For about fifty-five years the American Baptists have carried on in Siam a mission to the Chinese, many of whom reside in Bangkok; their present efforts are confined to them.

The only Siamese mission proper, therefore, is that which is under the care of American Presbyterians, who thus become practically responsible for the spiritual welfare of about eight million. Rev. W. P. Buell began this mission as representing Presbyterians in 1840. In 1844, after only laying foundations, he had to leave the field on account of his paralytic wife, and had no successors until 1847, when Rev. Stephen Mattoon and wife, and Rev. S. R. House, M.D., arrived.

These nearly sixty years have seen very marked changes in Siam. At first, and for years, the King was actively, tho secretly, the foe of their mission work. The missionaries could scarce get a house to live in. Compli

cations arose likewise with the British government, threatening not only the stability of the mission, but bid fair to drive out the missionaries. Just at this crisis of peril God interposed, as He had also done in the Turkish empire twelve years before, on July 1, 1839, and by strikingly similar means -the sudden death of the hostile head of the government. On April 3, 1851, Maha Mong Kut, the King, died. The man who was chosen by the assembly of nobles to succeed him on the throne, and who reigned for eighteen years, Chulalang Korn, was a man whose liberal and wise policy completely changed the whole aspect and prospect! And all this was the direct fruit of missions, for that man, while yet a private citizen, had been taught by a missionary of the American. Board, and was the only such man in the empire.

He was educated and enlightened, and under his reign the missionaries had more than mere tolerance-positive influence with the people and even with the government. Witness the following royal manifesto:

"Many years ago the American missionaries came here. They came before any other Europeans, and they the English language. The American taught the Siamese to speak and read missionaries have always been just and upright men. They have never meddled in the affairs of the government, nor created any difficulty with the Siamese. They have lived with the Siamese just as if they belonged to the nation. The government of Siam has great love and respect for them, and has no fear whatever concerning them. When there has been a difficulty of any kind, the missionaries have many times rendered valuable assistance. For this reason the Siamese have loved and respected them for a long time. The Americans have also taught the Siamese many things."

In fact Siam was opened to mission work not, like China, by gunpowder, nor, like Japan, by an American commodore with his squadron, but by the humble missionary and his entirely pacific measures-patience and prayer.

Bangkok is the great mission center and the capital of Siam. It is the Oriental Venice. Twelve years elapsed before the missionaries, who came in 1847, welcomed the first Siamese convert, as the fruit of their toil; and this was thirty years after Gutzlaff had come to Bangkok and sowed the first seed. The first convert in connection with the mission was Qua Kieng, a Chinese teacher, who had been baptized in 1844, and who died in 1859, three of whose children also became disciples, and one of them a candidate for the ministry. It is a curious coincidence that in the

same year in which this first Chinese convert in Siam died (1859) the first native Siamese convert, Nai Chune, took up the "apostolic succession." He truly adorned the Gospel. So desirous was he to bear to others the Gospel message that he firmly declined all offices of honor or salaried employments, that he might devote himself to medical practise as a means of selfsupport and Christian labor.

Siam presents examples of the silent and pervasive influence of missions, even where outward results are not so apparent. Years after Dr. Bradley died, in 1873, a marked case of conversion was found, directly traceable to his efforts in diffusing Christian tracts and publications. In June, 1877, a venerable stranger, seventythree years old, visited the Laos mission to ask medical treatment for his deafness, and referred to Christ's miraculous cure of the deaf man. He proved to be the highest officer in the court in the province of La Kawn, who, twenty years before, while visiting Bangkok, had received from Dr. Bradley religious books. These books were printed in Siamese, but the characters are so different from those used by the Laos people that he had to learn the Siamese characters in order to read them. And the light he got by this examination he had sought to follow, until now he came for further instruction. This whole story is very interesting and remarkable, but space forbids entering into detail. Suffice to say that, for the sake of the Christ whom he thus found, groping in the dark, he braved all peril and exposure and persecution; and that to this man's efforts is to be attributed the opening of a new mission in his native city, La Kawn.

Rev. Eugene S. Dunlap likewise found, in Petchbari, an old disciple, nigh unto death, who had received from Dr. Bradley, years before, portions of the blessed Word, and had studied them in secret, until he found Jesus therein and put away his idols. He had never been taught to pray, but by the Holy Spirit-for he had not even heard any disciple prayand Mr. Dunlap listened with amazement to the humility, faith and gratitude evidenced in his supplications.

Tho a considerable number of converts have been gathered, the success of Siamese missions can not be measured numerically. The influence has been pervasive. All Siamese society feels it, and even Chulalang Korn, the most progressive of Asiatic rulers, became a nursing father to the mission, tho not a professing Christian. Many incline toward the Gospel who are not converts, and not a few are at heart believers who have not courage to confess it.

The press is the handmaid of all the preaching. Four-fifths of the men and boys are able to read, and the mission press seeks to supply an evangelical literature. The Bible ranks first, of course, printed in parts for convenience, as Siamese characters make bulky volumes; next to it ranks "Pilgrim's Progress," that wonderful companion to the Word of God, and now printed in over one hundred languages. Medical missions are prominent, and no agency is more useful as a help to and means of evangelization. The cure of disease by rational treatment undermines confidence in "spirits" and "spirit worship." A truly Christian science is always in harmony both with nature and with Scripture, and exposes the absurdities

of heathen superstition. In the first eighteen months of his work, Dr. House had treated 3,117 patients. When cholera, which was there very prevalent a disease which has slain 30,000 people in a month, and even 500 a day and needed treatment, he successfully treated 5,000 people with camphor alone, using ten drops in as many teaspoonfuls of water, and giving a teaspoonful in the extremity of the disease, every few minutes. His uniform success worked wonders on the mind of the natives as a preparation for Gospel truth.

Afterward, with the patronage of Chulalang Korn and his Queen, the hospital work rapidly multiplied and its facilities increased.

Of course, education is a very prominent agency, but the school in Siam, as in other missionary lands, is a thoroughly Christian institution, and organized churches are to be found side by side with the schools, and their members largely gathered from the pupils. Dr. MacFarland was appointed by the King superintendent of public instruction and principal of the Royal College at Bangkok. At the Bangkok centennial celebration, in 1882, the King bought up the entire exhibit made by the girls' school, and gave to the principals in charge of it silver medals. All this does not look as tho Siamese missions were a failure.

Space forbids the tracing of the spread of Siamese missions to Petchburi and Chieng Mai, among the Laonese. Twenty years ago there were three stations, with nine ordained and four medical missionaries, nine female teachers, and twenty-seven native helpers; yet there were eleven

churches, with nearly nine hundred communicants. There was an in

crease of over twenty-one per cent. in one year-1887-8. There were sixteen schools, with four hundred pupils, and more than as many more Sunday-school pupils, and the benevolent contribution of these poor Siamese, averaged out of their poverty, over sixty cents a year, which to them was relatively more than ten times that sum would be to church members in our own land.

During the year 1827-8 the prime minister of Siam, who often expressed desire for a mission at Ratburi, a city of 50,000 to 75,000, midway between Bangkok and Petchaburi, and where he had one residence, offered for mission uses a large brick house, and offered aid in securing other buildings, so that for school and medical mission purposes the work might be fully equipped, and one lady of Philadelphia gave the $5,000 necessary to put a preacher and physician into this new parish of from 50,000 to 75,000 souls!

The twenty years of later mission. work in Siam, we may treat hereafter. The present sketch was meant to trace only beginnings. Suffice it to say that the work there gives promise of great final results. In 1902 among the Siamese and Laos only 4,000 converts had been gathered. But results are not always to be measured by members. Rev. James Caswell was permitted for eighteen months to train the man who, all unknown to him was to be the future king, and the influence of the schools and medical work is such as to command even the royal sanction and donations.

The fifth of these conventions was held at Nashville, Tenn., from Feb. 28 to March 4. This whole movement, of which these gatherings, every four years, are a conspicuous feature, belongs in the front rank of modern religious developments, both on account of its personnel, and the quality and quantity of the work it has done and is doing.

This Nashville Convention is the fifth quadrennial gathering. The growth of the movement is a sufficient sign of its vigor and virility. The first convention was in Cleveland, in 1891, with 680 delegates; the second, in Detroit, in 1894, with 1,325 the third, in Cleveland, in 1898, with 2,221; the fourth, in Toronto in 1902, with 2,597. But at Nashville the rolls of accredited delegates reached a grand total of 4,188, 3,060 of these being students and 286 presidents and professors from seven hundred centers of higher learning in North America. Thus the enrolment mounted up nearly a thousand higher than even the Ecumenical Missionary Conference in New York six years ago, and was 1,231 above that of the Toronto convention. Secretaries of the leading boards of missions and hundreds of missionaries were in attendance and helped to make the occasion memorable.

When a delegated body, mostly of young men, and of the most intelligent student class, thus gathers for five days, in numbers so great as to surpass any other that has ever met in a missionary capacity, it is time to ask three important questions whence? what? whither?-to inquire as to the origin, significance and future of the movement.

offered for service abroad; and this led to the sending out of John Forman and Robert P. Wilder, on a tour of the colleges and seminaries to carry the divine fire, kindled there, to other altars. A permanent organization was the result, of which this Nashville convention is but one rallying point.

We do not, of course, forget that, back of even Mt. Hermon, lay the noble "Haystack Band" at Williamstown nearly a century ago, and the group of students at Andover. But we are now concerned not so much with the remote initiative as with the modern and rapid growth of the germinal missionary plant. was the great privilege of the writer to suggest the motto which has become the watchword of this new movement-THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD IN THIS GENERATION

It

which again found its germ in the great missionary sermon of Dr. Angus, of London, who seventy-five years ago, suggested that if the church would furnish 50,000 missionaries and fifty millions of dollars a year to support them, the Gospel might be proclaimed to the whole world within the life time of men then living. This inspiring motto confronted the great audiences at Nashville day by day in huge letters.

The platform addresses covered vital themes, such as the work needed in unevangelized districts; the workers and their effective training; reports of those actually working in various fields; the grand motives of missionary enterprise, such as love of God and passion for souls; and that prime endowment, the enduement of the Holy Spirit-the one supreme equipment for service.

The outcome of these five days no man can adequately foresee. But it will be incalculable. Seven hundred springs of learning will be salted with the missionary impulse. The echoes of this convention will be heard in the uttermost parts of this land and of the earth. Hundreds of delegates

have already heard the call of the man of Macedonia; and thousands will be confronted with the solemn question how and where God would have the capital of their life invested. Board secretaries, missionary workers, college presidents and faculties, will have had a new vision of possibilities; and it will be hard for any intelligent observer of the signs of the times, to pay no heed to that living stream of young, educated life that flows in such a rapidly swelling flood before their eyes, having in it the potencies of all the future. Pastors, authors, editors, teachers, parentswho can be indifferent to this TIDE OF TIME, which is rising to such a flood mark of history and destiny?

The purposes of this marvelous

organization are fourfold: (1) to bring together delegations of students and professors from all the leading universities, seminaries and colleges of the United States and Canada, with the representatives of missionary enterprise at home and abroad, for association and conference; (2) to secure a united consideration of all problems concerning world-wide evangelization; (3) to seek a fuller knowledge of the missionary possibilities of the Church, and the inspiration by which they may be made actual; (4) to pray for and take steps to enter the opening doors of work for the extension of the kingdom of God by means of the preaching of the Gospel to the dense populations of non-Christian nations.

or

At the time the Federation was formed, in 1895, the five movements which comprise it included in all 509 student Christian Associations Unions, with a membership of 33,275 students and professors. Besides these there were in existence at that time in all the world 301 local student religious societies, with a membership of 11,725, unaffliliated with the Federation or with the national movements belonging to it. Since then all these have been drawn into the different movements and thus made a part of the Federation. In addition to this there have been organized in different parts of the world, and then affiliated, 925 student Christian societies. The Federation, therefore, now includes 1,825 Christian Associations or Unions, with a total membership of over 103,000 students and profes

sors.

Both national and local Christian student societies have during the past ten years gained greatly in efficiency, in power and in prestige. They are

* From the Bombay Guardian, February 17th.

more thoroughly organized. As organization is a necessary outcome of life this is a point of real importance.

Distinct advances have been made in the direction of reaching certain classes of students. The medical students of some countries, especially of Japan, Great Britain, and the United States, have been drawn into the movement in increasing numbers. In almost every country the theological students have become a more prominent factor in the movement than they were at the beginning of the decade. In two or three countries encouraging beginnings have been recorded in enlisting the interest and co-operation of law students. Effective steps have been taken recently here and there, particularly in London and Paris, to draw art students into the movement. The most encouraging fact of all in this connection has been the wonderful progress made in associating with the movement large numbers of students in the government colleges of Japan, India and