/ 4 
 PAM. eras 
 
 — 
 
 isc. vY\ ARS Cx te. woh eu As J 
 
 American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions. 
 
 HEATHEN CLAIMS 
 
 AND 
 
 CHRISTIAN DUTY. 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. ISABELLA BIRD BISHOP, F.R.GS., 
 
 And Honorary Fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical 
 Society. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 Printed for the American Woard; 
 CoNGREGATIONAL Housg, 
 BEACON STREET. 
 
 1908. 
 
 oo 
 
The following Address of Mrs. Bish- 
 op, the well-known traveler and author, 
 was given before the Gleaner’s Union, 
 an organization connected with: the 
 Church Missionary Society, in Exeter 
 Hall, London, November 1, 1893, and is 
 reprinted by permission. 
 
HEATHEN CLAIMS AND CHRISTIAN DUTY. 
 
 It is not as a mission worker in even the 
 humblest department of mission work that 
 I have been asked to speak tonight, but as 
 a traveler, and as one who has been made a 
 convert to missions, not by missionary suc- 
 cesses, but by seeing in four and a half years 
 of Asiatic traveling the desperate needs of 
 the "nchristianized world. There was a time 
 when J was altogether indifferent to missions, 
 and would have avoided a mission station 
 rather than have visited it. But the awful, 
 pressing claims of the unchristianized nations 
 which I have seen have taught me that the 
 work of their conversion to Christ is one to: 
 which one would gladly give influence and. 
 whatever else God has given to one, 
 
 In the few words that I shall address to yow 
 tonight I should like (for I cannot tell you any- 
 thing new or anything that you do not already 
 know) just to pass on some of the ideas which 
 have suggested themselves to my own mind in 
 my long and solitary travels, and perhaps es 
 
4 ~ 
 
 pecially since I came home, full of the needs 
 of the heathen world, and to some extent 
 amazed at the apathy and callousness of the 
 Christian Church at home. I have visited the 
 Polynesian Islands, Japan, Southern China, the 
 Malay Peninsula, Ceylon, Northern India, Cashe 
 mere, Western Thibet, and Central Asia, Per- 
 sia, Arabia, and Asia Minor. In each of these 
 countries I have avoided, as much as possible, 
 European settlements, and have scarcely lin- 
 gered so long as I could have wished at mis- 
 sion stations. My object was to live among 
 the people, and I have lived much in their own 
 houses and among their tents, always with a 
 trustworthy interpreter, sharing their lives as 
 much as possible, and to some extent winning 
 their confidence by means of a medicine chest 
 which I carried. Wherever I have been I have 
 seen sin and sorrow and shame. I cannot tell 
 of fields whitening unto the harvest, nor have 
 I heard the songs of rejoicing laborers bring: 
 ing the sheaves home. But I have seen work 
 done, the seed sown in tears by laborers sent 
 out by you— honest work, work which has made 
 me more and more earnestly desire to help the 
 cause of missions from a personal knowledge 
 of work in the mission field —but not among 
 the lower races, or the fetich worshipers, or 
 among the simpler systems which destroy men’s 
 souls. The reason, perhaps, why I have seen 
 
5 
 
 so little missionary success is because the 
 countries in which I have traveled are the 
 regions of great, elaborate, philosophical reli- 
 gious systems, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, 
 and Mohammedanism. 
 
 Naturally, among those at home there is a 
 disposition to look at the work done. On my 
 own part there may be too great a disposition, 
 possibly, to look at the work left undone, bee 
 cause to me it seems so vast and so appalling, 
 The enthusiasm of Exeter Hall has in it some 
 thing that to many is delightful and contagious. 
 We sing hopeful, triumphant hymns, we hear 
 of what the Lord has done, of encouragements 
 which a merciful God gives to inadequate and 
 feeble efforts, and some of us, perhaps, think 
 that little remains to be accomplished, and that 
 the kingdoms of this world are about to be 
 come “the kingdoms of our God and of his 
 Christ.” But such is not the case; and I think 
 that we may, instead of congratulating oure 
 selves upon the work done, though we are 
 thankful for what God has enabled us to do, 
 bow our heads in shame that we have done so 
 little and served so little. And I would like 
 tonight that we should turn away from these 
 enchantments, for enchantments they truly are, 
 and set our faces towards the wilderness, that 
 great, “waste, howling wilderness,” in which 
 one thousand millions of our race are wander: 
 
6 
 
 ing in darkness and the shadow of death, with. 
 out hope, being “without God in the world.” 
 
 The work is only beginning, and we have 
 barely touched the fringe of it. The natural 
 increase of population in the heathen world is 
 outstripping at this moment all our efforts; 
 and if it is true, and I believe it has never been 
 contradicted, that four millions only have been 
 baptized within this century, it has been also 
 said without contradiction that the natural in- 
 crease of the heathen world in that time has 
 been two hundred millions —an awful contem- 
 plation for us tonight. It is said that there are 
 eight hundred millions on our earth to whom 
 the name of Jesus Christ is unknown, and that 
 ten hundred and thirty millions are not in any 
 sense. Christianized. Of these, thirty-five mil- 
 lions pass annually in one ghastly, reproachful, 
 mournful procession into Christless graves. 
 They are dying so very fast! In China alone, 
 taking the lowest computation of the popula- 
 tion which has been given, it is estimated that 
 fourteen hundred die every hour, and that in 
 this one day thirty-three thousand Chinese have 
 passed beyond our reach. And if this meeting 
 were to agree to send a missionary tomorrow 
 to China, before he could reach Chinese shores 
 one and a half millions of souls would have 
 passed from this world into eternity. Nineteen 
 centuries have passed away, and only one third 
 
7 
 
 of the population of our earth is even nominally 
 Christian. 
 
 We are bound to face these facts and all 
 that they mean for us tonight, and to ask our- 
 selves how we stand in regard to this awful 
 need of the heathen world. We have in this 
 country ' 43,000 ordained ministers. If we were 
 to be treated as we treat the heathen, we should 
 have but 220 workers for the United Kingdom, 
 of which number seventy would be women. In 
 China alone we have but one missionary for half 
 a million of people, as if we were to have one 
 minister for Glasgow, or Birmingham, or Man- 
 chester, or one of our large cities. I think we 
 may say that to us indeed belongeth shame for 
 this our neglect. The Moravians, as perhaps 
 most here know, have one missionary out of 
 every sixty of their members. We have but 
 one out of every 5,000 of our members. Theirs 
 is an example that we can follow. Were we 
 equally impressed with love and obedience, 
 we should have 200,000 missionaries, and our 
 contributions would be £20,000,000 a year. 
 What an object this is to arouse the sleeping 
 conscience with! We spend £140,000,000, or 
 three guineas a head, upon drink; we smoke 
 £,16,000,000, and we hoard £240,000,0003; while 
 our whole contributions for the conversion of 
 
 1 Grezt Britain. 
 
8 
 
 this miserable world are but one and a half 
 million pounds, or ninepence a head. These 
 statistics are dry enough, but they are filled 
 with meaning, and an awful meaning if we 
 would only dwell upon them, each one of us 
 tonight in our own heart in the sight of God. 
 
 I think that we are getting into a sort of 
 milk-and-water view of heathenism — not of Afri- 
 can heathenism alone, but of Buddhism, Hindu- 
 ism, and Mohammedanism also, which prevail 
 in Asia. Missionaries come home, and they 
 refrain from shocking audiences by recitals of 
 the awful sins of the heathen and Moslem 
 world. When traveling in Asia, it struck me 
 very much how little we heard, how little we 
 know, as to how sin is enthroned and deified 
 and worshiped. There is sin and shame every- 
 where. Mohammedanism js corrupt to the .- 
 very core. The morals of Mohammedan coun- 
 tries, perhaps in Persia in particular, are cor- 
 rupt, and the imaginations very wicked. How 
 corrupt Buddhism is! How corrupt Buddhists 
 are! It is an astonishment to find that there 
 is scarcely a single thing that makes for right- 
 eousness in the life of the unchristianized na- 
 tions. There is no public opinion interpene- 
 trated by Christianity which condemns sin or 
 wrong. There is nothing except the conscience 
 of some few who are seeking after God “fest 
 haply they might feel after him who is not 
 
9 
 
 far from every one of us.” And over ail this 
 seething mass of sin and shame and corrup- 
 tion hovers “the ruler of the darkness of this 
 world,” rejoicing in the chains with which he 
 has bound two thirds of the human race. 
 
 Just one or two remarks as to what these 
 false faiths do. They degrade women with an 
 infinite degradation. I have lived in zenanas 
 and harems, and have seen the daily life of the 
 secluded women, and I can speak from bitter 
 experience of what their lives are —the intel- 
 lect dwarfed, so that the woman of.twenty or 
 thirty years of age is more like a child of eight 
 intellectually; while all the worst passions of 
 human nature are stimulated and developed in 
 a fearful degree—jealousy, envy, murderous 
 hate, intrigue, running to such an extent that 
 in some countries I have hardly ever been in 
 a women’s house or near a women’s tent with- 
 out being asked for drugs with which to dis- 
 figure the favorite wife, to take away her life, 
 or to take away the life of the favorite wife’s 
 infant son. This request has been made of me 
 nearly two hundred times. This is only an in- 
 dication of the daily life of whose miseries we, 
 think so little, and which is a natural product 
 of the systems that we ought to have subverted 
 long ago. 
 
 It follows necessarily that there is also an 
 infinite degradation of men. The whole ’conti- 
 
) fe) 
 
 ment of Asiais corrupt. It is the scene of bar 
 barities, tortures, brutal punishments, oppres- 
 sion, official corruption, which is worst under 
 Mohammedan rule — of all things which are the 
 natural products of systems which are without 
 God in Christ. There are no sanctities of 
 home, nothing to tell of righteousness, tem- 
 perance, or judgment to come; only a fearful 
 looking for in the future of fiery indignation 
 from some quarter, they know not what, a 
 dread of everlasting rebirths into forms of ob- 
 noxious reptiles or insects, or of tortures which 
 are infinite, and which are depicted in pic- 
 tures of fiendish ingenuity. 
 
 And then one comes to what sickness is to 
 them. If one speaks of the sins, one is bound 
 to speak of the sorrows too. The sorrows of 
 heathenism impressed me — sorrows which hu- | 
 manitarianism, as well as Christianity, should 
 Jead us to roll away. Sickness means to us 
 tenderness all about us, the hushed footfall in 
 the house, everything sacrificed for the sick 
 person, no worry or evil allowed to enter into 
 the sick room, kindness of neighbors who, 
 maybe, have been strangers to us, the skill of 
 doctors ready to alleviate every symptom —all 
 these are about our sick beds, together with 
 loving relations and skilled nurses; and if any 
 of us are too poor to be nursed at home, there 
 are magnificent hospitals where everything that 
 
If 
 
 skill and money can do is provided for the 
 poorest among us. And, besides, there are the 
 Christian ministries of friends and ministers, 
 the reading of the Word of God, the repetition 
 of hymns full of hope—all that can make a 
 sick bed a time of peace and blessing enters 
 our own sick room, and even where the sufferer 
 has been impenitent, He “who is able to save 
 to the very uttermost” stands by the sick bed 
 ready even in the dying hour to cleanse and re- 
 ceive the parting soul. In the case of the 
 Christian the crossing of the river is a time of 
 triumph and of hope, and “O death, where is 
 thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” 
 sounds over his dying bed. 
 
 But what does sickness mean to millions 
 of our fellow creatures in heathen lands? 
 Throughout the East sickness is believed to 
 be the work of demons. The sick person at 
 once becomes an object of loathing and terror, 
 is put out of the house, is taken to an out- 
 house, is poorly fed and rarely visited, or the 
 astrologers, or priests, or medicine men, or wiz- 
 ards assemble, beating big drums and gongs, 
 blowing horns, and making the most fearful 
 noises. They light gigantic fires and dance 
 round them with their unholy incantations. 
 They beat the sick person with clubs to drive 
 out the demon. They lay him before a roast- 
 ing fire till his skin is blistered, and then throw 
 
12 
 
 him into cold water. They stuff the nostrils of 
 the dying with aromatic mixtures or mud, and 
 in some regions they carry the chronic sufferer 
 to a mountain top, placing barley balls and 
 water beside him, and leave him to die alone. 
 If there were time I could tell you things that 
 would make it scarcely possible for any one 
 beginning life without a fixed purpose to avoid 
 going into training as a medical missionary. 
 The woe and sickness in the unchristianized 
 world are beyond telling, and J would ask my 
 sisters here to remember that these woes press 
 most heavily upon women, who, in the seclu 
 sion of their homes, are exposed to nameless 
 barbarities in the hour of “the great pain and 
 peril of childbirth,” and often perish miserably 
 from barbarous maltreatment. 
 
 This is only a glimpse of the sorrows of the 
 heathen world. May we seek to realize in our 
 own days of sickness and the days of sickness 
 of those dear to us what illness means for 
 those millions who are without God in the 
 world, and go from this meeting resolved, cost 
 what it may, to save them from these woes, and 
 to carry the knowledge of Christ into these 
 miserable homes! What added effort can we 
 make? The duty of all Christians towards 
 missions has been summed up in these words, 
 “Go. Let go. Help go.” The need for men 
 and women is vast, and I see many young mer. 
 
13 
 
 and young women here who perhaps have not 
 yet decided upon their life work. Then go! 
 Young Christian friends, here is the noblest 
 opening for you that the world presents. A life 
 consecrated in foreign lands to the service of 
 the Master is, 1 believe, one of the happiest 
 lives that men or women live upon this earth. 
 It may be that advancement in the professions 
 at home may be sacrificed by going to the for- 
 eign field; but in the hour when the soldier 
 lays his dinted armor down, after the fight has 
 been fought, and the hands which were pierced 
 for our redemption crown his brow with the 
 crown of life, and the prize of the high calling 
 - of God is won, will there be one moment’s 
 regret, think you, for the abandoned prizes of 
 the professions at home? “Let go.” Help 
 others to go by rejoicing in their going, by 
 giving them willingly. 
 
 Then comes the other great question of 
 “Help go,” and this subject of increased self- 
 sacrifice has occupied my thoughts very much 
 indeed within the last few months. Our re- 
 sponsibilities are increased by our knowledge. 
 We pray God to give the means to send forth 
 laborers. Has he not giveh us the means? 
 Have we not the means to send forth mission- 
 aries; have not our friends the means? And 
 when we pray God to give the means, may we 
 not rather pray him to consume the selfish- 
 
14 
 
 ness which expends our means upon ourselves* 
 Dare we, can we, sing such hymns as 
 
 All the vain things that charm me most 
 I sacrifice them to His blood, 
 
 and yet surround ourselves with these “vain 
 things””—the lust of the eyes and the vain- 
 glory of life? Our style of living is always 
 rising. Weare always accumulating. We fill 
 our houses with pleasant things. We decorate 
 our lives till further decoration seems almost 
 impossible. Our expenditure on ourselves is 
 enormous; and when I returned from Asia 
 two years ago I thought that the expenditure 
 on the decoration of life among Christian peo- 
 ple had largely risen, and I think so still, and 
 think so increasingly. Now, we have many 
 possessions. We have old silver, we have 
 jewelry, objects of art, rare editions of books, 
 things that have been given to us by those we 
 have loved, and which have most sacred asso- 
 ciations. All these would bring their money 
 value if they were sold. May we not hear the 
 Lord’s voice saying to us in regard to these 
 our treasured accumulations, “* Lovest thou me 
 more than these?” It is time that we should 
 readjust our expenditure in the light of our 
 increased knowledge; and not in the light of 
 our increased knowledge alone, but that we 
 should go carefully over our stewardship at 
 
15 
 
 the foot of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 in the light of those eyes which closed in 
 death for our redemption. 
 
 The time is almost at an end, and yet there 
 are one or two things I should like to say. 
 There can be no arbitrary law about giving. 
 If we readjusted, by our increased knowledge, 
 personal needs and Christ’s needs at the foot 
 of the cross, each one of us here tonight would 
 be sure, I think I may say, to do the right 
 thing. Let us be honest in our self-denial, and 
 not think that we are carrying the burdens of 
 this great, perishing, heathen world by touch- 
 ing them lightly with our fingers, but let us 
 bear them till they eat into the shrinking flesh, 
 and so let us fulfill the law of Christ. Let us 
 entreat him, even with strong crying and tears, 
 to have mercy, not only on the Christless 
 heathen, but on the Christlessness within our 
 own hearts, on our shallow sympathies, and 
 hollow self-denials, and on our infinite callous- 
 ness to the woes of this perishing world, which 
 God so loved that he gave his only Son for 
 its redemption. 
 
 In conclusion, let me say that the clock 
 which marks so inexorably the time allotted 
 to each speaker marks equally inexorably the 
 passing away of life. Since I began to speak 
 —and it isa most awful consideration — 2,500 
 human beings, at the lowest computation, have 
 
16 
 
 passed before the bar of God. And though 
 the veil of the invisible is thick, and our ears 
 are dull of hearing, can we not hear a voice 
 saying to each of us, ‘“ What hast thou done? 
 The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto 
 me from the ground.” Every minute eighty- 
 three of our Christless brethren and sisters are 
 passing into eternity. 
 
 The fields are white unto harvest, but who 
 is to be the reaper? Is it to be the Lord of 
 the harvest, or him who has been sowing tares 
 ever since the world began? Let each of us 
 do our utmost by any amount of self-sacrifice 
 to see that it shall be the Lord of the harvest. 
 And may the constraining memories of the 
 cross of Christ, and that great love wherewith 
 he loved us, be so in us that we may pass that 
 love on to those who are perishing. ‘* We 
 know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
 though he was rich, yet for our sakes he be- 
 came poor,” and we hear his voice tonight 
 ringing down through ages of selfishness and 
 luxury and neglected duty, solemnly declaring 
 that the measure of our love for our brethren 
 must be nothing less than the measure of his 
 own. May he touch all our hearts with the 
 spirit of self-sacrifice and with the inspiration 
 of that love of his which, when he came io 
 redeem the world, KEPT NOTHING BACK!