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Modern Protestant Missions.

BY REV. J. S. ROSS. M.A.

By common consent the year 1792 marks the beginning of the modern missionary movement-a distinct epoch in the development of Protestant Christianity. Yet this does not imply that tere were no missions before that date. The names of Egede, Stach, Ziegenbalg, and Schwartz are well known in this period.

The Moravian brotherhood rose to notice when the zeal of all Churches was at the coldest. Driven from Moravia, Count Zinzendorf (author of the hymn, "Jesus, thy blood and righteousness") bought an estate for the refugees, near the foot of a hill. This they called Herrnhut (The Lord's Shelter), a name which has since gone round the world. The society was composed of about 600 laborers and artisans, yet in the short space of eight or nine years, commencing in 1732, they had sent missionaries to Greenland, the West Indies, the Indians of North America, the Negroes of South Carolina, to Lapland, Tartary, Guinea, South Africa, and Ceylon. They now report 392 ordained ministers, preaching at 133 stations, to 23,501 communicants. Their missionaries frequently started without knowing how to reach their destination, and often had to procure support by working with their own hands. As showing their spirit, Count Zinz-ndorf went to a brother and said, "Can you go as a missionary to Greenland? Can you go to-morrow?" And the reply was, "I will start to-morrow if the shoemaker has finished my shoes which I ordered." So long as mankind can appreciate purity of intention, self-sacrifice, and heroism, the name of the Moravian brotherhood will never die.

Missions to the heathen were not undertaken by the Wesleyans until 1786, when Dr. Coke, destined for Nova Scotia, was providentially driven by a storm to the British West Indies, where a mission to the slaves was immediately begun at Antigua. "During his [Dr. Coke's] life it was not deemed necessary to organize a missionary society among the Wesleyans, for he embodied that great interest in his own person." He crossed the Atlantic eighteen times in prosecution of the work of God.

"The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts" was formed in 1701, rather for colonial than foreign missionary objects. This society became distinctly missionary in 1821. Thus, with the exception of the Danish missions represented by Ziegenbalg and Schwartz, and the work of the Moravians and Wesleyans, the whole heathen world. previous to the opening of the missionary epoch, was left in spiritual destitution, not "a solitary representative of the Churches of Great Britain being found on earth preaching Christ to those who had never heard his name."

It has been truly said, "Never has there been a

century in England so vo'd of faith as that which began with Queen Anne and ended with George II. when the Puritans were buried and the Methodists not born." Blackstone, about this period, said he had heard every clergyman of note in London, but not one discourse that had more Christianity in it than the orations of Cicero, or showed whether the preacher was a disciple of Confucius, Mohammed, o Christ.

What missionary activity could there be in Churches of this description? To diffuse such a Christianity would be a calamity; but happily it has no inherent diffusiveness. The only hope of the Churches themselves, and of the world, lay in a revival of religion. This occurred under the labors of Wesley and Whitefield, and one year after Wesley was dead, William Carey, clarum et venerabile nomen, succeeded, despite many discouragements, in organizing the first British Foreign Missionary Society, under the auspices of the Baptist Church.

To understand his difficulties it may be necessary to recall the prevailing sentiments of the people at that time, both in and out of the Church. When Carey proposed in the Baptist Association to discuss the advisability of sending missionaries to the heathen. Rev. Dr. Ryland is reported to have said: "Young man, sit down; when God pleases to convert the heathen he will do it without your aid or mine." Dr. Ryland simply expressed the prevailing sentiment of the majority of Christian people at that time. The East India Company refused to take Carey to India in one of their vessels. When they found he intended to be a missionary they ordered him off the vessel, but he reached Calcutta by a Danish ship. Even after his arrival, but for the firm conduct of the governor of the little Danish settlement at Serampore, to which he was invited, Carey and his family would have been seized and sent back to Europe by the first vessel. Charles Grant, who ultimately rose to be the head of the East India Company, wrote to the Rev. Charles Simeon to send out missionaries to the East, and promised to support them. Simeon failed to find one. Grant afterward wrote, I had formed the design of a mission to Bengal; Providence reserved that honor for the Baptists."

A bishop of the Church of England said he had in his diocese a very good clergyman, but one who was very eccentric, and gave as proof of it the fact that the said clergyman actually believed the red Indians of North America could be converted! Fuller, who was collecting for the new Baptist Society, went aside into the by-ways of London city to weep over the callon-ness of wealthy Christians. Three years after Carey had arrived in India the Assembly of the Church of Scotland denounced the scheme of foreign missions as "illusive," "visionary," dangerous to the good order of society," and as improper and absurd to propagate the Gospel

abroad so long as there remained a single individual at home without the means of religious knowledge."

But the above was mild compared with the diatribe of the Rev. Sydney Smith, who pronounced the scheme of foreign missions as "absurdity in hysterics," "preposterousness run mad," "illusion danc ing in maddest frenzy," "the unsubstantial dream and vision of a dreamer who dreams that he has been dreaming."

In the United States, Mills, Judson, Newell, and Nott held the now famous "haystack" meeting, to start a foreign missionary society; and because public opinion was opposed to them, by Article IV, the existence of their society was made secret. When a few years afterward it was proposed to charter the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, by the Massachusetts Legislature, Mr. B. W. Croninshield objected on the ground that "it would export religion whereas there was none to spare away from ourselves," to which the proper rejoinder was made that "religion is a commodity, the more of which is exported the more we have remaining," At first the Senate rejected the bill, but of five Boston papers not one gave a report of the debate, or even an abstract of it! What surprise and comment would such a legislative act excite to-day!

The first missionary to the Indians was Rev. John Eliot. He preached the first sermon ever delivered in North America to the Indians in their native tongue. He took a language which had no literature and had never been reduced to writing, and in eight years had the whole Bible translated. It was absolutely the first case in history of the translation and printing of the whole Bible for evangelizing purposes. It was issued in 1663, being the first Bible printed in America. "Prayers and pains," he said, through faith in Jesus Christ will do anything." Respecting his preaching to the Indians, both in Old and New England, it was declared the whole scheme was to make money, and that the conversion of Indians was a fable. He lived, however, to see six Indian churches and a thousand members. Southey pronounced him "one of the most extraordinary men of any country." He was followed by Brainerd in the same work.

Another name in connection with Indian missions which deserves to be perpetuated in history is that of Rev. James Evans, a Canadian Methodist missionary and the inventor of syllable characters for the Cree Indians, and by which they are enabled to read with surprising facility. Lord Dufferin said to Rev. E. R. Young: "Why, what a blessing to humanity that man was who invented this alphabet! I profess to be a kind of literary man myself, and try to keep up my reading of what is going on, but I never heard of this before. The fact is," he added, "the nation has given many a man a title and a pension, then a resting place and monument in Westminster Abbey, who never did half so much for his fellow-creatures

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For thirteen years, in northern Norway, Hans Egede heard the Macedonian cry to go to Greenland. His proposal to set out for that inhospitable region raised a storm of opposition, but after a voyage of eight weeks he landed there in 1721. Thus began the Danish mission. He was three years in learning the language, and remained there fifteen years.

The Moravian mission began in 1733 (twelve years after Egede), under the Messrs. Stach and Christian David. Before they departed Count Von Pless recounted the difficulties. "How will you live?" he asked. "We will cultivate the soil." "But there is no soil-only ice and snow." Then we must try and live as the natives do." But in what will you live?" We will build ourselves a house." "But there is no wood in the country." "Then we will dig holes in the ground and live there." "No," said the count; "here are $50, and take wood with you." Their voyage lasted six weeks. The natives were very indifferent to their teachings and mimicked them. They labored five years before they had one convert. Though zealous and self-sacrificing, Egede, the Danish missionary, had little success, from the fact that he did not give due prominence to the direct preaching of redemption through the blood of Christ. The truth was preached as part of a creed. The Moravians, on the other hand, addressed the heart rather than reason and had greater success.

A CENTURY OF MODERN MISSION CHRONOLOGY. 1792. The first British Foreign Missionary Society organized through the efforts of Carey. 1793. Carey landed in India.

1795. London Missionary Society organized. 1796. First mission of London Missionary Society opened at Tahiti, Society Islands.

1798. Death of Schwartz.

1799. Dr. Vanderkemp (London Missionary Society, opened mission to Kaffirs in South Africa. 1804. British and Foreign Bible Society organized. Mission to Sierra Leone opened.

1807. Morrison (London Missionary Society), first missionary to China.

Slave trade in British dominions abolished by
Parliament.

1810. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions organized.

1812. Church Missionary Society organized (in 1799 organized under another name).

Wesleyan mission to South Africa opened. 1813. East India Company compelled by Parliament to tolerate missionaries.

Judson arrived at Rangoon, Burma. 1814. American Baptist Missionary Society organized.

Mission to New Zealand opened by Church Missionary Society.

Death of Dr. Coke, on Indian Ocean, aged ɛixty

seven.

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1816. American Bible Society organized.

Moffat sailed for Africa.

1817. Wesleyan Missionary Society organized.
1818. Conversion under Moffat of Africaner, "the
terror of South Africa."

Madagascar Mission opened (London Missionary
Society).

Death of Samuel J. Mills, off west coast of
Africa, the originator of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and of the
American Bible Society.

1819. Missionary Society of Methodist Episcopal Church, United States, organized.

First Christian book printed in Siamese.

Whole of Bible translated into Chinese by Morrison, assisted by Milne.

1820. Mission to Hawaiian Islands opened. 1821. Mission to Liberia opened.

1822. Missions to Tonga Islands and to New Zealand opened by the Wesleyan Missionary Society. 1823. Raratonga Island, which had eluded the search of Captain Cook, discovered by John Williams, and mission opened. 1824. Missionary Society of Methodist Church of

Canada organized; also that of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, and that of France. 1826. Mission to the Karens ("wild men of Burma ") commenced.

1828. First Karen convert.

1829. Widow-burning abolished by the British Government in India.

1830. Duff arrived in India.

1833. Slavery abolished in the British Empire (went

into operation August 1, 1834).

First foreign mission of Methodist Episcopal Church of United States to Liberia commenced. Death of Melville B. Cox, first foreign missionary of Methodist Episcopal Church, United States. 1834. Death of Carey, "the pioneer of modern missions."

Death of Morrison, "the pioneer missionary to
China."

1835. Mission to the Fiji Islands, opened by the Wesleyan missionaries, Cross and Cargill.

1836. Missionaries banished from Madagascar. 1837. First native Madagascar martyr.

Krapf set out for East Africa.

1839. John Williams, "the apostle of Polynesia," murdered at Erromanga, aged forty-four.

1840. Livingstone sails for Africa.

Canton, China, taken by the English.

1542. Hong-Kong ceded to the English; Canton and four other cities opened.

1844. Missions to China reopened.

Missionary Society of Presbyterian Church in
Canada organized.

1845. Evangelical Alliance organized.

1846. Death of James Evans, Canadian Methodist missionary and inventor of the syllabic characters.

1848. Mission to the New Hebrides Islands commenced by Dr. Geddie, of the Presbyterian Church, Nova Scotia.

1850. Missionary Society organized by the New Zealanders.

Death of Judson, "the apostle of Burma." 1851. First zenana teaching in the East begun in Siam. 1853. Missionary Society organized by Sandwich Islanders.

Wesleyan Mission in China opened.

Commodore Perry (United States) sails into
Yeddo Bay, Japan.

1858. Japan opened by Townsend Harris Treaty to the Western world, after being closed 219 years (treaty went into full operation following year). Christianity tolerated in China by the Treaty of Tientsin (carried into effect in 1860).

Government of East India Company abolished by
British Parliament.

1859. First missionary in Japan.

1861. Persecution in Madagascar ceased and mission reopened.

1862. Jesuits enter Madagascar.

King George of Tonga gave a constitutional government founded on Christian principles.

1864. First convert in Japan.

1865. China Inland Mission commenced. 1870. Missionaries to Hawaiian Islands made last report to their society, these islands having ceased to be missionary ground.

1871. First Protestant church opened in Rome.

Bishop Patteson, of Melanesian Islands, murdered at Nukapu.

Mission to New Guinea opened (largest island in the world).

Livingstone found by Stanley at Ujiji. 1872. First Protestant Church organized in Japan.

Mission to Formosa, China, opened by Presbyterian Church in Canada.

1873. Livingstone found dead at his bedside on his knees at Ilala, Lake Bangweolo.

Canadian Baptist Missionary Society organized.
First foreign mission of Methodist Church of
Canada commenced in Japan.

Edict against Christianity in Japan taken down. 1874. Livingstone buried in Westminster Abbey.

Fiji Islands ceded by their chiefs to Great Britain. 1875. King Mtesa desired missionary teachers to be sent to Uganda, East Africa.

Presbyterian Church in Canada opened a mission in Central India.

1876. Mission to Uganda commenced.

Woman's Presbyterian Missionary Society of
Canada organized.

1877. Stanley's journey across Africa from Zanzibar, and emerging at the mouth of the Congo, 7,000 miles, completed in 999 days.

1878. Missions to the Congo opened.

Great revival at the Baptist Mission among the

10,000 bap

Telugus ("Lone Star Mission "); tized between June and December. Consecration of the great Memorial Hall by the Karens on the fiftieth anniversary of the first convert.

Buddhist temple in Province of Shantung, China, deeded as a free gift to missionaries for Christian

uses.

Death of Dr. Duff, aged seventy-two. 1881. Woman's Methodist Missionary Society of Canada organized.

Canada Congregational Missionary Society organized.

1882. Korea, "the hermit nation," the latest opened to the Gospel.

1883. Death of Moffat.

Church of England Missionary Society in Canada organized.

1884. Stanley opened the Congo basin; 5,249 miles of navigable rivers; eleven million square miles of territory; inhabited by forty-three millions of people.

Berlin Conference for government of the Congo country, agreement signed by fifteen ruling powers.

1885. Congo Free State erected.

Bishop Hannington murdered at Uganda by orders of Mwango.

1888. First railroad built in China, with sanction of the government.

First mission of Presbyterian Church in Canada to China mainland opened.

Whole Bible translated in Japanese. 1890. Memorable Missionary Conference at Shanghai, China.

Sultan of Zanzibar issued decree against the slave trade.

Death of McKay, of Uganda.

1891. Susi, who brought Livingstone's body and papers to the coast, a journey of nearly one thousand miles, and of a year's duration, died at Zanzibar. Edict of Chinese Emperor proclaiming toleration of Christianity.

First section of Congo River railroad completed. Latest new mission, in totally unoccupied territory undertaken-the Central Soudan.

Death of Samuel Crowther. "Born a slave, died a bishop."

1892. Death of James Calvert, noted missionary to Fiji.

The Brussels Treaty respecting the prohibition
of the slave trade, firearms, and the liquor
traffic in the Congo Free State and interior of
Africa, covering an area twice the size of Europe,
with a population of twenty-seven millions of
souls, signed by seventeen powers.
Mission opened in a populous but unevangelized
province of China, by the Methodist Church,
Canada.-Methodist Magazine.

Grasping for Souls.

BY MR. REGINALD RADCLIFFE.

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WHEN Christ "saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest" (Matt. 9. 36-38). Ponder these words, for they have been extraordinarily misunderstood and extraordinarily neglected. Who was to send forth laborers? The Lord of the harvest. Whom did he constitute laborers at Pentecost? The whole company of believers, women as well as men. Even Peter, in the midst of his own marvelous draft of fishes at Pentecost claims that not only women as well as men are to preach, but positively slave men and slave women (see Acts 2. 18, R. V., mar.).

The devil, however, against whose teachings Christ so earnestly warned us, at an early date began to freeze the Church, and to insinuate his limitations; then afterward, while we were boasting that we had got the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue, we were his laughingstock, because for generations we remained without sending a single missionary to the heathen, although our opened Bibles entreated us to share our light, as witness Christ's own searching words to his disciples: "Ye are the light of the world." "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." "Ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." Very soon persecution scattered the believers by the thousand, but (Acts 8. 1-4) they all went everywhere (men and women) spreading the Gospel. About one group of these it is recorded (Acts 11. 21), "The hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord." There was a great work, and much people was added unto the Lord; and Barnabas was sent to help and afterward Paul was brought.

This was the way in the early days that the WHOLE Church worked. If any man or woman professed to be a Christian he would be taught according to the Saviour's words, that if the salt lost its savor, it was thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of meu. But now at missionary meetings is not the cry often too much confined to money to send missionaries, or for missionaries to offer themselves to be sent out and supported? This may suit our present retail working. But it reaches comparatively a very feeble length.

We need not merely the willing and devoted missionary men and missionary women at present supported by the missionary societies of the world, but that the evangelization of the world should be taken

up by every member of the body who has not lost his savor, wherever the Lord of the harvest appoints him his place. I am persuaded thousands, both of men and women, will be found ready to go at their own expense, and ready to earn their own living. Indeed, are there not many such Christians already in heathen countries, earning their own living, but not realizing that they are there to be as salt, if they have not lost their savor? And more of our Christian young men and women are already intending to go to foreign lands simply for a livelihood, but perhaps with little thought of evangelizing the heathen. Will not the heathen converts themselves ever expect to be paid for evangelizing their neighbors, if they have no object lessons among them of white men and white women sustaining themselves, and yet spreading the Gospel as earnestly as their friends, the surrounding paid missionaries.

Let Mr. Hudson Taylor's confession on this point, in regard to the China Inland Mission, be pondered. In it he states that about thirty years ago he began by paying native evangelists in China, but experience had taught him to change such practice and employ purely unpaid natives, and that though as unpaid evangelists these natives were then unable to give but a small portion of their time, yet that small fragment of time proved to be more fruitful than their whole time had previously been. Mr. Hudson Taylor, it will be observed, is most particular to certify that there was nothing against the consistent lives of these evangelists when paid; nevertheless, a fragment of their unpaid week became more fruitful than the whole seven days had been.

Let no man accuse me of disparaging the work or the self-denial of the noble European and American mi-sionaries. True, they are paid, but that word may have a very mistaken interpretation, for many of them might have had ten times as much income had they remained at business in their own country. Ou the contrary, I say we are at present not doing these brethren justice. Many of them should be helped by being able to point the heathen to white men and women as good Christians as themselves, and preaching as earnestly, while they were receiving no pay for it, but laboring diligently in their secular callings.

The heathen, long before the white worker could speak his language, would discern that such a white worker was salt that had not lost his savor. Thus would such white workers be a marvelous help to the missionary, in fact, the missionary's missing link, and a marvelous help to the poor heathen. In truth, our present position neither squares with our Lord's command nor to the practice of the early centuries, and is not fair to the missionary, and certainly is very unfair to the poor groping savage or to the sincere, inquiring, thoughtful native, for when he begins to read his New Testament he finds it does not square with that book.

The Lord's Prayer was not given for missionaries

only, but for us all. Now, how do its requests begin? Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6. 9, 10). Then in verse 33 we are told, before all things, to "seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness." This, then, is our first business": while we are told in the same chapter the first coucern of the heathen is what to eat, what to drink, what to dress in. We see here what is made the business of every Christian man and woman of us, whether we reside at home or abroad.

Is not the attitude for us at the present timeheart prostration, with our faces on the earth, and a one-accord ery for an awakening among real be lievers-a confession that by our supineness we are hindering the conversion of the Jews at this, their momentous hour? The Mohammedan Goliath has come forth with bold defiance in Africa, and is running the race of a mighty giant quickly to overwhelm millions of Africans in his ready way to enlist whole tribes as followers of the false prophet, to say noth ing of their cruel and bloody slave trade; while coarse white-faced men from Germany, America, and England, are also racing into Africa with their poisonous trade, rum; and, if possible, more devilish still, skilled, refined white-faced men are slaying the Chinese and our Indian fellow-subjects with the awful mind-destroying, moral-destroying, life-destroying, and race-destroying opium.-The Christian.

My Missionary Call.

BY REV. FRANK W. WARNE, OF INDIA.

I WAS convicted of sin and felt called to the ministry at the early age of fourteen. Though I sought for three years, I did not enter into a clear consciousness of peace with God until the age of seventeen: but when peace came it was clear, joyous, and abiding. I entered upon the ministry at the age of eighteen, spent three years as a missionary in Manitoba. came to Evanston, and was several years a member of Rock River Conference when my call to be a missionary came, an outline of which I write by request.

During 1887 I was serving my second year as pastor at Austin, Ill. About the middle of the year, though my surroundings were all that I could desire. I began to have a strange unrest, as if something were going to happen, and I could not tell what. It seemed as if my work at that church were done. In this state of mind I went to the Des Plaines Camp Meeting and spent the whole time in consecrating myself to God and asking light on my case. I told the Lord over and over again that I was ready and willing to go anywhere and do anything if I could but know what he was requiring of me. I was sure in my own mind that my consecration was complete and entire. I went home from the camp meeting without any light on my case or new rest in my heart.