^% ,1^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Viss \ugast.'?. '"illiams ''rs..T. IT. Tanner Cornell University Library BV2060 .T63 Christian missions in tlie nineteenth cen olin 3 1924 029 338 351 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029338351 Christian Missions Nineteenth Century REV. ELBERT S. TODD, D.D. NEW YORK: HUNT &= £A TON CINCINNA TI: CRANSTON &= STOWE 1890 Copyright, 1890. by HUNT & EATON, New York, TO THE CONGREGATION OF GRACE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, BALTIMORE, with a kindness truly christian, and a thoughtfulkes3 peculiarly its own, has made five years of the writer's service seem but a few days, this little volume AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. Baltimore, Md., July i, 1890. PREFACE, Foreign travelers who are also victims of cacoethes scribendi no longer attempt to write up Europe, or even any single country. They content themselves with a notice of places here and there which, not being on the beaten track of travel, have escaped the attention of traveling book-makers. Such is the present volume ; no attempt at a discussion of Chris- tian missions, but an effort to call attention to some phases of this many-sided theme which seem to have been neglected. The work of missions has too often been regarded as a movement entirely modern, and so one that has no precedents by which it may be guided or lessons of warning which should be heeded. Gross injustice has thus often been done to the Church of the Middle Ages and of apostolic times. The experience of the past has been gained at too great a sacri- fice and is altogether too valuable to be thus 6 Preface. thrown away. The Roman Catholic Church may not be a safe guide, but to refuse to re- ceive lessons of wisdom which her history furnishes is equal folly with the captain who refuses to allow for rocks in the channel be- cause they were made known by the wreck of a rival boat. An effort is made in these pages to suggest some of the most obvious of these lessons, and especially to call attention to valuable hints which they furnish concerning the question of methods. The author omits the usual appeal to the critics for mercy, knowing that so small a spread of sail on literary waters will be likely to escape their notice altogether. Baltimore, ya««a;ry i, 1890. CONTENTS, I- PAGE The Conversion of our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. 9 II. The Missionary Triumphs of Paganism ig III. Christianity an Oriental Religion 32 IV. Characteristics of Ethnic Religions 41 V. The Solidarity of Humanity 68 VI. War and the Progress of Christianity 80 VII. Commerce and Christianity 90 VIII. The Humanitarian View 100 8 Contents. IX. PAGE Statesmanship and Missions 114 X. Methods 140 XI. Success 162 Christian Missions in the nineteenth century. I. THE CONVERSION OF OUR ANGLO-SAXON ANCESTORS. Ex uno disce omnes. Grave doubts exist in the minds of many as to whether the present attempt to evangel- ize the pagan and semi-pagan nations among which our missions are situated is not an at- tempt at the impossible ; at least, whether the success of such an undertaking is not highly- improbable. Such opinions are openly ad- vanced in the confidence that at least no one can show that they are without foundation. But what if it be answered that such an ob- jection is at variance with the plainest facts of history; that not only are there numerous examples of such conversion, but that our own Anglo-Saxon ancestors were thus made 10 Christian Missions. Christians, so that we ourselves are striking examples of what is declared to be impossible? The best answer to the charge that a thing cannot be done is to show that it has been done repeatedly, and what has been done may, under like circumstances, be done again. No more striking illustration of this appeal to facts could be desired than that furnished by the conversion from paganism to Christian- ity of the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons who were the progenitors of the English-speaking race, the history of which is both a thrilling story and a convincing argument. Tacitus informs us what unpromising subjects for civilization, to say nothing of Christianity, these tribes were while they still dwelt in Germany. Gibbon speaks of them as clothed in scanty garments made of skins of animals or of coarse linen, and dwelling in low huts, which were constructed without use of stone, brick, or tiles. For sustenance they depended on wild game, their domestic herds, and corn, which seems to have been the only cultivated prod- uct. As for money — they had none, nor at that time any written language. The care of the household, as well as the Our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. ii management of the land and cattle, was left to those too old to hunt or fight, or to women and slaves. War was regarded as the only oc- cupation worthy of men. They were immod- erately addicted to drunkenness and gambling, and gloried in spending whole days and nights at the table, where the blood of friends was often shed in drunken brawls. Woman seems to have held a higher place among them than among many barbarous tribes, though most of the drudgery fell to her lot. The Saxons accepted, though they were too uncultured to reduce to poetry, the sen- timent, *' Who loves not wine, woman, and song, Remains a fool his whole life long." They worshiped a variety of visible deities, among which were fire, earth, and the ocean, together with many imaginary deities which were supposed to preside over the most im- portant interests of life. The names of the days of the week still recall the gods that were then worshiped. They had no carved images or visible representations of the gods, because they knew nothing of sculpture even in its rudest forms. We know 12 Christian Missions. little of their modes of worship, save that they had a priesthood, a complicated system of divination, and believed that a human sacri- fice, now and then, was the most acceptable offering to the gods. " As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could rave and steal ; So through many a peaceful inlet Tore the Norsemen's eager keel." Such were our ancestors — little better than savages and not as far advanced in civilization as the average pagan nation of to-day — when they crossed the English Channel, in the middle of the fifth century, and took up their abode in Britain. They brought with them their language, customs, and religion, and departed from the old life only in that they now united against the Britons, whom they rapidly sub- dued, leaving every-where monuments of human bones and ruins of homes and cities. When they had subdued and well-nigh ex- terminated their foes they turned their arms, as of old, against one another, and Saxon, Jute, and Angle were engaged in an indis- criminate struggle as to which should be greatest. Here was pagan soil, pure and Our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. 13 simple as any that either continent can now furnish. What more hopeless task seemingly than for the Prince of peace to conquer these in- veterate fighters, the Lord of purity to make consistent followers out of these constitutional drunkards and gamblers, and the one God come to be accepted where there were gods enough to furnish names for the days of the week, and, if desirable, for those of the month ! Yet such a result was brought about and by the very means we are now using for a similar work in pagan lands. It began with Gregory, on whose tomb at Rome is in^ribed : " To English Saxons Christian truth he taught. And a believing flock to heaven brought." Bede, the earliest historian of the English, tells us that while yet a monk, Gregory wan- dered through the market-place, which then was probably the old Forum of Trajan, and saw a group of slaves of fair skin and golden hair, who were waiting for a purchaser. Greg- ory at once entered into conversation with the owner of the slaves, of which Bede has the fol- lowing account : 14 Christian Missions. " From what country do these slaves come ? " Gregory asked. The trader answered, " They are Angles." " Not Angles, but angels," he remarked, " with faces so angel-like. From what country come they ? " " They come," said the merchant, " from Deira," pronouncing the word, as if in derision, De-ira. " Yes, plucked from God's ire and called to Christ's mercy. " said the monk. " And who is their king?" When told that his name was Alia, he remarked that it sounded a little like Al- leluia, and he went away wondering if means could not be found to send the Gospel to the Angles. Seven years after he was made supreme pontiff at Rome, and immediately appointed Augustine to the work of carrying out his cherished desire for the conversion of the Angles. Augustine, with twenty companions, set out, yet the goal seemed so far and the issue of their undertaking so uncertain, that after a few months he returned, begging that he might be " spared from undertaking so toil- some and dangerous a journey." He was bid- den to persevere, and A. D. 597 this pioneer band landed on the very spot on the coast of Our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. 15 Britain where the wild Saxon tribes had landed on their first entrance into the country- one hundred and fifty years before. The Saxons had conquered the Britons ; now this band of twoscore had come to con- quer them. The way seems to have been pre- pared for them in a providential manner. Ethelbert, king of that part of the island, had married Bertha, a French princess, and a Chris- tian. Through her Influence Augustine re- ceived a hearty welcome, and at once com- menced his labors at Canterbury. These mis- sionary fathers not only preached, but cleared the land, drained the bogs, plowed, sowed the fields, built houses, and planted vineyards — a method very like to a much discussed modern self-supporting plan. Such success attended their labors that at the end of a year the king was baptized, to the great joy of his Christian wife, and the Christmas following several thousands of the most prominent of his subjects followed the example of the king. Slowly, but certainly, and for all time, the old pagan faith gave way to Christianity; the heathen temples were cleansed and converted into churches, and the i6 Christian Missions. old gods were neglected or destroyed. The foundation of the first English cathedral was soon laid at Canterbury, and a monastery built for the training of missionaries, who were sent into all parts of the kingdom. There were times when it seemed as if the tide was going backward ; when missionary graves multiplied on every hand ; but new re-enforcements con- stantly arrived from Rome to fill the vacant places, so that, in the space of about one hun- dred years, all the English kingdoms be- came Christian — the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight being the last to cleave to the idols of the fathers. So completely was the work done that there is not a single worshiper of Thor or Odin in existence, and only a few names left to speak of a once unquestioned religious faith. This work was accomplished under circumstances precisely like those by which Christianity seeks to do a similar work in our day. Augustine and his companions went to a people that "asked not after them." Our Saxon fathers were as content with their re- religion as the most self-satisfied pagans of our own day. The missionaries had no Our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors. 17 military power on which to depend ; not even a single soldier. Yet they won the day, and the English-speaking race is at least not pagan. It does not follow, because the Saxons abandoned their idols and became Christians, that therefore other nations will do so ; but it does follow, the attempt to evangelize them is not a visionary project. What more convincing fact could be conceived to show that the modern missionary move- ment is not chimerical ! All that is now urged to show that failure must be inevitable was then present. Are modern pagans dark and benighted ? So were they. Is there a seemingly insurpassa- ble barrier of language now ? So was there then. Are pagan lands far away? Britain was much farther from Rome, if you count by time and expense required for the journey. Are the pagans of to-day wedded to their idols? So were they. Do they positively re- fuse often to hear? So did they. Have these nothing on which to depend but the might of truth and the blessing of God ? They much more. Add to this that the Anglo-Saxon character has been shown to be most difficult 1 8 Christian Missions. to impress because of its strength and the tenacity of its hold on all that is peculiar to it. The conversion of such a race makes the evangelization of any other race an easy problem. Paul intimates that he, the chief of sinners, was converted for an example that no one might ever despair. In like manner let those who doubt the possibility of modern missions look to the triumph of the Gospel over the Saxons and take heart. Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 19 II. MISSIONARY TRIUMPHS OF PAGANISM. Fas est ab hoste doceri. The present condition of pagan lands, where error seems to be so intrenched by centuries of undisputed sway, seems to some to not only create a doubt that Christianity can ever be dominant there, but to constitute a conclu- sive proof that it cannot. But from the same condition comes a class of facts that strengthens our faith not only in the possibility, but in the entire practicability of the scheme of modern missions. It is the old argument of judging the future by the past, and reasoning from the fact that a thing has been done that it can be done again. To feel the force of argument from this quarter we have only to call to mind the fact that the religious systems with which Chris- tianity has to contend are not native to the region where they now flourish. They are themselves foreign religions, and obtained 20 Christian Missions. ascendency by the very means we propose to use in replacing them by Christianity. After noticing their struggles and triumphs it is perfectly natural to ask, Why may not Chris- tianity repeat all this? With a survey of our mission fields the ar- gument strengthens at every step. The traveler in Rome meets countless priests and abbots, pilgrimages and processions. Crosses adorn the most imposing buildings and dangle from the girdle of both priest and nun. Cathe- drals and churches are on every hand. Chris- tianity is dominant. But one feels inclined to ask. Where is the old Roman faith ? Where is the temple of Janus, where that of Mars? Here are the ruins of the Pantheon, but where are the gods ? Where are the devout worshipers of Bacchus, and the devotees of the Saturnalia? These Italians are true descendants of the old Romans, but where is the faith of the fathers ? It has passed away. It has been entirely superseded by another. The work began with a few refugees from Jerusalem who fled from persecution, and were not only Christians, but had a religion that would bear transplanting. From time to time re-enforcements arrived. Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 21 the most noteworthy being a certain man of Tarsus. In three hundred years, without a single sword-stroke, or spear-thrust, or battle-shout, the work was done, and the Roman Empire, by virtue of an imperial edict, as well as by conversion of the emperor and of the chief men of the realm, was pagan no longer. We certainly gain no discouragement concerning the work in which we are engaged from notic- ing that imperial Rome, the nation of iron, succumbed to the preaching of a few Jews. Across the Ionian Sea is another instance, in "Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence." When Paul landed there he found the city wholly given to idolatry. Not only was the temple of Jupiter Olym- pus entirely given up to the statues of gods and heroes, but more than three thousand of these were scattered through the citadel, the forum, and places of public resort, so that as Pausa- nius says, it was easier to find a god than a man in Athens. Idolatry was embellished and defended by all that sculpture, poetry, and music could do in the period of their highest 22 Christian Missions. development. It seemed then, so far as man could forecast the future, that Olympus would, to the last generation, echo with the praises of Zeus and the goddess Minerva hold un- rivaled sway in the Parthenon. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, if appealed to at this time, would doubtless have informed Paul and Bar- nabas that it would be quite useless to attempt to supersede this religion of the beautiful with a faith that permitted no attempt at outward representation of the divine. That " the un- known God " would ever succeed in banishing all traces of Minerva Pan, Venus, and the rest of the three thousand, seemed — and was — most preposterous. But where are now these gods and their worshipers? The streets of that ancient city are now full again. The inhab- itants boast their descent from the men of Marathon and Thermopylae. The ruins of some of the old temples still stand — but the traveler who might chance to ask a modern Greek in the streets of Athens where the wor- shipers of Pan and Juno met would be an- swered by a vacant stare. The religion of ancient Greece has perished so completely that all our knowledge concern- Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 23 ing it for at least a thousand years past has been derived from the books. "It certainly does not show that the ruder forms of worship found in Japan, Korea, and Bulgaria cannot be superseded by Christianity to notice that that precise work was done long ago in classic Greece. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," shouted the surging crowds of Ephesus as they hustled Gaius and Aristarchus, preachers of a new re- ligion, into the theater and before the magis- trates. The temple of Diana was accounted one of the seven wonders of the world, and the image of the goddess, according to the ac- cepted tradition, had fallen down from heaven. If this was so she should have been able to defend herself from the new religion, which swept her, Dagon-like, into the dust and ob- livion. Let the weary workers along the Ganges and the Yang-tsze-Kiang, with the millions who help in their maintenance, think of Diana and take heart. Of Egypt, land of sphinxes and riddles, one thing we know certainly : that in earliest times she was idolatrous. The gods of the land and of her great river had innumerable temples 24 Christian Missions. dedicated to their service. The ruins of vast buildings once connected with idolatrous wor- ship, to say nothing of the pyramids, speak of the unquestioned sway of a rehgion that is now of the things that were. The dark-skinned Bedouin who helps the traveler up the slopes of the pyramid, cannot tell any thing about that religion, indeed, he never heard of it. He only knows that he and all his are Mohammedans. So far as he knows that religion always was all but uni- versal in Egypt. But the traveler knows that the religion which had its rise in Arabia in the seventh century came into Egypt along the track which Israel took in going out of bondage, and after an eventful struggle conquered, and mosque and muezzin and Koran triumphed where, so late as the time of Ptolemy, a Roman soldier was put to death for killing one of the gods of Egypt, which in the city where his legion was then stationed happened to be a cat. The Christian who studies the hiero- glyphics of the great monolith brought from Egypt to America may recall, with growing faith, the fact that it has been the silent wit.. Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 25 ness of a complete religious revolution among the swarthy natives that once swarmed around its base, who, from the worship of Isis and the sacred bull, became ardent followers of the false prophet. The pessimist concerning foreign missions finds no food for doubt here. The greatest problem that confronts Christ- ianity to-day is that which presents itself in India. The ruts of religious thought and practice are so deep that it seems to be im- possible to get out of them. Two hundred million people there seem to be welded to- gether into one mass that is as impervious to religious impressions, other than their own, as the reefs of the coral islands, which are made of the bodies of many times two hun- dred million coral insects, are to the waves that break upon them. It is a common re- mark in India that every thing seems stereo- typed, or run into unchanging and imperishable molds. Yet nothing is more certain than that the India of to-day is not the India of two thousand years ago. The change is, in part, to be attributed to a religious ascetic known to the world as Buddha, who was born up under the shadow of the Himalaya 26 Christian Missions. Mountains. The religion of which he was the author, and which is now accepted by at least one fourth of the human race, antagonized Brahmanism at every point. Brahmanism had elaborate ceremonies ; Buddhism was simple in form and doctrine. The one held to the despotism of caste ; the other proclaimed " all men are brothers." The first was utterly selfish and narrow ; the second demanded self-sacrifice and the most Taoundless benevolence. The first was in- trenched by centuries of careful observance; the second started with a humble ascetic who had not a single soldier to back up his claim, nor a rupee in his treasury. There was no modern pessimist on the ground to tell him that it was no use, so he commenced to preach and make followers. All the world now knows that in one hundred years Buddhism conquered India. A reaction occurred a century after- ward by which Brahmanism again recovered its hold on the people, and Buddhism was ex- pelled. But though Buddhism was driven out of India its spirit remained to impress for all time the millions of that land. It had vitality still left sufficient to send its missionaries to Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 27 Cashmere and Nepaul, to the Dekkan, to the people of Mysore, to Borneo and Ceylon, to Thibet and Tartary, where it still lives and rules triumphant, having more followers than any other religion. What does the notable success of Buddhism at the beginning, and the still more remark- able ones further on, show but that no nation has a stereotyped and unchanging faith, and that the propagation of new forms of religion is not only possible anywhere, but has actually taken place almost everywhere ? Nor should the triumph of Mohammedanism in India be forgotten. However it came into India, even though it might have been forced upon the people in the beginning at the point of the sword, yet when the English came to take a prominent part in Indian affairs they found Mohammedanism growing with remark- able rapidity, and that without any use of the sword. But for the interference of the British there is little doubt but India would be a Mo- hammedan country to-day. As it is, one fifth of the population is of the Mussulman faith, and the increase is steady. Unless we wish to claim for Mohammedanism more truth, 28 Christian Missions. zeal, and adaptation to humanity than we are willing to allow to Christianity we must admit that what the religion of the false prophet has done the religion of Christ may do. It is at least encouraging for the missionary in India and for his friends at home to remember that the undertaking in which he is engaged can- not be visionary or impracticable, since it has already been accomplished, and more than once, on that same soil and under less favor- able circumstances. But the most striking example of successful missionary effort is furnished by China. Up to the Christian era China had only two forms of worship : that of Confucius, her great sage, and the system of Loo-tse, called Tao- ism. The people were wedded to these sys- tems, as they generally are to whatever has the sanction of age. Whatever may be charged against the Chinese, no enemy ever accused the nation of being fickle, or in love with new ideas and ways. Buddhism knocked at this unpromising door in the first century of our era. That the door was opened somehow, that Buddhism came in and has met with astonishing success Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 29 are facts of history. We only know that while the new religion was not always left to make converts without opposition it never met force with force or used any but peaceable, and, on the whole, worthy means to accomplish its ends. The Buddhist temples that every-where abound throughout the em- pire, and the men of the " yellow robe " that are met on all roads — and with much gratifi- cation by the traveler, if he happens to be a stranger and in need of protection — testify to the profound respect in which this religion is held by the masses, no matter how much it may be decried by the Chinese literati. Here, again, is matter for reflection con- cerning the possibility of the success of Chris- tianity in China. This staid, conservative people, whose most cherished motto is : " Nor change nor improvement can there be ; As did our fathers, so do we," SO far forgot or set aside their traditional policy that they accepted Buddhism, and, barring some local opposition, gave it a welcome. Shall we find in this proof that they may not do so in case of Christianity? May not the ■ missionary in China be justified in thinking he 30 Christian Missions. sees in the very prevalence of Buddhism, the religion which he must oppose, reason for en- couragement concerning Christianity? Bud-- dhism, a foreign religion, has succeeded ; there- fore Christianity may. The former is saying to the latter, like the guide on the mountains, who himself climbed up a steep, to the traveler who seeks to do so, " I have gotten up, there- fore you can." Japan is a still more recent instance. Shin- toism, the religion of the native inhabitants, gave way to Buddhism, and now the struggle between the two is relaxing on account of a still more formidable rival for the faith and affection of the Japanese. If Christianity is charged with being a foreign religion it can say to Buddhism, " So are you." Equally striking illustration in the same direction might be found in the conquests of the missionary band that from the head-quarters of lona, in the sixth century, spread the triumphs of the Gospel over northern Europe ; the splendid successes of Martin of Tours, in Gaul; of Bon- iface, in Germany ; of Ulphilas among the Goths, and Patrick among the Irish. There is scarcely a land or people where an illustration Missionary Triumphs of Paganism. 31 may not be found of a religious faith that at one time has been unquestioned but sub- sequently was greatly modified or entirely set aside by a better. If the present attempt to convert the pagan nations to Christianity shall prove a success it will only be a repetition of what has often been before. If the his- torian of the future is obliged to turn to dust- covered books to find out what kind of religions Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Moham- medanism were, and where they prevailed, it will only be a recurrence of what has been. Modern missionary efforts may fail entirely, but they are not attempts at the impossible, or even improbable, of which all the past is witness. 32 Christian Missions. III. CHRISTIANITY AN ORIENTAL RELIGION. Ex orieiite lux. Still another objection arises against the attempt of modern missions to introduce Chris- tianity into the East, this time coming in the name of science. The law of the survival of the fittest, which has been used to explain the diversified forms and varied homes of the animal life of the globe, is held to be equally true when applied to the various religions of the earth, which, we are told, had their origin in given localities because there were the conditions necessary to give them birth. The same conditions surrounding the origin would, of course, constitute the environment most favorable to subsequent development. Nature has thus set geographical bounds to the relig- ions of the earth, and any attempt to pass these limits might be expected to bring upon the transgressor the penalty which Romulus visited on his brother Remus for leaping his wall. Christianity an Oriental Religion. 33 "You are born Christians," writes Volney, in his Ruin of Empires, "on the banks of the Tiber, Mussulmans on those of the Eu- phrates, idolators on the Indus, just as you are born fair in cold climates or sable under the scorching sun of Africa." Gibbon quotes with approval the prevalent maxim, " In every country that form of superstition which re- ceives the sanction of time and experience is the best adapted to the climate and the inhabitants." In harmony with this we are reminded that the religion of the dreamer Sokya-Muni is just adapted to the enervating climate where it had its origin and still thrives, and the rude orgies of the South Sea Islanders to the peculiar condition and temperament of the dwellers on those wave-washed shores. The conclusion is then drawn that since Chris- tianity has its home almost solely in the Oc- cident, as paganism in the Orient, any attempt to replace the one by the other, in the light of modern science, would be as foolish as to attempt to displace the reindeer and the polar bear from the arctic regions to which they are adapted, and substitute the zebra and the camel, which are at home only in the heat 34 Christian Missions. of the desert. Let us be scientific for once, while we apply this law to the proposed intro- duction of Christianity into the East. In doing so we need to recognize the fact that while Christianity is now the prevailing religion of western nations, it is, after all, a stranger there, its true home being that very East into which we seek to re-introduce it. Christianity is in all respects an oriental religion. It was born in Mesopotamia, cradled by the Nile, given shape and form in a corner of Arabia. Its wise men were all Orientals. The prophets were all men of the far East. They taught and wrote in oriental languages, used figures and modes of speech that only an Oriental can fully understand. The Saviour of the world was an Oriental by virtue of his race, language, style of thought and dress. Christianity in its ancient and modern form was almost exclusively confined to the Eastern Hemisphere for forty-five hundred years. To be strictly scientific we must conclude that, while Christianity can never have a per- manent home in the West, or hope to overthrow the worship of Odin, or the Great Spirit, it may be expected to grow and thrive abundantly in Christianity an Oriental Religion. 35 the East, if given a fair chance. However it may be with the former of these conclusions, the latter is no doubt well founded. The home of Christianity is the East, and there are the conditions necessary for its grandest success. The Bible itself can never be properly appre- ciated in the West, because it must there be received as it is, as a translation of the Bible. The poems of Homer, or even the more modern works of Dante and Goethe, when translated, lose most of their beauty and force, and the poems of Job, David, and Isaiah suffer no less when put in an English dress, to say nothing of the words of Jesus and Paul. In the East, while neither the Hebrew nor Greek lan- guage is now spoken, yet languages so akin to them are that they may be there appreciated as they cannot be here. Even when the language of the sacred book is rightly in- terpreted the customs and institutions of the country, the molds in which the writer's thoughts unconsciously run, and a thousand other things which help to reveal the meaning of the speaker, defy all attempts at transla- tion. The Koran of Mohammed, over which the Arabs are enraptured, when put into the 36 Christian Missions. English by Sale, is both dull and insipid. The reason is that the translator could not, with the Arabic words, translate the sands of the desert, the nomad life of the wandering tribes, the strange civilization which surrounds them, or the real meaning of the wonderful imageryin which the Arab takes delight. It is on all hands admitted that one must be in some degree an oriental scholar before he can appreciate much of the sacred Scriptures. A leading homiletical review has therefore opened a department in its pages headed, " Light from the Orient on Bible Texts." We do not wonder that Keshub Chunder Sen, a learned Hindu, wrote, " Was not Jesus Christ an Asiatic ? I rejoice, yea, I am proud that I am an Asiatic. He and his disciples were Asiatics and all the agencies primarily employed for the propagation of the Gospel. In fact, Christianity was founded and developed by Asiatics in Asia. When I reflect on this my love for Jesus becomes a hundred-fold intensified. I feel him nearer my heart and deeper in my national sympathies. Shall I not rather say he is more congenial and akin to my oriental nature, more agreeable to my Christianity an Oriental Religion. 37 oriental ha|)its of thought and feeling? And is it not true that an Asiatic can read the imagery and allegories of the Gospel and its description of scenery, of customs and manners, with greater interest and a fuller perception of the force and beauty, than Europeans? " Much of the Old Testament is of little value to us — the minor prophets, for instance — because so essentially oriental in thought and expression. There is so little orderliness of thought, so little logical arrangement, so great a preponderance of feeling and imagina- tion, that we either fail to get any meaning or see only a glittering and illusory dream. All this is different to an oriental. The waste-places of the Bible he may be expected to understand, and perhaps inter- pret. Renan, in his Life of Jesus, says, " Birth and education in the West unfit one to understand oriental religions." It certainly is true that during the last thousand years, in which the Bible has been shut out from the East, little advance has been made in under- standing or interpreting its truth. It has been applied in practical forms in the West 38 Christian Missions. as it never could be there. Vast systems of theology have been elaborated purporting to rest on Scripture, but really based on phi- losophy. In interpretation of the Scriptures they remain about where the early church fathers left off. We still go back to those early teachers for our best conceptions of the real spirit of Christianity. What may we not expect from that same quarter when those who now pay attention to the Koran or Veda shall turn their attention again to the Bible? Chrysostom, after reading the life of Sakya- Muni, the founder of Buddhism, arid noting his deep, thoughtful, and even mystic spirit, wrote, " Si fuisset Christianas apud Deum maximus factus." He saw that there was soil from which Christianity could produce its choicest fruit. We cannot but believe that not only Sakya-Muni, but thousands of the Ori- entals, by their peculiar mental characteristics, training, and associations, are better fitted to grasp the deep, subtle, and highly imaginative poems of Ezekiel and Job, and the profound discusssion of the Logos of St. John, than the man of western education, no matter how complete his mental equipment. Bishop Christianity an Oriental Religion. 39 Thompson said of the Hindus, " They have characteristics which, if sanctified, would en- able them to enjoy the plerophory of grace. Europe is too proud, America too worldly, and both too materialistic. India, brought to Jesus, may lie, like John, in the Master's bosom." For the most perfect types of Christian living we also look to the East. The world will perhaps never have better examples of practical Christianity than that which Pliny described in his letter to Trajan, or that which forced from a pagan emperor the confession, " See how those Christians live — how they love one another!" Religion, in all its forms, seems to be more at home in the East than in the West, and the man of the East more reverent and devout than his western brother. The infidels of the race are most of them on this side of the globe. All the great religions of the "world had their origin in the Orient. The West has never originated any thing in that direction save a few religionettcs. The fate of empire, and especially the tri- umph of Moslem arms, drove Christianity out 40 Christian Missions. of the East, where, for several centuries, its triumphs were marvels. As we bring it back to its ancient home there is strong probability not only that it will live, but that it will attain in vigor and beauty to proportions it never knew here. May it not be that out of the East are yet to come sages and heralds of Christian truth who shall pay back with interest the debt they are now incurring? Having in mind the expansion of other religions in the East, and the phenomenal success of Christianity there for several centuries, we fully expect the Gospel to bring forth again its richest harvests back somewhere about the old hive of the nations and the cradle of all religions. We tender our thanks to science for supplying a principle that quickens our faith in the evangelization of eastern nations and shows that even the doubts of the scientist himself at this point are unscientific. Ethnic Religions. 41 IV. CHARACTERISTICS OF ETHNIC RELIGIONS. Heu pietas ! heu prisca fides ! Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, and Confucianism are no doubt the principal false faiths with which Christianity has to contend. Doctrinally they are far apart, yet they have many character- istics in common ; so much so as to justify their treatment as a unit. Of course, state- ments made concerning ethnic religions as a whole will be more true of one than of another, and may be altogether wrong sufficiently often to emphasize the rule, but not so frequently as to disprove the wisdom of treating them as a whole. The first, and perhaps the most prominent, of these characteristics is that they offer to their followers salvation by works alone. It is enough at this point to offer the testimony of Max Miiller, the one man of all others quali- fied to speak on this theme : 42 Christian Missions. " I may claim that in the discharge of my duties for forty years (as professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford) I have devoted as much time as any man Hving to the study of the sacred books of the East. And I venture to state what I have found to be the one key-note — the one diapason, so to speak — of all these so-called sacred books, whether it be the Veda of the Brahmans, the Puranas of Siva and Vishnu, the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Zendavesta of the Buddhists: the one diapason, the one refrain that you will find through all, is salvation by works. They all say that salvation must be purchased, bought with a price ; and that the sole purchase-money must be our own works and deservings. Our own Holy Bible, our sacred book of the East, is from beginning end a protest against this doctrine. Good works are, indeed, enjoined upon us in that sa- cred book of the East far more strongly than in any other sacred book of the East ; but they are only the outcome of a grateful heart — they are only a thank-offering, the fruits of our faith. They are never the ransom-money of the true disicples of Christ. Let us not shut our eyes Ethnic Religions. 43 to what is excellent and true and of good report in these sacred books, but let us teach Hindus, Buddhists, Mohammedans that there is only one sacred book of the East that can be their mainstay in that awful hour when they pass all alone into the unseen world. It is the sa- cred book which contains the faithful saying, worthy to be received by all men, women, and children, and not merely by us Christians — that Christ Jesus came into the world to save us sinners." They are all alike religions of fear. Love is the ruling principle of Christianity, prompting to labor, gifts, and sacrifices ; so that he who is not in all things inspired by love is by so much not a Christian. Fear is the active spirit of paganism. It drives its votaries on to wor- ship ; it impels to deeds and sacrifices, to penances, to self-imposed stripes and inflic- tions. The gods of heathenism are so repre- sented as to create fear on the part of the worshipers. " It is true there are millions of children, women, and men in India who fall down be- fore the stone image of Vishnu, with his four arms, riding on a creature half bird, half man, 44 Christian Missions. or sleeping on a serpent ; who worship Siva, a monster with three eyes, riding naked on a bull with a necklace of skulls for his ornament. There are human beings who still believe in a god of war, Kartikeya, with six faces, riding on a peacock and holding a bow and arrow in his hands, and who invoke a god of success, Ganessa, with four hands and an elephant's head, sitting on a rat. Nay, it is true, in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century the figure of the goddess Kali is carried through the streets of her own city, Calcutta, her wild disheveled hair reaching to her feet, with a necklace of human heads, her tongue protrud- ing from her mouth, her girdle stained with blood." The same might be written of the gods of China, which are so represented as to appeal to the fears of the people. The museums of natural history which contain the images of the gods worshiped by the savage tribes of the East Indies, the Sandwich Islands, some African tribes, and the original inhabitants of Mexico and British Columbia, furnish abun- dant proof that those grim monsters ruled by fear. Ethnic Religions. 45 Gibbon says concerning the religions and gods of our ancestors: "The ancient Druids, who were priests of our ancestors, had few rep- resentations of their deities; but their temples were in dark and ancient groves, where the se- cret gloom of the forest impressed the mind with a still deeper sense of religious horror, and the priests, rude and illiterate as they were, knew how to use every artifice to . deepen these impressions." Not a single one of the religions mention- ed can be relieved from the charge of ap- pealing exclusively to the fears and not to the love of the worshiper. Hence they speak of the heathen as being ever busy with new sac- rifices, new propitiatory and votive offerings to the gods, always led by fear. Out of their fears and ignorance combined have arisen some of the gloomy doctrines of their creeds, such as the doctrine of transmigration, with its ascending series of animated bodies, innu- merable births and deaths terminating, after slow cycle of ages innumerable, in absorption in the deity. Dr. Wentworth says : " The writer has a tract which pictures the Buddhist and Taoist 46 Christian Missions. hells, in which the lost are tossed by devils with pitchforks into the craters of burning volcanoes ; bound by devils to hollow pillars of brass while fire is kindled inside ; thrown naked upon floors of ice or precipitated on beds of spikes ; mutilated in all conceivable ways, sawn asunder, thrown to wild beasts, subject to all styles of degrading transmigra- tion — into animals, birds, insects, and vermin ; pitched into pools of blood, condemned to cross bridges so narrow that they are sure to fall off, to become prey to serpents and scor- pions, with many other styles of torment too tedious to relate and too barbarous to mention." That utterances which have some faint re- semblance to this have been made in the name of Christianity is not denied ; but what of systems which offer only a gospel of fear to their terror-stricken followers? Suppose Christianity taught only, and with horrrible emphasis and particularity, the doctrine of hell-fire, it would then offer as cheerful a gospel to its followers as is now proclaimed to millions of the race under these pagan systems. Ethnic Religions. 47 These religions are only to a slight degree ethical. Though sometimes civil, and adapted to purposes of state, sometimes military, and used to incite a warlike spirit, generally ela- borately ceremonial, they have, strange to say, little relation to moral conduct. A devoted worshiper in many of these systems may lie ; he may be guilty of fraud and adultery ; but that need not disturb his piety, nor will it disturb him in these indulgences. The expla- nation made by the apologist, that, " the ethical element in all religions is late in being born," will hardly do here, where it never seems to have been born at all. We must not infer that the heathen are all immoral, untrue, or impure. Many influences help to make them otherwise, but religion can hardly be counted among these forces. Neither are their religious teachings destitute of commandments and prohibitions ; but they are artificial and ceremonial. The writer of an article on Buddhism, in the midst of a review of the strange tenets of that system, breaks out with the exclamation : "What a mass of moralities, labeled and marked ! What singular ideas of the value oi 4S Christiax Missions. merit and demerit ! The one — even so simple a matter as a good wish — affecting all a man's future life in his various transmigrations ! An evil act or thought of demerit condemning to hells without number." The morality aimed at in every case is arti- ficial and man-made. According to the teach- ings of more than one of these religions hate and contemplated murder might pass without notice, while to eat without a ceremonial washing of hands, or to pray with a spot of ink on the finger-nail, would involve guilt. Nor need this surprise us when we read that ad- herents of a far better system were devouring widows' houses and for a pretense making long prayers, plotting to kill the Son of man and condemning any man who would eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath. In- deed, some ha\'e understood a sect of Chris- tians to teach that while it would be wrong to steal a sheep it would involve far greater guilt to eat of it on Friday. Ram Chandra Bose says of ]\Iohammedan- ism : " The only things, almost, about which they are very particular are the laws in the Koran about prohibited food and certain Ethnic Religions. 49 external obser\'ance3 : and consequently lip profession and lip worship, accompanied with abstinence from certain kinds of food and the wearing of some kinds of badges, pass for pietA- and godliness, even when the character of the parties who can onh- boast of such externality is depraved to the very core." Concerning Shintoism, the ancient relig- ion of Japan, Dr. Maclay writes : " We may perhaps as well state at the outset that an examination of the Shinto literature disclos- es the fact that Shintoism has no moral code, enunciates no clearly drawn distinctions between right and wrong, presents no au- thoritative statement or illustration of the principles of morality, and does not, in fact, enter seriously upon the discussion of any ethical subject." Where some attempts have been made to in- struct in ethics, either from lack of agreement as to what was right or the absence of proper motives to enforce the teaching, failure has ensued. In some cases laxity of morals can be traced directly to their peculiar teachings ; as, for instance, the doctrine of Karma, or 50 Christian Missions. fate, which underlies more or less all these systems. Of this Rev. T. J. Scott says : " This doc- trine of fate furnishes a sad example of the wide-spread blighting influences a vicious idea or doctrine can work when generally received. The idea of fate has repressed and blighted and vitiated human life as the breath of a vast and dreadful pestilence. Every bud and open- ing flower of virtue seems blasted by it ; every growth of vice and crime seems fostered by it. It crushes human progress in good, but forms a favorable atmosphere for the development of wickedness. Thieves, robbers, murderers, and monsters of debauchery complacently offer as an apology for their stealing, robbing, murder- ing, and debauchery, ' Kismet ' (fate)." Paganism as a whole has no morals. Pagan peoples have, but their religion ordinarily takes a path which is quite apart from the domain of ethics. This is the reason why under the very shadow of these religious systems polyg- amy can flourish, infanticide and falsehood not only be pr^ticed but justified, self-murder commended, the widow be immolated with the body of her dead husband, children be Ethnic Religions. 51 thrown in the Ganges or burned before Baal, slavery of the worst forms, and the degradation of women, justified. What can a religion hope to do with such morals, or rather with such immorals, as these? The moral condition of humanity anywhere is deplorable enough to suggest a comparison to the man of Jericho who had fallen among thieves and was left wounded and half dead ; but it is vain to look to any existing form of paganism for help. They may be depended upon to pass by on the other side. These religions are destitute of all misssion- ary spirit. Granting to them all that they claim in the way of excellence, yet the world is no better off on that account. It is not in- vited to share in this good, and in some cases is positively debarred from doing so. Max Miiller, in making a classification of mission- ary and non-missionary religions, puts Moham- medanism and Buddhism along with Chris- tianity in the former class. What is no doubt implied is that these two systems are not in their nature opposed to missionary effort. They are rather in favor of it. In the past they have each known times of great expan- 52 Christian Missions. sion. At present effort at expansion has prac- tically ceased. Mohammedanism may make feeble sallies into the heart of Africa and Buddhism in Central Asia, but these efforts are increasingly feeble, and must at no distant day cease. These two religions have practi- cally passed from the class of missionary to that of non-missionary religions, leaving Chris- tianity to stand alone. As to the other systems, they are of two classes. A part is opposed to all missionary effort on principle. With them religion be- longs to the nation, and is no more to be shared with the world than any other good they happen to possess. Such has always been the spirit of the Brahman, the Parsee, and the Jew. As to a still larger class, they are eclectic — that is, they hold the truth as so indifferent a thing, so carelessly, that it is no matter what one believes. An acute scholar, and long resident in China, writes: "There are three religions" in China: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism ; and it is often supposed that the nation is divided between these three, and that there are so many Buddhists, so many Confucianists, and Ethnic Religions. 53 so many Taoists. No mistake could be greater. Though mutually conflictive and repugnant these three systems live together in perfect harmony in China. The people be- lieve in them all and they belong to them all. Such is the latitudinarianism of the Chinese that they would neither see nor feel any thing incongruous in being members of every Church and subscribers to every creed on earth." Dr. Wentworth adds : " In conversation with Buddhist priests we have often had them tell us, ' We have read your books. Jesus was a good man, just like Buddha ; our religion is just like yours.' " The old Greek and Roman, mythologies took the same course. Gibbon says : " While they acknowledged the general advantages of religion they were convinced that the various modes of worship contributed alike to the same salutary purposes, and that in every country the form of superstition which had received the sanction of time and experience was the best adapted to the climate and to the inhabitants. Rome gradually became the common temple of her subjects, and the free- 54 Christian Missions. dom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of mankind." Great praise has been bestowed on these rehgions because of their liberality in tolerat- ing other religions ; but it was because they held the truth to be so unimportant that they did not care what men believed, and certainly would not bestir themselves to give them a better faith. The systems of paganism that are now ex- tant all profess to have the truth, and all differ as to why they will not put forth effort to give it to the world ; some because they are opposed to doing so on principle ; some because they are simply indifferent ; but all agree that the world must look elsewhere for help. This is a significant confession. Tliey do not furnish a sufficient basis of gen- eral integrity and public confidence for the car- rying out of extended schemes, benevolent or financial, or for the administration of justice. It is a well-known fact that commerce is in the hands of Christian nations. This is not be- cause for the time being Christian peoples own the ships and happen to monopolize the trade of the world, but because heathen peo- Ethnic Religions. 55 pies are handicapped and entirely unfitted to enter into competition with Christian nations. Organization and co-operation are the watcli- words of this business age. Indeed, enter- prises of magnitude can only be carried on in this way. This is only possible where there is a good degree of integrity and truthfulness and business honor. Any great business scheme must collapse the moment it becomes known that dishonesty is the rule among em- ployees. Heathen religions do not furnish the conditions on which commercial prosperity may be based. No more accurate thermometer of general integrity and public confidence can be found than the rate of interest on money. Where investments are certain interest is low ; where uncertain it must be made up by an in- creased rate. The rate of interest in all heathen cities is exorbitant. The following is not more true of the country of which it speaks than of many others ; "Additional evidence concerning usury in Hindustan has been laid before the council. A ryot borrowed 10 rupees ten years ago ; he has paid no and still owes the lender 220. Thirteen years ago a widow borrowed 150 56 Christian Missions. rupees (say $75); the lender haf taken all the products of her forty-acre farm ever since for interest alone. A ryot borrowed 17 rupees in 1858; he has paid 567 on account, and still owes 375." Falsehood and deception, where generally practiced, make business, except on a small scale, impossible. A writer already referred to has found it necessary, in order to support his view of heathen religions, to clear the Hindus from the charge of being persistent and outrageous liars. He goes back for proof to Ktesias, the famous Greek physician, who lived B. C. 400 and to Megasthenes, the embassador of Seleucus Nica- tor ; brings up the testimony of the kingof Siam, which is now sixteen hundred years old, and of the Mohammedan conquerors, which, while it might have been in point five hundred years ago, is now rather stale.* It would be interesting to know how the report became so widely believed that a Hindu trader was " an ant's nest of lies ; " and it is still more significant that those who hold to that opinion are those who have dwelt longest *MiilIer, India; What can it Teach Us? Ethnic Religions. 57 among them and have known them most inti- mately. One who has spent most of his Hfe abroad says concerning another people : " As a people the Chinese are sadly destitute of truthfulness and honesty. I have never known a heathen in whose word I could put the slightest confidence. A Chinaman is never so much in his element as when telling a barefaced falsehood. A lie with him is just what a smart repartee is with us, and any deception he can practice is regarded as legitimate cleverness. A Chinaman can be thoroughly honest from policy, but he is seldom, if ever, found honest from principle. The officials are known by the court and the people to embezzle their hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands, and yet they are not regarded as disreputable by any. Bribery, corruption, and extortion fill the land." In proof of this we offer the treaties made between the several Christian nations and heathen powers ; as, for instance, that between the United States and China, which stipulates that, while subjects of that country dwelling among us and becoming amenable to our laws shall be tried here by a jury of our people, our countrymen breaking their laws shall also be 58 Christian Missions. tried by our courts and judges. This stipula- tion is made because of the known lack of truth, impartiality, and justice in their courts. On account of this want of integrity the customs service in several heathen countries is in the hands, not of natives, but of foreigners. This has been brought about, in spite of the prejudice against them, simply because the revenue pass- ing- through foreign hands was found to be so much larger than when managed by native officials. Notwithstanding this want of confidence one in another in business affairs, shrewd and enter- prising Chinese merchants thought to introduce among their own people the business methods which they saw to be so successful in other lands, especially that of forming large corpora- tions. The result is told in a Shanghai letter to the London Times : " The general break- down of joint-stock enterprises created and managed by Chinese probably results from more than mere inexperience. It brings out clearly a serious defect in the Chinese character which will prevent their ever accomplishing any thing really great in the field of commerce or finance — the incapacity to work honestly for Ethnic Religions. 59 others. It is the same defect which prevents their civil, military, or naval administrations from attaining to any position of importance. Peculation rules, from the emperor to the coolie, and in all their undertakings individualism so strongly asserts itself that the effectual co- ordination of forces required to bring any enterprise to a successful issue is not attainable. It will no doubt be a great disappointment to the enlightened among them to discover that this taint on the character of the people is indelible, and that, much as they wish to get rid of the presence of foreigners, it is neverthe- less to foreigners they must apply to organize the resources of their country, whether by means of railways, steam-boats, mines, or any other form of combined effort whose success depends on the certainty that every man will do his duty." This condition of things comes out in even more painful forms sometimes. Paganism is confined to the more densely populated coun- tries of the East, where the conditions of life are hard, and where locusts, floods, drought, or pestilence reduce thousands to the verge of starvation. The result has been well described 6o Christian Missions. by Medhurst : " The supreme government and local authorities at such times profess great concern for the sufferings of the people, and measures are set on foot at times on an exten- sive scale to organize schemes for relief; but inefficiency and corruption nearly always inter- fere to defeat the most beneficent intentions, and little or nothing is eventually effected beyond the bestowal by imperial favor of a new tablet upon a river god or the offering of a special sacrifice to propitiate some deity sup- posed to be offended." This condition of things, if not the direct fruit of pagan religions, may justly be charged to their helplessness and indifference. The people are utterly unprepared for the struggles and com- petitions which the age is sure to demand of them. They must for the present content themselves to see the richest prizes in the way of the trade of even their own land pass into the hands of others, and they themselves become hewers of wood and drawers of water till they can replace their pagan morals with Christian sentiments and practices. These religions make on their followers large demands of time and money and give them back Ethnic Religions. 6i practically nothing Paganism is costly. This is in part because, being destitute of any real life and power, it endeavors to make up for it in showy ceremonials. Attention is diverted from the fact that Diana herself is helpless by attracting attention to the beauty of her shrine and the pomp of her worship. Beautiful groves and imposing temples cover inner poverty of spirit just as numerous living priests are sup- posed to turn attention from the fact that the idols are lifeless. This has been equally true of Christianity, which has put on a profusion of leafy ceremonials in the measure that it has been wanting in fruit. As a rule the ceremonial in religion is the most costly part of it. It de- mands beautiful temples and shrines, costly garments and sacrifices, vast numbers of priests and attendants. These demands extend to the individual who is burdened with the cost of numerous ceremonies for the expulsion of sick- ness from the home, of blight from his fields, or of guilt from his conscience. A foreign resident in any pagan land is sur- prised at the number of religious ceremonials, the oft recurrence of saints' days, the frequency of religious processions, and the continual 62 Christian Missions. appeals for aid to some branch of religion. The reason for the distinction so often made in pagan lands between a religious man and a secular man is founded on the fact that, for one to be quite religious, he must give his whole time to it — and then fail to keep up with the demand for prayers and superstitious practices which his religion imposes. , Christianity, with all the benevolent schemes which attach to it, costs but a trifle compared with the financial burdens which paganism im- poses on its followers. In the simply empty and absurd rite of propitiating evil spirits, to say nothing of the worship of the gods, China pays the sum of one hundred million dollars annually. The sacred white elephants of Siam are covered with jeweled garments, sleep on beds of richest silk, eat the choicest viands out of golden dishes, and have their smallest wish ministered to by a retinue of attendants. All this the people lavishly supply ; and this is one of the smallest of the burdens which their religion lays on them. Attention has often been called to the cost to India of the system of Brahmanism. The support of a vast army of priests and religious Ethnic Religions. 6^ mendicants, the erection of shrines and temples, the penances and pilgrimages imposed on the worshipers, suggest an enormous total. Hence it was that the Mohammedan conquerors of India found the expenses of their expedition paid out of the spoils of the temples, which had been gathered from a people noted for their poverty. But this would not be so bad if any adequate return was made to the people for the vast outlay. Where will we look for proof that these religions offer any real comfort in sorrow, in- spire any hopes touching the hereafter, or answer any real longings of the soul ? Polythe- ism, wherever accepted, precludes the possibility of rest of soul. Where the gods are many some are likely to be propitious and others imagined to be angry, and so the worshiper is kept in doubt and fear. Any misfortune he traces to this source, and finds in it new reason for anxiety. It is equally certain that many of the doctrines of pagan religions can yield only a harvest of foreboding. That such is actually the case is proven by abundant testimony in which the confession of the heathen themselves is prominent. No stronger proof could be 64 Christian Missions. adduced in favor of this view than the marked pessimism that underlies all Eastern religions. In Christian countries the opposite or op- timist view of life prevails. This makes it impossible for one reared under Christian teach- ing to believe that the Buddhist ever does mean annihilation when he speaks of his longed- for Nirvana. That he does mean so, and how he can bring himself to desire it, the following extract, written by Coomara Swamy, a Hindu, may suggest. He writes from the stand-point of the Buddhist: " Why complain of future non-existence when, according to what I am taught, I know that till now such has always been my lot? Nihilism was the great Sahara and existence but the little oasis, and not a pleasant oasis either. To revert to my native condition can- not certainly be a grievance. Indeed, how can it be so, if one will but dispassionately study the wretchedness of existence? But for life there would be no sin, no pain, no punishment. True, there is that something which is called enjoyment in the world. But to the thinking miind this is merely a will-o'-the-wisp and a delusion. If there can be no pleasure without Ethnic Religions. 65 some pain being associated with it, why have even the former?" Such reasoning — and it is precisely such with which Buddhist books are filled — could only proceed from those who, unfed and unsatisfied, have turned to annihilation as the best that offered. Another fact which looks in the same direction, and which the traveler in pagan lands is certain to notice, is the lack of any trace of joy in worship. Paganism is almost absolutely songless. Mohammedanism has a chant, but there is no trace of joy in the minor dirge. Six hundred million Buddhists are songless, as are the Brahmans, Confucianists and Shintos. The cheerless systems under which they dwell leave them no heart or theme for song. On the whole, the words of Isaiah were never more pertinent than when the question is asked mod- ern pagan peoples, " Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not?'' These religions have fallen far below the standard which they themselves set up in the beginning. Aiming to arrest corruption they are themselves conspicuous examples of decay. The searcher for proof that man unaided attains 66 Christian Missions. at length to the true, the good, and the beauti- ful will find cold comfort in the study of these religions. In each case there is progress down- ward. The authors of the various treatises on ethnic religions are appreciative, and some- times enthusiastic, as they speak of the origin and early history of the several religions. While they confine themselves to an analysis of the ancient books they retain a respectful tone. When they turn to describe religion as it now exists in the various pagan lands we detect a growing contempt which continues to the end of their chapter. The fact has often been pointed out that Brahmanism was purest when youngest. The most ancient Vedic poems contain the loftiest conceptions of God, the more modern Puranas are polytheistic and sensual, and later develop- ments indicate that progress is still going on in the same downward course. Buddhism in its fountain-head is at least a beautiful poem. Had it no subsequent history we must ever look upon it to admire and be iustructed. As we trace the windings of this stream through the muddy fields of supersti- tion and growing depravity, at every step of Ethnic Religions. 6"; which it gathers pollution till it forms the Dead Sea of modern Lamaism, our admiration is swallowed up of loathing. If we are inclined to admire Mohammedan- ism, and wish to continue to do so, we must confine ourselves to its early development. The farther away from its source we go the less of truth and beauty remains. Ram Chan- dra Bose writes of Mohammedanism what is almost equally true if the name of any other pagan religion is substituted : " That the political power has been on the wane for cent- uries, that their religious influence has been declining every-where, that their morals have been debauched, and that they have deterio- rated in physique, these are facts too well known to be pointed out, facts admitted by Moham- medans themselves." We are therefore driven to the conclusion that for all the purposes for which religion is supposed to exist — for rest of soul, for com- fort in adversity, for help to regulate the un- ruly passions of our nature, for confidence in the hour of death — the best forms of heathen religion as they now stand are lifeless and im- potent. 68 Christian Missions. V. THE SOLIDARITY OF HUMANITY. Nihil liumanum mihi alienum. We have no inclination to join in the struggle which Trench intimates would be made against the introduction of the new French word soli- darity, because its meaning, as given by him, "a community of gain or loss — a being, so to speak, all in the same bottom," shows that it supplies a real want in our vocabulary. The word not only expresses the relation of the several members of the French Commune to one another, but a growing thought with refer- ence to the relation of the several nations of the earth. They too, though without mutual pledges to that effect, are in the same bottom, to sink or swim together. Humanity is a unit and all the nations of one blood. No nation liveth to itself, no people goeth to honor or shame alone. All real progress must be of the entire race. Local or sectional advancement is of value as it affects the whole. The truth of The Solidarity of Humanity. 69 this statement is not lessened by the fact that it is not the theory of any accepted science of government or the working basis of any nation, even as the sun was still the center of the solar system long before Copernicus announced it to the world. The usual practice of nations seems to have been "the good old rule,'' " The simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can." Simple as this rule was it was a policy that built up one nation on the ruin of others and left no permanent benefit to any, like a great wave of the sea, which shows the highest crest, now here, now there, without any onward motion to the waters. Rome grew out of the ruin of Carthage and Athens ; Athens out of the wreck of Persia ; Persia at the expense of Babylon; and Babylon out of the plunder of Jerusalem. Temporary elevation of one nation was not then, and is not now, necessarily the advancement of the race. Napoleon, that great highway robber of the nations, sought to enrich France at the expense of all Europe. He succeeded for a time, but in the measure that France was strengthened and enriched 70 Christian Missions. Europe was impoverished and helpless. He carried away to Paris the finest specimens of art of most of the capitals of Europe, but their temporary location in Paris added noth- ing to the art treasures of the world. It is largely due to Napoleon that Europe is a vast military camp where rival powers watch each other and an unfortunate nation is in the posi- tion of a disabled wolf in a hungry pack ! But if Russia gain territory or power at the expense of Austria or Germany, at the humiliation of England, where is the gain to the race? Such a policy is not only selfish but short-sighted, and in the end suicidal. There is no real gain which is at the expense of another, even as there is no true commerce save where ex- change is of mutual benefit. The nations must go forward together, if at all. The laggards must be aided and the weak defended on ordinary principles of self-interest. "What great reform in our social, political, or educa- tional system is most needed and will advance us as a people ? " was recently asked of a score of the best minds of America. Andrew Car- negie answered, " The world does not move forward in any one department, but by a The Solidarity of Humanity. 71 gradual movement along the whole line." In the march of Israel toward Canaan the tribe of Judah, great in numbers and in men of war, took the lead : Judah might easily have forged ahead and perhaps entered the land at once, but the command was for the nation to advance as a unit, and to go no faster than the weakest tribe. True policy dictated that the strong should help, defend, and so hasten the weak, and by so much the advance of the entire people. Suppose Judah had used her superior strength to pillage Ephraim, and deplete that, tribe of her strong men for the burden and the march, Judah would have been temporarily stronger, but all Israel, and so Judah, would have been delayed so much longer in the desert. Even so the nations of the earth, which are, after all, but tribes of a common family, have been delayed in the march toward the goal of the human race by the selfish policy of each nation ignoring all others but its own and acting on the policy, " Our coun- try, right or wrong." The wisdom of a broader policy in the comity of nations is being em- phasized by the logic of events. 72 Christian Missions. Among the most significant are the breaking down of the barriers of nations, the end of isolation, and the era of migration and travel. Railroads are in part responsible for this, of which we have in Europe 115,000 miles; in Asia, 12,000; in Africa, 4,000; in Australia, nearly 7,000. On this side we have in the United States and Canada 146,000 miles, in Mexico about 8,000, and in Central and South America to- gether a like number. Altogether there is enough railroad in operation to girdle the earth twelve times, and enough is being built to make a new girdle every two years. Neptune's horses are equally busy on the sea. England alone has 1,600 steam vessels engaged in foreign trade, manned by 200,000 seamen. She has many times that number of sailing vessels, and is but one of the nations. The result is a yearly migration in all direc- tions dwarfing the exodus of Israel or the barbarian irruption of the Huns and Tartars. In the last thirty years 7,500,000 immigrants have made a home in our borders. We send abroad for trade or travel a vast number of our people, and England, France, Germany, and The Solidarity of Humanity. 73 Russia each duplicate the number. If work- men are needed in any corner of the world the working-classes flock there from all directions as the waters seeking a level. The commerce of the West has left a sprinkling of Anglo- Saxons in every port of every sea and along all the great highways of travel and trade. The pinchings of poverty and hunger have re- sulted in a deposit of foreign immigrants in all western lands, sometimes like a light snow after a storm flurry, and sometimes like a stratum of mud after a freshet. All the great cities are now cosmopolitan, and one has but to stop and listen to the babel of tongues to be reminded of the Babel where they were once confounded. This bringing together of the inhabitants of different and dis- tant regions, tends to counteract sectarianism, mitigate party and sectional prejudices, pro- mote unity and homogeneit}-. Vast sums of money are now loaned from land to land. Wc are invited to world conventions for the char- ities and humanities, and world's fairs for the display of the products and inventions of the earth. The nations of the Western hemi- sphere are summoned to meet in convention. 74 Christian Missions. There are rumors of one language that is to take the place of existing forms of speech, one currency for all the world, and one system of weights and measures. The centripetal forces of common interest and better understanding are certainly increasing faster than the centrifugal forces of selfishness and lust of power. The poet writes of a time when " The war-drum throbbed no longer and the battle-flags were furled, In the parliament of man, the federation of the world." The interests of the human race in all quarters of the globe are becoming so intertwined that there seems no way left for human progress but to advance all along the line. It is be- ginning to be seriously questioned whether we can reach the broadest and wisest national policy by simply striking a balance between the advantages of tariff and free trade, and thus finding out what is best for us. The ques- tion will still remain after that whether what is not good for the world can in the long run be good for any one nation? "An English minister," writes an emi- nent living historian, " must be an English min- ister first of all ; but he M-ill never be a great The Solidarity of Humanity. 75 minister if he does not in all his policy recog- nize the truth that there are considerations of higher account for him, and for England, too, than England's immediate interests. No man can truly serve his country to the best of his power who has not in his mind all the time a service still higher than that of his country." A narrow, selfish policy is becoming year- ly more dangerous. There have been times when a nation could sit down behind im- passable barriers of mountains or beyond dis- tant seas and build up a civilization untouched by the outside world. In such an age the prevalence of the most degrading barbarism and the most revolting vices made little differ- ence to the rest of the world. It was suffici- ently quarantined by distance and isolation. This is no longer the case. The leper among the nations walks abroad, and the only safe- ty is to cure him of his disease. He may be left to solve the problem of recovery alone, but he will have revenge by poisoning the atmos- phere and spreading the contagion. In the great cities of the world not a few men of wealth and note, though notoriously ■j6 Christian Missions. not overburdened with piety, are becoming munificent patrons of public charity and reform. They are learning at length that though they may, content in their marble palaces and in cost- ly churches on Sunday, let the vice, crime, and pauperism of the city severely alone, yet it will not let them alone. It can originate strikes, burn railroad depots and tear up rails, fill jails and alms-houses for the rich to support, fur- nish breeding places for the pestilence and abundant fuel for the vices of young patricians to feed upon. Hence the same worldly policy that accumulated the wealth says, Build chap- els and libraries ; open midnight missions and reform schools. Save us from the masses in the only possible way — by making them better- The same worldly policy is calling attention to seven million freemen. To leave them in ignorance with votes in their hands would be folly. The education and Christianization of the blacks is the only possible safety for the whites. Christianity and self-interest are for once agreed; the missionary and the poli- tician speak the same things, though for dif- ferent reasons. The races of the earth that are low down in the scale of intellifjence and The Solidarity of Humanity. ^7 morality must be aided for a like reason. The contact points between Christian and pagan peoples are now million-fold. Sometimes in place of virtue being imparted by the touch of civilization pollution is received. Wherever races of very different grades of civilization come in contact, there, for a time at least, vice holds high carnival. The darkest spots on the face of the earth are not in the Qenter of bar- barous nations, but along the borders, where drunken sailors, soldiers, reprobate merchants, and the scum of Christian lands meet a similar class, and each learns the vices of the other without forgetting his own. The bitter cry of the women of Alaska, the open shame of many sea-ports of China, Japan, and India, the almost entire depopulation of islands of the Pacific on account of the intro- duction of the vices of civilization, and the woes of many an African village are sufficient evi- dence. The influence of paganism on the moral condition of the age will be noted by the historian of the future as we now note the effect on Europe of contact with the Orient from the first invasion of the Moors to the last crusade. Bishop Foster says of paganism in 78 Christian Missions. general: "It hangs as a ponderous weight about the neck of the race, sinking it deeper and deeper into night and death." The only- way to get this weight from the neck of the race is to help the nations that have been blighted by false creeds to replace their baseless superstitions with Christianity. The human race is a unit, like a human body, and the only safe policy is not to aim at an ab- normal development of any given part or organ, but at the symmetrical building up of the whole system. The part that is neglected will make its pro- test felt by ruining the health of the whole body. The Old Testament economy was, dis- claiming all care for other races, to build up and keep pure one people. The failure was signal because the races left in darkness sooner or later corrupted and enticed from the worship of the one God the chosen people. The wiser and better policy of the new dispensation is to " go into all the earth and evangelize all nations." This is the work which modern mis- sions essay to do. It is not a little encourag- ing to find that the human race is being shut up to this, as the only way of true and lasting The Solidarity of Humanity. 79 progress, and that to the various branches of the human family may be appHed the words which Franklin addressed to those whp had just signed their names to the immortal doc- ument, " We must hang together or hang separately." 8o Christian Missions. VI. WAR AND THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. Paretur pax bello. The last half of the nineteenth century was ushered in amid the boom of cannon, and there has scarce been a time since when the sound could not somewhere be heard. Russia had a short and sharp contest with the allied powers, and again with Turkey alone. France had a memorable struggle with Germany and with China. England has had use for her army in the Sepoy rebellion in India, the Opium War of China, in Natal, Abyssinia, and Egypt. Germany, Italy, Mexico, China, and the United States have each had severe internal struggles. At least fifteen distinct wars have been waged during the last thirty-five years, costing an untold amount of treasure and a vast num- ber of human lives. It is a matter of profound sorrow that, so long after the advent of the Prince of Peace, the gates of the temple of Janus should, as a rule, be open, men industri- Progress of Christianity. 8i ous as ever in perfecting the art of killing men, and the world still be willing to devote " twenty-six hundred millions of dollars a year to Mars, against perhaps twenty-six millions for the Messiah." If there be any compensa- tion for this great loss, or any other and brighter side to this dark record, we may be pardoned for dwelling on it and making the most of it. It is worthy of notice that these wars have, for the most part, been between Christian and non-Christian nations. Such were the first and second wars between Russia and Turkey, the fivefold wars of England in the East, and the struggles of England and France with Egypt and China. In every case the Christian nation has not only been victorious, but has been able to secure substantial advantages for the cause of Christianity, either in the way of securing the privilege of extending it without molesta- tion, the protection of those who embraced it, or the hardly less important, though indirect, advantage which the prestige of victory among a heathen people gives to every thing belong- ing to the victor. The cessation of the horrid and unbearable oppression of the Christian population of Turkey, the complete independ- 6 82 Christian Missions. ence of Roumania, Servia, and Greece from the rule of "the unspeakable Turk;" India freed from despotic rule and put to school to a Christian nation ; China open to trade and the Gospel, and Egypt and Anam put in the way of a Christian civilization — these are some of the fruits of recent wars. When war has been internal, or between Christian countries, the result has been little less satisfactory for the cause of truth and just- ice. The freedom and consolidation of the Italian States, the unification of Germany, the preservation of the American Union, and the emancipation of the slaves, are unquestionably good results. The least fruitful of all these wars, the Franco-German, by crushing the military con- ceit of the nation whose military character and history was a constant menace to the peace of Europe, secured as substantial benefits as the rest. Five sevenths of the surface of the globe is now under the direct control of Christian nations — a result which was secured very largely by war. The issue of battle has in nearly every case been on the side of truth and progress, and in Progress of Christianity. 83 no case has it acted to cripple the civilizing forces of the world or re-enforce the powers of darkness. Much as we deprecate war, the world could ill afford to give up the results gained by it in the last half-century. We make no apology for war, nor seek to glorify the warrior. The sword has too often been used in the cause of selfishness and wrong for that. We fully admit " Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts. Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts." In speaking of the benefits of war we only magnify the grace and the overruling provi- dence of Him who can make even the wrath of man to praise him and the cannon the fore- runner of the Gospel and the missionary. The assertion that " Christianity, unlike Moham- medanism, has never used or profited by the force of arms" is untenable. The conversion of Europe to nominal Christianity was partly a work of the sword. From A. D. 500, means effective, but not all of them Christian, were used, and a commission to evangelize meant, 84 Christian Missions. in most cases, to conquer. Thus Charlemagne introduced Christianity to the Huns. In this manner Konrad brought the Gospel to the notice of the Prussians. Others, as the Suevi and the Goths, accepted the religion, as they did the laws, of the power that conquered and ruled them. In the proc- ess of time that which was simply lip and knee service grew into intelligent faith and love. So frequently has this been the order that John Foster, in his celebrated essays, says : " Did you ever listen to a discussion of plans for the civilization of barbarous nations with- out the intervention of conquest? I have — with despair." The fact that we have no right to do evil that good may follow does not prevent the Ruler of the universe from over-ruling even the wicked passions of men for the glory of his kingdom. The terrible persecutions of the first three centuries were no doubt made instru- mental in the triumph of the Gospel in Rome. The greed of the East India Company was clearly overruled for the lasting good of India. A Christian poet echoes only the same senti- ment when she sings : Progress of Christianity. 85 " I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps ; They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps ; I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His day is marching on." There i.s this to be said also of many of the wars of this century — they were not under- taken for selfish and ambitious ends. They have been rather the inevitable result of the contact of civilization and barbarism, light and darkness, which the expansion of the age has brought about. The citizens of Christian countries are migratory. They go to the ends of the earth for knowledge, trade, or the spread of the Gospel. Wherever they go they take their institutions and the appliances of modern civilization, such as the printing-press, loco- motive, telegraph, and all the wonders of modern mechanism. They believe in liberty, justice, equality, and the spread of the truth, and these ideas, gained after ages of conflict, they will not be likely to give up or cease to maintain. They, moreover, cannot look upon the op- pression of their fellow-Christians with com- placency. The people with whom they come 86 Christian Missions. in contact are ignorant and despotic. They are, moreover, so conceited as to think that they are strong enough to cope with any force. This leads tliem to provocation, which ends in war. These conflicts are inevitable, because commerce and contact of nation with nation are inevitable. Christian nations dare not give up their ideas ; heathen peoples will not theirs, and no way seems yet to have been devised to settle the differences which arise without an appeal to arms, unless civilized nations consent to cowardly silence and inactivity in the pres- ence of injustice and wrong. When the spirit of Christianity shall exert its proper influence among all people war will cease throughout the world, but till that time " it must needs be that offenses come." Those who advocate a policy of non-resistance, and whose only cry is peace, should first show us that justice and peace are prevalent which war will disturb. However we may cry peace, trouble and sorrow exist on the earth, and real peace is often only to be gained by war. If war is cruel, and it be " a libel on divine Providence to intimate that he has aught to do with it," we need to remember that there are Progress of Christianity. 87 some things worse than war. There have been, and are, especially under the despotisms of the East, oppressions and tyrannies of which we little dream. There are social wrongs which are ages long. There are festering sores which only the bayonet can prick. The occupation of India by the British lifted the curtain on a scene of awful political misrule and spiritual darkness whi(:h could allow a petty ruler to build a tomb at a cost of ten million dollars, wrung from the poor, and by the enforced labor of twenty thousand workmen, who for seventeen years wrought without compensa- tion, and could allow a ruler to levy a tax of four fifths of all the product of shop or farm on a people so blind as to give the other fifth to support a system of religion which demanded, and received, an annual holocaust of thirty thousand widows and many times that number of both men and women as victims to Kali. The cry from the Christians of Turkey, which precipitated at least one war, was not only because, as Christians, they were oppressed, but because, as subjects, they had no rights they could call their own, and were under the dominion of petty pashas, "who were so many 88 Christian Missions. sponges put over the ground in order to suck up the wealth of the inhabitants that it might be the more readily squeezed into the sultan's coffers." In the Zulu War many were no doubt slain, and the war by many was, therefore, con- demned as cruel ; but there was hardly more cruelty in the land during the war than when in its normal condition of peace. Just before the war Cetewayo, on assembling his army and finding, as a matter of course, many absent on account of sickness, said, " You sick men are of no use to the country, and I will save the doctors the trouble of attending you," so he sent and killed them. The question of war being cruel is at least an open one when the first condition of the treaty gained by it was " indiscriminate shedding of blood shall cease, and no Zulu be killed without a trial." China is ruled by a dynasty which, pretend- ing to a paternal care of the people, has the parental love of an ostrich, which deserts its young, and which may fairly allow the country to enter the list of the nations for the prize of being the worst governed country on the face of the earth. Progress of Christianity. S9 War may be cruel but it is short and deci- sive, which is more than can be said of many of the evils for which it seems to be the only antidote ; and on the score of humanity simply we might well pray that the sound of the cannon may ere long be heard in some regions which now enjoy peace, but which is only the peace of despair or death. Do we not, therefore, err when we infer that because we hear of wars and rumors of wars, therefore the Gospel of peace is inoperative, or the hands on the dial of the world's progress are moving backward ? 90 Christian Missions. VII. COMMERCE AND CHRISTIANITY. Argumentum ad crumenam. Commerce and the Gospel have been inti- mately associated ever since the days when fish- ermen and tax collectors were the chosen her- alds. The seller of purple of Thyatira and the tanner of Joppa received the early evangelists into their houses ; the corn ships of Alexandria carried them over the sea, and the manufacture of goat's hair tents furnished a means by which they might not be burdensome to any. Since that time the centers of trade have been the strongholds of the Gospel. Christianity has pushed along the track of commerce, partly because in its very spirit it is allied to the ac- tivities of daily life and must be carried off by main force, if at all, to the hermit's cell, and partly because trade furnishes the financial basis as well as the open door for the carrying out of the great commission. This debt to commerce the Gospel has richly Commerce and Christianity. qi repaid by bringing distant tribes into contact with civilization, opening up new avenues of trade and creating a multitude of artificial wants that only commerce can supply. Rev. Henry Marden says of central Turkey what is equally true of other lands : " The Ori- ental, when left to himself, is entirely satisfied with the customs of his ancestors and aspires to nothing better. No contact with Western civilization has ever roused him from his apathy ; but when his heart is warmed into life by gospel truth his mind awakens, and he wants a clock, a book, a glass window, and a flour-mill. Almost every steamer that leaves New 'York for the Levant brings sewing- machines, watches, carpenters' tools, cabinet organs, or other appliances of Christian civil- ization in response to the native orders that never would have been sent but for the Bible ; and now as you pick your way along the nar- row streets, through the noisy crowd of men, camels, donkeys, and dogs, the click of the American sewing-machine or the sweet strains of the American organ often greet the ear, like the voice of an old friend from home." For this reason the missionary cause often 92 Christian Missions. receives aid from men who only saw that as fast as pagan tribes were converted there arose a demand for soap, clothing, axes, and plows. The foreign trade of Great Britain with the most distant ports and islands of the sea, amounting to upward of four billions of dollars annually, was largely created by " the foolishness of preaching " on the part of the missionary. When Christianity was first taken to the Sandwich Islands there was no commerce there or intercourse with other nations. After seventy years of labor the trade between the United States and the islands amoun- ted to $5,546,000, and the natives were buy- ing yearly at the single port of San Fran- cisco goods amounting to $500,000 more than the entire cost of Sandwich Island missions from the beginning. This debt, in favor of the Gospel, commerce is now in turn canceling by furnishing to the heathen an argument in fa- vor of the rejection of their pagan system of worship, more convincing than any offered by the missionary, or possible from any other source. To understand the force of this argument Commerce and Christianity. 93 we must remember that greed of gain is not peculiar to any land. " Gold ! Gold ! Gold ! Hard and yellow and bright and cold ; Easy to get and hard to hold," is a kind of international god whose shrines are every-where. The almighty dollar is not any more omnipotent here than the franc, the rupee, the tael, or the shekel in other countries. The half-civilized races of the earth seem to be more sordid and more grasping than elsewhere. Even the worship of their gods is to a large ex- tent inspired by a desire to so propitiate them by prayers and sacrifices that they in turn may grant to their devoted followers success in their worldly undertakings. A traveler, who took from the celebrated prayer-tree of Hiogo, Japan, a number of petititions, which had been written out and tied to the branches for the gods to examine and grant at their leisure, found them to be not petitions for any spiritual interest, but in every case prayers for some tem- poral good. They worship the gods that they may be continued in health, prospered in busi- ness, and successful in all their enterprises. We can readily see the effect when they come 94 Christian Missions. to understand, as they are beginning to do, that no gain has or will accrue to them from the worship of the gods, but that those who entirely neglect and even ridicule these deities are richer and more prosperous than they. It cannot much longer escape the notice of the most obtuse pagan mind that Christian nations are in the ascendency in every thing. The commerce, even of their own country, is in ships that fly foreign flags. Out of twenty- one million tons of foreign shipping, seventeen millions belong not only to Christian but to Protestant powers. Goods made by machinery, and so cheaper and better than their hand-made supply, are pushing into all their markets and they are powerless to resist. Foreign inventions are brought to their attention which astonish and perplex them. Their learned men are forced to admit that Western science is far beyond them. Their medical men are driven to con- fess that they know little in comparison with the physicians of Christian lands. They find themselves poor and other nations rich. As they attempt to cope with our armies or navies they find themselves beaten, and Commerce and Christianity. 95 must relearn the art of war and provide new weapons. They are forced to notice that the simple in- crease of weahh in England and the United States, during the past twenty years, is many times more than they have gathered with in- finite toil during thousands of years. The hundreds of students, the attacli^s of em- bassies, and the occasional traveler from pagan lands cannot fail to notice and report that our people have better homes, food, clothing, and opportunities for happiness than theirs. In- deed, the contrast is most striking. The log- ical and practical conclusion which the people are certain to draw from all this is, that the worship of the gods is useless, since in the very particulars concerning which they call most upon them those who neglect the gods entirely are better off. The religious revolution in Japan has been brought about mainly by the object lesson of the ascendency of Christian nations in all things else, and why not in religion? Jiji Shimpo boldly advocates the adoption of Christianity by the Japanese " on purely economic and po- litical grounds, as the best thing for Japan 96 Christian Missions. ethically and socially." A learned Brahman re- cently said to his countrymen, " Where did the English-speaking people get all their intelli- gence and energy, cleverness and power? It is the Bible that gives it to them. And now they bring it to us and say, ' This is what raises us. Take it and raise yourself.' " Mr. Chalmers, the apostle of New Guinea, declares that he has never met a tribe who desired to have teachers so that they might be taught the Gospel, and he does not believe there ever has been one. All like the teachers at first be- cause of the worldly gospel they bring : because of the peace between the tribes, because of the increased supply of salt and tobacco, of beads and tomahawks ; but soon they learn differ- ently, and after a time begin to appreciate it as God's message of love to man. The same argument was most effective in turning our Saxon ancestors away from their idols. Bede tells us how Coifi, one of the most influential men among them, announced his conversion to the king: "None of our peo- ple, Eadwine, have worshiped the gods more busily than I, yet there are many more favored and fortunate. Were these gods good for any Commerce and Christianity. 97 thing they would help their worshipers." Then leaping on horseback, he hurled his spear into the sacred temple at Godmanham and with the rest of the Witan embraced the religion of the king. It is not a question whether appeals to self-in- terest are to be commended or conversions that commenced in such low motives accepted as genuine. We only claim that such arguments are patent to the rudest intellect and have to the ignorant peculiar power. Merivale says of the early progress of Christianity : " Among the multitudes there was probably after all no argument so effective, no testimony to the di- vine authority of the Gospel so convincing, as that from the temporal success with which Christianity was eventually crowned. The great inert mass of the thoughtless, the gross- minded, and the carnal, upon whom no legiti- mate argument could make any impression, were startled, arrested, and convinced by the last overruling argument of success." This argument is now telling with unusual power against pagan gods and superstitions in all quarters of the globe. The steamers that ascend the Nile, the Yang-tsze-Kiang, and the 98 Christian Missions. Euphrates, the cars that thunder back and forth through the heart of India, Japan, along the Nile valley, and about the capital of the Chi- nese Empire, are all missionaries. Every bale or goods, every clock, cabinet organ, sewing- machine, plow, carpenters' tool, each separate article of each ship load of goods sent abroad, has for the follower of false religions a message concerning the impotency of his gods. The books translated into Eastern languages, espe- cially concerning geography, geology, astron- omy, 'chemistry, medicine, and the industrial arts, are silent witnesses of the helplessness or perfidy of the gods who could allow their de- voted followers to be ignorant of these things. Every flag of a Christian nation reminds them how superior the God of the Christians is to their deities, since he has made his wor- shipers masters on sea and land. The great manufacturing centers of the world are thus the head-quarters of the greatest missionary movement of the age. The deep-laid plans of commerce for the extension of trade are the deeper plans of God for the overthrow of idolatry. The prosperity of Christian nations, while it Commerce and Christianity. 99 amounts to a powerful appeal in favor of Christianity, also indicates the wisdom of the missionary in keeping his own dress and manner of living. The very fact that he is a foreigner, and comes, not only in the name of Christian- ity, which his hearers do not appreciate at once, but of Christian civilization and progress, which they do, gives him an immense advan- tage, which increases in proportion to the intel- ligence of his hearers and which he cannot af- ford to throw away. loo Chkistian Missions. VIII. THE HUMANITARIAN VIEW. Homo homini ignoto lupus est. An English government official of India, in explaining his position as chairman of a mis- sionary meeting when not a professed Chris- tian, said : " In order to have a lively interest in Christian missions it is not necessary that one should be a Christian. It is only necessary that he should be a lover of his kind." Can a valid claim be made for Christian missions on the ground of philanthropy alone ? Is there that in the conditipn of society in non- Christian lands to justify an appeal to the humanity and pity of the world? "Yes," and " no," are answers given to these ques- tions. The obscurity which seems to exist is only because attention is fixed on ethnic re- ligions themselves, and their adaptation or fail- ure to satisfy the soul wants of their followers, rather than on the condition of pagan society. On one side, the revolting tenets and gro- The Humanitarian View. ioi tesque characters ascribed to the gods of pa- ganism are accepted as conclusive proof that these religions are utterly unsatisfactory. On the other hand, it is replied that, when inter- rogated, the heathen declare that they are quite satisfied ; that they still worship on from age to age, resisting every attempt to turn at- tention to a better faith, and even bestow sin- cere and well-meant pity on the followers of other religions. Besides, it is added, " who has a perfect creed, or adequate conceptions of the deity? They may be a little farther off than we, but we have all only approximations to the truth." While men may cavil as to the extent to which ethnic religions profit the souls of their followers or brighten their hereafter, there can be no reasonable doubt that they have failed to materially improve their bodily surroundings or mitigate the woes of the life that now is. " The same stars rise and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile ; and the same sorrows rise and set in every age. All that sickness can do, all that disappointment can effect, all that blighted love, disappointed ambition, thwarted I02 Christian Missions. hope ever did, they do still. Not a tear is wrung from eyes now that for the same rea- son has not been wept over and over again in long succession since the hour that the fated pair stepped from Paradise and gave their pos- terity to a world of sorrow and suffering." It is the office of religion, not only to peo- ple heaven, but to mitigate the sorrows of earth and to make lighter the burdens which humanity must carry. That Christianity is actually doing this work the multiplied chari- ties that are engaged in organized effort for the relief of all forms of suffering, the hos- pitals, orphanages, asylums, refuges, homes, fitly called " God's hotels," that lift their no- ble fronts in every city, are abundant proof. That charity " Meek and lowly, pure and holy, Chief among the blessed three," is in the land, witness Chicago, Memphis, Jacksonville, Charleston, and Johnstown. In all this we find, not difference, but contrast, as we cross the border^Iand of Christianity and look in on the society of pagan lands. Charity is indeed found in pagan lands, but it is arbitrary and whimsical ; endowing a hos- The Humanitarian View. 103 pital, it may be, for cows or monkeys while men and women starve and die in the streets. It is not surprising to find disease in all its forms at work in the dense population of the Old World. Such is the case in the best Christian communities in our own land. The difference is, that here the healing arts of one of the noblest professions, the comforts that are furnished the sick-room, the kind and sym- pathetic attention which Christian society de- mands shall be given to even the sick poor and the stranger, and the comforts of an in- telligent faith in the event of death — these les- sen, as far as may be, the pains of sickness and extract the sting from death. If we would realize how different all this is in non-Christian countries we must remember that, as a rule, no attention is paid to sanitary measures, even in crowded cities. Poverty deprives of comforts which are necessary for the prevention of, or restoration from, sickness. Foolish superstitions impose unnecessary pains on the sick and deprive some of the care which ordinary humanity would give, as in the case of the stranger, the widow, or one who has lost caste. Worst of all, a rational science of I04 Christian Missions. medicine is unknown throughout the East. Rude schools of rational practitioners with a limited pharmacopoeia of simple herbs may sometimes be found, but far more credit is given to charms, witchcraft, and whimsical and absurd methods, such as sucking and blowing on the diseased organ, accompanied with chants, or the pretended extraction of splint- ers of wood, pebbles, and bits of cloth, accom- panied by magical signs. This is even true, to a large extent, of that part of the East which was the cradle of med- ical science, where Avicenna wrote his treatise on pathology and materia medica which is said to be the basis of practice in Turkey to-day. But if the basis, it is much like the basis of the Washington monument — out of sight ! An Arab doctor has been known to write out a sentence from the Koran, directing the sufferer, after steeping the bit of paper in water, to drink the draught. A physician of the Levant recommended the trachea of a wolf hung from the neck of the patient as a cure for mumps, and the skin of the flying- squirrel held in the hand to make parturition easy ! The most common theory of disease The Humanitarian View. 105 is that it is caused by disease demons, hence the more frequent resort to the priest than to the doctor. This explains the method often practiced to quarantine against small-pox and cholera by surrounding the house with brush- wood, ditches, and vessels of stinking oil, so as to barricade the way of the disease spirit. For various ulcers, the Chinese receipt is, " Serpents, pulverized, one ounce ; wasps and their nests, one-half ounce ; centipedes, three ounces ; scorpions, six ounces ; toads, ten ounces. Grind thoroughly, mix with honey, and make into pills." In the year 1878, when China was suffering from the cholera, benevolent citizens printed and circulated the following remedy: " Rub the spine with an earthen spoon that has been soaked in tea-oil, till small black spots appear; then puncture these with a needle down to the bone. The poisonous blood will thus be removed. Dip your hands in cold water and rub the arms in front of each elbow, also the popliteal spaces, till they are black, then apply a burning lamp-wick. Give the following to an adult : One cup of salt heated in an iron spoon over a slow fire and mixed with one cup io6 Christian Missions. of ginger juice and an equal amount of boy s urine and cold water." Surgery in its simplest forms is seldom prac- ticed by the heathen doctor, notwithstanding the multitudes that suffer or die for lack of a few strokes of the lancet. The absence of precautions for the prevention of disease and the presence of such remedies for its cure give all the maladies to which flesh is heir a chance to meet and hold high carnival among the millions of paganism. Not only is the death rate high, but the road to death is made very rough though travel- worn. If in Christian countries the miseries of the sick poor have touched Christian hearts with pity, and led to the erection of hospitals for their care, should not the woes of the blind, fever-stricken, leprous-smitten, poverty-crushed millions who happen to have been born outside of the pale of Christianity awaken some com- passion ? If when Jacksonville was smitten by the yellow fever and Johnstown by the flood the practical sympathy of the entire country was awakened, shall we be entirely unconcerned about the fate of cities over which the fever continually hovers, and where the inhabitants The Humanitarian View. 107 at all seasons "are carried away as with a flood?" Bishop Foster adds, " The conspicuous feature of heathenism is poverty. You have never seen poverty. It is a word the mean- ing of which you do not know. What you call poverty is wealth, luxury." J. Thompson, F.R.G.S., and a trained trav- eler, says : " The picture, at best, is a sad one, and though a ray of sunlight may brighten it here and there, yet, after all, the darkness that broods over the land becomes but the more palpable under the struggling, iitful light. Poverty and ignorance we have among us in England, but no poverty so wretched, no ignorance so intense as is found among the millions of China." The poverty arises, in part, from the over- crowded condition of those old lands. It is in part to be attributed to the enormous taxes levied on the people, amounting sometimes to two thirds the entire income. Rev. H. V. Noyes, long resident in China, gives a carefully prepared table of statistics concerning the cost of idolatrous worship in a single province, by which it appears that the expenditures io8 Christian Missions. range from one fifth to two fifths of the income of the people. In some countries it is even greater than this. These burdens which the people have long borne, taken in connection with the fact that the wages paid for labor and the gains of trade are less in pagan lands than anywhere else, ac- count for the fact that the ordinary family in non-Christian lands is more miserably housed, has poorer clothes, more wretched food, and scantier comforts than the people elsewhere. Nor is poverty his only or heav- iest burden. He is every-where, save where Christian arms have secured his emancipation, a political slave to a government by absolute monarchy which allows him not a single right which government is bound to respect. Among the .sayings of Confucius is one called forth by his finding a woman wailing beside a grave on the side of the T'ae Mountain. One of his disciples inquiring the cause of her great sorrow, she replied, " My husband's fa- ther was killed here by a tiger and my hus- band also, and now my son has met the same fate." Confucius asked her why she did not remove from so dangerous a locality, and when The Humanitarian View. 109 she replied, " There is here no oppressive government," he turned to his disciples with the remark, " My children, remember this : op- pressive government is fiercer than a tiger." The heathen man has been subject to this tiger government time out of mind. He has grown patient and stolid attributing his condi- tion to Kismet (fate), against which it is vain to fight. As usual, the heaviest part of these burdens falls on the weakest shoulders. The women and girls of the East have had many eloquent pleaders, but none have risen to the merit and magnitude of the theme. The traveler is surprised by their absence from the public or social gathering, or even from the home which he may choose to enter. He cannot at once realize that she is shut out from the one, and that at his approach she fled to the inner apartment in the other. What goes on in the pagan home behind the latticed work, which practically bounds the heathen woman's world, is hidden. We know that she is grossly ignorant, it be- ing a sin to even teach her to read, and that with her superstition has a clear field. It is no Christian Missions. painfully true that the chivalric regard for woman so characteristic of Anglo-Saxon civil- ization is entirely wanting, that her birth was a disappointment to her parents, her betrothal without her consent, her marriage a legal transfer to a master who would have complete power over her ; her soul even without future existence save as an appendix to a man. As a widow she is regarded as accursed of the gods, and very properly doomed to the most menial services, and as a childless wife can ex- pect only wretchedness and neglect. Yet she is not dissatisfied, nor bewails her lot. Could she know how the women of other lands are educated and have a part in the work of society she would doubtless bestow on them sincere pity, but this only shows the clearer her true state. If the condition of five hundred million heathen women and girls does not constitute a valid plaint to the humane spirit which char- acterizes the nineteenth century, the world may be vainly appealed to for any thing that does. Nor is this all. Cyrus Hamlin presents a plea for the women of Turkey on account of polygamy and concubinage, which he asserts The Humanitarian View. hi are prevalent through the Levant. A Hindu woman, in the newspapers of Bombay, pleads with her countrymen to deliver the widows of her land from the terrible disabilities put upon them. Frank Leslie s Ilhistrated Weekly cites the slave-trade of Africa as a reason for the formation of an Anglo-American alliance to deliver that country from a scourge which, it asserts, was never so prevalent as now. Still others point to the famines which devastated Persia in 1871-1880, Turkey in 1874 and 1884, and India and China often, as valid reasons for extending help of all kinds to those afflicted regions. Few would care to take the ground that only the sorrows of our own or the English- speaking race could be expected to call forth our compassion, yet that is the only plea that can be urged for silence or inaction. The peo- ple of pagan lands have been compared to the man who fell among thieves at Jericho, who wounded him and left him half dead. In such a case, to stretch forth no hand to help is to deserve a place with the priest and Levite in the pillory of the tenth chapter of Luke's gospel, or with Skipper Ireson, 112 Christian Missions. " Who sailed away From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay; Sailed away from a sinking wreck with his own town's-people on her deck." The United States may profitably heed the words of Professor Henry Drummond when he says of the United States: " The world will be bewildered and disappointed if she sepa- rates herself from the rest of mankind in fac- ing those great wrongs of humanity from which seas cannot divide her and which her poorer brethren in every part of Europe are giving themselves to relieve. America does well in refusing the entanglements of Eu- ropean politics. Let her be careful lest she isolate herself from its humanities." It has not been forgotten that the greatest charity, after all, is to the souls of men. This has been entirely ignored that attention might be called to matters of lesser moment but about which there could be no dispute. The good things which, because of Chris- tianity, the Western world enjoys, the mission- ary takes and freely shares with his Oriental brother. He studies medicine and practices and teaches it there, has gained and earned the title, "the shield of woman," has demanded The Humanitarian View. 113 and received protection for at least his own converts from oppressive legislation, and re- moved the costly and heavy burdens of idola- trous worship from their shoulders. It was a sight of these things on pagan soil that led Professor Charles Darwin to declare that he was heartily in favor of Christian missions, "on the ground of charity and humanity," and which led him to write to the officers of a missionary society, " I shall feel proud if your committee think fit to elect me an honorary member of your society." 114 Christian Missions. IX. STATESMANSHIP AND MISSIONS. Fiat justitia mat coelum. When the disciples were contemplating the vast work that had been set before them by the Master, and were looking around for means on which to depend, Peter said, " Lord, here are two swords," and the Master answered, " It is enough." When afterward he attempted to use one of them he was bidden to put it up into its sheath. They were forewarned that, so far from depending on the civil power, they would more frequently appear before kings and magistrates for condemnation than otherwise, and that, " not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble," would be called or numbered among the followers of the Nazarene. That this should be the case in the early stages of Christianity in any land is quite what we would expect. The lust of power and the deceitfulness of riches would naturally make the rulers, and those high in station, the Statesmanship and Missions. 115 last to accept the truth. Why this should be the case where Christianity has long been dominant, why politicians and statesmen should there be, as a rule, so far behind the masses of the people in practical acceptance of Chris- tianity, is not so apparent. Why should a Christian people seeking Christian ends by Christian means be delayed or thwarted by the tardy justice or manifest wrong of those whom the people have put forward to represent them in the chief councils of the nation ? This would seem to be the case, whichever of two opposing views concerning the nature of government was in mind. If we accept the view of Mr. Mumford, then the nation will be regarded as a moral personality. Being a personality, and so having a character and presumably a con- science, we must agree with Milton, who long ago wrote: "A nation ought to be one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man as big and compact in virtue as in body: for look what the ground and causes of happiness are to one man, the same ye shall find them in the whole State." This seems to have been the view of the Emperor William II. of Germany, when, in No- ii6 Christian Missions. vember, 1888, he said, "The manifestation of love to one's neighbor is the duty of the State as a public community." If, on the other hand, as Mr. Spear contends, the nation is no such moral personality, but only an aggregation of atoms each one of which has a conscience and character, then those who represent those atoms in laws and public policy should shape the same so as to be in harmony with the pre- vailing sentiment." " It is a most dangerous and destructive delusion," said Theodore Fre- linghuysen in the United States Senate, May 8, 1830, "to suppose that while as individuals and families we are bound to respect the principles of religion, yet when we assume the character of States and nations these cease to exert any legitimate influence." Whatever theory we may adopt, the people have a right to expect that dearly cherished plans, which they individually seek to carry out, shall not be antagonized by their own action in an associate capacity. The bearing of this on the cause of Christian missions will appear when we consider how wide-spread the interest in this cause is among the best people of the land. We are indebted to Dr. Dorchester for the Statesmanship and Missions. 117 following summary of the churches, ministers, and communicants of the various Protestant denominations of the United States : churches. Ministers. Communicants. Advent Bodies 3,492 1, 321 134,577 Baptist Bodies 45,ii2 30,929 4,051,360 Lutheran Bodies 7,6to 4,512 1,036,970 Methodist Bodies 47,470 30,082 4,801,340 Presbyterian Bodies 15,104 11,428 1,476,962 Unclassified Bodies 12,689 12,096 1,374,163 Aggregate 131,477 90-368 13,877,422 ROMAN CATHOLIC. Sadlier's Hoffman's Year-Book. Year-Book. Priests 7,996 8,118 Churches :.. 7,424 7,353 Chapels and stations 3,133 2,770 Population 7,855,294 8,157,676 POPULA'UONS. Total " New-Churchmen " 10,178 Universalist, 41,474 families (5 each) 207,370 Unitarian, no means of estimating Roman Catholic ( Sadlier's estimate ) 7,855,294 "Evangelical" Bodies, three and a half times as many as the enrolled members 48,570,977 This shows an average of about one member in 4.5 inhabitants, on an estimated population for 1888 of 62,300,000. The evangelical popu- lation is JJ per cent, of the whole population ii8 Christian Missions. of the United States. The Roman Catholic population is 1 1 per cent, of the whole. These twenty million and more of actual members are identified with the cause of missions. They manifest their interest by giving eac-h year to the cause the sum of three million dollars. Some part of this sum is col- lected by the children, some of it represents the widow's mite, and much of it was given with no small self-sacrifice on the part of the donors. A still more valuable gift, and testi- monial as well to the interest had in this cause, is some thousands of the choice men and women, who at home or in foreign lands are engaged in the work of missions. The theme calls forth great conventions of the people and is the inspiration of no little effort, song, and prayer. The interest which so large a part of the people take in this cause is certainly valid ground for the claim that nothing shall be done to antagonize this work unless in extreme political emergency, especially that no injustice shall be practiced toward those nations or wards of our own nation that the people are endeavoring to impress with the precepts of Christianity. Further than this, Christianity Statesmanship and Missions. 119 cannot, in justice, ask the government to go, and does not wish to. It rests its claim on the same ground taken by the fishermen of the New England coast, who, in view of the im- portance of that interest to so large a popula- tion, ask that no action shall be taken in the treaty on the fishery question that shall jeopar- dize their interest. Likewise, the wine-growers of the Pacific Slope, the wool-men of the North- west, the farmers of the Middle States and the manufacturers of the East, set forth to Congress the wide-spread interest in these various indus- tries as a reason for legislation for or against ■ increased tariff. During the discussion of the Edmunds Bill in the Senate, a company of merchants of New York telegraphed, " Utah buys twenty million dollars of goods a year — hands off." In like manner, twenty million actual church members who consult together, ^ pray and sacrifice for the cause of missions, respectfully urge that fact as a reason for care in all government action touching that interest. But what has been the record at this point ? From the earliest settlement of the country the churches have been at work to evangelize the native Indian tribes. Brainard and Eliot were 120 Christian Missions. conspicuous examples among the early workers, but were soon surpassed by the Moravians, and even the Commonwealth of Massachusetts undertook, at one time, the work. For more than two hundred years it has been prosecuted by the most self-denying men of all denomina- tions, including Roman Catholics and Quakers. It has ended in failure. Some tribes have indeed been civilized and Christianized, but the great bulk of the Indian nation is morally, and every other way, worse off than when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. This is not, as has sometimes been supposed, because they are dying off. Three hundred thousand, the present number, is supposed to be as many as the tribes ever numbered. It has not been because the Indian cannot stand civilization. Where he has had a chance, as at Hampton and Carlisle, and some of the reser- vations, he has shown that, whatever else has rnade against his welfare, it is not civilization. The assertion of Catlin concerning the Indian character has never been disproved. " I fear- lessly assert," he says, " to the world, and I defy contradiction, that the North American Indian is eyery-where in his native state a Statesmanship and Missions. 121 highly moral and religious being, endowed by his Maker with an intuitive knowledge of some great Author of his being and the universe, in dread of whose displeasure he continually lives, with the apprehension before him of a future state, when he expects to be rewarded or pun- ished according to the merits he has gained or forfeited in this world." Bishop Whipple of Minnesota, who formed his opinions from residence among them, says " The North American Indian is the noblest type of a heathen man on the earth. He recognizes a great Spirit. He believes in im- mortality ; he has a quick intellect ; he is a clear thinker. He is brave and fearless and, until betrayed, he is true to his plighted faith ; he has a passionate love for his children and counts it joy to die for his people." It would be easy to multiply testimony to the same end from Lewis and Clarke, Governor Stephens, Colonels Steptoe, Boone, and Brent and General Harney, nor is their testimony invalidated by the fact that the noble red man is now a man of many vices and few virtues. The principal, though of course not the only, reason why attempts to evangelize the Indian 122 Christian Missions. tribes have failed, has been the treatment which they have received from the United States government. Time and again territory has been granted them, by solemn treaty, where they could dwell in peace and have a chance to profit by the instructions of the Christian teachers whom they were generally willing to receive ; but as often some pretext has been found for setting aside the treaty, robbing them oF their lands, and bidding them, like the crowds of a city, to "move on." Deprived of means of support, stung with a sense of their wrongs, and homeless, no wonder they have scorned instruction from the pale- face teachers. Bishop Whipple says of the entire history of the transactions of our gov- ernment with the Indians, which Helent Hunt Jackson calls " A Century of Dishonor: " "The sad revelation of broken faith, of violated treat- ise, and of inhuman deeds of violence will bring a blush of shame to the cheeks of those who love their country. They will wonder how our rulers have dared to so trifle with justice and to provoke the anger of God." The sad plight in which the law left the Indian after robbing him of his lands enlisted Statesmanship and Missions. 123 the interest of Governor Horatio Seymour, who said: "Every human being born upon this continent, or who comes here from any quarter of the world, whether savage or civil- ized, can go to our courts for protection ex- cept those who belong to the tribes who once owned the country. The cannibal from the islands of the Pacific, the worst criminals from Europe, Asia, and Africa, can appeal to the law and courts for their rights of person or property, all save our native Indians, who above all should be protected from wrong." The impression which all this has made on the Indians was expressed by Red Cloud, when, bidding adieu to friends he had visited at the Black Hills, he said :" Farewell ; if I do not meet you again on earth, I will beyond the grave, in a land where white men cease to be liars." " Our great trouble," says Julius H. Seelye, of Amherst, " is that we have sought to exact justice from the Indian while exhibiting no justice to him.." "The Indian bureau is often unable to fulfill the treaties," writes another, " because Congress has failed to make appro- priations." These explanations, however good 124 Christian Missions. fail to reach the Indian, who only knows that he has been treated in bad faith and that hunger knows no law. As a fugitive from the reservation he is hunted down by the cavalry, but not every general commanding such an expedition has the candor of General Crook, who, about to set out on one of these cam- paigns with which the country is so familiar, said to a friend, who remarked " it is hard to go on such a campaign," " Yes, but the hardest thing is to fight those whom you know are in the right." "Your father hath deceived me and changed my wages ten times" was not more true of the treatment Jacob received from Laban, than of the conduct of the govern- ment toward these defenseless wards. A policy just and honorable, even to the degree shown by the Canadian government to the tribes of the North-west, would have averted several expensive wars and saved from failure the best intentioned and persevering efforts to elevate the red man. The words of Latimer, though four hundred years old, concerning the miseries of the English populace and the responsibility of the nobles, are applicable here : " My lords of the laity and clergy, in the name of God, I Statesmanship and Missions. 125 advise you take heed. When the Lord of hosts shall see the flock scattered, spilt, and lost, if he follow the trace of the blood, it will lead him straightway unto this court." The relations of the United States government to the Chinese furnish another example. The interest which the American Churches take in the conversion of the Chinese is indicated by the following statistics of the various missions there : Denomination. Mission- Native Communi- aries. Helpers. cants. American Board 20 log 816 Baptist 30 43 1,340 Protestant Episcopal 21 20 496 Presbyterians 102 107 3,788 Reformed 15 22 844 Methodist Episcopal 80 132 3,903 Southern Baptist 20 25 776 Methodist Episcopal, South. 34 11 286 Presbyterian, South 19 5 82 It is thus apparent that all the leading denominations of the country are earnestly engaged in the evangelization of the Celestials. The better classes of the Chinese have all along manifested no little disrelish to the message of foreign teachers, but of late this aversion is more marked. This seems strange 126 Christian Missions. when we remember that our missionaries in that quarter in zeal, purity of life, and self- sacrifice are not excelled by any class of men anywhere. The primary reason why these pious labors are not producing the result we might expect is the treatment the Chinese have re- ceived from so-called Christian governments. As to our own nation, it is sufficient to refer to the course of action culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Bill. Up to the year 1880 a treaty existed between the United States and China by which the subjects of each might visit or reside in the country of the other with full protection. In that year we sent over a commission to get the Chinese government to agree that we might have the privilege of limiting immigration to this coun- try, which was granted with the understand- ing that it should in no case be altogether prohibited. Six months after a bill passed both houses of Congress suspending the coming of Chinese laborers to this country for ten years, and re- quiring of those already here, if they desired to leave for any purpose, first to register at a custom house and take a passport containing Statesmanship and Missions. 127 an accurate description of their persons, which certificate would entitle them to return. So far all was according to at least the letter of the treaty. What followed is well stated by Senator Henry L. Dawes in the pages of the Forum : " But the warfare upon Chinese labor- ers grew in intensity hour by hour. All polit- ical parties on the Pacific coast made common cause in waging it, and all political parties away from there vied with each other in urg- ing it on. Preparatory to the presidential campaign there was a race among politicians of the East for the cup offered by the voters on the Pacific slope to the best hater of these de- spised Celestials. " During the late session of Congress a treaty was negotiated at Washington by the execu- tive with the Chinese minister resident here which permitted the absolute exclusion for twenty years of all Chinese laborers, whether once resident or not, except such poor fellows as had left here a wife, child, parent, or one thousand dollars of'property, and had also left before going away with the collector of the port a minute description in writing of these various articles, and had come back within a 128 Christian Missions. year. When this treaty was submitted to the Senate for approval, that body, as if anxious for an opportunity to share in the ultimate opprobrium which must rest on all this busi- ness, amended the text, giving the screw one more turn. " The Chinese minister acquiesced with a sigh, but the amendments required ratification in China, which was likely to consume too much of the valuable time which was needed in the race. Congress, without waiting, passed an act, dependent upon the ratification of this treaty, making it ' unlawful for any Chinese person, whether a subject of China or any other power, to enter the United States,' ex- cept ' Chinese officials, students, merchants, travelers for leisure or curiosity,' and except those who have left behind them when they went away, as before described, wife, child, parent, or property. " And all excepted persons were, before set- ting foot on our soil, compelled to run the gauntlet of the most complicated system of listing, description, certificate, and passport that human ingenuity could devise. In the meantime, the home government, to which Statesmanship and Missions. 129 the treaty had been sent back for ratification, began to show some signs of ' the spirit of a man,' and, demurring to some of the pro- visions of the treaty, took time for further ■deliberation and discussion. " Upon the spur of a mere rumor that the treaty had been rejected, Congress, in hot anger and in hot haste, for there was no time to lose, and the Pacific slope had its ear to the ground, passed, without any reference to com- mittee, a law unqualifiedly and absolutely for- bidding any Chinese laborer who now is, or shall hereafter be, a resident of the United States, who may leave the country, from ever returning on any conditions whatever. Pres- ident Cleveland approved this bill, after the receipt of official information that the treaty had not been rejected by the Chinese govern- ment,, but that there were points in it which they desired to reconsider with us. He ac- companied this approval, however, with a spe- cial message giving good reasons why he should not have approved it at all, and sug- gesting alterations and amendments of the very bill which he had just signed. This is a brief summary of our dealings by treaty and 9 130 Christian Missions. legislation with the subject of Chinese immi- gration during a period of twenty years, cul- minating in an absolute exclusion from our shores hereafter of all Chinese laborers, both those coming for the first time and those re- turning here, no matter what relations of busi- ness or family they have left behind under a treaty pledge of safe return and undisturbed residence." Senator Dawes adds, " It is not the asser- tion of this power, but the manner and the assigned cause for its assertion, which will be likely to occasion criticism. There has been nothing open or manly, either in the negotia- tion of the treaties that conceded it or in the legislation in conformity to, as well as that in conflict with, those treaties. There is no- where in the whole series an avowal of the real purpose which prompted our persistent zeal." July 8, 1889, Mr. Chang Yen Hoon, then Chinese minister to the United States, wrote to Mr. Blaine, referring to the action of the United States Supreme Court in deciding "that the act of 1888 is in contravention of the express stipulations of the treaty of 1868 ; " Statesmanship and Missions. 131 but that as it is the exercise of the sovereign power vested in Congress it must be respected as tlie supreme law of the land." " You will pardon me," continued the minister, " if I express my amazement that such a doctrine should be published to the world by the august tribunal for whose members, my per- sonal acquaintances, I entertain such profound respect. It forces upon me the conviction that in the three years which I have spent in this country I have not been able fully and correctly to comprehend the principles and systems of your great government. In my country we have acted upon the conviction that where two nations deliberately and sol- emnly entered upon treaty stipulations they thereby formed a sacred compact, from which they could not be honorably discharged except through friendly negotiations and a new agreement. I was, therefore, not prepared to learn, through the medium of that great tribunal, that there was a way recognized in the law and practice of this country whereby your government could release itself from treaty obligations without consultation with, or the consent of, the other party to what we had 132 Christian Missions. been accustomed to regard as a sacred instru- ment When it is remembered that the treaty relations between the two nations were established at the express solicitation of your government, and that its every request for further stipulations has been met in the high- est spirit of complaisance, I think you must sympathize with my astonishment that the body which itself initiated this policy, and which represents the intelligence and justice of the great American people, should trample the treaties under foot, and grossly offend the nation which has always held these compacts in such sacred esteem." Similar words might be used to charac- terize the conduct of most of the public offi.- cials in regard to the Rock Springs massacre of the North-west, where about a score of Chinese were cruelly murdered by a mob and their homes and property destroyed. The government was not to blame for the crime more than for any other act of lawlessness ; but the subsequent action of the local and public officials has not received so merciful a judgment. The coroner's jury said, " We find that these persons came to their death at Statesmanship and Missions. 133 the hands of persons unknown." The grand jury said, " We have been entirely unable to ascertain by whom these outrages were com- mitted." The secretary of state, when ap- pealed to for indemnity to those who, while under solemn treaty, had lost all their property, replied, that " While the Chinese government did promise to indemnify Americans who suf- fer from mobs in China the American govern- ment did not promise to indemnify Chinese." Nevertheless, as a gratuity, he recommended that some recompense should be made. A year after the occurrence the survivors were still in doubt as to whether the claim of the Chinese minister would be favorably received at Washington and some reparation made. The Chinese have newspapers in their country not unlike our own, and through them the better classes are kept informed of govern- ment affairs. The impression which these events have produced touching the reception of Christianity may be inferred from an oc- currence narrated by an English missionary as taking place in a native chapel, where he had explained to the congregation the ex- cellent nature of Christianity, which he urged 134 Christian Missions. his hearers to accept. One of them, whom he described as having a " dress bordering on the shabby, and whose style seemed to indi- cate that he was more famiHar with the artisan class than with any other, though his face had a pecuMar look of sharpness and intelligence," rose, and with a look of suppressed hatred and bitterness said : " O, then, your object in coming here is to teach us charity and benevolence and truth and uprightness, is it ?" I said, "Yes." "If this be your object, then, why is it that you your- selves act in a spirit so directly the reverse of these, and force upon us instead your abom- inable opium ? If your nation believes in these doctrines as divine why has it imported this poisonous stuff, to bring poverty and distress and ruin throughout our land ? " And as he went on he became excited, and his eyes flashed and his eloquence grew. Chinaman- like he rolled his head from side to side, while the congregation (which in the mean- time had grown largely) looked on with ap- proving sympathy. I was so utterly taken aback that I could do nothing but quietly sit still until he had given full expression to his Statesmanship and Missions. 135 feelings. My surprise arose not so much from the matter as the manner of his accusation. It was given forth in the most offensive lan- guage, and with a force such as I had never met with on any previous occasion. After he had finished what he had to say the congre- gation that was scattered about — some sitting on the forms, others leaning by the door-way, and others again bending over the backs of the seats, listening breathlessly to what the man was saying — with one consent turned their faces upon me, waiting without uttering a sound to hear what would be my reply. I must say that I never felt so un- comfortable in any public meeting in my life before ! What the man had said I knew and felt to be truth. I began, therefore, somewhat stam- meringly, to say something in self-defense, when the man at once stopped me by saying, " There is no use in your trying to get out of the matter by saying that you have nothing to do with this opium system. Your country has. It is your nation, England, that is re- sponsible for all this ruin caused by opium. It was the English guns that compelled our em- 136 Christian Missions. peror to sanction the trade, and it is through England that it may now be sold throughout the length and breadth of the land without our government being able to do any thing effect- ual to prevent its spread throughout the kingdom." The facts of the case were all on his side, though somewhat offensively stated. England's share in this opium question is one which no reasoning and no sophistry can turn to her honor. Whatever of greatness or glory there may be in her history to which she can point, there is at least one blot upon her escutcheon which will not be easily effaced, and that is that she was the direct means of stimulating and protecting a trade that in- volves a third of the human race in evils which no language can describe. Would it be strange if some Japanese, lis- tening to a sermon on Paul's text before Felix, should stop the preacher to ask if the kind of justice he meant was the kind shown by the United States in retaining for so many years the balance of the indemnity fund? Could we blame the natives of Alaska if they refused to listen to a gospel from the Statesmanship and Missions. 137 lips of the same race that had treated their women with such indignity ? When will the better classes of Mexico forget that General Grant testified to what they already knew, that the invasion of Rlexico, which cost that country Texas and California, was without excuse in justice, and simply the measure of a political party to gain more terri- tory ? The real reason for the war was quaintly hinted at by James Russell Lowell, in the famous Biglow papers. " Ez fer Mexico, 'taint no great glory to lick it; But 'twould be a darned shame to go pulling o' triggers To extend the aree of abusin' tlie niggers." In general these acts of injustice have been committed in the interest of some political party. The interests of Christianity and of twenty million Christians have been ignored in the effort to save a party. However it might be with the millennium, the next election must be made secure. Nor are these things peculiar to our own land. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin says : " Christianity has done but little as yet to meet the Moslem problem. It is terribly handicapped by Christian governments. While in Islam every thing, good and evil, works to- 138 Christian Missions. p-ether with the Moslem missionaries and helps forward their work, the Christian missionary is embarrassed on every hand. The shameless and abominable lives of so-called Christians who are enemies to the cross of Christ are a great obstacle to their work. They deliver their message ; but here comes a counter- message, audible and visible and pernicious. The worst thing of all is that Christian govern- ments authorize and protect the traffic in opium and alchoholic liquors with equal stupid- ity and wickedness. China and Africa are fill- ing up with rum and opium faster than with missionaries. This astounding measure of Christian governments will prove as injurious to enterprise and commerce as to missions." We entirely agree with him in his conclud- ing sentence. " It is time for the Church of God to arise and demand that Christian gov- ernments shall not antagonize Christian mis- sions." There is little doubt that, if Christian gov- ernments would adopt a just Christian policy toward pagan and semi-pagan nations, the mis- sionary might hope to gain converts among the influential and from this vantage-ground Statesmanship and Missions. 139 more readily reach the masses, instead of being driven, as he generally is, to commence with the pariahs of society. In the days of Constantine and Theodosius, in the times of Eadwine and Clovis, and more recently in the Fiji Islands, the first converts were from the higher classes. It is humiliating thus to be obhged to plead for justice, not on the ground that it is just, but that twenty million Christian citizens ask it at the hands of government. I40 Christian Missions. X. METHODS. Non quomodo sed quid. The era of criticism on which Christian missions seem to have entered is rather to be rejoiced over as a sign of progress than de- plored as a token of decline. This appears when we notice that the critics now confine themselves to methods of work, whereas formerly they " compassed about and beset behind and before," after the fashion of the bulls of Bashan, the entire subject. This amounts to an admission that there is no longer a question as to the duty and prac- ticability of the project, and that the question of method is the only debatable ground. In the conduct of our Civil War, so long as craven- hearted and faithless politicians called in ques- tion the wisdom or justice of the attempt to preserve the Union, the country was in peril ; when at length they turned attention to methods that were being used or should be, or Methods. 141 to the conduct of the men who were conduct- ing the war, the victory was assured. Fifty years ago, Sidney Smith in the pages of the Edinburgh Review gave examples of the old methods of opposing the cause of missions ; the new has been more recently illustrated by Canon Taylor in the Fortnightly. The change is significant. " All missionaries, let me say," says Bishop Steele, " owe a debt of gratitude to those who call attention to the mistakes and failure of missions." The missionary should even wel- come the strictures of enemies which help to a settlement of doubtful questions. Two methods for the conduct of missions are now advocated, which an American quarterly has styled the method of stipendiary missions and that of martyr missions. In the first of these, a mis- sionary is selected and sent out by the repre- sentatives of an organized society which assumes the responsibility of a stated salary for his support, of which the Missionary So- ciety of the Methodist Episcopal Church is an example. The second method makes more of indi- vidual action. The missionary goes out with- 142 Christian Missions. out promise of any support, depending on his own exertions and the providence of God to supply his wants, with what chance aid may come from friends of himself or his cause. Bishop Taylor's African work and that of the China Inland Mission are examples of this method. Martyr missions have gained a host of friends of late, though their enthusiasm would mean more if they themselves evinced any eagerness to join the " noble army of martyrs," or were willing to accept of any other than the sti- pendiary method for the supply of their own wants, however much they advocated them for others. The method contemplated by martyr missions has, on the other hand, been severely criticised as a waste of valuable lives and resources ; and from an official eminence we have the statement, " It has often been tried but the result has in no case corres- ponded with the expectation of its projectors." A glance at the history of missions will con- vince those who are not hopelessly biased that martyr missions have indeed often been tried and that they have often been grandly successful ; indeed, that whatever success Methods. 143 the cause of missions has had has been mainly through martyf missions. It further- more reveals that stipendary missions have not often been tried ; indeed are something quite new to the history of the Churcli, whose real value remains to be seen. To appreciate this it is necessary that we reject the baseless supposition that the mis- sionary work is a movement of this century or that efforts have not been made for the con- version of the heathen by the Greek and Roman Churches, just as genuine as our own. There have been, apart from tlie movement under consideration, three great missionary epochs, widely separated in point of time, but one in spirit and singularly one as to the methods used. They were the evangelization of the Roman Empire by the Church of the first three cent- uries, the conversion of the nations of northern Europe by the great missionary movement of the sixth and seventh centuries, and the mis- sionary revival of the Moravian Church of the eighteenth century. Jerusalem, lona, and Herrnhut were the three great centers and are the present Meccas of missions. In each 144 Christian Missions. of these movements martyr missions had elo- quent illustration. The first, which by divine command began at Jerusalem, was so marked and glorious that the author of Tlie Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire found it necessary to devote an entire chapter to explain away the more remarkable features of it. A company of fishermen, tax-gatherers, and artisans, without influence or military backing, begin their testimony at Jerusalem, but soon go to Samaria and Antioch, then to Asia Minor, then across the sea to Greece and on to Rome. Others turn to the East and visit Persia and Arabia, while still others visit the land of the pyramids and the Nile. They make converts, empty idol temples of wor- shipers, call forth letters from consuls, make the highway and wilderness places resound with the praises of newly converted souls, and fix the attention of the crowds of the great cities with doctrines new and startling. Per- secution rages. Nero uses some of them for burning torches to light his gardens, and amuses the populace by turning the lions on others in the amphitheater, with only the re- Methods. 145 suit of sowing a bountiful supply of martyr seed. In vain he issues edicts of persecution. He cannot even keep the new faith out of his own palace and household, where the saints are found and from whence they send greet- ings. His edicts become more and more in- operative, because they often fall into the hands of officers who are themselves Christians. Finally it is found vain longer to resist, and the great empire becomes Christian in form as it already was in fact. As to the method used in this age of marvels^ — it was plainly that of martyr missions. There was no edifice in Jerusalem called the missionary building of the Nazarenes, nor was there any session of a committee on missions. They had not even a treasurer of a transit fund. Thomas went to India, Bartholomew to Persia, and Peter to Rome with no promise of support. They de- pended on their own labors, on the gratitude of those to whom they ministered, on the gifts of friends, and always on the providence of God. The apostle to the Gentiles insisted on supporting himself by the labor of his own hands. Others depended for the supply of their necessities on the churches which every- 10 146 Christian Missions. where sprung up. In those days every be- liever was required to be a missionary. His first great duty was to testify for Christ. Christian sailors, soldiers, and merchants, wherever duty called them or persecution drove them, were expected to speak boldly for the new faith. To refrain from this was not only a sin, but a sin which it was currently be- lieved had never forgiveness. Hence John was on the Isle of Patmos " for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ." Peter confessed before the council that he " could not but speak of the things which he had seen and heard." Phebe became " a servant of the Church in Cenchrea." Priscilla and Aquila were " helpers in Christ Jesus," even to the extent of " laying down their necks" for him. Mary " bestowed much labor." An- dronicus and Junia were "fellow-prisoners of note." Triphena and Tryphosa "labored much in the Lord." Timothy " endured hard- ship as a good soldier." Onesiphorus made a journey to Rome to succor an imprisoned apostle, of whose chain he was not ashamed, while Ydivl, facile princcps, was " in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons Methods. 147 more frequent, in deaths oft," constrained by a mighty love which led him ever on to the regions beyond, as an engine is kept throbbing by its furnace fires. The spirit of the entire movement was that which actuates all true missionaries, but the method was peculiarly that of martyr missions. Here was an example of self-supporting missions, where the result not only corresponded with, but exceeded, the expectations of the projectors. The second great missionary movement was directed toward the conversion of the nations of northern Europe. The proclamation of Theodosius, which, rather than the edict of Constantine, marked the conquest of the Ro- man Empire to Christianity, found the tribes of northern Europe savage as to civilization and pagans in religion. A map of the world in A. D. 600 would certainly represent all Europe north of the Rhine in jet black. The Church planted in Britain had about perished with the conquest of the country by the Saxons, and Gildas, their own historian, admits that they never thought it worth while to attempt to teach the Saxons. A few sparks may have remained alive among the embers in Ireland, 148 Christian Missions. but all else was blackness of darkness. Strange to say, the light which dawned on these na- tions sitting in darkness was not from Jerusa- lem or Rome, but from these waning sparks, which had somehow been kindled into a Pharos beacon light which shone out all over Europe. One little island on the north coast of Scotland was the center of this movement, lona — *' Isle of Columba's cell, Where Christian piety's soul-cheering spark. Kindled from heaven between the light and dark Of time, shone like a morning star." Well might Wordsworth and Johnson grow eloquent over a bit of land, three miles in length and half as broad, where Columba estab- lished his missionary training-college for the evangelization of the North. He was only one of many, though the greatest, and lona only one center, though the most conspicuous among several, and the year when he established his college only the center in point of time of a movement that was widespread and long con- tinued. The inspiration of the work was not received from Rome. It was singularly spon- taneous and evangelical, and more allied to the Methods. 149 spirit of Protestantism than of Roman Cathol- icism. It was even antagonized by Rome at several points. According to Columba's plan, those whose hearts were on fire to preach to the northern nations were invited to lona, where they received a thorough training for the work, which included manual labor and the trades, as well as prayer, meditation, and instruction. They were not all ordained, and many of them were married. " From this nest of Columba's the sacred doves went forth," generally in companies of twelve. The first step was to build a mission house, or monas- tery, as a basis of supplies and a refuge in emer- gencies. Sometimes as traveling evangelists they cut loose from all ties and went out with- out purse or scrip or two coats, eating such things as were set before them, and when this failed resorting to roots and berries of the for- est. A deed of Boniface illustrated the bold martyr spirit which actuated them. Coming to Fitzlar he saw the thunder-oak of Grismar, which the people so reverenced that he who broke a twig expected instant death. Plainly the way to uproot this superstition was to cut down the tree. This Boniface proceeded to do, I50 Christian Missions. to the consternation of the beholders, who at once reasoned that if Thor could not protect himself he must be useless. Of the wood of the oak Boniface made a chapel. Concerning the manner of life of the mis- sionaries the oldest of the English historians writes : " Receiving only the necessary food from those they taught, living themselves in all re- spects conformably to what they prescribed to others, and being disposed to suffer any ad- versity and even to die for the truth they preached." Not every king into whose domains they entered received them so favorably as did Athelbert, who said after hearing the first ser- mon, " We will not molest you, but give you favorable entertainment and take care to sup- ply your necessary sustenance." That they were soon able to care for them- selves seems evident from the fact that the pope, when he heard of the great success of the missions, sent sacred vessels and vestments for the altars, also ornaments for the churches, and relics of the holy apostles, and books, but no money. The method in this case was that Methods. 151 of self-support. It received eloquent illustra- tion in the labors of Ulphilas, Martin of Tours, Columbanus, Cyril, Methodius, and Anschor. The story of their labors, trials, and heroic deaths remains for the pen of some historian unbiased enough to do justice to the Chris- tians of the Middle Ages. The disappearance of every vestige of idolatry from the regions where they taught is evidence enough of their success. This was another example of martyr missions which was not disappointing to the projectors. The most successful missions of the Roman Catholic Church have generally been conducted after this plan. The famous Society for the Propagation of the Faith was only formed in Lyons in 1822, and has never raised more than one and a quarter million dol- lars a year, which sum will not account for the world-wide missions of that Church. The third great missionary movement was inaugurated at Herrnhut, Germany, in the year 1733- It was not simply begotten by the Mora- vian Church — it was the Church. As usual, the movement was great in proportion as the agents that carried it on were poor and 152 Christian Missions. obscure. The Moravian Church numbered only six hundred poor despised exiles when they commenced to go abroad. So late as 1886 the home churches of Europe and the United States were only able to raise ^16,803, though the proceeds of industrial enterprises and of schools connected with the missions brought up the sum to ;£'50,ooo. This shows that the stipendiary plan, if adopted, must have dwarfed their undertaking to a point beneath the notice of history. Moravian missions are historic mainly because they were martyr missions. With such poverty and paucity of numbers "they were able in nine years from the begin- ning to send missionaries to Greenland, St. Thomas, St. Croix, to Surinam, Rio de Barbice, to the blacks and Indians of North America, to Lapland, Tartary, Algiers, Guinea, Cape of Good Hope, and Ceylon. In the year in which Perry gained his great victory on Lake Erie a review of the past showed that, with one hundred and fifty-seven missionaries in the field, they had won a greater victory at thirty-three different points, where they had enrolled 27,400 converts. The method adopted for carrying on this work was essen- Methods. 153 tially that of self-support. The missionaries were at liberty to state their wants to the home church, which supplied such of them as their limited means would allow. For the bal- ance they depended on themselves and God. Christian David, the pioneer of the move- ment, wrote concerning his departure on this work : " There was no need for much time or ex- pense for our equipment. The congregation consisted chiefly of poor despised exiles who had not much to give, and we ourselves had nothing but the clothes on our backs. Being accustomed to make a shift with little we did not trouble our heads how we should get to Greenland or how we should live in that country." Yet they were not without plans for the future, for when asked how they intended to support themselves, providing they succeeded in reaching there, they answered that they in- tended to build a house and cultivate the land by the labor of their hands, that they might not be burdensome to any. When told that there was no wood in that country they re- plied, " Then we will dig in the earth and lodge 154 Christian Missions. there." They proved their scheme to be feas- ible by carrying it out and making the Green- land mission a grand success. Leonard Dober, who had it on his heart to go to St. Thomas, said, " If no other way offers I will sell myself as a slave there." He com- menced work at St. Thomas by hiring out as a steward to a planter. When the way opened he devoted himself wholly to his chosen work and won the praise of Bryan Edwards, the historian of the island, who testified to the sound judgment, evang^-lical spirit, and great success of Dober and his companions. Of the work of the brethren in South Amer- ica, whither some of them went in 1738, we read, " After working some time in the com- pany's plantation they took a piece of land on the borders of the colony and cultivated it on their own account, in the hope of at length finding an opportunity to make known the Gospel among the pagan inhabitants." Others in 1847 established a mission among the Tartars, going first to St. Petersburg and then two thousand miles overland to Czarizin. " Here they began to erect the buildings nec- essary for their accommodation, to cultivate Methods. 155 the land, and to work at their respective trades, with a view to the support of the colony." A physician of their number undertook the establishment of a mission in Persia in 1789. " His plan, which he carried out, was to practice as a physician in Cairo ; to learn the Arabic language ; to establish a correspondence with the patriarch of the Copts, and through him to form an acquaintance with the Abana himself." The leader of the company that in 1752 went to Labrador had before visited that region several times as mate of a fishing vessel. Small wonder that with such a practiced man in the lead " they took a house ready framed, a boat, various kinds of implements and seeds for the cultivation of the ground." The inability of the home church to supply the wants of those who went out made it necessary that they should be men who had had experience in the practical affairs of life and had some trade by which they could live. Aside from this it was the settled belief of this community of mission- aries that the habits of a student were not so well calculated to form a person for that work as those of a mechanic. 156 Christian Missions. In 1759 thirteen single brethren left for Tranquebar, an island in the Bay of Bengal, where, " having purchased a piece of ground about a mile from the town, they built them- selves a house, together with some workshops and outhouses, wrought at their trades, and met with good sale for the articles they made." The Cape of Good Hope was visited by George Smitd in 1736, who, on his arrival, after the manner of others, " fixed a spot for settle- ment and proceeded to build a hut and plant a garden." The method adopted by these remarkable men in their work is thus beyond question. It was essentially the same in all the three great missionary epochs. The revival of spiritual religion under Whitefield and Wesley was brought to this country in a like manner. A carpenter who wrought at his trade, a captain in his majesty's service, and a farmer were the earliest agents in this work. The self-supporting plan for missions is as old as Christianity, and the Church has won all its great triumphs in the past by the use of this method. The objection is sometimes made to self- Methods. 157 supporting missions that they entail needless and unreasonable hardship on those who carry them on. Strangely enough, the objection which history brings against them is the pos- session of too much wealth and the tendency to overmuch ease. Augustine and his forty companions went to Britain like Jacob to Beer- sheba, with a staff only. So much in harmony was their experience with that of those who, going out under like circumstance, " lacked nothing," that the first troublesome question which arose, concerning which advice was sought from Rome, was about the use and dis- posal of the property the Church had gained. The Franciscan fathers on the Pacific coast encountered the same difficulty. Father Juni- pero Serra, the pioneer, is represented as stand- ing on the deck of the vessel that bore him from Mexico to California having on his person his entire possessions, which were a garment of cloth, bound about the loins with a hempen cord, and a crucifix. His successors became great land owners and cattle graziers, and forgot the true object of the mission in overmuch prosperity. The Roman Catholic missions in Mexico iS8 Christian Missions. and the efforts of many of the pioneers of the apostolic Church met the same fate. The fact that those who thus take their lives in their hands have no vices to consume their resources or to hinder their labors, and that such manifest self-sacrifice calls forth liberal gifts, has made the self-supporting plan the most suc- cessful financial policy — even to the extreme of danger. The same plan seems to offer the only feasi- ble mode of expansion commensurate with the demands of the work and the opening doors. The gifts of the churches of Great Britain to the cause of missions during a decade were as follows : 1873-1877 (Average per year) £1,047,809 1878-1882 " " " 1,100,462 1883-1887 ' 1,218,163 The gift of this most Christian country to the cause of missions is at a stand, and to many it seems as if the limit had been reached. Three million dollars contributed annually by the churches of the United States is certainly far from the sum which may be reasonably expected in the luture, but there is a limit which must Methods. 159 some day be reached and which some think to be in sight. On the other hand, it is admitted by all that the work in pagan lands is only begun. Many missionaries are the sole means of Christian instruction to more than a million souls; and what are these among so many ? Where there is one Christian worker there should be one hundred, and where there is no one there should be ten. We have truly only been play- ing at the work of evangelization. But how is such an expansion possible? By the method most now in use it is not to be ex- pected. Allowing the gifts of the churches to increase at the rate expected by the most san- guine, and this to be supplemented by the efforts of churches formed on native soil, still the sum is but an approximation to the amount needed. But heroism and self-sacri- fice among twenty million Christians are not easily exhausted. If six hundred poor exiles could on self- supporting lines send out from Herrnhut so many successful workers, what might twenty million Christians do working in the same way ? i6o Christian Missions. The Salvation Army claims to have three thousand foreign missionaries, or more than half as many as all the rest of Christendom put together. Allowing that many of these are inexperienced and incompetent yet they man- age to live, largely through means obtained where they labor. This shows that the plan of self-support is not only possible in most cases, but admits of boundless expansion. The supply of men has generally been in ex- cess of that of money, and increases according to the measure of sacrifice demanded. A call for one or ten thousand young men from En- gland or America to go out, as did the apostles, the monks of Columba, or the humble workers of Herrnhut, would not be unheeded. If there is any thing that would unlock the coffers of unused wealth in the Church, and pour it out in lavish waste, like Mary's box of oint- ment, it is such a move as this. The sacrifice of the missionary, as well as the merit of his cause, has helped the Missionary Society to such resources as it hns had, but the prying eyes of scribbling travelers have been looking in on the comfortable homes of the missionarv and his lot no longer calls forth special com Methods. i6i miseration among the well-informed. In this the missionary societies have only shown com- mon business prudence in looking after the comfort of those whom they employed, with an eye to their highest efficiency and long con- tinuance in the work. Nevertheless Christianity needs heroes and martyrs in the missionary work to inspire the self-sacrifice of the Church, and this martyr missions can supply. The day is, perhaps, not far off when the voluntary and self-supporting method by which the Church has won most of her missionary success in the past will again take its place as the plan chiefly relied on in the last great struggle with paganism and antichrist. 11 1 62 Christian Missions. XL SUCCESS. Vexilla Regis proderent Fulget crucis mysterium. The fact that those who support the cause of missions are business men, accustomed to business methods, explains the demand so often made for an exhibit of the results of Christian missions up to date. It seems reason- able, at least from a commercial stand-point, that after a series of years in which assessments have been levied with great regularity, there should come a time for the declaration of a dividend, or at least for an accounting and summing up of results. Unfortunately for this way of looking at things, we do not occupy the relation of business proprietors in the cause of missions,, but only that of servants unto a master or soldiers under a general. " Whatso- ever he saith under you, do it " sums up our duty in the case. Though we could see no outcome, our labors may be necessary " for a Success. 163 witness against them " to make it clear to all that the Judge of all the earth had done right, having done for his vineyard all that he could. In undertaking to sum up the results of mis- sionary labor we find it difficult to reduce to statistics or to express in figures or words the most cherished results. The power of the most approved steam-engine is accurately known, and stated as equal to that of a given number of horses, and the brilliancy of the most powerful electric light is known as equal to the light of a given number of candles ; but no one attempts to reduce to figures the power of the moon to attract, as, for instance, the tides, or of the sun to give light. The great forces are imponderable and immeasurable, as is the effect of the lives of truly great men, like John Knox or Savonarola. The richest and most permanent results of missionary labor are those which do not appear in the table of missionary statistics. The number of members reported this year may by persecution or apostasy be much less the next, and the missionary property of this year be consumed by fire before the next report, but the gradual 164 Christian Missions. leavening of the mass by the Gospel, the ton- ing up of society along lines before neglected, the air of doubt and suspicion that gathers about the worship of idols, the lessening of the tone of contempt, and the absence of the old assumption of superiority, the willing ear, and sometimes the hunger and thirst for hearing the word of God — these are effects that abide and are important. What does not appear in the table of statistics is greater than that which does. The demand for facts and figures, if insisted upon, may readily be met by pointing to the entire body of Christianity in all lands, which is altogether a result of missionary labor. In the literature created by Christianity, the benevolent institutions called into being, the colleges and seminaries founded, the churches built, the wealth created, the Sunday-schools organized, and the members enrolled, the lover of the exact in religion may revel in facts and figures to any extent he wishes. Separate undertakings for the evangelization of single races may readily be traced, and results of vast magnitude found to have grown out of missionary labor. Christianity in Europe, Success. 165 Britain, or the United States owes its exist- ence to the missionary. The actual results of the modern movement to evangelize pagan peoples, as given in the missionary year-book, are matter of just pride. We have only to remember that the present movement is less than a century old ; that when Dr. Ryland bade the young Carey, who was pleading for a Gospel among the heathen, to " sit down, when God wants the heathen converted he will attend to it," he was giving expression to a nearly unanimous sentiment, which showed that the Church had first to be converted to foreign missions ; that every pagan land was at that time hermetically sealed against the Gospel ; that Christianity was in desperate straits to maintain its spirit- uality and even existence. With this in mind, the triumphs of missions are not only satisfac- tory but marvelous. It is useless to expect some travelers to find any fruit of missionary labor, because they have no eyes to see or ex- perience to qualify them to know of its char- acter if brought to their attention. Professor Darwin, whose accuracy as an observer no one will question, was an example of another class. i66 Christian Missions. While with the Beagle on her voyage he saw enough of missionary labor in Terre del Fuego, a most unpromising land from which to expect a favorable report, to draw from him the con- fession : " It is most wonderful ; and it shames me, as I always prophesied failure. It is a grand success." Over against the testimony of travelers of the former kind as to what they did not see we may safely put the more posi- tive witness of Mr. Darwin and thousands of others as to what they did see. The statistics of foreign missions are easily accessible and are worthy of careful study. A few facts seem to be established : I. Not only has there been marked progress but as signal victories as Christianity has ever won have been made in the cause of missions during the present century. The progress of the Gospel in the first three centuries has been reckoned as one of the evidences of its divine origin. The proof of the heavenly origin of the Gospel must then be accumulating, for the progress in the mission fields during the nine- teenth century surpasses that in either of the first three cenuries. Gibbon estimates the number of Christians at the close of the first Success. 167 century as 100,000. In a single country, that of India, only seventy years after Carey's first baptism of a convert, there were 73,000 native Christian converts, and a nominal Christian population among the natives of over 300,000. Taking all the mission fields together, it is beyond doubt that the triumphs of the Gospel in this century equal any that went before. 2. The rate of progress increases year by year. In India, for instance, the number of na- tive Christians was approximately as follows : J830 ^ . . . 27,000 1850 102,951 i860 213,370 1870 318,369 1880 528,590 l88g 800,000 In Japan, Madagascar, the Sandwich Islands, Fiji, the ratio of increase was even greater. This means the certain and speedy conquest of paganism, if present conditions remain. 3. The progress of Christianity in the East equals that which was made by other religions in their most brilliant eras, as for instance Buddhism or Moslemism in their early stages. Vast regions of the East were soon overrun by i68 Christian Missions. Moslem arms, but this is not to be confounded with the conversion of the people to that faith, which was much slower. Buddhism grew rap- idly, especially during the life-time of Gautama, but Christianity surpasses either at its best. This is surprising when we remember that the tenets of most ethnic religions are carefully adapted to the requirements of the natural heart and seldom demand an altered life. Getting religion under such circumstances is so easy that it is no wonder that at times the progress is rapid, but not more so than of that religion which at the start says, " Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 4. Progress in the evangelization of pagan peoples is as rapid as can be made with safety. " Sudden effects in history," says John Stuart Mill, " are generally superficial; causes which go down deep into the roots of future events pro- duce the most serious parts of their effects only slowly and must have time to become a part of the familiar order of things." History plainly demonstrates that when progress has been too rapid a reaction always sets in. The trans- formation of society during the first three cent- Success. 169 uries was of this character, and a reaction set in which for a time threatened to ruin all. The too speedy acceptance of the Gospel by the Saxons under Ethelbert was followed by a re- vival of paganism. The reformation of Luther was rapid and startling, but the reaction which came at the close testified that in the impor- tant matter of reconstructing religious thought among a people, the more haste sometimes means the less speed. Japan, to some, seems to be approaching the same danger-point. Seldom has any nation ever abandoned so hastily its old traditions, religious and polit- ical, and never perhaps without suffering the penalty which we hope the Land of the Rising Sun may escape. J. The attempt to introduce the Christian religion into the Orient has met at least with as rapid success as has the effort to introduce the arts and sciences, especially the appliances and inventions of the West. At the opening of this century the East was destitute of both West- ern science and religion. The tools of the workmen, the modes of travel, the homes, books, merchandise were rude as the religion. As to all the appliances of modern civilization I70 Christian Missions. Western nations have felt called upon to sup- ply the East, and sometimes at the cannon's mouth have demanded open ports for trade. Commerce has pressed into every open door and unlocked some that were shut. The mis- sionary, on the other hand, has gone out single- handed. Yet the nations of the East have ac- cepted Christian ideas and ways as rapidly as they have as a rule taken to the fruits of West- ern science. Are they slow to accept the New Testament? Not more so than to adopt the Western plow or to substitute the spinning- jenny for the hand-loom. They have shown great conservatism, but have not confined it to religion. 6. The progress of Christianity in the East is rapid when we consider the feebleness of the means used for its spread. A few missionaries here and there have been sent into lands where the population is immense. Sometimes a single man has been left to cope with the doubt and opposition of a province containing millions of souls. It is a law of mechanics, for the arrange- ment of pulleys for raising great bodies, that what is gained in the small expenditure of force is lost in time required for the operation. Success. 171 To expect any other result in the moral eleva- tion of a people is to be unreasonable. If we choose to be sparing in the amount of money used and in the number of men in the field, let us expect results only of corresponding magnitude. On the whole, the words of the old Latin hymn, which stand at the head of this chapter, were never more true than now : "The banners of heaven's King advance, The-mystery of the cross shines forth.'' INDEX. Anglo-Saxon ancestors, our ; their early condition, 11,12; conver- sion of, 13-16 ; strength of char- acter, 18. Annihilation, taught and desired, 64. Athens^ ancient religion of, 21. Augustin, 14. Bible, not appreciated in the Occi- dent, 35-37. . , „ , Brahmanism, struggle with Bud- dhism, 26, Buddhism, origin of, 26; in China, 29. Carnegie, Andrew, view of the world's need, 70. Charity among pagans whimsical, 102. China, Protestant missions in, 125; treaty with the United States, 127. Chinese, defect in character of, 58. Cholera, how cured by Chinese phy- sicians, 105. Christianity an Oriental religion, .38: Christianity, early triumphs of, 144. Chrysostom's testimony to Buddha, .38. , . . Coifi, why a Christian, g6. Commerce and Christianity, 90. Commercial value of paganism, 54-56. Cost of paganism, 61. Criticism of missions, 140. Custom-house in China, why man- aged by foreigners, 58, Darwin's testimony to the value of missions, 113, 166. Diana of the Ephesians, how su- perseded, 23. Disease, pagan remedies for, 105. Dress, folly of adopting native, 99. Drummond, Henry, appeal to the United States, 112. Egypt, ancient religion of, 24. Ethics, ignored by pagan religions, 47. Exodus of Israel a lesson to mod- ern nations, 71. Fate, Brahmanic doctrine of, 50. Fear the inspiration of ancient relig- ions, 43. Federation of the world, 74. Franciscan missions on Pacific coast, 157. Free trade and tariff, 74. Gibbon, disbelief of in missions, :>\i^'i Gold, an international god, 93. Government oppressive in the Ori- ent, 109. Gregory, 13. Hermhut as a missionary center, 150.. Humanitarian view, 100. Human race, solidarity of, 68. Immigration, effect of, 73. India, ancient religion of, 25; war overruled for the good of, 84. Indians, character of, 120, 121 ; in- justice toward, 122 ; treaties with, 123. Interest, rate of in heathen lands, 55- , International law, old formula, 6g. lona as a missionary center, 148. Japan, religious revolution in, i6g, Keshub Chender Sen's testimony to Jesus, 36. Medical science, ignorance of in Orient, 104. Methods of missionary work, 140. Mexico, war with, 137. Missionaries, many kinds of, gS. 174 Index. Missionary spirit wanting in ethnic religions, 24. Mohammedanism, triumphs of, 24. Moravian missions, 150. Napoleon, policy of, 70, National seclusion dangerous, 75. Nations, mutual relations of, 68. New Testament idea of missions, 78. Obelisk, a witness, 24. Old Testament view of missions, 78. Oriental Christ, the, 36. Orientals, more religious than the Occidentals, 39 ; want of enter- prise among, gi. Paganism as characterized by Bish- op Foster, 77. Pagan religions, costly, 6r, 87; now corrupt, 66, 67. Poverty in the far East, 107. Railroads and civilization, 72. Rock Springs outrage on Chinese, ^33- . . . Rome, ancient religion of, 20, 21. Salvation Army work, 160. Sandwich Islands, the Gospelin, 92. Science, superiority of Western, 94. Scientific objections to missions, 33. Selfishness, dangerous, 73 ; as a mis- sionary ally, 97. Sickness, want of care in, in the East, 10^. Slave-trade in Africa, in. Solidarity of humanity, 68. Sorrow, pagan religions no comfort in, 63. Statesman, description of a great, 74- . Statesmanship and missions, 114. Statistics of mission work, 163. Steam-ships and commerce, 72. Stipendiary and martyr missions. Strength of Protestantism in United States, 117. Success of modem missions, 166. Tariff and Free Trade, 74. Thomson, Bishop, on Character- istics of Orientals, 39. Treaties, between Christian and pagan lands, 57 ; with the In- dians, 123. Volney's view of religion, 33. Wars, of nineteenth century, 80 ; re- sults secured by, 83 ; modern, how brought about, 85 ; some things worse than, 87 ; inferior- ity of Orientals in the art of, 94, Woman's lot in the East, 109. Works, salvation by, a tenet of all ethnic religions, 41.