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belong to America and $30,000 is the annual sum provided by the Mission to Lepers for the support of the leper work of these boards.

That this work has the approval of the government officials and missionaries at work in India a few brief testimonies will show.

of the constant kindness and sympathy with which these poor creatures are treated! I have seen no more benevolent work in India than this." Still another, referring to the work in Bombay Presidency, said: "I was much struck with the genuine and efficient nature of the work

A leading government official in which is being carried on at these

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THE WINSTON WARD IN THE HOME FOR LEPERS, MANDALAY, BURMA

Bengal summed up his report of a visit to the largest asylum of the mission in the few terse words: "A noble work nobly done." Another official in the same province wrote: "I have been greatly impressed by my visit to this asylum. It has now upward of five hundred inmates, and the sight of so great a company of stricken people would have been most distressing had it not been for the surprising contentment of their bearing. No leper is sent by the authorities, and no wall prevents an inmate from leaving, and yet the numbers rapidly grow! Evidence

institutions. Among the lepers there reigns an air of cheerfulness and contented resignation, the logical outcome of a pure and clean environment. One feels that such work is among the noblest and most unassailable of any in India, and owing to its quiet and unpretentious character, it is all the more deserving of public support."

The following resolution was passed by a rising vote at the Decennial Missionary Conference held in Madras in December, 1902, by the representatives of all the Protestant missionary bodies in India: "That this Confer

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other part of India reached them. Grateful for all the mercies God had bestowed upon them and no doubt. remembering the days of their own privation in the past, they determined to forego their cherished. hope and cheerfully relinquished the whole sum they had collected for their prayer-rooms which they sent as their contribution to the famine funds of another missionary society. In the All-India Sunday-school Union examination (in the oral division), which took place in 1903, nine candidates in India were bracketed to

own lives, but they evince a keen interest in the salvation of others, and to many of them has been given the joy of so revealing the Christ to their friends that they in their turn have found the "Peace which passeth all understanding."

The Gospel is truly the "power of God unto salvation" to these people, able to make them contented and patient in their suffering, while some of them have even reached the Christian altitude of being able to rejoice in their afflictions. "I am glad, sahib, that God ever sent me

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this disease," said one woman to the writer, and seeing her in its advanced stages with her features disfigured and her limbs distorted, he asked how she could say this. She replied, with a peaceful and holy look in her face: "If I had not been a leper I should probably never have heard of Christ."

This work of caring for the lepers is hygienic, humane and holy, but the branch of the society's work which may be regarded as of strategic importance is the rescue of the untainted children; for to-day medical science and practical experience have both pronounced that leprosy is not necessarily hereditary, and early in its history the mission conceived the idea of saving the children by placing them in separate homes. This effort has met with abundant success, for it is reported that 99 per cent. of the children so separated have been saved from falling victims to the disease.

The mission has

twenty-two

homes for children with about five hundred inmates, and the value of such work who can estimate? These children are not only snatched from becoming part of the wreckage of humanity, but while in the homes, are fitted and prepared to take their place in life's duties, and act their part for the welfare of the human race. Many of them who have grown up are now devoting their lives to the service of Christ among the very people from whom they had been taken.

The heroic devotion of the missionaries of the various mission boards is worthy of notice. These men and women are unostentatiously and sympathetically ministering

to the poor sufferers whom nobody else will help, without any remuneration for so doing. These men and women, many of them cultured and scholarly, find in this work some of the greatest joy in their missionary service, and are willing to increase. the burdens which rest upon them by undertaking the extra responsibility of superintending leper asylums and children's homes, and "they have their reward," as the following testimonies show:

We often pay our last visit to the leper home in the evening, tired with the toil of the day. Hospital work has been particularly trying. Body and mind are wanting rest. A look around, a cheery greeting here, a smile there, and weariness is forgotten. These men take much from us, but they give us much in return. We know of no better medicine for the soul than to mix with them. They strengthen one's faith and broaden one's whole life. We should be the poorer without them.

The work among the lepers becomes more dear to me as the days and months go by. If I want a new impetus for the work among an unlovely people, then I go to the leper asylum.

The leper asylum and its work never wanes in interest, and we are constantly giving thanks for this pleasant refuge for these poor outcasts. We learn much from them, and one thing our church at home might learn, and that is, how to give.

Great things have been accomplished in the past, but much remains to be done, and the Society is seeking to enlarge the circle of its supporters by starting an organization for spreading information and raising financial aid in America

A committee of well-known business men has been formed in New York with Mr. Fleming H. Revell, of No. 156 Fifth Avenue, as Treasurer, and it is hoped that a .Field Secretary will shortly be appointed. Those who wish for further information may apply to Mr. Thomas A. Bailey, care of Thomas Cook & Son, 245 Broadway, New York City.

BY REV. D. L. LEONARD, D.D.
Author of "One Hundred Years of Missions"

These islands in the South Pacific display in a marvelous degree the matchless power of Christ to reach, redeem, and transform the grossest, the fiercest, and the most devilish of humankind.

The group of islands is located about as far to the south of the equator as Hawaii is to the north. Only a few of them are of any considerable importance, either for size or the number of their inhabitants. As a matter of fact two, Viti-Levu (Great Fiji), and Na Vanua-Levu (the Great Land), include the bulk of the entire area of about 8,000 square miles.

When first visited, more than a century ago, the population numbered about 200,000, but it has been reduced since then to 117,000 or less, largely through the ravages of certain infectious diseases.

These islanders belong to the black Melanesian race and resemble the natives of New Zealand and the New Hebrides more closely than those of Tahiti or Hawaii. Physically and intellectually they rank among the foremost in the South Seas, but before Christianity had wrought its astounding miracles of transformation, they had no equals for brutality, licentiousness, and utter disregard of human life. world over their name was a synonym for all that is atrocious, inhuman, and demoniacal. It was a part of their religion to be as cruel as possible toward their enemies, and to slay them with nameless and horrible tortures was a positive delight.

The

Their habitual acts were by far too disgusting and fiendish to be described in detail, or even to be imagined. Here is the portrait of a typical Fijian, when wrought upon by the demon of passion:

"The whole body quivering with excitement; every muscle strained: the clenched fist eager to bathe itself in blood; the forehead all drawn up in wrinkles; the staring eyeballs red and gleaming with terrible flashings; the mouth distended into a disdainful and murderous grin."

The story of the introduction of the Gospel of peace and love into this annex antechamber to the "bottomless-pit" is a novel one, and full of interest. So far as any human purpose or plan were concerned, the first steps were taken apparently by purest accident, as a result of a curious combination of circumstances, two missionary organizations playing an undesigned part. In the year 1823 the English Wesleyans began evangelizing work in Tonga, a group several hundred miles to the east of Fiji, and after eleven years reaped a rich reward in a great revival, in which several thousands of the natives were brought to a saving knowledge of the truth. Intercourse between the two island worlds was by no means infrequent, and a considerable number of Tongans had crossed in their canoes to Lakemba, one of the most easterly members of the Fijian group, for social and trading purposes. Among these visitors were some of the recent converts, who at

A chapter from "The Pacific Islanders-From Savages to Saints." Edited by D. L. Pierson. Published by Funk & Wagnalls Co. Illustrated. 12mo. 354 PP. $1.00, net.

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