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meaning of this fact in the matter of opportunity needs not to be argued. The effect of failure on the part of the home churches to realize the meaning of opportunity in China is illustrated by a recent letter from Hankow. The writer, a Wesleyan missionary, says:

Some men who had been coming (to chapel) from a distance, for several years, asked if they might have a place of their own nearer home. I went with them and saw the large room. We were to have this with two smaller rooms for $7.50 the year, and the Chinese members were to pay half of it. At the opening day the place was crowded. Oh, the glorious sensation that comes over a man as he stands before a crowd like that! The power comes! You feel it as you see those eyes looking at you! You have for them something they have never heard before the message of Life! Yet when I presented the account at Synod for the small sum required for this chapel I was told our funds would not allow of this. We must open no new places, but hold the centers we were already working! It is hard to have to refuse the calls which are be

ing made on every side. Men are crowding to hear the Gospel, and we have opportunities to preach Christ which I venture to say will be found in no country except China to-day. But China is not evangelized yet. Jesus Christ walks unknown through 1,500 out of 1,900 cities that are capitals of countries, because He needs lips to use and hands to use, and there are no missionary servants of His in those cities.

One of the China Inland Mission secretaries tells of visiting a district in the province of Honan where but one missionary and his wife are at work. They have the names of 700 people in that district who have registered their wish to know more about

Christ. Who is going to explain to them even the rudiments of Christian faith? The missionaries of the American Board in North China have demanded, in a manner that takes no denial, money for the extension of their work. The Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge declares that it must have means greatly to increase its publication work, for everything that it can publish in Chinese is eagerly bought and read. The same demand for extension to use the present marvelous opportunity comes from every part of the empire. The situation; for those reports are a sort Bible Society reports show the real of a barometer of popular tendencies in pagan lands. The reports show that about 1,500,000 copies of the Scriptures and Scripture portions were taken up by the Chinese in 1904, all but a negligible percentage having been bought and paid for. The whole vast nation is in some degree accessible to the missionaries of Christ. Tibet is the only section of the empire which still persistently and deliberately repels missionaries, and even Tibetans living among the Chinese have become Christians during the year in small numbers.

It is clear, however, that the present, temper of influential men in China may soon pass. While in two or three cases Japanese Christians have established centers of Christian influence in China, in general the Japanese teachers now swarming over the whole land invite the people to Buddhism, and otherwise oppose Christianity. Because of this, it is certain that unless the Christian Church can make plain to the nation the healing power of Christ, other teachers, proclaiming the merits of some new superstition of the

moving of the waters, will persuade China to step down into the nearest puddle and call that a cure. If this happens, men may well begin to discuss the "yellow peril."

So in a missionary survey of Eastern Asia the spectacle which fills the eye, to the exclusion of everything else, is this view of one-half of the pagans of the world there accessible to the activity of the Christian Church and made so through the intervention of the hand of God. This fact, if really understood in its magnitude, its potentiality and its urgency, would cause the immediate assembling of an Ecumenical Conference, not only of missionary societies, but of all branches of the Church, so as to plan effective action in harmony with the revealed will of God.

Malaysia

The Chinese dispersion in many lands should be noted to some extent if we would appreciate the variety of Christianizing influences now providentially directed upon that nation. We can not pause to speak of Christian Chinese communities found in the United States and in Hawaii. In Singapore, the Straits Settlements, Borneo, Sumatra, and Java are many thousand Chinese laborers and merchants. In all these different parts of Malaysia Christian congregations clustered about various missions among the Chinese are building up sturdy characters, who have already shown their value in winning their friends in China to Christianity. Nor is this source of evangelistic influence upon China a thing to be treated as a chance side issue. There is one Master hand utilizing all such indirect sources of influence upon the great nation which has a future in store.

Some revolutionary changes among the people of the Philippines may be seen, not only from an educational, but from a religious standpoint. One of the outward tokens of these changes is the wide circulation and study of the Bible. Another token is the decision during 1905 by the interdenominational Evangelical Union of missionaries there to call urgently for an increase of missionary force, because the time for evangelizing the islands is now. All the facts in the case justify our interpretation of the new order of things as a summons to the churches, because God's time has come for extension of His Kingdom there.

One detail in Sumatra, which also comes within this general geographical division, we can not refrain from giving. We sometimes fail to hear inspiring incidents of the progress of the Kingdom of Christ to-day, because it is difficult to know what European missionaries are doing. The Rhenish Missionary Society occupied the Silindung valley in Sumatra in the year 1862. The people whom the mission aimed to reach were the Battas, a cannibal tribe who killed two missionaries of the American Board in 1834. These people warned Nommensen, the first missionary to arrive, that he had best go away, since he was like a grain of corn thrown on a hard roadway for any passing fowl to eat. The missionary believed himself called of God, and said it in his answer: "He who threw me on this hard road can protect me!" But he saw little fruit from long labor. Now, after forty years, there are 15,000 Christian Battas in the Silindung region, and the movement has spread to the Toba Lake district, where are 10,000 Christians. On all sides the tribes are begging for

teachers. This year an invitation came from the borders of the Mohammedan territory to the north. The missionaries referred the request to the society in Germany. The answer of the society, prompted by the spirit of the whole movement, was: "Advance, for God leads!"

India

Among 300,000,000 of people, 200,000,000 of whom are of the most hopeless pagans, education and law and order in themselves have some elevating effect. It is not always right to point to progress away from superstition or ignorance, or even from paganism in India as a result of missionary labor. Yet this very working of a government system, together with many other influences, in the line of breaking down obstacles to the acceptance of Christianity, is another illustration of the truth that when He wills to prepare the way of the Kingdom, He is not tied to the use of slow-moving missionaries to do it. The plague and the cholera have prepared the way this year, and so has the earthquake, because calamity has been mitigated by kindly ministrations of missionaries and their native Christian followers. The open abyss between Christian and pagan standards of morality in India. is a mark of the "Way" about which a man, tho a fool, can not err. A pagan in North India says that of nonChristian officials 99 per cent. take and demand bribes, while of Christian of ficials the percentage is reversed, and not more than one in a hundred can be found who seeks "graft." The pagan who has such a contrast to reflect upon is in a fair way to conviction.

A remarkable spread of Christianity should be noted among the wild Muso

tribes of North Burma in the region of Keng-tung. Missionaries went to Burma for the Burmans. They have had but moderate success. Little by little they have found numerous followers among the wild Karens, Shans, and other tribes, and have gone on northward until now the new field opened in the Keng-tung region brings them into close touch with the southern frontier of China. The missionary history of Siam, and work among the Laos tribes, is almost a duplicate in this respect of the story of work in Burma. In both countries success in winning large numbers has been reached chiefly through obedience by missionaries to the northward beckonings of Providence. The effect upon southwest China mountaineers of seeing wholesale conversions among their kinsmen yet farther to the southward is worth watching.

A characteristic of missionary work in India now is the conversion of masses of the common people. Thirty years ago Wesleyan missionaries baptized the first convert at Ikkadu, 30 miles west of Madras. Sixteen years ago a missionary went there to reside. To-day the mission station is headquarters of a Christian community of more than 2,000 souls. It has, besides the mission home, a brick church, a large hospital, a lace factory, where Christian Women carn their daily bread, and two homes for children, where 100 each of boys and girls are being trained for useful life. This instance may be duplicated in the missions of other denominations and in many places.

The movement toward Christianity is by no means confined to the masses. To the sneering question, “Have any of the rulers believed on Him," one

can answer that high-caste Brahman religious rulers and Mohammedan Pharisees are converted every year in India. But the movement centers among the lowest castes. From this fact, indeed, springs much of its significance. The downtrodden poor have been held in bonds through their superstitious fears. The fact that they are gaining strength to test Christianity for themselves shows some weakening of Hindu superstitions. It also suggests how much the neglectful disdain with which they have been treated by the Brahmans has prepared the way of the Gospel among them, giving their minds small grasp of the pagan dogmas. The enormous number of the "lower classes" in India, and the proved capacity of many of them to develop in intellect and in spiritual faculties, gives weight to the conversions now occurring among them. The Christianizing of the masses became the strength of Britain, Germany, and America; and the Christianized masses of India will yet prove a source of strength to India.

Africa

We must outgrow the habit of regarding the population of Africa as the world's submerged tenth-" Godforsaken," inaccessible, and hopelessly doomed. Railroads are being pushed inland from many points on the Coast; the great line from Cape Town northward is already within striking distance of the Lake region; steamers ply on the Nile, the Niger, the Kongo, and the lakes. All these facilities for communication aim at opening the great interior to trade and colonization, and increase the number of white homesteaders in Africa. But incidentally they make a path for the mis

sionary and the Bible just as military roads did in the Roman Empire. Africa's time has come.

The policy of Great Britain in its African possessions is to develop as well as control the natives. This policy has a direct bearing upon the freedom of missionary operations in territories under British rule. It has recently led to definite action favoring missions. Lord Cromer, the British Commissioner in Egypt, has expressed his approval of work among pagans in the Sudan, even while deeming unwise those among the Mohammedans. His suggestion, in fact, has been the immediate cause of the founding, by the Church Missionary Society, this year, of a new mission in the Sobat region of the upper Nile. In South Africa the report of an official investigation committee into the problem. of dealing with native races also approves missions, noting the improved morals seen in Christian natives, and urging the religious and moral instruction of the natives by missionaries. The novelty as well as the importance of such official deliverances. needs no emphasis.

Excepting Mohammedan regions of Africa, one may say that in the missionary fields of the continent political and religious opposition hardly needs to be taken into account. Such a degree of freedom is in itself a call to missionary expansion in the name of Him whose is the Kingdom.

When we allude to the Mohammedan regions of Africa as being under special conditions we must not be understood to say that missions in Northern Africa have no results. They are hampered by a great hostile religion. or prevented by an uncompromising political opposition. Yet in Morocco,

Tunis, and Algeria, this year has been notable for some conversions of Mohammedans and for extensive interest in learning of Christianity. In Egypt a systematic campaign has been begun for interesting Mohammedans in Christianity through lectures and literature. The effect has been good, and the truths scattered widely are as seed which can be caused to spring up if God will.

South of the equator the characteristic feature of the year has been a general demand upon missionaries. everywhere for teachers for people who wish to learn to read the Book. This demand comes from the long case-hardened pagans of Cape Colony, from Portuguese East Africa, from the interior stations of German East Africa, from Nyasaland, from Angola. Missionaries in Kamerun write. that they shrink from touring, because the people are so importunate for teachers whom the mission can not send. In the vast Kongo region the hunger to be taught seems to grow, and villagers will come sixty miles in canoes to beg for a teacher. Such a general craving to be taught is no mystery. It is an effect of the earlier novelty of safety in travel and intercommunication between tribes. This, on the other hand, is an ameliorated condition springing, not from Mohammedanism or Fetishism, but from the teachings of Jesus Christ. "I can hardly believe my eyes," says a German missionary in Kamerun, "that this is the man-killing, blood-drinking, darkest Africa of other days."

As to results from giving Africans this teaching for which so many are asking, the year has brought important additions to the churches in all missionary fields. Uganda is still the

marvel of missions for growth, and for positive religious initiative. Some falling off of zeal may be expected from the influx of white colonists who are not, like the missionaries, careful of Ugandan interests. But such falling off can be narrated when it sets in, which it has not yet done. An idea of the hold of Christianity upon the people may be gained from one part of this field that is under charge of a single missionary. Under his supervision are four native pastorates. Each of these pastorates contains 40 churches. Landmarks of progress elsewhere are such occurrences as the formal acceptance of British law and British rule by those former robbers, the Angoni tribes west of Lake Nyasa; the fact that the native rising which destroyed the missionary station at Ibanj in the Kongo State left no hostile animus against missionaries; the rapid growth of the Basel Society's work in Kamerun, the number of Christians on January 1, 1905, nineteen years after the founding of the mission, being 4,786, with 1,638 candidates for baptism. Other tokens of the same tendency are the deep, cordial Christian devotion that has been steadily growing among the Matabele Christians in Rhodesia, the interest in evangelistic work shown by churches in many African fields, and, more than all, the examples, now seen in almost every region, of growth of church-members in faith and in conformity to Jesus Christ.

Bible Circulation

The purpose of this article does not permit detailed examination of all mission fields. But prosperity in the enterprise of the Bible societies is, in no small degree, a gauge of progress

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