1 fc., ti OUTLINE MISSIONARY SERIES. o — N Boo BY J* T. GRACEY, D. D. ROCHESTER, N. Y.: J. T. GRACEY. 1897. CONTENTS. Page. Africa.3 Bulgaria. 58 Burma.29 Central America. 52 China.34 India.21 Islands of the Sea. .. .«.!.61 Australia.61 Borneo.64 Java. 63 Madagascar. 62 Malay Archipelago.63 New Guinea.64 Polynesia.62 Singapore. 64 Sumatra . 63 The Celebes.64 The Molucca Islands.... 64 Japan.11 Korea. 19 Mexico. 38 Persia and Central Asia.60 Siam and Laos . 32 South America. 44 Turkish Empire..54 Map of Africa . 2 “ “ Burma and Siam. ..30 “ “ Congo Free State . 5 “ “ India. . 22 “ “ Japan . 12 OUTLINE MISSIONARY SERIES OPEN DOORS: HINTS ABOUT OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHRISTIAN WORK IN AFRICA, JAPAN, INDIA, BURMA, CHINA, MEXICO, SOUTH AMERICA, THE TURKISH EMPIRE, KOREA, AND THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA. BY J. T. GRACEY, D. D. Seven years Missionary in India : Member of the American Oriental Society : Member International Congress of Oriental¬ ists : Hon. Member A merican Society of Comparative Religion. J. T. GRACEY. ROCHESTER, N. Y.; 1897. THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA. “ in the political, commercial and geographical annals of Europe, and especially in those of Great Britain, the name of Africa has been writ large during the past few years.” AM as certain of the conversion of Africa to God,” said the sainted pioneer missionary, Latimer Neville, “as I am of the rising of the sun to-morrow morning.’’ “The idea of a chain of missions will yet be taken up by succeeding generations and carried out, said the toil-worn, self-denying African missionary, Di. Ivrapf, “for the idea is always conceived ten years before the deed comes to pass. This idea I bequeath to every missionary coming to East Africa. Every one who is a real patriot will open this bequest and take his portion out of it, as a fellow-partaker of the^ tribulation, of the patience and of the kingdom of our God.” Krapf did not quail at the cost. He said: "The first resident of the new mission ground is a dead pel son of the missionary circle; our God bids us first to build a cemetery before we build a church or dwelling-house, showing us by this lesson that the resurrection of East Africa must be effected by our own destruction.” When three mechanics died he wrote: “‘That is fine business, you will say, ‘the heavy part of the army is beaten, and the light division completely unnerved, and yet you will conquer Africa, will draw a chain of missions between the East and the West.’ ” The utterances of Neville and Krapf come with the clarion ring of the boldest of the Hebrew Prophets. They were men “crying in the wilderness.” They have gone, but their track is ablaze with the light of their zeal, their faith and their prophecies. Was it instinct or revelation that justified Krapf’s charge to the Christian Church to put a chain of missions across a continent almost five thousand miles in width?—a continent so wide as to cover land and ocean eastward from the Pacific 4 THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA. coast to Ireland—a land with an area three times as great as that of Europe, with a central river draining three mil¬ lion square miles more than are contained in the Mis¬ sissippi valley, and with another river, “the gift of the Gods/’ to Egypt, whose length is equal to one-eleventh of the circumference of the globe—a land, with one- seventh of the population of the globe. Is this land, this wonderful land, that Neville was sure would be brought to Christ, and whose slave-chains Krapf was sure would be substituted by a trans-continental chain of Christian mis¬ sions—this land to which our own sacred books make more allusion than to any other—this Continent that sheltered Abraham when driven by famine from Canaan, which nurtured Jacob and afforded shelter to a greater than Abraham—the land of the Cyrene who bore the cross of the world’s Redeemer—the land of Cyprian and of the fiery Tertullian—is this land open to us? The very antiquity of its history and literature and art appeals to our reverence. It is older than Homer’s Iliad —older than Plato’s Dialogues—older than the oldest of the books of the Chinese, “the Kings”—older than the oldest of the sacred books of the Hindus, the Vedas— older than Moses and his Pentateuch. Its history was old before Abraham forsook Terah. Its art was old before Roman or Greek quarried granite or marble for Parthenon or Pantheon. “Four thousand years ago the great Pharaohs of Egypt were piling up their pyramids, hewing out obelisks, build¬ ing their massive temples and carving the gigantic images which amaze all modern beholders.” Its stone¬ faced sphynx has seen the legions of Napoleon and Alexander, and the plagues of Jehovah which released the Hebrew slaves from the brick-yards. The explorations of the last thirty years have revealed Africa almost as thoroughly as the discovery of Colum¬ bus revealed America. Livingstone penetrated from the Cape to Ujiji, Schweinfurth pierced the continent from the north-west; the east had been discovered by way of the Nile, the Zambesi and the Shire, but the greater work 6 THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA. yet, the work essential to Krapf’s chain of stations con¬ necting east and west Africa, was that done by Stanley in his march “from salt sea to salt sea.” Only for no miles from the sea on the west had the Congo been penetrated. There Tuckey and his noble band of navigators died of fever seventy-four years ago; died, but left the Congo basin unknown. What do we know now about this trans-continental water system? We know that above these rapids which seventy years ago arrested progress a hundred miles from the Atlan¬ tic, the Congo is navigable in an unbroken stretch for a thousand miles. We know that there are almost innum¬ erable affluents of the Congo by which this hitherto unknown tenth part—“the richest tenth part of Africa can be threaded with commerce and civilization. We know that by providing for the carriage around two waterfalls, the one hundred miles of navigable water at the mouth of the river, and the eleven hundred miles above those first rapids are supplemented by another two thousand miles of navigable waters of the Congo. We know that there are great lakes with which this Congo system is connected, affording a water-fiont of three thousand miles. We know that this Congo basin is estimated to contain an area of roughly, eight hundred million acres. We know that it is estimated to contain eighty thousand towns, and forty—possibly fifty million souls. We know that over these water highways the merchant and the missionary may push their boats over seventeen thousand miles of a river system, and thirty thousand square miles of a lake system. . What a marvelous change in the conditions of approach to these people! The action of the Brussels Conference contains a series of measures calculated to repress the slave trade, pro¬ hibiting the importation of fire-arms, and providing for the establishment of strong stations in. the interior to serve as refuges for the native population. The roads followed by slave-dealers, and especially the places of crossing of the principal caravan routes, are to be THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA. 7 watched, and caravans are to be stopped or pursued wherever it can be done legally. For the repression of the maritime slave trade the right to visit, search, anc seize vessels under 5 00 tons burden has been conceded by the signatory Powers within a defined zone, which embraces the waters of the East Coast. Turkey and Per¬ sia are among these contracting Powers, and they have pledged themselves to prohibit the importation of slaves _“their transit, exit, as well as trade therein. . Special restrictions on the traffic in alcoholic liquors are imposed, their introduction being forbidden to the districts where, for any cause, they are not already in use, and customs duties being prescribed in those regions in which such liquors have been imported. . . . . All this aims to build up a great civilization which, it it is successful, while it will make the white man the leader of the black man for the next hundred years, will do that other grand thing spoken of by Victor Hugo when he said, “in the nineteenth century the white man has made a man out of the black, and in the twen¬ tieth century Europe will make a world out of Africa. Nor is that all. “We are at present. assisting at a unique spectacle in history, the actual division of a con¬ tinent scarcely known by the civilized nations of Europe. Thus reads a document lately issued by the new French Committee on African affairs. It is a long story, already possibly not a very honorable one—this of the so-called partition of Africa; yet it is, the London Times says, so far an accomplished fact that it is possible to take stock of the share which has fallen to the lot of each, with some approach to accuracy.” The “Mouvement Geographique” some while since, worked out the problem of the European geographical extension in Africa, in a series of tables which are the clearest presentation of this progress which has. fallen under our eye. It is astounding to note this projection of Europe on Africa within fourteen years; or, since 1876, the year of the Brussels Conference, from which the 8 THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA. scramble may be said to date. The following 1 will mark this extension in square miles. Portugal, in 1876, 612,217: in 1890, 774,993. Spain, in 1876, 3,500; in 1890, 210,000. France, in 1876, 283,450; in 1890, 2,310,248. Germany, in 1874, none; in 1890, L° 35 > 7 2 °* Congo Free State, in 1890, 1,000,000. Italy, in 1876, none; in 1890, 360,000. Great Britain, in 1876, 2 79P^5; in 1890, 1,909,446. Total, in 1876, 1,178,332; in 1890, 7,590,496. If to this we add the areas of Egypt and the Egyptian Soudan, of Tripoli, Morocco, the independ¬ ent Central Soudan States, the Transvaal and Orange Free States, and patches elsewhere not yet ensphered, it will probably be found that of the 11,900,000 square miles of Africa, not more than 2,500,000 remains to be scrambled for. But here is vast responsibility on the Christians of Europe, and every one of these Christian Powers throws wide open the door to the missionary, and affords the utmost protection possible to them. Thus the “king¬ dom 1 ’ of God extends, so far as the political “sphere” goes, in giving Africa to Christ. And now come the railroad schemes for supplement¬ ing the river highways, and the French Government voted three-and-a-half million francs for a railway from the Senegal River to the head-waters of the Niger, and the Portuguese Cortes entertains a bill for building a rail¬ road from Loando inland into Angola, with guaranteed interest at six per cent, for the Government, and now a railway from Vivi, near the head of steam navigation on the Congo, from the ocean to Stanley Pool, to avoid the rapids of the lower portion of the river is being rapidly constructed, the most difficult portion being pushed to completion. It is even probable that of the vast sums from King Leopold’s private fortune in Africa, half a million dollars annually shall be spent in the construc¬ tion of such a railway. James Wilkinson of Glasgow, is reported to be willing to bear the expense of constructing a railway over the only seventy miles necessary to make complete the connection between Lake Nyassa and the sea. THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA. 9 While the International Society of Exploration, with the King of Belgium at its head, proposes to open up a trade highway from Loando to Zanzibar—from west to east across the continent—it is also proposed that branch societies shall mark out and open up cross paths to the central highway, so as to spread a net work of routes over the interior to the coasts, the English to push a line northward from their recently acquired Transvaal across the Zambesi River on to the south of Lake Tanganyika, the French to start from Algeria across the Sahara, the Germans to advance through Abyssinia, and the Italians from the Galla country, south from the Red Sea. The submarine cable is laid to connect England with the British colonies all along the west coast to the Cape of Good Hope, and the Portuguese have a line under contract from Senegal to St. Thomas. We have said nothing of the open door through the strong Christian governments growing up in South Africa, along the west coast, and in Madagascar—“An island,” you say, but an island that would stretch from Maine to Florida on our Atlantic coast. We have said nothing of nominally Christian Abyssinia, Algiers and Tunis, with their railroads, and within easy reach of the Christian evangelism of London and Basle. Is there not an open door of language and initial liter¬ ature and Christian labor? The English language is spoken a hundred miles inland from the coast, almost all round the continent. And the missionaries mainly with a few scientists and merchants, have enabled Mr. Cust to catalogue four-hundred and thirty-eight languages, and one-hundred and fifty-three dialects, after throwing out everyone if he could not indicate by the map wheie it is spoken. He at least knew how to group them all—ten Semitic; twenty-nine Hamitic; seventeen Nuba Fulah; one hundred and ninety-five negro; one hundred and sixty-eight Banto; nineteen Bushman-Hottentot. Take it all in all, here is a new world thrown up for the conquest of Christian civilization. In the Congo Valley alone is a highway cast up for the evangelization 10 THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA. of a population equal to that of the United States. Northern Africa, including the Soudan, which of itself is well nigh equal in extent to the Indian Empire, or, roughly equal to the United States east of the Missis¬ sippi, is to be conquered from a rude form of Islam, but the “richest tenth-part of Africa/’ the valley of the Congo, is to be reclaimed from simple, unlettered fetishism. Think of it! Stanley took 999 days to travel 7,000 miles across the Continent of Africa, and never saw the face of a Christian, nor of a man who had had the opportunity to become one. Yet he saw single tribes numbering a hundred-and-fifty thousand, and moved amongst a popu¬ lation of fifty millions! The whole continent offers a work challenging the enterprise, the power for combination and administration of the aggregated Christian intelligence of the last years of the nineteenth century. East, west, north and south, the door stands wide open. Mr. Stanley tells a story about Frank Pocock’s sing¬ ing. Frank was the English boy who was with him. Frank and Stanley were the only white men ever seen at the spot named. It was exactly on the Equator at 25 0 east longitude. If one place could be more than another “the heart of Africa” it was this. Frank sang we have said; sang, we now say as the advance courier of mer¬ chant and missionary; sang, the representative of all Christendom. It was a John Baptist cry in the wilder¬ ness—that wilderness of Africa, the densest moral wilder¬ ness of the world, the blackest part of heathen Africa. Frank sang several songs. Mr. Stanley thought them not cheery enough for his men. Then Frank Pocock sang again. This time not for himself, nor for Stanley, but for you and for me, for all saints of all lands; for all the battered and bannered hosts of Christ ; sang what all others will sing all along the Congo, from “salt sea to salt sea,” over that continent; Frank sang: “Onward Christian soldier, Marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus Going on before.” THE OPEN DOOR IN JAPANo Thirty and more millions of people, in less than thiity years, have, in the Empire of Japan, undergone the great¬ est possible of revolutions in matters of government, commerce, education, religion, the army and nav), material and social science, systems of finance, religion and—well everything but morals. A rough historical draft of the Empire of Japan may be made thus:—Theoretically, the government was orig¬ inally presided over by the gods. About 700 b. c. these delegated their prerogative to a royal race of godmem These received various titles, amongst which was that of Mikado. The Mikado was ruler of church and state. He was a born pope, holy, infallible, too sacred to be allowed to touch the ground, theoretically never even paring his nails, nor cutting the hair of his head or beard. But even this royal line of incarnate gods became involved in trouble, by that cancer of all loyalty, the order of inheritance, and a military power was sum¬ moned to support the claim of the god-king on the Jap¬ anese throne. About seven hundred years ago the military power of the Japanese government chose to constitute itself the Executive part of the government, and to assert its own permanence in this relation. In the organization of this Executive Department, the generalissimo of the army established, subordinate to himself, a great nobility on a feudal basis. The esta > lished head of the military was styled the Tycoon. Nom¬ inally he was subordinate, even from his own standpoint, to the Mikado. Everywhere, and on all hands, the Mikado was acknowledged as the Emperor. Every¬ where, and on all hands, the Tycoon was known to be the real Emperor. This dual government, with the Mikado for figure-head, lasted for centuries. In the Kirosaki Mona Sakata] OKIO, ^EDO/^ Nagoykr THE OPEN DOOR IN JAPAN. 13 course of time the great increase and the greater oppres¬ sions of the military class prepared the people for its overthrow. This could only be done by re-asserting the long dormant but rightful power of the Mikado. The Tycoon and his feudal lords became divided, and both sought relief in one way, both determined on re-estab¬ lishing the direct and single government of the Mikado. Each sought to identify themselves with the restored power of the Mikado in the government. For this they contended, but at last both laid down their arms at the foot of the Mikado’s throne. All this occurred just at the juncture when western nations, partly by over-awing the Japanese government, induced them to accept foreign commercial intercourse, thus introducing to their notice the idea of the most advanced civilization. The Military Commander of the Japanese forces, when he saw the walls of the fort crumb¬ ling beneath him, under the fire of Commodore Peiry s guns, while he paced to and fro, swore by all the gods of Japan that he would find out how it was done. The whole nation presently thereafter resolved to find out how Europe and America did everything else. Western ideas were thus thrust upon them, at a time when the crusts of social and political order were broken up, and when the remoulding came, new men helped to inaugu¬ rate new measures. The foreign features could readily be incorporated as a part of the new regime. The result we have seen in part. It constitutes a most astonishing fusion of ideas and social and political forms, of periods separated from each other by not less than five centuries. The total revolution, which has made a new Japan, has taken place in the lifetime of a single generation, and involved changes which would constitute a new era in any country. A people whose written history stretches in uninter¬ rupted tale over 2,550 years, whose first ruler of the still reigning family was contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar, have, in thirty years seen all this totally revolutionized. Thirty years ago it was like a medieval Europe, now it 14 THE OPEN DOOR IN JAPAN. is modernized in almost every part. Down to thirty years ago, with a longer history than any nation in the west, it had gone through fewer changes than the youngest of them. Within thirty-five years, this nation, with government records reaching back to the time of Croesus, has publicly and deliberately, in the face of the world, changed the settled habits and policy of centuries. The Mikado resumed the government de facto, ban¬ ished feudalism, destroyed numerous principalities, con¬ solidated the army and the navy, built a fleet of war and transport steamers, ironclads and rams; constructed a stone dry-dock, with capacity equal to the requirements of the largest steamers; built machine shops, forges and foundries, railroads and telegraph lines; established schools in which English, French and German are taught; sent more than a thousand of their country’s best young men abroad, to study the laws, languages, habits, manufactures, governments and religion of other coun¬ tries; totally changed the system of internal revenue; introduced new methods of agriculture, mechanics, and road and bridge building; and seriously, yea, radically, modified the whole position of woman in society. Fol¬ lowing this came the peaceful transition from absolute to limited monarchy at the suggestion, and by the grant of the Mikado himself, and with it a Parliament and a Constitution. Japan, from a state of absolute exclusiveness for ages, has swung to the other side of the arc, and is repre¬ sented at every European capital. Then “the sea was its bulwark, now it is its pathway.” Then taxes were col¬ lected in kind, now in money. Then Buddhist temples were in the front, now Buddhism is disestablished, their revenues divided to the State, and their bells “sold for old bronze.” Then there was feudal tyranny, now there is a limited monarchy. Then the Emperor was absolutely invisible because of his sacred character, now the people are not even obliged to prostrate themselves before him on the streets. A dozen newspapers are published in Tokyo, and hundreds in the provinces. The postal sys- THE OPEN DOOR IN JAPAN. 15 tem of Japan is now embraced in the “Postal Union, and letter-boxes in remote villages are labelled in Eng¬ lish—“Post-office.” The telegraph runs from end to end of the Empire, and the national holiday—every fifth day has, since 1876, been substituted by the official adoption of Sunday as a day of rest. The calendar of the civilized world was adopted three years earlier (1873), that year becoming the 2,333rd year of the traditional unbroken reign of the Mikados. Outcasts, like workers in leather, have become “citizens”; new coinage has been introduced, Englishmen and Americans have been put at the head of the Department of Public Works, the Navy, the Impe¬ rial College, and the Department of Mines. The Depart¬ ment of Religion in 1877 was abolished by its incorpora¬ tion with the Department of the Interior, or Home Office, and the Shinto priests awarded a pension to cease after twenty years. The literary stir is surprising. The. Department of the Interior licensed publications thus,—in 1881, 545 works on political subjects against .281 in 1880; 255 works on law in 1881 against 207 in 1.880; 25 on modern political economy in 1881 against 15 ‘ m 1880; 267 works on medicine in 1881 against 229 in 1880; ethical and moral works increased in 1881 over 1880 from 32 to 93 ? historical works from 196 to 276, practical works from 491 to 556, drawing and writing from 127 to 339, engi¬ neering works from 8 to 28, books on commerce from 70 to 115. In two years 415 newspapers were started, 161 of which ceased, one only being prohibited by the gov¬ ernment. The total of works published in 1881 was 4,910 against 3,792 in 1880. School-books in both years were nearly half as numerous as all others put together, num¬ bering 707 in 1880 and 704 in 1881. Into all this great change and stir, Christian thought and Christian influence entered as a part, and necessaiy part, of the regime, and the Christian missionary became everywhere in demand as a teacher, and Christian senti¬ ment exerts great influence on the government. Die i6 THE OPEN DOOR IN JAPAN. foreign missionary was the government professor in the Imperial College and the normal schools, at the very juncture when that government sent out the edict of compulsory education of every boy and girl in the Em¬ pire. In 1880 the report of the Educational Department showed a school population in Japan of five millions between the ages of six and twenty-four years. Two millions of these were enrolled on the school registers, and the average daily attendance was a million and a half, of whom 6,000 were in the middle schools, 7,700 in the normal schools, and 6,700 at foreign language schools, and the total gain of scholars over the year before was two hundred thousand. Here, then, is a great system of education, not only of which the missionary force may avail itself, but which it has had the opportunity to largely mold. Here is a literary people, and the missionary is on hand with his Christian literature which he sells in vast quantities unmolested, with all the edicts against Christianity unre¬ pealed. The government has materially modified its official attitude toward Christianity. Everywhere when the mis¬ sionaries first sought to introduce Christianity, they stood face to face with the ancient edict—now nearly 250 years old—which reads:—“So long as the sun shall warm the earth, let no Christian be so bold as to come to lapan; and let all know that the King of Spain himself, or the Christian God, or the great God of all, if he vio¬ late this command, shall pay for it with his head.” This was supplemented in 1868 by new proclamations. Mr. Griffis in his Mikado’s Empire translates them thus: Board No. I— Law. The evil sect called Christians is strictly prohibited. Suspicious persons shall be reported to the proper officers, and rewards will be given. Dai Jo Kuan. Fourth year Kei-o y Third month. Board No. Ill— Law. Human beings must carefully practice the principles of the five social relations. Charity must be shown to widowers, widows, orphans, the childless and sick. There must be no such crimes as murder, arson or robbery. Fourth year Kei-a , Third month. Dai Jo Kuan. THE OPEN DOOR IN JAPAN. 17 And a few months afterwards the following appeared: “ With respect to the Christian sect, the existing prohibition must be strictly observed.” 11 Evil sects are strictly prohibited.” In 1873 all these public notices were withdrawn. This did not cancel them however, no more than it did those against murder, &c., which were also removed,-yet tol¬ eration has gradually increased since their removal. A direct advantage has also come from the adoption of the seventh instead of the fifth day as the national holiday, as the native evangelists and missionaries thus have for their Sunday labor a day that accords with the general public leisure. This advantage is held to be incalculable. The press being practically free, and public discussion unrestrained, public opinion seems to be growing more and more favorable to measures which will facilitate Christian work. The press has again and again openly advocated toleration. One editorial, in a Japanese news¬ paper ran thus: “The faith of people can only be formed by their hearts, and it seems therefore improper for the Govern¬ ment to dictate to them which form of faith is right, and which wrong, and what they shall do and what they shall not do on this subject. It would be better for the Gov¬ ernment to permit the people to worship God as they please, provided that in doing so they do not violate the laws of their country. This, therefore, is a thing to which our rulers ought to give the greatest consideration. Ye statesmen, what are your views?” The same editor plead for Christianity as follows:— “The entrance of Christianity is the natural outcome of time. There is nothing better than Christianity to aid in the advancement of the world, but there are sects which are injurious, as well as sects that are beneficial. The best mode, therefore, of advancing our country is to introduce the most free and enlightened form of Chris¬ tianity, and have it diffused among our people.” But Japan never needed the presence and power and i8 THE OPEN DOOR IN JAPAN. guidance of the Christian missionary more than now Darwinism flourishes in Japan. Japanese flock to Ger¬ many as well as to the divinity schools of America. French Romanists, Greek Catholics from Russia, Uni¬ tarians, Universalists, infidels, and heterodox forms of the Christian teaching of every shade, are present among them. They never needed the earnest prayers and wise counsel, as well as financial resources of the West more than they do at this hour. But they will have strong leaders, or none, from afar. The look of things for years has been that it is possible that Japan may become Christian by royal decree, in a day. The great statesman, Fukuzawa, intimated this as a necessary political and civilizing measure. His line of argument is that the efficacy of so called International Laws lies in the fact that the nations adopting or recog¬ nizing such compact have the same customs and religion. Anti-Christian countries cannot enter into this compact. The idea of equality, too, inheres in this^ International Law, but so far as politics is concerned the idea of human equality had its origin in Christianity. * * Jesus Christ at thirty years of age, for the first time brought to light the principle of equality of men and women, noble and serf. He traces the growth and spread of this idea till it resulted in national independence in America and negio emancipation. Fie says all Christian nations lest on Sunday, and that drafts of laws of Congress may be con¬ sidered’as sanctioned and signed by the President if such drafts are not returned by the President to Con¬ gress within ten days, from which ten days, however, Sundays are excluded. He does not base his argument on the excellence or necessity of Christianity as a relig¬ ion but says it is an essential part of the western civiliza¬ tion which they are compelled to adopt or retire from the comity of nations. Christianity is not only the root of the advanced civilization of the age, but it is inseparable from it It is impossible to accept Christian civilization with¬ out accepting Christianity itself. It is a political neces¬ sity to Japan. THE OPEN DOOR IN KOREA. 19 We have left ourselves no room to show that Japan is ripe for the Christian religion as no other, or in a sense that no other is 011 the globe* _ Japan has been greatly elated by its triumph m hand¬ ling western naval ships in an unequal contest with those of China and is pushing her new processes into little For¬ mosa. ; I i - THE OPEN DOOR IN KOREA. Korea, ‘The Hermit Nation,” has a population of ten millions. For 400 years she was isolated from the rest of the world, except as hostilities now and again broke the monotony. “In the fifth century Korea gave religion and letters and art to japan. Woven goods, brocades and silk fabrics of great variety, cut and polished jewels, armor inlaid with silver and gold, bronze utensils of every sort, vases, censers and chandeliers, bronze bells and "images, flags, trumpets, drums, and saddles, with pottery of exquisite shapes and workmanship, were sent not merely by ships, but by fleets from Korea to Japan. Korean history runs backward through three thousand vears, the dynasty originally being affiliated with that of the Chow dynasty of China in 1122 B. C. With vary¬ ing fortune they have continued now independent for centuries, now as a province of China, and anon with a King of their own, through other great periods, dynasty succeeding dynasty, down to 1864, when the present King, then a boy of twelve summers, became Kegent. In May, 1882, a treaty was made between the United States and Korea, opening Korea to the Americans; later Great Britain and Germany formed like treaty rela- tion. • r Korea is a small country about double the size oi Ohio, with a population variously estimated, but which we may put down at twelve millions. It has a coast line 20 THE OPEN DOOR IN KOREA. of 1,800 miles, though the tongue of land is only about 400 miles long. It numbers among its mineral products, coal, iron, lead, tin, silver and gold. It pays tribute to China and Japan, but beyond that, is not controlled by them. Its existing records reach back for 3,000 years. Its trustworthy history begins about A. D. 200. In 1876, the present progressive King entered into treaty rela¬ tions with Japan, opening to them three Korean ports. The land is owned by the people, and held for them by the King, and rented to the people, which takes the place of all other taxes. The Capital, Seoul, contains about 35,000 houses and a population of from 150 to 200 thou¬ sand. In religion, Korea has followed China and Japan from an original Nature worship to the adoption of Buddhism, Confucianism and Romanism. Of late years there has exhibited a strong tendency to emphasize the primitive Nature worship. Rev. J. Ross somewhile since gave a list in the “Chinese Recorder” of over twenty gods which are popularly worshipped in Korea; gods of the road, gods of the mountains who protect from tigers, gods of the rain and of war, gods of the kitchen, the Virgin Mary, and ancestral tablets are enumerated. Christianity was introduced into Korea through some Jesuit books from Peking, in 1777. The first Korean convert was baptized in 1783. The new faith spread rapidly, but here, as elsewhere, Jesuit political intrigue led to revolt against them, and sixty years of persecu¬ tion followed in which thousands of Korean converts died within this century with the names of Jesus and Mary on their lips. Other thousands apostatized; but some estimate that there are still thousands of secret dis¬ ciples of Christ in the land. A missionary of the Netherlands Society reached Korea in 1832 and remained one month, distributing tracts and religious books. The missionaries of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, living in China on the borders of Korea, exerted the first of the more modern Protestant influences in Korea, through Koreans that THE OPEN DOOR IN INDIA. 21 came over to their mission fields for trading purposes. On the seaboard modern missionary influences flowed to Korea from Japan. The Methodists and Presbyter¬ ians began missionary work in Seoul in 1884. A great interest was felt in this movement because “The Her¬ mit Nation” was the only country besides Thibet abso¬ lutely closed to the Gospel. It is affirmed that the transfer of Korea from the quasi¬ sovereignty of China, to that of Japan, has not hindered but furthered the prosperity of missions in Korea and thrown far wider open the door of opportunity. TIME OPEN DOOR EN ENOEAo Asia is the most populous of continents but this popu¬ lation is very unequally distributed. Taking the whole area, Europe has a denser population proportionately than has Asia. Asia counts but 46 to the square mile while Europe averages 90 to the square mile. But four countries of Asia, India, Java, China and Japan, having together not more than five-sixths of the area, have double the population of Europe. The “Open Door” in India is so wide open it were difficult to describe the opportunity, the duty or the promise. Every increase in definite knowledge concern¬ ing the relative populations of China and India has sent that of China down and that of India up, as compared with the previous popular estimate of them. China was presumed to have a population of over four-hundred mil¬ lions and India to have a population of less than two hundred millions. Fuller acquaintance with China has made some who were in position to form a judgment place the population of China as low as two hundred mil¬ lions, while the definite information acquired through the Government census has shown India to be populated by two hundred and eighty-nine millions of souls. The imagination is paralyzed in the effort to compi e- Gfc.Nc.RAL IVlAP OF INDIA. In-* THE OPEN DOOR IN INDIA. 23 bend such a numerical mass. Put the entire population of the Western Hemisphere alongside of it, and it con¬ stitutes but one-third as many; while France contains but one-seventh as many souls as are crowded into that vast peninsula—a peninsula which constitutes one-sixth of the entire territory of the British Empire. Of this vast mass, allowing a generation to pass away every third of a century, twenty thousand die each day, over eight hundred each hour, fifteen every minute, one every four seconds of the year. Day and night, summer and winter, the ceaseless caravan moves to the “pale realms of shade.” These for whom Christ died are born, live and die without hope in Him. Ask them whither they go, what follows on this life, and the refrain set in the minor chord of the heart’s sadness will be: “What do we know about that?” Through thirty centuries this people have had no bet¬ ter religious notions than those of to-day. dhey are not so much burdened with a sense of sin as they are with a sense of indescribable weariness. They long less for pardon or purity than western nations, but they are crying pitifully, crying dike a child in the night,’ for rest. Their hearts are overburdened and they want relief. Their definition of soul might well be that of Laura Bridgman, as that “which aches so.” They are without Christ and without hope in the world. The population of India may be roughly classified as (1) Hindus. (2) Aboriginal tribes. (3) Muhammadans. (4) Miscellaneous sects as Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs. The Hindus have been put down at about 208 millions. The Muhammadans number something over 57 mil¬ lions. The miscellaneous groups with the Christians make up the remainder. The Aboriginal tribes, such as the Gonds, Konds, Santals and Hill tribes are not Hindus. A great many of them may be so counted because they have been so largely impressed by Hinduism, but probably 20 mil¬ lions of them cannot be said to be even Hinduized. 24 THE OPEN DOOR IN INDIA. Nor is it fair to represent that all the millions of so- called Hindus should be counted such without discrimi¬ nation; because there are multitudes of these who are out-casted. They do not belong to the Hindu social or religious order. They are mere hangers-on to the body politic, but religiously have no privileges, nor socially, any standing. They are “without the pale,’’ wholly sep¬ arated from the community, and eternally and necessarily so. So that we have a society constructed in three strata, (i) Hindus within the general classification of the four castes, which are sub-divided into perhaps thou¬ sands of separate classes according to circumstances. (2) The depressed classes, low castes, or non-caste, and out- caste populations within the Hindu area—say 50 mil¬ lions. (3) The Aboriginal tribes who have refused amal¬ gamation or agglutination with the Hindu community. The opportunities which are afforded to Christian nations to carry to such a multitude that which they most need are positively without a parallel in human history. There is the strong protection of person and property, of the missionary and his disciples throughout the entire Empire of India. So far as government goes—there is nowhere on this globe—it is doubtful if there ever has elsewhere been in all history—so great a multitude of people, under one political power, allowed to follow so freely and fully their personal religious convictions with¬ out molestation from the State as occurs in India. Out¬ side of Great Britain there is not a nation in Europe which accords such large religious freedom to its sub¬ jects. Here then is nearly one-fifth of the population of the globe, amongst whom the missionary may go, with the greatest security to himself and his property, and greatest protection to his work. In the remotest corner of that great empire, the power of the British Govern¬ ment is felt and respected, so, that, to use an oriental hyperbole, one may go along “the highway tossing up money and nobody will ask him how many teeth he has in his mouth.” * THE OPEN DOOR IN INDIA. 25 The same government has constructed an extensive network of railways, so that the remotest part of this empire is speedily and cheaply reached. There are now in operation 14,000 miles of railway, and hundreds of miles more being constructed. The telegraph lines in India are extended over 2,000 miles, and the cable connects India with England, with China and with Australia. The mail is but a fortnight between London and Bombay, and the cheap postal system enables one to have his book and letter postal communication with the rest of the world, in the remotest hamlet of the Himalayas, in the jungles, or wherever he may pitch his camp or moor his boat. Education and literary facilities are multiform. Eighty- five colleges of law and medicine and art were, in 1890, educating 9,000 students, and 66,500 educational institu¬ tions of all sorts are contributing their force to the intel¬ lectual activity of the age. Fifty-three millions of chil¬ dren are awaiting the literature which may be newly molded to stimulate and form their minds. Three hun- dred-and-sixty books were registered in the Punjab alone during the second quarter of the year 1884. Of these six were English, sixteen Arabic, one hundred and thirty-five were Hindi and Urdu, and the remainder bi¬ lingual. Two hundred and thirty periodicals were reg¬ istered in the same period. The people have, through a multitude of channels, learned something of Christianity, so that non-Christian communities, recognizing its excellence and power, as compared with the other systems of religion about them, are pervaded with the conviction that Christianity is des¬ tined to become the religion of India. No one has ever attempted to explain the occasion of this wide-spread notion. Whether it arises from an intuitive perception of the worth of the Christian faith, or is associated with the idea that the British Government, being powerful enough to subdue all India, will naturally occasion the people to adopt the Christian religion, or, whether with¬ out reasoning at all about it, this notion has obtained as a sort of prophetic impulse, or whether the Spirit of God 26 THE OPEN DOOR IN INDIA. has directly put the thought into the minds of men and communities widely separated from each other as a fore¬ shadowing of His purpose, and as a providential prepa¬ ration for the preaching of the Gospel—be all this as it may, the one great important fact and factor remains to the Evangelical force of Christendom, that millions of these people expect Christianity to prevail in the land. We have the results already reached as a basis for future operations, and as furnishing the very agency needed for further advance. Sir William Muir has forcibly said: ‘Thousands have been brought over, and in an ever-increasing ratio converts are being brought to Christianity. And these are not shams nor paper converts, but g*ood and honest Christians, and many of a high standard/’ Sir Herbert Edwards said as long ago as 1866: “God is forming a new nation in India. While the Hindus are busy pulling down their own religion, the Christian Church is rising above the horizon. Every other faith in India is decaying. Christianity alone is beginning to run its course. I believe if the English were driven out of India to-day Christianity would remain and triumph.” The native Protestant Christian population of India has leaped from 27,000 in 1830 to 103,000 in 1850, to 213,009 in i860, 318,000 in 1878 and to 528,500 in 1880, and to 939,000 in 1891. Studying the ratio of growth as herein stated, in the last three decades it shows an increase of fifty-three per cent, from 1851 to 1861; an increase of sixty-one per cent, from 1861 to 1871, and a leap to eighty-six per cent, of increase between 1871 and 1881, and 22 per cent, above that by 1891. The number of communicants nearly doubled between 1851 and 1861, it more than doubled between 1861 and 1871, and it more than doubled again between 1871 and 1881, and added 50 per cent, on that by 1891. The open door to the Homes of India affords the most unexampled opportunity suddenly thrust upon Christian philanthropy. There is nothing equal to this in all the THE OPEN DOOR IN INDIA. 2 7 past history of the Church. This is not seen so much in the increase of female pupils from 31,370 in 1871 to 65,761 in 1881, and to 200,000 in 1891, as in the sudden development of the opportunity to have a hundred times as many within the next decade. These opportunities to reach the women with the Gospel are now wide-spread. Fifteen years ago Bengal had more zenana pupils than all the rest of India put together. Now the Northwest Provinces have the largest number of this class of pupils. The vast female population of India, possibly one hun¬ dred and fifty millions in all, has received a heritage of ignorance. India’s women and girls have been kept in illiteracy for a thousand years. As late as 1881 only seventy thousand out of this total female population of over a hundred millions were able to read and write. There still remains 128 millions of illiterate females in the Empire. But the whole are now approachable by the women of Christendom. No class of this female popu¬ lation more need help, and none are more glad to receive it than the widows. Probably one in eight of the entire female population of all ages is a widow. A census of Calcutta showed there, 58,000 wives, and 55,000 widows. There are in India, according to the census, nearly 80,000 widows under ten years of age. The women of Christen¬ dom have learned much about the method of approach to these women, and the call for workers in this special department is imperative. We have worked from the first till a comparatively recently date, having access only to the one-half of the population, and that half hav¬ ing the weakest religious instincts. Now and suddenly the other half—the more naturally susceptible and, by odds, the part of the population most potent to mold the religious thoughts and prejudices of the youth of the land—is thrown open as an approachable and an available force for the Christian worker. The native Christian community is rapidly rising into power and leadership. Every year scores of native Christians of both sexes pass the Government Teacher’s 28 THE OPEN DOOR IN INDIA. certificate examination and take a large share in the education of the masses in mission and in Government, Municipal and other schools,. The percentage of passes amongst the Christians at the University’s Examination in 1882-83, was 45.4, while amongst the Brahmans it was 35.4, and the Mohammedans and others were still lower. In the Northwest Provinces only one female amongst the Hindus is able to read and write for seventy-nine males, amongst the Mohammedans one to fifty-five, amongst Christians one to two! ! It is easy to see what an available power this Christian female educated force may become in the land. If Christian women are the most highly educated women of the land, they must rapidly rise to prominence and power. There is a large force of these women already at the command of the Christian Church for broad and aggressive evangelistic work in India. The Medical Missions have met with large success. The presses are pouring out millions of pages of Chris¬ tian literature. At over seven hundred principal stations missions are being operated. Over thirty-six hundred clerical and lay native preachers speaking the languages and familiar with the customs are already leading the native church, and the opportunity to co-operate with these forces of all sorts is ours, and it brings with it cor¬ responding obligations. There are vast tracts of country which are scarcely touched at all by Christian evangelism. Hyderabad, a native realm, with eleven millions of inhabitants, has only a few workers, and thus throughout the extent of the land the Christian force is feeble when the crisis is so imminent. The whole native mind and heart and social order is being remolded, and we have the privi¬ lege of greatly shaping it. Never were these people thrown so pleadingly before the Christian world as now. THE OPEN DOOR EN BURHA. Within the past seventy-five years the political map of Southeastern Asia has materially changed. In 1820, the Emperor of Burma claimed dominion over all the tribes of Burma proper, as well as over Chittagong, Arakan, and the Tenasserim provinces, including a large part of the Malayan Peninsula. On November 30th, 1885, Theebaw, the last Emperor of Burma, was a pris¬ oner in the hands of the English army. A few weeks later the Empire of Burma was annexed to British India. Since Lord Dalhousie annexed Nagpore without even the formality of a proclamation, but by simply gazetting a Commissioner, nothing so strong has been done in Asia as the annexation of Burma by the Viceroy through the mere notification that the country, its boundaries still undefined, would for the future be part of her British Majesty’s dominions. Thus in substance says a num¬ ber of the Spectator. It is now more true than ever, that the Viceroy of India with the Emperor of China governs half the human race, “and has to find time for break¬ fast.” It is now more true than ever, that four out of six of the great river-systems of Asia, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Irrawaddy, run from source to sea within the British dominions. It is now more true than ever, that British commerce through Burma shall be felt as far away as Pekin. What all this means for Christian evangelism may be only hinted at. In 1782 Rev. Father Sangermano wrote in his “Description of the Burmese Empire”: “I suppose there is not in the whole world a monarch so despotic as the Burmese Emperor. He is considered, by himself and others, absolute lord of the lives, prop¬ erties, and personal services of his subjects; confers and takes away honor and rank; and without any process of law can put to death not only criminals guilty of cap¬ ital offences, but any individual who happens to incur THE OPEN DOOR IN BURMA. 3 1 his displeasure, * * he considers himself entitled to employ his subjects in any work or service, without sal¬ ary or pay, * * their goods likewise and even their persons are reputed his property.” The despotism of the Burmese monarchy has been but little modified in the intervening century, and we may all now rejoice for the opportunity afforded for unre¬ stricted evangelism in a new territory of ten times the productiveness of Ireland, destined doubtless to a rapid development in its resouces, and growth in its popula¬ tion. Up to 1826 the districts which now form British Bur¬ ma were under the Burman dynasty. Tenasserim and Arracan were then ceded to Britain, and in 1852 Pagu and Martaban were added to the concession. In 1861 the population of British Burma did not exceed 1,189,164. Within twenty years thereafter the popula¬ tion tripled, reaching in 1882 3,736,771. Part of this increase was from India, part from Upper Burma and the Shan States. But the Karens, which are so largely Christianized, are increasing most rapidly. Burma is about equal in area to New England, the Middle States, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois combined. Its population is variously estimated at from eight millions to fifteen millions. Except in what was until lately British territory no census has ever been taken. Immi¬ gration has largely increased the population of the ter¬ ritory before known as British Burma. In the eight-and-a-half years preceding 1872 the Bur- mans increased thirty-one per cent, with the aid of immi¬ gration, while the Karens, without immigration, increased at the astonishing rate of fifty-six per cent. If this increase could be continued for another generation, the Karens alone would number upwards of three mil¬ lions. The work of God has so signally prospered among them, that they must come to be a great evangelizing agency, in the total of British Burma as now consti¬ tuted. Since the annexation of British Burma there has 32 THE OPEN DOOR IN SIAM AND LAOS. been a marked spread of Christianity. Of the people 87 per cent, are Buddhists, .038 are nat or spirit wor¬ shippers and .022 are Christians. The Karens were greatly oppressed under the Burman dynasty, but the missionaries have had large success among them.. In the Government Administration Report for British Burma (1880-81) it was said: “Foremost in this work have been American missionaries of the Baptist persua¬ sion. . . . There are now attached to this 151 Chris¬ tian parishes, most of which support their own Karen pastor and their own parish school and many of which subscribe considerable sums in money and kind for the furtherance of missionary work among the Karens, and other hill-races beyond the British border. Christianity continues to spread among the Karens to the great advantage of the commonwealth, and the Christian Karen communities are distinctly more industrious, bet¬ ter educated, and more law-abiding than the Burman and Karen villages. The Karen race and the British Government owe a great debt to the American mission¬ aries, who have under Providence wrought this change among the Karens of Burma.” THE OPEN DOOR IN SIAM AND LAOS„ Siam is within the second great river basin of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, as Burma is in the first. . The Capital of this alluvial plain is Bangkok, “the Venice of the Orient,” with a larger population than Madras or Madrid, Cairo or Brussels. Siam is as large as New England and all the Middle States. It is larger than Japan, and its population equals that of Persia, or Bur¬ ma, Sweden or Belgium. In area it is four times as large as the State of New York. Until 1885 Siam had two Kings. The present King is 42 years old (1896) and is the first sovereign who ever went abroad. In 1873 the custom of prostration before the sovereign was abol- THE OPEN DOOR IN SIAM AND LAOS. 33 ished. Politically Siam is likely to retain an independent sovereignty. The telegraph connects Siam with the French system through Cochin China, and the British system through Tavoy. The posfoffice delivers letters regularly in Bang¬ kok, and is being extended through the country. Eighty per cent, of the population can read. There is no caste nor hereditary priesthood. Large business houses of foreign merchants, steam rice-mills and steam saw-mills signal the development of the country. In 1882 Siam observed her centennial. Flags of all countries float in the harbor of Bangkok. The King has established a college, and appointed a missionary as Minister of Pub¬ lic Instruction. Fifty years ago Siam was sealed against the entrance of all foreigners, traders or missionaries. To-day, she is in treaty relations with all Christian coun¬ tries. Next to the Mikado of Japan, the King of Siam is the most progressive sovereign in Asia. Few lands are more open to the Gospel. Her millions are all ac¬ cessible to the Christian missionary, whose right to travel and build school-houses and churches anywhere, is protected by treaty. The women are not secluded. The children can be gathered in schools. There are numerous Chinese in the Empire. The first church was organized among these Chinese in 1837 and it was the first church of Chinese Christians in all Asia. The first Zenana teaching ever attempted in the East was done by missionary ladies in 1851 among twenty-one of the thirty young wives of the King of Siam, with several of the royal sisters in the class. There are six States of Laos directly tributary to Siam. In 1878 the King caused a Proclamation of Religious Liberty to the Laos to be made, containing a clause securing the observance of the Sabbath. *THE OPEN DOOR DN CHINA, “The Christian religion, as professed by Protestants and Roman Catholics, inculcates the practice of virtue, and teaches man to do as he would be done by. Per¬ sons teaching it or professing it, therefore, shall alike be entitled to the protection of the Chinese authorities; nor shall any such, peaceably pursuing their calling, and not offending against the laws, be persecuted or interfered with.” [Treaty of Tientsin.] “The undersigned, her Britanic Majesty’s Consul, requests the civil and military authorities of the Emper¬ or of China, in conformity with the ninth article of the Treaty of Tientsin, to allow - to travel freely and without hindrance or molestation in the Chinese Empire, and to give him protection and aid in case of necessity.” [Form of Passport.] There is the open door! Under that form of passport missionaries have gone, and may go, to every Province in China. Under that Treaty native Chinese have pro¬ fessed the Christian religion, and though occasionally persecuted and their property despoiled, that is recog¬ nized as violence to the prescribed order by the Imperial Government, and in multitudes of instances has indem¬ nity been allowed. Never since the world began did so brief a document admit at once so large a portion of the human family to the possibilities of Chrisitianity; never before did a state document roll so much responsibility on the Christian Church. The day the signatures of the first and second Chinese Plenipotentiaries and their great seal were set below those of Elgin and Kincardine in 1858, one-third of the human race were admitted to the brotherhood of the nations, and placed on the back forms of the possible audience of the minister of the Gospel. That door was *For fuller information concerning China, its country, people, missions, see Outline Missionary Series by J. T. Gracey, D. D., Postpaid, 15c. THE OPEN DOOR IN CHINA. 35 opened by the decree of the Eternal, not by the ‘ Ver¬ million pencil” of the Imperial Emperor, and for a quar¬ ter of a century it has not been shut. To the Christian Church the obligation is equal to the opportunity. China proper consists of 18 provinces, each nearly as large as Great Britain, and all practically open to the Protestant missionary. There is one written language, intelligible wherever Chinamen dwell; there is no caste or harem exclusiveness, such as marks Brahmanical and Muhammadan people; the climate and products are those of both temperate and tropical lands; China sends swarms of men all over the surrounding lands and seas, from Calcutta to Australia and California, and even South America. Once Christianized, the Chinese should become the missionary race of Eastern Asia, as the English-speaking people have been of the West. There is an open door of travel. Not that there are carriage-roads or palace-cars, but the great rivers and the Imperial canals thread the Empire, and boats and boatmen are easy of command at economical rates. In considering the possibilities of approach we must not overlook the fact that while there are eight times as many people in China as there are in the United States, and one-third more than in all the countries of Europe combined, the geographical center of the country is not the center of population. One-half of the people of the empire are in one-quarter of the territory and in the por¬ tion most salubrious and accessible to travel. This open door of the public water highway not only facilitates the movements of the missionary, but facilitates the spread of the truth by the population which moves from city to city, and themselves disseminate what they learn. There is the open door of the Mandarin language. To be sure there is the obstruction of local dialects, but the great literary door of the Mandarin language stands open night and day. Though a man at Canton may not understand the speech of a man from Foochow, they can both understand the same books or letters, in the common literary language, written and read, admired THE OPEN DOOR IN CHINA. 36 and adored from the Imperial Palace to the remotest hamlet of the empire. Only persons educated in this literary language are admitted to public office, and not less than ten thousand competitors for literary honors present themselves at the national examinations held every three years at Peking. Not only do statesmen and scholars, however, become familiar with this, lan¬ guage, but shopkeepers, traders and others acquire a knowledge of it. Additional force will attach to this medium for reaching the people when we remember that China has a truly national mind. China is not like the continent of Africa or the Americas, with a great multi¬ tude of tribes, having totally divergent ideas, and con¬ flicting communal feeling. You do not, by crossing the boundaries of States larger than all England, pass from one set of feelings and tribal ambitions to another. There is but one common mind, one common civilization, one common mass of feeling, one great and homogeneous people from the great walls to the sea. Hence, through this common language, one appeals to common preju¬ dices and passions, makes arguments equally ^available and forceful at Hong Kong, Peking, Kiu-Kiang or Chung King. There is an open door in the considerably disturbed confidence of the people in their religious system since the great Taiping rebellion. The gods of Buddhism and Taoism and the 110-god system of the Confucianist, ail alike proved unavailing to hold the Emperor and his armies in power. It was at this juncture, and after four¬ teen years of unsuccessful struggle with these insurgent elements, that at last British guns, which had humil¬ iated the Emperor at Peking, . came to his res¬ cue to preserve him in his empire. It was not the national religion, but the “foreign devil” who proved equal to perpetuating the Imperial Government of the “great middle kingdom.” "The great open door which is affording ingress to foreign ideas is available for Christian evangelism. Bounded on the north by the “inhospitable plains,” on THE OPEN DOOR IN CHINA. 37 the west by the mountains of Tibet, and on the east by “an ocean not yet plowed by the keels of civilized com¬ merce,” she had for centuries been developing a civiliza¬ tion of her own, she was imperious and self-conceited as she was self-contained. China never knew till the Opium war, that she had anything to learn from the rest of the world. For more than thirty years the West has, however, been acting on China by its “arms, its commerce, its religion and its science.” China, after being hermetically sealed for centuries, is at last having an inflow of new ideas, and the Christian religion flows in as a part of the new order of things. After their first rude shock they began to study war- facilities; but they could not stop there. Soon schools were established at the open ports for the study of the languages and sciences of the West, and along the avenues of literature were seen translations of works of science and the useful arts. French inspectors and Brit¬ ish naval Post-chaplains have inspected Chinese frigates, and trained sailors for Chinese fleets. Retiring officers of the British army have commanded the camp of instruction at Shanghai, and Americans have drilled forces at Ningpo. Krupp guns surmount Taku forts. A schoolmaster trained by the Bishop of Victoria is employed as special translator. Treaties on mining are read by Viceroys, and fine steamships owned, manned and controlled by Chinese, plow the great rivers, plv the coast and cross the Pacific. It is at a time like this, when one-third of the human race turns as with one mind to study western mathe¬ matics and to put them into the course of study for ten thousand students triennially passing civil service exam¬ ination, and when social laws and material science from the West are entering the great Empire, they are com¬ pelled to fix their attention too on the religion of the West and we have been privileged to go unmolested, threading every highway and by-way to make known 38 THE OPEN DOOR IN MEXICO. the faith of our fathers, and thus to have these ideas enter China as a part of the new order of things. The Government notified even French Roman Cath¬ olic missionaries that they need not flee the country because of recent French atrocities. It is a most sig¬ nificant fact that at a time when Great Britain has formed an alliance offensive and defensive with China, that Burma comes under British rule, and the high¬ way through the Shan States into Western China is to be protected by a Christian power. The great riots in China which threatened temporary check to the progress of missions, have burned but to enlarge their liberties. The Imperial Edict sent all over the Empire (1891) ordering that persons molesting for¬ eigners and even Chinese Christians, shall be punished, is considered the most important State document ever issued in China favorable to Christianity. The China-Japan war, which humiliated China, has been followed by intenser interest in the subject of Chris¬ tianity, and accessions to the ranks of missionary adher¬ ents have been greater than before'. THE OPEN DOOR ON MEXICO. Mexico is commanding much attention from many lands. It is one of the fairest regions of the earth. Put on its surface the republic of France, place beside that the British Isles, add Portugal, and you will still have room for the whole of Austria. It is nearly two thou¬ sand miles in length, with an average width of four hun¬ dred miles. Lay it on our Republic, and it would cover one-third of our territory. It has an area of 763,804 square miles, with an estimated population of eleven millions. Four-fifths of her territory is an immense table-land, with a climate the most varied and attractive in the tor- THE OPEN DOOR IN MEXICO. 39 rid zone. You may choose within her borders perpetual snow or continuous summer; the flowers and fruits of the tropics, or the pines and hemlocks of the frigid zone. Her mountains, hills and valleys abound in minerals, while her sea coast yields pearls like those she furnished for the crowns of Ferdinand and Isabella. The registered coinage of the mint of Mexico for one hundred-and-thirty-five years amounts to twenty-hun¬ dred millions of dollars. One “lode” alone, in 1873, paid the stockholders the enormous sum of over twenty mil¬ lions of dollars. Another silver mine produced twenty thousand dollars per day for five years, when it was stopped by a flood; it produced fifty millions in three years thereafter; between 1871 and 1881 it yielded annu¬ ally thirteen-millions four-hundred dollars. No silver mines have ever been known to give out. The mines which the Aztecs worked before Cortez came, are profit¬ able as ever. The mintage of the Republic of Mexico, of silver, gold and copper, was over twenty millions of dollars. More than three-thousand-millions of coinage in this country can be readily established. Doubtless, Mexico has produced one-half the existing stock of silver in the world. She has a horticultural region on the Pacific, equal in extent to all of Cuba, where the cot¬ ton plant propagates itself and wheat yields from sev¬ enty to a hundred fold. She has a half-dozen distinct races, whites, Aztecs, mestizoes and zamboes, negroes and mulattos, or more exactly, three races: the old Spanish, the Aztec, and these two mixed in the Mestees. Eight millions are Aztecs, and probably six millions are pure Indian. One authority says: “Of the total population of the republic, one-sixth are European, one-half pure Indian, and one- third a mixture of these two.” A gentleman who con¬ ducted the negotiation for a million of acres of land in the Mexican State of Zacatecas, about half way between our Texas border and the City of Mexico, said that he made the purchase really for Bismarck, who desired to obtain ten millions of acres of land in Mexico, on which 40 THE OPEN DOOR IN MEXICO. to build up a German colony. The Government of Mexico has entered into a contract with a firm at Leghorn, Italy, for the sending of a thousand emigrants every trip, on the Mexican Transatlantic Company’s steamers, insuring an immigration of at least sixteen thousand Europeans every year. In this immigration the three great Latin races of Europe will be represented, though the bulk of the immigrants will naturally be Italians. The moral and religious condition of the inhabitants is not felicitous. The Aztecs were, perhaps, the flower of the Indian races of the two Americas. The ancient Mex¬ ican reveals a mixture of barbaric splendor and semi- civilized life. We cannot comprehend the religious and moral situation of the population of Mexico, without studying their civilization and their religious notions and ceremonies (for these are the base of what exist to-day); their causeways, their streets, their market-places, their idol-temple, with its dumb idols foul with human blood, their land, and their magnificent Capital. The “Halls of the Montezumas’’ is now a poetic phrase—it was poetry in architecture. Three thousand persons could assemble in one of the-rooms of the palace, and on its terraced roof “a splendid tournament” might have been given. There was a large pantheon of deities, good and bad, for war and for peace; the enclosure of their temple was itself a town, and “no human tongue could explain the grand¬ eur and the peculiarities of that temple.” The prevailing religion in Mexico to-day is the Roman Catholic—malformed Christianity. For three centuries the Roman Church dominated Mexico. Immense stone churches were erected in different cities and towns of Mexico, and spacious convents and convent churches were built for the several orders of friars and nuns. The cathedral recommended by Philip II, is still the grand¬ est church building in the Americas. Enriched by the vast wealth of the land, this branch of the Spanish Church became the “richest of churches.” The Church was the banker of the nation, loaning money on mort- o-aw until she came to possess two-thirds of the real o o 1 THE OPEN DOOR IN MEXICO. 41 estate, and as all church property was exempt from tax¬ ation, the rate had to be distributed over the remaining one-third of the taxable property. It is estimated that still from one-third to one-half of the real estate is owned by priests, notwithstanding they have lost of late years through the confiscation of the State, property estimated at nearly three hundred millions of dollars. Of the prop¬ erty of the City of Mexico, it is thought they own at least one-half. The church still collects from rentals, tithes and parochial dues, throughout the republic, twenty mil¬ lions a year. Withal, she has left the people poor, igno¬ rant, superstitious and immoral. The image of the saint was exchanged for the Aztec idol and saint-worship has proven but little improvement on idolatry. Perhaps nine millions of people have no other God than the crucifix and the Virgin Mary. Other superstitions obtain throughout the land: In the district of Chiautla, for instance, the Indians carry in procession a shapeless mass of wood, adorned with a rosary of iguanas (a kind of a lizard) and snakes. This they call their patron, San Sebastian; and this modified fetishism is countenanced by the clergy of a church which professes to be the repository of all true Chris¬ tianity. The moral condition of the people is low. Perhaps hail the population living together as man and wife are not married. The exorbitant marriage-fees of the Church have had much to do with this. Such a state of immor ality need not be enlarged on. Ignorance, too, is rife; not one-third of the total population are able to read and write. . What are the opportunities for relieving the situation. First-_The Government itself favors and aids reform. With the downfall of the Maximilian regime, a new era dawned. The State has confiscated a large amount of ecclesiastical propertv, and appropriated it to State edu¬ cation, and bestowed them, for the purposes of Protestant education, allowing the priestly party to select for use, though not to own, as many church edifices as they 42 THE OPEN DOOR IN MEXICO. thought they might need for worship. All monasteries, nunneries, inquisition-houses, etc., were secularized and sold to pay the public debts of the country, and con¬ verted into stores, cotton warehouses, etc.; or where they covered whole blocks streets were run through them. They overturned all religious orders, so that to-day there is not a monk, nor nun, nor friar, nor Jesuit. In 1854 the City of Mexico contained twenty-nine relig¬ ious houses with about five hundred monks and nuns. A correspondent from Mexico to the Cologne Gazette, says of the buildings confiscated: “Some of them are magnificent specimens of archi¬ tecture, and the schools especially may congratulate themselves on the spacious quarters which have been assigned to them in the finest monasteries in the country. They have large halls for lectures, court-yards sur¬ rounded by galleries, gardens and fountains. The Palace of the Inquisition, which is one of the finest buildings in the town, is now occupied by the Medical School, a magnificent convent by the Law School, and the large Jesuit monastery of San Ildefonsa by the so-called Escu- ela Preparatoria, or Training School. Several of the churches are used as store-houses, two are used for Protestant services, and some are already falling into • yy rum. Second.—The present Government is doing something to dispel the ignorance of the land. There are thousands of schools established in the republic, yet they are poorly organized, and dominated by priestly influence.' The intermediate and high schools are permeated with skepti¬ cal teaching, example and influence. In districts remote from the large towns, even the most elementary educa¬ tion is well-nigh impossible, because of the poverty of the people. Third.—The material development of the country by railroads and telegraph, affords a fine opportunity for Protestant work. The number of miles of railway oper¬ ated and being constructed, is amazing to those who first learn of it. The outstretching of this system, through THE OPEN DOOR IN MEXICO. 43 the steamer and railroad connections of Central and South America, promises a great inflow and outflow of influences north and south—promises that Mexico will become a most important center of influences on this western hemisphere. It is no hour to be idle. Its full system of telegraph and cable lines will carry from the City of Mexico to Lima in South America; thence across the Andes to Maldonado; thence to Rio Janeiro; thence to Portugal; while its northern connections are with the Western Union Telegraph Company’s system. At El Paso the total railway systems of Mexico are clamped to the total railway systems of the north, so that one may take a palace car through from capital to capital, or from Toronto or Washington to the City of Mexico. Fourth.—Note the far-reaching influence of the lan¬ guage of Mexico. The influence of Mexico will flow through the Spanish tongue; and we must take account of this outflow. Ninety millions of people speak the Eng¬ lish tongue, fifty-six millions speak German, fifty-one millions speak Spanish, and forty-five millions speak French. The Rio Grande separates the English-speak¬ ing races and the Spanish-speaking races of North and South America. South of that river sixteen nations speak Spanish. Mexico is thought by some, well conversant with the situation, to be the natural leader of the other fifteen Spanish-speaking States, and that means all south of her to Cape Horn, except Brazil, which speaks Por¬ tuguese. THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTH AMERICA. South America is the smaller half of the new world. Four-fifths of it lies in the tropics. It is largest where North America is smallest, and smallest where it is largest. Some have thought its physical position, lying so largely in the tropics gave it a great advantage pros¬ pectively over the Northern part of the hemisphere, of which so great a proportion lies in the cold of the far north. This is deceptive when merely judged from the map. Commercially, the most largely productive part of South America, after all, is found within its temperate, not within its tropical districts. Brazil is the size of the United States, but a small part of it is esteemed capable of agriculture. The equatorial valley is filled with dense forests. Yet South America is, as a whole, very inter¬ esting and important. Fifty—some say sixty—millions of people make up the population of Spanish America including the West Indies and Brazil, of whom not less than five per cent, are European subjects. There are also about a half million savage Indians; or roughly, approaching twice as many as the total Indian popula¬ tion of the United States, including Alaska. These are confined mostly to the interior of the continent of South America with a few small tribes, numbering perhaps five thousand, in Central America. Three-tenths of the popu¬ lation of South America is put down as pure white, and one-tenth negro, others are of mixed blood. The rapid immigration of Europeans of late years has, however, been materially modifying these proportions. The physical resources vary much in the several States in relation to commerce. The Orinoco is navi¬ gable for a thousand miles, the Amazon for twenty-six hundred miles. From its base to the Andes, with its tributaries, it presents six-thousand miles of navigable waters. The Upper Paraguay and Southern Parana present an uninterrupted waterway north and south like the Mississippi. The river Platte offers a more extensive THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTH AMERICA. 45 system of unobstructed navigation than any river in the world, and with the exception of the Amazon pours more water into the ocean. It affords more miles of navigation than all the rivers of Europe combined, and more than the Mississippi, with its several tributaries. It is tidal 260 miles from its mouth, and ocean-ships of 24 feet draught can be floated all the year for 1,000 miles, and those of 16 to 20 feet can go 2,700 miles into the interior of the continent, and a small expenditure of money and labor would enable a ship from New York or Liverpool to go direct into the very heart of the continent in Brazil by way of Buenos Ayres. The Amazon is obstructed but the Orinoco is open to large vessels. An equal number of cattle can be purchased in Argen¬ tina and Uruguay for half the money paid for them in Texas. There are 96 sheep, 18 cattle and four hoises for each inhabitant in the River Platte country. The foreign commerce of Brazil is almost double that of Cuba. No less than five routes for an inter-continental railway have been shown to be possible, and some of these have had roads surveyed or operated for one-third of the distance between Buenos Ayres and Bogota, and that within three years. These material matters emphasize the prospective rela¬ tions and obligations of Protestant North America to this south land, the spiritual care of which devolves the more largely on us because the European churches leave these Papal and pagan peoples almost wholly to our labors, and they are coming nearer and nearer to us. They need the same care that we propose to bestow on the dead churches of the east, or on European communi¬ ties which are spiritually paralyzed by the Roman Church. For three hundred years Rome has laid the palsy-smiting hand of excessive and heretical sacerdotal¬ ism on the people of the Spanish Americas. Brazil alone is as large as the United States, exclusive of Alaska. It has not now probably more than one- fourth the population of the United States, but it is 46 THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTH AMERICA. growing, and the valley of the Amazon has well nigh unlimited resources. Rio de Janeiro is worthy of our thought. Its bay compares with that of Naples for beauty; its population of 400,000 is substantially a Euro¬ pean population; it has numerous schools, public and private libraries, art galleries, an Imperial conservatory and academy of music. San Paulo, fifty miles inland and two hundred and fifty miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro, in the large coffee-growing region, is a city of 35,000. It is “The Athens of Brazil,” with a Roman Catholic theological seminary, and a law university, one of two in the empire. Bahia, 700 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro, on the sea coast, is a still larger city having a population of 200,000. It is the oldest city in Brazil. But this vast country is just now feeling the thrill of modern energy, railroads are being projected to develop it, and there is the stir of a new life. According to the census of the Brazilian Government in 1870, the smallest number of children in the schools, in proportion to the free population, was in the Province of Goyaz, and was as low as one in two-hundred and eight; the highest was in Clara, which was one in forty- six. Romanism has held sway for more than three-hundred years, and yet if one child in each seven inhabitants of a civilized community may be estimated to be of a school age, then in the best part of this Empire, not more than about one in seven of those who should, attend school. Slavery in Brazil has been abolished but these ex¬ slaves cannot read or write and many of them continue their heathen superstitions. They are fetish worshipers still. All these are accessible, and they will be an impor¬ tant factor in the future of Brazil. The Province of Bahia is one of the most advanced in many respects, yet even there, not more than one in seventeen of a school-age, attend school. But we write now only of free persons. The slaves, which number perhaps a million, do not enter into this calculation. Brazil has ceased to be an Empire and become a THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTH AMERICA. 47 Republic. By her new laws it is forbidden to the States and to the Union to establish, disestablish or hinder any religious service. . . . All individuals of whatever religious confession may exercise their worship in public and freely, coming together to that end; and acquire goods, observing the limit put by the law. . . . Not one' Church or worship has special official protection, nor shall it have any relation of dependence or alliance with the Government of the Union or of the States. “The Jesuitical company is excluded from the country, nor is it allowed to make any new convents or monas¬ teries. There is perfect liberty to manifest one’s opinions on whatever subject, by press or platform, without fear of censor; each one, however, will be responsible for any abuse of this privilege.’'’ Brazil presented three obstacles to progress to the mind of Agassiz; slavery, a corrupt clergy, and a lack of educa¬ tional institutions. Now slavery is gone, but even with it Agassiz could say in his “Journey to Brazil,” “There is much also that is very cheering that leads me to believe that her life as a nation will not belie her great gifts as a country. Should her moral and intellectual endowments grow into harmony with her wonderful natural beauty and wealth the world will not have seen a fairer land.” The United States of Colombia is a territory into which we could put the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and all of New England, and have room left to put our magnificent Dakotas up behind them all. And yet the statistics of education are quite similar to those of Brazil. What a vast region of illiteracy? When we sweep our telescope all over this vast continent we find the shading but little lighter anywhere, and the deepening of the lines in other places. Guiana has, with her other populations, the added interest of more than a half-million of Hindus, imported for labor in her territory, amongst whom Christians may work without let or hindrance. Peru and Chile, on the west coast are our nearest neighbors, for the line of communication with them is b ' 48 THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTH AMERICA. very direct. Chile is in transition. It stretches from 18 degrees south to Cape Horn, or 2,660 miles in length, averaging 820 miles in width. Through this land of the Incas sweeps the famous twenty-feet-broad highway from Quito two thousand miles southward, cut for miles through solid rock, built in many places of heavy flags of freestone. Its population numbers about two mil¬ lions and a-quarter, occupying a territory one and one- half times that of California. There are more than a thousand public schools in the country, with high schools, a normal school and a university, all under the direction of the Government. There are over one-hundred and twenty newspapers published in the country, twenty-nine of which are dailies. The press is not favorable to the Roman Catholic Church and the power of the Papacy, and has contributed largely to bring about the reforms attracting now so large attention. The power of the Spanish Government was broken in 1818, and Chile has since maintained her independence. It was a long strug¬ gle, however, till twenty-eight years later, when Spain acknowledged this independence. The present constitu¬ tion of the Republic was adopted in 1833, and it is said to be the second oldest political constitution in the world. By this constitution the Roman Catholic was made the State Church, with liberal patronage and exclusive pro¬ tection. Great reforms have been in progress. Those tending to break the power of the State Church come first. In consideration of its financial support, the Church granted to the Chilean Government the right to nominate the incumbent to the archbishopric and bishopric of the Chilean Church. In 1877 the archbishopric became vacant by the death of the incumbent, and the Government nom¬ inated a priest who was distasteful to the Pope on account of his liberal sentiments. The Pope, therefore, refused to confirm the nomination of this man, Sen or Tafaro, making pretext that his family record was not altogether unquestioned. He was an able, philanthropic, enterprising and liberal gentleman, and the Government THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTH AMERICA. 49 declined to make any other nomination. No new name was sent, and the Pope sent an ambassador to adjust the difficulty with the Government, but the bearing of this legate was so obnoxious that the Government ordered him to leave the country within ten days. Diplomatic relations have not been renewed between the Pope and the Chilean Government since; and as all the bishoprics of the country but one have become vacant and as there is no provision for filling these offices, the Roman Cath¬ olic Church is practically in a state of suspense in the Republic. Still further, a bill passed the Lower House, and was presented to the Senate, abolishing the State connection with the Roman Catholic Church, and requiring the President to make oath, not as formerly, to defend the Roman Catholic Church, but to defend all, of whatever religious faith, in the enjoyment of the rights of public worship according to the dictates of their own conscience. The next feature of these reforms we notice is the recognition of civil marriages. The Church has always demanded exclusive right of solemnization of marriage, but here, as in many other Roman Catholic countries, the fees became so exorbitant, reaching to thirty-five and forty dollars, as practically to place ecclesiastical mar¬ riage beyond the reach of the poorer classes. A Roman¬ ist and a Protestant could not be married except by that costly and criminal process of a dispensation from the Pope, and that meant an outlay from five hundred to a thousand dollars, and a year or two or even more of delay. The consequence of this in Chile was what such obstruction had been everywhere, a fearful proportion of illegitimate births, and a low sentiment concerning marital bonds and relations. The Government has pro¬ vided for the civil registration of marriages, births and deaths, from which the Church hitherto reaped consider¬ able revenue. Chronologically, however, the first of these reforms was that of secularizing the cemeteries. Though they had been established by the Government, they had been 5o THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTH AMERICA. consecrated by the Church, and only Romanists of good church-standing were allowed interment within them. Other cemeteries, not consecrated by the Romanists, were established by Protestants, foreign residents and others, who lost members of their families by death. The number of Dissenters and non-Romanist Chileans of many classes became numerous and influential, and it was at length not possible to prevent their interment m the consecrated cemeteries. The anti-Romanist senti¬ ment at length became so strong as to lead the Govern¬ ment to declare the secularization of all the cemeteries. The Church authorities fulminated decrees against these cemeteries, procured new lots, and ordered the removal of the remains of the faithful to them; and when that was met by the Executive of the Government, the eccle¬ siastics next used all the crypts and vaults of the Churches, and within three days, in Santiago, they removed a thousand bodies to them. The only resort of the Romanists now, is the consecration of individual burial lots. We may not stop to mention the great struggle of reform and liberation which is also taking place in the Argentine Republic, the fierce struggle with ultramon- tanism through the press, the legislature, the executive, and the schools. For the present, Liberalism is making mighty progress, and exerting an influence which makes the whole land seem to be undergoing a reformation. The great physical and material development of the country makes all this the more necessary and the more feasible. Railroads are being projected to the foot of the Andes, and even over them to connect this system with that of Chile. Within a few years a hundred millions of dollars have been spent in public improvements. The Argentine Republic has recently extended its jurisdiction to Cape Horn by establishing a protectorate over Terra del Fuego. Other lands that we have not been wont to think of as important, are being rejuvenated. Paraguay seems THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTH AMERICA. 51 likely to come to the front again. For years after the death of the last Lopez, Paraguay remained almost a cypher among nations, for the terrible reason that almost all of its male inhabitants were slaughtered in the fatal war that also cost Brazil and the Argentine Republic so much blood and treasure. The Paraguayan population in 1870 consisted almost wholly of women and children, well-nigh nude and well-nigh starved. All the cattle in the country had disappeared; but in the years that have intervened the children have grown up, many of the prisoners and expatriated citizens have returned to their homes. There is now a respectable Government. The Paraguayans are a most interesting people. The aborig¬ inal language, the Guarani, is still spoken, having never been displaced by the Spanish, amongst the common people. We have thus touched upon most of the fourteen coun¬ tries which make up this great continent of South Amer¬ ica. The population in them all are of three classes: the European, the native Indian, and the mixed races, and they bear a general type of civilization, having experi¬ enced the advantages and drawbacks of the old Roman Catholic Portuguese and Spanish civilization; a civiliza¬ tion which soon reached its zenith, and under the pall of the Papacy extended a paralyzing hand on the very energy and culture it had evoked. Though not in all equally, yet in all more or less, there is the same ten¬ dency to liberalism, to a revolt against sacerdotalism and especially Ultramontanism, and to the taking on of modern European, but more especially North American thought and habits. It is a transition time in these States and Kingdoms and Republics, wherein Protestant ideas, civil and ecclesiastical, are exerting unwonted power; a time that will not stay, a period most propitious for the work of Protestant Evangelism, but demanding immediate action if we would, as we may, mold their educational institutions, their energetic press, and guide the modification of laws, which so materially affect the religious and civil revolution now occurring. Now is the reformation before the reformation. 52 THE OPEN DOOR IN CENTRAL AMERICA. Rev. G. W. Chamberlain, of Brazil, says that South America offers one of the widest fields for Evangelistic work in all the world-wide parish; homogeneous in char¬ acter and to a wonderful extent in language, customs and institutions, and hence affording peculiar advantages to the work of the gospel. It is, he says, the widest empire of Rome, and the conditions are such as to give the best vantage-ground from which to bring influence to break down that hoary system of error, fraud and oppression, by scattering the seeds of the word, and raising up a new people who will walk in the right way of the Lord. Surely, he says, the Christian Churches of North Amer¬ ica have a grave responsibility towards the more than half-pagan, or less than half-Christian multitudes of South America. THE OPEN DOOR IN CENTRAL AMERICAo Central America has three classes of natives—of pure whites a few; of Indians about 3,000; the remainder, composing the bulk of the population, are of mixed Indian and Spanish blood, the Spanish element predom¬ inating. These are distinguished above all other Spanish- American peoples by sobriety and simplicity. Indolence, however, is a universal characteristic, and their supersti¬ tions are of the grossest form. Of late the wealth of the country has increased greatly, developing a tendency to luxury, gambling and the use of intoxicants. Besides these three native classes there are about 2,000 Europeans of the better class, 300 North Americans, 1,500 Italian laborers and 1,500 Jamaica negroes. The population is mainly gathered upon the central plateau. The entire population is probably between 225,000 and 250,000. Costa Rica is nominally Roman Catholic. In writing of the religious state of any Spanish American country THE OPEN DOOR IN CENTRAL AMERICA. 53 it is not necessary to enter upon a consideration of the Romish system as it is understood by its more enlight¬ ened votaries in Europe and America, for even they concede that in Spanish America, it has degenerated into sheer idolatry. The Abbe Dominec, Chaplain to the Emperor Maximilian, denounced the form of Romanism which he found in Mexico as “virtual heathenism.” It would be easy to fill pages with evidences of this, and so to demonstrate that whatever lukewarmness toward missions to the Papal countries of Europe Christians may tolerate in themselves, their arguments fall to the ground when applied to missions to Spanish America. In Costa Rica, as in other Central American Repub¬ lics, the population is divided by the line of education. The uneducated masses adhere blindly to the degrading superstitions in which they have been reared; the edu¬ cated few, in the language of a diplomatic representative of this country, “are growing unmindful of their ances¬ tral religion, and the next generation will see a more rapid decline of the power of the priest. Business and professional men never attend mass.” Of all the unoccupied fields in the world call¬ ing for evangelistic agencies, the nearest to any Chris¬ tian in the United States or Canada is Central America. Except the small Presbyterian mission in Guatamala there is no organized effort for Christ’s Gos¬ pel in all these lands; or, so it was, until recently, when the Central American Mission was formed for carrying the gospel to the unevangelized lands of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, San Salvador and Honduras. The Jamaica Baptist Missionary Society has a missionary at Port Limon, which is exclusively among Jamaica negroes employed as laborers at that place, and that was all there was until the Central American mission recently opened work by sending Mr. McConnell from St. Paul, Minn., to commence a' mission at San Jose. Mr. C. I. Scofield, the secretary of this mission at Dallas, Texas, says that it is undenominational and entirely in the hands of lay¬ men. THE OPEN DOOR IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. Turkey, shorn of territory both Christian and Muham¬ madan in Europe and Asia by the Treaty of Berlin, still consists directly of twenty and one-half millions of peo¬ ple, covering one and one-ninth millions of square miles, of the lands which were first Christianized and sent forth missionaries until the Muhammadan apostacy began. Of the population, four and one-half millions are still in Europe in four provinces, and sixteen millions are in Asia in twelve provinces. 1. —Open evangelism amongst Muhammadans is not yet permitted, but apart from that, the field is a wide one. In 1847, the English ambassador obtained an impe¬ rial decree constituting the native Protestants a separate and independent community, by what is known as a Hatti-Sherif having the Imperial autograph. In 1839, and after the Crimean war in 1856, the Sul¬ tan was compelled to concede religious freedom to his Christian subjects, and the right to hold land, along with other rights which have never really been enforced. Civil and religious liberty is guaranteed to the sub¬ jects of the Porte by six articles in the Treaty of Berlin. In 1878 the “Convention of defensive alliance between Great Britain and Turkey” placed Asiatic Turkey under British protection and leased Cyprus to England, the terms being that she defend Turkey “by force of arms ’ if necessary, while the Sultan is pledged to reforms chiefly for protection of the Christians. After the mas¬ sacres of i860, Lord Dufferin secured a special adminis¬ trative system for “The Lebanon,” under a Christian governor-general. Practically, no Mussalman may become a Christian without persecution to the death, and Chris¬ tian work is confined mainly to the followers of the East¬ ern Churches—Greek, Armenian, Nestorian, and Coptic. 2. — After thirty-five years in the Turkish Empire, Dr. Hamlin is competent to testify to the changes wrought THE OPEN DOOR IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. 55 therein. He says:—that Turkey has made progress in education in the last half century. Printed school books in the spoken languages have been introduced in the schools of the chief nationalities; every native race has the beginning of a literature. The whole scheme of Mos¬ lem education has been secularized; even the Govern¬ ment University is not subject to the clergy. Moslem schools are established on a graded system. European law in the form of substantially the Euro¬ pean code has been introduced into the courts as of equal authority with the Moslem code; a litigant can have his choice of codes, and in some quarters nine-tenths of the cases tried are by the Napoleon code. The different gov¬ ernors have an administrative council composed of Mos¬ lems and Christians. For twenty years the Ottoman Government has been gradually admitting Christian sub¬ jects to a share in the higher offices of the State. 3. —There was until recently no restriction on the pub¬ lication of the Word of God, in any language, in Turkey. Books and tracts must be presented to a censor, but he seldom censured. Books and tracts have been anathe- mized and burned, and people persecuted for reading 01- even possessing them; but this has generally increased the market. For years the Missionary Press was the chief source of reading matter for the people of Turkey, and doubtless they far outnumber, even now, the issues of any other press. It is doubted by Dr. Bliss, of Con¬ stantinople, if there is a city or town or village of any considerable size without, at least, one copy of the Word of God. Books published by Protestant Christians num¬ ber 1,082 titles. Down to 1882, two million copies of the Bible were sold at a price sufficient to pay their cost. Four newspapers are published under the auspices of the Protestant Churches, one Armenian, one Turkish, one Graeco-Turkish and one Bulgarian, paid for invari¬ ably in advance. There are also juvenile publications. 4. _ There was until lately practically but little restric¬ tion on Christian schools. The ground for the Christian college at Aintab was given by Turks. Ninety young 56 THE OPEN DOOR IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. women had entered the college at Harput. The col¬ lege at Beirut had a medical school. Robert College has trained nearly two thousand students. It has twenty European and American professors. In 1883, out of 211 students seventy were Bulgarians. 5. —There is great opportunity to influence the entire Turkish Empire from Constantinople. The “Star in the East” says:— “1. Constantinople is the capital of the Ottoman Empire. 2. It is of vast dimensions. 3. It is the seat of government. 4. Its inhabitants represent the various nationalities on whom the Holy Ghost was outpoured at Pentecost, and who anciently were comprised under the great Byzantine Empire. 5. It is the heart of the Mos¬ lem faith, whose pulsations are felt in the Continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, and reach the distant Soudan and India. 6. It rules over Palestine, and affects the destinies of the Jews. 7. It is now in a condition of crisis. 8. The tide of opportunities more favorable now than it ever has been is great for evangelistic work. 9. The races once enlightened by Chrysostom, Gregory, and Athanasius require again the living Word, and many are anxious to raise their fallen candlestick. 10. The Christian workers are ready to help, and it is con¬ sequently of the utmost importance as a rallying center." 6. —The Christian community affords an efficient agency for the advance of Christianity. They are fore¬ most in progress, in knowledge of foreign countries and foreign languages; they have superior activity and energy and a favorable opportunity for reaching great prominence and power. Their churches have become largely self-supporting under most unfavorable circum¬ stances. The people are poor. The Turkish Govern¬ ment has systematically robbed its people, through depreciation of its own currency, of a hundred and eighty millions of dollars. The commerce of the land is almost ruined by western competition. The English can make “Turkish towels” cheaper by machinery than they can be made by even the wretchedly underpaid hand-labor THE OPEN DOOR IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. 57 of the East; and can add the cost of transportation to Turkey and undersell the Turkish manufacturer. The same is true of the Turkish cap, the fez, and other manu¬ facturers. The manufacturing interests of the country, therefore, have been prostrated. The agricultural interests have suffered for lack of means of transportation. Wheat is sold at a short dis¬ tance in the interior for one-fourth what it brings in Con¬ stantinople, because of the wretched and insufficient means of carrying it to market. The Government taxes the productions of the country equal to one-fifth of their value, and enforces its collec¬ tion, seizing cooking utensils, beds, or whatever has an appreciable or supposable value, in payment of its demands. It is in the face of facts like these that the native Prot¬ estant Church, planted amidst intensest prejudice, fight¬ ing the most terrific odds, persecuted, hunted, robbed, mobbed, and sometimes stripped of everything, has gone on not only increasing in numbers, but struggling by dint of self-denial, to sustain its own ministry, until one- fourth of the American Board’s churches became wholly self-supporting, and none of them received foreign aid of more than one-fourth to one-half of the pastor’s salary. This spirit of liberality had been developed till the con¬ tributions of these poor people equaled one dollar for each Protestant, and that means a contribution for each person equal to ten to twenty days’ wages or income. The Constantinople Branch of the Evangelical Alli¬ ance is pressing the foreign Embassies at the Turkish capital, to present to the Turkish authorities, the evi¬ dence which they furnish, of the persecution of Chris¬ tians, especially of converts from Islam, and the denial of guaranteed rights to Protestant Christians. The several missionary societies exert a powerful influ¬ ence throughout the empire; that of the Church of Eng¬ land directs its labors to the Arabic-speaking population of the Hol} ; Land; the American Presbyterian conduct the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, and has four THE OPEN DOOR IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. 58 * principal stations besides; the American Board has Rob¬ ert College at Constantinople, one at Smyrna, Aintab and Harpoot, with six female seminaries at other places. The recent calamities to the Armenian Mission are yet unmeasured. Ahmid II, ‘‘The Great Assassin,’ has sys¬ tematically massacred a hundred-thousand Armenians. But the old Gregorian and Protestant Churches now present a state of union never before known. The Edinburgh Medical Missions Society is at Nazareth and Damascus; the Free Church of Scotland has Lebanon missions. There are many other agencies at work in this field. Bulgaria. Our limited space precludes our treating of that nation or semi-nation, of shepherds and agricul¬ turists known as Bulgarians, whose history as a nation some have traced to the second century before Christ, but who became well known six centuries later. They threatened the Greek capital of Constantinople in the ninth century. In A. D. 861 their King Borese was bap¬ tized and the nation became Christian. The Turkish Government sought to control them through the Greek Church, and the Greek ecclesiastics sought to merge them into the Greek See. They have sought emancipa¬ tion from Turkish rule and have maintained of late years an independent Bulgarian Church as a national organ through which to communicate with the people. Thus fidelity to the national Bulgarian Church has become identical with patriotism, and Bishops have been ap¬ pointed not with a view to their orthodoxy but to their political influence. “Orthodoxy” is synonymous with love of the nationality. This strong national feel¬ ing developed through a thousand years, makes them jealous of foreign influence, and the rela¬ tion of the National Church to their independence, jeal¬ ous of foreign religious influences. They have been so geographically situated as to become the battle-ground of Asia and Europe through centuries. The treaty of Berlin divided Bulgaria by separating it into two sec- THE OPEN DOOR IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. 59 tions, organizing Roumelia out of that portion of it lying south of the Balkans, as a separate government, and granting autonomy to that part of it lying north of the Balkans as the Province of Bulgaria. But the peo¬ ple were, and are still, one people, with one language, with the same traditions and the same national ambi¬ tions. Now Roumelia rises in rebellion to the Turkish authority, and in defiance of the Berlin treaty, to become incorporated with Bulgaria, technically so-called, to make once more the blood-brotherhood of the old Big Bulgaria. We make bold to say that “manifest destiny” points to a great Slavic nation in Southeastern Europe. Few wish to risk their prophetic reputation in fore¬ telling the future of a territory and a nationality which is the pathway of all contending interests and forces of both Europe and Asia, but we may note a few facts. 1. Full religious toleration appears morally certain. Repeated attempts have been made to so amend the pro¬ posed constitution as to forbid “proselytism, ” but they have thus far all been voted down by the Assembly. And the Assembly will continue to vote them down just as fast as they present themselves. Prince Alexander Bat- tenberg is a Lutheran and will almost necessarily pur¬ sue a liberal policy, as he has even informally pledged himself to do. The most active minds in the Bulgarian Assembly have included at one time a dozen of Rev. Dr. Long’s students from Robert College, and he has doubtless, in conjunction with his colleagues, imparted to them his own ideas of civil and religious liberty.. Mis¬ sions have an influential part to perform in furnishing renascent Bulgarian nationality. 2. The demand for the Scriptures in all parts of the country is a strong proof that there is here an open door that no man can shut. 3. Bulgaria is a strategetic point for penetrating the Greek Church and Russia. 6o THE OPEN DOOR IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. Persia, the land whence the tribes have emigrated over the Ural mountains, along the shores of the Medi¬ terranean, down the valley of the Ganges; the land of Cyrus and of the great empires of the Euphrates; the land in which Daniel prayed and prophesied, with a written history dating from 1900 B. C., though now much reduced in size, is yet twice as large as the German Empire, having 450,000 square miles, one-half arid and the rest poorly developed, yet it supports a population variously estimated at from six to nine millions, two millions of whom are semi-nomadic tribes. Ninetv-five per cent, of the remainder are pure Persians or Turks, for ages past identified with Persia. The original Per¬ sians still occupy the central plateau “and although always numerically weak, by their wonderful governing and organizing power they have proved the factor which at various times has spread the rule of Persia from the Nile to the Ganges, and from Constantinople to Delhi. They are not opposed by temperament to change and progress like other Asiatics. They are nearly all Mu¬ hammadans of the Sheah sect, who are less bigoted than the Sunni sect, represented in Constantinople, Alex¬ andria and Delhi. Missionary labor has been mainly confined to the 30,000 Nestorians, and about the same number of Armenians and Jews, but its marked success has awakened the apprehension and commanded the respect of the Moslems. A period of rapid change is coming in Moslem lands, says Dr. Shedd. He says that in the long chain of Mos¬ lem lands from the Pillars of Hercules to India and China, the two links that are weakest are Egypt and Persia. If strong Christian influence prevail in either of these, the chain is broken. The hope in the case of Persia is growing brighter. There are more signs of progress in opening the country to commerce and to Christian influence than in centuries before. A British Navigation company are opening the only navigable river from the south. An American company are open¬ ing artesian wells. Banks are founded with British THE OPEN DOORS IN THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA. 6l capital, railroads are projected and highways for wheeled vehicles are under construction, and mining and manu¬ facturing companies are getting under way. Progress is in the air and the most progressive man in the Empire was the late Shah himself. He and many Persian rulers have desired to grant religious toleration and to curb the ecclesiastics. Missionaries will need new wisdom; and the home churches in Christian lands must awake to the fact that the door in Persia opens wider and wider. THE OPEN DOORS IN THE ISLANDS OF THE SEAo “The earliest open doors were in the Islands of the Seas and to the credit of the church it may be said that all the principal islands and groups of the Pacific, both north and south of the equator, are either occupied by different sections of the Protestant Church or the respon¬ sibility of their occupation has been accepted/’ More than three-hundred islands of Eastern and Southern Polynesia have thrown away idolatry and its cruelties. The Polyglot Polynesian Church is well represented in the noble army of martyrs from Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji. Williams and Gordon, Baker and Bishop Pat- teson are names high on the honor roll of the Church of God. ‘The world holds these little communities in poor esteem. * * * They forget that almost all the great experiments and problems of humanity have been wrought out within small areas. Durifig the seventy years’ toil in the South Sea Islands, we have solved a great problem of missionary economics.” So says a report of the London Missionary Society. Australia is scarcely an island; it is, rather, a conti¬ nent; 2,500 by 1,950 miles in extent, it is about equal to the United States exclusive of Alaska. It has thou- 62 THE OPEN DOORS IN THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA. sands of miles of telegraph lines. When our Revolu¬ tionary war began it did not contain one civilized man. Now its enlightened and civilized population counts three millions. The public institutions of its leading cities are equal to those of similar size in England. It is quite generally under Christian influence. Australia is destined to play an important part in the civilization and Christianizing of the entire world of the southern hemisphere. When Queen Victoria ascended the throne the trade of England was $500,000,000. To-day the trade of the Australian colonies exceeds that by $100,000,000. Madagascar is a sort of Great Britain of Africa, yet is three times the area of Great Britain. It is not wholly Christianized. The French war threatened Protestant mission work, but it has been saved and cannot be set wholly back. The national idols have been removed from the palace and the priests are no longer a part of the Court. A royal sanctuary for the worship of Cod has been erected. Christianity sits enthroned in the per¬ son of the Queen. The Sabbath is strictly observed. This island holds important relations to the destruction of the slave trade, and as a base from which the con¬ tinent of Africa is to be reached. It remains to be seen what effect the late French annexation of the island will have on Protestant missions. Polynesia is now largely Christianized. Starting with Tahiti, the London Society has quite thoroughly evan¬ gelized the Society islands, Australasia, Plervey, Samoa and other groups. The W esleyans have had marked success on the island of Tonga and neighboring islands, and the American Board has graduated from its list of missions the Sandwich Islands, having organized the churches, which include the large proportion of the islanders, into the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, leaving them a missionary church carrying the Gospel into the Gilbert, Marshall, Caroline and Marquesas Islands. In Fiji, the Wesleyan triumph has been so THE OPEN DOORS IN THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA. 63 extensive, that in 1879 it was stated by the governor that of a population of 120,000, 102,000 were regular worshippers in Christian churches, and every family con¬ ducts morning and evening worship. The islands of the Loyalty group are partly Roman Catholic, but there are 110 heathen, the entire population being included in the Protestant and Roman Catholic communities. Malay Archipelago. “If we look at a globe or map of the eastern hemisphere,” says Mr. A. R. Wallace in his Malay Archipelago, “we shall perceive between Asia and Australia a number of large and small islands, form¬ ing a connected group distinct from those great masses of land, and having little connection with either of them. It is inhabited by a peculiar and interesting race of man¬ kind—the Malay—found nowhere beyond the limits of the insular tract which has been named the Malay archi¬ pelago. . It happens that few persons realize that, as a whole, it is comparable with the primary divisions of the globe, and that some of its separate islands are larger than France or the Austrian Empire.” Sumatra is a thousand miles long and its area is equal to that of England, Scotland and Wales combined. It is under Holland, and is the second great colonial power in the world, with a population of over four mil¬ lions. Of these, perhaps more than half are in the Dutch settlements. Buddhism was introduced from India, then superseded by Muhammadanism. On the sea coast are independent Muhammadan Malay princes. Java, a Dutch island, about the size of Cuba, has eight times its population, and has been under the rule of Holland for two-and-a-half centuries. Europeans, Chinese, Arabs and others, numbering nearly a quarter of a million, occupy the island, with seventeen millions of Javanese. Java has comfortable villages, cities, roads and bridges. One railroad extends from Samarang into the interior as far as Jookja; another from Samarang to Ambarrawa. Morals are in a wretched state. 64 THE OPEN DOORS IN THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA. Borneo is thrice the size of Great Britain with a popu¬ lation variously estimated at from two to four millions. The Dutch claim a million-and-a-quarter in their ter¬ ritory. These are chiefly Malays, Chinese and the orig¬ inal inhabitants, the Dyaks, who are idolators and have been accused of cannibalism. The Celebes have a population of nearly three mil¬ lions, of which, approaching a million are Dutch sub¬ jects. The Alfooras are the aborigines of these and several other islands. They are heathen. Originally Brahmanism was their faith, but they have been Muham¬ madans since the sixteenth century. There are, how¬ ever, many Christian converts among them. The Molucca Islands have an estimated population of two millions, of which one-half are Dutch subjects. New Guinea is larger than France. It is divided between Dutch and English rule. It is 1,400 miles in length. Its mountain peaks rise more than 13,000 feet. Its greatest width is 300 miles. The people are in a primitive state. They have lake villages and are in the stone age—no implement, no vessel, no tool, no weapon being made of metal. They are not disposed to cloth¬ ing. They have taken clothing to wrap up their drums rather than themselves. The religious ignorance seems as dark as in any part of the globe. Along the coast they have an idea of a Great Spirit, but no idea of wor¬ ship. They have a gloomy, superstitious fear of death. Singapore is the capital of the Strait’s Settlements, which include Malacca and Penang. Its growth has been like that of San Francisco or Melbourne. It was primeval forest in 1818. It was ceded to the East India Company in 1867 and erected into a capital. It is a free port, yet by stamp-tax and land-revenue has an income of $2,500,000. There are 86,000 Chinese and 22,000 Malays out of a population of 139,000. But here are Javanese, Portuguese, Arabs, Jews, and 12,000 natives of India. CHINA. By Rev. J. T. Gracey, D. D. « 64 Pages. Price 15 cents. T HIS is a condensed outline of the history, social and religious customs; also of Missionary labor and success in in the vast Empire of China. Probably over 150,000 copies have been sold. It is revised to date. “OUR MISSIONARY HEROINES—BY FAITH.” By J. T. Graoey, D. D. i 6 Pages. Price 10 cents. A bold outline of Missionary work by women in many lands. WOMAN’S MEDICAL WORK. By Mrs. J. T. Gracey. 16 Pages. Price 10 cents. A rapid review of the work of Missionary women in the Department of Medicine in many Mission fields. WOMAN'S WORK FOR AFRICAN WOMEN. By Mrs. J. T. Gracey. 16 Pages. Prico 10 cents. These may all be ordered of the publisher, J. T. GRACEY, ROCHESTER, N. Y. J - s