Missionary Work of Methodism. 535 in oblivion the religion of the Bible, with its swing of conquest, will be triumphantly marching on, to bring the whole world to the feet of its Christ. "For they are dead that sought the young child's life," was true in the first century, has been true for nineteen hundred years, and will be true till the millennium has crowned our Christ with universal triumph! Christianity always lives to read a burial service and sing a requiem over the graves of its enemies. Now what humble part has Methodism borne in this supreme work of the Christian Church? In its origin it was itself a missionary movement of the eighteenth century against the dead formalism of the Established Church and the almost lifelessness of nonconformity in England. Its first missionary work was to reach the lost and neglected millions of that land, and also to revive evangelical religion, and formulate a preachable theology in the denominations of two continents. It has been a missionary of evangelical zeal and God-honoring doctrines to Christian pulpits everywhere. The first missionary society of Methodism in America was organized in 1819. It was purely a home missionary society until 1833, when its first foreign mission began in Liberia. Its home missions literally cover the republic from Maine to California, and from Texas to Minnesota. In 1830 its most valuable piece of property west of Michigan was sold for $800. Since that time its home missions have spread to the Golden Gate and have gathered into their folds several thousand churches, hundreds of thousands of communicants, and between thirty and forty millions of dollars of church property. In eight of its home mission States there are more communicants of Methodism than of any three of the largest Protestant denominations united. The foreign mission fields of all Methodism include Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, St. Petersburg in Russia, Bulgaria, Mexico, South America, Japan, Korea, China, India, Malaysia, Fiji Islands, Friendly Islands, Georgia Islands, and many other islands of the sea, besides the continent of Africa. The Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church alone has at least four thousand missionary workers in the foreign work, and five thousand in home missions. The Methodist Episcopal Church raised last year for foreign missions $1,041,393, which is the largest sum contributed for that work in 1892 by any denomination in America. The annual contribution of all Methodism for missions is over $3,000,000. The members and probationers of heathen converts in all Methodism are over three hundred thousand. Methodism in America was late in entering the foreign mission fields. The first three quarters of a century of existence in this land were almost wholly employed in developing from nothing a powerful organization-her church property, her schools and colleges, her universities and theological seminaries, which amount to-day in all Methodism in America to more than $300,000,000 of property. The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church originated in 1869, and the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the same Church in 1881, both of which are vigorous and advancing organizations. In 1858 we had but one heathen convert as the result of our labors. That lone soul represented all the fruit she had gathered from the heathen nations. Since that year her foreign missions have marked a steady and, later, a glorious triumph. Malaysia, our youngest foreign mission, already has more preachers in the vernacular, more children in schools, and more converts than all our heathen missions thirty years ago. Our work in China is extensive and growing with revivals of a marked character. We have schools, hospitals, and universities and church property in China worth more than $400,000. Conversions are multiplying rapidly and the future is golden with promise. In Japan our work is strong and advancing. In Mexico we have more results to report after twenty years' work among that Romish population than were achieved in India, 536 Missionary Work of Methodism. which is now our greatest success, in the first twenty years of its history. I have not time to detail the results in all fields. Bishop William Taylor is striding over the continent of Africa as if pacing off a new empire for the Lord Jesus Christ. But in India the missions of Methodism have reached the highest success, perhaps, ever known in the history of foreign missions. In the past two years more than forty thousand heathens have abandoned idolatry and accepted of Christianity, and been baptized in the missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church alone, and more are coming this year for baptism than ever before. There are more Sunday school scholars in the North India Conference than in any other Conference in Methodism. We are unable by our The axles of his chariot Our successes have become our burdens in foreign lands. contributions to keep pace with the triumphs of the Redeemer. are hot with the speed of his coming, and the wheels glow with the swiftness of his progress! It is no longer a question of open doors or consecrated men and women, but only of money to multiply the workers. We could use in India or China alone all the resources of our Church with economy and success. As yet we are but in the early seed sowing of our mission work. The golden harvest is yet to ripen if we are true to the Master. Pentecostal waves of evangelizing power will, erelong, sweep over these hoary empires of heathenism, and they shall come to Christ by the hundred thousand a year. We have only been doing the preliminary and preparatory work for the great consummation by the Holy Spirit. For twenty years scoffers passed by the shores of Hell Gate where two derricks grimly stood, weather beaten. Two piles of débris were the only records of success for the two decades. The superficial observers and mockers knew not what was being done underneath. Great chambers were cut into the vast body of rock beneath the waves; then holes were drilled in every direction from these chambers; these holes were packed with dynamite, and then wires led from every charge of dynamite beneath the waves back to the land, where they were connected with a powerful electric battery. When all was ready the tiny finger of the baby girl of General Newton touched the key of fire, and in one instant a million tons of rock were lifted from their ancient bed, and to-day the world's commerce sails safely over what was once a "maelstrom" of destruction! So the missionaries are chambering beneath the ancient institutions of heathenism and are steadily drilling in the vast mass, packing their work with the dynamite of Bibles, Christian schools, Christian churches, Christian literature, and Christian homes, and when their work is fully ready the Holy Spirit will explode this dynamite with fire from on high, and heathenism will be rent and torn with destruction. I am not extravagant in naming this power of the Gospel "dynamite,” for the Holy Ghost has employed the very Greek word from which we derive that term to express the terrible majesty of the Gospel: "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the dunamis [dynamite] of God unto salvation." The representatives of Hinduism and Buddhism, frescoing the nakedness of their effete religion, may come to the World's Parliament of Religions, and suggest-with the indorsement of the liberals who renounce evangelical Christianity, and the liberal press that sought to strike down our Christian Sabbath-that, perhaps, the final religion of the world will be a compromise, a composite of all religions. Out upon such vapidity! Christianity-with a supernatural Christ, a supernatural revelation, and a supernatural life in the heart of her millions, witnessing to her divine origin and saving and cleansing power; with her banners farther advanced than ever before; with her augmenting legions more victorious than ever-has no compromise to make'with heathenism! It is the final religion. We have the sun at noonday, what care we for the evening stars? Missionary Work of Methodism. 537 Read the Crisis of Missions, by Dr. Pierson, and there you have the verbatim confession of prominent Hindus-judges, magistrates, and scholars in their own land—that heathenism is doomed to pass away and Christianity will over all prevail. No matter for the bombast and bravado of these gentlemen strutting on the stage of the World's Parliament of Religions amid the applause of Christian courtesy, if at home the governing mind of Hinduism sees the handwriting on the wall that foretells its overthrow. Here is one fact which is overwhelming proof. In 1892 a conclave of Hindus in India was summoned and held to discover, if possible, some method of averting the doom of their religion by checking the advance of Christianity. They borrowed from Christianity the weapon they desired to use. They appointed October 30, 1892, as a day of universal prayer in India to their chief gods that the deities would interfere to turn back the invasion and power of Christianity. What was the result? 1. Their alarm was revealed clearly. 2. Their coming overthrow was confessed unless the gods interfered. 3. The hosts of Christ appealed to the God who could answer by fire. 4. The futility of their attempt to check the advance of Christianity was seen in the fact that in the year that has followed twenty-five per cent more Hindus have been converted than were ever converted in any previous year! Let these gentlemen enjoy their brief season of boasting, but we have their army on the run. With this dynamite of God surcharging the work and consecrated workers of all missions, the triumph of the kingdoms of Christ in the world is unquestionable. The dawn of the day of millennial victory already gilds the heavens with the splendors of coming conquests. 'Tis coming up the steep of Time, and this old world is growing brighter. We may not live to see the dawn sublime, but high hopes make our hearts throb lighter. We may be sleeping in the ground, when it awakes the world with wonder, 'Tis coming! Yes! 'Tis coming! THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN.-Dr. A. B. Leonard, who has been visiting Japan, writes as follows of the people: "The common people live in very poor houses, usually made of mud held in place by a lattice of bamboo or reeds, and their clothing is of coarse material and exceedingly scanty in quantity. Multitudes of men and boys wear only a loin cloth, the value of which would not equal a nickel, while an equal number of women and girls are innocent of garments above the waist. Large numbers of boys and girls under ten years of age may be seen who are absolutely nude. Where such conditions obtain there can be no refinement or modesty, and but a low type of morality. The religions of the people have also failed to provide for their intellectual development. Up to the period of the revolution the education of the masses was almost wholly neglected, and it is not strange that now widespread illiteracy prevails. Since Western influences have been somewhat potential a system of popular education has been provided, but at the present time not more than one half the children of school age are under instruction. But the indications are all hopeful. In twenty-five years great changes have occurred. There has been improvement in temporal conditions, and the moral and intellectual elevation of the people has been of a marked character. The stagnant sea of a civilization produced by false religions is being stirred, and the people are waking from a slumber of centuries. That they should in their newly awakened life exhibit idiosyncrasies is only what might be reasonably expected. If they are opinionated and egotistical, it is owing in part to the flattery they have received at the hands of foreigners of the Alcott and Arnold type, and in part to the transitional state through which they are now passing." 538 Four Centuries of Christianity in America. Four Centuries of Christianity in America. BY PROFESSOR H. M. SCOTT, OF CHICAGO. WE are just entering upon the fifth century of American history. At no centennial turning point of our national life could a retrospect be taken with circumstances so favorable and outlook so wide and clear as now. When the first hundred years closed with 1592 America was still little more than a name in the thoughts of men. In 1692 England was all occupied with the revolution which had put William of Orange upon the throne of the Stuarts; France was torn and divided by the persecutions of the Huguenots under Louis XIV, while Germany was slowly recovering from the thirty years' war and the robberies of France. In 1792 Christendom was still less in position to contemplate peacefully the place of America and her history in the development of Christianity; for then the horrors of the French Revolution, following, as a sort of Satanic caricature, the American Revolution, and shaking the whole political and social system of Europe to its foundations, blinded the eyes of most students of history to the true significance of life in the New World. cially in its relation to the progress of Christianity was the discovery of America most ignored by scholars a hundred years ago. This could not well have been otherwise, for a proper estimate of far-off lands by Christian thinkers is inseparable from some adequate conception of the foreign missionary duties of the Church and a century ago the idea of foreign missions was just beginning to show itself in Protestant communities. Espe What has Christianity gained from four hundred years of American history? First of all, it might be answered, and this answer includes essentially all the rest, Christianity by means of America has added to her beneficent domain the largest, most powerful, most intelligent, most active and aggressive nation of the earth. The sixty-five millions of Christian citizens within these United States form the richest acquisition made by Christianity in the past four hundred years. Here the persecuted and the poor of all lands have found a home; and here, taught by necessity, men have set in motion new influences and started new activities, which have vitally affected the progress of trade and commerce, invention, civil government, general culture, and religion. Especially in its religious position has the acquisition of America been of supreme importance to the Church of Christ; for not only has America saved and built into a Christian nation millions of mankind, but in doing so she has produced a kind of Christian nation which is superior to that of any of the lands from which her people came. De Tocqueville said, sixty years ago, in his Democracy in America: "There is no country in the world where Christian worship exerts greater influence upon the souls of men than in America." Zahn, a German Calvinist, of somewhat pessimistic character, is nevertheless compelled, in his Sketch of the Evangelical Church in America in the Nineteenth Century, 1889, to admit that in growth, in liberty, in self support, in orthodoxy, in reverence for the Bible and the Sabbath, and in religious activity, the American Churches excel all others. Nippold, a rationalistic German theologian, in the last edition of his Handbuch der neusten Kirchengeschichte (vol. iii, p. 5), 1892, says that in matters of the "inner life" as shown in the "Gesta Christi" none of the European State Churches can for a moment compare with the Churches in America. And Bryce, in the second edition of his American Commonwealth (vol. ii, p. 583ff.), 1892, sums up the religious superiority of America in the following points, the enumeration being mine: 1. The influence of Christianity is greater and more widespread here than in any part of Europe. 2. "The social and economic position of the clergy is above that of" the clergy in any other land. 3. Social jealousies among clergy and denominations do not appear in America as in Europe, because all are on an equality, and hence they are more ready to cooperate than in the Old World. 4. Churches are much more equally distributed in America and better attended than in Europe. 5. Interest in theological and religious questions is greater here than elsewhere, unless perhaps in England. Bryce adds: "The Bible and Christian theology altogether do more in the way of forming the imaginative background to an average American view of the world of man and nature than they do in modern Protestant Europe." 6. The social side of church life is more developed here than in Europe; the American congregation is the center of a group of literary, benevolent, and other societies in a way little known across the sea. 7. Personal interest in religious work, and the amount of money given for churches, for education, for charity, are greater in America than elsewhere. Instead of offering any estimate of my own as to the quantitative and qualitative character of the contribution which America has made to our common Christianity I have preferred to let these French, German, and English historians give their judgment. MISSION WORK. I now turn to notice a second phase of this wide subject, namely, the vast mission work which has been undertaken in direct and indirect connection with America and her history. The very discovery of America was associated in the minds of men with the growth of the Church. Columbus thought of getting money in India with which to equip a missionary army to deliver Jerusalem from the Turks Four Centuries of Christianity in America. and convert the Mohammedans. He said the prophet Isaiah showed him the way to America. When Luther heard of the New World he exclaimed, "Why, Germany was converted within eight hundred years of the time of the apostles, and how many islands and countries have been discovered, in which after fifteen hundred years no such grace has appeared!" Soon explorers were pressing all along the coast of America, and reports came to Europe of divers sorts of strange tribes-Eskimo, Micmacs, Mohawks, Aztecs, barbarous and civilized, but all sunk in idolatry and degradation. It was not an accidental thing that Martin Luther was a boy only nine years old when Columbus discovered the New World. The Reformation brought a new Christianity to light just when God had revealed a new land beyond the sea, to be the dwelling place of the greatest Protestant nation of the world. The cry of the heathen in America appealed to both the Roman Catholic and the Reformed Churches of Europe; but years passed by before the persecuted and divided Protestants could enter upon foreign mission work. The Catholic Church, stirred by the discovery of America, took a new departure in work for the heathen. From Spain and Portugal, also from Italy, monks soon set out for the New World. In 1493 a Benedictine with twelve companions sailed for America. Soon after Portugal sent missionaries to South America. France also entered the field, and before long from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the delta of the Mississippi French missionaries explored new lands for France and baptized new converts for the Roman Church. The Jesuit order especially entered into foreign mission work, and sought by the mission conquest of America and the East to make up for the loss of Protestant Europe. The New World led the Protestants more slowly into the foreign field; but when they did enter it they did so with much greater thoroughness. Instead of sending a few monks to travel along the rivers and baptize by wholesale the wondering Indians, the Protestants decided to make their own homes in America, and both preach the Gospel to the heathen and build up a free, Christian commonwealth for themselves. The difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic mission methods in the New World can be seen by a comparison of North America and South America. Three points especially are worthy of notice: 1. North America was settled by Protestants, who taught the right of individual liberty, the Bible as the rule of faith, and Christ alone as Lord of the conscience. South America was settled by Roman Catholics, who made ignorance the mother of devotion, and obedience to the Church the supreme law of life. 2. North America was settled by farmers and citizens, men who looked for a home, a free home, a godly home. South America was overrun by sol 539 diers and priests, men who sought money and fame, who had no idea of making their home in America, and with no thought of liberty. 3. North America was settled by men of strict, stern morals, who brought their wives and children with them, and who built up a true, pure family and social system. But South America was settled largely by soldiers and adventurers, men of loose morals, who lived with the native women and produced a halfbreed nation, which inherited much of the vice and weakness of its origin, and has not yet risen to true civilization and self-government. The settlement of New England took place as part of a planned effort to promote religious liberty and also to carry on true missionary work in opposition to the false missions of Romanism. Cotton Mather says that the first general consideration "for the Plantation of New England" was that it would be" a service unto the Church of great consequence, to carry the Gospel unto those parts of the world, and raise a bulwark against the kingdom of antichrist, which the Jesuits labor to rear up in all parts of the world." The earliest Protestant foreign missionary efforts took place in connection with America. In 1556 the Church of Geneva sent out fourteen missionaries to preach the pure Gospel to both heathen and Romanists in Brazil. In 1649, under Oliver Cromwell, the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England" was organized in old England. But this society arose because of the labors of John Eliot, from 1646 on, among the Indians in Massachusetts. The labors of Eliot, Mahew, Cotton, and others among the native Americans, and the reports of their work published in England, led indirectly to the organization of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in all Parts of the World. The conversion of America, both North and South, to Christianity in connection with the Protestant and Catholic Churches, is a wonderful result of recent history. With the exception of a few small tribes all dwellers in America profess and call themselves Christian. It took eighteen hundred years to overtake heathenism in Europe. In only four hundred years has American paganism disappeared, and its followers have accepted Christianity. And closely connected with this speedy conversion of the New World is the stimulus which America has given both directly and indirectly to foreign missions in all lands. Besides stirring the mother country to send the Gospel to the heathen the churches of America have been foremost in doing similar work themselves. There are about sixty societies, representing all branches of the Protestant Church, now sending missionaries from these United States to all parts of the heathen world at an expense of about three million dollars a year. A recent German writer (Plath, Was bedeutet die Entdeckung Amerikas für die christliche Kirche? 1892) says that the American Churches have |