1 24 The California Methodist Episcopal Chinese Mission. during the year. In spite of all our efforts to get scholars the average attendance has been only twenty-five, with fifty on the rolls. This is largely the result of the restriction act-First, lewer immigrants come to this coast; second, those who do come have, for the most part, been here before, and have learned all the English they care to acquire; third, the anti-Chinese legislation has unsettled the prospects of the Chinese in this country, who are beginning to doubt the utility of learning any more English than will serve their present needs. We can only deplore the fact that the present mission building has been for the last six years unadapted to the altered conditions of our work. Had we a large mission hall in the heart of Chinatown, instead of a school building outside of Chinatown, we might ac complish greater results and secure a wider hearing for what is after all our great business, the preaching of the Gospel. The union services on the open streets every Sunday afternoon have been attended by the same orderly attentive crowds as in years gone by. In addition to our regular preaching and teaching much time has been spent by the superintendent in assisting the authorities to combat the Highbinder societies, the gambling dens, the traffic in slave prostitutes, and also in exposing the fearful spread of opium smoking and the trade in the drug at this port. The superintendent has made frequent pastoral visits to the schools and religious classes at Oakland, Sacramento, and San Jose, and preached the Gospel to attentive crowds in the Chinese streets of those cities. In OAKLAND the mission has been for five years under the charge of Miss Kelsey and Brother Woo Ming, who have done faithful and successful service for the Church. Begun with much misgiving and in the face of many predictions of failure, our school and church meetings have grown steadily till we are fully on a level with the longer established stations of other missions in this city. During the last five years we have received thirty young men from probation, of whom all but one remain faithful to their baptismal Six have joined the church on profession of faith at this place during the year. In SACRAMENTO the year's work has been full of discouragements and vexations. The old schoolhouse, in which so many happy meetings have been held and souls born into the kingdom, was destroyed by fire in October last. No insurance could ever be procured on our furniture, and the fire brought us a total loss. The young men and preacher barely escaped with their lives. The Chinese young men stood round with tears in their eyes to see their little spiritual home in flames, but they soon rallied, rented another room, and rented it at their own expense. After this heroic effort we hoped to see more prosperous days. We had not been long in our new school on Third Street, when a Highbinder war broke out, and several bloody battles were fought on the street ciose to our school. Attempts were made to blackmail some of our Christians, and on refusal their lives were threatened. The consequent fear and excitement has been very disastrous to our work. Most of the decent heathen Chinese have left for quieter parts, and several of our members have joined the exodus, shaking off the dust of their feet against a place where only blackmailers, slave owners, gamblers, and bad characters can thrive. In spite of this turmoil two have united with the church from probation. Mrs. Marsh has worked alone, and deserves much of our sympathy and prayers. In SAN JOSE our school is under the charge of Miss Starkweather, and the church members under the leadership of Walter Fong, a student in the University of the Pacific. Last year we reported an increase of church members, & flourishing school, and increased interest in our serv ices. This year we have lost ground. Several of our members have gone away, others have grown careless, and the Sunday and evening schools have been thinly attended. A spirit of dissatisfaction has broken out, and the year's work has been marked with bickering and strife. One couvert has been baptized, and united with the church. We have every confidence that during the coming winter, when the Chinese return from the vineyards and orchards, our work will revive. With a membership of one hundred and twenty, the majority of whom are domestic servants and laborers, the following list of contributors will attest the liberality of our Christian Chinese: Toward expenses of mission.. Toward support of helpers.. $543 315 105 Presiding elder.... 85 Persian and Russian Notes. bation. One interesting feature of our work is the number of our girls who are employed in families, and are not only earning their living, but gaining a sense of independence and self-reliance which, as paupers fed and clothed by the mission, they could never acquire. Mrs. Downs is matron of the home. Mrs. Ida Hull has done noble work in house-to-house visitation. One woman, a former inmate of the home, has united with the church, and two others have joined on probation as a result of Mrs. Hull's labors. Mrs. Hull also teaches an infant day school in the mission, which has doubled its attendance during the year. The infant class is now an important feature of our Sabbath schools, as many as twentyfive little Chinese being gathered in every Sabbath. There are now about sixty children in San Francisco belonging to Christian families connected with our mission, and to give these little native sons and daughters of the Golden West a Christian education is a duty which our Woman's Missionary Society cannot neglect. Six of these children have already expressed a desire to join our church. The results are very encouraging to the noble ladies who manage this Society, as well as to the agents they employ. The California Conference makes the following recommendations: 1. It is evident that the increasing demand for evangelistic work among the Chinese necessitates enlarged facilities for aggressive measures, which our present quarters, located on the line that divides. Chinatown from the white population, does not af ford. We must have a place right in the slums of the Chinese district, where heroic street work is even now going on. Such a place is very difficult to secure, as rents are high, and the prejudice against such a movement is strong and shared by the property holders, who do not hesitate to rent their property for the liquor traffic, but refuse to do so for religious services. The sum of five hundred dollars, appropriated by the Missionary Society, is utterly inadequate to meet this care. We should have at least one thousand dollars per annum with which to inaugurate and sustain such an enterprise. 2. The fact that there are now fifteen hundred native born Chinese children in San Francisco, with their number rapidly increasing, demands thorough and effective appliances for their education, among which we commend the kindergarten system. 3. The exclusion of the Chinese from our country, while unlimited immigration of the lowest classes from southern Europe is allowed, many of whom are immoral in character, all of whom are under the authority of an ecclesiasticism, the polity and practice of which is at variance with all of our American principles, is a discrimination against the Chinese, unjust, unwise, and un-American. 4. We arraign the Federal Government for its com. plicity with the odious opium traffic. It now obtains 25 an important duty from a tax of twelve dollars per pound on all imported opium, aggregating one million of dollars per annum, and a revenue from all smuggled and confiscated opium equal to one half a million more. 5. We record with gratitude to God that these one hundred and eighteen Christianized Chinese are giv ing out of their poverty to the support of the Church and its benevolences the liberal amount of over fifteen dollars each. 6. We deplore the treatment visited upon the Chinese in our midst by private ruffianism and congressional legislation, as brutal and cowardly on the part of the offending citizens, and unstatesmanlike on the part of the United States Congress. Persian and Russian Notes. BY REV. P. 2. EASTON. UNDER date of October 14 Dr. Vanneman, writing from Tabriz, speaks of the deaths in the city from cholera as 10,000, and with the surrounding villages 26,600; Teheran and villages, 18,000 or 20,000; all Persia from 75,000 to 100,000. Mr. Högberg, the Swedish missionary at Tabriz, thus relates his personal experience: "As you know, we heard the sound of cholera even when you left, and so it stood up to the end of July. I had before expected to take a trip to Karadagh, and now it was time that I must go if I should come home and then go to meet Dr. Ekman in Astara about the middle of September. I went out then with Mirza Hhassan, and after eight days' journey we had the cholera before us in the villages and towns. She "We remained in Ajali for two days expecting a messenger from Tabriz, and he brought the news that we had cholera in Tabriz. We went back as quick as possible, but I found our home empty, and when I reached the girls' school I found my children and Miss Nystrom, but not my beloved Eva. was both dead and buried. She died the third of August. Then the little one, Eunice, followed her on the fifteenth, our wedding day. You understand better than I can write about the feelings I had then and still have. I am quiet under the will of God, but, on the other side, I know what I have lost." In the letter of Mr. Childs from Tabriz the idea is given that Dr. Bradford was the only one of the missionaries who remained in the city during the attack of cholera. This is not correct. Mr. Wilson and Miss Holliday were there all through the cholera epidemic. On the part of the others there was no fleeing, but the carrying out of a plan which had been determined upon two months before the cholera reached the city. Those who were appointed to go went, and, those appointed to stay remained; each one doing his duty, those who went as well as those who stayed. 26 How North American Indians Learn to Read the Bible. Some time ago I wrote to a friend in Russia asking him to procure for me a copy of a certain article in a Russian magazine. He says that he went to a public library, and was there "shown a printed list issued in 1884 from the General Censure Office, requiring the Otechestrenomy Zapiski for several years, including 1880 and 1881, to be taken out of circulation and not allowed to be read in libraries. Trespassers upon this law are severely punished. "There seems to be a silent struggle going on against a dead form of religion, and an indifferentism which is masked under a compulsory official form of religion. "Your American nation has proved the neighbor of Russia, in the evangelical sense of the word, much more than those who were rather profuse in fraternizing, in words, and fair speeches with our country.” From Tiflis, Mr. Höijer, a Swedish missionary, speaks of a missionary journey from Tiflis to Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan. He left Hohannes (a Mussulman convent) in Kashgar, and an Armenian evangel. ical worker in Kokand, from whence he was driven by the Russian government and went to Bokhara. Near the close of October, the Mussulman authorities closed and sealed the Presbyterian Mission Church and the Boys' School in Tabriz. How North American Indians Learn to Read the Bible. TWENTY years ago I went out as a missionary to the Cree and Salteaux Indians, north of Lake Winnipeg. I found myself four hundred miles from the nearest post office, and was entirely among Indian people. The word of God printed by the Bible Society has been scattered broadcast over that land. We have the Bible in Cree, printed in what is called the syllabic character, the invention of an earnest missionary, the Rev. James Evans; a knowledge of this being so easily acquired, that within a few weeks at the utmost Indians can learn to read the word of God. I will give you an instance, showing how easily it is acquired. It has been my practice to go among the tribes to teach them to read the word of God by that means. I would go down, say to Nelson River, or to some place in the interior, where a missionary had never gone. There we built a school house, and I lived entirely on the game of the district. Then one day I took a burnt stick, and on the side of a rock I marked out the syllabic characters, "Ma, ne, too," aud so on. I got together a band of Indians, from the old man of eighty down to the little child of from six to eight, and we gradually committed those characters to memory, just as a little child in this country would the alphabet. I would go through those characters with the Indians while they smoked their pipes on the grass. After a while they would get impatient, but they would put down their pipes and say, "ma,' "ne," "too," as they looked at the rock. I would then say, แ ma," "ne," "too;" and they would repeat all together, "ma," ue," "too"-Manitu. That was the name of the Great Spirit! It came upon them as a revelation. There it was on the rock-God, whom they were accustomed to revere, the name made with a burnt stick on the side of the granite. O, bow interested they became! And then I would go on to join together words in the open Bible, and in a few days they would be reading the word of God. One day I was sitting in my own house, and on turning round I saw about ten or a dozen Indians. An Indian never knocks at the door. If he does not find the door of a dwelling open he will just put his hand on the latch and go in without knocking, and if you don't get up early in the morning you may find him coming into your bedroom after you. On that occasion I rose up and shook hands with three of them, and said: "What cheer? what cheer? what do you want with me? I don't recognize you; what place do you come from?" They replied, "Very far away." I said, "How far?" and they replied, "Thirteen nights!" The Indians estimate distance by the number of nights that they sleep away from their homes. These fellows had traveled all day and slept all night, and they had, it appeared, been traveling fourteen days. I said, "It must be something of great importance that has brought you so far?" They replied, "We have come for you." I looked at them, and they were such stalwart fellows that I thought with myself, "If you have come for me I had better surrender at once." I said, “Why have you come for me?" They said, "We have got a great book, but we don't know what it means; can you read the book?" I replied. “O, yes; and I took down my Indian Bible. I was incredulous when they told me where they lived, for I felt pretty certain that no missionary had ever gone to that land. I opened my Indian Bible, and I read, "Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; " and I found that they understood something of the truth. I was amazed, and said, "Why, you have had a missionary down in your land." They replied, "You are the first missionary that we ever saw." I said, "You have had a teacher?" They replied, "We never saw a teacher; what is a teacher?" I got interested at hearing these people wanting the word of God and at their telling me their story, and I asked, " How did this happen?" They said, A hunter came down to our country to hunt for marten, beaver, and other animals, and we used to go to him and talk with him. We found that he had with him a great book, and as we lay around the camp we listened to what he read, and the words were very sweet. We went to him one day when he was not hunting, and he read to us from the book." On hearing this I said, "Would you like to read the Bible for yourselves?" and they replied, "Yes." I then got some burnt bark, and taught them to read ma, ne," "too"-God: and before they left us they could read pretty well. 66 A Famous Document. Connected with the factories of the Hudson's Bay Company there were Indians who showed the strongest wish to read the Bible. They were told that it would save them a great deal of trouble if they could read the Bible. A whole case of Bibles from London had been sent to them, but they said, "We don't know what the Bible means." They said, in effect, that the Bible was to them like a musical instrument, that they could touch it here and there, but they could not combine the parts so as to produce music. "Will you come and explain it to us?" I could not go to them until the next winter, but I then harnessed my dogs and, with my faithful Indians, I went far into the interior. At last I found myself among people who had never seen a missionary or a teacher. But, in the wonderful way which I have described, they acquire the art of reading the word of God. It was the story of the Ethiopian eunuch over again. I had to travel about 450 miles to reach my destination, the temperature being from forty to fifty degrees below zero. Some time ago a number of Romish priests came from Lower Canada, and endeavored to make inroads 4pon our Indian missions; but the Indians had the Bible open before them, and this proved one of our greatest safeguards. When these priests came among us I did not actively oppose them, but I kept my eyes open. I afterward said to the Indians, What did those gentlemen say to you?" "O," said they; "they said much about the Virgin Mary, and how ready she was to intercede for us." I said to them, "Well, what does your Bible say about that?" They replied, "The Saviour says, Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'' The priests found themselves greatly mistaken. The Indians said that they would not trust to the Virgin, but would go at once to the Son of God; and the result was that we never, I believe, lost a convert.Rev. E. R. Young, in The Bible Society Gleanings. A Famous Document. EARLY in the history of the Serampore Mission, Carey, Marshman, Ward, and their brethren signed a Deed of Agreement, which embodied the principles on which they meant to carry on their holy work. It was a lengthy document, but these were its chief clauses: 1. It is absolutely necessary that we set an infinite value upon immortal souls. 2. It is very important that we should gain all the information we can of the snares and delusions in which these heathens are held. 3. It is necessary, in our intercourse with the Hindus, that, as far as we are able, we abstain from those things which would increase their prejudices against the Gospel. 27 5. In preaching to the heathen we must keep to the example of Paul, and make the great subject of our preaching, Christ the Crucified. The doctrine of Christ's expiatory death and all-sufficient merits has been, and must ever remain, the grand means of conversion. 6. We ought to be easy of access. to condescend to the natives as much as possible, and on all occasions to treat them as our equals. 7. Another important part of our work is to build up and to watch over the hosts that may be gathered. 8. It is only by means of native preachers that we can hope for the universal spread of the Gospel throughout this immense continent. Let us, therefore, use every gift, and continually urge on our native brethren to press upon their countrymen the glorious Gospel of the blessed God. 9. It becomes us, too, to labor with all our might, in forwarding translations of the sacred Scriptures in the languages of Hindustan, 10. That which, as a means, is to fit us for the discharge of these laborious and unutterably important labors is the being instant in prayer and the cultivation of personal religion. 11. Finally, let us give ourselves up unreservedly to this glorious cause. Let us never think that our time, our gifts, our strength, our families, or even the clothes we wear are our own. Let us sanctify them all to God and his cause. This deed was read thrice a year, that its high aims and pure motives might be ever before the missionaries. Dr. George Smith calls it a Preparatio Evangelica, and says it embodies the divine principles of all Protestant scriptural missions, and is still a manual to be daily pondered by every missionary and every Christian. 66 Topics for the Week of Universal Prayer, (Suggested by the Evangelical Alliance.) SUNDAY, JAN. 1.-Sermons.-The Exalted Saviour's Gifts for Men." Psalm 68. 18, 19; John 16. 23, 24; Acts 5, 31. MONDAY, JAN. 2.-Humiliation and Thanksgiving. Confession of the Church's sins of omission and commission, compromising and understating God's truth, mistrusting his power, neglecting his call, and keeping back his due. Psalm 32. Prayer for grace to put away whatever hinders individual, famils, national, and congregational blessings; and for a special blessing on this year's observance of the Week of Prayer, which begins with New Year's Day. Neh. 9. 1-3, and Hag. 1. Praise and Thanksgiving : For God's revelation of himself in his word; for the fruitful observance of the Week of Universal Prayer; for the increase of brotherly love, missionary 4. It becomes us to watch all opportunities of doing zeal, and desire after holiness. Rev. 5. 11-13; Jer. good. 33. 3. 28 Talk of the Lawyer and the Pastor about Giving. TUESDAY, JAN. 3.-The Church Universal.-Prayer for the demonstration, in power, of the Spirit in the Church; pleading the specific promise of the Ascending Lord (Acts 1. 8); prayer that "the Holy Church throughout all the world" may be more humble and diligent in the study of the word, in discerning God's purposes, and in obtaining his promises; more active in her witness for Christ, in the observance of his Sabbath, and in obedience to his will; more faithful in her protest against Romanism, Sacerdotalism, and Latitudinarianism; and more eager in her looking for his glorious appearing. John 5. 39; Titus 2. 1114: 2 Peter 3. 11-13. WEDNESDAY, JAN. 4.-Nations and their Rulers.Prayer that all earthly rulers may acknowledge their responsibilty to the King of kings; that all persecutions of Christians may be stayed; that anarchy, oppression, and slavery may cease; that drunkenness, impurity, and gambling may be put away; that the opium traffic may be speedily abolished; that trade disputes may yield to truth and righteousness; that the "making haste to be rich" and the love of luxury may be arrested, and that God's day may be nationally honored. 1 Tim. 2. 1-4; Psalm 67; Rom. 13. 1-7. THURSDAY, JAN. 5.-Foreign Missions.-Praise to God for great missionary progress within recent years. Psalm 66. Prayer for missionary churches and societies, Bible and tract organizations, and for all efforts for diffusing the pure Gospel in the heathen and Mohammedan world; for native churches and their pastors; for secret believers who have not yet openly confessed Christ; for missionaries-men and women, evangelistic, educational, medical--and all their helpers; for the removal of all hindrances to Christianity. Matt. 28. 19, 20; Rom. 1. 14-17. FRIDAY, JAN. 6.-Home Missions and the Jews.Praise for the success increasingly vouchsafed to every branch of evangelistic work, and for blessing which has attended missions to the Jews. Luke 15; Acts 2. 41-47. Prayer for all Christian workers, and that every personal effort to win souls for Christ may be conducted with wisdom and power. Acts 4. 13-31. Prayer for God's Ancient People Israel, that the veil upon their hearts may be taken away; that all persecutions of the Jews may cease; that Christians may clearly understand God's purposes concerning Israel, and let their light so shine among Jewish neighbors as to attract them to the Gospel of Christ. Amos 9. 11-15; Rom. 11. 12-15. SATURDAY, JAN. 7.-Families and Schools.-Prayer that God's word may be accepted as the one true basis of the education of the young in the home, the school, and the college; that husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, may, in their mutual relations observe the law of Christ; that family worship may become more general, and that domestic life may be sweetened and hallowed by godliness; that increasing blessing may rest upon Sunday schools, Bible classes, and Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations. Deut. 6. 47; Mark 10. 13-22. SUNDAY, JAN. 8.-Sermons.-The Promised Outpouring.-Joel 2. 28-32. The plain command Ask ye of the Lord." Zech. 10. 1. Talk of the Lawyer and the Pastor about Giving. A SHORT time ago the writer listened to a conversation between a very spiritual minded, large giving lawyer and his pastor. The lawyer's Sabbath school class habitually reported collections much in excess of all others. The pastor noting the fact, the lawyer replied: "Why don't you preach upon the duty of the Lord's tenth? It was sanctioned by the Saviour and proportionate giving emphasized by Paul. The people nced reminding, and it pays soul and purse." "Ah," rejoined the preacher; "that is it, I don't want to teach the people to give from the wrong motive." That is," said the lawyer, "the child who obeys his father, and receives the promised reward, is less worthy than the child who pays no regard either to the command or its reward." "O, I meet the difficulty," replied the preacher, "by presenting the general duty of giving." 44 'Perhaps that is the reason," suggested a third person, "that all the remainder of this large Sunday school, having the general indefinite idea of giving, gives little more than this one class." Then the pious lawyer said, "You can't make motives for people, but you can present God's plan and God's promises. I state a case to a jury and put it in as strong a light as I think I should, and then rest it. My duty ends there." "Could not a man," said the third, "begin to obey God from a selfish motive and come to a better one by that? St. James says the 'doer... shall be blessed in his deed.' The ten lepers asked cleansing from a material, selfish motive, and one by that was filled with gratitude, giving glory to God." "Well, yes, that's so," said the preacher; "but we commonly think seeking health a more worthy motive than seeking wealth." Number four, having stopped to listen, said: "What about a poor man in need of help to shelter his wife and little ones? What of that motive? that means money." "That means money, emphatically," said the lawyer, and it means more. It means faith in God; it means trust. And the lowest kind of trust in God is better than none. It is better than any kind of trust in man, and will do more for a man who holds on to it. It shows he is setting in toward right and will get there' one day. Get your Bibles; we are not wiser than God. Look over in Psalms, I forget |