cannot follow your customs. I am sorry to displease my mother but I cannot take this girl for a wife. As a Christian I can have but one wife and she must be a Christian. I have been here many times and told you about this Jesus religion,' still you go on in your old ways. Oil and water will not mix; neither will the true religion mix with Nat worship. Some of you say that you believe in this 'Jesus religion,' still you go on in the old way. You have the Nat altars in your houses; you go to the Nat feasts where you get drunk, etc. I do not care for authority and a life of idleness which you propose, yet I want to help you. I want to go about among the Kachin people and tell them of the Lord that can save. When enough of my people become Christians to found a new village where there shall be no Nat worship and no strong drink allowed, then, if they will build a school house and chapel, I will come and be their teacher, preacher and head man. Think the matter over and I will come again for your answer.” His mother was very angry and would have nothing to do with his plan. The next morning I went with Mose to several houses where they claimed to have given up Nat worship. These families all wanted to go to the new Christian village, but nothing could be done about it till after the coming harvest, so that I was obliged to leave the country before anything was done except to select the site of the new village and secure a grant of land from the Shan Sawbwa. The next day we reached a small Paloung village where the people seemed to be very poor and evidently had a hard time to make a living. The This houses were small and dilapidated and the people were poorly clothed, while their food was coarse and scanty. At the evening meeting they seemed tired and listless and but little interest was manifested in our message. They were Buddhists, but had no priests nor place of worship, not even an idol house, and I saw only a few cheap idols and books in the houses visited. condition of affairs was explained when I found that nearly every man and woman in the place smoked opium. This awful habit is rapidly spreading in the northern Shan states. An early start the next morning enabled us to reach Bong Hoke, a large Paloung village, before noon. We found a flourishing town with large houses, plenty of ponies and cattle and large gardens of sugar cane. A caravan of traders, who were camped near, came to our meeting with the few people who were not away at work, and we had a very interesting service. It was the first time that the traders, who lived twelve days' journey to the east, have ever heard of Christianity. They listened attentively and gladly took tracts and some copies of Mark's Gospel to read to their people at home. The large zayatt was crowded at the evening service, and the meeting continued till long after midnight. The next morning two boys came with us to attend the school in Namkham. Many of the people afterward came to the Namkham bazaar and also to the meetings in the chapel and to the hospital for medicine. In this way we become acquainted with the people and gain an influence over them. A short march down the mountain side the next morning brought us to Se-lan, a large walled bazaar town, where we have an out-station. At one corner of the bazaar we have a building for a dispensary with a large open veranda in the front, where we hold the bazaar meetings each bazaar day. It was bazaar day, and a great crowd was already gathered, buying, selling, eating, drinking, gambling, gossiping, etc. We joined the Christians at the bazaar meeting, which was already in progress, with an audience of nearly one hundred. After an hour's service the hospital assistant and I treated about thirty patients while the preachers and Bible women were having personal conversation with those who were interested and remained to ask questions. Then we sang some hymns and another crowd gathered, and we had another service like the first. This kept up till about four o'clock, when the people scattered to their homes in every direction. This town is only half a mile from the Chinese frontier and nearly onehalf of the people came from Chinese territory. The chapel and the houses for our native helpers are built outside of the city wall in the "Chinese town," where we have a small school and about fifAs we were teen baptized converts. to spend the night here, I went with some of the workers to see the Sawbwa in his new palace. He has always been very gracious, and this evening called for his head wife (he has five wives) and the officials about the palace to come and hear us sing and tell something of the Christian religion. About forty soon gathered and we had an attentive audience for an hour. The Sawbwa would be glad to help with school and hospital work as the Hsipaw Sawbwa did, but his oldest brother is the chief Buddhist priest in the district, and another brother is the prime minister. They are both very jealous of anything Christian, for they know that the Christians will not give money to Buddhist offerings. These offerings are a rich source of "graft" for the priests and officials, for only a small fraction of such collections gets beyond their hands. were as The next day was Sunday, and we had an early morning prayer meeting. At ten o'clock the chapel was crowded, for the Sawbwa came with a number of followers from the palace. They seemed interested, but mostly from a desire to "hear some new thing." At the Sunday-school there many adults as children, for of course the older people are as ignorant of the Bible as the children. We had an experience meeting in which every Christian took part, and closed with the Communion service. Another Gospel service in the evening was mostly attended by people coming from the "Chinese town." At the close three professed faith in Christ and are to go to Namkham and ask the church for baptism. Thus ended a busy and successful week's work. Three slaves rescued, two boys secured for the school, eleven services held, the Gospel preached in six towns, two of them for the first time. What a privilege to be "workers together with Him!" Only one missionary family in this great field where there ought to be at least ten! Where are the nine? BY REV. C. BENSON BARNETT, YING CHOU FU, CHINA When, like Rip Van Winkle waking from his sleep, some four hundred million people begin to turn over, rub their eyes, sit up, and show other signs of life, it is little wonder that a feeling of stupefaction and amazement comes over those who are looking on. The voices of young and old, men and maidens, unite in voicing the one cry: "A new day! a new day!" How discordant and different each voice is can only be realized by those who follow minutely the doings of this vast empire. Here it is the boom of the latest Krupp cannon and there the crack of the Western rifle. as the marshaled battalions march and re-march and enter for the first time into mimic battle on scientific lines; here it is the steamer's syren shriek making the hills resound with its weird and unaccustomed sound, while anon it is the shrill whistle of the steam engine, in places where once it was death for any outsider to dare to dwell. Here again it is the thud, thud of machinery, there the clink, clink of the new coin as it passes into the farthest corner of this once exclusive land. Or again it is the query of the student and scholar, as with new book in hand he contemptuously flings aside the old, now hoary with its past millenium, and pertly asks the meaning of the new. Or anon it is a foreign accent, as "Good day!" "How do you do?" sounds strangely on your ear. Then, too, praise God, amidst all this medley and din, there is the cry here and there from a truly penitent heart: "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Or, "Who is this that cometh with . garments dyed in red?" Or, "Who is this Jesus whom ye preach?" and as we distinguish the cry, we thank God and take courage. The outlook in China is a strange one. Railways projected or in course of construction, or even actually opened for traffic, will soon stretch from one end of China to the other. Schools of every grade under imperial control are springing up throughout the length and breadth of the land, from each and all of these Christ and Christianity in any form is severely banned. Above all comes the rejection of the Westerner, be he European or American, from every position which can in any way, either adequately or otherwise, be filled by any one else, and to-day even foreign money offered in the shape of a foreign loan is spurned and rejected. All this speaks of an anti-foreign spirit scarcely less real than that which existed prior to the great anti-foreign holocaust of 1900, and should send every praying man and woman to his or her knees that the message of the Cross be given to this people ere the opportunity which now presents itself passes away, perhaps never to return. Notwithstanding all this, to-day, throughout the greater part of this great empire, there are bodies of men who are feverishly desiring to connect themselves with the Christian Church, trying to conform to its usages, and in many ways giving encouragement to the Christian teacher. But what is it that makes some good men tremble? It is that in many places bands of twenty or thirty, or even more men, who have no conception of the spiritual nature of the Church of God, or of the Gospel, in fact, have never once heard it preached, suddenly come to our chapels, buy, read and learn, and up to a certain point seek to conform outwardly to what they hear, or in other words, seek to convert themselves outside. And, of course, such men must be taught. But who are these men, and why have they come? In most cases they are men who either have now, or once had, or some day expect to have, some matter of disagreement either with their own relative, their neighbors, their official, or with people of another sect, which makes them fear to stand alone, and so they begin to attend the preaching-place, and in all outward things soon become so conformed that when they make application for admission to the Church, it is almost impossible to distinguish the true from the false. Under these circumstances, what is to be done? To teach them is an evident duty; to pray for them is an obligation, and yet, even so, from their very number there is still the gravest danger imaginable, unless God visit this land with such a special outpouring of His Spirit as such a state of things seems instantly to demand. One matter for rejoicing is that so many Christian teachers are awake to this aspect of things to-day, and yet how many there are who scarcely seem to dream of it, who are themselves actually helping it on by the support which they so often solicit from the Chinese law courts instead of looking for that spiritual help which, as it seems to me, God so often gives apart from man's intervention. And this it is which makes some of us tremble for the future, for tho men are putting away their idols to-day, they are often found. erecting them to-morrow, and really the simple putting away of idols is much on a par with putting away the queue-it will be done as soon as some one brave enough to carry out what is already recognized as a needed reform arises to give sufficient vim to the project. China, the "Stronghold of the Devil," with all her latent potentialities, is awakening from her night of sleep; while real change is in the air, "opportunity" and "peril" stand already side by side. If the wrong path be taken, or the opportunity be missed, disaster to the Church and dishonor to the home must follow. What then? As of old, so now, "Prayer was made earnestly of the Church unto God." Cease not to pray, therefore, that workers, who themselves, without guile, with all their unsuspicious love, may yet be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, remembering that they are sent forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, and that those who are cast in a sterner mold and see the grave danger threatening this Church, may in their time be filled with love and the Spirit, lest in seeking to pluck up the tares they pluck up wheat. BY REV. GEORGE DOOLITTLE,* ZAHLET, SYRIA Dean Milman calls the Druze religion "one of the most extraordinary aberrations which ever extensively affected the mind of man.' a The Druzes of Syria occupy peculiar position in the ethnological and religious problem of the Holy Land. They are outwardly affiliated with the Moslems and observe the great Islamic feast-day, but inwardly they consider the prophet of the sword as an offspring of the evil one, and the great Moslem ràce as no better than Jews and Christians. Their religion is extremely esoteric and eclectic-a combination of excerpts from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, allegorized and adapted to the form of the Persian mystic religions, of which Zoroastrianism is a type. Life, Character, and Customs of the Druzes Of all the many divisions in the picturesque land of Syria, none is more full of delightful scenes than the mountainous district district of the Lebanon. This bit of the earth's surface is crowded with hills and valleys, undulating tablelands and deep river beds. Its eastern boundary is marked by a long range of snowy mountains; its vine-clad hills and terraced slopes are watered by perennial springs fed from the pentup supplies in the bosom of the mighty ranges. Its soil yields a goodly harvest of wheat, barley, pulse, lentils, olives, and the abundant mulberry leaves for the cultivation of the silkworm. Flocks of sheep and goats are met with every where. Busy farmers drive their plows through fertile soil, and the landscape is rich with varied tints of green and brown and red. Quaint villages dot the hillsides or crown their summits; towns of considerable size and importance flourish throughout the land. This fertile district is the home of the Druzes of Lebanon. Most of the entire Druze population of Syria is found in these mountains and valleys; others occupy the Mount Hermon district, while many also are found in Damascus and its environs, and still others are as far south as Safed, above Tiberias; the remainder inhabit the wide-spreading, fertile plain of the Hauran, south of Damascus. Census-taking is not a strong point of the Turkish government, and the estimates as to the number of Druzes range from seventy thousand to over one hundred thousand. The Druzes are a sect by themselves. They believe that no one can either leave or enter their number, and proselytizing is unknown. The "catechism" of the Druzes thus states it: Question.—“If any one of the people understands and accepts and adopts the Unitarian (i. e., Druze) religion, is he saved?" Answer.-"Not at all. For the door is closed and the word is finished, and if he dies, he returns to his former religion." This peculiar tenet has proved to be the safeguard of the Druze body. Promulgated at a time when the founder of the religion was laboring against persecution and utter fail * Rev. Geo. C. Doolittle has during nearly twelve years' residence in Syria been brought into frequent contact with the Druzes of Mount Lebanon, and has been privileged to read in the original Arabic manuscripts some of the shorter treatises which contain the fundamental principles of their secret religion. |