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has been urged, through its branch in Turkey, to use its good offices through Sir Edward Grey, to get the British government to act, in its capacity as protector of the Christian. races in Turkey. The sultan and his advisers have thus far succeeded by those falsifications and denials with which the world is so familiar in blocking all attempts to save these doomed martyrs; but it may yet be that the Lord will use the prayers and efforts of His servants to rescue these long-suffering Stavriotæ from the jaws of destruction. Pray for them!

THE SPIRIT'S POWER IN
MADAGASCAR

The London Missionary Society reports that the revival in the Betsileo country continues to increase in power, especially in villages and country

towns. "In the seven divisions of our district," writes Mrs. Rowlands, "many hundreds have decided for Christ. But what we value even more

is the deepening of the spiritual life

of the believers." The native Christians are throwing themselves most earnestly into the work of evangelization. The latest report describes "four wonderful days," during which a company of evangelists visited village after village, and found in them all a most remarkable work going forward, the people being moved much as they were in Wales during the revival last year. There were physical manifestations like those seen in Wales, and during the revivals under Nettleton and Edwards, but there were great searchings of heart and confessions of sin, with manifest repentance and many conversions. In one typical place there was a crowded meeting where an old

Betsileo man, a recent convert, spoke most simply and effectively. One hundred and twenty of those present had been baptized, and thirty-three more. now received the ordinance. In many places the people are giving up their charms, and many hundreds have decided for Christ. One of the peculiar features of the movement is the ministry of the women; they are most effective in speaking, praying, and visiting, and in the winning of souls. GROWING INDEPENDENCE IN JAPAN

Owing to the action of the Kumaiai churches of Japan in deciding to take over the entire support of their 99 churches, thus relieving the American Board of a large item of expense, some in America have criticized this action, on the ground that the Board is losing control of the Japanese churches. But this selfsupport and self-government is the end in view in each mission. It has come in Japan more quickly than was expected, so that hereafter nearly all appropriations from the American Board can go to schools or for new evangelistic work which is needed. now more than ever before. Japan, now a first-class "power," is engaged in the process of deciding upon a religion. Having practically given up Buddhism, it will be Christianity or atheism. Some of the leaders have become restive under what seems to them too large a dependence on the part of the native church on foreign aid and guidance. They say if the Japanese people are so thoroughly able to take care of themselves in a

political and military way, why not also in religious and ecclesiastical matters? Such movements are a sign of the times, but are as yet confined largely to churches in the large cities.

BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

This is a darkness that may be "felt." In many places Paganism here reaches its lowest depth. Superstition, cruelty, worship of demons, immorality sanctified by the example of the gods, lying, stealing, polygamy, slavery-this is, for three-fifths of her people, Africa's religion. Here depravity meets no real obstacle in its gravitation toward destruction.

Islam, tho holding a smaller number in bonds, presents a graver problem than Paganism. It has more truth, being monotheistic and nonidolatrous. Its converts are more decent and intelligent, less barbarous and degraded. But it only refines the vices it cannot reform, and makes the sinner only a little more proud and self-satisfied with his respectability. A Moslem said to a European: "You must not wear our clothes. They are given us of God to set forth the character of our religion, as yours set forth the character of your own. Our clothes are wide, easy, flowing; so is our religion. We can steal, lie, commit adultery, and do as we wish, and our prophet will make it all right for us at the last day. Your clothes are like your religion: tight-fitting, narrow and restraining." "The pliant Pagan readily becomes the fanatical Moslem" -more unreachable than ever by the Gospel.

Polygamy and slavery complicate the problem of missions, and both are. deep rooted. Custom is rigid and frigid, and these both belong to what long has been. Moreover, both institutions have a legal status and sanction, and find another sort of sanction in lust, idleness and greed. Strange anomalies occur, as when Kathokan,

the Batlokwa chief, brought one of his wives, Ma-nhalla, to be received as one that thirsted for God, having himself taught her the catechism and prayer, and awakened her thirst for God. Yet he, himself, would not accept the road because the gate was too strait to admit him with his six wives. Their contact with impure and unscrupulous white traders and officials greatly hinders the conversion of the natives and introduces new vices and diseases. The white peril is often worse than the black. The state of morals among Europeans is sometimes so shameful as to be indecent to speak of. Civilization is too often degeneration even to the negro, so that whatever material benefit comes by the partition of Africa, in the suppression of some evils, it brings in very doubtful influence, morally and spiritually. Belgian rule has introduced a slavery, cruelty and tyranny worse than ever existed before. The rubber trade has been a robber trade, and sometimes the missionary is mixed in the native mind with the white oppressors. The Portuguese often obstruct mission work by army conscription, forcing the young men of a mission school into government service, and carrying on slave trade as "contract labor." Foreign powers seem sometimes allied with lawlessness instead of enlightened rule. At best the temporizing policy of timid officials shuts out mission work, as among Moslems at Khartum, or forbids church bells to ring, lest Moslem ears be disturbed, as in Blantyre. This policy sometimes goes so far as to discriminate in favor of Islam. One official frankly confessed to having "left his conscience at

home," and many more act as if that were the case. The trade in drink, carried on by white men, is appalling. During four years, thirty million gallons of liquor were shipped from Europe and America to help civilize Africa! Islam moves with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other; to the native it often seems as if Christianity came with the Bible in one hand and the bottle in the other; yet even the native chiefs often protest, begging not to be inundated with rum, and declaring that it will shortly exterminate the African.

The race problem is, of course, a serious one. White men as a class will not admit black men to any sort of equality. The black man is wanted. only as a drudge, and with noble exceptions, has no true chance of rising to a higher level. Chinese and Indian coolies crowd him out from work needed for his development. Hence the "Ethiopian movement," whose motto is "Africa for the Africans"movement perfectly natural, but in danger of being used in the interests of fanaticism and violence, like the Boxer movement in China. And Africa once aroused may take bitter revenge for hundreds of years of outrage.

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Romanism complicates the mission problem in this, as in all other lands, being universally exclusive and intolerant. After Madagascar came under French control, native Christians were persecuted and it was made very hard even for the missionaries who had previously done so much for the Malagasy; and the papal bull directed against Protestant missionaries on the Kongo within thirty years past, shows but too well that the spirit of the Inquisition, alas, still survives.

The hope of Africa is found in Christianity of a pure type. Good government is a prime factor in its uplift, and beneficent laws and their just enforcement are most likely to come in the wake of the Gospel. The slave traffic and the rum traffic must cease, or Africa's redemption will never come. Whatever of Pagan barbarities are put down, equally disastrous evils may take their place, unless these two prolific sources of disaster are checked. Christian education is one of the best weapons against Moslem influence, and wherever the Christian school goes Islam's sway declines.

Good roads will help commerce, and a scientific medical system will both displace superstitious witch-doctors and promote sanitary conditions. The microscope has been brought into the war against deadly African fever and sleeping sickness by exposing the mosquito and tsetse fly as carriers. Clearing away of underbrush and draining of pools and marshes are already reducing malaria. And it is not too much to say that nine-tenths of all the real uplifting forces in Africa. radiate from the mission station. Wherever missionaries have had the longest and largest influence, there the changes have been most numerous and radical. Polygamy is dying out where Christian wedlock is faithfully taught. In one year the number of such marriages doubled in the Natal district. The tongues of Africa are being rapidly reduced to writing and this means a vernacular Bible read by the natives. What a benignant institution the Gospel proves itself, with its five-fold method-evangelism, medicine, education, work and literature! Medical missions would fully justify

themselves, were it only for the temporal relief they bring, and the reduction of the death rate. But as they exist they are as much missionary as medical, and deputations come alike from hut and palace to beg for resident doctors.

One of the most hopeful results of Christian missions is the creation of a native evangelistic body, averaging six times as great as the missionary force. The converts become in turn converters. Far more than at home does the evangelizing spirit prevail, and in this we recognize the main hope of Africa's evangelization.

A special blessing goes with Industrial Missions. The lazy native needs. the discipline of work. It is at once the antidote to his inertia and the promotive of self-support and manhood. Far greater than the yield of the best tilled soil is the harvest in the man himself. Lovedale, before the last century closed, had sent out 1,600 students from a four-years' course, and of these less than one per cent. lapsed into heathenism. British rulers in Central Africa show their approval of Livingstonia Industrial Missions by the state prize given for every graduate. There all the great trades are taught that lie at the basis of a civilized state. The schools prove that the African mental caliber compares favorably with that of any other race; in fact the missionaries pronounce the African rather precocious, and without the early decay that often follows precocity. But training, without the Gospel, was pathetically proven a failure. by Bishop Colenso's famous experiment upon his twelve picked Zulu lads, who, so soon as they were given liberty, dropped their civilization and donned their paganism.

A governor of Cape Colony emphatically said he would rather have a mission station than a military post for guarding his territory; and the careful observer finds that every trait of a good citizen is developed by true Christian institutions. The black Christian is found fully equal to the white in virility, stability, and all the elements of a manly disciple. In enthusiasm for Christ, in self-denying giving, in heroic endeavor and patient endurance, he stands among the foremost.

If mission work is vindicated by success, the whole history of missions may be challenged to show any fruits more obvious and abundant than in seven fields of Africa-Gaboon and Corisco, Madagascar, Zululand, Sierra Leone, Livingstonia, the Nile Valley and Uganda. Raymond Lull, George Schmidt, John Krapf and Rebmann, Robert Moffat and David Livingstone, John Mackenzie, Francis Coillard, Joel Lindley, Alexander Mackay, George Pilkington, Melville Cox, Adolphus Good, Samuel Lapsley, Doctor Laws, Thomas Comber, Bishops Hannington, Steers and Taylor, Parker and Crowther-the last not a whit less worthy than any of themthese men and the like of them have left a trail of light behind on the Dark Continent. Samuel Crowther himself was a type of Africa's sad past and glorious future-a captive. boy, traded for a horse, imprisoned in a slaveship, liberated by the English, then a mission pupil at Free Town, and afterward in England, then sent back as a missionary to the Niger basin and finally in Canterbury Cathedral receiving the Bishop's staff. The African slave, the Christian freeman, the missionary bishop-how he

suggests the progress of his people from slavery to liberty and liberty to authority, like Nloko Paul, the apostle of the Kongo, and King Khama in Bechuanaland-the African Peter the Great. Those who depend on statistics for their kindling of enthusiasm will do well to read the story of Madagascar, Livingstonia and Uganda. If any Christian community at home can parallel these fruits, we know not where that home field lies!

Thirty years ago, in all Central Africa there was not one convert where now are 60,000; not one church or school where now stand over 2,000 houses for worship and instruction, and 300.000 pupils are taught; and where there are more than 100 ordained natives and thirty times as many helpers. In Uganda, in 1904. there were nearly 50,000 baptized Christians (nearly 9,000 baptized that year), 32 native clergy, 2,500 native evangelists and teachers, a cathedral built by native Christians and holding 4,000, and over 1,000 other places of worship, seating nearly 130,000 and an average aggregate attendance on the Lord's day of 50,000. Nearly 100,000 could read and write and 250,000 were under Christian instruction! And it was only in 1875, less than thirty years before, that Stanley's letter of appeal was published in London.

In Madagascar, after a quarter century of persecution, from 1835 to 1862 -"the time when it was dark"-Christians were found to have multiplied four-fold. And eight years later there were 620 congregations with 23.000 adherents; and after another twentyfive years, the congregations had multiplied to 2,000, with 96,000 members, and nearly 400,000 adherents.

Nevertheless this is only Dawn-the continent is yet dark. Graham Wilmot Brooke was moved to give his life for the Sudan, because there alone as large a population as in all North America was absolutely without the Gospel! If a man wants to carry the war into Islam's territory here is his chance to evangelize 50,000,000 of Moslems in North Africa. If he yearns to contend against Romanism, here are 2,500,000 followers of the Pope vigorously seeking proselytes and ten times as many natives measurably under their sway. If he yearns to cope with Paganism, 90,000,000 offer a field of conquest in the southern half. Vast unoccupied districts invite. and command occupation. The missionaries are so few that each may have a parish of 4,000 square miles and 50,000 people.

Who will undertake to be a torchbearer to illumine the scarcely relieved midnight of the Dark Continent?-that not only the grey Dawn may come to all Africa's millions, but the noon-tide of the Gospel Day!

A TYPICAL AFRICAN HOME When an African furnishes his new house he needs visit no store like ours, for the many things we buy. In his home there would be no chair, table, bed, plate, knife, fork or spoon; no pictures, books or bric-à-brac. Many of these he has never seen or heard about. Instead he will provide a large wooden mortar for pounding the corn, an earthen pot for carrying water and cooking, a hoe for work in the garden, an axe for felling trees, and possibly a blanket, made of grass or the bark of the rubber tree, for a bed.

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