beliefs they hold dear. It is not only from adverse critics outside the Christian Church but from enlightened worshippers within it that we hear this plea for leaving these people to the light they already have. Now, we should greet all such light with a cheer. Our only complaint is that there is so little of it. To deny or depreciate the good in other faiths in the supposed interest of Christianity is to show signs of defective con- fidence in its incomparable superiority. To attempt to make out their light to be darkness comes near committing the sin against the Holy Ghost. The more of it the better : it is so much more to the good in the common stock and store ; it is so much more working capital in the resources available for further develop- ment. All flying shafts of light sprang from the same source in the Eternal Sun — the " Logos," or " Word." Fragments of the truth, "in many parts and diverse fashions," are only waiting to be released from obscuring encrusta- tions and knit into the full body of " the Truth." Good in Every System 59 China contributes to the common store practical domestic and state laws, enforces the fifth commandment, " Honour thy father and thy mother," better than the rest of the world, and urges the homage due to the spirits of the dead who " live again in minds made better by their presence." ^ Hinduism contributes the immanence of the Eternal as the ocean of common being^ — and in a mode of this con- ception the Christian thinker to-day is finding a deeper basis for the incarnation of Christ. Buddha prescribes the conquest of desire as the secret of release for the distracted heart of man, and shows the " eternal process moving on " by which " from state to state the spirit walks " in aeons upward or downward. Toward such segments and arcs of the rounded orb of truth our attitude cannot but be one of sympathetic appreciation. They, we claim, are prophetic workings of the Spirit. They also offer so much more common ground between the missionary and the Asiatic mind. The human heart is the greatest of all the prophets — the mother of the prophets of the earth — speaks in many languages of symbol and phrase, and never dies. These gleams of light are cryptic prophecies of good to come, and for ' See the lofty, spiritual prayers to " Shang-ti," the Supreme Spirit, in uncorrupted Confucianism, quoted in Dr Campbell Gibson's Mission Problems, pp. 76, 77. 6o The Challenge to Missions their fulfilment Christianity is indispensable. " Whom ye worship in ignorance Him declare we unto you," Paul's message to the Athenians, is our message to all superstitious worshippers of dim symbols of the Mystery. The blind homage which is addressed to the material shrine and symbol God may interpret as merely misdirected through ignorance ; He may esteem and appraise it as really meant for Himself. None the less, however, the worshipper is not spiritually quickened and saved from his sin where such blind ignorance reigns. And, to meet the confused desires of his heart and morally redeem him, it is imperative he be told that the One after whom he has been groping through the mists is here in full glory. It is more than doubtful if we can ever articulate Christianity into the Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian systems, as it was related to the Jewish system. Yet the moral aims and yearnings underlying them Christ does fulfil. Their better contents, like the Jewish Law, may have served a temporary purpose ; they have kept alive in some measure the spiritual sense of the devout votary, although, again like the Jewish Law, they have become materialised and have encrusted the inner life with a cramp- ing shell of mechanical ritual. While not utter, unmitigated delusions, they are often so utterly imperfect and corrupted, and so distort Good in Every System 6i the truth, that wherein they have hints of good they must be fulfilled and consummated in Christ, and wherein they are currently false and debasing, as for the most part they are, they must be supplanted by Christ. " Some better thing " — that which justified Christ in superseding the Jewish religion — amply justifies His Church in superseding or crowning pagan faiths with Christianity. The missionary, it is true, is apt to be a little impatient with such academic appreciations and balanced comparisons of other religions with the Christian revelation. He may, as he ought to, seize their good points, the wise things said by their own teachers, as common ground on which to start his address ; but the common ground is usually only a jumping-off ground. He is face to face with so much dark debase- ment that it seems wasted breath to talk of good things in pagan faiths. And the early apostles did not depend upon such reasoning; St Paul was usually uncompromising. Great victories cannot be won for a new, aggressive religion by genial concessions, although the manner of the fight must not be rude and ungenerous. The native convert, too, seldom has much to say about the half-truths in paganism. We must allow for the polarity and revulsion of human nature to extremes in any change of belief like his ; yet we cannot 62 The Challenge to Missions but note that what impresses him is not the partial light but the utter darkness and falsity of the old religion. But it is not the missionary and the convert we are specially addressing. The Western mind makes a more detached valuation of world-religions, judging them chiefly from their scriptures and absolute contents, and knowing to discriminate between their pure primitive form and their corruptions, such as, we remember, have in past times overlain and debased our own Christian religion. For the sake of such, the problem requires new treatment. Why interfere with the sacred things of the Asiatic? The Hebrew religion, while only a mixed, imperfect symbolism of the truth, a stage on the way like other world-religions, surpassed them all in the amount of light and grace it contained. Yet our Lord did not spare it for the truth that was in it. " India and the Far East have religions of their own, with good elements in them : why not leave them alone ? " People who speak thus should make a further demand : " The Jews had a religion of their own, with good contents in it : why should Christ disturb their minds and upset their sacred customs ? " On that principle how could Christianity ever have entered the world at all on any field ? It must disturb something. Good in Every System 63 Was Copernicus not to disturb the traditional astronomy of Europe in case he should shock men's minds for two generations during the transition time? Then also it is wrong to interfere with the childish ideas of our little folk and give them the fuller truth required to develop their manhood. The interference is no less commendable when we take to the heathen, not only what fulfils their symbols and glimmers of good, but what is of momentous consequence for their characters, lives, social redemption, and destinies. Christ is indispens- able to them as the answer to their needs, as a revelation of the bedazing Mystery, and as a rest to their world-weary, self-sick hearts, bringing them a better salvation than they had ever conceived. We have first striven to deal fairly with the light and good in these religions which find appreciators among us in the West. " The God of Things-as-They-Are," however, requires that we look with open eyes at the bald realities of pagan belief and life. It is the bare truth, unfortunately the truth, that these fine elements are far from being typical of the Asiatic faiths from which they are drawn. The tit-bits of ethical wisdom gathered from afar are dug out of heaps of superstitious rubbish. The mass of the " Sacred Books of the East "would nauseate the Christian 64 The Challenge to Missions at least as much as the rare flowers selected for anthologies delight him. We pay our ready tribute to the humane heart of Buddha. But Arnold's " Light of Asia " is not the native article ; it is a Western setting of the Buddha- story, recast in the Christian mould by one who has unconsciously carried over Christian ideas and terms for its interpretation. By Mr Fielding's own confession, his " Soul of a People" is not the every-day Burmese religion but a semi-poetic subtilising of it. Buddhism in its pure form is despairing pessimism, and in its popular guise is unhappily blind, idolatrous superstition. Superstitions as blind envelop the Chinese worship of ancestors {pace Lord Curzon, who likens it to the memorials of the distinguished dead in Westminster Abbey), and leave the soul without a God. The ancient symbols which once held striking imagery of the Unseen are no longer transparent but opaque, and obscure more than they reveal. These races of the pagan world know no personal Father of mankind enveloping the world with conscious care and love, no re- demptive suffering in the Divine heart, no salvation from sin as sin (only from the ache of life ^ ), no Spirit of grace descending to make new creatures of evil men, no pledge of vital ' For a sane and just statement of the reality in Chinese emples, see Gibson's Mission Problems, p. 141 f. Good in Every System 65 eternal life in fulness of manhood, no assurance of the re-knitting of family ties broken in death — in short, no adequate idea of salvation in its rich Christian sense. Their hopes and solaces are but adumbrations of hope and love. The average Asiatic millions are fed with empty puerilities, or with metaphysical abstractions which are out of touch with human life and void of moral elements. Or they are held under the terrorism of " Nats," nature-spirits, departed spirits, and magic, and are prostrated before grotesque material images. Religion for the most part, alas, is a matter of prayer-wheels, fortune-telling, mechanical repetition of in- coherent words, and pathetic mummery — would that we could report it otherwise ! It is no wonder if these race-religions lack spiritual and moral power. Where, as in China, ethical precepts are given for prudential conduct, the loveless, impersonal code is chill and sterile, more impotent for making pure hearts than were Hebrew Tables of Stone, because lacking a personal God of exalted and exalting char- acter. Elsewhere religion is practically divorced from morals. Christianity, it has been said, is the only religion which has for its aim to make men good ; and the saying is true, if by " good " we understand positive inward moral purity and high character. The Christian ideal of holiness is substantially a new conception to the pagan mind. 66 The Challenge to Missions Myriads of simple-hearted votaries visit the pagan temples ; but the faiths these enshrine are morally decadent, moribund, effete. They lack the dynamic power which is indispensable for the deliverance of men from the mastery of sin and the weight of material things, for the creation of soul and of purest manhood and womanhood, and for working social and com- munal regeneration. And they appear to have no power of self-renewal. In Japan certain sects have attempted a Buddhist revival, but, in spite of one or two such spurts of " Catholic Revival," the pagan religions have no resurrec- tion-power like that by which Christianity rose in renewed vitality and might out of the grave of its mediaeval corruptions. The moral and social life of pagan peoples naturally matches their faiths. The missionary may see pagan life too unbrokenly black, not unnaturally having eyes chiefly for the grim moral degeneracy which confronts him ; at the other extreme the modern cosmopolitan mind, like Mr Fielding, makes light excuses for its moral evils. After one's young imagination has been fed on mission literature which painted heathendom as one unqualified scene of cruelty and vice, a black romance, it comes as a sur- prise to see the swarthy little children playing happily and the old folk sitting contentedly in the shade, to hear sounds of domestic merriment Good in Every System 67 and discover bits of human kindness. In every way it is one thing to read about pagan lands in books, and quite another thing to look on " the heathen " in flesh and blood in their motley life of chequered light and shade and their pathetic superstitions. There are indeed kind hearts among them, domestic tendernesses, filial devotions, brave deeds of self-suppression — what Augustine perversely called " splendid vices." Here and there are enlightened men who see beneath the crust of superstition, disavow the worship of material objects, and revere only pure intelli- gence. In every land there are happily select souls, like Neesima of Japan, and the Chinese viceroy, Chang Chih Tung, whose heart God has touched after the manner of Cornelius. But these are comparatively few and rare among the superstitious millions. They scarcely count in the practical problem of heathendom (except as possible progenitors and founts of future en- lightenment). And they are as little typical of the races to which they belong as Seneca was typical of Roman and Socrates of Greek paganism. The people generally are held in a state of soulless stagnation and impassive content. " They are quite content as they are," say some, among them Lord Curzon. True ; and that is the worst of it. They are content with a sort 68 The Challenge to Missions of bovine contentment, as a race of men may be who have been held under slavery that has unmanned them and taken the soul out of them. Petrified by the unintelligent custom of long ages, they have little consciousness of wanting anything. More insurmountable than the Chinese "Myriad-Mile Wall" is the im- penetrable wall of proud self-satisfaction in which the people are encased. The missionary's difficulty is, not to deal with pagan religions, but to pierce the Asiatic's haughty, supercilious sense of superiority and break through "the cake of custom " and wake the torpid soul and heavy conscience to the perception of moral and spiritual need. Generally they recognise nothing evil in the vices which reign among them. Moral corrup- tions are rife, and they neither hide out of sight nor raise a blush. So widely is religion divorced from morality in India that the devout priest may be vicious without remark. What wonder, when lustful and debasing practices are sanc- tioned by Hindu religious rites ! When Mrs Besant went into ecstacies over Hindu mysticism. The Rets and Ruyyet, an influential Hindu paper in Calcutta, said : " When an English lady of decent culture professes to be an admirer of Tantric mysti- cisms and Krishna worship, it behoves every well-wisher of the country to tell her plainly Good in Every System 69 that sensible men do not want her eloquence for gilding what is rotten. ... In fact abomina- tion worship is the chief ingredient of modern Hinduism." And the Daily Hindu, of Madras, said, " Our religious institutions are a festering mass of crime, vice, and gigantic swindling." Lord Curzon and Mr Michie tell us that it takes a Chinese imagination, charged with brutal coarseness, to invent the horrible accusa- tions levelled at Christian missionaries. No need of the critic to remind us of the vices besmirching Christendom. But, for differ- ence, the Christian conscience has always protested and fought against these evils, and is the great moral force engaged in reducing them. They have to conceal themselves as illicit. In paganism, on the contrary, they enjoy common sanction ; native religion is not at work against them ; they often flourish under the shelter of the gods. Yet far more serious than all these evils is the moral torpor at the back of them, the absence of conscience in things unclean. In many the first work to be done by Christianity is to create the very sense of sin, which is indispensable to the beginnings of moral re- newal and the cry for holiness — and this is one reason why missions, having John Baptist's preparatory work to do, take long to produce great results. Christ has first to develop con- 70 The Challenge to Missions science, establish personality, and wake the flying ideal which both condemns and inspires. What pagan peoples — Buddhists, Hindus, Con- fucianists, as well as barbarians — most pro- foundly need is to be inwardly quickened, born from above them out of their moral callousness, to have soul created and the cry of the child of God waked within them. It is remarkable how, when a people, like an individual, receive Christianity, an outburst of new energy appears. It not only transforms character ; it creates a new type of manhood and womanhood ; it sets up a new ideal of holiness such as the pagan mind never dreamt of before. But, still more, it opens new springs of vitality, awakens hope, and supplies motive- power for personal sacrifice and social regenera- tion. It is for such work as this, not less than for personal salvation from sin, that the world imperatively requires Christ and His gift of new Life. V LIBERAL THOUGHT AND HEATHEN DESTINIES LIBERAL THOUGHT AND HEATHEN DESTINIES Under the more liberal theology approved by the modern mind the ruling conception of heathen destinies has silently changed. Is the change calculated to " cut the nerve " of the missionary spirit? Dr Morrison, famous as Times correspondent at Pekin,^ makes merry over China Inland missionaries who picture the hundreds of millions of Chinese hurrying unconsciously to eternal perdition. "They tell the Chinese inquirer that his unconverted father, who never heard the gospel, has, like Confucius, perished eternally." We have no wish to deliver such men out of Dr Morrison's hands ; but he must know that they are a diminishing number, at least among the better order of missionaries, and that the enlightened, if they have no clear theory on the subject, at any rate utter no such sentence of wholesale anathemas. It is true that Carey and other pioneers, holding all to be lost indistinguishably who had not known and believed in the historic ' An Australian in China. 74 The Challenge to Missions Jesus of Galilee, conceived the swarming multitudes of fellow-mortals in heathen lands as consigned by the million to a common, indiscriminate doom — actually brands to be plucked from the burning. (By the same re- lentless logic the men of the " Hard Church " had to leave to a like fate all our unfortunate little ones who had died in infancy.) If not saved — and was there any Saviour except Christ? — must they not be relegated to outer darkness ? Otherwise why take trouble to send them the gospel ? Jonathan Edwards even claimed that the happiness of the beatified saints would be en- hanced by the thought of the outcast legions, thus making heaven take toll of hell for its keener bliss ! No wonder the Japanese asked Francis Xavier, and Radbod,^ chief of the pagan Frisians, asked Bishop Wolfran, whether all their forefathers were hopelessly condemned. Xavier writes in a letter in 1552: "One of ' According to the well-known dramatic story, Radbod, u candidate for baptism, had already one foot in the water, when he stopped and asked the bishop, " Where are my dead fore- fathers at present?" "In hell, with all other unbelievers." Withdrawing his leg, the revolted chief exclaimed, " Mighty well ; then will I rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians in heaven." The story is told in Motley's Dutch Republic (Introduction), whether adorned or naked fact we need not here inquire. Liberal Thought and Destinies 75 the things that most of all torments our con- verts is that we teach them that the prison of hell is irrevocably shut. They grieve over the fate of their departed children, of their parents and relatives, and they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there is any hope, any way to free them by prayer from that eternal misery, and I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none. Their grief at this affects and torments them wonderfully — they almost pine away in their sorrow." (Cf. E. Coleridge on Xavier.) That gospel, if they understand its backward bearings, must sound a strange piece of " good tidings" in their ears. Let Whittier express it— " Oh those generations old. Over whom no church-bell tolled, Christless, lifting up blind eyes To the silence of the skies ; For the innumerable dead Is my heart disquieted." This conception of heathen destinies has not been overthrown by the battering-ram of argument. It has been imperceptibly dissi- pated by the spread of a more liberal spirit. We have made discovery of certain good elements in pagan systems. We had dealt with shadowy abstract heathen under the logic of an abstract dogma ; with the aid of travel 76 The Challenge to Missions and reading we have learnt to imagine these human beings in their palpitating flesh and blood, and picture the awful issues. How did we manage to close our eyes in sleep of a night for thinking of these torrents of ignorant brother-men flowing unwittingly to destruction, except just by not conceiving them to our- selves in human face and feeling? Whenever such a stupendous unintelligible human holo- caust came vividly before the Christianised imagination, the theory fell devitalised and undone. The sunshine of a warmer Christian compassion coming from the infinite love of Christ made the unutterable dogma pale away into the dim limbo where lie the shades of departed creeds. Possibly it was the case of the little child that was set in our midst to test and smile away this belief — the little child dying in tender years without hearing of Christ. The gracious, illogical exception allowed for the child's future destiny broke an opening through the wall of stern dogma, and the opening widened to make room for child-races, for men and women who, in proportion to their opportunities, were not naturally worse than ourselves, but only less fortunate in their birth- place, for the generous treatment of people who could not believe the gospel since, un- luckily, they had never heard it. Liberal Thought and Destinies 'j^ Enlightened minds to-day insist on a theory of judgment at once more scientific, ethical, and Christian than that which drove the earlier missionaries to the rescue. Now any theory which either (i) consigns the heathen en bloc to " adamantine chains and penal fires," or (2) claims that, since they are simple innocents and have their own gleams of light and God is good, all is well with them here and beyond, is palpably false. The iron view is not more immoral than the easy view. The latter is inconsistent with visible, grim realities in the actual character of the heathen, and makes free with heaven and God's moral laws. The former, if realised, would strike with a rebound against God's good name and clash with Christ's revelation of the Father-heart. To some the question seems a gratuitous and an idle one. They are content to leave it out of their horizon and obey their Lord's marching missionary orders — as obey His command we must in any case. But not all can close their minds to such a problem. We do not go seek- ing it ; it comes seeking us. It is forced upon us by the change of thought, and by frank questioners in the Church and out of it who have a right to ask us what new theory has taken the place of the old. Earnest workers, also, ought to have clear ground on which to base their enterprise. We are very far from 78 The Challenge to Missions seeking to settle particular destinies ; we do not know the destinies of even the people about us in a Christian land ; we only know the principles on which they will be judged. At bottom our rest is in God's fairness. Yet we can and must mark out the lines and principles on which, so far as present light takes us, God deals with the heathen. We shall see later that the real question is not one of future destinies at all. Yet, none the less, we must meet men's questions on the subject. Now — to take a negative first — it will not satisfy to import specially for the heathen a theory of another chance in a future probation. However far that may be permissible as a speculation, the Scripture about spirits in prison (i Peter iii. 19), on which it is chiefly founded, is too obscure, too doubtful in its meaning, and too solitary in the Bible to clear up the mystery. Moreover, to ride off along this line is to seek easy escape from the issue. And if the idea got possession of average minds in the Church, it would still indeed be theoretically imperative on them to give the saving light of life to all men as soon as possible, but the working effect would be to ''cut the nerve" of missionary enthusiasm. Any theory which relaxes earnest effort is thereby proved to have for us the value of a falsehood. We have no need or title positively to lay down close limits in any Liberal Thought and Destinies 79 veiled region where God is, but there is nothing here to work with or count upon. It is not enough, either, to make special bye- laws for a few exceptional " good heathen," like Buddha and Socrates. We have to do with millions. The allowance must be regularised, the principle of treatment broadened down to the multitude and universalised. The principles of judgment are the same for the heathen as for ourselves. The standards, the tests, vary with varying conditions ; but the principles are universally the same. (i) Judgment is proportioned to the good within reach. It is our Lord's own principle, that responsibility is pro- portionate to what is possible to each, to his light, capacity, and opportunity. (2) The grace of the Eternal Christ operates beyond the area in which the historical Jesus is known. (3) Judgment goes, not by the gross bulk of goodness attained, but by that faith in good which is the root of goodness. Destiny is determined, not by absolute present character, but by the germ which potentially is ultimate character. (4) Salvation is salvation from present sin and moral death, not from destinies, which are only incidental to ultimate character. 8o The Challenge to Missions One result of these principles is that we cannot deal with the heathen in the mass and pronounce them either all saved or all lost. Invisible differences divide them, equally with ourselves. The common idea is that all will be saved who act up to the light they have. It is half true, yet suggests a falsehood. Not one of the best of the pagan peoples ever lived up fully to the light he had. Equally on the small scale as on the large, there is no man who has done as well as he might, none who is without sin, none who must not at the last depend on sheer mercy. There cannot be two different grounds of acceptance before God — one, the ground of merit, among the non-Christian races, the other, "by grace are ye saved," among Christians, from under whose feet all trust in personal merit is sharply taken away by Christian teaching. Take the Road of the Scriptures to reach the proper point of outlook upon the heathen world. The Jews — on what ground were any of them saved .'' We cannot speak of " the Jews " being saved en bloc, as though all who offered Jewish sacrifices were accepted in the lump, and as little can we classify the heathen and say of them in one breath that they are either all saved or all lost. But how was it possible Liberal Thought and Destinies 8i for Abraham and other devout Jews to be accepted of God without the knowledge of the historical Jesus ? It will not do to suppose that they stood on tiptoe and foresaw the personal Jesus and the Cross in the distance ; it is not true. They had their moral law and the knowledge of the one holy and merciful God. And they had their symbolism of sin, of sacrifice, and of self-devotion. Abraham was justified because he believed God, and that was counted for righteousness. This was no fiction ; he was not righteous ; but his faith in God had in it the germ and potency of righteousness. In proportion as Jews were humble-hearted and believing, making appeal to the mercy that was hinted to them through material symbols and imagery — in proportion as they responded to the light that shone — they had the mercy of God for their sins. The heathen to-day are B.C. What operated B.C. in God's treatment of Jews operates pro- portionately in Asia and every continent and island which is not yet Anno Domini. That the Jews had fuller light and clearer symbols of the Unseen is beside the point here. God's method or principle is the same for all alike, when deal- ing with different races all of them B.C. The grace which was at least within reach of the humble-hearted Jew has always been and now is within reach of the Gentile in proportion F 82 The Challenge to Missions as there is similar response or appeal of spirit. Were the redemptive virtues of Christ's cross, then, delivered to the devout Jew in advance without having as yet been acquired by Christ ? Rather say, more Scripturally, that that suffer- ing love in the Divine Heart which once for all in history became embodied in Jesus was a timeless, eternal reality and therefore avail- able B.C. The Cosmic Light, the " Word " or " Logos " of St John, "that light which lighteth every man," did not first come into existence in Jesus, but " came into the world " in Him, incarnate in human personality. As there was a diffused light through our universe before the sun, and as that diffused luminous mist became centred and embodied in the sun, so there was and is a universal " Word " or Light, — " Logos sper- matikos " — an eternal Christ or Good. Every- where in human hearts, in infinitesimal or considerable degree, there have been glimmer- ings of the Mystery and the Truth, bits of good and light and love. Everywhere the touch of the Unseen has been felt, whether interpreted superstitiously here or known intelligently there. Men have cast their intuitions in the form of symbols — the sun, or the image of the Great Calm in the still face of the Amita Buddha of Japan, or in the Jewish shechinah on the Liberal Thought and Destinies 83 mercy-seat stained with the blood of offered lives. These symbols, at first luminous with significance, have become obscured with gross superstitions — yet not utterly ; they have con- tinued faintly to signify something of the Unseen Good, or they have gathered up the heart's dumb desires for Good. And at the same time all men have seen fellow-men suffer- ing and needy — mankind (with whom Christ Jesus made Himself one, Matt. xxv. 45) crucified before their eyes ; they have met human need, and either ignored it or responded to its appeal to the kind heart. Where and in whom among the peoples of both Christendom and heathendom God's all- seeing eye has found the needful response to existing light and good, no human mind can conjecture. How far He may have seen an outstretching of the half-encrusted spirit to the Mystery and the Pity ; how far any hearts may have waked to the only symbol of the Divine within sight ; how many or how few have shown a beat of compassion towards human want or a relenting over sin, or a humble, weary cry for help beneath the sky — these secrets can be known only to Himself Our difficulty is not about the cosmic grace of Christ being available wherever among mortal men the fit response is shown. Our doubt is about the likelihood of any sufficient response among many both at home 84 The Challenge to Missions and abroad. But, certainly, if God All-wise accepted the man who offered a slain bullock as a symbol of his self-devotion, we may be sure that He has an eye and an ear for any symbol? language of the human heart appealing to the Unseen wherever He finds it, whether among simple suppliants of the Merciful Virgin or others of the same order. It is not righteous- ness. But, according to Scripture, God, so far as it is true, counts it for righteousness ; for it is the germ and prophecy of righteousness under happier conditions to come. For judgment goes, not by absolute present character, but by the germ of potential character which is wrapped up in faith in Good or sym- pathy with Humanity. The penitent thief on his cross had not time to acquire good char- acter ; but in his appealing cry to Christ there germinated the seed of potential goodness. Attitude is destiny. Not absolute attain- ment : have average Christians much more than their faces turned towards the light, more than mere seeds of holiness ? But, however meagre their attainments, they have taken an attitude in relation to the light in Christ ; and that attitude is the forecast of their destiny. What lies in heart-faith, however crudely formed, is the seed of righteousness, of ultimate character. If anywhere. East and West alike, by dim or clear faith the Light of the Eternal Word Liberal Thought and Destinies 85 has met with response, there the grace in- carnated in Christ may find the attitude of spirit it everywhere is seeking as the condition of higher blessing. Thus no one anywhere is saved except by the Eternal Christ — unrecog- nised perhaps, i^^ when saw we Thee?") — and except through faith or desire as the germ that grows to goodness and fruits in bliss. Whatever further scope or cycles of existence for the development of these faith-germs or love-seeds of good may come in other aeons having their own new issues, we see only thus far, that the issue of this aeon is determined by these attitudes of the secret soul. How seldom or how often God perceives such germs of faith, either in Anglo-Saxon, Asiatic, or African, He alone can know. We are not one step nearer being able to say who among the heathen are blest and who suffer loss. We can as little assign destinies to them indiscriminately as we can to the folk who live next door to us — enough and well if we can forecast our own. To read destinies is not our aim in these pages. None but the Omniscient Heart-Interpreter has the materials for such discrimination. Yet much is gained if we can, humbly, discover the lines on which God deals with men of all colours and conditions. Even as to ourselves we only know the principles of divine judgment and the grounds of faith and 86 The Challenge to Missions hope. And the discovery frees us on the one hand from the goad of the old, unthinkable horror over indiscriminate destinies, and on the other from lax latitudinarianism as to the needs of the heathen. VI CAN THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE SURVIVE? Does Liberal Thought cut the Nerve of Missions? 87 VI CAN THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE SURVIVE ? Does Liberal Thought cut the Nerve of Missions ? Does this modern way of viewing the heathen relax the missionary motive ? Certainly the older conception of their destinies gave a sufficiently violent reason for missionary urgency. It held up a picture which was vivid, concrete, and therefore calculated to tell on crude or emotional natures. On the other hand, the unthinkable issues for these unenlightened and unfortunate millions, if rea- lised in clear imagination, instead of offering an inspiring incentive, would singe and sear the sensitive heart, would stun the mind and paralyse the energies. The vision would over- whelm us. What is the motive, then, for urgency in sending the gospel to the heathen? The same motive as we find at work in the hearts of the first apostles. Not once in the New Testament do we find these ardent mis- sionaries introducing a bare mention of heathen 89 90 The Challenge to Missions destinies as an argument for evangelising the world. Their eyes never look that way. None of their zeal comes visibly from that quarter. It is not a question of future destinies at all with them. What impels them is the sense of the people's utter moral need and spiritual darkness, their religious destitution, their " lying in sin," and the burning desire to carry to all men the blessed news of the Divine redemptive love which has wrought such a transformation in their own lives. It is the same sense of the world's utter moral need, sin, spiritual darkness, and religious destitution, the same sense of unspeakable obligations to Christ for new life and hope, and the same eager desire to convey to all men the grace which has brought us spiritual bless- ing — it is this that must, and does, serve as a sufficient motive for our missionary zeal. If this fails to inspire us, it is a sinister sign that we lack the very essence of the Christian mind, the love which flamed in the apostles' hearts, and that we have missed the true meaning of salvation. Our conception of salvation itself has been changing at the very time when our theory of the heathen has been changing, and the one comes in aptly to interpret or correct the other. The enlightenment which has been enlarging our sympathies has in the same process been Can the Motive Survive? 91 deepening our insight into the true nature of salvation. Here enters our fourth principle, that salvation is salvation from sin, not from destinies. The real and urgent question is not a matter of destinies at all, one way or the other. It is one of present moral condition and character. It is not what we are coming to, but what we are becoming, that matters. Destinies, good or bad, while momentous enough, hang entirely on the character which constitutes their quality. The actual problem is, not the man's future, but the man. Look at pagan peoples with the most God- like eye, and there is enough in their condition to appal our hearts, if we can see beneath the surface of their natural content. However large the mercy of Heaven, they most palpably stand in dire need of being morally saved from sin's degradation and spiritually enlightened and enfranchised as the sons of God. Properly we cannot speak of pagans being either "saved" or "lost" in the full Christian sense; for these words are polarised, charged with a depth of moral significance which is the creation of Christianity, and their meaning is not rightly applicable outside Christian spheres. But we can speak of them being sunk and dark, needing the salvation that elevates and enlightens. The old idea about the heathen — that they 92 The Challenge to Missions were consigned to hell — was false in its crude form, yet it was profoundly true in the moral impression it conveyed. Take hell as the symbol of their moral need, of the measure- less calamity of sin and inward degradation, as the awful canvas on which is flamingly projected before our imagination the unspeak- able evilness of evil and the catastrophe it involves. When men could not picture to themselves the inward deterioration in which lay the true " damnum " (" loss "), this vivid vision of future destinies gave them the full measure of it, conveying the right moral im- pression. Because the old forecast of heathen destinies is softened away, some are being blinded to the deep moral destitution and darkness in which millions lie. What we have now to fear is the swing of the pendulum to the opposite error — that "it's all right with the heathen." And undoubtedly it will take time to plant the new conception of salvation victoriously in the average Christian mind ; and meanwhile the missionary spirit of some may cool. But the transition-time will pass, and the higher motive will become as strong a dynamic as the old one. If we have Christ's compassionate heart, we burn to save all, whether heathen at home or heathen abroad, from their sins and moral degradation, from the things which waste and Can the Motive Survive? 93 destroy their manhood, to redeem them from the power of the flesh and the world and all that defiles. Knowing Christ precious to our- selves and what He can do for all men, we thirst to see all spiritualised and made new creatures in Christ Jesus, to send them that which will raise them in character and make them full men completed in Christ, that which will not only enlighten, free, gladden, bless, and enrich their existence, but will elevate their corporate social and domestic life and establish the kingdom of God among them. Such is the true missionary motive, and motive enough. Even on a less tragic ground, why is it a matter of urgent duty and concern on a parent's part to teach his child the story of Christ and train him in Christian truth and life? The more modern theory of the dead child's future — does it relax parental anxiety to impart Christian light and teach him to love and imitate Jesus ? What is the parent's motive now? Simply the sharp sense of the value of Christ to every human being, young or old — the perception of the child's need and peril if he does not get the saving power of Christ upon him ; the sense of the native worth and value of being a Christian in soul and character; the desire to lift him out of 94 The Challenge to Missions "the natural man" to "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." If that motive be not strong enough to inspire us with zeal for taking the blessing of Christ to the heathen, then Christ has still much work to do upon us to make us Christian in mind and spiritual sympathy. VII CHEQUERED RESULTS "Counting the Game" 95 VII CHEQUERED RESULTS: "Counting the Game" What have laymen, personally acquainted with foreign countries, to say of the effects that missions have had upon the natives ? Is the Church herself satisfied with the results produced? When sea-going people, traders, travellers, and civil servants deprecate or decry the missionary's work, it is commonly on the ground that it spoils the natives, that to educate them is only to make them worse, or that the converts are so few that they cost so many hundred pounds per head ! Some of the best civilians have a more favourable report to give. Indeed it is generally the highest class of civilians, hold- ing responsible positions, who declare that missions are doing an immense amount of direct or indirect good. Sir Claude Macdonald, late British Minister at Pekin, formerly British Agent at Zanzibar and on the Niger, Sir Chas. Aitchison, Lieut.-Governor of the Punjab, Sir R. Temple, and other men of like position have been steadfast supporters of mission work. Sir 98 The Challenge to Missions Harry Johnston's tribute appeared but lately in the secular press. And Lord Lawrence's words are not forgotten : " Notwithstanding all that English people have done to benefit India, the missionaries have done more than all other agencies combined." Their verdict is not quoted as foreclosing the case. But, as criticisms from mission censors are so largely introduced in these pages, it is fair to show that men of sane and independent judgment, in the highest quarters where they are likely to see the work on the large scale and know its effects by long residence, express an estimate of it entirely different from the airy gossip current in camps and treaty ports. Yet one must deal with the average opinion that one en- counters in moving about in the world. First take briefly the question of numbers. Dr Morrison, who has clearly been at school, mirthfully reduces the outcome of the work to fractions. " Expressed succinctly their harvest may be described as amounting to a fraction more than two Chinamen per missionary per annum. If native helpers are added, the aggregate body of converts amounts to nine- tenths of a Chinaman per worker per annum." ^ Lord Curzon, more sedately, asserts that the work is "not advancing with a rapidity ^ An Australian in China, "Counting the Game" 99 in the least commensurate to the prodigious outlay in money, self-sacrifice, and human power." ^ So, then, it is not the missionaries alone who, as Mr Michie puts it, "sum up their success" as "sportsmen count their game." If they do so, it is chiefly because the Church at home, not unnaturally yet un- fortunately, calls for statistics of advance, and expects the missionary to produce his yearly "tale of bricks." But it is the critic, even more than the Church, that demands results and "counts the game." Lord Curzon himself, like Mr Michie shows that the test of progress does not lie in the number of converts. " Much of their work is necessarily devoid of immediate results, and is incapable of being scientifically registered in a memorandum. They sow the seed, and if it does not fructify in their day or before their eyes, it may well be germinating for a future ear-time." He pays a tribute to the missionary's "devotion and self-sacrifice, his example of pious fortitude, the influence of the education and culture thus diffused in kindling the softer virtues and in ameliorating the conditions of life ; the slow but certain spread of Western knowledge ; the visible products in organised philanthropy in the shape of hospitals, medical dispensaries, 1 Problims oft hi Far East, loo The Challenge to Missions orphanages, relief distribution, and schools ; the occasional winning of genuine and noble- hearted converts from the enemy's fold." " You don't get an adequate return for your money," says the man who looks on 4 per cent, as poor interest for any investment, whether sacred or secular. And a return he and we are perfectly entitled to expect. But how much does he allow for the laying of the foundations required before a new order of things can be built up? How much for the slow progress of rubbing down prejudice and distrust, for proving the apostle's dis- interested motives, for lifting the heavy inertia of age-long custom, for breaking the trammel- ling yoke and bar of caste, and for mitigating the force of rooted superstitions and vested interests ? How much for making dictionaries (as missionaries have been the first to do) and for translating the Scriptures ? And is the critic to count it as nothing in the balance-sheet that Christian missions have been opening up closed countries to civilising influences and national development as well as to trade? (It carries no weight with the Christian mind, but it might with the com- mercial censor, that missions have opened many doors for trade, and have brought back in commerce far more than they have cost) How much time, and how many lives, were "Counting the Game" loi spent in cutting down the ancient forests of Britain, in taming and tilling the soil, in laying roads and building bridges, and making our island-home the rich and comely land it is? A long taming, tilling, preparatory work of a similar kind has to be done among native races before the rich harvest of human good- ness and enlightened piety can be reaped. In the assessment of missionary results, how much is allowed for such preparatory, civil- ising, educational work? With all this in view, can any fair mind reckon up the out- come at so many converts per missionary per annum, costing so many hundred pounds per head, or expect more than a moderate ad- vance meanwhile in the numbers won from paganism ? Yet, even in respect of numbers, the results sufficiently attest the progress of the cause. In one year alone (1899), excluding the baptised catechumens, not less than 100,000 were added to the number of communicants. The appalling fact remains indeed, that the number added to the native population of such a country as India by natural increase is larger each year than the numbers won to the Christian fold. But the multiplication of the Christian community marches in a rising ratio, and will ultimately overtake and out- strip the native growth. I02 The Challenge to Missions The Imperial Census for India taken for 1 90 1 has been revealing the great strides made by Christianity during the previous decade. The return for the entire continent, with the exception of the Bombay Presidency and Burma (the statistics for which had not appeared), shows that the number of professed Christians had risen from 1,952,704 in 1891 to 2,501,808 in 1901 — had risen in fact by 550,000. In these returns European Christians are included; but, according to Sir Charles A. Elliott, late Lieut-Governor of Bengal,^ they are practically stationary in numbers, the same as in 1891. The addition of half a million Christians, therefore, has been drawn from among the natives. Within ten years half a million natives of India have been won to the open profession of Christianity. The growth in numbers has been thirty per cent., and that is four times the growth of the general population. It is not merely the large increase in itself that gratifies and reassures ; it is the rising ratio of increase, four times the increase of the populace. And here, of course, no account can be taken of those who during the same period have become Christians in secret, and the larger numbers who have been brought within the Christian "sphere of influence." (See Appendix B., p. 184). ' Times, 3rd December 1901. "Counting the Game" 103 The increase of course varies very greatly in different countries. In some places it is disappointingly small thus far. In Korea, on the other hand, at Pyeng-Yang, there was only a handful of Christians in the whole region in 1895 ; by 1900 there were 2,500 communi- cants, while the total number of adherents was 10,000. Not counting the 500,000 Chinese claimed by the Roman Cathohc Church, there are nearly 100,000 Christian communicants in China. And the native Christian community attached to this church membership — young people in schools, catechumens, families, etc. — is many times larger. In Uganda within a single decade the number of baptised Christians has risen, Bishop Tucker states, from 300 to 30,000. " Why, the captain assured me at tiffin that there weren't half-a-dozen Christians in all China ; and here in one meeting are more than three hundred." This was said by a passenger who allowed himself to be con- ducted by a friend to a centre of mission work. It is now notorious that those hasty visitors and travellers, and even white residents, who declare that they have seen plenty of mission- aries but few native Christians have never gone to examine for themselves what the missions are doing. The Christian natives are not on I04 The Challenge to Missions show in the streets : they are only a fraction of the heathen community and not distinguish- able among the million ; and of necessity the work is usually quiet and unobtrusive. How can the success of the campaign be known to those who only touch at open ports, or run through a country on business or for sight- seeing purposes ? They depend for their information mainly on the Philistine gossip current at the clubs and the dinner-tables of residents who live almost entirely apart from the native's life and never investigate the work done by missions. "A little laudable curiosity and a braving of the smells and sounds of native streets" would reveal to them that, whatever the failures here and there, the floating reports do no sort of justice to the actual results. It is from the lower and less educated classes, we are reminded, that the converts are drawn. Have any of those whom Oliver Wendell Holmes called the "Brahmin classes" of the community believed ? Are the literati found in the native Church? Ar^d certainly, if Christianity does not appeal to the enlightened, grave doubt is raised — but not about missions, rather about Christianity itself. But (i) our missionary experience simply reproduces Christ's own. " The common people "Counting the Game" 105 heard Him gladly"; and critics were able to ask, " have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him ? " Yet some of the most enlightened rulers, like Nicodemus, did believe on Him, although restrained by caste-fears from at once confessing Him. It is often the educated who are the most closely encased in prejudice ; and, if most of the Rabbis and Herodians of India and China are the slowest to admit the new light, it is only what happened in the first days of Christianity. It is clear from the Apostolic Epistles that, while some of the well- born in Rome and Greece belonged to the primitive Church, most of the first Christians were of the commonalty, numbers of them slaves. (2) It is what seizes the great common instincts of the people that proves its universal truth. What captures the broad base of the triangle shows the full width of its conquering power. And early missions in the Roman empire conquered the community by working from the humbler strata upwards. Besides (3) it is from the lower-middle (not the lowest) classes — those very classes from which most of the converts are drawn — that the most virile life of the community is recruited. " As the husbandman, driving his ploughshare into the soil, brings the bottom strata to the surface and turns the upper strata to the io6 The Challenge to Missions bottom, so in the upheavings of Providence the lower classes of yesterday become the upper classes of to-day." It is what we find in the history of races. Some ask, " Are not the rude African races sure to be overborne and swept away by the civilised ? " For one thing, at present these are multiplying much more swiftly than the whites. And just as the highly cultivated and luxurious Romans were spent, and were out-lived by the hardy Goths and Germanic races of the north, so the ruder earth-children and hillsmen of the modern world may have a large contribution to make to the stock of the coming race. By the same law the religion which conquers the simpler, humbler class in the community may be planting itself most securely in the genera- tions to come. But (4) numbers of the enlightened classes do respond to mission work, markedly in some countries if not so extensively in others. In Japan, for example, in the year 1900 {cf. The Chinese Recorder for 1900) Mr Loomis was able to say, " The Minister for Foreign affairs and the Secretary to the Prime Minister are Christians. The honoured President of the Lower House is a devoted member and elder of the Presbyterian Church ; and there are thirteen or fourteen other Christians in the present Diet. Two battleships of the first class "Counting the Game" 107 in the Japanese Navy are commanded by- Christian captains. There are three Christian professors, and upwards of sixty members of the Young Men's Christian Association, in the Imperial University of Tokio. There are thirty Christian Associations and eight hun- dred and fifty members among the students of Japan." If in India fewer of the educated classes become professed converts, it is partly because of the restraints of caste — numbers of them are known to be disciples in secret, afraid of the awful ban of the out-caste. Yet a Madras writer and philosopher, Mr S. Satthianadhan, M.A., LL.M., has shown how Christianity is being assimilated by India. "What," he wrote, "is the influence of Christianity on New India? We have first and foremost a large and influential com- munity that has severed itself entirely from the ancient religion, and has accepted Christ as its Saviour. Some of the keenest intellects that India has produced, men like Professor Ramachander, the author of 'Maxima and Minima,' Dr Krishna Mohun Banerjee, one of the first Indians whom the Calcutta Uni- versity honoured with the degree of Doctor of Laws ; and Pandita Ramabai, a woman of rare intellectual gifts, and well learned in Sanskrit literature [he adds other names of io8 The Challenge to Missions equal importance], have found in the teachings of Christ final rest and satisfaction. " But the indirect influence of Christianity in moulding the thoughts and aspirations of the Indians is very considerable. The unique personality of Christ is having, consciously or unconsciously, a supreme attraction for even those who are outwardly opposed to Christi- anity. Some who have come under mission- ary influences, even though still within the visible pale of Brahmaism and Hinduism, recognise the claims of Christ as the greatest religious teacher and His right to their allegiance, though they are not prepared to take the step that means the severance of family ties, social disgrace, and isolation. The most telling testimony to the influence of Christianity is to be found in the efi'orts made to read into Hindu religious doctrines the moral teachings of Christ." Of this in- corporating process the Madras thinker gives living examples. (See Appendix B., p. 184). Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen — head of the Brahmo Somaj, and never attached to the Christian Church — asked: "Who rules India.' What power is it that sweeps the destinies of India at the present moment? ... If India is encompassed on all sides by Christian literature, Christian civilisation, and Christian government, she must naturally endeavour to "Counting the Game" 109 satisfy herself as to the nature of this great power in the realm which is doing such wonders in our midst. India knows not yet this power, though already so much influenced by it. She is unconsciously imbibing the spirit of this new civilisation — succumbing to its irresistible influence. Therefore India ought to be informed as to the real character of the course of this reforming influence — Christ. . . . Christ, not the British Government, rules India." It is by the diffusion of Christian ideas and of civilising and humane influences, and the general preparatory work already done, that the progress of the cause is to be calculated ; it is not to be measured by the numbers on mission registers. Much of the expenditure of life and labour is of the nature of an investment ; the large amount of capital sunk will bring its return in time to come. J. Russell Lowell, American citizen of the world and no partizan, may be allowed to make the case acutely plain. When the keen scrutiny of sceptics " has found a place on this planet, ten miles square, where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and security, sup- porting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted, a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, womanhood honoured, and human life held in due regard, — when sceptics can find such a place, ten miles square, on this no The Challenge to Missions globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundations, and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the sceptical literati to move thither and ventilate their views. But so long as these men are dependent on the very religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little to rob a Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that Saviour who alone has given to men that hope of Eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom." ^ And this brave argument may be extended to the cause which carries the benefits of Christianity to pagan races and can do for them what it has done so amply for all of us. ' Cf. the present author's In Relief of Doubt, p. 66. Also Mr Meredith Townsend's Asia and Europe, chap. iii. , a wise valuation of the situation in India. See outline in Appendix B., p. 184. VIII CHEQUERED RESULTS "The Mission-made Man" VIII CHEQUERED RESULTS "The Mission-made Man" But are the natives improved by Christian missions ? Are the results morally and socially satisfactory? This, and not the matter of numbers, is the serious question. And it must be seriously and frankly answered. Let the lay critic as seriously consider the whole situation and do justice to the case. Readers will bear in mind that some of the following paragraphs deal more particularly with the situation among African, Polynesian, and other races just emerging out of semi-barbarism, while others apply to conditions which exist among the settled Asiatic races. The late Miss Mary Kingsley — what piquant travel books about West Africa she has left us ! — said that " the missionary-made man is the curse of the coast." ^ In India and the Far East we are not allowed to forget the "rice Christians" whose change of creed has in it the hope of better wages. There are very ^ Travels in West Africa. H "3 114 The Challenge to Missions many among the lay community — numbers of them personally Christians — who declare that missions only upset and spoil the native, that they prefer the raw heathen or natural coolie to the mission " boy," the " red " to the " School " Kaffir. And they have come across cases sufficient to give them reason for what they say. Granted that too often these summary verdicts are the result of light gossip among unfriendly or easy men of the world, that frequently they are second-hand and not drawn from personal knowledge, mere echoes which resound through treaty ports and foreign settle- ments and are caught up by the casual visitor. Something has to be discounted from the opinion when it comes from a certain class of European and American residents, who either (i) have little serious interest in religion and a traditional prejudice against missions, or (2) show a contempt for the " blacks " which warps their estimate of work among "niggers," or (3) lead a gay or money-hunting life which requires that the native be " kept in his place " as a feeder for their pleasure or for their speedy enrichment. Yet this only explains a portion of the criticism, much of which is offered in good faith by men of credit. "The Mission-made Man" 115 The scandal is caused by two classes of natives who carry the mission brand. (i) Some who have been educated at the mission school or college swell with vanity or independence, and are perhaps foolish enough to think themselves too good for menial labour. Without being bad, they alienate the sympathies of the white employer. (2) There are others who have been educated without being morally touched. When they have got the education they want, they scale off all religious professions and seek only to get some post or clerkship with the aid of what they have learnt. Some turn out clever rogues. Others go away and sink lower than they were in a state of nature, adding foreigners' vices to their own, perhaps completely '' going fantee." It is these unsatisfactory or peccant classes with whom the shipmaster, the trader, and the merchant come into contact. It is the " wastrels " who usually gravitate to the ports and become known to the foreigner ; the best are often "up country." The critic generally has the former in his eye, and they blind him to the existence of others of a very different type. Of the good, reliable Christian natives, no worse, according to their stage of develop- ment, if no better, than approved communi- ii6 The Challenge to Missions cants in our home churches, more will be said later. Miss Kingsley, after paying a high tribute to the West African missionaries as generally brave and noble-minded men and women, says : — " A really converted African is a very beauti- ful form of Christian, but those Africans who are the chief mainstay of missionary reports, and who afford such material for the scoffer thereat, have merely had the restraint of fear removed from their minds in the mission schools without the greater restraint of love being put in its place." " He ' rips,' but he rips carefully, terrified by his many fetish restric- tions, if he is pagan ; but if he is in that partially converted state you usually find him in when trouble has been taken with his soul — then he rips unrestrained." It is on this account, she says, that "the missionary-made man is the curse of the coast." " When trouble has been taken with his soul," the Asiatic may not " rip " — he is already semi-civilised, and his case differs from that of the African — but he may disappoint in his own more self-seeking way, when he is not converted to his finger-tips. Such sinister cases — although very far from representing native Christians generally — must "The Mission-made Man" 117 be explained. And explained they can be, if we take a wide enough horizon for our outlook. We must ask such questions as these : — (i) What length of time, how many genera- tions, are we to allow undeveloped races for ascending through temporary failures to the social and moral level to which we have risen only after centuries of slow evolution ? (2) What but unsettlement can we expect from races and individuals passing through the transition from a lower to a higher order of life? (3) Are the cases complained of peculiarly the result of mission work, and in no way connected with the inrush of all kinds of foreign influences .' (4) Is mission work raising the character and life of the majority of the converts within the native Church ? I. We must grant these raw, undeveloped races time for their evolution. It cannot but take several generations before they assimilate Christianity, get it into their blood and incor- porate it in the habit and traditions of their common life. They must have time for pain- fully learning the tastes and laws of an enlightened existence and settling steadily into a higher moral and social order. ii8 The Challenge to Missions Do we forget how many centuries it has taken us in Britain to emerge from barbarism and acquire some measure of the Christian mind and habit ? More than a thousand years passed, thirty or forty generations came and went, before our race was extensively Christian- ised in character and social custom. St Jerome tells that when " a boy, living in Gaul, he beheld the Scots, a people in Britain, eating human flesh ; and though there were plenty of cattle and sheep at their disposal, yet they would prefer a ham of the herdsman or a slice of the female breast as a luxury." The first results produced among our barbaric ancestors by Columba, Cuthbert, Augustine, and other early missionaries — were they even as good as those to be witnessed to-day in Uganda or the South Seas ? We have reached our present mixed state only after Christianity has been at work on us for fifteen centuries. Are we to expect untamed races now to come to the same level of enlightenment at one swift leap .' It is preposterous for critics to measure the ultimate value of mission work by the effects produced in one or two generations. Miss Kingsley admits that the children of the school, with all their shortcomings, are better than the others outside. That in itself is much, and is the pledge of more. Has there "The Mission-made Man" 119 been some visible gain, some step taken upward on the long stairway of ascent ? In spite of bad cases, the majority of those who have come under Christian influence have made a clear advance upon their previous condition. That is enough to certify the prophecy of faith — as much as can be expected in one generation. The world is still young. These dark child- races are but beginners in life's career. They have the capacity of future maturity, as much as our own race had when Rome and Greece looked down on it with contempt. We are shortsighted judges if we pass sentence against the process of elevation at its beginning because of the blunderings of certain natives who, with no Christian ancestry or Christian environment, have failed to absorb Christian teaching. 2. " The natives are unsettled by the mis- sionary, spoilt by education" Even suppose this more widely true than it is. Unsettlement is inevitable during their time of transition. There is no progress for a people except through a stage of unsettlement and stumbling. Are they too independent and self-import- ant? Their swollen independence, with all the foolishness into which it leads them, may be the rude uprising of unbalanced manhood. They "strut" as though they were mighty; but that strut is the boy's premature attempt I20 The Challenge to Missions to be a man, and, though it makes us smile, it hints self-discovery and coming manhood. Their mistakes in misusing their education and liberties are the first erratic blunderings which a raw people make in the use of their freedom, the first unsteady steps on the way to a civilised life. "They are happier in nature's raw state." Perhaps they are — in the sense of bovine con- tentment, as a Russian moujik is happier in his sluggish existence without a man's rights than a free Briton, as the ignorant are happier than the wise. But such happiness is no measure of the worth and dignity of their life. Do we refuse to educate a child because he is happier when ignorant and young than when he will be mature and wise ? Yet they are not so happy as theorists assume : they hve under the terrorism of their superstitions. Are some of them vain, superficial, unreliable, upset by having high " notions " filling their heads? No one — except possibly the fond padre — wishes to gloss over their faults — and even the missionary sees these with distress. But the same thing is said of the freedmen of the Southern States. The same argument was urged against their emancipation. The same charge was advanced — that they were happier and more serviceable when they were slaves, "The Mission-made Man" 121 that education and freedom upset and spoilt them, turned their heads and broke up the old, peaceful relations. And there was truth in the charge. Was emancipation an error, then, because of the unsteadiness and blunderings of the first and second generations of freedmen ? Those may think so who live uncomfortably close to them ; but we who stand detached are able to take a larger, longer view. In the course of generations the full benefit will be reaped. The unsettlement and errors of the transition time are inevitable ; and they are no argument against freeing and educating the Negro. Here at home the same thing is said : the lower classes are spoilt by being educated ; they are too proud to do menial work — see the difficulty of getting servants! And indeed the disadvantages of educating the million are patent. Possibly they are being too highly educated in letters and too little trained in industries and practical work. But the abuse which the lower classes make of education is only incidental to their general elevation. The ultimate enlightenment of the masses is worth the price which has to be paid during the process. If native races are unsettled and rendered unsteady at first by foreign teaching and 122 The Challenge to Missions missions, it is only the inevitable stage on the way to their final maturity. The transition time is always trying. The first effect of new ideas everywhere is unsettlement. This is the universal path of progress. We must take the far look — say, across the same number of centuries as we have had for our ascent — and foresee better days. In Sir William Wilson Hunter's words ( The Old Missionary) : " A youth who starts life with such a wrench away from the order of things around him as is implied by conversion may have strange oscilla- tions before he reaches true equilibrium or poise." Many of the Negroes who revel in Christian emotions have not yet ethicised their life. But do we not find similar cases often enough among ourselves? The last thing to be Christianised in some men is their conscience in matters of practical conduct. The American, so the old story goes, asked at Oxford how they got the College lawn smooth as velvet. " You roll it, and cut it, and roll it, and cut it, for two or three hundred years, and then you get it like this," said the gardener. If land newly taken in from the prairie could not quickly be reduced to soft lawn, as little can we expect to produce rich Christian character out of raw races without a long process of Christian cultivation. To change "The Mission-made Man" 123 the metaphor, is the germ of the Christian life set in the heart of native Christians ? We must estimate the final outcome by what that germ of goodness is capable of ultimately producing. The mistake of the " Exeter Hall " idealist is that he wishes the natives to be dealt with at once as the white man's equal, to be fully enfranchised in Church and State, and put on a level with our own race. But they are child- races, and must be treated as such. What alienates the sympathy of many a layman is the foolish talk of fond men who want to give them the rights and social position for which they cannot as yet be fully qualified. But it is not the missionary usually who is guilty of this fondling foolishness ; it is the theorist at home. The missionary knows from practical and often mortifying experience — witness the vagaries of the " Ethiopian Church " of South Africa — that they must continue under guidance and control like children, until they have been trained to use their new privileges and have matured as full-grown men. But that is no reason for keeping them ignorant and Christless. 3. Is the missionary alone responsible for the results? It is a perilous and often a calamitous time when the old " cake of custom " is broken, when custom-law, the sway of chiefs and super- 124 The Challenge to Missions stitions, and the settled tribal rule are destroyed. The pagan order has, just as Miss Kingsley described it, lost its restraining hold ; and the new moral order has not yet mastered the nature-folk and wrought itself into their fibre. It is small wonder if there be unsteadiness, blundering, and temporary failure, when there is "one world dead, the other helpless to be born." (See Appendix B., p. 184). But even if missions were withdrawn, the old pagan order of fetish fears and tribal law could not possibly long remain. Railways, commerce, and the whole mass of Western civilisation will in any case proceed irresistibly to break up the rule of caste and race-custom and the superstitions of the unsophisticated. The missionary is not the only foreigner among them. By the confession of Dr Morrison and Miss Kingsley, he is the best and most humane representative of foreign enlighten- ment. Robert Louis Stevenson said the same re- garding the missionaries of Samoa — and among the finest tributes he ever paid were his pseans over the missionary James Chalmers and the heroism of a native Samoan preacher. If these rude races or old-world nations are not morally seized and uplifted by Christianity, the old pagan order will fall to pieces all the same, and there will be no new moral and spiritual "The Mission-made Man" 125 force set at work to create a new and better order with finer restraints and higher law and custom. We are urged not to destroy the native simplicity of primitive peoples. (The man who has seen them in the flesh indulges in a smile when the bookish dreamer at home talks at large about their simplicity as though it were idyllic !) But their so-called " simplicity " does not suffer so much from the missionary as from foreign trade and civilisation ; the best results are to be seen where he is farthest from foreign corruption. In any event it could not long be preserved even if he disappeared from the scene. Our material civilisation is invading the preserves of all the primitive races of the world, and nothing can arrest its march. There- fore education — which should not be too high for their actual requirements and should be well balanced with manual, industrial training — and all our moral and Christian forces must be set at work among them, else they will either be- come a direr curse to all who come into touch with them, or they will racially perish. The proper influence of well-conducted com- merce is in many ways wholesome and helpful in the spread of the kingdom of God. The work of raising a rude native race cannot all be done by missions and preachers. It needs 126 The Challenge to Missions the merchant, the artizan, the capitalist each to contribute something to the development of the people's industrial and social life. Some were disappointed when Livingstone, ceasing to be a mere evangelist although to the last a missionary, went forward as a pioneer into Africa to open up the country and prepare a way for commerce as well as missions. A statesman as well as a preacher, he saw that the people could never be elevated and en- franchised in the human race without a full civilisation being planted among them. Com- merce opens up the country, develops its resources, creates new wants which compel the natives to leave their idle or hunting habits and settle to steady work, and lays the material basis for a new order of life. Yet Manchester goods, railways, and the like cannot socially and morally save them. Commerce cannot make or mend character — and often in its train corruption follows. At any rate, for good and ill it pushes its way to every square mile of the earth, and it is everywhere breaking up the primitive "sim- plicity" of native peoples. The British Government through its schools and colleges has supplied the best youth of India with secular education ; and moral failure is thus far confessedly the result. It has turned "The Mission-made Man" 127 out clever office-seekers, who have "notions" put into their heads, in many cases prove un- reliable, and think themselves too good for the old menial, toilsome labour. Their old pagan order and customs are upset — all the more disastrously when no new religious power accompanies the secular enlightenment to balance the unsettlement it produces and begin the long process of building up good character. Sir William Wilson Hunter, K.C.S.I., specialist in Indian affairs, in his exquisite idyll. The Old Missionary, says through his typical hero : " The indigenous schools made the native religions too much the staple of instruction. Your Government schools take credit for abstaining from religious teaching of any sort, and in due time you will have on your hands a race of young men who have grown up in the public non-recognition of a God. The indigenous schools educated the working and trading classes for the natural business of their lives. Your Government schools spur on every clever small boy with scholarships and money allowances, to try to get into a bigger school, and so through many bigger schools, with the stimulus of bigger scholarships, to a University degree. In due time you will have on your hands an over- 128 The Challenge to Missions grown clerkly generation, whom you have trained in their youth to depend on Govern- ment allowances and to look to Government service, but whose adult ambitions not all the offices of the Government would satisfy. What are you to do with this great clever class, forced up under a foreign system, without discipline, without contentment, and without a God?" There is no inferential argument here that Government ought to, or even can, mix with its education the saving salt of religious teaching.^ Sir William W. Hunter, however, is an independent witness to the fact that, not the missionary alone, but the Government far more with its secular educa- tion, is a disturbing agent which inevitably breaks up the old order. The transition must be gone| through ; there is nothing else for it under any policy, secularist or Christian. The disturbance must be en- dured ; it would not be abated if mission work were to cease. And those take a very narrow and shortsighted view of the case who boggle at the present unsettlement and fail to look far ahead and see what will result when Christian enlightenment has done its slow, cumulative work upon successive generations. Many of the evils which catch the eye of the ' V. Bishop Welldon in Empire Review, September 1901. "The Mission-made Man" 129 critic are part of the demoralisation always found where civilised and uncivilised races meet and corrupt each other. All the world over and in every century, the meeting-line of different races, high and low, dark and white, has been the scene of surging passions, bringing peril to the weak. The white man's vices flourish where he has lower races at his dis- posal, and the men of the brown or the black skin are apt to cast off ancestral restraints and " rip." Have we estimated how the liquor trafific demoralises the natives and works round to the detriment of the missionary cause? Miss Kingsley did " not agree that the natives of the Gold Coast would be better without spirits " — she only thought apparently that they would be better without the mission school ! But she is out-voted overwhelmingly by witnesses of all beliefs and of no belief I have seen the havoc wrought by " Cape Smoke " sold to the Kafifir at ninepence a bottle — natives mad with it. The inflammable and unstable nature of the natives is easily set ablaze by the fiery liquid. This intoxicating curse, both directly and indirectly, mars and impedes Christian work. It accounts for some of those dark degenerates who bear the brand of the mission school. Concubinage, too, has something here to I 130 The Challenge to Missions answer for. I have had an Englishman on the China seas complacently avow the practice, defend it, and assure me that it is quite the usual thing for white men in the East. On the contrary, one knows well that numbers of white residents among alien races are as clean in their lives and as honourable as the best of us at home. Yet every layman who has mixed freely with his kind is aware of the loose lives lived by too many of his countrymen when " East of Suez, where the best is like the worst." Such things as these are associated in the native mind with "Christian" countries, and they hamper the missionary's work, and do damage to the good repute of the white man's religion. " These missionaries are a curse to the country. They are spoiling it for the white man." This was said lately by a man who had gone up to Livingstonia to buy cattle for the North Charterland Exploration Company, after he had stolen the natives' stock, abused women and shot men who resisted, and had been overtaken, tried upon evidence before the English resident, Mr Murray, and severely condemned and heavily fined. An extreme instance, of course, yet not without a parallel in the Congo Free State where the Belgian "The Mission-made Man" 131 officers take their will of the natives, in the South Seas under the Kanaka labour system, and sometimes under the British flag. There are of course good traders as well as bad ; but too many of them exploit the natives (no guile- less innocents, certainly, but what of that?) and use them in cruel ways that make every true man's blood boil. R. L. Stevenson, while arguing that the missionary should do more to keep on friendly terms with the trader and win partial support from him, wrote from Samoa : " The missionary is hampered, he is restricted, he is negated, by the attitude of his fellow -whites, his fellow- countrymen and his fellow-Christians, in the same island." " It has been observed," the journalistic mouthpiece of British opinion has recently said, " with no little truth that the continuous object-lesson of kindliness, truthful- ness, and integrity which the missionary con- veys in his daily dealings with his neighbours, standing, as it often must do, in striking contrast to the vices of the ruling class, is the chief stone of missionary offence in the sight of the average Mandarin " — and, it might have been added, for the same reason the chief missionary offence in the eyes of many white traders, soldiers, and officials. "The missionary unsettles and spoils the 132 The Challenge to Missions natives " : in what light do many (not all) of the men who say this look upon the natives? Largely as "black labour" for the mines and the plantations, for coaling ships and bringing down rubber, or as carriers for travellers or menial servants. They are wanted as human "beasts of burden," or as providing markets for our goods. In the eyes of numbers they are "unspoilt" so long as they supply "cheap labour," are subservient, and give no trouble. What are " niggers " for if not to be serfs of the white man's purpose? Perhaps they are less subservient when taught in the mission school than when "raw." But are they for ever to be treated as having been created for ox-like submission and ignorance? When a ship-master, a trader, a planter, or an agent of a chartered company regards them as existing to be exploited by the European and American, we know what value to attach to his judgment that Christian work " spoils " them. It is here again that we see how our secular, social, commercial, and political life and action and our Christian work are interrelated and bound up together for better or for worse. The progress of missions does not depend alone on what the missionary is, does, or says. What is the general influence of the repre- sentatives of Europe and America in their "The Mission-made Man" 133 relations with pagan peoples ? The legions of Christendom, when abroad in the interests of the civil service, the army, the navy, commerce, diplomacy, and education — what sort of moral forces do they carry with them, and do they tell on the whole against or in favour of the message of the Church's agent ? On that much of his success depends. From this comes the force of the argument often advanced, that we have plenty still to do before the people of our own land are Chris- tianised. "You need not go to China and Peru when there are so many close to your hand who are as 'black' as you could wish." If, indeed, we could first completely Christianise our entire population and bring in the millen- nium by concentrating all our forces at home, the plea for this exclusive home policy would have weight. But unhappily such a plan is unworkable. The work at home and the work abroad must go on abreast, and each helps the other. All seas find the same level ; and, in the close communication between nations in modern times, the various races will rise or fall together. Our moral conditions at home spread their influence far over the world. If Europe and America are not every way Christian, the effect will be felt wherever Europe and America exert their power. 134 The Challenge to Missions The results of mission work among pagan races, therefore, do not depend on the missionary alone. They are affected by the entire weight, good and bad, of the commercial, social, moral, and political influence which white men bring to bear upon those whom the Christian Church seeks to Christianise. Many of the sinister cases charged against the mission school are not the direct product of mission work, but are the waste-product of native life disorganised by foreign civilisation. Of this. Christian work is not the cause, indeed, so much as it is the saving corrective, the full benefit of which will only appear when successive generations have gradually absorbed the Christian life. But may not the Best be the enemy of the Good ? The Hebrew race required to be trained in Monotheism and the School of Law and Kindergarten symbolism before being fit to receive the spiritual revelation of Christ. Can the uncivilised to-day dispense with this inter- mediate stage of gradual education, and leap from the lowest to the highest ground ? Would not a religion inferior to Christianity, like Mohammedanism with its simple monotheism and code of rigid rules and penalties, serve barbaric Polynesians and Africans better for the first stage of their moral evolution ? "The Mission-made Man" 135 But (i) it is impossible to keep any rude race detached under such a legal schooling, and ignorant of the Christian faith which is on the march everywhere. (2) Africans who have ac- cepted Mohammedanism have not been trained and prepared thereby for the easier reception of Christianity. On the contrary, it has arrested the development of every race it has won. And there is no other religion which is available for the work of elementary drilling in legal ethics. (3) The purely legal method has been tried and has failed. Bishop Colenso made the experiment in Natal. He withheld the full Gospel from his Zulus and taught them the law of commandments, training them in simple morals and industry. When his preparatory work was completed, his " School Kaffirs," set free to go their own way, returned to their old paganism again, reverting to type, as others have "gone fantee." The full Christian faith has proved itself the most powerful for the moral development of immature races. It has certainly to be taught them in simple, concrete form by missionaries who have Moses' gift as much as St John's. The reign of law has in some measure to be retained alongside the Gospel of love, as it is in the Christian education of a child among ourselves. The transition for such peoples is a somewhat perilous one. 136 The Challenge to Missions But it has to be passed through on the slow way to a higher life. There is nothing else for it. Let two or three successive generations absorb the Christian spirit, and it is seen that the Best is the best for them as for us. Our own barbaric ancestors proved it when they received Christianity and were schooled and elevated thereby. It is the one moral training agency in the world which suits all grades of men, making men as it saves them. 4. But are the majority of native Christians visibly im.proved by the work of m.issions ? That is the paramount question.^ If most of the native Church members are measurably better in personal character and domestic life than they were as heathen, better also than heathen of the same class outside, the weak and foolish specimens who have had mission training supply no argument against the work as a whole. It would be as preposterous to take the fools and the religious rogues at home who have misused their education and their Sunday School nurture and build on them an argument against the general effects and use of current education and Christianity. Let the "candid friend" of missionaries, Mr Michie, give his evidence as to " the quality of ' See Dr Campbell Gibson's calm and wise survey in Mission Problems, published since these pages were written. "The Mission-made Man" 137 the Chinese Christian converts." " Few as they may be, when all told, and mixed as they must be with spurious professors, it is a grati- fying fact, which cannot be gainsaid, that Christians of the truest type, men ready to become martyrs, which is easy, and who lead ' helpful and honest ' lives, which is as hard as the ascent from Avernus, crown the labours of the missionaries, and have done so from the very beginning. It is thus shown that the Christian religion is not essentially un- adapted to China, and that the Chinese character is susceptible to its regenerating power." Numbers of the converts are indisputably good and sterling Christians, proportionately as consistent and trustworthy as the better class of Christians at home. A few of them have already the bright signal of the saint in their faces and their tested lives. Others have not the spiritual faculty highly developed, yet are genuinely good. Many of these — cases from every country could be quoted in scores — have given clear, sometimes even magnanimous, proofs of their unselfish devotion and renewed life. They have abandoned evil heathen practices. They have been ostracised by their former comrades, their very cattle put under the ban of the clan 138 The Challenge to Missions or guild, and have borne the petty vexations that gall the heart. They have endured per- secutions, suffering the loss of their possessions, and in the last extremity meeting death with firm fidelity. What took place during the tragic siege of Pekin and in many Provinces of China sufficiently attests the statement. The letter of thanks written by Mr Conger, the United States Minister at the Chinese capital, certifies their faithfulness and their disregard of their own lives. Comparatively few lapse in such "killing times." Living- stone and Mackay of Uganda found the same loyal devotion in Africa. In India many have sacrificed family ties and become out-caste {cf. p. 184). They learn to give liberally of their means for the spread of the Christian cause, in some cases organising missions of their own and maintaining them at their own cost. Numbers of them are proportionately more generous than the average Christian at home. Lord Curzon, Mr. Freeman Mitford, and the picturesque journalist remind us of those who "find salvation for the sake of material ad- vantages," for occupation and the foreigner's wages. Lively young soldiers and civilians, or blasi " citizens of the world," who themselves perhaps have no surplus of encumbering morals "The Mission-made Man" 139 and no religion to speak of, are ready with witty sallies at self-seeking " rice Christians." That some should enter the fold from law motives is only what might be expected. How can the most careful missionary absolutely prevent some such from creeping into the Church? Protestant missionaries do their best to sift the motives of enquirers, subject doubt- ful cases to a long probation, and impose various other tests of sincerity. Are there not some at home who associate themselves with churches from low motives, for the sake of trade-custom, or for social standing? As a matter of fact the " rice Christians " — profess- ing to be Christians for the sake of their rice — are comparatively few. And they do not dis- credit the genuine majority. " Nothing," writes Mr H. C. Thomson as an independent lay observer, in his recent China and the Powers (p. 271), " nothing has been so remarkable during the recent revolt as the extraordinary number of converts who have suffered the most cruel martyrdom rather than recant. Never again will it be possible to make use of the old sneer that they are all 'rice Christians,' converts only for the subsistence which they can obtain from the missions. The heroic way in which they have gone to a horrible death for conscience sake is the most convinc- I40 The Challenge to Missions ing testimony to the sincerity of their conversion and to the noble work which those who have been their teachers have, as a whole, done in China." Some, indeed, are weak and limp, " mixed " in their faith, with rags of their old superstitions still clinging to them. Yet they are palpably honest up to their light, and are blundering towards a worthy life. The misdoings and defections of the weak and half-converted are no worse than the lapses of certain people in the early Christian Church whom the New Testament describes as " spots " and backsliders. St Peter had to write, " Let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer." If some in modern mission churches lapse temporarily into their old lying or vicious habits, it is not so very amazing, considering their previous lives, their present surroundings, and the blood in their veins. At Corinth, according to St Paul, equally great offenders were found. Yet the early Christian Church was none the less the most potent agency for regenerating and uplifting men in the pagan world of the time. Miss Isabella Bird (Mrs Bishop), who saw pagan lands and mission work from a detached point of view, says, " It is a remarkable thing how anxious they (the native Christians of "The Mission-made Man" 141 China) are for purity, and how strong they are against anything which is inconsistent." Even those who err have their moral sensibilities gradually quickened. The reclaimed acquire a keener perception of sin. In spite of imperfections, these mission-made natives are stumblingly on the upward incline towards full manhood and the Christian life. They are in the birth-throes of entrance into the divine Kingdom. We plant Christ in their consciousness, sure that He will carry forward His own work in their experience, His Spirit steadying and train- ing them in goodness. The Power which has ruled our moral and spiritual development may be relied on to achieve as great an outcome in their experience after its own type. That Christ-consciousness, too, will move in their hearts, as it has in ours, to make the Christian cause self-propagating among them. Already numbers of them are fired with the missionary spirit, and " pass it on." Our only business is to light the sacred fire in their hearts, guide them as apostles or bishops for a time, and train some of themselves to make the Christian campaign their own. IX THE MEN AND THEIR METHODS IX THE MEN AND THEIR METHODS The target of the critic's shafts, when it is not the " mission-made " native, is usually the missionary himself, or his ways of working. And some of those who have the best interests of the cause at heart have pertinent questions to put regarding the men and women sent out and the lines of policy on which they conduct their work. It is in respect of men and methods that free expression of opinion, alike from friends within and from critics without the Church, must be held legitimate and proper. The sacred cause in itself is inviolable, the spread of Christ's kingdom imperative, and the ultimate moral development of rude races must be vindicated. But the missionaries are not sacrosanct, and, when any one takes exception to the policy which determines their modes of working, he is not to be summarily dealt with as though he were touching the ark of God. In the eyes of many, the most urgent mis- sionary question is the problem of men and methods. It is not within the plan of this little volume to enter into that discussion. It is 146 The Challenge to Missions enough to touch lightly upon certain practical points raised by the average lay observer. I. Dr Morrison has a passing tilt at the comfortable residences of men who are supposed to be making every sacrifice for the heathen. That the missionary has "a good time" and lives in comfort is the assurance one gets from typical " birds of passage." They point to his spacious house and his servants, and to the bungalow on the hill to which he goes in the hot season. But (i) the cases differ in different places. In the open ports and other centres where foreign civilisation is established, there is no occasion for the missionary living in uncomfort- able quarters. The surprise of voyagers at sight of his establishment comes from the common romantic impression conveyed by missionary literature of the old, crude sort, the impression that everywhere indiscrimin- ately the sacrifices and hardships are alike severe. But in the interior and at many mission outposts the hardships and sacrifices are heavy enough, not measured by the cubic space of the house — the house itself inevitably mean, and other conditions of life, not understood at home or by the passer-by, suiificiently taxing to patience, offensive to white folks' sensibilities, and perilous to family life. Further, (2) often the mission building com- The Men and their Methods 147 bines boarding-school premises with the mis- sionary's house. The writer has stayed in such a mission house in the East, where half the spacious building was devoted to boarding- school purposes. (3) The health of all white men, missionaries as well as civilians, in hot climates demands, where obtainable, airy room-space and verandah protection against the sun. It is this that largely accounts for the spacious appearance of some mission houses. (4) The mission house in open ports and central points has to accommodate passing mis- sionaries on their way to the interior or remote regions — and one could tell of lay travellers for whom the missionary has brought out his best and provided entertainment on a scale beyond what he can ordinarily afford, and who have gone their way and written about the luxury of the missionary's life 1 (5) There is no virtue in the ascetic life when lived for its own sake. Poverty in the foreigner does not impress the native — quite the contrary. It is quite true that some men make themselves more comfortable than the conditions justify ; a few may be found who feather their own nests ; and mission property is sometimes con- structed on an unduly grand scale. But these cases are very far from being typical of the life and homes of the vast majority of missionaries. 148 The Challenge to Missions The Vicarage and the Manse at home are not usually the meanest in the parish. And the home Church may properly wish to establish the missionary in the moderate comfort that is available. In any case he has usually plenty of disabilities and hardships — loneliness, loss of kindred society for his family, discouragements which he must consume alone, and the incessant tax put upon his patience by the irresponsible, slow, "wait-a-bit" ways of the natives with whom he has to deal. 2. The thousands of male and female mission- aries, as a matter of course, vary in calibre, education, wisdom, aptitudes and tact — vary as much as Christian ministers and workers at home. If the incompetent, the over-zealous, and the misguided are there, it is largely because raw novices and new-caught zealots have precipitated themselves upon the mission- field, and because it has too often been thought that distinct mental endowments are not so requisite abroad as at home. Lord Curzon has cause to animadvert on "irresponsible itinerants" who are a law unto themselves, and to say that "impulsive virtue and raw enthusiasm are not necessarily the best credentials for a missionary career." Certain societies and movements in par- ticular have something to answer for in this respect. The Men and their Methods 149 "On the ship bound for China," wrote Mr Julian Ralph as hot-haste journalist, " I was struck by the mediocre mental character of too many of the men. They are often villagers and men of the narrowest horizon." But even mere " villagers " and " mediocre men " may do laborious and useful service. Yet it is certain that the permanent success and good repute of the missionary cause can be greatly assisted by the elimination of volunteers who have little to recommend them beyond their earnest spirit. The raw and callow, untrained in the guidance of life, ignorant of human nature, with narrow view of God and His treatment of the pagan peoples, and with no room beside their "one idea" for the march of civilisation, do indeed win genuine converts and often show a heroic evangelising spirit, but they are the civilian's stumbling-block, and they are not the men to grapple with the larger problems of paganism, nor to deal wisely with the shrewd questions of the heathen critic. Are they adequately equipped if they have made no real acquaint- ance with the mental attitude of the people whose religions they seek to displace with Christianity? Wise selection from the volun- teers is imperative, and will contribute much to the highest success of the mission cause. And means should be taken, as Henry Drummond so strongly urged after his visit to many ISO The Challenge to Missions mission fields, that each be sent to the country for which he is naturally fitted. The very best that the Church can find are wanted — broad-minded, big-hearted, level- headed men, able to grasp the larger issues of the work as well as deal with the individual soul, fired with a Christian earnestness which burns on steadily without being consumed with its own vehemence. There is need of states- manship, generalship, scholarship, as well as of evangelising activity. The career of a mis- sionary in an ancient land offers the amplest scope for the highest gifts. It is a career which may well captivate any young man of spirit, which will give him the fullest outlet for all his powers, and which will satisfy his best ambitions. There are many such men on the field, men who would have taken front rank in the home- service of the Christian Church. One cannot know the missionaries in any country without receiving from the majority of them a strong impression of their patient fidelity, level-headed caution, and brave unacknowledged devotion. Men who are as capable as the rest of their brethren at home — one feels it an impertinence to give them a character. They have their own special temptations, frankly described by Dr Wenyon. They are their own masters as a rule, far from those to The Men and their Methods 151 whom they are humanly responsible, and may grow languorous in hot countries, or masterful as do many white men living among dusky races. They, like soldiers long in the field, are liable to become "stale," weary-hearted under the unrelieved pressure of hostile, im- movable paganism — and the way in which this immovable, contented paganism oppresses the hearts of sensitive missionaries can scarcely be conceived by the home-Christian in a religious environment. Against such perils they have to brace themselves — none the less although they have Divine supports and a religious mission — and the risks attending their depres- sion should commend them to general sympathy and be remembered by the intercessors at home. But, despite all temptations, as a class their lives are beyond cavil. Captain Younghusband, the experienced traveller in the Far East, wrote : " Missionaries no more than other human beings are free from mistakes of judgment. But I have before now publicly testified to the noble and self-sacrificing work of missionaries which I have seen with my own eyes in the far interior of China. . . . The most important and the most far-reaching work in China is not done by our official repre- sentatives, nor by our enterprising merchants, but by that great body of Christian men — and women too — who are giving their lives to impart 152 The Challenge to Missions to the Chinese the accumulated knowledge of the West." 1 Robert Louis Stevenson wrote : " I suppose I am in the position of many other persons. I had conceived a great prejudice against missions in the South Seas, and I had no sooner come there than that prejudice was at first reduced, and then at last annihilated. Those who deblatterate against missions have only one thing to do, to come and see them on the spot." They will, he says, see harm done — " infallibly in all sublunary affairs." But " they will see a great deal of good done ; they will see a race being forwarded in many direc- tions, and I believe, if they be honest persons, they will cease to complain of mission work and its effects." The earlier missionaries " broke the tabus," and generally were too radical and iconoclastic. The new class "think that it is best to proceed by little and little, to spare so far as it is possible native opinions and set native habits of morality, to seek rather the point of agreement than the points of differ- ence." " The true art of the missionary, as it seems to me — an outsider, the most lay of laymen, and for that reason, on the old principle that the bystander sees most of the game, perhaps more than usually well able to judge — is to profit by the vast amount of moral ' Times, 19th Nov. 1901, The Men and their Methods 153 force reservoired in every race, and to expand and fit that power to new ideas and to new possibilities of advancement." The missionary errs, he thinks — his individual opinion on this point is at least worth recording — in looking askance on the white traders, who are indeed of mixed character, but who, by more considerate treatment, might be them- selves made better and might also be raised up " a brigade of half and half supporters " of the work. But " those who have a taste for hearing missions, Protestant or Catholic, decried, must seek their pleasure elsewhere than in my pages." ^ Dr Morrison, Miss Kingsley, and other typical critics speak in like terms. The bulk of missionaries, however, are above the need of either testimonial or defence. Their life and work speak for them. We only quote these verdicts from outside as a means of satis- fying readers who discount what the Church says about the work. 3. On the graver questions of policy and methods we have " many men many minds." It would be vain to discuss the educational policy V. evangelistic policy in India without intimately knowing the conditions and going thoroughly into the very serious and difficult problem — and that is not for these pages. But ' Life of R. L. Stevenson, ii. 193, and In the South Seas. 154 The Challenge to Missions apparently native education has been too scholastic and been carried too far.^ A " century of experiments " has passed, and some points have become clear. (i) It is Christianity in its primitive simplicity, not the theological creeds of the West, that the missionary has to deliver to the pagan world. It is but a small "body of divinity" that he has to carry with him — the body of Christian essentials. Other races will secrete their own interpretation of Christ's revelation. Perhaps the Asiatic will penetrate more deeply into its mystic meanings than has been possible for the matter-of-fact European. (2) The Bible must be set in its proper per- spective, the Gospels and the Apostolic Epistles in the forefront as alone indispensable. Ought those portions of the older Scriptures over which we ourselves still stumble to be trans- lated at once, or to be imposed as on the same level of authority as the Christian documents ? Some parts of their Old Testament might be drawn from the higher prophetic and pre- paratory elements in their own old systems of religion. Questions of Bible criticism, of course, are not for them ; but we must so ' On the question in South Africa see Dr Stewart's Experi- ment of Native Education — brave warnings addressed to Kaffir students at Lovedale. On the question in India the late Sir William Wilson Hunter has something to say in The Old Missionary. The Men and their Methods 155 represent the Hebrew revelation to the native Christians that they shall not have to pass through the crisis of re-adjustment which has been imposed on us by mistaken teaching in the past. (3) Decaying races are not to be neglected because they may not survive the centuries or dominate future history. The mission in the New Hebrides, said Henry Drummond, has no place in the evolutionary career of man- kind. " It belongs to the Order of the Good Samaritan. It is a mission of pure benevo- lence." Our Lord had compassion, and has taught us to have compassion, on the waste and useless lives. And the races that are likely to vanish need the gospel as much as single individuals. Yet it must be the supreme aim of missionary strategy to win those races that bid fair to shape the history of future generations. (4) Industrial training, it is felt, must play a larger part in the scheme of missions than formerly. To educate raw races in their heads and not in equal measure in their hands and eyes — in husbandry and handicrafts — is to dis- qualify them for the career which most of them must follow. Habits of industry are indispensable to their progress, and it is for lack of such habits that numbers of them come to grief Lavish Nature has hitherto provided 156 The Challenge to Missions easily for their needs ; competition and pressure from white races will enter their arena and compel them to work. In the direction of industrial equipment, happily, numbers of mis- sionary institutions are developing their educa- tional scheme. (5) Do not missionaries among half-barbaric races place too much stress on getting the people clothed? The "reds" in Africa are healthier than the " School " natives (who carry on their back their whole ill-matched outfit, which when soaked with wet causes illness). Yet it is in some measure true of Adamic races, as it was of Adam and Eve, that, when their eyes are opened to themselves in moral consciousness, they know themselves naked and are ashamed. That desire for covering means a discovery of shame and therefore a new instinct or finer sense of virtue. At the same time, numbers of missionaries seem to think that the natives are not properly Christianised unless taught the foreigner's habits. This is not included in the missionary aim. (6) Policy and methods of work are deter- mined in many cases when we determine what is the missionary aim and final object. Henry Drummond reported : " It is the deliberate opinion of many who know China intimately, who are missionaries themselves, that half the preaching, especially the itiner- The Men and their Methods 157 ating preaching, carried on throughout the empire is absolutely useless." A certain amount of itinerant preaching is imperative, indeed, and indispensable for pioneering pur- poses. But it will count for less or more according to the ruling object which the missionary has in view. What is the ruling idea and aim that will inspire the wisest missionary policy and dictate the best methods? This question the next chapter will seek to answer. X THE AIM The Coming Kingdom >S5 X THE AIM : The Coming Kingdom Was Livingstone right in the ruling object he had in view, in his missionary ideal? Those who believe that the end of the present dispen- sation, with the Second Coming of Christ, is at hand do not believe in Livingstone's aim, which may be called " national Christianisation." As they believe the present world-order is soon to pass away, their plan of campaign' is to " gather out " from the nations those who are Christ's " own." We are to preach the Gospel " for a witness," and, when all have heard it and had their chance, then cometh the end. " For a witness " : it would seem as though the Gospel were to be proclaimed to all " for a witness " against them, to the end that they may be without excuse and God may be technically in the right in condemning them. Does not this give rather a sinister bearing to mission work ? This aim determines the whole of their mis- sionary policy. It is the evangelist's business T i6i 1 62 The Challenge to Missions to rapidly evangelise everywhere, and his modus operandi is to itinerate. He lays no large foundations, because his scheme has no great human future. He addresses himself to the individual alone, and does not seek to establish a Christian community-life. Mere " outgather- ing" is his aim. Many who labour with this as their sole object are among the most devoted missionaries, and they have their own harvest and reward. They are contributing towards the great issue; but that issue is larger than they know. And their aim and methods of working have some unfortunate effects. No ; the Christian aim is to establish the entire kingdom of God among all the nations of the earth. It is to do the whole work of Christianity in individual hearts and in the national life. It is to do for Asia, Africa, the West Indies, and the Pacific Islands everything and all that Christ has been the means of doing for our personal and social life — to achieve a corporate as well as an individual salvation. Among races now pagan there is to be the same " outgathering " as there has been among the Western races. Christ cannot get His own out of Asia and Africa unless His full kingdom is broad-based there in the Christian common- weal. How many of ourselves would have been "gathered out" from the world if the The Aim 163 social life and national conditions of our land had not been Christianised ? The first work of the missionary is to win individual converts to the faith and service of Christ as Saviour and Lord ; and this effort continues to the end. But, with equal step, he must endeavour to lay broad foundations for the social, educational, national, and economic redemption and elevation of the people to whom he is sent. The Empire of Christ has to be planted in the community-life of the nations. Only then can it put the people in a position to receive the new spiritual life, and so win the "great multitude which no man can number out of all nations and kindreds!' We must prepare for permanency. If any event beyond our calculation, if another Advent of Christ (even supposing it to be of an external, dramatic character), were to arrest the work in mid-course, we should be best prepared for it by doing the whole work of Christianity. If this work of Christianising the communities of men throughout their whole life is restrained by the expectation of an immediate Second Coming, that expectation is in the very act raising another argument against itself Truth, when rightly understood, does not cramp the Christian aim nor limit the benefits which its spokesmen carry with them. Some who pray earnestly for the hastening 1 64 The Challenge to Missions of the coming of Christ hold such a theory of the course of prophetic events that their prayer can only be answered by the hastening of the increase of wickedness and apostacy. One thing is sure, not the " times and seasons," but that we can best help Christ to bless the world by establishing His many-sided kingdom in the entire life of mankind. With this aim before us, our plans are laid, not for " the casual sharpshooter bringing down his man here and there," but for the slow, lasting regeneration of the human race. Our method of working is so determined as to lay foundations for a huge structure, to sow seed for future generations to reap. And our hearts do not fail us in presence of slow progress and the imperfections of the native converts. The upward movement is but beginning. The world moves slowly, but it moves. The kingdom of Christ comes gradually, and " without observa- tion." What God makes slowly he means to last. XI THE RETURN-VALUE OF MISSIONS 165 XI THE RETURN-VALUE OF MISSIONS The past century's experience of mission work — not to speak of earlier times — has sufficiently justified the faith of the pioneers. It required audacious faith on their part to confront the world's gigantic heathenism with nothing but the gospel of Jesus in their hands and call it to surrender. Was faith ever more daring than when St Paul faced the Roman Empire and Greek learning, and foresaw them yield to the Son of Man .' Yet the answer of time confirmed his faith. To stand to-day in some Asiatic, African, or Polynesian centre, surrounded by pagan customs, pagan temples, and pagan apathy, to be one among a few indistinguishable Christians in presence of millions who are fast- bound in the universal paganism, and to stand up to it and believe that the gospel of Christ can conquer and regenerate the whole — this demands the faith that moves mountains. To look on caste-bound Asiatics, and especially on raw barbarians who are, in Kipling's language, " Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Halfdevil and half child," 167 1 68 The Challenge to Missions and to find the capacity of full-grown manhood in them, and foresee that out of that crude material can be wrought the rich Christian character — one's faith might well stagger at the prophecy. We have passed the experimental stage, however, and that faith is sufficiently attested by the witness of experience. It is only as they cast their eyes over the work of ten or twenty years that missionaries see much measurable increase and improvement. Yet from that small arc it is possible to infer what curve and course the future is to make. There are foretokens that what Coleridge called " the miracle of Christendom" is to be followed by the miracle of Asia and Africa, the miracle of the world. The Gospel works. The world goes round the sun. We have as much to go upon for this faith as Newton had when he inferred from local observation that the law of gravitation controls the universe. We have our Newtonian principle, in the faith that the world will answer to the attraction of Christ's gospel. Livingstone said that Dr Moffat foresaw homesteads and railways covering Africa and steamboats plying on its lakes. His anticipation is already some distance on its way to fulfilment. From these homesteads, he said, the sound of Christian worship would be heard ; and we The Return-Value of Missions 169 have foretokens of that prophecy's fulfilment also. Dr Duff, " father of the faithful " though he was, had not faith enough to believe that India's womanhood could be enhghtened. "Female education in India, so far as I can see, is hopeless. You might as well try to scale a wall five hundred yards high as attempt to give Christian education to either the women or the girls of India." Yet already in Bengal alone there are about 100,000 girls receiving education, three-fourths of them an education under Christian teachers. The beneficent social work being wrought by missions all over the world is itself alone an answer to the critic and an attestation of faith. Dr Dennis has crowded two volumes [Christian Missions and Social Progress') with the sum- mary of the changes effected — in domestic life, in the relief of sickness by medical missions, in the enlightenment and elevation of native women by lady missionaries and teachers, in the reduction of children's sufferings, cruel customs, oppression, and caste, and in the purifying of the relations of the sexes in marriage and the community — in short, in the whole social life of the pagan world. It is here that men who have no faith in the religious aims of missions are at one with us — in cordial approval of the work done by missionaries in ameliorating the con- I70 The Challenge to Missions ditions of pagan life. The visible miracle cannot be gainsaid, even by the sceptic. " All things grow sweet in Him. He draws all things unto an order fair. All fierce extremes that beat along time's shore Like chidden waves grow mild, And creep to kiss His feet ; For He alone it is that brings The fading flower of our humanity to perfect blossoming." The return-value of Christian missions is seen in the evidence they give us of the world-wide power and truth of Christianity. In the mission field the Christian faith is being verified before our eyes. Its universal appeal to the human heart, its fitness for mankind under all con- ditions, its moral power for the regeneration and elevation of the race, and the redeemable- ness of the heathen are being openly attested anew in the history of the world. Faith's ventures are returning to certify our religion as experimentally true. Here we have living witness of the contem- porary presence and activity of the Spirit of Christ. The Gospel works ; and it works moral miracles within present observation. At the very time when scepticism heralds the downfall of Christianity, it is demonstrating its vital force in the regeneration of races and men in all nations. The Return-Value of Missions 171 For proof of the dynamic power of Chris- tianity in transforming continents our appeal formerly was made to the victory it achieved over Roman paganism in early centuries. But its claims would be weak if we had to reach so far back in history in order to adduce evidence of its conquering power over the pagan world. The same conflict with paganism is proceeding now under the lead of the missionary legions, and Christianity is repeating its early triumph in the same gradual stages. A fresh and modern apologia for Christianity is being wrought out by mission work before our eyes. If some do not see it — well, some did not see the miracle even when it was performed visibly by the Christ Himself in person. If the Christian Church had taken the advice of the early opponents of foreign missions, if we had " eaten our morsel alone," we should have lacked the greatest present-day witness to the truth of our religion. If we ever ceased to disseminate the gospel while paganism survived, it would be because we had lost faith in Christ and had nothing vital to say to mankind. Our missionary enthusiasm is largely the measure of our spiritual life. " The love of Christ constraineth us." We cannot lie close to Christ's heart without hearing how it beats with the passion for all races of men. Those to whom He is 172 The Challenge to Missions much will seek to make all men sharers in the boon He has brought into their own hearts and lives. And the results of faith's endeavour will return to confirm their faith and give Christ the Saviour world-wide verification. APPENDICES 173 APPENDIX A {See Chapter II. pp. 88-36) The Powers and the Priests in the East First the missionary, then the consul, then the gunboat — that is the pith of what many a Chinaman may be heard to say. What he resents most bitterly, and what we have exposed in the text — the white priest's inter- meddling with native courts, and foreign encroachments on territory — important books written by independent laymen, British and American travellers and officials, as well as by reliable missionaries, are continually certi- fying afresh. Among these may be specially named : China and the Powers, by Mr H. C. Thomson, author of a work on the Chitral Expedition ; The Real Chinese Question, by Mr Chester Holcombe, Secretary of American Legation at Pekin ; Overland to China, by Mr A. R. Colquhoun ; and China in Convulsion, by Mr Arthur H. Smith. France has been protector of Roman Catholics in the East ; it was a French priest who inserted in the Chinese translation of the Treaty of i860 a fraudulent interpolation entitling missionaries to reside and acquire property in the interior ; 176 The Challenge to Missions and it was under severe pressure from France that in 1899 an Imperial Decree was issued conferring on Roman Catholic dignitaries a recognised official status in China. " The bishops," says Mr A. H. Smith, " adopt the rank of a Chinese Governor, and wear a button on their caps indicative of that fact, travelling in a chair with the number of bearers appropriate to that rank, with outriders and attendants on foot, an umbrella of honour borne in front, and a cannon discharged upon their arrival and departure." The same status was offered to the mission- aries of the Reformed Churches, but they, backed by the British Prime Minister, declined the offer. Mr A. R. Colquhoun, author of well-known travel-books, writing as a lay investigator, says: " The blood of the martyrs is in China the seed of French aggrandisement. France uses the missionaries and the native Christians as agents-provocateurs; and outrages and martyr- doms are her political harvest. What the pre- ponderance of her commerce does for England the Catholic protectorate does for France, so that the influence of their respective positions vis-d-vis of the Chinese is nearly balanced; but France makes ten times more capital out of her religious material than Great Britian has ever done out of her commercial. Under the fostering care of the French Government the Powers and Priests 177 Catholics have become a veritable imperium in imperio, disregarding local laws and customs, domineering over their pagan neighbours, and overriding the law of the land." The irony of the situation is visible to shrewd Chinamen — the sinister fact that France, which protects Jesuit and other Romanist missions, and displays so much zeal in backing up their propaganda, has expelled these same Jesuits from her own borders as a danger to the Republic, and has herself rejected the religion which she pushes forward in China. Their leaders know that " the presence of a Roman Catholic bishop in Annam was the thin end of the wedge which has split that country in twain and brought a part of it under the domination of France." The Chinese conclude — no wonder ! — that Christianity is a useful political weapon, the advance agent of territorial aggression. With tragic results Germany has latterly secured that Roman Catholics in Shantung shall be under German protection. This was brought about through the agency of Bishop Anzer. " He began," says Mr Thomson {China and the Powers, p. 250), " to assume an offensive and dictatorial tone towards the Tsung-li-Yamen and to all the district governors, walking into their courts as though a superior, and reporting any official who did not cringe to him to his official superior and ultimately to Pekin. M 178 The Challenge to Missions Finally, to put the climax to his proceedings, he obtained permission to build a cathedral in Yu-Chow-Fu, where Confucius lived and where his shrine is, in the province of Shantung; and this cathedral was actually begun, and its building led to the murder of the two German missionaries, which furnished the pretext for the forcible seizure by Germany of the port of Kiao-Chau." This, he asserts, was one of those sparks which set the Boxer patriotic movement in a flame and produced such deadly disaster. (And the horrible cruelties of the Allied Troops during the convulsion in North China further deepened native repugnance for the foreign religion.) Tributes are paid by the same writers to the devotion and self-denying labours of in- dividual Roman Catholic missionaries ; but even good men, though they were Protestant and not Papal, could not save this policy from working havoc. And some of the better men among them are beginning to see that their Church is paying too heavy a price for the favour of political Powers. Why was Japan fast closed against Chris- tianity and all intercourse with foreigners for centuries ? Xavier and his henchmen had won tens' of thousands of Japanese converts. But the foreigners, following the usual Roman Catholic policy, intrigued for political power and laid their hands on the reins of govern- Powers and Priests 179 ment. The nation — the story and traditional scenes are well known to the author as a former resident in Japan — rose up in wrath, slew thousands of converts, and practically- annihilated Christianity in the land, thereupon sealing the doors of their islands to all foreigners for two hundred and fifty years. The noble spirit of the devoted Xavier could not have averted such an issue to such a policy. What but similar revolt must follow when a similar policy is pursued in China ? Quite as acute is the Chinese resentment when foreign priests intermeddle with the courts of law on behalf of their converts. "Broadly speaking, in Chinese courts there is no such thing as justice." Are the mission- aries to leave their native followers to be devoured by the "tigers and wolves" of the Yamens ? They are naturally tempted to side with their own people. But, if they do, they are enmeshed in a network of complications and animosities. Even if the wrong has all been on the pagan's side, there may have been indiscretions on the convert's ; and, in any case, "whether the stone hits the pitcher, or the pitcher hits the stone, it goes ill with the pitcher." With good reason the Reformed Churches, taught by some bitter experience, have for the most part refused to take up the lawsuits of their native members. The Roman Catholics, on the other hand, i8o The Challenge to Missions take advantage of their status as local magis- trates to intervene in the courts when their supporters are involved. Let Mr A. R. Colquhoun state the facts. "Whenever a Christian has a dispute with a heathen, no matter what the subject in question may be, the quarrel is promptly taken up by the priest, who, if he cannot himself intimidate the local officials and compel them to give right to the Christian, represents the case as one of persecution, when the French consul is appealed to. Then is redress rigorously extorted, with- out the least reference to the justice of the demand." After citing a specific instance in detail, Mr Colquhoun adds : " It is not sur- prising that arbitrary proceedings like this should cause the Christians to be feared and hated, and we need not wonder at the occasional murder of a priest when such feelings are spread generally throughout the country." The people know that the foreign priest has this privilege ; numbers of them appeal to missionaries — Protestants included — to be ad- mitted members of their churches, in view of some threatened dispute or lawsuit : once they are within the foreigner's fold the enemy will, they imagine, be frightened off. " Every Catholic headquarters," says Mr A. H. Smith {China in Convulsion, pp. 50, 51), " is served by able Chinese, some of whom are expert in Yamen affairs and act as lawyers for Powers and Priests 18 1 whoever has a case in hand. ... It is common for those who are acting as advance agents of the CathoHc Church, in fresh woods and pastures new, to let it be known that, whatsoever happens to those who identify themselves with that organisation, they will be protected in their lawsuits." Protestants in some regions issue notices and tracts to prevent the expectation of such help from them ; but, in spite of all, shady citizens apply for entrance, and some falsely use the name of the missionary for their nefarious purposes. As the policy of certain Powers and priests is likely to continue the same and create trouble in the future as it has done in the past, let the public discriminate and justly apportion the blame. In order to avoid " offences," the Reformed Churches should do everything to sever them- selves from all political backing, to prove — even though it cost a great price in means, the refusal of indemnities, and personal freedom — that they have no mercenary ends to serve and are absolutely disinterested in their campaign. There are certain " offences " which are in- evitable. In addition to some mentioned already, the incursion of Western commerce disturbs native industries and trade. "Fire- ships," telegraphs, railways — of such disquieting encroachments there can be no arrest. 1 82 The Challenge to Missions It is also a grave offence in the eyes of the authorities and the people that Christians should decline to conform to the customs of the country. Most missionaries and converts stand out against the homage paid to departed ancestors. Some argue that the custom means little more than " paying one's respects " to the dead : why not, then, " bow in the house of Rimmon" to that extent? The primitive Christians in the Roman Empire had to con- front the same question. Why not conform just so far as to pay passing homage to the Emperor's statue ? But, though the particular point was small in itself, it stood for their general separation from paganism and formed the test of their religious consistency. " The refusal of the Christians to perform ceremonies which they regard as idolatrous at the New Year season, at the spring festival when the sacrifices are offered at the graves, at weddings, and especially at funerals, renders them liable to persecution, sometimes to the extent of being driven from their homes and expelled from the clan to which they belong " {China in Convulsion, p. 34). But in all such matters of conscience the animosity aroused is inevitable in the nature of the case. It must be endured in patience and courtesy, in the expectation that the leavening power of Christianity will gradually spread enlighten- ment and overcome prejudice. Not on these Powers and Priests 183 grounds chiefly can it be said that " the mis- sionary is at the bottom of all the trouble." " It cannot be too often repeated," writes Mr Thomson — and Mr Chester Holcombe has already been quoted in the same sense {supra p. 33) — "that the feeling against the mission- aries was caused, not by their tenets, nor by the quiet exercise of their religion, but by the use made of them politically by their different Governments, and still more by their harmful intermeddling on behalf of their converts in the courts of law." APPENDIX B {Chapters VII. and VIII. pp. 102, 108, 124. 188) Checks to Progress in India Mr Meredith Townsend, of the Spectator, in the course of a discriminating discussion of the inter-relations between the West and the East, in Asia and Europe, makes an interesting estimate of the prospects of Christianity in India and of the elements that hinder progress. The supernatural elements and the com- plex creed in Christianity, Mr Townsend says, present no difficulty to the Hindu mind. With superhuman manifestations of deity in human form the Hindu is already familiar : "no miracle, however stupendous, overstrains the capacity of his faith." On the contrary, Christ is not so completely the Hindu ideal because not so visibly supernatural and because so like their own human ideal of humility and self-sacrifice. One serious obstacle to missionary progress lies in the attempt generally made by the workers from the West, not to make Christians merely, but to Europeanise the Asiatic. Mis- sionaries insist on "civilising" the Indian after the manner of the West. They breed in him the desire of imitation, wrench him away from Checks to Progress in India 185 the whole system of things in which he has been reared, create a hybrid caste, not quite European, not quite Indian, with the originality killed out of it. The missionary as a European is divided from the people of India by race, colour, and incurable differences of thought, of habit, of taste, and of language. He never can become an Indian. All this is inevitable. But Christianity is capable of adapting itself to all civilisations. And, as Mr Townsend implies, no attempt should be made to create the same division among native converts by Europe- anising them. As has been argued in preceding pages, Christianity must be planted in the consciousness of the world-races, and, while tended and guided by the Western missionary, must be left to adapt itself to their racial conditions and become self-propagating along their own lines, even at the risk for a time of aberrations in the adaptation of Christian doctrines. The convert, too, is required to " break caste " irrevocably. Mr Townsend believes caste to be " a form of socialism which has through ages protected Hindu society from anarchy and from the worst evils of industrial and competi- tive life — an automatic poor-law to begin with, and the strongest form of trades union." But "caste in the Indian sense and Christianity cannot co-exist." The break-up is inevitable. The convert must eat and drink with men of 1 86 The Challenge to Missions other castes, must abandon the seclusion of his home and much of his authority over his wife and children, and must give up many of his rooted habits. It is not only his religion that is changed ; everything is changed for him. " One can hardly wonder that many, otherwise ready, shrink from such a baptism of fire." It is, as we know well, on this account that many in India remain Christians in secret. Sir Charles Aitchison, one of India's Lieu- tenant-Governors, said : " I know of one of the ruling princes of India who probably never saw or spoke to a Christian missionary in his life. After a long talk with me on religious matters, he told me himself that he reads the Sanskrit translation of our Bible and prays to Jesus Christ every day for the pardon of his sins. . . Statistics of conversion are no proper or adequate test of missionary work." Moreover, the missionary in India is often ridiculed for saying that he has hearers who are converts but not Christians. He is stating the simple truth, says Mr Townsend. "The Hindu mind can believe, and does believe, in mutually destructive facts at one and the same time. An astronomer who predicts eclipses ten years ahead without a blunder believes all the while that the eclipse is caused by some super- natural dog swallowing the moon, and will beat a drum to make the dog give up the prize." He may be convinced of the truth of Christi- Checks to Progress in India 187 anity, but the assent is not a transforming spiritual faith, and leaves him nearly where he was — a baffling puzzle and a disappointment to the missionary. These obstacles alone account for much delay in the victorious progress of Christianity and for facts that feed the critics.^ Caste, again, has been a buttress to the native ; and the removal of the old buttresses and tribal habits sometimes leaves the converts unsteady. " And," says Mr Townsend, " the second generation often shows signs of missing the ancient buttresses of conduct. They are the true anxieties of the missionaries, and it is from them in nine cases out of ten that the ill-repute of Indian Christians is derived ; but European opinion about them is most unfair. They are not converts but born Christians, like any of our own artisans ; they have not gone through a mental martyrdom, and they have to be bred up without strong convictions, except that Christianity is doubtless true, without the defences which native opinion has organised for ages, and in the midst of a heathen society in which the white Christians declare their children shall not live." ' A Scot, it is said, was asked to support a society for the Conversion of tlie Jews. He subscribed once, twice, and was applied to for the third time, when his impatience brolce out. "Confoond it, are thae Jews no' a' converted _j/«/ ? " Widen the application, and is it not symbolically true of many with reference to the progress of Christian missions ? 1 88 The Challenge to Missions As to these imperfections in a small propor- tion of the converts, the same writer wisely adds: "Christianity is always imperfect in its beginnings. The majority of Christians in Constantine's time would have seemed to modern missionaries mere worldlings ; the con- verted Saxons were for centuries violent brutes ; and the mass of Christians throughout the world are even now no better than indifferents. None the less is it true that the race which embraces Christianity, even nominally, rises with a bound out of its former position, and contains in itself thenceforward the seed of a nobler and more lasting life." The inference is clear, as urged in preceding pages. We must not compare native converts newly emerged from paganism with the best life found in Christian lands of the West, but with the conditions which existed in our own race when as yet the work of Christianity was only commenced among us. It is only in the course of generations, there as here, that the harvest of the truth is reaped. As Mr Kidd shows in his Principles of Western Civilisation, the progressive struggles and movements of to-day are always for the benefit, not of the present generation, but of that " majority which constitutes the long roll of the yet unborn generations," and Christianity is a vital force in that ultimate elevation of the world. TURNDULL AMD SPEARS, FRINTBRS, EDINBURGH. A CHOICE GIFT FOR A BUSY CHRISTIAN WORKER. Neat Cloth, 394 pages. Crown Zvo., 6s., Post fret. Seed Com The Methodist OCCU WUlll Times says:-" An ad- mirable collection of thoughts ^ and illustrations, compiled for Tfll^ the use of Christian workers. ^^-'^ • • One of the charms of this book is the absence of the ^v^g ^-^ stock illustrations, common I r1£k ^%/^V%f/^i*^<3 ^oi'^s °^ this class. The I 11 W Ai^ViVVWl value of the work is en- hanced by the fact that the subjects are arranged in Al- Or Thoughts, Themes phabetical order, and there are two exhaustive indexes, and Illustrations . . one of authors and the other of texts. Rightly used, the D Y book will be a boon to preach- ers and teachers." Rev. C. PERREN, D.D. The Christian World says: — "The book is everywhere bright and readable, and hard-pressed speakers whose ideas need reinforcement will often find here what they are in search of." The Christian says :— " ' Seed Corn ' answers well to its secondary title, as a volume of ' Thoughts, Themes and Illustrations for the Pulpit and Platform, and for Home Reading.' A good sower will know how to use this seed-corn," The Literary World says:— "Some workers will find it serviceable. The Indexes of Authors, Texts, and Subjects will aid those who are in search of the kind of help which the book can give." The Sunday School Chronicle says:— "Dr. Perren's 'Seed Corn' is a good and useful book. It contams many thoughts, themes, parables and similitudes. Gleanings from the vineyards and harvest fields of a ministry which has lasted for more than a quarter of a century, which God has acknowledged and blessed. The most original of us may learn from these pages." SEED CORN FOR THE SOWER Is arranged In alphabetical order througliout, and IB equipped witli the following three good Indexes : Complete Index of Texts Illustrated. ^ I Complete Index of 250 Authors quoted. n/_ Complete Index of Subjects treated. / Thus maWng Its contents easily available. H. R. ALLENSON, 2, Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row, E.C. and Evangelists. THE EVANGELIST'S HANDBOOK. 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By D. L. Moody. Helpful Passages for Different Classes of Seekers. Part II. 244 Pages of Outlines and Sketches of Revival Sermons. Forty-four Old Testament, seventy-one New Testament. In all one hundred and fifteen outlines from approved Evangelists, such as J. W. Conley, R. A, Torrey, A. B. Earle, J. L. Campbell, John McNeill, J. Wilbur Chapman, D. L. Moody, E. W. Bliss, D. H. Cooley, A. J. Gordon, J. H. Elliot, C. G. Finney, D. W. Whittle, A. F. Barfield, A. T. Pierson, the Editor, and others. " A large number of sermon outlines adapted for revival services. Outlines gleaned from those whom God has used and owned in the blessed work."' — Sunday School Chronicle. " One great merit, they are brief." — Daily Chronicle. " Famous sermons all passed through a capable condenser." — Expository Titnes. "Teems with excellent suggestions." — Christian Age. " To young men desirous of engaging in evangelistic work, we can highly recommend this volume." — Methodist Times. II. R. ALLENSON, 2, Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row, EC. IT IS A SIGN OF THE TIMES THAT SO MUCH IS BEING DONE FOR THE CHILDREN. Crown Svo, cloth, 3«. 6d., with complete index. Sermons to Boys . and Girls " These addresses dis- play considerably more culture than the majority of sermons to young peo- ple. They have attractive titles, and the style is simple. They would, we imagine, be listened to with interest by intelli- gent children on a Sunday afternoon." — S, S.Chron. *' This collection of Ser- mons, all of them brief, pithy, and practical, ap- peals to many beside the • BY . . young, though from their plainness and simplicity they are specially suited JOHN EAMES, B.A. to those for whom they were intended." — Family Churchman. " Beautifully printed and bound. Subjects aptly chosen, interestingly handled, and the addresses abound in happy illustration." — Christian Commoivwealth. " Preaching to children is now a common practice. Mr. Eames has given us a volume of 'sermonettes,' which are well worthy of publication, simple, pointed, and full of apt illustra- tion. They would be pleasant to listen to and furnish good reading." — Freeman, " Mr. Eames takes pains to be mteresting, and uses sensible illustrations, keeping clear of questionable anecdotage."- Christian IVorld. "Many a preacher to children might well take a leaf out of Mr. Eames's book. The subjects are well chosen, and the style of treatment eminently appropriate." — Christian Age. " Sermon literature for young people, whether to be read directly by them, or embodied in pulpit teaching for their benefit, is a useful and growing class. Many will welcome ' Sermons to Boys and Girls,' which contains fifteen discourses pointed and well constructed. The index gives a list of the many anecdotes and illustrations that brighten the pages." — The Christian. 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A particularly strong feature of the illustrations is that very many of them are drawn from tbe realm of science, and in Mr. Learmount's hands make a fascinating addition to the aids for speakers. The volume is further furnished with a comprehensive index. The fifty-two subjects of Mr. Learmount's volume are ;— Living Rainbows. A Walk in Fairy- Moving Suns. Talking Sunbeams. land. Duty. The Cosmetic of Talking in Colours. Cats. Love. Sunny Lives. Castles in the Air. Little Parasites. Pneumatic Lives. Life's Chloroform. The Angel's Sin. Fairies. An Immortal Heart. Automatic Good' Glorified Dust. Carpe Diem. Human Lamps. A Human Mena- gerie. Bells on the Toes. Honour Bright. Nemesis. Real British Lions. Chameleon Lives. Clairvoyance. Mesmerism. ness. Growing Wings. Try, Try, Try Again. Children's Corners. The Living Pace Makers. phone. Armoured Cruisers. A Powerful Lever. Dogs. Ladies and Gentle- men. Soldiers. An L'on Dress. Contentment. Sermons in Stones. Hobby-Horses. 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THIRD or BIBLE CLASS COURSE. Seventh Grade, Senior. Fifty-two lessons for 2s. 6d. ; post free, 2s. 9d. Teachers' Aids to the various series are supplied at 3s. 6d. the year's course of lessons ; post free, 23. 9d. Specimen lessons of Grades i to 6 sent post free for 6d. each grade. Bible Class Course, 9d. post free. H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 5 BATTERSHALL (Rev. W. W., D.D.)- INTERPRETATIONS OF LIFE AND RELIGION. Twenty Sermons. By Rev. Walton W. Battershalt,, D.D., Rector of St. Peter's Church, Albany, Crown Svo, cloth, 6b. The Ghuroh Standard.— "Twenty sermons, every one of which is brief, pointed, and in the true sense dogmatic." The Outlook.— "All show spiritual inslgfht, ardour of conviction, and un- common literary gifts." Boston Globe.—" Admirable in form, expressed with great fervour and sincerity, while abounding in many rhetoric beauties." The Evangelist.—" If short sermons generally had as much clear, condensed thought as is here represented in a forcible and cultivated style, there would be good reason for the current prejudice in favour of sermonic brevity." BIBLE READINGS, BOOKS OF. (j'c? Edwards, Ellis, Smith, and Wolfe.) BOOK OF SERVICES FOR PREACHERS. Baptismal, Communion, Marriage, and Burial. (See " Nonconformist Minister's Ordinal.") (See Marriage Service, Church of England.) B RIANT (W. B.)- PRAYERS AND PRAISES. A Series of Responsive Services for use in Sunday Schools and at Christian Endeavour Meetings. Compiled by W. B. Briant. 40 pages, doth, 3d. ; paper, 2d. Postage Jd. extra. Rev. W. J. Dawson, M.A.— " Admirable." Rev. P. T. Forsyth, M.A., D.D. — " Serves its purpose well." Rev. John Hunter, 0.0.—" Excellent in every way." BROCK (Rev. WILLIAM)— A YOUNG CONGO MISSIONARY. Memorials of Sidney Robert Webb, M.D. By Rev. WILLIAM Brock. Crown 8z>o, cloth, Is. 6d. Second Edition. BROOKS (Right Rev. PHILLIPS)— THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS ON THE MORAL, SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL, AND INTEL- LECTUAL LIFE OF MAN. By the Right Rev. Phillips Brooks. Uniform with " Lectures on Preaching." Crown %vo, 2s. 6d. net. Postage 4d. extra. Expository Times.— "' The Influence of Jesus' is theologically the most characteristic of all Bishop Brooks' works. If one would understand this man, one must read this book. Mr. Allenson has given us a new and attractive edition." Baptist Magazine.—" A book which might well become popular. Bishop Brooks logic was always lighted up by imaginative power, and his strongest reasoning was tremulous with emotion. The purpose of the book is established with an irresistible force of logic and a wealth of choice illustration. The re>lssue of the book Is altogether timely." 6 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE BROOKS (Right Rev. PHILLIPS)— LECTURES ON PREACHING. By the Right Rev. Phillips Brooks. Uniform with Phillips Brooks' Works, issued by Messrs. Macmillan. Neat clotk^ crown %vo, 2b. 6d. net. Postage 4d. extra. Expository Times. — "Mr. Allenson has done very well to let us have it in uni- formity with the other books by Phillips Brooks which we possess. It is A BOOK OP PERMANENT VALUE." The Baptist. — " These valuable lectures constitute a really s:reat book." The Speaker. — " Readers of these noble and impassioned pages will be at no loss to discover wherein lay Dr. Phillips Brooks' secret of power." Church Times,— " Well worth reading: and re-reading by young clergy. They can hardly study the great preacher's methods without learning much, very much to help and strengthen them." Methodist Times. — We have more than once commended this delightful book. There is no preacher of the Gospel, there is hardly any public speaker on any sub- ject, who can read any one of these lectures without learning something profitable. We only wish all our preachers could own, and make their own, the sterling truth of this deligrhtful and valuable book." Independent.—" There is no book of Homiletics more worthy of earnest and prayerful study." BROOKS (Right Rev. PHILLIPS)— LETTERS OF TRAVEL (1865-1890). By Right Rev. Phillips Brooks. Large crown Svo, c/otk, 5s. These letters of travel cover a chapter of Phillips Brooks' life that was always of the greatest delight to him, and in which are represented many of his most striking personal characteristics. They convey not only an interesting story of travel, but also evidence of that personal charm, ready wit, and genial appreciation which tJiose nearest to him loved so well. Academy. — "Those who have not had the good fortune to hear Phillips Brooks will be surprised with this glimpse of what must have been a delightful character." Spectator. — "The principal charm of the late Bishop Brooks' letters lies in their perfect unconsciousness." Speaker. — "Anyone who reads between the lines of these letters from abroad will see clearly enough that nothing in the nature of historical appeal, literary suggestiveness, or social comment was lost upon a genial observer who loved boolu and buildings only less than men and women. ' BROOKS (Right Rev. PHILLIPS)— ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. Re ligious, Literary, and Social. By the Right Rev. Phillips Brooks. Edited by the Rev. John Cotton Brooks. Crown ?,vo, cloth. 2 vols. Sold separately. Vol. I, — Religious Topics ; Vol. II. — Social and Literary. 5s. each. BROOKS (Right Rev. PHILLIPS)- THE LIFE WITH GOD. By Right Rev. Phillips Brooks. A striking Address in booklet form. Neat artistic wrapper^ 2S pages, 6d. net ; post free, 7d. Christian Worid. — It is almost overwhelming in its power, eloquence, and tender pleading. It is also essentially human, as is the religion which it sets forth. The preacher's great point is that the religious is the only natural and complete life." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 7 BROWN (CALVIN S.)— THE LATER ENGLISH DRAMA. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Calvin S. Brown. Small crown %vo, cloth, 6s. 6d. Extract from Preface. — " It is the object of this book to present in convenient and accessible form what has been done best in the English drama from the time of Goldsmith to the present. For this purpose six plays have been selected, and that the usefulness of the book might be increased, a number of notes have been added." The texts are given complete, including dedications, prefaces, prologues, and epilogues. Only one expurgation has been made, and that is indi- cated in its proper place. The six plays chosen are — BROWN (Rev. CHARLES)— THE MESSAGE OF THE GOSPEL. Sermon preached at commencement of Simultaneous London Mission. 20 pages, crown %vo. Id. ; post free, 1 Jd. ( Tracts for the Times, No. 16.) "A model Mission Address." BROWN (Rev. CHARLES)— FERME PARK MAGAZINE. Contains Sermon by Rev. Charles Brown each month. \i.; post free, IJd. ; Iwehe months, Is. 6d., post free. BROWN (RUTH MOWRY)— Something Strikingly New for the Children. THE BIBLE IN LESSON AND STORY. By Ruth Mowry Brown. Crown Svo, cloth, 5s. Forty chapters upon as many Bible truths, each chapter written in a manner that will especially interest the children. In connection with each lesson is a delightful illustrative story, together with a '* Memory Gem" and an "Occupation," in which the children are given something to do that will help impress the truths that have been taught. There is a wealth of information and suggestion about this book that will delight all who have anything to do with the training of children. It is equally adapted to junior workers, primary teachers, or for use in the home. BRYSON (Mrs.)— FRED C. ROBERTS OF TIENT- SIN ; or, For Christ and China. By Mrs. Bryson. With Preface by Rev. F. B. Meyer, B.A. With Portrait Frontispiece, Second Edition. Handsome cloth, large crown Svo, 3s. 6d. Christian.—' ' It is crowded with incident and interest." BURRELL (D. J., D.D.)— FOR CHRIST'S CROWN. And other Sermons. By David James Burrell, D.D. Crown Svo, cloth, 68. 8 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE BURRELL (D. J„ D.D.)— GOD AND THE PEOPLE. And other Sermons. By David Jambs Burrbll, D.D. Crown 8vt>, cloth, 6s. BURRELL (D. J., D.D.)— GOLDEN PASSIONAL. And other Sermons. By David James Burrell, D.D. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. BURRELL (D. J., D.D.)— THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. Thirty- seven Sermons. By David Jambs Burrell, D.D. Crown ivo, cloth, 6s. The subjects are brightly and vigorously treated. BURRELL (D. J., D.D.)- THE WONDERFUL CROSS. And other Sermons. By David Jambs Burrell, D.D. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. CAMPBELL (Rev. J. AT., D.D.)— TEACHING OF THE BOOKS. By Rev. J. M. Campbell, D.D. {See Willett & Campbell). CARPENTER (Dr. BOYD-Right Rev. Lord Bishop of Ripon)— THOUGHTS ON PRAYER. By Dr. Boyd Carpenter. Fcap. Svo, chth^ Is. 6d. Contents : Necessity of Prayer — Times Adverse to Prayer — Heartwork in Prayer— Reality of Answers to Prayer — Efficacy of Prayer, etc. Rook.— '* It deals with many important questions. Cannot but prove helpful to all who may bestow any attention upon them. We accord this volume a most hearty welcome." CARPENTER (Dr. BOYD-Right Rev. Lord Bishop of Ripon) — FOOTPRINTS OF THE SAVIOUR. By Dr. BoYD Carpenter. New Edition, with Thirteen Illus- trations, printed on Art Studio paper. Crown %vo, cloth, 8s. 6d. Chapters on places visited by our Lord : Bethlehem — Cana — Sychar — Nazareth — Capernaum— Gennesaret — Decapolis — Bethany — Gethse- niane — Calvary — Emmaus — Olivet. Expository Times. — " Great lessons from the Life of Christ grouped round the cities in which He did His mighty works, and illustrated by ^eat artists, are told here simply for simple folks. It is a new edition of a FOREMOST FAVOURITE of the sick-room or prayer-meetings." These Devotional Studies are attractively bound, and make a very hand- some and acceptable gift book. H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 9 CAWS (LUTHER W.)— THE UNRECOGNISED STRAN- GER. And other Sermons. By Luther Winter Caws. Crown Svo, neat cloth^ 3s. 6d. net ; post free, 3s. lOd. Ohrlstlan World. — " Not cast at all in the conventional sermon form, but throusfhout fre^h and suggestive, the outcome of a thoughtful, earnest, and cultured mind." Evangrelioal Magazine.—" To read them is to be held spellbound. Strong and spiritual sermons that stir and still." CHILDREN'S SERMONS AND ADDRESSES TO YOUNG PEOPLE. (See Eames, Ed- wards, Ellis, James, Learmount, Mercer, Reichel, Snell, Thomas, and Tyndall.) CLARK (Rev. R. W., D.D.)- THE CHURCH IN THY HOUSE. Daily Family Prayers, Morning and Evening, for a month. With selected Scripture Reading. By the Rev. R. W. Clark, D.D. i2mo, cloth, 28. 6d. COMMON PRAYER, BOOK OF. Revised, with some Additions. For use in Congregations of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion and other Free Churches. Cloth, Is. net ; post free. Is. 8d. Roan, Is. 6d. net; post free, Is. 8d. COOK (CHARLES, F.R.Q.S.)- ENTHRALLED! ENSNARED!! A Tale of London Life. By Charles Cook, F.R.G.S. Crown Svo, cloth, gilt lettered title. Is. 6d. ; paper wrapper. Is. COOK (CHARLES, F.R.G.S.)— THY DEVIL SHALL BE MY DEVIL. A Striking Evangelistic Address. By Charles Cook, F.R.G.S., Author of " The Prisons of the World," etc. 12 pages, narrow %vo. Id. ; by post, IJd. COSTER (Rev. Q. T.)— GLORIA CHRISTI. Verses by Rev. G. T. Coster. Crown %vo, buckram cloth, 3s. 6d. net ; post free, 3s. gd. DAVIS (Rev. J. D., D.D.)— JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA, LL.D. A Sketch of the Life of. The Runaway Boy who founded the First Christian College in Japan. By Rev. J. D. Davis, D.D. With many Illustrations. Crown %vo, cloth, 156 pages, 2s. 6d. Rev. A. T. Pierson, D.D.—" Interested and delighted me. No man or woman can read this book without a positive addition to heart-wealth." to H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE DAWSON (Rev. W. J., M.A.)— HIGHBURY QUADRANT PULPIT AND CHURCH MAGAZINE. Contains Sermon by Rev. W. J. Dawson each month. Monthly, Id. ; post free, 2d. DE KAY (CHARLES)— BIRD GODS. By Charles De Kay. With Decorations by George Wharton Edwards. 2."] t, pages, \zmo, cloth, gilt top, 7s. 6d. New York Times Saturday Review.— " . . . Its manner is very charming and its matter is fruitful in suggestion. The most successful chapters are those that show how the cuckoo, the woodpecker, and the swan have entered into European mytho- logy and given rise to such hero-gods as Cuchullaind and Pikker. It is indeed in the information gained of these and other mythical demigods of Northern Europe, and of their relations to the familiar names of classic mythology, that the interest and value of the book chiefly lie, and in this respect its interest and value are very great." *' The volume is sumptuously made. The value of the book as a work of reference is greatly enhanced by an unusually elaborate index. *' [Signed] Ernest Ingersoll." DICKIE (Rev. JOHN)— SOUTH AFRICA. Personal Experiences and Impressions, By Rev. John Dickie. Second Edition. Crown 8vOy cloth. Is. 6d. South Africa, — ** A pleasant, gossipy account of a visit to South Africa, and con- tains a number of useful hints to travellers." DIX (Rev. MORGAN, D.D.)— CHRIST AT THE DOOR OF THE HEART. And other Sermons. By the Rev. Morgan Dix, D.D., Rector of Trinity Church, New York. Crown %vo, cloth, Jf)}, pages, 33. 6d. Contents, Twenty-seven Doctrinal and Practical Sermons : i, Christ at the Door of the Heart (Advent) — 2, The Light of Evening (Close of the Year)— 3, God's Purpose Fulfilled (Epiphany) — 4, The Parable of the Catacombs (Epiphany) — 5, The Mystery of Godliness (Epiphany) — 6, Work and Labour Contrasted (Septuagesima) — 7, The Power of the Preaching of the Cross (Lent)— 8, Walking through the Wilder- ness (Lent)— 9, False Weights and False Measures (Lent) — 10, Shrink- ing from the Call of Christ (Lent) — 11, The Triumph of the Cross (Passion Sunday) — 12, The Power of His Resurrection (Easter) — 13, Self-consciousness (Easter) — 14, The Years of the Right Hand of God— 15, Idle Fears— 16, The Burden of Life — 17, Patience — 18, The Wedding Garment — 19, The Child of Promise— 20, St. Paul— 21, Life Saved, yet Lost— 22, Life Lost, yet Saved— 23, Lessons from the Desert Ways — 24, Man not a Debtor to the Flesh— 25, The Love of Christ — 26, God's never-failing Providence — 27, The Confession of St. Peter. H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE ii DOLE (CHARLES F.)- THE COMING PEOPLE. A Social and Religious Study of Life from the standpoint of the beatitude, "The meek shall inherit the earth." By Charles F. Dole, Author of ** The Theology of Civilisation." Fcap. Svo, 58. Bovton Herald. — " Is as sincere in logic as it is inspiring in cheer and hope." The Spectator devoted its leading article to this book, and said : — " This is a healthy and virile essay, which the reader will be thankFul to Mr. Dole for having given him. There are in the book the outlines of ideas of which we shall probably hear a good deal In the future, as the attempt to interpret the Christian world and the Christian spirit in terms of the modern doctrine of evolution becomes more developed." Methedist Rec«rd0r. — " It is distinctly refreshing: to read this book, written in a style quite admirable, and under the impulse of a generous and reverent spirit. This book ought to be widely read, and we are sure that he who begins the work will linish It. Mr. Dole has the insight that discerns principles, and a keen eye for facts." The Inquirer. — "Dealing with great problems, it is manly, simple^ and in- vigorating." DOLE (CHARLES F.)- THE THEOLOGY OF CIVILISA- TION. By Charles F. Dole, Author of "The Coming People,'' " The Religion of a Gentleman," etc. Fcap. Svo, 53. Contents : Introduction — The Realm of Doubt — The Moral Structure of the Universe — The World of Opposites — Thorough-going Theism — The Good God— Great Questions —Rational Optimism — ^The Be- ginnings of Personality — What Personality is — The Cost of Personality — The Religion of the Man and the Religion of the Child— The Process of CiyiUsation. The Methodist Tlmei.— " Mr. Dole's book on ' The Coming People ' was good, but this is STILU BETTER. It is an exceedingly inspiring and helpful book. It is valuable, not from a theological, but from a religious point of view._ The theologian will often revolt from Mr. Dole's views, but the religious man will pass by such passages, and gain great stimulus as he reads." The Expotitory Times " It is a new book, full of new tboughts. . It stirs new hopes within us." The Literary World.— "We have found the volume i thoughtful and stimulating: contribution to an important study of the true inward relation of the religious inquiries of our time with the fuller outlook of the modern as distinct from the medieval outlook in the realm of life and thought. It involves an earnest treatment of many great questions and not a few real difficulties that harass some true thinkers and good men and women." DOWEN (Dr. Z.)— THE IDEAL CHURCH. An Address by Dr. Z. Dowen. Crown &vo, fapir wrapper, 6d. 12 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE EAMES (Rev. JOHN, B.A.)— SERMONS TO BOYS AND GIRLS. By John Eames, B.A. With complete index to subjects and illustrative anecdotes. Crown Svo, clotk^ 3s. 6d, Sunday School Chronicle.—" These addresses display considerably more culture than the majority of sermons to young people. They have attractive titles, and the style is simple. They would, we imagine, be listened to with interest by in- telligent children." Family Churchman.— " This collection of Sermons, all of them brief, pithy, and practical, appeals to many beside the young, though from their plainness and simplicity they are specially suited to those for whom they were intended." Christian Commonwealth.—" Beautifully printed and bound. Subjects aptly chosen, interestingly handled, and the addresses abound in happy Illustration, ' ' Freeman. — " ' Sermonettes * well worthy of publication, simple, pointed, and full of apt illustration.** Christian World.—" Mr. Eames takes pains to be interesting, and uses sensible illustrations, keeping clear of questionable anecdotage." Christian Agro. — *' Many a preacher to children might well take a leaf out of Mr. Eames' Book," The Christian. — " Sermon literature for youngpeople, whether to be read directly by them, or embodied in pulpit teaching for their benefit, is a useful and growing class. Many will welcome ' Sermons to Boys and Girls,' which contains fifteen discourses, pointed and well constructed." Methodist Times.— "Examples of what children's addresses ouffht to be— simple in language, but pointed In teaching." EDWARDS (Rev. C.)— A BOX OF NAILS FOR BUSY CHRISTIAN WORKERS. Fresh Volume of Original Outlines and Bible Readings. By Rev. Charles Edwards, Chaplain to the Soldiers' Home, Winchester. With Introduction by Sydney Watson. Just ready. Thi-rd Edition^ Ninth Thousand, Crown %V0i clothi i6q pages ^ Is, 6d. Contents : Assorted Nails for Busy Workers — Strong Nails for Building Purposes — Pointed Nails for General Use — Selected Nails in Monthly Packets— Bright Nails for Active Service — Special Nails for Fixing Pictures — Numbered Nails for Willing Workers. Methodist Recorder.— "Will be time saving as giving thought a definite direction. We commend the book very heartily to Local Preachers." The Christian.—" Here are * Nails of many sorts.* The pages abound in material for evangelists and other workers, sound In substance and direct In aim." The Sunday School Chronicle.— "A little volume which has struck us even more, so living and suggestive it is, is 'A Box of Nails.' There is an unfailing point, a keen edge about these outlines, as well as a genuine and earnest spirituality. Expository Times. — *' They are jpood nails, of sterling quality, and well shaped." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 13 EDWARDS (Rev. C.)— New Book by the Author of "A Box of Nails." TIN TACKS FOR TINY FOLKS, and other Outline Addresses for Teachers, Preachers, and Christian Workers amongst the Young. By Rev. Charles Edwards. Neat doth. Crown ivo, 2s. 6d. Methodist Times.— "We are thoroughly pleased with this book. It is a mine Of thought and illustrations. He is seen to special advantage in his talks on birds." Local Preachers' Magazine.— " We could wish this handbook were placed in the hands of every preacher. Even those who shape their own outlines will find abundant helpful ideas, and just the kind to kindle thought." Sword and Trowel.—" It seems to us to be THE VERY THINa." Free Methodist. — "With such a book no preacher need fear the toil of adding to his sermon — a word to the children." Sunday School Chronicle.-" These outline addresses, simple in their divisions, apt in illustration, and telling in application, will be found full of suggestion and help to teachers and superintendents." ELLIS (J,)— TOOLS FOR THE MASTER'S WORK. Comprising 250 Sermon Outlines, Bible Studies, Children's Addresses, Sermonettes, Temperance Talks, etc., etc. Collected by J. Ellis, Editor of "The Tool Basket," etc., etc. Cloth bound. Gilt, Crown ^vo, 160 pages. Is. 6d. A difficulty is often felt by those who have to prepare a sermon or lesson at a very short notice, as to the choice of a theme. These notes and outlines have been gathered from many sources, and grouped in a convenient form, with two indexes of subjects and texts, with the hope that they may prove to be of service to the great army of Ministers, Teachers, and Christian workers. This is an Entirely New Collection of Sermon Outlines, largely contributed by bona-fide Preachers. The Methodist Times. — ** Our old friend, Mr. J. Ellis, has just issued another valuable volume, comprising over 250 Sermon Outlines, Bible Studies, Addresses and Sermonettes. Most of the Outlines are just the suggestions and hints we so often want, and leave abundant scope for the preacher's own work and thought." The Outlook. — '"Tools for the Master's Work ' should prove of great use." The Scotsman.—" A useful little book for clergymen and missionaries." The Local Preachers' Mag^azine.— " Mr. EUis seems to have excelled him- self in this volume. The best of these Outlines is that they are not mere skeletons, but suggestive thoughts, leaving plenty of room for the individuality of the speaker." The Bookman. — " The work is carefully done and will certainly prove a mine of wealth.'* The Baptist. — "The author displays great ingenuity in analysis. The divisions are simple and make free use of catch words, which will be readily remembered," The Perthshire Constitutional.—'' This is a small volume containing between two and three hundred Sermon Outlines. They are from many different pens; sometimes the same text or subject is treated in two or three different ways, so that there is ample variety. One good point about the book is that it does not say too much at a time, room is left for the individual speaker so to use the Outline as to make it his own. Another good point is the fulness of its index ; the reader can find subjects and texts at a glance." 14 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE ELLIS (J.)- WALLET FOR PREACHERS, TEACHERS, AND CHRISTIAN WORKERS. An en- tirely new series of Outlines of Addresses by J. ElLIS, compiler of The Tool Basket, etc., etc. Fcap. %vo. Is. ELLIS (JO- OUTLINES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. For Teachers, Preachers, and Christian Workers. Comprising 600 Outlines of Addresses, Bible Readings, and Sunday School Talks, together with over 250 Illustrations and Incidents. Com- piled by J. Ellis. Being " Tool Basket," " Seed Basket," "Illus- trations and Incidents" bound in one volume. Handsome linen bindings Fcap. Svo, 2b, 6d. The Christian World.— "The volumes previously issued under the titles, 'Tool Basket,' 'Seed Basket,' and 'Illustrations and Incidents,' are here conveniently bound tog:etber." The Christian,— " Here is the scaffolding: "« which to build hundreds of addresses and talks, and we are convinced that many a puzzled labourer will arise and build after consulting these suggestive pages." The Methodist Times, — "We have so frequently referred to these books in our columns that we need not do more now than wish the little volume the success it deserves. It is daintily bound, of a size convenient for the pocket, and comprises Six Hundred Outlines and Addresses, Bible Reading-s and Sunday School Talks, together -with Two Hundred and Filty Illustrations and Incidents." The Expository Times.— "Three little books— 'Tool Basket,' 'Seed Basket,' and ' Itlusirations and Incidents' — were lately published, and gladly welcomed. They were the close-packed work of a genius in this department. These three are now bound in one, and published attractively." Local Preachers' Magrazine.— '* A very treasury of help- ful, well -> arranged matter. Excellent in spirit and suggestiveness." Wesleyan S. S. Record. — "We have commended the smaller volumes as they came out each at a shilling without reserve, and now the one volume is beautifully got up for zs. 6d. It is full of wise suggestions, and dull must be the mind that is not sharpened by the facts, incidents, and outlines given in great profusion." Out and Out. — " Hundreds of hints, outlines, and illustrations are here supplied in compact and attractive form. A valuable storehouse of good things." ELLIS (JO- ILLUSTRATIONS and INCIDENTS. For Preachers, Teachers, and Christian Workers. Being a Col- lection of 250 Anecdotes and Facts, with Index of Subjects. Fifteenth Thousand. Neat cloth, Fcap %vo, Is. Methodist Recorder. — ''A choice and well-arranged collection of anecdotes marked by miicli freshness, and likely to be of service to many busy workers in providing ' windows ' for their lessons and discourses." Sunday Sohool Chronicle.—" Quite a number of the illustrations are new to us." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 15 ELLIS (JO- SEED BASKET FOR MINISTERS, SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS, AND CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOURERS. Being a collection of Three Hundred Outlines, Seed Corn, Sunday School Addresses and Band of Hope Talks. By J. Ellis, Editor of " The Tool Basket." Twentieth Thousand. Neat cloth, la. Rev. F. B. Meyer,—" Deserves its name." Hew Age.— "The work is well done." Methodist Times.-" Will find this little book of great service." Christian Commonwealth. — "A wealth of suggestion." Primitive Methodist. — " Three hundred excellent outlines." Free Methodist. — " A great deal pressed into little compass." Methodist Times.—" The ' Seed Basket ' is as good as the 'Tool Basket.' " Baptist.—" Another admirable collection of helps." Preachers' Magazine. — " Brief, bright, suggestive." a- Expository Times.— " Contains at least a year's sermons or addresses, easily made and sufiiciently worth making your own." ELLIS (JO- TOOL BASKET FOR PREACHERS. 300 Outline Addresses for Preachers, Sunday School Teachers and Open Air Workers. Being a Collection of Sermon Outlines, Pegs of Thought, Sunday School Addresses, Advice and Hints to Open-Air Workers and Temperance Advocates. Compiled by J, Ellis, Thirtieth Thousand. Strong limp doth boards^ Fcap, %vo^ Is. Rev. Mark Guy Pearse says "Admirable: the sort of thing that is invaluable to busy workers." Methodist Times. — *' Clever, suggestive, valuable, and thoroughly practical." Christian. — " Has achieved a well-merited success." Literary World. — " Really useiul." Local Preachers' Magfazine.— "This compact little book." Church Sunday School Magrazlne.— "Simple and suggestive notes.'' Family Churchman. — " Outhnes clearly and intelligibly put." Pray and Trust.— " Suggestive and pointed." Young Man.—*' A handy little volume." Jamaica Churchman.— '* A very attractive as well as useful basket." Expository Times.— "The quality Is very good and the number very great. ' * British Weekly.— " Nicely got up." EVANS (A. JOHNSON. M.A.)- A PRIMER OF FREE CHURCH HISTORY. By A. Johnson Evans, M.A. CrawnSvo, cloth, clear type, 2s. 6d. A Veteran Free-Churchman. Dr. John Clifford says :— " Mr. Johnson Evans has laid the Free Churches under a great obligation for his true story of the origin and early developments of the Free Churches of England and the United States. He knows his facts, marshals them with skill and cogency, and in a spirit of justice and charity that will commend them. The great struegle for liberty of conscience is depicted with clearness and force. The book should be read by our young Free Church people throughout the land." i6 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE A PRIMER OP PREB CHURCH HISTOR V (continued) — A Teacher of Future Pastors. Rev. G. P. Gould, M.A., says:— "I hasten to say at once that I welcome it cordially as a very able and, within its limits, satis- factory piece of work. I am struck especially with the judicial tone preserved throughout, there is a most evident desire to be most scrupulously fair all round. I trust It will have a wide circulation." A Pastor at Work. Rev. Charles Brown says '.—" I have read with very great interest and pleasure the ' Primer of Free Church History ' by Mr. Evans. It is very interesting and very fair, and eminently readable. I am delighted with It, and hope it will receive, as it certainly deserves, a very wide circulation." Sword and Trowel.—" An excellent handbook. Our young men and women ought to be taught the history of their splendid heritage. In this clear and cogent primer they will learn how irreparable is the loss of those who forsake the spiritual for the merely fashionable and formal, who leave the Church for an estab- lishment of the State." FreeChuroh Chronicle.— " Mr. Evans' aim is to interest 'the young people of all ages ' in the Evangelical Free Churches, and we think he has succeeded. The book is a useful, interesting, and opportune compendium, it can do nothing but good." Expository Times.—' ' The only offence his book can give is by its brevity. We could take much more with profit and with pleasure. It is welcome, and well done.'* The Glasgow Herald.— ''The book is in reality a very excellent short history of Nonconformity, from the great secession in the time of Henry VIII. to these latter days. The general trend of opinion throughout the world, as well as a large num- ber of local circumstances, have contributed to give a temporary activity to the Free Church Movement in England and Scotland, and a short and well-written volume like this is distinctly useful, as setting forth historically the fundamental principles on which the movement is based. Some striking parallels are suggested between the Evangelistic and Catholic methods of controversy in these days and in the seventeenth century." FAIRBAIRN (Rev. R. B., D.D.)— OF THE DOCTRINE OF Mo- rality IN RELATION TO THE GRACE OF RE- DEMPTION. By Rev. R. B. Fairbairn, D.D. CrownZvo, 68. FAULKNER (R. E.)- JOSEPH SIDNEY HILL (First Bishop in Western Equatorial Africa). By R. E. Faulkner. With an^ Introduction by the Right Rev. Bishop Stuart. IVith Three Portraits. Second Edition. Large crown %vo, 38. 6d, 0. M. Intelllg^enoer, — " To a young man the story it tells should be an inspira- tion." British Weekly. — "The strong, steadfast, kindly face that looks at you as you open this volume encourages to its perusal. And the promise of the frontispiece is amply fulfilled. Whoever wishes to make the acquaintance of an admir- able and loving: man, and to see what the Christian character in these latter days is, should read this volume." Literary World. — "This biography, well written aud full of interest, is calcu> lated to stir very mingled feelings. When Bishop Hill died at the early age of forty two, he had put into seventeen years of active ministerial life more zealous work than many a fellow -labourer has the opportunity or power, perhaps, to perform in a span far longer. Sprung from the people and apprenticed to a trade, it was a Southampton clergyman who recognised in the lad, John Hill, qualities that had Sromise, Hill was of the stuiff that (tathers strenjrth by difficulties. 'he Church militant lost a son she could ill spare in John Sidney Hill." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 17 JOSEPH SIDNEY HILL (continued)— India's Women. — "Apart from Us interest to all lovers of missionary work, the story oi Bishop Hill is so full of stirrtngf scenes and lively anecdotes as to com- pel the atten'ion of the most casual reader." Presbyterian. — " The perusal of it leaves the heart richer and better for having become acquainted with such a noble life." Student Volunteer. — "We welcome this simple record of his Christ-like, unsel- fish, and deeply sympathetic life." Otago Workman. — "The simple story of an earnest life devoted to the noblest of callings and ending amid a halo of glory, reflecting a lustre on his whole previous career, and told in an unaffected manner by a discreet observer." Forward. — "The chapters describing the Bishop's work amongst youug men in New Zealand are specially interesting and instructive to young men." Ohurch Missionary Gleaner. — "We wish specially and earnestly to recommend the Memoirs of Bishop Hill. It is just the book to ffive away, particularly to young men and boys." Expository Times. — " Another missionary biography, and a good one." Church Bells. — "The book should be read as an account of modern missions iu some aspects, and also by any who are disposed to despair of humanity and to be- lieve that the ages of heroism are passed away. This record will revive faith and restore hope in men and women, and is incidentally a strong piece of evidence in favour of the truth of the eternal gospel of the Son of God." FORD (JOHN D., U.S.N.)— AN AMERICAN CRUISER IN THE EAST. By Chief Engineer John D. Ford, U.S.N. (Fleet Engineer, Pacific Station), who was with Admiral Dewey at Manila. Second Edition, including Battles of Cavite and Manila, ■with complele Index. One vol., l2mo, 536 pages, cloth, fully illustrated, 12b. Describes in a simple and entertaining manner a cruiser's voyage to the Aleutian Islands, China, Korea, Japan, and the Philippines, with nu- merous photographic Illustrations and Maps, with accounts of life on an American warship, of the battles of the Yalu, of Cavite, and of Manila, and with map of the famous sea fight, drawn by a participant. Army and Navy Journal. — " A straightforward and agreeable story, and a valu- able as well as an entertaining book, and beautifully and abundantly illustrated." The Outlook. — '* A very entertaining volume : contains not only lively sketches of manners, places and institutions, but political and geographical information." The Nation.- -"An excellent book of travels. . . . There is a freshness in the relation and a cleverness of study and observation which make the narrative interest- ing and superior to the superficial tales of the ordinary globe-trotter." FORSYTH (Rev. Dr. P. T., M.A.)— THE HAPPY WARRIOR. By Rev. Dr. Forsyth, M.A. A Sermon preached as a Memorial Sermon upon the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone. Crown %vo, 32 pages, 3d. ; post free, SJd. A fine inspiring address to young people. . . „ British Weekly.—" The sermon is suggestive, bold, and warmly appreciative. Methodist Times.— "A masterly memorial sermon." FRUIT (JOHN PHELPS)— THE MIND AND ART OF POE'S POETRY. By John Phblps Fruit, Professor of Enghsh Language and Literature. Large crown Svo, cloth, 58. B i8 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE QANT (F. T., F.R.C.S.)— FROM OUR DEAD SELVES TO HIGHER THINGS. By F. T. Gant, F.R.C.S. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. A capital book for young men and women. Literary World.—*' The argument is illustrated by character sketches that are evidemly portraits from life," The Guardian. — "The author uses his technical knowledge and experience of human nature to a very good purpose. . , . In a series of very powerful de- scriptions, no reader can fail to be impressed by a sense of the misery and bondage of sin, or fail to be helped by the hopeful possibilities of the soul's awakening." Church Review. — " In the diagnosis of sin, this book has some value for the clergy ; especially with regard to the sins of the flesh, of which the observant medi- cal man may give a valuable diagnosis. This is especially true in the book before us. The terrible simultaneous degradation of body and soul is powerfully, but we fear accurately, described." Christian. — " The works of the flesh and the lusts of sense are analysed with masterly skill, and the ' higher things ' are described in a manner which rends the veil of Agnosticism in twain from the top to the bottom." QIBBON (Rev. J. MORQAN)— THE PULPIT. A Sermon and Address to the Children. By Rev. J. M. Gibbon. Issued Monthly. Id. Post free, IJd. ; or 12 months, Is. 6d. Bound Volumes may be had as under : — TWELVE SERMONS by Rev. J. M. Gibbon, selected from the monthly issues prior to 1899. Fcap. %vo, cloth. Is. 6d. ; post free. Is 9d. VOLUMES FOR 1901, 1900, & 1899. Twelve different Sermons and Children's Addresses by Rev. J. M. GiBBON in each volume. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, Is. 6d. each, QIBBON (Rev. J. MORQAN)— THE FOUR LAST THINGS. Four Sermons on Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven, by Rev. J. M. Gibbon. Neat clothe la. net ; post free ^ Is. 2d, Methodist Times. — "Lucid, fresh, and thoughtful sermons." Christian. — " In ' Four Last Things ' subjects of sublime and great import are discussed, not always in terms which we approve, nor to conclusions which we en- dorse, but uniformly, with reverence, and often helpfully." Sunday School Chronicle. — " Worthy of careful reading." Primitive Methodist.—" There is a vigour and freshness of thought that is captivating." QRAY (Rev. Dr. QEO. Z.)— THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF RECOGNITION IN THE WORLD TO COME. By Rev. Geo. Z. Gray, D.D. A book for the Bereaved. Fifth Edition. Neat cloth, 3s. QREV (Rev. J. TEMPERLEY)— A VILLAGE APOSTLE, AND OTHER POEMS. By Rev. J. Temperley Grby, Crown &V0, 2s. 6d. H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 19 GREER (Rev. DAVID H., D.D.)— FROM THINGS TO GOD. Twenty one Sermons by Rev. David H. Grber, D.D., Rector of St. Bartholomew's Church, New York. Crown %vo, cloth, 6s. HABBERTON (JOHN)- HELEN'S BABIES. By John Habber- TON. idmo, clcth. Is. A neat presentation of this Iiealtliy and humorous tale of child-life. HALL (HARRIET M. M. [Mrs. Dr. NEWMAN HALL])- VOICES, AND OTHER POEMS. Square i6mo, artistic binding, bevelled boards, gilt edges, 2s. 6d. net. HALLAM (Rev. FRANK)— THE BREATH OF GOD. A Sketch Historical, Critical, and Logical of the Doctrine of Inspiration. Crown %vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. An able and well expressed summary of the results of the higher criticism on the Bible. HALSEY (Rev. J.)- THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH. Twenty- one Sermons by Rev. Joseph Halsey. Crown ivo, neat cloth, 5s. The contents of this vigorous volume of sermons are as uniJer : — The Spirit of Trath — Ave Imperator 1 — The Ministry of the Cloud — The Foolishness of God — The Readiness of True Consecration — A Mis- interpreted Verse and a Misapprehended God— A Cry from the Dust — Fishers of Men — The Fall of Jericho : Ancient and Modern — The Abundant Entrance — Divine Arrests in Service — The Reiterated Mes- sage and the Twofold Hearing — Social Contrasts — Jephthah ; or, Heredity's Victim and Time's Revenges — The Outcasts' Christ — Reticence not Indifference — Authority in Religion — 'The Comedy of the Calf — An Old Question with a New Answer— The Closed Book and the Rent Veil — The Many Voices and the One Message. Christian World.—" Many readers of Mr. Halsey's ' Beauty of the Lord ' hoped to see more from his pen . . . Here is the second series as filled with actuality and sanctified with common sense as its predecessor." New Agfe. — ** It is a positive relief to come across something one can sturdily dis- agree with. Mr. Halsey is only wrong now and then, he is right in the main, and he puts his thoughts in a bright stimulating way, which gives to his book a great attractiveness." Clergyman's Magazine.—*' His style and mode of thinking are refreshing: buyers of sermons will spend their money wisely when they add this to their list." South London Press. — " His views are expressed with remarkable lucidity, force, and courage." Bradford Observer.— " Original In the best sense, they are the genuine utterances of a true man's mind and conscience, full of straight thinking and strong conviction, earnest and eloquent." Clergyman's Magazine.—" A fresh and breezy book of sermons." Liverpool Dally Poet.—" Is fearlessly outspoken." 20 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE HANDLEY (Rev. S. B.)— WHAT ENGLAND OWES TO THE PURITANS. By Rev. S. B. Handley. Crown Sz/o, l^pages^ 6d. net ; post free^ 7d. Herts Congregational Magazine.— "Mr. Handley sums up his case, io the course of which he has marshalled an enormous number of facts in orderly, interest- ing, and compact array, by saying that now he trusts it is evident that England owes to the Puritans ' our ordered freedom and power of public opmion, our English Sabbath, and our English home.' We think he has abundantly proved his case, and to all who wish for an invigorating tonic in small compass for their Free Church faith we say, buy this well-informed little booklet.*' Sword and Trowel. -" We finished the perusal of these pages with the assurance of a lifetime confirmed, that 'our fathers were high-minded men.' The Protestants of to-day are in danger of forgetting their Pnritan ancestry and the tremendous sacrifices which were made on behalf of civil and religious liberty, and the cause of God and truth. The Free Church Federation would do real service by scattering his little work, broadcast over the land. The Nonconformist memory, like its con- science, needs stirring up; this little historical and descriptive work is admirably adapted for this purpose." HARRIS (READER, K.C.)— MEN'S SINS. An Address to Men only. By Reader Harris, K.C. Second Edition. One Penny. Arranged to go into a court-shape envelope. A trenchant, plain, and outspoken statement on social purity. HERBERT (Rev. C.)— WHEREFORE, O GOD ? A Modern Esdras. By Rev. Charles Herbert. Ornamental wrapper^ narrow Svo, 6d. net ; post free^ 7d. Christian World, — "Man's labour, his sin and suffering, the mysteries of faith, of prayer, and of the Divine sacrifice come successively under review. The booklet is attractively written. Should be helpful to those on whom 'the riddle of the world ' weighs heavily." Coulson Kernahan. — " Very many thanks for so kindly sending me a copy. My opinion of the book it.<;elf you already know, and I like it even better now that I have read It again In cold print. I hope it will be a huge success. I must congratulate you on the get up. Mr. Allenson has produced it admirably. The cover design could hardly be improved upon." Rev. F. A. Prlngr, Vicar of St. Luke's, Deptford, "begs for permission to serialise It in his local magazine, as it is so helpful for the needs of his district." Prof. Whitehouse, Cheshunt College.—" The earlier chapters are very suggestive and show that you have been thinking ardently on the deepest themes." Rev. J. H. Stanley, Great Baddow, Chelmsford.— " A valuable little book. The Soints raised are of the first importance, the solutions offered are tersely and eautlfully expressed. I very earnestly commend the book, especially to young men. " Rev, H, H. Oarllsle, M.A.— " Much pleased with it. Suggestive and timely, and likely to prove useful to thoughtful men. I shall put it into the hands of some I know to be perplexed about the mysteries." Literary World,— The author deals in a clever and very striking way with some real rellgrious difficulties. There is much that is helpful and stimulating is these colloquies," H. R. ALLENSON^S CATALOGUE 21 HERRON (Rev. Q. D.. D. DO- SOCIAL MEANINGS OF Re- ligious EXPERIENCES. By Rev. Prof. G. D. Herron, D.D. C^own Svo, dotk, 3b. 6d. New Age (full page review). — "Dr. Herron is a fearless preacher of righteousness. The note struck is sufficiently evident from the title of the book." Review of Reviews (full page review).— "Mazzini does not lack disciples, but Professor Herron, of Grinnell University, perhaps has grasped more thoroughly than any one else the inner meaning of his message. ' Social Meanings ' is a, book well worth reading." HERRON (Rev. Q. D., D.D.)— BETWEEN C/ESAR AND JESUS. Eight Lectures on the Relation of the Christian Conscience to the Existing Social System. By Rev. Prof. George D. Herron, D. D. Crown 8w, c/otA, 3s, 6d. Literary World.— "Dr. Herron is familiar to many thoughtful people in this country as a very earnest exponent and advocate of certain concepCions of the social and political claims of the Gospel of Christ, From first to last Dr. Herron writes with intense resolution, and with a fine, pure passion full of the enthusiasm of humanity, and with the adoration of Christ. The final chapter teems with noble and suggestive thoughts, which should be pondered earnestly by intelligent Chris- tian men in England and America." HERRON (Rev. Q. D., D.D.)— THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. By Rev. Prof. G. D. Herron, D.D. With Introduction by Dr. Charles A. Berry (Chairman of the Congregational Union). Crown %V0i clothe 3s. 6d. Christian World. — " Never in our day have we had the moral foundations and spiritual law of a Christian Society preached with such prophetic fervour and power as in this volume." HERRON (Rev. Q. D., D.D.)— THE CHRISTIAN STATE. A Politi- cal Vision of Christ. By Rev. Prof. G. D. Herron, D.D. Crown Svo, clothe 3s, 6d. New York Critic. — *'Dr. Herron is a man of power. He writes with immense enthusiasm and fine culture. Dr. Herron, like a prophet — a speaker of God, that be is— does not argue ; he appeals to one's moral nature ; he pleads, he com- mands." HERRON (Rev. 0. D., D.D.)— THE NEW REDEiVIPTION. A Call to the Church to reconstruct Society according to the Gospel of Christ. By Rev. Prof. G. D. Herron, D.D. Sixth Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth, 38. 6d. Amerloan independent.— "A book to be read and pondered." 22 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE HOLDEN (CLARA M.)- THE WARFARE OF GIRLHOOD. A Series of Bright Papers for Girls. By Mrs. Robertson Lawson. Handsomely bound, crown %vo, Is. 6d. Ohrletlan World. — "The tone throughout is inspiring and practicaL" HORNE (Rev. C. SILVESTER, M.A.)- PRIMER OF CHURCH FELLOW- SHIP. By Rev. C. Silvester Horne, M.A, {See under Rev. William Pierce. ) HORNE (Rev. C. SILVESTER, M.A.)- THE SPIRIT OF DIVES. An In- dictraent of Indifference. A Sermon to Young Men and Women. By Rev. C. Silvester Horne, M.A. Id. ; post free, IJd. {Tracts for the Times, No. i.) Literary World. — "An earnest sermon marlced by frankness and wisdom." HORNE (Rev. C. SILVESTER, M.A.)— THE SOBRIETY OF HOPE. In Praise of Optimism. A Sermon by Rev. C. Silvester Horne, M.A. Id.; post free, IJd. {Tracts for the Times, No. 6.) HORNE (Rev. C. SILVESTER, M.A.)— THE LIFE THAT IS EASY. A Course of Ten Sermons on the Christian Life to a Weeknight Congregation. By Rev. C. Silvester Horne, M.A. Crovm %vOt doth, 2s. This volume of sermons would make an acceptable gift to any one halting on the threshold of decision for Christ. The Contents of this vigorous and freshly- writ ten exposition of the Christian Life are as follovirs : — The Goal of Life — Fulness of Growth — The Mystery of Godliness — The Life that is Easy — Voices that Call to Life —The Master of Life— The Return to Self— Healing Health— The Power of Personality — Stability of Character — Means of Grace. Presbyterian. — "The chapters are brief and very readable. Mr, Home has given us a brilliant presentation of the Christian Life." Christian Commonwealth.—" His style is remarkably like that of Dr. Culross, we could hardly pay him a higher compliment. Every page contains some original thought. The sentiment is purely evangelical." Literary World.— '' It is impossibletoavoid the impression that this young preacher has a message for the human conscience and Heart. His manner of treat- ment is strenuous and intense. Is certain to be read and pondered by thoughtful young men and women." Independent.—" It is a vitalising', cheering:, encouraging, helpful volume." Methodist Times. — " No one can read these pages without spiritual profit." British Weekly.—" This suggestive volume of sermons." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 23 HORWILL (Rev. H. W., M.A.)— WANTED— AN ENGLISH BIBLE. By Rev. H. W. Horwill, M.A. 2d. ; post free, 3Jd. An Essay reprinted from The Contemporary Review by special per- mission of the Editor. (Tracts for the Times, No. II.) HORWILL (Rev. H. W.,'M.A.)- FOUNDATIONS. A Sermon by Rev. H. W. Horwill, M.A. \i..; post free, IJd. (Tracts for the Times, No. 7.) A fine and inspiring appeal to young people to build on Christ. HORWILL (Rev. H. W., M.A.)- LIGHT AND LEADING. Vols. I. and II. (6>i? under " Light and Leading. ") JAMES (Rev. Q. HOWARD)— TALKS TO YOUNG FOLK. Seven- teen Addresses to Children. By Rev. G. Howard James. With Index of Subjects and Anecdotes. Crown 8vo, handsome cloth, 23. 6d. Contents: "Greedy Dogs" — Truth Telling — How to Conquer Evil — Steadfastness — Good Words — Evil Words — A Lad who Helped Jesus —A Little Slave Girl— " For the Prize "—The Three "Phones"— Prayers that are not Heard — A Little Word of Great Meaning, "Amen" — What the Old Year says— The Snow: Its Wonders and its Service — The Snow : Its Might and its Parable — Jewels — A Child in the Pulpit. Baptist MagrazlnOi — " Mr. James has the happy knaclc of interesting." The British WeelJly.— " A volume of simple sermons for children." Expository Times.—" Here are comradeship with the little ones, unabashed pro- fusion of good story, unforgetable lesson I '* Christian Commonwealth. — " L'hese talks are full of sound teaching, in simple homely language, enforced by telling Illustration," JOHNSTON (WILLIAM A.)— HISTORY UP-TO-DATE. A Concise Account of the War of 1898 between the United States and Spain; Its Causes and the Treaty of Paris. By William A. Johnston. With Sixteen Photographic Illustrations and Portraits. Crown %vo, cloth, 6s. Dally Mall.—" A rather good account." Manohester Cuardlan,— " Brevity, accuracy, and impartiality." 24 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE JONES (NEWTON)— THE CAPTAIN ON THE BRIDGE. And other Addresses to Children. By Newton Jones, Evan- gelist of the Sunday School Union. Illustrated with numerous Diagrams. Small 4^0, strong cloth, 23. 6d. net ; post free, 28. 9d. Rev. Thomas Spurireon " A very helpful and suggestive book." JOWETT (Rev. J. H., M.A.)- THE DUTY OF BEING YOUNG. An Address to Young People. By the Rev. J H. JowETT, M.A. li.; post free, IJd. (Tracts for the Times, No. 4.) KEPHART (Rev. J. C, M.A.)— CHART OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF CHRIST. Sixteen pages of Letterpress and Coloured Chart printed on strong bond paper, all neatly folded into a handy book for the pocket. Cloth limp, 2s. 6d. Most valuable accompaniment to the Gospels. Shows at a glance the events of our Lord's Life by a coloured Diagram and a Harmony of the Four Gospels. American Sunday School Times.—" There are evidences of great care. Mr, Kephart's book will be very uselul." KILBY (HENRY)- TRIPS TO ALGERIA, HOLLAND, NORTH CAPE, HAMBURG AND LUBECK, THE HIGHLANDS, ITALY, THE NORTH SEA, POMPEII, THE UNITED STATES, AND CANADA. By Henry KiLBY. Illustrated. 132 pages. Demy 8vo, pictured boards. Is. Chatty descriptions of visits to many interesting places, LAWSON (Rev. W. ELSWORTH)— HEROIC ENDEAVOUR. A Word of Hope to Young Men. By Rev. W. Elsworth Lawson. Two Addresses to Young Men, one a New Year's Address. Neat enamel wrapper, 6d. Youngr Man. — " Of this book we may confidently say that it is one of great merit. U is able, strong, and full of suggestion." Christian World " An earnest sermon thoughtfully put together." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 25 LEARMOUNT (Rev. JAMES)— A New and Handsome Volume of Addresses to Children. FIFTY " TWO ADDRESSES TO YOUNG FOLK. By Rev. James Learmount. Neat ciotk, crown Sz/o, 3s. 6d, The great difference in the ^reatment of children to-day and of the earlier years of this century is continually being made evident by the forthcoming of various volumes that are especially interesting to the caretakers of the young. Mr. Lear- mount's volume is the latest to appear, and from its abundance of happily chosen illustration and fund of anecdote should prove of much use to the busy preacher or teacher in search of material to enlighten his own addresses. The volume, too, is abundantly suited to the actual reading aloud to small or greater gatherings of children, either in the family circle or class-room. A glance at the contents of the volume will readily show that Mr. Learmount has beaten a path for himself, and as his subjects are fresh* so is his treatment of them. A particularly strong feature of the illustrations is that very many of them are drawn from the realm of science, and in Mr. Learmount's hands^ make a fascinating addition to the aids for speakers. The volume is further fur- nished with a comprehensive index. Many of these Addresses have already seen the light in the pages of The Independent^ and it is largely on account of the many requests up and down the country from its readers, beside applications from those who have had the advantage of hearing them spoken, that this volume has been put forward with every confidence of being made heartily welcome. Thefifty-twosubjectsof Mr. Learmount's volume are:— I, Living Rainbows — 2, TalkinjEj Sunbeams — 3, The Cosmetic of Love — 4, Castles in the Air — 5, Pneumatic Lives — 6, The Angel's Sin — 7, An Immortal Heart — 8, Glorified Dust — 9, Carpe Diem — 10, Human Lamps — 1 1, A Human Menagerie — 12, Bells on the Toes — 13, Honour Bright — 14, Nemesis 15, Real British Lions— 16, Chameleon Lives — 17, Clairvoyance— 18, Mesmerism — 19, A Walk in Fairyland — 20, Talking in Colours — 21, Sunny Lives — 22, Little Parasites — 23, Life's Chloroform — 24, Fairies — 25, Automatic Goodness — 26, Growing Wings — 27, Try, Try, Try Again — 28, Children's Corners — 29, Pace Makers— 30, Armoured Cruisers — 31, Uglification — 32, Human Klondikes — 33, Alive Inside— 34, Growing — 35, The Third Finger — 36, Moving Suns— 37, Duty — 38, Cats — 39, Dogs — 40, Ladies and Gentlemen — 41, Soldiers — 42, An Iron Dress — 43, Contentment — ^44, Sermons in Stones — 45, Hobby- Horses — 46, A Legend's Lesson — 47, The Living Microphone — 48, A Powerful Lever — 49, Christmas Toys— 50, Heaven's Christmas Lights — 51, Robin Redbreast — 52, Treasures of Memory — Index of Anec- dotes and Illustrations. The Examiner. — " The addresses are all rich in fresh and apt illustrations from science and legend, from literature and human life, and among all these there is not one " chestnut 1" Ministers and others who have to speak to young folk should look into this volume." ^ , . , The Pilot.— " Abundance of short and telhng anecdotes, the value of which teachers will not be slow to recognise." LEE (WM. E., M.R.C.S.E.)— HUMAN BODY, THE, AND HOW TO TAKE CARE OF IT. A Tract for the People. An Address delivered to the Fulham Y.M.C.A. By Wm. E. Lee, M.R.C.S.E. Crown Sva, 22 pages, 8d. ; post free 2Jd. Christian.— " An admirable tract." 26 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE LEWIS (Rev. F. WARBURTON, B.A.)- THE UNSEEN LIFE. By Rev. F. Warburton Lewis, B.A. Crown &vo, 2s. %i. Hew Agre.— " Marked by thoughtfulness, spirituality, and that quality which our fathers called uaction." LIGHT AND LEADING. For Minis- ters, Sunday School Superintendents and Teachers, Local Preachers and Bible Students. Vols. I. and II. edited by Rev. H. W. HoRWiLL, M.A. Vol. III. edited by Rev. G. Currie Martin, M.A., B.D., Reigate. Small /^to size. Vol. I., Zi,6i.; Vol. II., 3s. ; Vol. III., 3s. 6d. The object of * ' Light and Leading " is to brine, as far as possible, the resnlts of Modern Biblical Scholarship and research within the reach of readers who do not know Greek or Hebrew, and to promote in general the Reverent and Scientific Study of the Scriptures, free from strained interpretation and theo- logical bias. To supply practical hints respecting Preaching and Public Speak- ing for the help of beginners. To give Self-taught Students, especially in the department of sacred science, practical advice respecting the choice of books, methods of study, etc. The Features include Biblical Exposition ; Articles on Methods of Teaching and Study; Summaries of important Books, especially on Biblical and Educational Subjects ; Helps for Preachers and Speakers, etc. McKAY (Rev. Q. P.)— New Book on "The Last Things." IMMORTALITY ON GOD'S TERMS : Endless Life in Christ the Lord. By the Rev. George P. McKay. Fcap. %vo^ cloth, la. Llg*}!! and Leading'. — *' Fitted to provoke reflection and inquiry regarding a ques- tion of great importance. The writer entertains strong convictions, and offers excellent reasons for doing so. We can conceive of nothing in so small a compass, which could deal more incisively and comprehensively with the subject of * Conditional Immor' tality' than this booklet does." The Christian.—" Deeply solemn questions considered with befitting reverence." Rev. J. Morg'an Gibbon.—" A brave and timely utterance." Rev. 0. 0. Whitehouse, M.A., Cheshunt College.—" An interesting and sug- gestive book. I agree in the main with its conclusions, which are those of Dale and Edward White." Sir G. G. Stokes, Bart., LL.D., D.O.L., F.R.S.— " I quite agree with the author. For the last 30 years 1 have lived in the beUef that this is the truth, and from time to time have been struck with the wonderful way in which the doctrine dove-tails into the whole system of the Christian Faith." Rev. George Dana Boardman, D.D,, New York.— " I like it for the truth of its doctrine, the fidelity of its exegesis, the clearness of its statements, and the homage it gives to the bestower of immortality." MACKINNON (Colonel W. C.)- SAADI SHIRAZI, A FEW FLOWERS FROM THE GARDEN OF. Translations into English Verse of portions of THE BUSTAN. By Col. W. C. Mackinnon. Second and revised edition, 3s. net ; post free, 3s. 3d, H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 27 MACLAREN (Rev. ALEXANDER, D. DO- SERMONS PREACHED IN MAN- CHESTER. By Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D. Second and Third Seriesy Fcap, Svo, 38. 6d. eac/i* By arrangement with the publishers of these valuable books of the eminent Manchester preacher, Mr. AUenson has much pleasure in drawing attention to this important addition to his catalogue, and the very favourable reduction of is. on the published price of each of these books, which lon^ since earned a first place among sermon literature, and even in comparison with the later work of Dr. Maclaren have never been excelled. MANN (Rev. CAMERON)— COMMENTS AT THE CROSS. Six Lent Sermons. By the Rev. Cameron Mann, Rector of Grace Church, Kansas City, U.S.A. Crown %vo, cloth, 8a. 6d. Contents : i, The Comment of Indifference — 2, of Hatred — 3, of Despair — 4, of Faith — s, of Superstition — 6, of Thought — Appendix — The Com- ment of Love. From the Preface.— "As far as I know, this is the first attempt to group together and treat as a whole the sayings of those who watched at the cruci^xion." MARRIAGE SERVICE ACCORD- ING TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Printed in Red and Black, with presentation fly-leaf for name of the parties marrying. In two styles, neat artistic cloth, gilt edges, 6d. ; paper, gilt edges, 3d. Postage, jd. extra, MARTIN (Rev. 0. CURRIE, M.A., B.D.)— A CATECHISM ON THE TEACH- ING OF JESUS. By Rev. G. Currie Martin, M.A., B.D. For use in Schools and Bible Classes. 16 pages, stout wrapper, clear type. Id. ; cloth, 2d. Post free, 2Jd. About God— Himself— The Holy Spirit— Prayer and Worship— The King- dom of God — Our Duty — Discipleship — Sin — His Own Death— His Resurrection and Second Coming — His Mission. The answers are entirely in the words of Scripture (Revised Version). Rev. Dr. ClifTord says : — " This Catechism is one of the best I have seen. The questions are most skilfully arranged, and the answers are apt and effective. A better catechetical guide for the young in acquiring a knowledge of the teach- ing of Jesus I cannot imagine." Profeesor W. F. Adeney says ;— " I hope indeed it may be of good service. What a grand total of teaching.' ' Rev. Alfred Rowland says:— "I lilce your Catechism; I hope it may have a large circulation. The idea of stating essential Christian truths in the very words of the Founder of the Christian Religion is not only excellent in itself, but is well carried out.'* MARTIN (Rev. Q. CURRIE, M.A., B.D.)- SERMONS TO CHILDREN ON MOTTOES OF GREAT FAMILIES. Crown %vo, cloth, 3s. 6d, 28 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE MARTIN (Rev. Q. CURRIE, M.A., B.D.)— LIGHT AND LEADING. Vol. 3. See under " Light and Leading." MEN, BOOKS FOR YOUNG. {See under Phillips Brooks, Bryson, Davis, Faulkner, Gant, Lawson, Phillips.) MERCER (Rev. HENRY F.)- BREAD FOR THE BAIRNS. Outline Addresses to Children. By the Rev. Henry F. Mercer. Royal l6mo, papery Is. net', doth, 3s. net. Interleaved for notes. Sunday School Chronicle.—" From the letters I receive there is an undoubted need for works of this sort, and I would counsel Christian workers to add this book to their stores. The addresses are brief outlines built up about a blackboard plan. The teaching is direct, strong, and true." Scotsman. — "Simple and ingeniously devised religious lessons for children. It should prove helpful to ministers and Sunday School teachers." MILLEDQE (Rev. SYDNEY)- SNAP SHOTS FROM THE STUDY. By the Rev. Sydney Milledge. Sq. \(smo, cloth, limp, ].s. Twelve volumes of these simple Gospel messages to boys and girls are now ready. "Snap Shots from the Study" is published weekly, price, Jd. Sent post free monthly, one copy for 6 months. Is. 9d. Two copies, 28. lOd. MILLS (B. FAY)- GOD'S WORLD AND OTHER SERMONS. Fifteen Representative Sermons. By B. Fay Mills. Crown Svo, cloth, 5s. Literary World.— " Deserves attention as revealing something of the style and teaching of this very successful American evangelist. The appeals are driven home with many illustrations and incidents from Mr. Mills' own personal experience." Expository Times. - " As inspiration, as electric spark, in short as sermons, they are everything." Inillan Church Quarterly.— " Brimful of telling anecdote and apt illustration. Most telling and pointed appeals." MISSIONARY LIFE AND WORK (see Bryson's "Roberts of Tientsin" (China); Davis's "Joseph Hardy Neesima " (Japan); Faulkner's "Joseph Sidney Hill" (New Zealand and W. E. Africa); Phillip's " Christian Chivalry " ; Pierces "Dominion of Christ" ; Brock's "Sidney Roberts Webb" (Congo). H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 29 Brighten the Children's Sunday. MISSIONARY LOTTO. Consisting of Questions and Answers chiefly on the work of The London Missionary Society, arranged to instruct and entertain. It is an admirable means of communicating information, and provides something quite fresh which may be used on Sunday with the young people. In box. Is. net ; post free, Is. 3d. MONOD (WILFRID)— HE SUFFERED; or Human Suffering Interpreted by Jesus Christ. Six Meditations for Holy Week. By Wilfrid Monod. Royal idmo, 2s. MORGAN (Rev. Q. CAMPBELL)— NEW COURT PULPIT. Issued Month ly. Contains Sermons and Notes by this popular preacher. Id. ; post free, 2d. Twelve Sample Nos., post free, Is. 3d. MORISON (JOHN, D.D.) — COUNSELS TO A NEWLY-WED- DED PAIR. A Companion to the Honeymoon, and a Remem- brancer for Life. By the late Dr. John Morison. Handsomely bound in light ribbed cloth, neatly ornamented in gold, gilt edges, 28. 6d. Thirty-second thousand.^ An old favourite as a wedding present. NEEDHAM (E. S.)— AN IMAGINARY SYMPOSIUM. Criticising Scepticism and Agnosticism. Crown Svo, clothe 28. 6d. Literary World. — *' This is a very sprightly little hook, not only entertaining but suggestive." NEW ORTHODOXY, THE. Biblical, Theological, and Literary Articles aiding in the Reconstruction of the Christian Beliefs. Vols. I. and II., %vo, la. 6&. each. Edited by Rev. Robert Tuck, B.A. NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK. A New and Revised Critical Edition based on the Texts of Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, and Weiss, with Marginal References and Footnotes. This 18 the Edition published by the Wurtemburg Bible Society. Strongly bound in limp leather, tape sewn, gilt edges, round corners, Ss. 6d. Strongly bound in semi-limp cloth boards, sprinkled edges, round comers, 2s. 6d. This Greek Testament can also be had in ten parts, each bound strongly in limp cloth, suitable for the breast pocket, at 6d. each, postage Id. extra. 30 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE NONCONFORMIST MINISTER'S ORDINAL, THE. A fresh setting of the Preachers* Services for Baptismal, Marriage, and Funeral Services. Large Type. Fcap. %vOi neat cloth^ Is. net ; dark red cloth, gilt lettered. Is. 3d. net ; black buckram, gilt lettered^ very strong. Is. 6d. net ; Turkey morocco, gilt edges and gilt lettered^ 3s. 9d. net ; postage^ 2d. each extra. This book will go comfortably into a breast pocket. Presbyterian.— "Judicious and devout." Literary World. — "A work many Nonconformist ministers will be glad to know of and to possess. It is a handily and tastefully presented book; as convenient in size, type, and binding as could well be." Evansrellcal Mag^azlne. — " Will no doubt prove most valuable to the young minis- ter, who on leaving college needs some such guide." Primitive Methodist.— ''When this ordinal is known we predict that it will he largely used." NORTON (Rev. JOHN N., D.D.)- OLD PATHS. Fifty-two Sermons. By Rev. John N. Norton, D.D. A Course of Sermons for the Church's Year. Illustrated with numerous useful and telling anecdotes. Large crown Svo, 6b. OUTLINE SERMONETTES ON GOLDEN TEXTS. Forty-seven topics by- Rev. Prof. W. F. Adeney, Rev. R. C. Ford, M.A. M.A. Rev. A. R. Henderson, M.A. Rev. W. J. Allan, M.A., B.D. Rev. G. Currie Martin, M.A., Rev. W. Armstrong. B.D., Rev. W. W. D. Campbell, Rev. Sydney Milledge, M.A., M.A. and Rev. John Eames, B.A. Rev. E. Pearce Powell, M.A. Rev. Hugh Elder, M.A. Reprinted from ' ' Light and Leading,^' vol 3. Fcap, Svo, cloth, Is. PALMER (Rev. E. REEVES, M.A.)- A Theology for the Twentieth Century. CHRIST, THE SUBSTITUTE. A Series of Studies in Christian Doctrine, based upon the Conception of God's Universal Fatherhood. By Rev. E. Reeves Palmer, M. A., Author of " The Development of Revelation." Crown Svo, cloth, 418 pages, 7s. 6d. In this work the Author, from the starting point of the Universal Fatherhood, elaborates a system of Theology in which various doctrines — as Substitution, For- giveness, Justification, Election, etc. — are presented in a manner hitherto unrecog- nised. N.B. — The Author's former work, "The Development of Revelation,' was highly appreciated by the late Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 31 PALMER (JOSEPH)— THE GOSPEL PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTION. By Joseph Palmer. Crown Sm, clotky 400 pageSj 6s. Spectator. — | ' * The Gospel Problems and their Solution ' proceeds on the theory that the Synoptic Gospels are the record of our Lord's utterances in Aramaic, while St. John gives those that were spoken in Greek. It is an elaborate piece of work, from which, whether he accepts its theory or no, the student can scarcely sail to learn much.*' Unitarian Bible Mag^azlne.— " We have no hesitation in pronouncing this to be a most interesting volume. Not that we regard it as in any sense final. But it lays open before us in an honest and genuine manner, and very methodically too, the result of much thoughtful, laborious study made by one who has worked his way out of a narrow circle into a position of independent inquiry, and shows a rare and valu- able clearness in the statement of every difficulty." " The comparison of parallel passages in the Gospels our author makes is most suggestive. The use he makes of the hints supplied to students by the newly un- buried papyrus fragments of Jesus' sayings ; the careful collection of word differences that show the Greek complexion of John's Gospel ; these, and many other points will make the book of some value to those who can catch an impulse to fresh enquiry, without being obliged blindly to adopt conclusions." Glasg'ow Herald.—*' Mr. Palmer, in a style whichitisa real pleasure to read, and with learning which it is impossible not to respect, undertakes to prove that the narrative parts of the Gospels were written soon after, and for the most part im- mediately after, the events happened which they relate ; and that the reports of Christ's longer addresses were taken down as they were spoken. Even the circum- stances connected with the birth of Christ which no human being but Mary could know are not admitted to be exceptional. According to Mr. Palmer, they are admitted into the Gospel narratives only on the authority of written documents." Guardian. — "A work of real value. We cannot, of course, endorse all the author's arguments or conclusions. But he has devoted many years to his task, and no one can deny that several of his points are new and important. We are glad to call our readers* attention to bis book as one that well deserves their study." Baptist. — "Discussed with considerable ability, and the whole of the Gospels brought under a close critical review. There is much arch Ecological information in the book concerning ancient writings, tablets, papyri, MSS., the use of shorthand in early times, etc., to illustrate and sustain various parts of Mr. Palmer's theory. He has certainly taken immense pains and spent much time in careful research, and the reader will find many lines of thought and study worthy of the consideration of all Bible students.*' Westminster Review. — "The chronological confusion in Luke is explained by the fact that in editing he got the slips mixed and the writer being no longer alive to assist him, he was not able to get them in their right order. It will be seen from this that this Is an original and entertaining work." Eng^lish Churchman. — " Indel>tedness to other authorities for the strengthening of his view is admitted by Mr. Palmer, whose independent, devout and truth-seeking qualities go very far to secure our confidence and concurrence. We cordially re- commend his laborious endeavour, and wish his book a wide circulation." Family Churchman.— "This inquiry will well repay careful reading, and commend itself to many biblical students as the workof one of nolittle care, research, and ability, endued alike with a reverent mind and with a true love for God's holy and inspired Word." Christian.—" A work which will Interest many Bible students." PARKER (Rev. JOSEPH, D.D.)- TO-DAY'S CHRIST. A Study in Re- incarnation. By Rev. JOSEPH Parker, D.D. A Companion to "To-Day's Bible." Cloth, Is. 6d. net; by post, Is. 9d. 32 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE PARKER (Rev. JOSEPH, D.D.)— TYNE FOLK— MASKS, SHADOWS, AND FACES. By Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D. Handsome cloth, crown ^vo, 38. 6d. Methodist Times. — "We are glad to welcome his latest work. A charming series of Tyne^^ide sketches. Readers cannot fail to be interested in the recollections so graphically set forth." Literary World.— It is a collection of vigorous and simple stories, displaying inti- mate knowledtje of the North Country folk and their ways." Expository Times.— " Of all Dr. Parker^s books, 'TyneFolk'is the favourite. It is both himself and the folk, but chiefly himself of course. And he is himself the most interesting personality, both to himself and to us, that any of his books con- tain. The delight of it is that we have him when he does not know, and see him when he thinks we are looking at another." From a chapter in "Studies in Texts " Dr. Parker says : — "Anyone caring to know more about my early days, and the conditions in which I lived, should read ' Tyne Folk.' In thisbook I have given an almost literal account of the people who aflfected my earliest impressions and endeavours, and who thus created the atmo- sphere which surrounded my progress towards maturity. Oh, those old, old times, and old, old folks." PARKER (Rev. JOSEPH, D.D.)- JOB'S COMFORTERS, OR SCIEN- TIFIC SYMPATHY. By Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D. 6d. net ; post free, 7cl. PARRY (Rev. JOHN, M.A.)— THE PARISH DISTRICT VISITING BOOK, AND SICK AND COMMUNICANTS' LIST. Second Edition. Strongly bound in buckram cloth, round comers, for the pocket, 2s. net ; post free, 2s. 3d. PEARSON (Rev. SAMUEL, M.A.)— AM I FIT TO TAKE THE LORD'S SUPPER? By Rev. Samuel Pearson, M.A. Seventeenth Thousand. l6 pages, crown Svo, Id. ; post free, IJd. 6a. per ICX3. ( Tracts for the Times, No. 5. ) PERREN (Rev. C. H., D.D.)- The Evangelist's Handbook. REVIVAL SERMONS IN OUTLINE. With Thoughts, Themes, and Plans, by eminent Pastors and Evangelists. Edited by Rev. C. H. Perren, D.D. Crown %vo, ■m pages, cloth, 3s. 6d. Part I. 80 Pages on Methods. SOME MODERN REVIVALS By Rev. John R. Davies. DIVINE AND HUMAN AGENCY IN REVIVALS. By Rev. John Gordon, D.D. THE PASTOR'S VALUE. By W. H. Gkistweit. THE EVANGELIST IN REVIVALS. By Rev. E. A. Whiitier. H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 33 REVIVAL SERMONS IN OUTLINE (continued)— THE PEOPLE'S PART IN REVIVAL WORK. HOW TO PROMOTE REVIVALS. By D. L. Moody. WORK PREPARATORY TO REVIVALS. By Rev. Herrick Johnson, D.D. REVIVALS— HOW TO PROMOTE THEM. From a Lecture by Charles G. Finney, D.D. HOW TO SECURE A REVIVAL. By E. P. Brown. SOME HINTS ABOUT REVIVALS. HOW TO AWAKEN FRESH INTEREST IN OUR CHUR- CHES. By D. L. Moody. HOW TO SAVE SOULS. By Rev. F. O. Dickey. PERSONAL WORK IN REVIVALS. By Rev. B. Fay Mills. EXPECTING CONVERSIONS. By Ira D. Sankey. DEFECTIVE REVIVAL WORK. THE SUNDAY EVENING SERVICE. By Rev. Addison P. Foster, D.D. THE INQUIRY MEETING. By D. L. Moody. [SEEKERS. HELPFUL PASSAGES FOR DIFFERENT CLASSES OF Part II. 244 Pages of Outlines and Sketches of Revival Sermons. Forty-four Old Testament, seventy-one New Testament. In all one hundred and fifteen Outlines from approved Evangelists, such as J. W. Conley, R. a. Torrey, A. B. Earle, J. L. Campbell, John Mc- Neill, J. Wilbur Chapman, D. L. Moody, E. W. Bliss, D. H. CooLEY, A. J. Gordon, J. H. Elliot, G. C. Finney, D. W. Whittle, A. F. Barfield, A. T. Pierson, The Editor, and others. Sunday School Chronicle. — '* A large number of Sermon Outlines adapted for Revival Services. Outlines gleaned from those whom God has used and owned in the blessed work." Daily Chronicle. — " One great merit, they are brief." Expository Times. — " Famous sermons all passed through a capable condenser." Christian Age. — "Teems with excellent suggestions." Methodist Times. — "To young men desirous of engaging in evangelistic work, we can highly recommend this volume." PERREN (Rev. C. H., D.D.)— SEED CORN FOR THE SOWER. A Book of Thoughts, Themes, and Illustrations for the Pulpit and Platform. Original and Compiled by Rev. C. H. Perren, D.D. With Complete Indices to Subjects, Texts, and Authors quoted. C/aiA boards, 394 pages, 5s. Is arranged in alphabetical order throughout, and is equipped with the following three good indices — Complete Index of Texts Illustrated — Complete Index of 250 Authors Quoted — Complete Index of Subjects Treated — thus making its contents easily available. The Methodist Times. — "An admirable collection of thoughts and illustra- tions, compiled for the use of Christian workers. One of the charms of this book is the absence of the stock illustrations, common to works of this class. The value of the work is enhanced by the fact that the subjects are arranged in alpha- betical order, and there are two exhaustive indices, one of authors and the other of texts. Rightly used, the book will be a boon to preachers and teachers." C 34 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE PHILLIPS (Rev. THOMAS, B.A.)— CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY. A Missionary Address to Young Men. By Rev. Thomas Phillips, B.A., Nor- wich. An artistic Booklet. Enamel paper wrapper^ narrow %vOj 6d. Life of Faith. — " An address on Phil. iv. 13, specially addressed to young men. Workers among young men should bear this little work in mind." Christian. — " Friends of missions might do well to distribute copies among young men." PIERCE (Rev. WILLIAM), and HORNE (Rev. C. SIL- VESTER. M.A.)— THE PRIMER OF CHURCH Fel- lowship. By Rev. W. Pierce and Rev. C. S. Horne, M.A. Fourth Edition, For Use in the Independent Churches. Cheap Edition^ 6d. ; post free, 7d. Cloth, Is. Rev. Principal Falrbairn, D.D., Oxford.— "Your little book is most timely. It is full of wisdom and of good feeling, and I know no book which speaks a more needed word. May it help our churches, and our young people in particular, to know what the Church really means and what their duties toward it." Dr. R. W. Dale, of Birmingham. — *' I have read with great interest the * Primer* which you have just published. It is admirable from fu-st to last. It is precisely the kind of book that Congregational ministers must desire to put into the hands of Church members, and of candidates for Church membership. It is a triumph of simplicity, clearness and earnestness." Dr. R. F. Horton, M.A., Hampstead.— "I think the 'Primer' will be of the greatest use, not so much as a rigid text book for pastors and teachers to employ in classes, but as a model or pattern of the ground which has to be covered, and filled, according to the individual conviction, in instructing the young. For my own part, I mean to use it, just as it is ; but then, I am perhaps more in accord with you than many of our brethren would be : they will be able to use it with equal profit, though in a different way. I hope the success of it will be very encouraging." Rev. Alexander Maolaren, D.D., Manchester. — "I have read it withmucli in- terest, and think it extremely well adapted for the purpose intended. I shall recom- mend it in my own congregation and elsewhere as opportunity serves. I am sure that many pastors will join with me in thanking you for a very necessary and well- done piece of work." Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D., London.— "This is an excellent idea. That Mr. Pierce and Mr. Horne have taken it up is to me a cheering sign of the times." Word and Work. — '' We gladly welcome the new and cheaper edition of ' The Primer of Church Fellowship,' by the Revs. William Pierce and C. Silvester Home. Having already expressed our high opinion of it when published at one shilling, we rejoice to see this cheaper edition, and trust it will be scattered broadcast over the twofold section of Christendom, known as the Churches of the Congregational order. It is an admirable handbook to the privileges and duties of Church membership.'' PIERCE (Rev. WILLIAM)- Sermons on iVlissionary Work. THE DOMINION OF CHRIST. The Claims of Foreign Missions in the Light of Modern Religious Thought and a Century of Experience. By Rev. William Pierce. Handsome cloth, large crown ivo, 3b. 6d. Special edition, for dis- triiutioit, stout paper. Is. net. H. R. ALLENSON'S catalogue 35 THE DOMINION OF CHRIST (continued)— Contents : The Dominion of Christ — Patriotism and Missions — The Saviour of the World — The Vocation of the Missionary — Women as Missionaries — The Beckoning Vision — Place of Education as a Mis- sionary Agency — Relation of the Churches to the Work of Foreign Missions — Foreign Missions and Christian Life and Thought — Physician and EvangeUst — Forward — Complete Index. Mr. Pierce's work would be found useful at any time, but should particularly be so now when the China mission field is in such a disturbed state. It would well form the basis of a short series of addresses for week-night services. L.M.S. Chronicle (Rev. Geo. Cousins).— "Earnest in spirit, enthusiastic and hopeful in tone, and thoroughly practical in aim. We heartily commend this book, and desire for it a large circulation." Methodist Times. — " Clear, manly, and thoroughly Protestant.'* Indian Christian Patriot.— "A really good book on Christian Missions." British Weekly. — "Cannot fail to increase intelligent interest in the propagation of Christianity." American Sunday School Times.— "A Pastor would find this book of great stimulative value." Baptist. — "The position that the missionary is_ essentially an evangelist and not an educationalist is ably maintained. There is a vigorous plea for extended medical missions." 0. M. Intelllffenoer.— *' A good and stimulating book." PIERCE (Rev. WILLIAM)— CHRISTIANITY AND ART. A Ser- mon by Rev. WILLIAM Pierce. Crown ^o, l6 pages, Id. ; post free, IJd. (Tracts for the Times, No. 2). POTWIN (Prof. L. 5.)— HERE AND THERE IN THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT. By Prof. L. S. Potwin. Large Crown Svo, 58. PRINO (Rev. F. A.)— THE MESSAGE OF THE INCAR- NATION TO THE NATION. Sermon by Rev. F. A. Pring, Vicar of St, Luke's, Deptford. Crown 8ve, i6 pages, 2d. ; iy post, 2Jd. REICHEL (Rev. QEO. V., M.A.)— WHAT SHALL I TELL THE CHILDREN ? By the Rev. Geo. V. Reichel, M.A. ffand- some cloth, crown 8vo, 5s. A new volume of Object Sermons and Themes, with many illustrative Anecdotes. British Weekly.— "It is rather a nice book, and will be very useful to teachers and those who preach to children. The merit of the volume is that it has fresh- ness." 36 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE RIPON (Right Rev. Lord Bishop of [Dr. BOYD CAR- PENTER])— THOUGHTS ON PRAYER. By Right Rev. Lord Bishop of Ripon. Fcap, Svo, cloth. Is. 6d. Contents ; Necessity of Prayer — Times Adverse to Prayer — Heartwork in Prayer — Reality of Answers to Prayer — Efficacy of Prayer, etc. Rock. — ' ' It deals with many important questions. Cannot but prove helpful to all who may bestow any attention upon them. We accord this volume a most hearty welcome." RIPON (Right Rev. Lord Bishop of [Dr. BOYD CAR- PENTER])— FOOTPRINTS OF THE SAVIOUR. By Right Rev. Lord Bishop of Ripon. Crown Svo, doth, 23. 6d. New Edition, with Thirteen Illustrations printed separ- ately on Art Studio paper. A very handsome gift book, and useful withal. Chapters on places visited by our Lord : Bethlehem — Cana— Sychar — Nazareth — Capernaum — Gennesaret — Decapolis — Bethany — Geth- semane — Calvary — Emmaus — Olivet. ROTHERHAM (JOSEPH BRYANT)— Valuable Aid to Bible Study. THE EMPHASISED NEW TESTA- ME NT. A New Translation designed to set forth the exact meaning, the proper terminology, and the graphic style of_ the sacred original ; arranged to show at a glance Narrative, Speech, Parallelism, and Logical Analysis ; and empha- sised throughout after the Idioms of the Greek tongue, with select references and an appendix of notes. By J. B. Rotherham. This version has been adjusted to the critical text (" formed ex- clusively on documentary evidence ") of Drs. Westcott and Hort. Third Edition. Crown ^o, double columns, 272 pages, cloth, 103. 6d. ; half roan, 10s. net; half morocco, 123. 6d. net; whole limp morocco, I63. net. The Christian Commonwealth. — We know of no translation which is of more service to ministers or to Bible students generally." The British Weekly says:— "This is a painstaking work which deserves recog- nition. No page will be read without having a clearer light shed upon some passage or verse. . . . The book Is well worth study . " The Christian says : — " Many years ago Mr. Rotherham brought out a version of the New Testament critically emphasised, and some of us employed the book with interest and profit. The present work strikes us as following a better method than its predecessor The title-page fairly describes the plan of the work. The typo- graphical arrangement is very sucv-Cssful, emphasis being indicated by signs that are expressive without being cumbersom. The Christian, in a further review, says : — " It is a pleasure now to welcome the completed work, the third edition of a version which was first published twenty-five years ago. To many this version will be a great help, not only in study, but in de- votional reading. Thoughtful Christian workers will appreciate the volume as a present." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 37 ROYAL HELPS FOR LOYAL LIV- ING. Daily Readings for a year. Scripture, Poetical, and Prose quotations from eminent writers of all time. l6mo, cloth, 38. 6d. SERMONS {see Banks, Battershall, Brooks, Burrell, Carpenter (Boyd), Caws, Dawson, Dix, Eames, Gibbon, Halsey, Home, James, Learmount, Lewis, Perren, Pierce, Pring, Reichel, Snell, Thew, Thomas (Evan), Thomas (H. Elwyn), Tipple, Tracts for the Times, Tyndall. SERMON OR MANUSCRIPT PAPER. THE PATERNOSTER SERIES. The user of this paper enjoys the following special advantages : It is easily arranged by means of holes punched in the left hand margin, so allowing that a sheet of paper can be immediately inserted or abstracted at desire, and that without disturbance to any other sheet. Small 4to Good Writing Paper, ruled faint lines and margin line, Is. 6d. for 10 quires. Octavo Good Writing Paper, ruled faint lines and margin line. Is. for 10 quires. Any special size and ruling made fromptly to order. SHELDON (Rev. CHARLES M.)— IN HIS STEPS: What Would Jesus Do ? By Charles M. Sheldon. With Preface by Rev. F. B. Meyer, B,A. Handsome presentation edition, doth gilt, bevelled boards^ 3s. 6d. Cheaper editions, 2s. 6d., 2s., Is. 6d., Is. and 6d. Please ask for Mr. Meyer's Edition, which was the first to be on sale in England, and is the only authorised Edition in this country. This remarkable social story, the thought of which is the application to all life of the test question, " "What would Jesus do 1 " has had an extraordinary sale. In the guise of a dramatic story, the book makes a powerful appeal to the public conscience in the lines in which interest is now so deeply aroused — namely, the social con- ditions affecting the relations of employer and employee, rich and poor, the Christian and the world, the saloon and the voter, etc. Or, ClifFord says : — "This is a living book. It has the fascination of a story, and the inspiration of a prophet's message. The thought of our time is just now crys- tallizine round the example of Jesus. No question is so urgent as * What would Jesus do in my place and with my circumstances? * WE MUST ANSWER IT, and it is a real gain to see how others of our own day have answered it. The book will be of great service." Extract from Mr. Meyer's Preface.— " The author's purpose is to draw atten- tion to the ethical teachings of Jesus, and to enforce the necessity of compliance with them on the part of those who bear His Name. And who shall say that there is no ne«d ? ' In His Steps ' will set its readers thinking, and lead to that self-ques- tioning which is the first step towards hfe of the noblest quality. Because I enjoyed the book when I read it, and think it will lead many to reconsider and reconstruct heir lives, I have pleasure in writing these prefatory commendations." Sunday School Times.—'* The reading of the book will search many a heart, and ought to lead to a simpler, holier, and more fully consecrated Christian life," Christian Endeavour World.— "A fascinating tale, that draws and holds with straightforward winsomeness." 38 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE SHELDON (Rev. CHARLES M,)- THE CRUCIFIXION OF PHILIP STRONG. By Charles M. Sheldon. Handsome presentation edition^ cloth gilt, bevelled boards^ 3s. 6d, Cheaper editions, 2s. 6d,> 2s., Is. 6d., Is. and^^. Ohioag'o Herald. — " A fine piece of realistic writing." Zion*8 Herald. — |'The people wanted the Gospel, the old Gospel, without any reference to such things as the oppression of the poor, the rum traffic, gambling, in- dustries, and the like. Philip's Gospel was too broad, too worldly, for his people, and they could not endure it. The story is wonderfully well told and has a double edge." The Congresfatlonallst. — " It is an argument, a plea, a panorama and a story all in one. The story is one of intense vigour and pathos. It will secure a very wide reading, and it should make a deep impression upon every reader and produce lasting fruit." 5HELD0N (Rev. CHARLES MO- MALCOLM KIRK; or, Overcoming the World. A Tale of Moral Heroism. By Charles M. Sheldon. Handsome presentation edition^ cloth gilt^ bevelled boards, 3s. 6d. Cheaper editions, 2b. 6d., 2s., Is. 6d., Is. and^^. This book tells the entrancing history of the regeneration of a lawless western town. The hero, Malcolm Kirk, embodies every element of courageous self- sacrifice. As one writer has said : " He glorifies and invites to one of the noblest types of heroism." The servant girl question is treated from a new standpoint in the character of Faith Kirk, and the liquor element receives some hard blows. Young people will read it over and over again with growing interest, and it should be in every Sunday School library. SHELDON (Rev. CHARLES M.)— THE TWENTIETH DOOR; or. Bat- tling with Temptation. By Charles M. Sheldon. Handsome presentation edition, cloth gilt, bevelled boards, 38. 6d. Cheaper editions, 2s. 6d., 2s., la. 6d., Is. and 6i, Sunday School Journal. — " Its picture of youth struggling toward manhood io a hand-to-hand fight with robust temptations is of thrilling interest." Golden Rule. — " No one can read it without feeling that few sermons would be more interesting or helpful than this story. I propose to read portions of this book referring to school life to my Sunday School class of boys at their next monthly meetings at my home. The author has a special gift in this way," RellgrlOUS Herald. — *' The sturdy and conscientious manliness with which Paul decided all questions, his true and helpful friendship with his school and college room mate, together with the story of the home life of his mother, brother, and sister, make a story of great interest." ConfirreKatlonallst.— " It is a story of school and college life as well as of manly service and helpfulness in more than one sphere." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 39 SHELDON (Rev. CHARLES MO- RICHARD BRUCE ; or, The Life That Now Is. By Charles M. Sheldon. Handsome presentation edition^ cloth gilt, bevelled boards, 3s. 6d. Cheaper editions, %^. 6d., as., Is. 6d., 1b. and Qd. This story of a young man's conflicts in his attempt to live up to a high ideal should interest all, particularly young men. The Oungrreg'ationallst.— " It is a truly powerful, practical, touching Christian narrative, creditable to the writer and engrossing to the reader. . . . He pos- sesses real power as a delineator of character, skill in using incidents and wisdom in describing a natural, manly and inviting type of Christianity. Put the volume into your Sunday School library." SHELDON (Rev, CHARLES M.)— HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER; or, Christ ian Stewardship, By Charles M. Sheldon. Handsome pre- sentation edition, cloth gilt, bevelled boards, 3s. 6d. Cheaper editions, 28. 6d., 2s., Is. 6d., Is. and^d. The Rellg'ioiis Telesoope. — "A striking book which relates how the perplexities of a great labour trouble led a rich young man to see that his money was not given him for his own individual pleasure and profit alone." The Episcopal Recorder.— "The story is well-written, intensely interesting, and should incline the hearts of readers to take a wider view of this great problem." SHELDON (Rev. CHARLES MO- ROBERT HARDY'S SEVEN DAYS; or, A Dream and Its Consequences. By Charles M. Sheldon. Handsome presentation edition, cloth gilt, bevelled boards, 3s. 6d. Cheaper editions, 2s. 6d., 2s., Is. 6d., Is. and Gdi. Christian Work.— "The earnestness, the zeal, the solemnity, the kindliness, the Christianity, of that week's living are pictured with a skill and dramatic power that cannot fail to make readers feel as never before how solemn a thing it is to live." The Cong'reg'aticnali&t. — "It is a well conceived and powerfully written story, which should arouse lethargic Christians and do much to establish brotherliness and true views of this life and the next. Portions of the book are dramatic, and all of it is of great interest." The Herald and Presbyter.-^^'Theimpossibilityof makingupin a weekforthe neglect of the opportunities of a lifetime is impressively shown." SHELDON (HENRY CO- HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. By Henry C. Sheldon, Professor in Boston Uni- versity. 5 vols. , extra crown Svo, cloth, 42s. Vol. I. — The Early Church. VoJ. 11. — The Mediseval Church. Vols. III., IV., v.— The Modern Church. Professor W. T. Davison, writing iu The Methodist Times.-" The New Church History may be with confidence described as one of the clearest and most readable for the general reader anywhere obtainable, very useful to the elementary student as well as serviceable to more advanced students for its summaries, tables, and general surveys, while for a modern period it will be found interesting and valuable to all. We are sure that Methodist readers, at all events, will give Professor Sheldon's volumes the welcome on this side of the Atlantic which their brightness, force, com- prehensiveness, and practical utility deserve." 40 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE SIAIE (Rev. A. H. MONCUR)— WHAT THE CHURCH MIGHT BE. A Sermon by Rev. A. H. MoNCUR SiME. l6 pages, crown Svo, Id. ; post free, IJd. (Tracts for the Times, No. 13.) SIN PUNISHED, BUT SINS FOR- GIVEN. The simple way of Salvation of the first century, but now practically » New Theory of the Atonement. This sets forth from Scripture the two penalties for the infraction of God's laws — one inevitable, the other conditional. Crown %vo, l8. SMITH (HANNAH WHITALL)— THE OPEN SECRET; OR, THE BIBLE EXPLAINING ITSELF. Nineteen Bible Readings. By Mrs. Pearsall Smith, Author of " The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life." A series of stimulating Bible studies. Crown %vo, yzd pages, sewed, 2s. 6d. Contents : Our Saviour — God is Love — The Law and the Gospel— Assur- ance of Faith — Keeping Power of God — Rest of Souls — Consecration — God's Ownership — Fruit-Bearing — The Presence of God, etc. SNELL (Rev. BERNARD J., M.A.)— CITIZENSHIP AND ITS DUTIES. A Sermon. By Rev. Bernard J. Snell, M.A., B.Sc. Crown %vo, 16 pages, Id.; post free, lid. (Tracts for the Times, No. 3.) SNELL (Rev. BERNARD J., M.A.)— WHY ARE WE INDEPENDENTS? By Rev. Bernard J. Snell, M.A., B.Sc. Sermon preached on Free Church Sunday. Crown Svo, 2d. ; post free, 2\i. (Tracts for the Times, No. 8). Western Dally Mercury.— " In these days of Anglo-Catholic reaction it is well to set forth the principles for which the Independents stand. The Rev. Bernard Snell has done this with effect in a powerful sermon in which he answers the question, ' Why are we Independents ? ' " SNELL (Rev. BERNARD J., M.A.)— THE WIDENING VISION. And other Sermons. By the Rev. Bernard J. Snell, M.A., B.Sc. In- cluding Thirteen Addresses to Children (Twenty-six Sermons in all). Crown ivo, neat cloth, 3s. 6d. Manchester Guardian.—" It would be difficult to find a better example of the kind of preaching which finds favour at present as compared with that which was in vogue fifty years ago. There is no attempt at rhetoric, but serious, earnest thoughts on the real problems of life." Independent. — " Evokes admiration for his manly downrightness and utter honesty. There is no special pleading. Free in style, fresh in illustration." Christian World.— "The addresses to the children are very interesting and abound in good stories." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 41 SNELL (Rev. BERNARD J., M.A.)— THE ALL -ENFOLDING LOVE. And other Sermons. By the Rev. Bernard J. Snell, M.A., B.Sc. Including Thirteen Addresses to Children (Twenty-six Sermons in all). In one vol. Crown %vo, neat cloth, 33. 6d. Christian World.—" Mv. Snell here gives us thirteen of his eminently vigorous sermons, and a further instalment of the delightful words to children." Sunday School Chronicle. — "Certain to Hnd many readers by reason of the breadth of sympathy which characterizes it, the sane and practical gospel which it proclaims, and the simple directness of its style. The book is not only for the spiritual edification of Adult Christians, however. It contains thirteen sermons ad- dressed directly to children, and if we have had favourable words to speak of the sermons to grown-up people, we have to say of these 'Words to Children ' that they strike us as being quite the best children's addresses we have read for many a day." SNELL (Rev. BERNARD J.. M.A.)— THE GOOD GOD ("Le Bon Dieu"). Twenty-six Five-Minute Addresses to Children. By the Rev. Bernard J. Snell, M.A., B.Sc. (Taken from the above two volumes. ) Crown %vo, neat cloth, 2s. Newcastle Daily Chronicle. — " Charming addresses to children, simple, homely, childlike instructions." _ ^^ South London Press.^" Pervaded with warmth, kindliness, and sympathy. Lloyd's News.— " Clearly and forcibly impresses his meaning on his little auditors." .. ,. , . , , -. Manchester Guardian.—" Bright and vigorous, full of stones drawn from a wide range, not seldom touched with humour." SNELL (Rev. BERNARD J., M.A.)— THE VIRTUE OF GLADNESS. And other Sermons. By the Rev. Bernard J. Snell, M.A., B.Sc. Including Thirteen Addresses to Children (Twenty-six Sermons in all). In one vol. Crown 8vo, neat cloth, 3s. 6d. Christian World.— "Another welcome volume from the courageous Brixton Evangelical Magsizlne.— " Mr. Snell is one of the boldest, freshest, and most unconventional preachers in London, and it is evident from the healthy exposition of ethical and spiritual Christianity which we have in this volume where the secret of his popularity lies." .... Manchester Guardian.-" There is much freshness of treatment in these dis- courses, which are mainly practical." _, ., , , . , _. Christian Age.— "The Sermonettes to Children are charming productions ; no- thing could be better." SNELL (Rev. BERNARD J., M.A.>- THE FOUR LAST THINGS. By the Rev. Bernard J. Snell, M.A., B.Sc. Four Sermons— I, Death; 2, Judgment ; 3, Heaven; 4, Hell. Crown %vo, neat cloth. Is. 42 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE STOWELL (Rev. J. HILTON, M.A.)— WHAT IS A CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH ? A Sermon by Rev. J. Hilton Stowell, M.A. 1 6 pages, crown ivo, Id. ; post free, IJd. (Tracts for the Times, No. 12.) STRONG (Rev. CHARLES H.)— IN PARADISE; OR, THE STATE OF THE BLESSED DEPARTED. By the Rev. Charles H. Strong. Crown &vo, cloth, 33. 6d. STRANGE ADVENTURE OF THE REV. WM. PANTON, PRIEST. Crown%vo, paper, sewed, ^t. Methodist Times. — "Deeply interesting for a. number of reasons. It is a pole- mic against Ritualism, powerful, yet filled with the tenderest spirit the reviewer has ever found in any controversial pamphlet. But it is also literature. The writer has also the gift of character drawing. It is a human document significant of much which cheers in these grey days." THEW (Rev. JAMES)- BROKEN IDEALS, AND OTHER SERMONS. By Rev. James Thew. Crown %vo, cloth, 3b. 6d. British Weekly.—" Mr. Thew's sermons are fresh and tender." THOMAS (ALFRED)— IN THE LAND OF THE HARP AND FEATHERS. A Series ofWelsh Village Idylls. By Alfred Thomas. Handsome crown %vo, art cloih^ gilt top, 68. Uniform with "Bonnie Brier Bush" in style. Cheaper edition^ art linen hoards, 3s. 6d. ; also in 4 parts, 6d. each, rut ; postage Id. extra. Dally Ohronlole. — " Religion is the vital thing with these people, and one cannot read these papers without feeling something of the reality and beauty of it." " Full of sympathy." " Charming story." "Drawn by a loving hand." Bradford Observer.—" Much simplicity and charm." Baptist. — " Rustic homeliness, sincerity, generosity, and godliness of the people are seen in every chapter of the book." New Age.— "Tells with charming simplicity and directness story after story of the village life of Wales." Methodist Times.—" Marked by considerable power." Westminster Review.— Stories of the quaintest characteristics of the country- side, told with sympathetic appreciation, and not without a sense of humour." Independent.— As a modest and readable contribution to the study of Welsh life, this book is well worth a perusal." THOMAS (Rev. EVAN)- FOR LOVE'S SAKE. By the Rev. Evan Thomas. Crown &V0, cloth. Is. 6d. net ; post free. Is. 9d. H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 43 THOMAS (Rev. H. ELWYN)- PULPIT TALKS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, By the Rev. H. Elwyn Thomas. Crown %vo, sewed^ Is. 6d. net. Clasg'OW Herald. — "The author is a Welshman, and his discourses combine in a very happy manner the fervid eloquence of the Welsh Pulpit with the breezy direct- ness which is characteristic of some Congregational preachers. The subjects are such as young people like to hear discussed, and others such as they are the better for hearing about. . . . The book would be an excellent one to put in the hands of a young man, and may be recommended also to ministers as a specimen of the kind of preaching to which young people lend a ready ear." Weekly Echo and Times. — "These addresses by a man of wide experience are just the thins: either for young people themselves to read, or as food for reflection for those who have to teach the young." Welsh Youngr Folk. — "The English language in all its beauty and simplicity is on these pages, and the preacher's utterances are exceptionally readable, racy, and humorous." THOMAS (Rev. H. ELWYN)— MARTYRS OF HELL'S HIGHWAY. By Rev. H. Elwyn Thomas. Introductory Preface and Appen- dix by Mrs. Josephine Butler. Handsome clothe crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. Second thousand, cheaper issue^ 2s. 6d. The Star.^" Written with graphic and remorseless power, vigour of style, and thorough honesty of purpose." Bradford Observer.—" All true reformers of every kind will wish it success." Gentleman's Journal. — "The work is true, explicit, searching, and . . earnest men will study it as a contribution towards the solution of an ever-engross- ing problem. It ought to be extensively given to our Sunday Schools and public libraries." Glasgrow Herald. — " The contents are thoroughly in keeping with the title. . Written with quite a passionate earnestness." Independent. — " A courageous book which will probably create great sensation." The OhrJStian. — " No one could read this unveiling of one of the blackest forms of calculating and fiendish iniquity without horror and indignation." Christian World. — " Social reformers will find much help in its pa^es." The Witness and the Day.—" It is utterly impossible to put it aside until it is finished. . . . Full of scorching sentences which burn their way into the reader's soul." TIPPLE (Rev. S. A.)— SUNDAY MORNINGS AT NOR- WOOD, With additional Sermons and Prayers. By Rev. S. A. Tipple. New edition^ Crown 8vo, 6s. Cong'regatlonal Magrazlne. — " The natural demand for discourses so wise in spirit and so excellent in form could not be satisfied by the issue of a single edition. The few added discourses of more recent date will increase the satisfaction of the old readers and of new." British Weekly.— "There are more original ideas in Mr. Tipple's volume than in many which have rapidly run into nine or ten editions. Both the prayers and the sermons contained in it give evidence of a fresh, lucid, and forcible thinker. The sermons are short, very interesting, and always aim at impressing on the hearer one idea. No connoisseur In sermons can fail to appreciate the fine quality of Mr. Tipple's Work." Christian World. — "The first edition has long been out of print, and many will be glad to know that they can obtain these rarely spiritual and sugsestive sermons. Two sermons are new, the one a reply to Tolstoi's literalism, the other on * The Silence of Christ.' " 44 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE TRUMBULL (A. E.)— MISTRESS CONTENT CRAD- DOCK. A Novel. By Annie Eliot Trumbull. 305 pages, I2ma, cloth, 5s. Manohester Guardian.— " A faithful picture of life in the early days of our colonies." Spectator.— " A strong Puritan atmosphere,'' TRUMBULL (A. E.)- ROD'S SALVATION. By Annie Eliot Trumbull. Illustrated by Charles Copeland. \2.mo^ cloth^ 5s. SpriniTfield Republican.—" The volume entitled ' Rod's Salvation ' contains four short stories, some of which are long enough to be fairly called novelets. . . . 'Rod's Salvation' is a good picture of longshore life, telling of the devotion of a sister to a scapegrace brother and well worthy a reading." The Citizen.—" Miss Trumbull is blessed by a most delightful and unpretentious gift of story-telling. Her work suggests a twilight musician; she has a certain dainty humour in her touch." TRUMBULL (A. E.)— A OAPE COD WEEK. By Annie Eliot Trumbull. i2;«(?, cloth^ 58. The keenness, quickness, and acuteness of the New England mind were, perhaps, never better illustrated than in her stories. Her conversations are at times almost supernaturally bright ; such talk as one hears from witty, brilliant, and cultivated American women — talk notable for insight, subtle discriminations, unexpected and surprised terms, and persuasive humour. The Outlook. — ' * ' A Cape Cod Week ' contains an account of the adventures and achievements of three young women who sought the seclusion, silence, and scenery of Cape Cod, and who enlivened that remote and restful country by flashes of talk often brilliant, almost always entertaining. Miss Trumbull's work is delightful reading : the sameness of the commonplace and the obvious is so entirely absent from it.*' TORREV (R. A.)— GIST OF THE LESSONS, 1901. A Concise Exposition of the International Sunday School Lessons for igoi. By R. A, Torrey, Superintendent of the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago. Author of " How to Bring Men to Christ," " How to Study the Bible," etc. Size^ ^\ by 2\ inches^ most handy pocket companion. Strongly and serviceably bounds Is. net ; postfree^ Is. 2d. This little book contains the complete text of each lesson with parts emphasised in heavier type, the alterations of the Revised Version also noted, and from 2^ to ik pages of commentary and notes, so that possessors of this book can, wherever they happen to be, use any passing minute in a study of next Sunday's lesson. Each study is accompanied by a pointed series of questions upon the lesson. These studies are equally useful to speakers and others apart from the Sunday School connection, each study being a complete outline of a subject suitable for an address. Copies for 1900 can still be had. H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 45 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. Scottish Endeavour.— " Admirable for putting into the hands of thoughtful young people." 16 pages. Price Id. each ; post free, IJd. 1. THE SPIRIT OF DIVES. By Rev. C. Silvester Horne, M.A. An Indictment of Indifference. 2. CHRISTIANITY AND ART. By Rev. W. Pierce. A Re- pudiation of " Art for Art's Sake." 3. CITIZENSHIP AND ITS DUTIES. By Rev. Bernard J. Snell, JM.A. " Apathy is the Enemy." 4. THE DUTY OF BEING YOUNG. By Rev. J. H. JOWETT, M.A., Carr's Lane, Birmingham. 5. AM I FIT TO TAKE THE LORD'S SUPPER ? By Rev. Samuel Pearson, M.A. Third Edition. 17th Thousand. 6. THE SOBRIETY OF HOPE. By Rev. C. Silvester Horne, M.A. 7. FOUNDATIONS. By Rev. H. W. Horwill, M.A. 12. WHAT IS A CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH? By Rev. J. H. Stowell, M.A. 13. WHAT THE CHURCH MIGHT BE. By Rev. A. H. MONCUR SlME. 14. THE DEVIL IN KHAKI. By Rev. W. Pedr Williams. Price 2d. each ; post free, 2 Jd. 8. WHY ARE WE INDEPENDENTS? By Rev. Bernard J. Snell, M.A. 9. THE HUMAN BODY, AND HOW TO TAKE CARE OF IT. By W. E. Lee, M.R.C.S.E. II. WANTED— AN ENGLISH BIBLE. By Rev. H. W. Horwill, M.A. Reprinted from The Contemporary Re- view. 32 pages. Price 3d. ; post free, 3Jd. 10. THE HAPPY WARRIOR. An Address to Young Men and Women, By Rev. P. T. Forsyth, M.A., D.D., Cam- bridge. TUCK (MARY N.)— WITH THE SOWERS IN AN EASTERN LAND. By Miss Mary N. Tuck, of the London Missionary Society, Berhampore, N. India. 24 pages, 3d. net ; by post, 3|d. A most interesting and readable article of a personal visit to the native women of an Indian village. Suitable for reading at a Missionary Working Party. 46 H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE TUCK (Rev. ROBERT, B.A.)— (See under New Orthodoxy.) TYNDALL (Rev. C. H., M.A., Ph.D.)- The Eye as Well as the Ear. OBJECT SERMONS IN OUTLINE. Forty- five Topics for Children's Services and P.S.A*s. By Rev. C. H. Tyndall, M.A., Ph.D. With Introduction by the Rev. A. F. ScHAUFFLER, D.D. Handsome crown Svo^ 3s. 6d. A new edition has been prepared to meet the demand for this particular book, which can claim to be the first of its kind in pointing to truth by means of the eye as well as the ear. It is worth while to point out that if it is not possible or convenient to employ the object accompanying the text, these addresses and outlines of addresses of. Dr. Tyndall's are so arranged that, by means of a slight description which is i^ven in every case, the actual object can be dispensed with. Independent. — "The lessons are well conceived and worked out with great in- genuity, and in good hands could not fail to be extremely effective. We advise pastors, Sunday School superintendents, and others who have young peoples' meetings in charge to examine this book." American ConBTfesationallst.— "Those pastors who are wrestling with the problem how to attract, interest, and influence young people may obtain valuable suggestions from this book.'* Golden Rule. — "Everything is original and suggestive, no pains are spared in bringing together the things which can be made serviceable as symbols." The Expository Times speaks of this as the " Great Kindergarten in the pulpit." WEIDNER (Prof. R. F., M.A.)— STUDIES IN THE BOOK. By Rev. Prof. Revere Franklin Weidner, M.A. I2m>, cloth, 2b. 6d. each. NEW TESTAMENT. 3 Vols. Vol. I. — Historical Books. Seven General Epistles and Revelation. Vol. II.— 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans. Vol. III. — Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Philippians, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus. OLD TESTAMENT. Vol. I.— Genesis. WILLETT (H. L., Ph.D.)- THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL. By Prof. Herbert L. Willett, Ph.D., Instructor in Semitic Lan- guages and Literature, and Dean of the Disciples* Divinity House in the University of Chicago. 156 pageSy clotk^ fcap. $vo, 1b. 6d. ?ut ; post free, Is. 9d. Each chapter of this admirable handbook is followed by a series of questions. Christian Evangrellst. — " We will venture the assertion that never before has so much information about the Hebrew prophets been condensed into one hundred and sixty pages." H. R. ALLENSON'S CATALOGUE 47 WILLETT (H. L., Ph.D.)— LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS. By Prof. Herbert L. Willett, Ph.D. 164 pa^es, /cap, Svoy cloth^ la. 6d. net ; postfree^ Is. 9d. A good feature ia this book is the series of questions appended at end of each chapter. The Christian Evansrellst.— " This book is the finest compendium of the facti in the life of Jesus, and the chief characteristics of His teaching, which we beUeve to be in print. " WILLETT (H. L.). and CAMPBELL (JAMES M.)— THE TEACHING OF THE BOOKS; OR. THE LITERARY STRUCTURE AND SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Prof. Herbert L. Willett and Rev. James M. Campbell, D.D. 338 /c^^j, crown %vo, clotky 68. This handbook has been prepared especially for advanced Bible Class work, but it is hoped that it may also be found useful to the pastor and general Bible student. The aim of the book is to get through the letter of Scripture to the spirit, through the shell to the kernel, through the bone to the marrow. Bibliotheca Saora. — "One of the most trustworthy and helpful books of intro- duction to the New Testament which has been published." Christian Century*— "Its admirable combination of the critical and spiritual, expressed in clear and condensed literary style, makes it a valuable book, " WILLIAMS (Rev. W. PEDR)— THE DEVIL IN KHAKI. A Sermon by Rev. W. Pedr Williams. Crown 8w, Id. ; post free, Ijd. (Tracts for the Times, No. 14.) WOLFE (J. E.) GOLD FROM OPHIR. A New Series of Bible Readings. Edited by J. E. Wolfe. With an Intro- duction by Dr. James H. Brooks. Contributed to by Dr. Pente- cost, Dr. A. J. Gordon, Prof. Moorehead, Rev. F. B. Meyer, etc., %vo, cloth boards, ■^oz pages, 7s. 6d, C. H. Spurgreon in Sword and Trowel. — " The owner of this fine vol. will have a warehouse of pulpit and platform furniture ready for use. Everything is con- densed and analysed, so that there is not a line to spare. The doctrine is after our own heart, and the pervading spirit is one of downright earnestness." INDEX OF AUTHORS' NAMES PAGE Ballard (Rev. Frank, M. A.; 3 Banks (Rev. L. A., D.D.) 3 Battershall (Rev. W. W., D.D.) 5 Bkiant (W. b) 5 Brock (Rev. William) 5 Brooks (Rt. Rev. Phillips, D.D.).. 6 Brown (Calvin S.) 7 Brown (Rev. Charles) 7 Brown (Ruth Mowry) 7 Bryson (Mrs.) 7 BuRRELL(Rev. D. J., D.D.) 8 Campbhll (Rev. J. M., D.D.) ... . 8 Carpenter (Rt. Rev. Boyd, D.D.) 8 Caws (Rev. Luther W.) 9 Clark (Rev. H. W.) z Clark (Rev. R. W., D.D.) 9 Cook (Charles, F.R.G.S.) 9 Coster (Rev. G. T.) 9 Davis (Rev. J. D., D.D.) g Dawson (Rev. W. J., M,A.) 10 De Kay (Charles) 10 Dickie (Rev. John) 10 Dix (Rev. Morgan, D.D.) 10 Dole (Rev. Charles F.) 11 DowEN (Rev. Z., D.D.) 11 Eames (Rev. John, B.A.) 12 Edwards (Rev. Charles) 2 and 12 Ellis (John) 13 Evans (A. Johnson, M.A.) 15 Fairbairn (Rev. R. B., D.D.) .... 16 Faulkner (R. E.) 16 Ford (John D. ) 17 Forsyth (Rev. P. T., M.A., D.D.) 17 Fruit (John P.) 17 Gant(F.T., F.R.C.S.) i8 Gibbon (Rev. J. Morgan) 18 Gray (Rev. Geo. Z., D.D.) i8 Greer (Rev. D.H., D.D.) ig Gregory (Miss) 2 Grey (Rev. J. Temperley) 18 Habberton (John) 19 Hall (Harriet M. M.) 19 Hallam (Rev. Frank) 19 Halsey (Rev. J.) 19 Handley (Rev. S. B.) 20 Harris (Reader, K. C.) 20 Herbert (Rev. Charles) 20 HERRON(Rev. Prof. G. D., D.D.) 21 Holden (Clara M.) 22 Hornh (Rev. C. Silvester, M.A.) 23 HoRWiLL(Rev. H.W., M.A.) .... 23 James (Rev. G. Howard) 23 Johnston (W. A.) 23 Jones (Newton) 24 Jowett (Rev. J. H., M.A.) 34 PAGE Kephart (Rev. J. C, M.A.) 24 KiLBY (Henry) 24 Lawson (Rev. W. E.) 24 Learmount (Rev. James) 25 Lee (W. E.. M.R.C.S.E.) 25 Lewis (Rev. F. Warburton, B.A.).. 26 McKay (Rev. G. P.) 26 MACKINNON (Col. W. C.) 26 Maclaren (Rev. Alexander, D.D.) 27 Mann (Rev. Cameron) 27 Martin (Rev.G.Currie, M.A., B.D ) 27 Mercer (Rev. Henry F.) 28 MiLLEDGE (Rev. Sydney) 28 MiLLs(B Fay) 28 Monod (Wilfrid) 29 Morgan (Rev. G. Campbell) 29 Morison (Rev. John, D.D.) 29 Needham (E. S.) 29 Norton (Rev. Jno. N., D.D.) 30 Palmer (Rev. E. Reeves, M.A.) . . 30 Palmer (Joseph) 31 Parker (Rev. Joseph, D.D.) 32 Parry (Rev. John, M.A.) 32 Pearson (Rev. Samuel, M.A.) 32 Perren (Rev. C. H., D.D.) 32 Phillips (Rev. Thomas, B.A.) ,. .. 34 PiERCE(Rev. Wm.) 34 PoTwiN(Prof. L. S.) 35 Pring (Rev. F. A ) 35 Reichel (Rev. George V., M.A.)... 35 RoTHERHAM (J. B.) I and 36 Sheldon (Rev. Charles M.) 37 Sheldon (Prof. Henry C.) 39 SiME (Rev. A. H. Moncur) 40 Smith (Mrs. Pcarsall) 40 Snell (Rev. Bernard J.. M.A ,B.Sc.) 40 Stowell (Rev. J. Hilton, M.A.) . . 42 Strong (Rev. Chas. H.) 42 Thew (Rev. James) 42 Thomas (Alfred) 42 Thomas (Rev. Evan) 42 Thomas (Rev. H. Elwyn) 43 Tipple (Rev. S. A.) 43 ToRREY (Rev. R. A.) 44 Trumbull (A. E.) 44 Tuck (Mary N.) 45 Tuck (Rev. Robert) 46 TYNDALL(Rev. C.H..M.A., Ph.D.) 46 Weidner (Rev. Prof. R. F., M.A.) 46 Welsh (Rev. R. E.) 2 WiLLETT (Rev. H. L., Ph.D.).... 46 Williams (Rev. W. Pedr) 47 Wolfe (J. E.) 47