Missionary Review of the World

creased greatly, but their relations with their boards are closer and most sympathetic, and their mutual work is accordingly more efficient. Since 1898 the Presbyterian Board has held annual conferences for all newly appointed missionaries, gathering at these all the missionaries appointed to go out during the year, and also as many as possible of the missionaries at home on furlough. The American Board. instituted such a conference in 1905, and the American Baptist Missionary Union and the Episcopalians have now similar conferences. All are agreed All are agreed that the results have been distinctly and perceptibly advantageous. The enterprise is not only growing, it is becoming more effective. A number of the Churches have also held great missionary conventions of the whole Church. The Southern Methodists held a notable conference of this sort in New Orleans in 1901, and the United Presbyterians in Allegheny in 1904. Both of these resulted in advance policies, to which reference will be made. The leader in this field, however, is the Northern Methodist Church. It held a great convention in Cleveland in 1902, which resulted in a great and immediate increase in the income of the society, and it has followed this convention up with others held in various cities, and developed in connection with them a remarkable missionary exhibit. Ten thousand five hundred people have attended these Methodist missionary conferences.

Missionary Literature

Another evidence in the growth of missionary interest at home has been the enlarged circulation of the missionary magazines and of missionary

leaflets. The latter are issued by the

thousand to-day where, perhaps, they were issued by the hundred in 1892. In 1903 the Presbyterian Board alone distributed 2,143,000 leaflets, sending them only upon application. Missionary lectureships also have been established in theological seminaries, and a missionary professorship in Yale University, to which the Rev. Harlan P. Beach, long the Educational Secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement, has been called. The Bureau of Missions has come into existence. This grew out of the Ecumenical Conference, and was established to care for some of the collection of material made for the conference, and to serve as a central clearing-house for missionary information.

There has been, of course, a great growth in the strength of the home constituency of the leading missionary organizations. It will be well to tabulate the facts as to this growth.*

The following table shows the proportion of dollars spent by each Church upon its home support for each dollar sent to the foreign field:

selves has decreased also from $8,445,000 to $8,386,161. It should be said that 1892 was a year of large special gifts. All the other churches mentioned have enlarged their gifts, some of them with notable advance. The Southern Baptists have more than doubled their contributions, and the Southern Presbyterians have about done so. The greatest proportionate increase per membership has been made by the United Presbyterians, who have advanced from $1.05 per member in 1892 to $1.77 in 1905.

These advances represent increased cost of administration. The latter has been essential in order to maintain or increase the gift of the churches. This increased expenditure, however, is really not cost of administration, but cost of collection. The cost of actual administration has diminished, but it has been necessary to spend money in distribution of information and in solicitation of support. It would be found that the increase in the following table, showing cost of collection and administration, was due wholly to the enlarged efforts to awaken the home Church. The table is for the foreign mission activities alone of the various denominations. It is reliable

COST OF COLLECTION AND ADMINISTRATION OF FOREIGN MISSION FUNDS

boards, for the boards do not agree

as to what they charge to administration account. Some charge literature. and some do not.

These efforts for advanced giving have been called by different names in the various churches: The Open Door Emergency Campaign in the Methodist Church, the Forward Movement in the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches, or by no name at all. In some cases the expense has been met outside the boards by interested individuals, and so does not appear in the above table of cost of administration. These special efforts have been directed particularly at the men of the churches, and some of them have made use of the specific object idea of giving. A study of the life of Jeremiah Evarts, the first treasurer of the American Board, will show that they are using no revolutionary principles, but are simply reviving and reapplying the same general principles which from generation to generation have underlain the missionary operations of the churches. They are a fresh adaptation, however, and represent a real advance over the work of twelve years ago, when not one of them had arisen.

Advance in Foreign Field

These advance movements at home are allied, of course, with the advance movements abroad. The Southern Methodist Convention in New Orleans resulted in a magnificent gift of $50,000 to equip the college of the Southern Methodist Church at Soochow, China. The various advance movements in the United Presbyterian Church have been parts of a noble plan to secure the evangelization in this generation of the two fields

for which the United Presbyterian Church is responsible in India and Egypt. Many missions have from time to time calculated upon the number of men and women and the amount of support needed to evangelize a particular population; but the United Presbyterian Church has set earnestly about the practical realization of such a project.

The last thirteen years has seen a large expansion of the work in the mission fields already occupied. One significant thing in the tables is the small increase in the number of missions. The Churches have had all they could do to care for the missions already established. But there have been new fields occupied since 1892. The Spanish war opened Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines. In 1892 there was and could be nothing in the Philippines, and there was not very much more in the other islands. Now there are in these islands alone 6 Protestant missions with about 12,000 church-members, including Methodist probationers. This is clear advance. Other wars than the Spanish war have affected missions. In 1892 the Boxer troubles first devastated missions in China, and then the land. reacted, opening the field wider than ever before, and creating an educational and literary demand without precedent. The terrible losses of that upheaval have already been repaired twice over. In 1892 there were 1,296 missionaries and 37,287 native Christians in China. In 1905 there were 3,107 and 131,404. The destruction of the Khalifate by Kitchener opened the non-Moslem peoples of the Sudan and beyond to missionary effort, and when the restrictive measures of the British government are relaxed, will

open the Mohammedan populations also. The Church Missionary Society and the United Presbyterians have pressed in to occupy the ground. As a consequence, in part, the orders on the Beirut Mission Press for Arabic Bibles have already exceeded in six months the output of the entire previous year. The Boer war did its destructive work where upbuilding is sure to follow, and has now taken thousands of Chinese to Africa, where they ought to be reached. And, last of all, the terrible conflict in the East, which has just closed, has released the missions in Korea and Manchuria from all fear of Russian suppression, has assured religious liberty in all Eastern Asia, and has furnished the greatest opportunity which missions have ever had to sow the seed of the Gospel in the heart of Japan, in the minds of soldiers at the front and in the hospitals, and of women and children left at home and waiting for comforters.

And many new missionary enterprises have grown up. Some churches which had no missions have inaugurated them, as in the case of the United Evangelical Church and its mission in Hunan. The foreign work of the Young Men's Christian Association has been built up almost entirely in the last thirteen years. In 1892 there were only four secretaries abroad. Now there are 44 secretaries, with 12 more under appointment, and 300 associations in 20 different countries.

The Canton Christian College, the outgrowth of the work of Andrew Happer, has been established with noble prospects and on solid foundations in Canton. The Mackenzie College and affiliated schools in Brazil

have been organized under an independent board of trustees incorporated under the Regents of New York. The Yale University Mission has begun work at Changsha, the capital of the province of Hunan, China, with the purpose of providing a Chinese Yale, to be manned and supported by the students and alumni of Yale University. And these are only a few of the new sprouts which the great plant has thrown out.

And, best of all, there has been immense advance in the strength and character of the native churches and the quality and power of the work of the missions. Every one of the organizations considered in this article reports a great growth in the number of native communicants.

MEMBERSHIP OF THE NATIVE CHURCH

Much of this growth has been the quiet, normal growth of healthy organization. But there have been also great awakenings and wide reaching movements in Korea, in parts of China, among the low-caste people of India. And now the fires of the Welsh revival seem to have kindled on the hills of Assam, and elsewhere in India the same living Spirit is moving upon the people. And the native churches have not grown in membership alone. They have advanced in trained leadership and in strength of

About 3-5 of these are probationers.

This is only an apparent decrease, due to the Board's no longer counting any part of the Church of Christ in Japan,

Some churches have fallen far behind others in the energetic development of a native agency. But we are seeing with increasing distinctness the necessity of raising up a strong native ministry that it may lead the new churches. In no respect has there been greater growth than in the selfsupport of the new churches. Doubtless the statistics on the subject are fuller now than thirteen years ago; but it is undoubtedly true that the pressure exerted by the annual conference of missionary boards has produced fruit here. The table will speak for itself. It sets forth the contributions of the native churches for their own church, school and medical work:

ceeds the growth in membership, so
that it is evident the churches are ris-
ing more nearly to real self-support.

Among the most encouraging ac-
complishments of these thirteen years
have been the advances in Church
unity and cooperation. Since 1892

there have been union movements re-
sulting in the organic union of differ-
ent denominations in Mexico, Korea,
and India, and there is scarcely
a field where there has not been dis-
tinct progress in organized comity and
cooperation. In Peking, Congrega-
tionalists, Methodists, and Presbyteri-
ans unite in educational efforts; in
Shantung, Baptists and Presbyterians
in a joint university. And now in
Korea a great union is proposed which
will consolidate the work of the Amer-
ican Methodists and the American,
Canadian, and Australian Presbyteri-
ans. Nothing can prevent these union
movements abroad. Let us pray that
nothing may delay them.

Two significant developments of the
work should not be overlooked-
namely, the growth of the medical
work and the work of women. The
latter has overtopped the work of the

1892