THE BEGINNINGS OF A BOARDING SCHOOL AT MISSIONARY POINT, AGANA gard the missionary work as superfluous and unnecessary, if not as an actual intrusion. "The people have their own religion; let them alone," is the opinion of those who ignore careful moral distinctions and condone sinful practises. But the government, while showing no special favors, has been on the whole fair, sympathetic and appreciative. Once a man who had experienced richly the transform demand his release, saying by this act: "No man shall be detained against his will nor compelled to act contrary to his desire and conscience in matters of religion under this government." Thus the American flag scored one for liberty in the island of Guam. The public schools, established by the present governor, are indirectly favorable to our work, for they diffuse knowledge among the people and de stroy the hold of ignorance and superstition. The unusual intelligence of many of the people as compared with other Caroline Islanders is another encouragement. They are the most capable island people we have been privileged to meet and an old priest has written of them: "They are superior physically and mentally to the Filipinos." Credit must be given to the Roman Church for what it has done in spreading a knowledge of some of the fundamental truths of Christianity; for, in spite of the obscurations and perversions, they have prepared the people for better things. They have enabled them to understand and appreciate Christian instruction. It is encouraging to work for such people. Once get the ear and you can soon make the mind and heart to understand, and there is often a very gratifying response to the truth and appreciation of its meaning. Undoubtedly the Malayan type of the native predominates among them, but there has been a large infusion of Spanish and Tagalog Filipino blood. Protestantism calls out the best and most intelligent people, those who are able to read the Bible and to think about its truth. On October 4, 1903, a church of thirty-one members with thirty probationers was organized and on November 1 of the same year was celebrated the first communion service in the island in which the cup was given to the laity. The decorum, solemnity, and evident appreciation of the meaning and sacredness of the sacrament were profoundly noticeable. Of these members two are teachers in the public schools and six are in the government employ. The people have been oppressed, ignorance and superstition have been fostered and all pro gress prohibited. They have not had a fair chance. With our public schools and other free institutions a great improvement may be expected of them. There is also a desire for improvement among the people. This is seen on all sides, but especially in the eagerness with which the people welcome our schools and send their children to them and the interest the pupils take in their studies. The educational work of our mission has been conducted upon two lines: A day school in Agaña, attended by the smaller children and beginners, and taught by Chamorro young women, and a boarding school for boys and girls at Lapunta, conducted by the missionary, with pupils especially selected for advanced work. The pupils are as a rule enthusiastic and eager to learn and make commendable progress; some of those taking the most advanced work show possibilities for improvement far beyond anything we have even seen in other island people. This fact encourages us to lay special stress on the educational work; and just here lies strong hope for the future. The promise of native evangelists and teachers greatly brightens the outlook. However evangelistic the missionary may be, he must depend very largely on trained natives, whom he has taught and inspired to evangelize his field. Imperfect as some of them are, the native evangelists are necessary and must be employed, if the people are to be instructed in large numbers. In our schools there are promising boys and girls, soon to be young men and women, well instructed and strong in the faith, who will command respect by their worth and accomplishments, and be able to meet with sound arguments the sophistries of the priests. They will know how to conduct earnest inquirers into the Way of Life out of the mazes of superstitions, half-truths and subtle errors which have so long kept them from the Light. Herein lies our greatest encouragement and hope. When we can send forth such men, filled with the love of Christ, the Roman Church will either change its methods and become more scriptural and less superstitious or multitudes will break away from it and seek something surer and better. For the present semi-heathen teaching and practise can not stand before the enlightenment of educated natives and their earnest loving preaching of the simple and pure Gospel of our Lord. A very noticeable improvement has taken place in the Roman Church since the arrival of Protestant missionaries in Guam. More instruction is given and superstitions are less open and glaring; greater stress is laid on the necessity of a moral life and in some cases discipline for immoral conduct has been exercised. There can be no doubt but that the Roman Church has received a new impulse and is becoming more educational and less superstitious. The removal of the support of the government has been most salutary, and the friendliness of some of their best people for the Protestant church and the changed lives and earnest preaching of some of the converts have stirred them profoundly, and led them to see that they must do more for their people. The love which our people have for the Bible and their knowledge of its teachings have affected a large number of people and it is safe to say that there will never be another bonfire of the Blessed Book in the Plaza of Agaña. Reviewing the field and the work we lift our hearts with profound gratitude to the Great Head of the Church, for the hold that His truth has already taken upon many hearts; for those who in the face of opposition and persecutions have steadfastly set their faces toward the better life; for a goodly number who have really experienced the blessing of forgiveness through Jesus, and whose faces are lighted up with the joy of the redeemed and whose lips and lives bear testimony to the power of Jesus as their Savior. The sympathy and prayers of the people in America should be given to this little church in Guam. It is now a small company, but it is the little leaven in the meal which shall leaven the whole, the "handful of corn in the top of the mountain whose fruit shall shake like Lebanon." THE SUNDAY REST QUESTION Keeps coming to the front now and then. Dr. Fletcher Little, medical health officer for Harrow, England, now urges attention to the fact that the constables of Britain are overworked, and that not only their health but general efficiency is gradually being impaired by seven days' work every week. In the metropolitan district there are about 15,000 policemen, and Dr. Little earnestly recommends a change, whatever extra expense may be involved. In the long run, God's laws pay for their own keeping, and a natural penalty follows their transgression. BY GEORGE S. EDDY, KODAIKANAL, SOUTH INDIA Two years ago, at the request of the MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD, an article was prepared on the unoccupied fields of India. Mr. Azariah, the Indian traveling secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association in South India, made a study of more than thirty volumes of the Government Census Report to ascertain which portions of India were without missionaries, evangelistic workers or Christians. The study of these unoccupied fields laid so heavily upon the hearts of some of the young men of India the burden for India's evangelization that finally in prayer this sense of need gave birth to the thought of a National Missionary Society of India, a society to be manned by Indians, supported by Indian money and controlled by Indian management. After many months of prayer and thought and consultation with representative missionaries and Indian leaders in all parts of the land the movement was organized. Delegates representing each province and portion of India, Burma and Ceylon met on December 25, 1905, in Carey's historic library at Serampore to organize this movement. Uniting as it does the Christians of all churches and of all provinces into one great society for the evangelization of India and adjacent lands, its organization marks a new era in the history of India and of Protestant missions. It is notable that just two hundred years after Ziegenbalg came to India as the first Protestant missionary, and exactly one hundred years after Samuel Mills began at Williamstown the great missionary move * The results of this study were published in the REVIEW for April, 1905. ment in America, and a hundred years after the saintly Henry Martyn landed in India to labor in this very spot, the Christians of India have now united in the first national indigenous missionary movement of its kind ever organized in India or within the history of Protestant missions. The sessions of the conference were held in the great library where William Carey labored, and the constitution of the new society was adopted in the old pagoda where Henry Martyn worked and prayed for the evangelization of this land. Founding no new denomination, but preserving the strongest loyalty to the churches; soliciting no funds outside of India, but laying the burden for India's evangelization upon her own sons, we believe the society is organized on a sound and safe basis. Our first thought was to look to the foreign missionary societies that have already undertaken the evangelization of some two-thirds of the country. Letters were written to the principal societies in England and America asking if they could open new missions in the unoccupied districts; or if that were impossible, whether they would favor the attempt being made by Indian Christians themselves to undertake a forward movement for the evangelization of their own country. The replies received from these societies indicate that there is such a shortage of both men and money for nearly all the foreign societies that they can not undertake in the near future any new missions. The Indian Church then stands face to face with the problem: If the foreign societies will be taxed to the utmost to give the Gospel, even superfi cially, to two-thirds the population of India, the remaining third, or 100,000,000 can look only to them for any possible hearing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this generation. While vast districts are still unoccupied and unclaimed, we have over a million Protestant Christians in India who might meet that need. Many of them, especially in the south, are in old communities of the third and fourth generation, with numerical strength, growing education and wealth, and often, with growing worldliness, owing largely to a lack of outlet and sense of responsibility for the evangelization of their own people. Indigenous societies, like the Indian Missionary Society of Tinnevelly, working in connection with a single mission, have shown the possibility of Indian Christians mastering another language and successfully carrying on mission work at a distance, with their own men and money and management. Such societies, however, are necessarily local and limited, and they exist only in one or two places. There are numbers of men who could go, but who have no indigenous societies to send them; there are churches which could give, but have no missionary society that is really their own. They feel that the time has now come for a National Missionary Society of India, conducted by Indian leaders, supported by Indian funds, manned by Indian men maintaining loyalty to the churches and working in harmony with existing missions, but placing the responsibility upon their own people for the work which they shall feel to be their Own. The movement will be governed by a council, composed of representative |
