Lavras School 
 
 BRAZIL 
 
 AS A MISSION FIELD 
 
 1 I RVf— > 
 
 S. H. CHESTER:, 
 
 
‘Brazil as a Mission Field. 
 
 BY S. H. CHESTEK. 
 
 I N sailing from New York to Rio de Ja- 
 neiro the ship’s track lies eastward about 
 one thousand miles and then southward 
 about thirty-six hundred miles. The 
 greater part of this jo’urney is through an 
 ocean desert. It is very rarely that either 
 ships or sea fowl or even flying fish are visi- 
 ble. A journey of about twenty days brings us 
 tc the harbor of Rio, the capital of the United 
 States of South America. 
 
 After crossing the equator one observes that 
 the Southern heavens are not so rich in con- 
 stellations as the Northern. The Southern 
 Cross is quite insignificant in comparison with 
 the Great Dipper, which is still to be seen on 
 the far Northern horizon, turned bottom up- 
 wards. 
 
 A BRAZILIAX CITY. 
 
 The Bay of Rio is enclosed in a circuit of 
 about eighty miles of coast line, along the edge 
 of which and running back in the gorges be- 
 tween the hills are the lines of houses which 
 make up the city. They are all of the Latin 
 style of architecture, exactly like the houses we 
 see in Lisbon or in Naples. They are of stucco 
 
walls with tiled roofs, and painted in all the 
 colors of the rainbow. Many of them are 
 adorned with a profusion of sculptured and bas- 
 relief ornaments. The business streets are nar- 
 row, mean, and ill-smelling, and the pity is 
 that so little fire is used that there is little 
 hope of a “ Chicago ” conflagration to clear 
 them out and make room for something more 
 modern. The principal one is called the “ Ouvi- 
 dor,” on which no vehicles are allowed except 
 at specified hours, and which, in the afternoons, 
 is always crowded with pedestrians, many of 
 them very stylishly attired, some going on busi- 
 ness errands and some conversing in the most 
 animated style on the morning’s proceedings 
 of the National Congress. 
 
 The business houses and residences are in- 
 termingled. The balcony windows, which are 
 the universal feature of domestic architecture, 
 are always full of women leaning on their el- 
 bows observing and being observed. This phe- 
 nomenon appears everywhere in Brazil, not 
 only in large cities, but also in small towns and 
 even in farmhouses in the country. 
 
 There are many beautiful gardens in Rio of 
 tropical flowers and foliage plants, palms and 
 grasses, and avenues of overarching bamboo. 
 The municipality deserves credit for its efforts 
 to beautify the city in this way. Almost every 
 private residence that aspires to any degree of 
 elegance is surrounded by a lovely flower gar- 
 den. 
 
 By a cogwheel railway we ascend the Cor- 
 covado Mountain, from the top of which is to 
 
 3 
 
be seen a panorama of mountains, bay, and city 
 of indescribable beauty. The mountains rise 
 precipitously in all manner of quaint shapes, 
 many of them being needle pointed and others 
 like a sugar loaf. These, with the crystal wa- 
 ters of the bay, the houses in their bright col- 
 ors, the gardens in their tropical luxuriance of 
 foliage, and, above all, the sky at sunset, with 
 such brilliancy of such varied and ever-chan- 
 ging hues, altogether make a scene to fill the 
 soul of a painter with ecstasy and despair. Not 
 all the cities of Brazil possess this wealth of 
 natural advantages; but most of the larger 
 cities an the coast present an attractive and 
 picturesque appearance. The city of Sao Paulo 
 has been built up since the development of the 
 coffee industry, and is much more modern and 
 progressive in all respects than Rio de Janeiro. 
 It has handsome stores, strong banks, compara- 
 tively wide and well-paved streets, and trolley 
 cars managed by the same people who run the 
 lines on Broadway, New York. 
 
 A well-to-do Brazilian is very particular as to 
 what is on the inside of his yard enclosure, but 
 is sublimely indifferent as to what is on the 
 outside. The wealthiest man in Bahia has a 
 palatial mansion in the midst of a lovely gar- 
 den enclosed by a tall iron fence. He owns a 
 large area of land contiguous to his dwelling, 
 from the rental of w^hich he derives his income. 
 I noticed that this ground was covered with a 
 large number of very small and very dirty 
 hovels, evidently occupied by very poor people. 
 The plot of ground immediately adjoining his 
 
 4 
 
yard fence he had rented out for stock yards. 
 The city of Bahia, however, is not to be taken 
 as, in all respects, typical of Brazil. The great 
 majority of its population are negroes, many 
 of whose ancestors only two generations back 
 were native Africans. 
 
 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 
 
 The Amazon River and other general fea- 
 tures of the physical geography of Brazil are 
 familiar and well known. One very remark- 
 able feature of it was unknown to me, and I 
 have only seen it referred to in a book on Bra- 
 zil written by Prof. Louis Agassiz. It is that 
 very nearly the whole surface of Brazil is cov- 
 ered by the same character of top soil. This 
 soil is a dark-red clay mingled with gravel. 
 Professor Agassiz pronounced it to be a glacial 
 drift — a sort of paste spread over the surface 
 of the country when, some time back in the 
 geological past, a great glacier slided down 
 from the sides of Andes into the Atlantic Ocean. 
 The stratum has an average thickness of sev- 
 eral feet, and, like all glacial drift soil, is, fer- 
 tile and productive. It produces an abundant 
 food supply for the present population with the 
 most superficial kind of cultivation. In North- 
 ern Brazil the elevation of the land near the 
 eastern coast causes a precipitation of moisture 
 before the ocean breeze travels far into the 
 interior. In consequence of this, the country 
 is subject to droughts, severe and long pro- 
 tracted, during which the people are obliged 
 to leave home and come toward the coast in 
 
 5 
 
search of food. With this exception, which 
 perhaps does not include more than one-sixth 
 of the total area of the country, the capacity 
 of the land for supporting population must be 
 much larger than that of the United States of 
 North America. The ccftton plant grows indefi- 
 nitely without renewing until it becomes a 
 tree, and for the first three years yields abun- 
 dantly. The ravages of insects, however, have 
 greatly interfered with the production of cot- 
 ton. There are immense coffee plantations 
 which formerly yielded very handsome profits. 
 In recent years the impositio-n of foolish ex- 
 port duties has almost destroyed the profits of 
 coffee raising. There is no finer quality of cof- 
 fee than the best grade of well-seasoned Rio. 
 The coffee which the Brazilians give you in 
 their homes is as good as any that the traveler 
 will find in France or . Italy. The poor repu- 
 tation of Rio coffee is due to the fact that so 
 much of it has been used in this country in 
 an unseasoned state. It is said that some of 
 the famed Mocha coffee of Constantinople grows 
 on Brazilian coffee plants. The small round 
 grains which grow one in a pod are separated 
 from the flat grains and sent to Aden, in Ara- 
 bia, where they are put up in bags of Arabian 
 cloth and shipped all over the world as Mocha 
 coffee. The valleys produce abundantly of 
 sugar cane and rice and beans and mandioca 
 with almost no cultivation after the seeds are 
 once planted. A large variety of tropical bread 
 fruits contribute to the food supply. The grass 
 
 6 
 
on the hills furnishes pasture the year round 
 for innumerable cattle. 
 
 The climate of Southern Brazil in the winter 
 season is Edenic as far south as Sao Paulo. 
 There is occasional frost enough to blacken ten- ■ 
 der leaves, but nof enough to kill the greater 
 part of the vegetation. Twenty-five out of 
 thirty days which I spent in the States of Sao 
 Paulo and Minas Geras reminded me contin- 
 ually of George Herbert’s lines: 
 
 “ Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright; 
 
 The bridal of the earth and sky.” 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Although the first European colofnist came 
 to Brazil about the same time that the Pil- 
 grim fathers came to North America, the re- 
 sources of that splendid country are as yet 
 almost wholly . undeveloped. Instead of the 
 80,000,000 people who inhabit the States of 
 North America, the last census gave Brazil a 
 population of less than 20,000,000. There are 
 places where gold nuggets are found lying 
 about on the surface of the ground, and many 
 places where good wages could be made wash- 
 ing the sand in the streams for gold, and yet 
 gold mining is carried on to a very limited 
 extent. There are railroads connecting most 
 of the larger cities near the coast, and two 
 or three that penetrate the interior for several 
 hundred miles. These roads have been built 
 chiefiy by English capital, and are only the 
 beginning of what is necessary to furnish trans- 
 
 7 
 
portation for the people and the products of 
 the soil. Interior transportation is chiefly done 
 on two-wheeled w^agons, whose screeching 
 wooden axles announce their approach for miles 
 before they come in sight, pulled by ox teams 
 over roads which are simply gullys that have 
 been dug by the wagon wheels in the soft, 
 gravelly soil. The transportation of his farm 
 produce by this means costs the farmer almost 
 as mmch as he can get for it when he reaches 
 the market. It is no wonder, therefore, that 
 Brazilian trade plays such a relatively insig- 
 nificant part in the world’s commerce as it 
 does to-day. There are some very delightful 
 and hospitable homes among the well-to-do of 
 the rural population. The great majority of 
 the farmhouses, however, that one passes are 
 of the most primitive character in the matter 
 of style and appointment. 
 
 GOVERXME.XT. 
 
 One reason for this slow development is per- 
 haps the semi-tropical climate, which is not con- 
 ducive to energy and enterprise. The neces- 
 sities of life being so easy of attainment has a 
 tendency to make the people satisfied merely 
 to obtain these without thinking very much 
 about the progress of the country. Another 
 reason is the form of government which the 
 first colonists brought with them from Portu- 
 gal. The line of emperors culminating in the 
 last Dom Pedro were mostly men of high char- 
 acter. Dom Pedro himself was a man of benev- 
 olent disposition and commendable public spirit. 
 
He was nat a very strong character, however, 
 and was always surrounded by a very numerous 
 body of officials who administered the govern- 
 ment mainly in their own personal interest and 
 always on the principle of killing the goose that 
 lays the golden egg. In 1889 the imperial gov- 
 ernment was overthrown and a republic was 
 set up whose constitution was modeled very 
 closely after that of the United States of North 
 America. The Brazilians, however, obtained 
 their free institutions without having had any 
 previous training in the art of administering 
 them and without paying any price for them 
 either of blood or treasure. The mutiny of a 
 few regiments one night at the capitol was the 
 only public disturbance attending the change 
 of government. Since the republic was estab- 
 lished, the same officials or their immediate de- 
 scendants have been in power, with no good 
 Dom Pedro to guide and restrain them. The 
 National Congress has been almost wholly un- 
 der their influence. Their principal idea seems 
 to have been to obtain government revenue 
 rather than to legislate for the general pros- 
 perity of the country. They impose no tax on 
 land, making it easy for the old and wealthy 
 families to hold very large bodies of it with- 
 out expense, thereby preventing the occupation 
 of it by those who would develop and utilize 
 it. They impose a tax of 6 per cent on all 
 property passing from one hand to another, 
 thus attaching a penalty to the transaction of 
 real estate business. When our government 
 removed the tariff on Brazilian coffee, which 
 
 9 
 
had almast paralyzed that industry, instead of 
 allowing the coffee planter to enjoy the pros- 
 perity which would have come to him and 
 thereby securing the general prosperity of the 
 country, they imposed an export tax of about 
 the same amount, thus securing large govern- 
 ment revenues, but destroying the profsperity 
 of all that part of Brazil of which coffee is the 
 principal staple. Their financial legislation has 
 resulted in fluctuations in the value of their 
 standard coin, the milreis, which have reduced 
 almost all business to a guessing basis. Dur- 
 ing the last ten years the value of this coin in 
 gold has ranged from 121/2 cents to 45 cents. 
 Its par value is 54 cents. 
 
 RELIGIOX. 
 
 The chief reason of all why Brazil has not 
 kept pace with this country in its development 
 is unquestionably to be found in the fact that, 
 until about forty years ago, the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church had uninterrupted sway over the 
 people. This leads us to the topic of Brazil as 
 a mission field. Is it nat already a Christian 
 country? And even though we may regard the 
 form of Christianity prevailing there as less 
 perfect than ours, is it generous and liberal- 
 minded in us to be sending missionaries to this 
 Christian country? 
 
 It is not my purpose in speaking of Brazil 
 as a mission field to denounce Roman Catholi- 
 cism in the abstract. I believe that church to 
 be, wherever found, a corrupted form of Chris- 
 tianity. We must also recognize the fact that 
 10 
 
many of the saints of God are to be found with- 
 in its pale. I shall speak only of that type 
 of Roman Catholicism which is found in Bra- 
 zil, and shall not say anything of it more se- 
 vere than the Pope himself has said in numer- 
 ous encyclical letters addressed to the South 
 American clergy, pointing out their shortcom- 
 ings and pleading for reforms. 
 
 If Christianity consisted in names and exter- 
 nals, Brazil w’ould perhaps be the most Chris- 
 tian country in the world. Every village has 
 its large wooden cross erected on the tallest 
 neighboring hill, which is supposed to give its 
 Christian character to the village. Every large 
 farm has a church as a part of its equipment. 
 Padres are thick in the streets of every city, 
 and from a hill in Sao Joao de ’1 Rey, a city of 
 about ten thousand people, I counted the spires 
 of thirteen large churches, besides a multitude 
 of chapels and shrines. Religious festivals are 
 so numerous that they seriously interfere with 
 the transaction of business. They are held 
 frequently throughout the year, sometimes last- 
 ing a week, and the cost of the fireworks and 
 other things used in connection with them 
 amounts up to the thousands of dollars. At 
 least one-half of the male children are named 
 after one or another of the twelve apostles or 
 of some saint in the Roman calendar. A large 
 proportion of the towns and villages have scrip- 
 tural names. A saloon in the city of Rio, hav- 
 ing the usual spectacular display of bottles in 
 its front window, had the name written above 
 
 11 
 
the doer: “The Restaurant of the Children of 
 Heaven/' 
 
 When we come to the realities, however, 
 that should correspond to these names, we find 
 a condition of things that is as nearly as pos- 
 sible the exact opposite of what the names 
 would imply. Professor Agassiz, who was by 
 no means prejudiced against Roman Catholi- 
 cism, after three years’ observation of the Bra- 
 zilian priesthood, says of them: “Their igno- 
 rance is patent; their character, most corrupt; 
 and their influence, deep seated and powerful.” 
 For them to marry would be contrary to the 
 canons of the church and would lead to their 
 deposition. It does not interfere, however, with 
 their official standing when, as many of them 
 do, they live in open concubinage. I was struck 
 with the similarity of the relatio’n to the people 
 of many of the Romish priests in Brazil to 
 that of the Buddhist priesthood in China and 
 Japan. They are considered necessary in con- 
 nection with certain functions and occasions in 
 the life of the people. They must be on hand 
 to perform the marriage ceremony, to admin- 
 ister extreme unction to the dying, to bury the 
 dead, and to absolve those whose consciences 
 trouble them on account of their crimes. Apart 
 from these official functions, the best people 
 have no use for them, and they are perhaps the 
 most disreputable element in the communities 
 where they reside. 
 
 There is a class of people in Brazil, repre- 
 senting the old aristocracy, who are highly ed- 
 ucated, who have elegant homes in which they 
 
 12 
 
dispense charming hospitality, and who are un- 
 surpassed in all the arts and amenities of so- 
 cial life. Many of them are attached outwardly 
 to the Romish Church because it is respectable 
 to be so, but most of them have long ago be- 
 come disgusted with the ignorance and super- 
 stition which are the most obtrusive features 
 in the life of both priesthood and church, and 
 have become either French Positivists and Ma- 
 terialists, or have reacted to the opposite ex- 
 treme and become Spiritualists. 
 
 So far as the common people are concerned, 
 the Romish Church, which had exclusive con- 
 trol of educational matters for nearly three 
 hundred years, brought less than 10 per cent 
 of them to the intellectual plane of being able 
 to read and write. Religiously, the ignorant 
 masses are what they could not help from 
 being under the tuition of such a priesthood 
 as the one described above. Even if the people 
 could read the Bible, it is a forbidden book, 
 and the public burning of Bibles by the priests 
 in the streets is still a common occurrence. 
 Under the empire, the priests had a monopoly 
 of celebrating marriage, and were so exorbitant 
 in their charges that many poor people were 
 forced either to live in celibacy or to forego 
 the sanction of the marriage bond. Some of 
 the superstitious rites practiced by the people 
 are too gross and revolting to be described. The 
 Christ whom they worship is the dead Christ. 
 The Virgin Mary is the one to whom they look 
 as a Saviour. Images of God the Father are 
 paraded before the people. I saw at Lavras a 
 
 i: 
 
company of very black Africans, in gaudy ar- 
 ray, bearing banners with doves embroidered 
 on them, beating tambourines and performing 
 dances similar to those that may now be seen 
 in the villages of Central Africa. This pro- 
 cession was supposed to be in honor of the Holy 
 Spirit. Images of the Virgin and the saints 
 are scattered along the highways, where their 
 shrines are visited and enriched by the de- 
 luded people. Under the empire there was an 
 idol in the city of Bahia which bore the name 
 of General St. Antony. The idol was regular- 
 ly commissioned and received a general’s salary 
 from the government. This salary, of course, 
 was handled by the priest who kept charge of 
 the idol. About twelve miles out from Per- 
 nambuco, on the railroad, I passed a large farm 
 owned by Sr. Alho, a lawyer in the city. It 
 was equipped with all the buildings and ma- 
 chinery pertaining to a first-class farm, includ- 
 ing a church, but the land was not in cultiva- 
 tion, and all the buildings were in ruins except 
 the dw^elling and the church, which were in 
 excellent repair. The explanation was that, 
 some time previously, Sr. Alho obtained pos- 
 session of a human skeleton, which he suc- 
 ceeded in persuading the people was that of a 
 person formerly known in that region as St. 
 Severino. He had the skeleton stuffed and cov- 
 ered with leather and set it up in the church 
 as an object of worship. St. Severino proved 
 to be a miracle worker, whose benefits in the 
 way of bringing about happy issues of things 
 in general were in proportion to the value of 
 
 14 
 
the votive offerings made at his shrine. The 
 income derived from this source belonged to 
 Sr. Alho and proved so handsome that he found 
 himself able to live on it comfortably in the 
 city without the trouble of working his farm. 
 This is not at all an extreme illustration of the 
 degradation to which the so-called Christianity 
 of Brazil has come. Wherever such supersti- 
 tions prevail, whether they have attached to 
 them the name of Christian or pagan, we find 
 a proper field for the missionary operations of 
 our Protestant Christendom. 
 
 MISSION WORK. 
 
 The laws of Brazil guaranteeing religious 
 liberty are all that could be desired. The ex- 
 ecution of those laws, however, especially in 
 places remote from the seat of government, is 
 often very difficult. Such is the fanaticism of 
 the people, stirred up as it often is by the local 
 priest, that a Protestant missionary goes into 
 a locality in the interior of Brazil where en- 
 lightenment has not yet penetrated at the peril 
 of his life. One of the features of Brazilian 
 social life, brought over from Portugal in the 
 sixteenth century, was the professional assas- 
 sin. Organized bands of these are still to be 
 found in many places, which are usually in the 
 service of the political leader of the locality, 
 who protects them from the law and protects 
 from them whom he chooses, and uses them to 
 remove inconvenient obstructions in the way 
 of his political ambition. These bands have 
 proven ready instruments in the hands of fanat- 
 15 
 
icai priests in their work of opposing the intro- 
 duction of Protestantism. Only a few years 
 ago one of our missionaries in the town of 
 Conhotinho, about one hundred miles in the 
 interior from the city of Recife, v/as assaulted 
 in the street by one of these assassins. He 
 would have been killed had not a native min- 
 ister riding by his side interposed his own per- 
 son and received the assassin’s dagger in his 
 own heart. Riotous demonstrations have been 
 made in many other places when missionaries 
 have attempted to open work where it had not 
 previously been done. The people of Brazil, 
 however, when once they have given ear to the 
 gospel message, have proven remarkably re- 
 sponsive to it, and the work of the Presbyte- 
 rians in Brazil has had a more rapid develop- 
 ment than in any other of our foreign mission 
 fields. 
 
 The first Presbyterian foreign missionary 
 work ever undertaken was the sending out of 
 two ministers and fourteen students by John 
 Calvin and the Genevan clergy to an island in 
 the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. After a few 
 years of successful work this missionary party 
 was murdered, and those who had adhered to 
 them w’ere scattered by persecution. 
 
 All the principal Protestant denominations 
 of this country are working in Brazil. The two 
 largest missions are those of the Methodists 
 and the Presbyterians. The Methodists were 
 late in beginning their work, not arriving on 
 the field until 1876. They have carried it on 
 with characteristic aggressiveness, and have 
 
 16 
 
wisely devated mucli of their energy and means 
 to the development of a native ministry. They 
 have a well-established college and theological 
 seminary at Jiiiz de Fora, and have gathered 
 about three thousand communicants into the 
 church. The Northern Presbyterian Church 
 began work in 1859. The first Presbyterian 
 Church was organized in 1862. McKenzie Col- 
 lege, at Sao Paulo, has excellent buildings, a 
 fairly good endowment, and about five hundred 
 students in attendance. In 1869 the Southern 
 Presbyterian Church began work in Campinas, 
 in the Province of Sao Paulo. The first mis- 
 sionaries organized The International College 
 of Campinas and conducted a successful school 
 at that point for about twenty years. Owing 
 to successive visitations of yellow fever, this 
 school was finally abandoned, and the Campinas 
 mission was transferred to Lavras, in the State 
 of Minas. At this point a very successful girls’ 
 school and also an Industrial School for Boys 
 has been established. At Campinas a marsh 
 at the base of the hill on which the city is 
 built, which was the breeding ground for yel- 
 low fever germs, has been cleared and drained 
 and a beautiful stream of clear water now 
 runs through it with grassy meadow banks. A 
 supply of good water has been brought down 
 from the hills and the very best modern sys- 
 tem of sanitation adopted. There has been no 
 epidemic of fever for several years, and it is 
 not believed that there can be any more of such 
 a malignant type as those which formerly pre- 
 vailed on account of local causes which have 
 
 17 
 
now been removed. The school building at 
 Campinas was recently purchased by the Synod, 
 and the Theological Seminary formerly con- 
 ducted at Sao Paulo is now conducted there. 
 
 A training school for native candidates for 
 the ministry is also being conducted at Gar- 
 anhuns, in North Brazil. The plan of our 
 church and of the Northern Presbyterian 
 Church, which works in cooperation with us, 
 is to develop a number of schools which shall 
 be feeders to one higher school where Prot- 
 estant young men can receive professional train- 
 ing and where the future ministry and lead- 
 ers of the Presbyterian Church in Brazil may 
 receive a training based on Protestant instead 
 of Jesuit ethics. The educational work carried 
 on by Protestants in Brazil has furnished the 
 model on which the whole system of public 
 education is now being conducted. 
 
 Our Brazilian Christians have shown a most 
 commendable spirit of liberality, and have de- 
 veloped rapidly in the direction of self-support. 
 In nearly all the cities and larger towns com- 
 fortable church buildings have been erected al- 
 most entirely by native contributions. The 
 Presbyterian Church at Rio has a nice stone 
 building and comfortable manse and gives an 
 ample support to its own pastor, who is a man 
 of learning and eloquence. In the year 1901 
 three members of this congregation contributed 
 $6,000 to the benevolent operations of the 
 church. A theological seminary building cost- 
 ing $25,000 has been erected at Sao Paulo. The 
 money for this building came entirely from the 
 
 18 
 
native church. At present there are not less 
 than ten thousand communicants in the Synod 
 of Brazil. The church is organized with its 
 regular Boards of Home and Foreign Missions. 
 
 In 1903 there was a division in the church. 
 The pastor of the First Presbyterian Church 
 in Sao Paulo undertook to induce the Synod 
 to make membership in the order of Free Ma- 
 sons a bar to communion. Failing to carry his 
 point in the Synod, he seceded, and with six 
 other native ministers and seven ruling elders 
 set up the Independent Presbyterian Church of 
 Brazil. What will be the final result of this 
 unfortunate occurrence cannot yet be foreseen. 
 It is not impossible that it may result in great- 
 er activity in both branches of the native 
 church and the more rapid evangelization of the 
 country. 
 
 If all our foreign missionaries shomld now 
 retire from Brazil, leaving the native church 
 to its own resources, it is sufficiently well es- 
 tablished to maintain itself, and would both 
 live and grow. The aim which We have in view 
 in all foreign missionary work — namely, the 
 establishment of a self-governing and self-prop- 
 agating church — has been to this extent at- 
 tained in Brazil. That church, however, will 
 need our help for perhaps another quarter of a 
 century in order to carry on successfully the 
 immense evangelistic work which remains to 
 be done before Protestantism attains the place 
 which it ought to hold in Brazil. Especially 
 will our help be needed in furnishing for the 
 Brazilian church an adequate supply of prop- 
 
 19 
 
erly trained and qualified native ministers, eld- 
 ers, and leaders. Furnished with these, the 
 Presbyterian Church of Brazil will be ready to 
 take its place among the strong and well-organ- 
 ized forces that are working together in the 
 great effort to evangelize the world in this gen- 
 eration. 
 
 Executive Committee Foreign Missions 
 Presbyterian Church, U. S. 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 lM-11-10 
 20