REV. JAKES MUDGE, D. D. The Pastor's Missionary Manual /• THE PASTOR'S M I S S I O N A R Y M A N U A L. - BY REV. JAMES MUDGE, D.D. MISSIONARY SOCIETY methodist Episcopal Chufch, 150 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK. 1891. Boston University School of Theology Library PREFATORY WORDS. If any apology is needed for this little book, let it be found in the following facts, which it seems proper to state as accounting for its production. The author, since returning in I883 from ten years' service as a missionary in connection with the North India Conference, has aimed to be, in the few charges which he has served, a missionary pastor at home, deeming it a plain duty, since he was providentially prevented from going back, to do all in his power to promote the cause at this end of the line. He has also been permitted to accomplish something in a wider field as continuous Secretary and Treasurer of the New England Conference Missionary Society since its reorganization in I886. Besides this, during the past four years he has been Lecturer on Missions in the Boston University School of Theology, and is also Treasurer of the International Missionary Union. Being brought in all these relations, as well as some others not here specified, to give much time and strength to the study of missions, it appeared to him in the light of a duty to throw a small portion of the results of this study into a condensed, convenient form that might prove of service to his fellow pastors— especially the younger portion and those who had not paid much attention to the theme—by making it easier for them to discharge their full obligations to the missionary cause. Hence this unpretending pamphlet, which might easily have been expanded into a considerable book for the library shelves, but which, in its present shape, it is hoped, iii PREFATORY WORDS. may be found of sufficient worth to lie on the study table and receive frequent consultation when missionary matters need to be considered. May the Lord bless it to the advancement of that glorious time when He whose right it is shall reign in all hearts throughout the earth! JAMES MUDGE. CLINTON, MASS., Sept. I, I89I. CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE. I. MISSIONARY PASTORS THE NEED OF THE HOUR........................ I 2. TH E MONTHLY CONCERT OF PRAYER...................................... II 3. THE SUNDAY SCHOOL MISSIONARY SOCIETY........................... I8 4. How TO RAISE MONEY FOR MISSIONS 26 5. How TO MEET COMMON OBJECTIONS 35 6. THE CHIEF GROUNDS OF MISSIONARY OBLIGATION 40 7. OUR MISSIONARY SOCIETY'S EVOLUTION 44 8. TH E AUXILIARY ORGANIZATIONS 49 9. OUR FOREIGN MISSIONS 54 I0. OUR DOMESTIC MISSIONS 64 II. THE CONFERENCE MISSIONARY SOCIETY 69 I2. SIMULTANEOUS MISSIONARY MEETINGS 72 I3. TEXTS FOR MISSIONARY SERMONS 76 I4. TOPICS FOR MISSIONARY ADDRESSES 80 I5. MISSIONARY THOUGHTS IN POETRY 84 I6. PPAYING FOR MISSIONS 94 I7. READING ABOUT MISSIONS 98 I8. HEART THROBS OF MISSIONARY HEROES I02 I9. TH E NOBLE SPIRIT OF THE NATIVE CONVERTS......................II0 20. NUGGETS AND ARROW POINTS II7 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL I. Missionary Pastors the Need of the Hour. THIS is the closing decade of the nineteenth Christian century, a century rightly called, because of the marvelous changes produced by it in every sphere of human activity, "the wonder of the ages." But the interest of the Church in missionary work, the noblest enterprise of all, and the most fit to create enthusiasm, does not for some reason, seem to feel the quickening pulses of the hour as much as do most other things. It advances, indeed, but the progress is far too slow. It moves, but in this period of steam and electricity to move on an ox-cart cannot be accounted satisfactory. In fact, so far as the contributions go, (and by them we best gauge the interest,) they have for some time not kept pace with the increase of the numbers and wealth of the churches. Dr. Dorchester computes that the Evangelical Protestant Church members of the United States gave to Home and Foreign Missions in I850 one and one-tenth mills to each dollar of their property; in I860 this sum was reduced to nine-tenths of a mill; in I870 to eight-tenths, and in I880 to six and a half tenths of a mill. The computation for I890 would no doubt show a still further reduction. In I850 thirty-five cents per member was given; in I860 forty-eight cents; in I870, sixty-three cents; in I880, fifty-nine and a half cents; and in I890 probably about the same as in I870, or if an increased amount not more than two cents for two decades. The Methodist Episcopal Church in I872 gave to its Missionary Society forty-five cents for each of its lay and ministerial members; in I888 it gave only forty-six cents, although the sixteen years had without doubt much increased its riches. Is there any explanation that can be found why an impulse commensurate with the calls and claims of the dying world has not been put into this enterprise ? Without attempting now an analysis of ultimate causes we affirm unhesitatingly, that the responsibility for the present deplorable indifference with reference to the evangelization of the heathen rests chiefly upon the pastors of the home churches. There is no diversity of opinion on this point among those who have made the matter the subject of most careful study. They all say with Dr. Christlieb, "The great difference of interest in missions in different parishes comes chiefly from the different position 1 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. taken by the clergy in regard to it." They all agree with Dr. Pierson that "the stream rises no higher than its source, and ordinarily the measure of the pastor's interest in the world field determines the level of his people's interest and enthusiasm." Dr. Duff, who traveled widely, observed closely, and felt deeply on this theme, declared "The greatest obstacle to the success of missions lies in the apathy and indifference of ministers." It can easily be seen why so large a responsibility is located here. The ministers are the natural and appointed leaders. They create the sentiment of the congregations, and in the long run exert a molding influence on the people. The latter are in very many cases willing to be led, but they can do only a little without him to whom they rightly look for inspiration and direction. He holds the key of the situation. With tact and persistence he can bring to bear a constant pressure that will in the course of a few years transform opinion. It is perfectly certain that little or no missionary spirit will be developed in a church unless the pastor himself is full of it. If by his silence or inactivity he declares that the enterprise is of small moment the people can hardly be much blamed for failing to support it. The pastor who does nothing or next to nothing, really opposes. A goodly proportion of every congregation will respond generously to appeals for this cause, if such appeals are presented with enthusiasm. In the vast majority of cases it is perfectly just to say that where there is a failure in the collection the pastor is the one chiefly at fault. He was induced to slur the matter over or take it up in a purely perfunctory and apologetic manner, and the result was only what might have been expected: a shame to him, a blight on the benevolence of his congregation, a grief to his Lord, and a defrauding of the "Greeks and barbarians" to whom he is as much a debtor as was the apostle Paul. It is true that a pastor who throws his soul into this thing as he ought will occasionally meet with criticism or even opposition on the part of some of the leading men of his church. But is such a fact any reason for silence or for recreancy? Should it not rather be deemed an argument for greater earnestness? It certainly shows that previous pastors have been culpably neglectful to duly train the flock in this direction, have suffered them to go on year after year ignorant of what should be the first concern of a Christian Church. But a true minister, who looks to the favor of his Master rather than of man, will say to himself, not let me be quiet about this lest I damage my popularity, not let me do as others before me have done and leave to some braver successor the task I find too hard; no, but, let me do my full duty in the THE NEED OF THE HOUR. fear of God, with as much tact, to be sure, as I can command, but not with unmanly cowardice and the shirking of plain obligation. The minister who fails to cultivate the missionary spirit in his charge wrongs the church in general, whose funds he cripples and whose disciplinary requirements he violates; wrongs his own individual church, in ways which we will shortly explain; wrongs Christ Jesus, the travail of whose soul he frustrates and whose coming he postpones; wrongs the world at large, and himself in particular most of all. He forfeits his legitimate share in the glorious triumph of the gospel and loses the welcome at heaven's gate which he might otherwise receive from great numbers brought there out of every nation by his indirect instrumentality, even though he could not in person reach them. "The world is my parish," every true minister will say, especially every lineal successor of John Wesley; the world is my parish, and no smaller sphere can answer the demands of Christ upon me; I cannot excusably plan for anything less than Messiah's universal enthronement. He who does his utmost at home will doubtless find at the last day that his prayers and his urgency in raising the funds have been among the most powerful factors in producing the glad results. Great numbers of pastors no doubt honestly think that their duty to the church immediately placed in their care will not permit them to do much for the cause in general, and especially for people in distant lands. They fall into the delusion so common with many laymen, that whatever money or strength goes out of the parish is so much subtracted from the sum total that would otherwise be spent in the parish, and that if nothing is given to Africa or Asia there will be so much the more laid out for America's uplifting. But all experience proves that this is not so at all, and that the missionary cause is, as Dr. Durbin used to phrase it, as much " the life of the Church at home as it is the hope of the Church abroad." Nothing so ministers to a church's true growth, gives it such edification and strength as the being drawn out of itself and actively interested in the welfare of the lost millions. Nothing so stirs the heart for home work as seeking to spread the gospel amongst those who know it not. Nothing so expands the soul and broadens the sympathies, and calls out generosity, loosing the purse strings and the heart strings, as the taking up of God's world-wide work for prayer and study and active participation. Nothing so promotes the principle and habit of Christian stewardship and dispels selfishness as getting men filled with the grand thought of conquering the world for Christ. This will put that element of the heroic into their life THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. which is needed to rescue it from sordidness even as, thirty years ago, the saving of this nation did, lifting men above themselves in a way that no smaller purpose could possibly have done. Dr. Alden well says, " There is no form of human need at home which would not be thoroughly supplied simply as a supplementary 'twelve baskets full' to a well equipped resolute endeavor first of all to feed the hungering millions of heathen lands." The Church will certainly do better for her own people by forgetting them in a measure than by thinking of them exclusively. It may seem like bread cast upon the waters, but it will be surely found after many days. There will be accruing as the blest result new evidence of God's truth, new convictions of His power, new affection for His will. Faith for larger home conquests will be strengthened by the mighty works wrought, the glorious victories won, in the lands afar. Selfishness will diminish and zeal for God's cause in all directions dominate. We shall feel the closeness of our connection with the myriads of our fellow men. We shall learn to look upon life not from the narrow, niggardly standpoint of self-interest chiefly, but from the wider, kindlier platform of a generous recognition of the active brotherhood of man. The best days of the Church were the days of her greatest activity in extending the word of truth ; she has flourished in proportion as she has been true to this cause ; and so it will always be. It is vain to seek a stable prosperity in any other line. No nation or individual can really succeed that lives merely or mainly to itself. It is a sure recipe for Church decay, for choking up its channels of beneficence and shriveling up piety, to act upon the maxim, '' Charity begins and ends at home,'' to devote all strength and time and interest and funds to local conveniences and adornments, to get little or no information as to the needs of the great world at large, and to give little or nothing for its help. They who water are themselves watered, they who bless others are blessed ; he who shares, at God's command, the little meal in the barrel will find the supply marvelously continued ; he who stops amid the bitter cold to rub a freezing stranger into vigor will thereby save his own life, while his heartless companion refusing to tarry passes on to destruction. Just as an army which is held within its entrenchments and kept at spading loses heart and is practically beaten, so is it with the Church ; if it has no enterprise or aspiration for making its influence widely felt, it will spiritually decline. The sword itself well wielded is the most efficient shield. The war carried into Africa and into Asia does most for the protection of Europe and America. Whenever the Church has lost sight of its expansive character, its world THE NEED OF THE HOUR encompassing commission, it has begun to lose ground. Whenever it has gone forward aggressively in obedience to the command of Christ, His spirit has been with it and all has been well. The fact is our benevolent resources are practically inexhaustible, only waiting to be drawn out, and in no other way can this so well be done as by the cultivation of the spirit of missions and the urging of the mighty motives which underlie this magnificent enterprise. "The light that shines farthest shines brightest nearest home." "We need in the West," said a far-seeing Western clergyman at a public meeting, "a Christianity strong enough to convert the world." He felt that to contend against the mighty forces there marshalled in opposition to religion nothing weak would answer. And it is true of our entire nation that only missionary piety, the strongest and clearest sort, can do the work required. To confine everything within our own boundaries would de feat the very end sought. The streams of beneficence would dry up. Any such proposition exhibits lamentable lack of perspective, a total misapprehension of the true philosophy of giving. It is a short-sightedness that ought to be constantly exposed, and ought by this time to be much better understood than it seems to be. The subversion of foreign missions would indeed be, as Dr. Anderson says, " the destroying of the great wheel in the vast machine of many wheels of which our be nevolent system is composed." To export religion is the best way to increase the amount available for home consumption. The church of Pastor Lewis Harms in Hermansburg, often referred to, is an illustrious example of this principle. Though composed of poor peasants and farmers, under his energetic leadership they organized themselves into a missionary society, built a ship, sent out a missionary colony from their own number to South Africa, established a training school and a missionary magazine, and soon had scores of laborers and thou sands of converts in Zululand. Did it cripple them at home ? No; the record is that during the seventeen years that Pastor Harms was spared to carry on the enterprise his parish enjoyed one long revival and ten thousand members were gathered into his church fold. Dr. Anderson tells us that in I847 the native churches in the Sandwich Islands where the mission had been planted for 27 years and had met with remarkable success, gave alarming signs of apathy and collapse. There was a deficiency of relig ions stimulus. It was found there, as it has been in our own country, that the motive power of home interests alone, the mere finishing up of the work already so largely done, was not of itself sufficiently strong to meet the needs of the case. " In THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. short, it was painfully certain that the infant churches on those islands could not be raised to the level of enduring and effective working churches without a stronger religious influence than could be brought to act upon them from within their own Christianized islands." It was this discovery that gave rise to the missions to Micronesia, an archipelago 2000 miles westward, where native Hawaiians supported by their own churches have since been operating with the best of effects in the islands from which as well as those to which they went. It has been repeatedly proved that it is impossible for mission churches as well as others to reach their lighest and truest state without some outside field of labor. To be Simply recipients fatally narrows and fossilizes. Dr. Ellin wood mentions a New York pastor whose congregation were struggling with a heavy debt, who was wise enough to urge them on that very account to enlist in outside mission work. He would not allow them, as a weaker, shortsighted leader would have done, to count themselves poor and dwell upon their burdens till all heart was taken out of them. He said, "We have so much to do among ourselves that we cannot afford to withdraw from the help of others in Christ's name. We cannot do even our own work selfishly. We can only succeed on the higher and broader principle of love to Christ and His common cause." Would there were more such ministers 1 Then would there be more churches filled with power and efficiency and vigorous spiritual life. Dr. F. A. Noble of Chicago, at the great London Missionary Conference in I888 gave the following item of personal experience in proof of the proposition that active interest in mission work helps to educate a church in liberality. He said : "About ten years ago the providence of God led me to the pastorate of my church in Chicago. The church had had a long and severe struggle, but we were between fifty and sixty thousand dollars in debt. The men who were in it had given and given. They were compelled to meet the current expenses of the church, and it was as much as they could do to meet the semi-annual interest of this vast sum. After years of discouragement they had decided that they could not do anything for Foreign Missions, nor much, if anything, for Home Missions. I had been for days taking an estimate of things. I went into the pulpit one Sabbath. I announced the schedule of benefactions. I said, ' We will give so much for this and so much for that. In two weeks we will take the annual collection in behalf of Foreign Missions. I tell you what 1 want you to do. I want you to give six hundred dollars.' They looked at each other and they looked at me. The sum was so vast that they had not any words of reproach. So I es THE NEED OF THE HOUR. caped. Next Sunday morning I repeated the announcement, and said, 'Remember, next Sunday you give this six hundred dollars.' I heard some remarks about the new minister that had come. We took our collection. What was it? It was not six hundred but eight hundred dollars. When I took my chair the next Sunday morning it was the most astonished congregation you ever saw. What was the outcome ? They began to have some faith in themselves, some sort of respect for their capacity ; they found their means were not exhausted. In six years we had paid every dollar of our indebtedness, and raised our contributions up to nearly twelve thousand dollars. There is no church in this continent, or any other, which, if the minister will put his heart into it, and say, ' Our sympathies must be as broad as the sympathies of Jesus Christ, our interests must be as wide as the interests of Jesus Christ,' cannot be brought to give of its substance for foreign mission work." In view of all these facts, which might be greatly multiplied, can any one doubt that that pastor greatly wrongs his church who, from any motive, however well meant, leads or permits it to confine its labors and prayers to its own individual wants. It is a course sure to diminish its gifts and graces, and decrease its energies and endowments. No matter if the church be feeble, let it begin at once to do something for those far poorer than itself, and it will take on strength. Dr. Samuel Miller, formerly professor in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, writes : ' ' If I were asked how a church, however small or poor, would be most likely to rise and grow, I would say with confidence, let it begin in good earnest to pray and exert itself for sending the gospel to the benighted and perishing. However small its strength, let it rouse that ittle, such as it is, and engage with fervent prayer and with heartfelt love for souls, in contributing to the Lord's treasury, and the very effort would tend to enlarge and build it up." Dr. Andrew Somerville, of the United Presbyterian Church, Scotland, records: ' ' My official position for so many years as foreign secretary, and the visits which during that time I paid to several places, gave me fitting opportunity for observing the state of matters, and I often said that I scarcely knew a congregation favored with a minister who took an active part in mission work, that was not prosperous." To be a missionary pastor, then—that is, one carrying on his heart the welfare of the wide, wide world, as well as the little part of it within the limits of his local parish, is as plain a duty as can be conceived. Viewed from any and every aspect its obligation is imperative and pressing. It remains to ask, what will a missionary pastor do? To which the answer is, he will do his utmost to develop a mis THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. sionary spirit in his church. And in order to accomplish this he will disseminate information, inculcate principles, maintain an interesting monthly concert of prayer, organize his Sunday- school into a Missionary Society, and devise means for contributing his full quota to the missionary treasury. The last three points we will take up in the three following chapters. A lew words in regard to the first two will be in order here. It needs to be well understood that there is no short cut by which we can easily reach the goal in this matter of creating and maintaining the missionary spirit; that is, the spirit that will count it a joy to deny self for the upbuilding of the Redeemer's kingdom in any part of the earth, the spirit that if no convenient channel was offered for the conveyance of its contributions toward the world's conversion would even make one for itself, entreating the authorities to accept their gifts, like the Corinthians of old (II. Cor. viii. 4). There is no lazy, speedy way by which this business can be done up once for all. The people must have patient, careful, skillful, persistent, elementary instruction in the facts and principles of missions. There must be line upon line and precept upon precept for many a weary day, involving a great deal of work, but it is truly blessed work on which the Lord sheds His richest smile. In the accomplishment of this work many methods must be used and many qualities will be called into requisition. Of course our missionary periodicals—The Gospel in All Lands, The Little Missionary, and World Wide Missions—all excellent in quality and cheap in price, must be circulated. Subscribers for them can almost always be obtained if pains is taken. It is sometimes possible to institute a missionary reading club whereby books and magazines on this subject, either furnished by the pastor or owned in common, will be passed from hand to hand. Into the Sunday-school library a few suitable volumes bearing on missions, of which there are now great numbers, can be occasionally introduced. The public prayers of the pastor, both on the Lord's Day and in the regular midweek meeting should rarely be without some allusion or more extended supplication for the salvation of all men. In short, a multitude of ways may be taken, the less direct being often the most effectual, to keep the topic before the minds and impress it upon the hearts of the congregation. A secretary of the American Board relates the following incident which has a lesson in this line: "' 'Dr. T——,' said a prominent lady in an influential church to a minister who had just been called as pastor, 'I do not believe in foreign missions.' The minister was grieved hut said nothing. A few weeks after, when the church was gathered about the table of the Lord, he took THE NEED OF THE HOUR. occasion to read the Master's final words to his disciples. 'The last words of our friends,' said the minister, are always precious. It affects us to know what chiefly weighs on their hearts as they are about to leave us, and any message or commission they give us then we would rather do anything than fail to heed or to execute. It has always impressed me deeply that the thing that chiefly weighed on our Savior's heart as he was taking his departure was the world, the whole world of sinners for which he had died, and that the very last request that he made of his followers was that they should go into all the world and preach his gospel to every creature.' The pastor continued his remarks for some minutes in this strain, but without the slightest personal allusion. Shortly after the close of the service the same lady approached him and said with tears in her eyes, 'Dr. T——, I do believe in foreign missions!' It is in this way, not by chiding or reproof, that the missionary spirit is to be developed in the churches. They need to be brought in contact with the soul of the gospel, with the richness and fullness of the redemptive scheme as disclosed in the whole Word of God, and especially in the character and utterances of our blessed Lord himself." The words of the Rev. I. H. Packard, of the New England Conference,in an admirable essay on "How to Spread Missionary Information' ' published in The Gospel in All Lands for March, I886, are so much to the point that we make a quotatation: "We must have a fixed, unalterable determination to do this one thing as distinct from other things. A tame willingness is not enough; a strong, well-defined purpose founded upon intelligent convictions of the necessities and grandeur of the missionary cause, and of our personal responsibility for its success is absolutely demanded. There are four strong barriers before us, impregnable against everything but a resolute purpose; these are ignorance, indifference, avarice, and narrowness. There is a sort of heroism needed by all Christian workers in order to reach hearts and consciences entrenched behind such opposing walls. When Wm. Lloyd Garrison commenced the publication of the Liberator he began with the memorable words: 'I am in earnest; I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.' Missionary items are hardly as objectionable as were the teachings of Garrison, nevertheless there is enough laziness, ignorance, indifference, avarice and narrowness in ourselves and others to encounter, to necessitate something of the same dauntless purpose. We must be in earnest; we must listen to nc excuses for inaction; we must not apologize for our work, nor retreat, and our cause must be heard." The pastor who takes up his task with this firmness of front will certainly prevail, and will have a missionary church. Is it too much to ask that every one do so? No, for only thus can this world be saved; nay, only thus can the Church herself be saved. The condition which confronts us is extension or extinction. They who make no effort to arouse the Church to THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. fulfill her destiny are really in league with the enemies who seek her overthrow. Should the Church settle down at ease as though her work were done, deliberately turning her back upon the unevangelized nations, she would inevitably and immediately decline. Should she cease to go forth to conquer new fields she would begin to lose her hold on the fields already won. Not merely the prosperity but the very existence of Zion; not her well-being alone, but her being itself, is inextricably intertwined with the work of missions. For this is the chief work of the Church, not an outside cause or a side issue, but the great primary business for which she was instituted and organized. She has, alas, departed in practice far from this ideal. She must be brought back to it. She must be led to rise in her might and make the conquest of paganism her ruling passion, hurling herself upon the foe en masse, instead of sending out against those solid ranks an insignificant skirmish line. This will be done when the ministry, one and all, make the cause their own, take it on their hearts and keep it before their people. When there is a man in the pulpit full of longing to see the dark lands lighted, they who fill the pews will in most cases be found ready to take their share in this grand crusade of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not for the rescue of an empty tomb but for the universal enthronement of an all-conquering Christ. II. The Monthly Concert of Prayer. THE Monthly Concert of Prayer for Missions has been in vogue, with varying degrees of interest, for some scores of years. Indeed, it was started in England at least a century and a half ago, and for the last seventy years has been more or less observed in this country. The Congregational and Presbyterian churches have been especially faithful to this institution, and have reaped their reward in a generally diffused acquaintance with missions among their people, and a degree of liberality toward them, such as is found in no other of the large denominations. In Methodist churches a regularly observed monthly missionary concert is a rarity. Not but what such meetings have full theoretical approval. The Discipline, ¶367, makes it the duty of the preacher-in-charge to institute and carry them on. And their immense importance to the cause is fully conceded by all who give the matter any attention. But it is found in practice that there are some difficulties in the way of their regular maintenance. They are not apt to be in favor with the unthinking and the unspiritual part of the people. Those who, while not altogethei unspiritual, lack breadth of mind, are quite as likely as any others to object to them, on the ground that they interfere with revival effort. In the view of this class no meeting is quite right, especially none on Sunday night, which does not largely consist of stirring exhortations to sinners, and is not closed by an invitation to come forward for prayers. They over-emphasize this one department of work, and seem to forget that a true church of Jesus Christ has other aims and purposes than to make a direct impression on its immediate surroundings, that it is an integral part of a far larger movement and must pay strict regard to the distant as well as the near. It is true of every pastor that the world is his parish, and monthly meetings for the consideration of its needs should be steadily maintained. He will find obstacles to doing so not only from without— from those who wish to air their easy eloquence on familiar themes and send their prayers along in the customary grooves, from those who have so much spiritual selfishness that they are reluctant to pray for anybody except themselves and their immediate relations, from those who find a coldness in whatever looks toward a larger drain on their pocket books—but also from within. That is, to make such meetings really interesting requires a large amount of personal preparation. 11 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. No off-hand talk bora of the moment and given with a glow will answer. There has to be a good deal of special reading and thinking, somewhat out of the line of bis ordinary employment And it is quite possible that he has little taste for it, besides having, as he considers, almost no time and perhaps few resources. There are so many things to do. so many objects clamoring for a share of attention, that the over-burdened and distracted man, feeling that he must shirk something, shirks that which has the least attraction for him and which will apparently yield the least fruit. Furthermore, he is unfamiliar with the monthly concert, having never seen it tried in the home of his boyhood, so he really does not know just how to go to work. Hence these obstacles within combining with the obstacles without, make his missionary prayer- meetings a nonentity. It is a thousand pities! It is not in the least necessary. The thing being right to do there is, of course, a way to do it. The pastor must first make up his mind that it shall be done, because it ought, and that nothing whatever shall be permitted regularly and statedly to interfere with it. In special seasons of unusual revival, when extra meetings are being held and extra helps used, it may not be wise to divert the current of thought or omit for a whole evening the appeal to the unconverted. Hut if such seasons are long continued, a judicious manager can arrange that the missionary cause shall not be- altogether lost sight of on its customary night : and it may be so handled as to help instead of hindering the impression made upon the ungodly. A missionary meeting is a meeting for and about salvation, as much as any other. Accounts of the wonderful triumphs of Divine grace among the lowest and most hardened of the human race, instances of suffering and sacrifice for the sake of Jesus, narrations of revival seasons in the foreign field, would certainly furnish a fitting basis on which to ground an invitation to sinners here in America to test the same mercy which has proved efficacious all over the World, and a warning not to incur the greater condemnation which must come upon those sinning against so much greater light than is granted the heathen. A cause so close to the very heart of Jesus and so vital to the welfare of His kingdom as that of missions cannot be detrimental to any phase of the Church's true prosperity if its presentation be properly guided. Much less can it be necessary to shut out all reference to it for many months together, or many years, lest revival labors be discouraged or destroyyed. It is precisely because the Church has so little of the true revival spirit that it cares so little for the promulgation of the Gospel message in the regions beyond. Let the pastor then, get so deeply convicted both of the importance of this meeting and its feasibility that he shall put MONTHLY CONCERT OF PRAYER. his foot down very firmly in relation to it. He need not storm Or bluster or scold. That indicates weakness. He need not necessarily even make any pre-annouueement of his purpose. Having coming to a fixed resolution that it can and must be done, let him go straight forward in the discharge of his plain duty, taking it for granted that no one will wish to interfere with him in carrying out that duty, and that it is not a matter question whether he shall do it. Where by previous con ition additional co-operation can he secured, it is of course well to take means for securing it. But it is also well, under some circumstances, to remember that many persons will fall in with an accomplished fact rather than assume the responsi bility of conflict, when if they had had the opportunity, by being consulted with, to dissent beforehand, they would have felt bound to be provoked and dissatisfied at having their advice disregarded. And they will be especially unlikely to make a disturbance, if the experiment to which they would have objected is seen to be a success. Such it can become in this case, every time, if the pastor so wills. What must he do? The specific things will depend very largely on his specific surroundings ; as the situation changes hi- methods will change. Rut it may be safely said that in this, as in almost everything else, there is no substitute for hard work, and the meeting will be worth, to himself and hi- people, just about what it costs. He will have to take the laboring oar in most cases. He can sometimes get considerable help in various ways from his Missionary Committee, but in making his program he will generally have to put himself in pretty largely at beginning, middle, and end. To do the best service he will have to keep the matter on his mind more or less all through the month, making notes and clippings from papers; magazines and books as he has opportunity. of these he can put into the hands of the young people to recite or read. In other cases he can ask them to give the incident or anecdote in their own words, or to state the point referred to and add some brief comment. It is not well to have much reading; especially if the extracts be long : no matter how good they are. the attention of the majority will soon flag. Brief Scripture readings can profitably be selected and dialogues can occasionally be managed. Printed missionary exercises are sometimes available that will give a large number something to do. Essays on appropriate themes may be introduced. An exercise called Sharp Shooting may suitably find a place on the program. It is arranged in this way : brief paragraphs or short incidents to the number of a do/en or more are distributed beforehand to such as are sure to be present and then at a given time in the evening they are called for one after another in quick succession by number, THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. with perhaps a pointed comment by the leader to drive each shot home, as much snap and enthusiasm being put into it as possible. Each month there should be something new, not only in the way of topic, but in the method of bringing out the topic. As many as possible should be brought in to take some part, not excluding the children, though it is not to be what is commonly known as a children's concert. The re peating of the Lord's Prayer together, or at least the first part containing the missionary petitions, may well be made one item. Also the singing of the doxology, special attention being called to the second line. In like manner single stanzas of other hymns, such as the second of "O for a thousand tongues," and the one in Coronation beginning " Let every kindred, every tribe." Stanzas that carry a very emphatic mis sionary thought, may be interjected at suitable intervals. The different mission fields or countries can be taken up in succession, and an evening devoted to each, several persons being engaged for some time beforehand in looking up information upon them. The various religions of the world can be treated in the same manner. A most interesting evening can be spent on Mohammedanism, for example, especially if the vast topic be sub-divided by assigning to one the life of the founder, to another the conquests under his successors, to another the chief doctrines, to another the ritualistic practices, to another the present condition of Mohammedan countries, etc., etc. The same can be done with Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. Different churches or denominations treated in their relation to missions can also be made profitable topics. The Moravian Missions, for instance, are of thrilling interest, and furnish an especially stimulating example. Another plan is to make different individuals responsible, each for some country or field, and so have a resume of the month's progress in the whole world. The more prominent classes in the Sunday-school can sometimes be induced, one after another, to make arrangements for filling a half hour at the meetings. The details for three or four of the twelve evenings can be left very frequently with the best of results to the officers of the W. F. M. S. or the W. H. M. S. If there be a chapter of the Epworth League, it can have charge of an evening once in a while. Some of the valuable books on missions that are constantly dropping from the press, such as John G. Paton's Autobiography, E. R. Young's ' 'By Canoe and Dog Train," Cyrus Hamlin's "Among the Turks," Gilmour's "Among the Mongols," Gordon's " Our India Mission," Thoburn's " My Missionary Apprenticeship," can be read at home and the choicest incidents from them related. Sketches of missionary heroes may be given ; a series of five-cent tracts about them is published MONTHLY CONCERT OF PRAYER. by the American Tract Society. Our own Missionary Publication department at I50 Fifth Avenue, New York, and the leaflets of the W. F. M. S. furnish a great variety of miscellaneous material. Maps of the mission lands are a very great help indeed in conveying vivid ideas concerning them. Colton's missionary map of the world is perhaps the best available for general purposes at present, but its price is high. Cheaper ones can frequently be made, either by the pastor or somebody in the congregation, that will answer fully as well, and will, indeed, for special fields, be better. A blackboard is often of large service. Missionary curiosities, and visits from missionaries, or special letters from them, should, of course, be utilized to the utmost whenever practicable. In short, there is almost no end to the varied arrangements that may and must be made, if the meeting is to justify its right to be and to hold up its head in the forefront of all others, as it certainly should. Special care needs to be taken, withal, that it be not too long ; let the audience be left hungry for more rather than sated with too much. And on no account let the collection be forgotten. While the interest of the people is kindled and their hearts are aglow, give them a chance to put their good purposes into immediate execution by putting their hands into their pockets and their money into the boxes. The result will often he surprising. Another caution is perhaps still more needed. Let it be a concert of prayer, rather than merely of music or recitations. Information is good, but not if it crowds out supplication. Here is where no little diligence and vigilance will be called for. Reports and addresses must not be allowed to monopolize the entire evening. Nor is it enough to secure prayers of a vague and general nature. Indeed, they are the special bane of such meetings. Prayers short, sharp and direct, that ask for the specific thing which rests as a burden on the heart, and then stop, are needed always, are rare everywhere. But in a missionary prayer meeting they are doubly essential and doubly hard to get. It is here that failure is to be feared more than anywhere else. But even here it is not really necessary. The desired pointedness, and brevity, and applicability can be obtained to a large degree if sufficient labor be put forth. Perhaps nothing reveals the utter lack of sympathy with missions, and ignorance about them, among the masses of church members so much as the woful dearth of praying power on this subject. It is even rarer than dollars in the contribution basket, and is more important. Unless pains is taken about it an entire missionary prayer meeting may pass and several prayers of the usual routine indefiniteness be offered without a single petition for missions except from the minister. It sometimes works well to assign beforehand different countries THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. to particular persons to be prayed for. After a statement of some special need or crisis, or a description of a particular person's work, it is well to ask some one to pray very briefly for that particular matter. Let the pastor himself lead in it if no one else can, not being afraid to call plain names right out in meeting before the Lord, and let the impression be dis tinctly made that these prayers mean something, that the offer ing of them is the chief business on hand, and that other matters are introductory and incidental to this. The whole meeting should tend to awaken the spirit of supplication both at the time and afterwards, and everything should center around this. If such a missionary meeting as we have tried to describe —planned for with care, managed with skill, filled with enthusiasm and work—were held monthly in any church for a series of years, who does not know that it would not only be the best attended meeting of the month, but that it would also revolutionize the thought of the community in regard to missions, and treble the collections. If it be said that it is too much to suppose that many pastors will take this amount of pains, we reply, who expects this world to be saved without effort, and just so far as the same spirit which sends our missionaries abroad possesses our pastors at home, as it certainly should, so far will this amount of labor not seem too great. We occasionally hear the objection raised that all the other benevolent societies ought to be treated the same, in the amount of time and strength expended, as the Missionary, and hence that such a scheme of endeavor as this book contemplates is manifestly impossible. We cannot regard this point as well taken. They who make it have not wisely considered the matter. Neither the Bible Society, the Church Extension Society, the Freedmen's Aid Society, the Preacher's Aid Society, nor any of the rest, hold the same relation to the Church and its purpose in the earth that the Missionary Society holds. This stands alone. None of the rest compares with it in magnitude or importance, in the amount of money required to meet its obligations, or in the effect that would be produced by its desired success. The urgency of the debt which God's people owe to the unevangelized nations of the earth is far greater than that represented by any of the minor organizations. All the other benevolences are debtors to missions. They profit by its prosperity. It is fighting their battle, as well as its own, against the selfishness and covetousness of the human heart. As a rule they all rise and fall together, and there is no occasion that one should be jealous of another. Let, then, this monthly meeting be energetically maintained in all our charges. The failure to do so, it cannot be doubted, is MONTHLY CONCERT OF PRAYER. one chief cause of the very subordinate rank we hold among other denominations in our average per member of missionary contributions.* It is in no way creditable to us that so small a percentage of our churches conform to this important provision of the Discipline. Its steady observance would work wonders. Dr. James L. Phillips, in the Missionary Review for September, I888, relates an incident, one out of many, in proof of the educating power of the missionary concert. In raising an endowment fund for a Bible School in India, he was sent, rather to his surprise, to a little village in Central Ohio where a small audience of about seventy people greeted him. But when he came to take the subscriptions, after the lecture, he learned why it had been thought well for him to spend an evening in this out-ofthe- way place. Among those who had listened to him were three women, who proved to be sisters, and who between them pledged $85 for his school. Inquiring for their history he learned this : " Their childhood home was in Western New York, where they used to attend a Presbyterian church. Their pastor never failed to observe the monthly concert of prayer for missions, at which service he regularly brought before his people the conditions and claims of the pagan nations, the freshest news from the front ranks of Christ's advancing army in all lands, and also the duty and the privilege of helping on this grand movement for the world's evangelization by earnest prayers and cheerful offerings. That faithful pastor had reached his rest and reward in heaven, and I, a stranger from the opposite side of the earth and another denomination, had been permitted to reap some of the golden harvest for which, through years of patient toil, he had sown the seed." Thus will it always be. If the monthly concert be faithfully held some hearts will be moved, some noble givers raised up, some young souls fired with a purpose to be God's messengers to His neediest children. No work pays better than this. * While our average per member is still low, in consequence of our immense membership so largely composed of the poor and the young, it should in justice be remembered that our total contribution for foreign missions is now larger than that of any other American Church or Board. We gave last year for foreign missions, through all ascertainable channels (besides the many special gifts not reported or tabulated) $889,6I3. The Presbyterian Board collected $794,066, the American Board $762,947, and the Baptist Missionary Union $440,788. It should also be noted to our credit that whereas in I880 we were only raising $559,37I for our Missionary Society, we poured into its treasury last year $I,I35,27I, or a gain of $575,900 in ten years. The gain in the last five years has been $304,I43. III. The Sunday School Missionary Society. AMONG the first concerns of every missionary pastor will be the bringing into line of the children and youth. Their help is indispensable. Hence he will cheerfully comply with the requirement of the Discipline, ¶ 355, which makes it his duty "to see that each Sunday-school is organized into a missionary society under such rules and regulations as the Sunday School Board may prescribe." What constitutes such an organization? It will not, we think, be seriously claimed that the manifest intent of the Discipline, either in spirit or letter, is complied with by a mere appropriation to missions from the funds of the school, whether it be one collection a year, or one collection a month, or a special proportion of all collections. This is in many cases the practice, and it is better than nothing, but it is, after all, an evasion and by no means meets the entire need. A bona fide organization implies a written constitution, giving definite authority and full directions as to powers conferred; it implies also special officers, whose duties are laid down and whose privileges are pointed out. Unless attention be paid to both of these points but little effective work will, as a rule, be done. If the matter be left to a mere general understanding or tacit agreement without settled rules, very little prominence will be accorded to it; very little permanence secured to it, very little vigor infused into it; there will be fluctuation, uncertainty, lack of stability, lack of confidence, lack of power. And if there be no carefully chosen officers, chosen with a single eye to their peculiar qualifications, the constitution, however well in its way, will be likely to remain a dead letter; it will not work itself; it only indicates the lines along which the best work can be done. Both the constitution and the officers are essential. If only one is obtained very defective results will appear. The two together will do wonders. Of the two, no doubt the right men or man, or the right woman, is most important; but if he or she be reinforced by a right system, a wise plan of operations, he can do double what he otherwise could. As to a constitution, the following form, prepared by the writer for his own Sunday-school a few years ago, and since adopted by the New England Conference and other bodies, will probably answer all ordinary requirements: CONSTITUTION. ART. T. This Society shall be called The Missionary Society of the ——— Methodist Sunday School, and shall be auxiliary to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 18 SUNDAY SCHOOL MISSIONARY SOCIETY. ART. II. The object of this Society shall be to promote in all prac ticable ways the interests of the missionary cause within the bounds of this school. ART. III. All the members of this school shall be members of this Society. ART. IV. The officers of the Society shall be a president, vice-presi dent, secretary, and treasurer, who shall together constitute a board of managers, to be elected annually by the Sunday School Board on the —— of ———. ART. V. A part of the session of the school on the first Sunday of every month shall be set apart for missionary exercises and the reception of gifts for the cause of missions; and it shall be the duty of the board of managers to provide for such exercises, varying the program from month to month in such a way as to actively engage as many of the school as possible in acquiring and supplying information and inspiration on missionary topics. The managers shall also devise and set in vigorous operation whatever schemes they can, such as mite-boxes, collection cards, occasional missionary concerts or sales, etc., for increasing the missionary contributions of the school. ART. VI. The president shall preside during that part of the school time which is devoted to missions; the secretary shall read at each monthly meeting a report of the previous meeting; the treasurer shall hold the funds raised by the Society and pay them to the Missionary Society of the M. K. Church. The president, secretary, and treasurer shall make a semi-annual report to the Society on the first Sundays of April and October. ART. VII. Vacancies in the offices may be filled at any regular or special meeting of the Sunday School Board. ART. VIII. This constitution shall not be altered except by a vote of two-thirds of all the members of the Sunday School Board, at a meeting called for that purpose. It is of very considerable consequence to have the officers of the missionary society distinct from the ordinary officers of the school; in nine cases out of ten it will be found of very great advantage. It will give greater emphasis to the organization. The officers, if they have this one work specially committed to them, will be driven to magnify their office, being put on their metal to accomplish something and to show reason for their existence, whereas if they are merely the regular officers of the school they will feel perhaps that they are doing enough, putting out all the time and strength that they can spare, even if they do nothing for missions. Besides, as a rule, the regular officers have been chosen with no special reference to their missionary zeal, and may have very little or none at all, in which case they will do very little or nothing at all, in spite of any amount of constitutions. Probably, in most cases, the pastor should be president of the missionary society. . He ought to be able to supply in himself just the right man for that post, a man full of earnestness, and determined to do as much as possible for missions through the Sunday-school. A part of the session of the school—either at the beginning, taking the place of the usual opening exercises, or at THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. the close, taking the place of the lesson review, together with a little more—where there is but one session, or the second session where there are two, should be set apart on the first or second Sunday of every month for missionary exercises and the collection of the money. A brief program should be arranged from month to month for this fifteen or twenty minutes. This will require some care and skill, but if taken hold of in good season and planned for systematically little trouble will be found in managing it successfully. A song from the school, a recitation from a scholar, an essay from a teacher, or a reading by a young lady, and a story by the pastor, gives about the right variety. As to the collection, it is not enough just to pass the boxes, as on an ordinary Sunday, with no words of exhortation or instruction. If the matter is treated in this perfunctory way, not much will be gathered. A good deal more emphasis should be put upon it, and a good deal more eclat should be given it. With a little manipulation the sums obtained can be doubled or trebled, without anybody's being the poorer. Let the contribution of each class (when the school is not too large) be brought to the desk and received by the pastor with a few words of thanksgiving and dedication to God. Let the amount also be publicly announced, the classes that do creditably being especially commended, and no class being allowed to shirk without a word of reminder or gentle reproof. In this way an aggregate of from $5 to $I0 a month can be raised, even where the school is not large; and from our best schools from $30 to $50 a month can be obtained. For it will always be found that some of the teachers and adult scholars will become enthusiastic about it and will give their dollar or half-dollar every month with great satisfaction, and with no diminution from their annual subscription. Neither will the regular collections of the school for its current expenses be diminished, but rather increased. It is found to add to the interest if the classes are called, not by their numbers or teachers, but by some special name, appropriate to the cause, which each may select for itself. The following are a few of the more common: Light Bearers, Little Gleaners, Busy Bees, Gospel Heralds, Christian Workers, Friends of the Heathen, Happy Helpers, Cheerful Givers, Lovers of India, Messengers of Peace, Golden Censer, Chaplin McCabe, William Butler, Bishop Thoburn, Bishop Taylor, Africa's Deliverers, Aid for China, Mite Bringers, Joyful Gatherers, Drops of Water, Grains of Sand. SUNDAY SCHOOL MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 2I But the Sunday-school can do much more for missions than to take its regular monthly class collections. Various other schemes should be devised for increasing the contributions. The scholars should be directed and incited not only to give money themselves, but to collect it from outsiders. Mite boxes, or barrels, or jugs, or eggs are useful to this end. Let them be varied from time to time to keep up the interest, and they will catch a great many pennies and nickels and dimes that would otherwise be wasted. They should be opened either once a quarter or once in six months, and then given out again. Collection cards in some one or more of the many forms in vogue should also be pressed upon as many as will take them. Those which require the collector to get at least a cent a month from each of ten acquaintances, is very simple in its working and gathers in a large amount of money. The "Willing Worker " cards, which call for ten cents for each of our principal mission fields, are also excellent. Those marvelously cheap papers, World Wide Missions, and The Little Missionary, should be widely introduced and circulated among the scholars, the latter in the infant department, the former among the youths and adults. It is far tetter to obtain individual subscriptions for them by personal solicitation than to make a grant out of the funds of the school; for what people pay for themselves they are much more likely to prize. The Little Missionary, however, being only six cents a year, may sometimes with advantage be given as a present or prize to those children who take a mite box to fill. There should be, besides the monthly meetings, an annual meeting or anniversary, either on the day of the effort in the general congregation, or on Easter Sunday, or the final Sunday of the Conference year, or some other suitable occasion. A program of more than ordinary elaborateness, including reports from the officers and some attractive speaker from outside, should be prepared, and a good opportunity will be afforded to bring up any arrears in the sum that the year's requirements seem to call for. There should, of course, be a steady advancing of the standard. Easter Sunday and its popular concert, in accordance with the excellent suggestion of our Missionary Secretaries and General Committee, should, whether made the annual meeting or not, be thoroughly utilized to get a rousing collection for missions. What more fitting than to associate with the resurrection of our Lord the great commission which is the most significant utterance of the forty days. Little or much may be made of it as circumstances dictate, and many minor variations in the method of the observance may be introduced. Dr. W. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. N. Brodbeck of Boston writes as follows concerning the custom in Tremont Street Chnrch : '' The school makes its offering on that day during the regular session, but the amount is not then reported. Envelopes have been furnished each teacher with the number of his or her class on the face, and a blank place for the amount finally to be enclosed. These envelopes, with the amount contributed by the class during the school hour, are kept by the teachers until the evening concert. Any further amount contributed by any of the scholars in the evening is added to that already enclosed, the envelope is then sealed, and the total amount indicated in the blank place provided for it. Toward the close of the concert exercises the roll of the classes is called by the Secretary, and some member of each class, who has been selected by the teacher or class for that purpose, brings forward to the altar the envelope of said class, the amount enclosed is announced by the Superintendent, and a record of it kept by the Secretary. Then the offering of the congregation is received by young misses appointed for that mission, and the total amount received from the school and congregation is announced before the final close of the services." This same successful minister bears the following testimony : "After an experience of nineteen years I unhesitatingly commend the Sunday School Missionary Society. I believe every pastor will find it helpful in his work in every way, and through it may be trained a generation of missionary givers who shall raise the cry of ' A Million for Missions ' to the more consistent one of ' Two or three millions for this blessed cause.' " The Rev. W. I. Haven of Boston, writing of the program in his Sunday School Missionary Society, which meets on the first Sunday of each month, using twenty minutes at the beginning of the session, says, " We have selected music and a paper or address on the regular missionary theme of the month as announced in The Gospel in All Lands. These papers are well prepared, the friends who are to take part being selected some months beforehand. The collections have very largely increased, and the regular Sunday-school collections have been benefited rather than otherwise. The exercises are simple, short, varied and interesting." The Rev, J. W. Higgins, pastor of the South Street Church, Lynn, writes enthusiastically of the great change which has been brought about there in the missionary interest and collections by the introduction of a Sunday School Missionary Society SUNDAY SCHOOL MISSIONARY SOCIETY. organized and managed on the plan outlined in this chapter. Be fore this organization, the largest amount ever given by the school to missions was $50. The year of the organization, I888, the contributions rose to $74, in I889 they were $I24, in I890 they were $I40, and in I89I they were $I73. At Whitinsville, Mass., under the stimulus of such an organization, which was improved from year to year, the col lections went up steadily from $20 in I885 to $46 in I886, and $I08 in I887 ; in the latter case an average of one dollar for every member of the school was reached. At East Pepperell, where $2I had been raised in the Sunday- school for missions in I887, the new plan introduced by the new pastor resulted in $76 for I888, $I02 for I889, and $I37 for I890. The pastor of the church at Raymond, N. H., under date of Nov. I0, I886, writes, ' ' In July the Sunday-school was organized into a Missionary Society, since which time the receipts from this source alone exceed the entire sum raised last year in the church and school.'' The Wesley Chapel Sunday-school, Washington, D. C., which was organized into a Missionary Society in I840 and has held regular monthly meetings ever since, has this peculiar feature : prior to the final collection of each year, the officers of the Society go over their books and find out how much they need to make up the amount they desire for the annual report, and apportion this balance among the different classes of the school according to their supposed ability. The Superintendent of the Sunday-school in Middletown, Conn., writes under the date of Feb. I0, I887 : ' ' We have tried the plan but a short time, but with great results. Our collections are already three times as large as they used to be, and promise to be larger. Our scholars and teachers as well take a renewed interest in this great missionary work. They are learning something about the cause. They begin to feel themselves part of a great national enterprise. Organize the schools ! ' ' So say we. Organize the schools. Not to do it is to make any adequate, permanent, solid advance in the money raised and the interest taken practically impossible. It is well known that those Conferences which roll up the great sums for missions do it very largely, and sometimes chiefly, through the Sunday-schools. The Philadelphia and Baltimore Conferences raised 62½ per cent. of their total contributions last year through their Sunday-schools ; New Jersey 66 per cent, Wil THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. mington 60, New York and Newark 46. Taking the whole list of the Spring Conferences 45 per cent. of the missionary money came from the schools'. Any Conference which falls below that—and there are many which have not half as good a per cent—convicts itself of disloyalty to the Discipline, robs the Missionary treasury, and also robs its youth of a mighty educational influence whose value cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. To bring the children month by month face to face with the great facts and thrilling incidents and touching narratives of the mission fields, thus arousing their sympathies for those destitute of the gospel, is worth a very great deal. Nothing does our boys and girls more good or lays better foundation for future usefulness than to lead their thoughts out beyond the narrow circle of the things they see, and put them in some contact with the noble souls that have illuminated missionary annals. They will get impressions which never can fade away, impressions which will push them out of themselves into active work either abroad or at home, impressions which will elevate and ennoble their whole character. They will be trained to give as nothing else can train them, and habits of benevolence will be formed which will make them invaluable helpers in every good work all their life long. The day is not far distant when vastly increased efforts will be made by the Christian Church to evangelize the world, and the youth of the present day are the ones who must be so educated in the Sunday-schools that they will enthusiastically give or go. A most grievous wrong is done to the children when no provision is made for their regular instruction in a line of effort so vital both to their own spiritual growth and the welfare of the world. With proper endeavor they can be wrought into a mighty instrumentality for carrying forward this missionary enterprise to glorious completion in the coming century. Any negligence at so momentous a point can be called nothing less than a crime. We must have the little ones for missions. Let not their energies, unless in the most extremely urgent and desperate circumstances, be turned exclusively or mainly toward raising funds for local expenses and church debts. This is to give mere finance the precedence over education. It is not the amount of money the children can raise that should be made the paramount consideration, but their training in habits of self-sacrifice, the broadening of their minds, and the getting them interested in the world-wide work of the Lord. They should be early aroused to think that their own comforts and the advantages of the Christian civilization which they enjoy, SUNDAY SCHOOL MISSIONARY SOCIETY. impose an obligation upon them toward those less highly favored. Thus will they grow most steadily and surely to be large-hearted and strong-souled. IV. How to Raise Money for Missions. IT has been alleged, not unreasonably, we think, that the best spiritual barometer for a church is the amount of money raised for missions. It certainly tests the genuineness of the Christian professions made, discloses the amount of unselfishness attained, measures the intelligence, and marks the honor paid to Christ. A great deal is said of a church when it is declared and proved to be one of the conspicuously missionary churches of a Conference. The pastor also who gains a reputation in this same direction holds a certificate of distinction second to none in the eyes of the discerning. To secure eminence in this line there must, however, be not only the right spirit of strong desire and full consecration to the work, but also a knowledge of the best methods. The purpose of this chapter is to present a few suggestions and hints, with the hope that they may be of service to the younger pastors of the Church and such as have not given much thought to the theme. Prior to all more immediate attacks upon the pocketbook in the interests of this or any other special cause, there should be a thorough, persistent indoctrination of the people with regard to the duty of systematic beneficence. This is an indispensible preliminary. Methodists have not been trained in this, we think, to the extent that some other denominations have been. They are also on the average poorer than some others, making it harder for them to squeeze out much surplus over and above what is necessary for an economical living. Their local burdens are usually greater than most others have, and the number of outside charities pressed upon their attention is larger. Hence nothing but the most faithful, patient teaching on this subject will prepare and enable them to measure up to their obligations. Spasmodic efforts, the result of impassioned appeals or peculiar exigencies, are very unreliable and unsatisfactory. The people must learn to obey the apostolic command, to lay by them in store on the first day of the week as God hath prospered them, must learn to act simply as stewards of God's property, as those who have been put in trust, for a season, of certain moneys which they are to use sacredly for the real owner in heaven. Only as this hard lesson of Christian pecuniary responsibility is mastered will the treasuries of the benevolent societies be filled and the work of the world's salvation inarch on with majestic strides. And it will be mastered only as the pastors, irrespective of personal 26 HOW TO RAISE MONEY FOR MISSIONS. inclination, unmindful of frowns, disregarding dissuasion, on every reasonable occasion push it manfully forward. When it is mastered, then the annual missionary day, and all other occasions for worthy bestowment, will be welcomed, not avoided, will be a joy, not a dread. Concerning this annual day, some things should be said. For, although large sums (from $I00 to $I ,000) will be obtained from a Sunday-school worked in the manner already set forth, and no inconsiderable addition to the total will come from the twelve collections at the monthly concerts of prayer, yet all this in no respect does away with or detracts from the importance of the annual effort in the large congregation. Besides the general preparation just mentioned there should be a good deal of special preparation. The time should be selected with care. It is a serious mistake to defer it too long. By no means should it be left till the last month of the conference year, when the pressure of the local finances is keenly felt, and a deficit in the current expenses very likely stares the stewards in the face, making them feel poor, if not cross. If this course be taken there is also the great danger that a succession of stormy Sundays may occur, and very largely reduce the results that otherwise might be reached. Neither is it well, as a rule, to take it before the meeting of the General Missionary Committee in November, because after that date the special exigencies of the new financial year can best be understood. It need scarcely be said that it should not be brought into competition with the unusual family outlays at Thanksgiving and Christmas, nor thrust into the heat of summer when congregations are depleted. January or February would seem to be the best time, at least for the conferences that meet in the Spring, but different localities will demand different dates. Let the matter be seriously studied by each pastor. He should also very diligently prepare a special sermon well adapted to the occasion, and make it, if possible, his best effort for the year. Of course if he can get some one to help him who will draw a larger audience or make a stronger appeal, that is all the better; but he will rarely be able to do it, and it is important in any event that he should be present. After the sermon let a subscription be taken, a subscription by all means, in no case a mere basket collection; probably it would be better to have no basket collection at all, even as a supplement. It is very important to have the names of the givers, not necessarily for publication, but for two reasons. People will always give more when the amount is to beset in black and white opposite their own signatures than when they can slip something, nobody knows how little, into a box. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. A sense of shame or proper self-respect, not to say pride, will prevent them from being satisfied to donate five or ten cents for the salvation of the world, when they ought to give five or ten dollars, if they suspect that the ten cent donation will be known. For the same reason subscription papers passed down the aisle from pew to pew are better than cards, because in the former case there is greater publicity to the subscription. A still greater degree of publicity is obtained by having the subscriptions called out and recorded at the desk, or by having life memberships of the Missionary Society made through special donations. This works in some places, and with some men to manage it, but in other places the people would not take kindly to it. For the average church the subscription paper is probably the best. Good results are sometimes reached by getting in advance a few large subscriptions or a few from some other cause peculiarly stimulating, and putting them at the head of all the papers as a kind of example, before they are passed down the line. A good deal depends oftentimes on setting the key-note well. If it is seen that some poor widow or servant girl or working man so loves the Lord that he or she purposes to give $5 to this cause, the foreman in the shop, or the mistress of the servant, or the merchant and employer, will be ashamed to give less, though he might otherwise have quieted his conscience by putting down one dollar. The second reason why it is important to have the names of the donors is that the pastor or the missionary committee may individually solicit those whose names are not on the list. Especial note should be taken of the absent (and for this reason the pastor needs to be present), that an opportunity may be given to each one to subscribe something. Oftentimes a pretty large amount may thus be gleaned from those out of town temporarily or permanently, and from those detained at home by old age or sickness. A personal call also offers a good opportunity to discuss the matter in a pleasant way and remove objections and prejudices. There are various other methods of taking the collection. One of the best (very comprehensive though somewhat laborious and expensive) is to send out to every church member and attendant, young and old, not long before the annual offering, a circular letter stating what the money is for, what it has done, how much is needed, etc. Some small tracts can go along with it. There should also be enclosed one large envelope, having on it the name of the family, and smaller envelopes with the names of the particular members. The contributions of each person are to be put into these envelopes and the envelopes deposited in the boxes on the missionary day. This day is to be made as big a one as possible with advertis HOW TO RAISE MONEY FOR MISSIONS. ing and extra attractions so as to reach also that class of people who never give anything except under such pressure. Then, when it is over, let those whose envelopes have not been returned be called upon and a personal solicitation be made. Another system is to have all the benevolent causes of the church printed on a card, and these cards circulated by mail or otherwise among all the members near the beginning of the year, each member being requested to mark his subscription for each of the causes on the card (to be paid monthly or annually), and then return the card or the duplicate of it to the pastor. Still another way is to have a benevolent collection every Sunday, either in boxes passed through the congregation or placed at the door, and of the total amount thus contributed for benevolence a certain proportion previously agreed upon is assigned to missions, and so with the other societies. A further scheme, which has been found to work well in some places, is to secure in the congregation, after a special sermon on benevolence, and by special solicitation also, as large a number as possible who will pledge a cent a day, or more, either to missions exclusively or to all the societies, of which the Missionary will have the chief part; then let these names be divided, according to location, among a band of volunteer collectors who will agree to see them all once a month, receive the money, and report to the pastor or some general treasurer of benevolences. A slight variation on this is to have the whole membership divided into four or more classes, by the pastor and official board, those in the lowest class to give a cent a month, those in the second five cents, those in the third ten, those in the fourth fifteen, and so on. These three last methods have some features very commendable, and are perhaps nearest the ideal of true Christian principle. But if any of them are used, very special pains should be taken to supplement them by those instructive sermons and pointed appeals which are necessary for the edification and incitement of average human nature as we find it in our churches, and in the absence of which the uninformed, the penurious, and the emotional will be likely to avoid giving anything at all. It remains to be pointed out that the pastor should set a good example of generosity and zeal in the matter by making a considerable contribution himself. There would seem to be no reasons that except or excuse him, under ordinary circumstances, from being one of the largest givers to the Missionary Society. He handles more money and lives in a better style than the majority of his congregation. He is far better in THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. formed as to the necessities of the work and the needs of the world, through the papers and books that he reads and the gatherings that he attends. He is supposed to be, and ought to be, generally is, more thoroughly consecrated to the service of God than the lay members. Of the tithe of his income which is due to some department of God's work, he can give a much larger proportion to missions than his members, because they have to give theirs quite largely for his support and other local expenses, to which he does not, as a rule, con tribute much. There is every reason, for his own soul's sake and for the sake of others, why he should make a handsome donation. And he should not be deterred by any false modesty from letting his light, in this particular, so shine before his parishioners that they, seeing his good works, may glorify God by following in his steps. It certainly is not well to depend for missionary money on entertainments or fairs and festivals, for while there may be nothing wrong in principle about these things when conducted unexceptionably, they are at the best a very irregular source of income, and any cause that builds much upon them is on an uncertain basis. Nor have they the educational value that comes from direct straightforward giving, where nothing is suffered to come between the giver and the Lord; and the mind, undistracted by the bait of worldly pleasure, learns to find a keener, purer pleasure in genuine sacrifice for Jesus. But the various simple schemes for earning money for missions, which have been so much in vogue of late, especially on the part of children and youth, are to be unreservedly commended. The more of missionary hens, and ducks, and lambs, and calves, and pigs, and bees, and flowers, and potatoes, and onions, and cherry trees there are the better. If children are taught to earn their money for Jesus, in some of these quiet ways, instead of having it put into their hands without trouble, it will mean a great deal more to them and do a great deal more for them. A plan which has been practiced in many places with much zest and profit is to give out to all who will take them either a cent, or a nickel, or a dime, or a quarter, with the pledge that they will do their best to multiply it by judicious investment joined with industry, and report the result at a given time. It is marvelous what reduplieations have been found possible, what self-denial has been exercised, what inventive genius has been called forth. From 200 cents thus given out in one school more than $60 was returned at the end of the year. In another case from something over a hundred pennies there came back $I26. Nine children with five cents a piece, in a Maryland school, brought in $I2.82. In another place eighty dimes, taken by old and HOW TO RAISE MONEY FOR MISSIONS. young, yielded $I80. Some of the things made in the course of these transactions were as follows: crochet work, pop-corn, potato chips, cotton lace, toilet mats, worsted socks, taffy, bureau scarfs, pincushion covers, scrap-books, lemonade, molasses candy, garters, book-marks, tidies, paper flowers, tablecloth, lamp-lighters, ice cream, mottoes, pen-wipers, story books, aprons, sun-bonnets, match receivers, caramels, iron-holders ginger cakes. Special thank offerings and birthday offerings should by all means be encouraged. It is also good to have an occasional Self-denial week (not but what one should always deny self) when some ordinarily allowable comfort, that it would not be well to deprive one's self of entirely or continually, is for the time put aside, or some meal forgone, that the price may be put into the treasury. Missionary tea meetings, at the parsonage or elsewhere, if not once a month or a quarter, at least once in a while, may be made profitable. Some curiosities may be exhibited, a few short, pleasant stories read or told, simple refreshments served, and a small contribution from each one (at the door, beside the plate, or in. a collection basket) gathered for the swelling of the funds. Something of a Japanese, Chinese, or Hindu tone may be given to these meetings successively, if there be resources sufficient. We have said but little, except incidentally, of the important use which may be made of the Quarterly Conference missionary committee and of missionary collectors. The former, in many cases, if carefully selected and rightly trained, will be of great aid in upholding the pastor's hands, and the latter, in some shape or other, are almost indispensable, especially in large churches. Even a single collector, if full of love for the cause, can often accomplish wonders. In illustration of this Bishop Harris tells the following story: In I860 Bishop Morris was presiding at an Annual Conference held in one of the most prosperous portions of the Church. In the examination of character he called the name of an excellent minister, a good friend of missions, whose voice was often heard in earnest appeals for their support. ' ' Brother," said the Bishop, ' ' what is the amount of your missionary collection?" "Well, now," said he, "Bishop, before I tell you how much I have, I must tell you how it was collected. At the last Conference I was sent to a church that had never done a great deal for the missionary cause. They never allowed a subscription to be taken for the support of missions; they never allowed anything in that line, except an earnest appeal once a year for missions, if the preacher would make one, and then to pass the plates and receive in ready cash what the people were THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. disposed to give. For the last ten years they have never given in their annual collection more than twenty-five dollars, nor less than fifteen dollars. When I went there last year their church needed repairing and they must rebuild their parsonage, and, feeling themselves in rather straitened circumstances, they gravely resolved that, for that year at least, the Missionary Society must get along without their contribution, and the pastor was requested not to present the cause for a collection during the year. It seemed almost a case of necessity. I fell into the trap, and we agreed together to take no missionary collection. The next Sabbath at the close of the service I, as was my custom, invited persons to come forward and join the church. Among those who presented themselves was a young girl who had been away at school, but whose mother was so sick that she had sent for her to come home to attend her. She handed me her letter, and as she did so asked me if we had appointed all our missionary collectors for the year, saying that she had been a collector where she had been at school, and was in the habit of gathering funds every week for the missionary cause; that she loved the work, and would be glad to continue in it. I stated to her frankly the action of the official board, and that we were not going to raise any missionary money this year. On hearing this statement her countenance was sad; she stepped down from the kneeling board, on which she was standing, and returned to her pew. On Monday morning she called on me for a collector's book. I told her that I had none. Indeed, there had never been one in that church. Whereupon she wrote to her former pastor to send her a missionary collector's book. In due course of the mail it came, and on receiving it she presented it to me that I should certify in it as to her good character, and that she was authorized to receive money for the support of our missions.' ' This pastor went on to say in that Conference : ' ' The whole affair soon passed out of my mind and was forgotten. We repaired the church and rebuilt the parsonage, and paid the bills for both. I received a comfortable support, notwithstanding the alleged poverty of my people. Yesterday morning when, carpet bag in hand, I was starting for Conference, I saw that young girl coming through the gate and up the walk which led to my house. Said she, ' I understand you are going to Conference.' 'Yes,' was the reply. 'Here,' said she, ' is a little missionary money which I have gathered during the year;' and that faithful girl counted out seventy-six dollars which she had quietly collected in a community where the church had never given more than twenty-five dollars, under the most stirring appeals of its pastor. Bishop, the amount of my missionary collection this year is seventy-six dollars." HOW TO RAISE MONEY FOR MISSIONS. Bishop Fowler gives also a couple of examples of what can be done when the right means are used. Here they are: "A brother in one of the seaboard Conferences was sent to a poor charge in a city. It agreed to pay him $I,200. Many doubted their ability to carry such a load. The brother adopted the plan of the Discipline. Everybody gave a little all the time. At the end of the year he had received his $I,200, and he took to Conference $I,700 for missions, and no one was harmed." "A brother in the New England Conference had a church almost swallowed by a great debt. By almost superhuman exertions he raised the money and pledges to pay the debt. But to do it he was obliged to ' give the heathen the go by.' This did not seem right, so he appointed six women to apply the plan in the Discipline. Among these women he distributed the names of the members. They went about with much fear and trembling to glean a little, and give those who wanted to give a chance. At the end of the year he had raised in this way more than twice as much as the year before, and nobody was hurt." The secret of successful finance, in this as in all other matters, is an open one. Universal experience proves that it is by the vast aggregate of littles that the largest sums are raised. A systematic, persistent carrying out of the plans in the Discipline, whereby the basis of contribution is enlarged and the number of contributors greatly multiplied, would at once double our receipts. It is precisely thus that the German Methodists have attained their honorable pre-eminence for missionary giving; they thoroughly work all the Disciplinary provisions, and hence in their poverty surpass the richer American Conferences. It is by similar solid and painstaking methods that our Wesleyan Methodist brethren of England and Canada have achieved those marvelous missionary successes which excite the wonder of the Christian world. It is the only possible way. There is no royal road to this kind of triumph, any more than there is to any other. Hard work and plenty of it is the chief explanation. When William Arthur, missionary secretary of the Wesley an Connection, was asked to give the secret of the success of his denomination in raising missionary money, he replied: "The ministers make the cause their own, and all are invited to contribute." There is no doubt but that he struck the right key. Whenever the ministers in general— not one in ten or one in four—make the cause their own, adopt it enthusiastically, throw themselves into it with heart and soul, feeling that here is a true test of their faith, their love, their devotedness to Jesus Christ, there is no trouble in getting the money. Such men will look upon the sum apportioned to THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. their churches only as a minimum figure; a point of departure from which to proceed to the highest possibilities of the situation. With such men universally in charge, three or four millions, instead of one million, could readily be raised each year for the Missionary Society. This is susceptible of easy demonstration. The Disciplinary scheme, which has been outlined and amplified in these pages, leaves nothing to turn on the fortunes of a single great effort or a single great giver. It carefully provides for no less than twenty-six stated missionary collections in the course of the year, besides the subsidiary money-getting arrangements through mite boxes, etc., in the Sunday-school. The twelve monthly concert collections, for a small church of one hundred members, will aggregate at least $20. The twelve monthly Sunday- school class collections will yield about $60, and the subsidiary efforts as much more. The pastor himself will give about $20, and will easily get from his general congregation, if the last man is seen, at least $90, making a total of $250. With a large church of five hundred members worked on this plan, $I,000 could readily be realized without the help of particularly rich men, and with such help it could be doubled. Now the M. E. Church has considerably over 20,000 separate local church organizations, and these churches average more than one hundred members each. (The total of members and ministers was last year 2,296,88I.) Two hundred dollars a year from each would make over four million dollars. Who will say, looking at man's wail and God's will, that it would be too much? Will the time come when Methodism will give at this rate ? The answer depends chiefly on the pastors. If they could be got to say the word, it might be realized next year. V. How To Meet Common Objections. THERE can be no doubt but that all, or nearly all, the current objections offered to the missionary enterprise have their foundation in the lamentable lukewarmness of the Christian Church in point of practical piety. For while lack of information may be truthfully said to lie at the basis of some of the prevalent indifference, it is, after all, the low state of spiritual life which makes people not only contented with this ignorance but opposed to having it dissipated. It should also be noted that many of the objections frequently heard fully answer each other. For example, it is said by some that the heathen do not need the gospel, being about as good as most Christians anyway ; while others declare, with equal fatuity, that they are so degraded as to be beyond the reach of the gospel. It is also clear that about all the objections urged against missions would have had equal force — that is, none at all — as against the work of Christ himself and his apostles, especially as against Paul's career; and most of them would be as fatal to Christian work at home as to that abroad. All of which goes to show that they have no reasonable foundation, and are idle excuses for failure in duty, rather than sober defenses of an honest position. But such as they are the pastor has to meet them, and hence should be well prepared. Probably the most common and the most plausible objection to missions strictly so called—that is, to the evangelizing of the unevangelized nations, is found in the assertion that we have "heathen enough at home;" in other words, that the American churches should employ all their energies within the bounds of this country. To this there are various answers. One is that the home work needs the foreign, and for its own sake cannot possibly spare it, as we have already shown in the first chapter. Another is that the watchword of Christian work should always be, not so much the nearest, as the neediest, and the foreign field is by far the more needy. Strictly speaking, there are really no ' 'heathen' ' of any consequence in this enlightened land. And for the work here, where comparatively little needs to be done, the Protestant churches expend $80,000,000 as against $4,000,000 sent abroad. And the total Christian workers in the foreign field number 52,500, or one to 24,000 of the population, while in the home field there are about I, 260,000 workers, or one to 50 of the population. So the proportion is twenty to one in favor of the home field with respect to the 35 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. money, and 480 to one witn respect to the laborers. The closest possible estimate of the total benevolences of the Methodist Episcopal Church for last year makes it about $25,000,000, and of this sum considerably less than one million went out of the country; in other words, more than ninety-six per cent of what we contribute religiously is spent for home work. The foreign field exhibits far larger returns for the outlay than does the home. Mission churches double their membership in about ten or twelve years, and churches at home hardly ever in less than twenty, more commonly in from forty to sixty. The policy of concentration, instead of diffusion, would have prevented our ever receiving the gospel, and hence for very shame and gratitude we ought to refuse to advocate it. Having gained so great a gift by others' generosity, to turn around and say, now we will keep it all to ourselves, is a piece of meanness of which we should disdain to be guilty. It cannot be the design of the Master who has left us to cultivate his great estates that we should put all our energies into making a flower garden of a few acres, going over the same soil again and again, while nothing whatever is done for the vast pastures and moorlands of easily reclaimable soil running wildly to waste. This, in barest outline, seems to us an unanswerable reply to the somewhat specious but utterly unsound position that we should do little or nothing in other lands till all the people of this land are converted. We are well able to do both, and we must. Let all have a chance. In addition to this objection which smacks so strongly of national narrowness, there is another one which bears the stamp of faint-hearted unbelief. According to it the missionary enterprise is wholly visionary and impracticable, a mistake, a failure, a chimera, a waste of effort, that should be abandoned straightway without further loss. What shall we say to this ? We appeal first of all to the commands and promises of Almighty God, who saw the end from the beginning, when He bade His followers go forth, and assured them of final victory. And we fail not to remember that such revolutions as we are seeking to bring about necessarily take time. He would be very unreasonable and unacquainted with history who should expect large, sudden changes in the religious convictions of great peoples. It is only to patient faith that the prize is sure. We can point also to a very considerable amount of encouraging results already achieved as an earnest of more to come. Among them may be mentioned the following :— I. The wonderful change regarding missions in the sentiment of the home churches. A century ago the churches were asleep, and it was the rarest thing to find a single soul having HOW TO MEET COMMON OBJECTIONS. any sympathy at all with the project of evangelizing the heathen ; whereas now the duty is very generally acknowledged. 2. The amazing difference in the opportunities of intercourse with foreign lands. The increased facilities of travel seem the work of magic. Almost the whole world is now easily accessible. Whereas a hundred years ago nearly every government was bitterly opposed to missions and nearly every country was closely sealed against them; now the number that cannot be entered is very small. 3. The vast amount of preparatory work already done in the foreign fields. Extensive missionary explorations have been made, and great stores of knowledge gained, that will mightily aid future operations. Languages have been mastered, strategic points occupied, materials collected, and best methods settled upon as the result of careful and costly experiments that will not have to be made again. 4. The immense number of the Christian Scriptures that are now yearly put in circulation. The first eighteen Christian centuries produced less than fifty new versions of the Scriptures. In the last ten years the British and Foreign Bible Society alone has issued fifty-six new versions, and has been engaged in translating the Bible in I66 languages. More copies were issued from the press last year than existed in the world at the beginning of this century; that is, some six millions. Over two hundred and twenty million copies of the Bible have been printed in the last ninety years, and not less than six hundred millions of the race have had God's Word given to them in their own tongue. 5. The Missionary Societies and other closely allied organizations, such as those for spreading Christian literature. It is not sufficiently borne in mind that they are new, almost without exception the product of the past century. A hundred years ago there were but these seven, the New England Company founded in I649, the Christian Faith Society, I696, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, I698, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, I70I, together with the Danish Government Mission to Greenland, I72I, and the Moravian Missions, I732—all small and some of them practically suspended. Now there are nearly 300 such Societies, little and large. 6. The decided gain in the Christian percentage of the total population of the world. In John Wesley's day, I25 years ago (see Wesley's Sermons, Vol. II, p. 74) only five parts in thirty of the world's population were Christian, while six were Mohammedan and I9 heathen. To-day between nine and ten parts are Christian, between three and four Mohamme THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. dan and about I6 heathen. A century ago Christians were only 20 per cent. of the whole, or as one to four in the population; now they are about 30 per cent. of the whole, or almost one to two, there being probably 480,000,000 Christians out of the grand total of I,500,000,000 now existing on the earth. 7. The pronounced political ascendency and superior gains of Protestantism. While 840 millions, or very nearly 4-7 of the people of the world are ruled by nominally Christian governments, 500 millions, or more than 4-7 of the 840, are under Protestant control. Practically all the foreign commerce of the world is in Christian hands; and of the 2I million tons of shipping engaged in it, over I7¼ millions belong to Protestant powers. Protestants have increased within the century more than three fold, while Roman Catholics have only doubled. 8. The amazing growth of the English-speaking nations. Those which are most energetically Christian and progressively Protestant are advancing in resources the most rapidly. They have multiplied five fold within the century, while the population of the world has not more than doubled, and some think has only increased fifty per cent. In another century they will be at least eight hundred millions, and will dominate the globe. 9. The high character and large aggregate of the converts actually won. There are now not far from three million Protestant native Christians, one third of whom are communicants. Among these some of the most marvelous triumphs of grace seen in any land or age have taken place, and glorious revivals, presaging great advances, are becoming more and more common. I0. The Student Volunteer Movement among the Colleges of America. It is a matter wholly within the last five years, yet so strong an impetus has it obtained that already more than six thousand of the most promising and best educated young men and women of the land have said solemnly over their own signatures, " We are willing and desirous, God permitting, to become foreign missionaries." This speaks volumes concerning the hold which the missionary enterprise has obtained in the heart of the studious youth of the country, and concerning the numbers available from which to recruit and increase the ranks of the eight thousand workers from Christian lands already in the foreign field. Whoever will thoughtfully consider these ten tokens of encouragement— their number might easily be increased — will find little cause to feed or feel despondency with respect to the prospects of missions. HOW TO MEET COMMON OBJECTIONS. An objection of a somewhat different character, more petty and inexcusable, but still needing to be answered, is even yet occasionally heard. We refer to the stale, empty fling that it takes two dollars, or ten, to send one to the heathen. As a matter of fact, out of every dollar contributed to the treasury of our Society ninety-five cents go to the missions directly, and of the other five cents only one cent and a third goes for purely office expenses, such as salaries, stationery, and traveling. The rest is economically divided among a large number of items absolutely essential to the administration, foremost of which at present is the interest bill, which we hope will be shortly done away. Only the grossest ignorance can longer perpetuate this often refuted slander. Equally baseless and senseless is the charge that missionaries have too high salaries and live extravagantly. They are as low as it is prudent to have them, considering the kind of men needed, and the value of their lives and services. They are acting as agents of the churches at about one-tenth of the salary which men of equal ability receive in those countries as agents of worldly corporations. It would be the height of folly to send families at much cost to the other side of the globe, and then so cramp them for support that they could give only a small part of their time and strength to the special work which they were charged to accomplish; or so expose them to needless hardships that they would speedily be disabled. The best economy is not always what appears so to those unacquainted with the circumstances. As to the assertion that the Church is not able to contribute the sums needed to carry this enterprise through to success, we need not Hesitate to brand it as sheer selfishness. When the pocketbooks of professing Christians get really converted, so that they shall devote to the Lord's work what now they lavish on useless luxuries and injurious indulgences, they will give twenty millions to missions where now they give one million. We have been merely playing at missions so far, in a purely puerile way. When we get ready to take up in earnest the business of making the world Christian, all that we have done hitherto will seem as nothing. We pretend to regard the value of souls as superior to anything else, and obedience to the command of Christ as paramount to all in importance. When these principles begin to rule our practice the dawning of a new day will have arrived and Christ will very speedily be everywhere enthroned. VI. The Chief Grounds of Missionary Obligation. IN marshaling' the motives for this world-wide enterprise, the divine should always take precedence of the human ; we should place first those reasons derived from God, next those derived from our fellow-men, and lastly those derived from self. Not the love of man but the love of Jesus is the chief constraining motive of the Christian. The leading incentives to missionary activity may be regarded as five, and stated as follows : The direct command of Christ, the indirect command of Christ, the spiritual needs of our fellow-men, the temporal needs of our fellow-men, and our own profit both temporal and spiritual. Concerning the direct command of Christ—conveyed to us in the five places, Matt. xxviii. I8-20, Mark xvi. I5, Luke xxiv. 47, John xx. 2I, Acts i. 8—it may be remarked that it is unmistakably plain, that it was uttered under such peculiarly solemn circumstances as to give it the highest possible authority, that it was spoken not only to but through the apostles, and hence is in full force to-day, and that it is absolutely sufficient and final as a present basis for our uttermost, speediest action. Each of these points will bear great enlargement, and will be found extremely cogent. And it may be safely argued that while obedience to this command does not require every one literally in person to go forth, it does require the same self-sacrificing, whole-hearted consecration to the work from those who are obliged to stay at home. The indirect command of Christ is included in his general teachings, his example and spirit. And it is important to emphasize the missionary bearing of these because thus very greatly increased strength is given to the obligation. It is seen not to be dependent on any one precept, however weight}', but to be interwoven with the whole life of Jesus, so that we cannot walk as he walked, in broadest ministry, without being- true to the missionary enterprise. His works explain and enforce his words. The whole view of man presented in the New Testament, according to which all are brothers, makes this enterprise a necessity. This view puts the strong under bonds to the weak, prescribes the Golden Rule as the guide of action, bids us love our neighbors as ourselves, and honor and serve all men. The course of conduct thus laid down certainly cannot stop short of the impartation of the gospel. The prophecies, both in the Old Testament and the New, which the Sprit of Jesus put on record, together with. 40 CHIEF GROUNDS OF MISSIONARY OBLIGATION. 41 the promises and prayers pertaining to the world-wide spread of the Word, also constitute a virtual command. It is not needful to enumerate them here. They may be found by the score throughout the Scriptures. The example of Christ's chosen apostles, who may well be supposed from their long intercourse with him to have fully imbibed his spirit, is likewise a part of the indirect command; for what they did when possessed and guided by the Holy Comforter, we may fairly infer he intended them to do, and would have done himself had he remained on the earth. Their example gives highest sanction and clearest pattern to missionary labor, for they went into all parts of the then known world teaching and preaching the good news of the Kingdom. Once more, the fundamental idea of the Christian church as Christ's body and representative, makes it missionary. Its very purpose and constitution shut it up to this cause. It was undoubtedly organized so as to get the advantage which comes from combination and division of labor, and thus more effectively to exert its influence for the salvation of mankind. Expansion, diffusion, are necessary thoughts in connection with it, and all true Christians are born into the Kingdom propagandists. The Church, if true to its origin, will be dominated by the same spirit of unselfish love that filled its Founder's bosom. The spiritual needs of the heathen are clearly greater than those of any other class of people in the world. After all due allowance is made for the many excellent traits and natural virtues possessed and developed among them, their best friends have toadmit their manifest moral degradation. Their religious deprivations and depravations are evident and abundant. They are without the Bible, the Sabbath, the revelation of Divine love and the forgiveness of sins, the example of Jesus, the disclosure of future happiness, the assurance of reward for virtue. Nay, more: their religion itself is, in many cases, one of the chief ministers to vice. Lying and licentiousness are fearfully prevalent, while lewdness, cruelty, and crime are even accounted means of securing the divine favor. They are grossly wicked, and they know it, but they know not how to escape from the bondage of sin. It cannot be doubted that the vast mass of the heathen are perishing; and it is equally certain that a far larger number of them will be saved if their light is greatly increased, just as it is in our own communities. Surely this is enough to decide our duty, even apart from the explicit and implicit commands to evangelize them. We may lay aside speculations as to their destiny until we have done our utmost to influence it in the right direction. Their temporal needs are so great that all who have become really conversant with them are ready to declare that, leaving THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. the future life wholly out of the question, our outlay of men and money, time and strength, is repaid ten-fold by the unspeakable advantages which missionary labor confers upon them in this world. Heathen wretchedness cannot be depicted in its full colors by any language that can be used. The intense, habitual, helpless poverty, the dense and well-nigh universal ignorance, the oppressive social customs, the governmental exactions, the pitiful condition of woman, the neglect of childhood—these are a few bare items in the dark account. Their graphic recital would move the hardest heart. Let it be remembered, also, that Christianity alone can meet these terrible needs of pagan lands. Secular influences, working by themselves, have been not only powerless to produce beneficent changes, but have been for the most part maleficent in their effect. So far from commerce and civilization having any tendency to uplift the lowly, they have operated for the most part in just the contrary direction, because animated by avarice and selfishness. Christian missions have been hindered by them more than helped. Furthermore, for civilization in itself, even when peacefully proffered, the savage has at first no relish. It is a new life that he needs, a change of heart such as Christianity alone effects. "A nation cannot have the fruits of civilization without the roots,' ' and those roots are in a true religion. When all this is considered, it would seem that every one possessing even a few drops of the milk of human kindness would, on that basis alone, even if there were no other, be mightily moved to aid the propagation of the gospel. Lastly, the reflex personal benefits, so clearly and plentifully associated with efforts for the world's conversion, should not be ignored. We can here do little more than indicate them in the briefest manner, leaving each reader to follow out the trains of thought suggested. The close connection of work for the heathen with the development, both in the church at large and in individual Christians, of those qualities essential to the most vigorous spiritual life, has been already dwelt upon in a previous chapter. The service which missions do for the home church by affording it an unstinted supply of the most inspiring examples of Christian heroism and devotion both in the persons of the missionaries and the native converts will be mentioned and illustrated in two subsequent chapters. Besides this, the increased unity among Christians which has arisen from missionary labor should by no means be forgotten. Believers of all names are certainly brought nearer together in proportion as they fix their thought on the last command of their common Master and set themselves to obey it. Minor variations are lost to view in comparison with the great truths CHIEF GROUNDS OF MISSIONARY OBLIGATION in which they agree. Every one attending a General Missionary Conference has been deeply impressed with the strong union feeling that prevailed, and the disposition to ignore all names but that of Jesus. Gratitude, also, both towards God and man, will assuredly be promoted by the cultivation of the missionary spirit. We shall be deeply grateful to God as we are made, by the force of comparison, to clearly realize the unexampled mercies and privileges with which we have been endowed. And we shall be correspondingly thankful to those heroic men who evangelized our pagan forefathers, laying us under a debt which we can only pay by passing on in turn the torch of light and life to others. Once more, let it be borne in mind that missions constitute the best reply to the assaults of infidelity. As nothing gives such a handle to unbelievers as the Church's failure to comply with her Lord's command, so nothing so confuses and prostrates them as successful obedience to it. Missions are the most unanswerable apologetics. The best evidences of Christianity are converted heathen. New nations and tribes swinging into line and keeping step to the music of redemption's song, carry consternation of the deepest sort to all opponents of our faith. A religion which is changing the face of the world and making the wilderness to blossom as the rose, is giving unanswerable, overwhelming evidence not only of its right to be, but of its universal prevalence in the not distant future. In addition to the spiritual benefits which come to us from missions, there are also many temporal benefits. For a full treatment of the theme we must refer the reader to two volumes exclusively occupied with it, namely: ' ' 'These for Those, Our Indebtedness to Foreign Missions, or What We Get for What We Give," by Dr. William Warren, Portland, Maine, I870, and ' 'The Ely Volume on Missions and Science, or the Contributions of our Foreign Missions to Science and Human Wellbeing," by Dr. Thomas Lowrie, Boston, I882. It may suffice here to say that the service of missions to civilization and general enlightenment—especially in the three departments covered by literature and science, trade and commerce, and politics and government—has been such as to call forth the most unstinted encomiums from the best judges and highest authorities. So that it is clearly proven that in temporal tilings as well as in spiritual it is a most profitable investment to extend the knowledge of Christ's kingdom. And when we add this final motive to all the other yet weightier ones previously presented, it will be seen, we think, and confessed by all candid minds, that the proof of duty is perfectly overwhelming. The only possible conclusion will be that it is a sin of great magnitude on the part of any Christian not to be a friend of missions. VII. Our Missionary Society's Evolution. THOUGH it may be admitted that the question, how shall we arouse a sufficient degree of missionary spirit among the churches, takes precedence, in difficulty, of all others connected with this theme, yet even when that spirit is very largely awakened the field is by no means clear of perplexity. Another question of large moment starts up, namely, by what organism shall the missionary spirit be transmuted into missionary labor. That the reply to this is far from self-evident may be seen from the fact that the most various answers have been given. Setting aside private and individual missions, which have the loosest of all organizations (if, indeed, they can be said to have any), and which manifestly cannot be depended on for any large results, we may name, without at present describing, the political or secular method, very much used in other days and not entirely without defenders at present, the colonization scheme, which has been at times much in vogue and is still regarded with favor by a few, and the associational plan so largely practiced in many Protestant countries to-day. The last is undoubtedly better than the preceding, and is perhaps the only available form for State churches and for those Christians who make the complete independence of the local church a primary consideration, and hence have only the vaguest sort of connection with each other over any extended area; but it cannot be regarded as the ideal, or as a finality. It is not fitting that the Christian Church should transfer to outside organizations so vital a part of its fundamental functions. The regular machinery of the church should collect the money, select and send the men, direct their conduct in the foreign field, secure purity of doctrine and the proper administration of discipline. Had this been done from the beginning we should not now have so much difficulty in rooting out from the minds of the people the false notion that when asked to do their part in spreading the gospel over the world they are being solicited to contribute to some charity or benevolence. The Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church has reached its present admirable position by what may be appropriately styled a process of evolution. Like Methodism itself it has gradually developed, adapting itself to circumstances and undergoing a variety of changes, passing on from point to point as Providence appeared to direct and the wisdom of experience to dictate. It has not probably yet attained 44 OUR MISSIONARY SOCIETY'S EVOLUTION. in all respects perfection's height, but in most particulars it affords an admirable example of close approximation to the ideal. Previous to I872 its membership, as in so many other societies even at the present day, rested on a purely financial basis. The Society up. to that time consisted exclusively of life members, made such by the payment of twenty dollars. No others belonged. Twenty-five of these members constituted a quorum for the transaction of business. And at the annual meeting, of such members as might choose to come together in the city of New York on the third Monday of November, there was chosen the full board of managers, in whom was vested the entire disposition of the affairs and property of the Society. Rather a loose arrangement, it would seem. These managers consisted of thirty-two laymen, and, after I856, of no more than thirty-two ministers, although before that all ordained ministers, both traveling and local, who were members of the Society were also members of the board. This made it, by the necessities of the case, largely a local affair, and to some extent, legally at least, independent of all Church authority. Yet from the first its promoters earnestly endeavored to give it a connectional character, and partly succeeded. They groped their way steadily toward the true theory and method, dropping off one erroneous feature after another, following the leadings of the Lord, and moving forward as fast, perhaps, as the Church in general was prepared to accompany them, until they came at length to the fully developed system. It is instructive and interesting to note the advances. This Missionary Society was clearly the child of the New York Preachers' meeting. A committee from that meeting, composed of Nathan Bangs, Freeborn Garrettson and Laban Clark, drew up its constitution, which was formally adopted at a large public gathering held in Forsyth Street church, April 5, I8I9, and a full set of officers was elected. The ensuing General Conference sanctioned the scheme and recommended all other Methodist missionary societies, notably the one at Philadelphia, which was of older date, to become auxiliary to this at New York. But it was more than twenty years before these two societies really united. Nor was it till I836 that the Missionary Society became of sufficient importance to have a resident corresponding secretary who should give his entire time to its service. Dr. Nathan Bangs was appointed. He had from the beginning, without salary or compensation of any kind, conducted almost all its business, writing every annual report but one, and holding in himself the most of its life-blood. Dr. Bangs was chosen by the General Conference, THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. as have been all subsequent corresponding secretaries, although, until the abolition of the old ' ' society" in I873, it went through the legal form of re-electing them at its regular an nual meeting. From I836 to I844 the corresponding secretary had to be a member of the New York Conference, which was charged with his supervision. In I844 a very important step was taken in the direction of generalizing the management. It was in this year that the church was divided into mission districts, and there was formed from these the general missionary committee, appointed by the bishops, to whom was given a share in the control, conjointly with the board. In I856 the clerical managers were restricted to thirty-two, and in I872 was instituted the present arrangement, whereby the general missionary committee is composed of one representative from each of the mission districts, now fourteen, elected by the General Conference, on nomination, by the delegates of the annual conferences within each district respectively, also an equal number of persons selected by the board of managers from its own sixty-four members, together with the secretaries and treasurers of the Society, and the whole Board of Bishops. This action more than any other gave the final death-blow to the old society idea, and made the missionary organization, as it ought to be, an integral part of the work of the whole Church. Dr. Durbin, secretary from I850 to I872, had already seen the importance of emphasizing this side of the movement, and in the Disciplinary chapter on Missions, recast by him with a large amount of new matter in I852, he had taken pains to place at the head of all this highly significant sentence: "The support of missions is committed to the churches, congregations and societie. as such." In other words, the cause was not to be regarded as the concern simply of such separate members of the church as might choose to bind themselves together in local auxiliaries, which at the first, and for a long while, were regarded as the principal feeders of the Society, nor of such as were able and willing to contribute twenty dollars at one time, but every church member throughout the nation or the world was by the very fact of his membership pledged to contribute and co-operate according to his ability, nor did he need to be further enrolled in any distinct way to make this pledge more binding. And all the pastors were, as such, special agents of the cause, charged with collecting funds for its furtherance and in every way advancing its interests. The missionary section of the Discipline was again entirely recast in I876, with a number of new paragraphs, of which the following stands first: "For the better prosecution of missionary work in the United States and foreign countries there shall OUR MISSIONARY SOCIETY'S EVOLUTION. 47 be a Missionary Society, duly incorporated according to law, and having its office in the city of New York; said Society being subject to such rules and regulations as the General Conference may from time to time prescribe." Singular as it may seem, this was the first issue of the Discipline, fifty-six years after the Society had been endorsed by the General Conference, containing a direct authorization of its existence. No previous Discipline has any mention of the Society, except two or three indirect references or allusions in paragraphs treating of other topics, which shows emphatically in what a very miscellaneous manner the entire legislation of the Church on this subject has been thrown together, and how fragmentarily it has arrived at its present excellent condition. The most recent emendation of the constitution, ordered by the General Conference of I888, was in the same line with all the previous changes, and provides for the still further emphasizing of the connectional, as opposed to the local, character of the institution, by prescribing that the annual meeting of the General Committee shall be hereafter no longer confined to New York, but shall be held at least three times out of four in other cities. It would seem now that there is nothing left of the society or local idea beyond the mere name and the restrictions imposed by the necessity of having a charter from some specific State Legislature in order to hold property, as well as the necessity of having headquarters where certain matters of business can be attended to. This Missionary Society, still so-called for convenience sake, is now simply and solely the whole Church itself acting in its corporate capacity for the establishment and support of missions. It is not an outside organization allied to the Church, but distinct from it. Rather is it the right arm of the body, holding most vital connection with every other part, receiving its full share of the life-blood and contributing its full share to the welfare of the whole. The Missionary Society is only one of the names of the Church, and every member of the latter, from the senior bishop to the youngest probationer, is also a member of the former, having some part to fill in its maintenance. The General Conference, the highest authority, the one body which speaks for the entire Church the world around, elects its secretaries and treasurers and presidents, appoints its managers and general committee, revises its constitution and sovereignly regulates all its affairs. The bishops appoint all the missionaries. The General Committee, meeting annually, selects the mission fields and allots the money, and the Board of Managers, meeting monthly, looks after the details, while the secretaries conduct the correspondence and set in motion all possible agencies for THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. filling the treasury. So there is at last provided here an agency of marvelous completeness for the purpose in hand—a system of wheels and pulleys and bands in which strength is combined with elasticity, and which moves with a smoothness and efficiency leaving little to be desired. VIII. The Auxiliary Organizations. THRE E additional organizations, besides the original and venerable Society described in the previous chapter, have, in the providence of God, sprung up, subsidiary to it, co-operating to secure the same general result, but with a somewhat different system of agencies, and standing in some respects on a different basis. The oldest of these is the WOMAN'S FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY. Its purpose, as defined by Article Second of its Constitution, is "to engage and unite the efforts of Christian women in sending female missionaries to women in the foreign mission fields of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in supporting them and native Christian teachers and Bible-readers in those fields. The payment of one dollar annually constitutes membership." It was founded March 23d, I869, in Boston, chiefly through the exertions of Mrs. E. W. Parker, Mrs. William Butler, and Mrs. W. F. Warren. And from that time its course has been right onward. The Missionary authorities of the Church speedily adopted this promising child, with the understanding that it should not raise its funds in such a way as to interfere with the contributions of the churches and Sunday-schools for the treasury of the parent Society, and should in all particulars work in harmony with the Church authorities at home and abroad. The succeeding General Conference recognized it with approval " as an efficient agent in the spread of the gospel." And in I884 a separate section in the Discipline gave it yet larger recognition, and defined more exactly its sphere and functions. It is not allowed to obtain money by collections or subscriptions during any of our church services, nor in any promiscuous public meeting or Sunday-school. Its appropriations are submitted for revision to the General Missionary Committee of the Church, and its appointees are in all respects subject to the bishop and presiding elders where they labor. Four thousand five hundred dollars were raised the first year, and two missionaries, Miss Isabella Thoburn and Miss Clara Swain, M.D., were sent to India, the country whose pressing needs had chiefly given rise to the movement. The next year $22,000 was raised, and the following year $44,000 ; by I880 the amount had risen to $76,000, by I884 to $I43,000, and for I890 no less than $220,329 were poured into its treasury. The whole sum contributed since the organization is $2,333,450. 49 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. The work of the Society is conducted by ten co-ordinate Branches, namely, New England, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Northwestern, Des Moines, Minneapo lis, Topeka, and Pacific, covering almost the entire country, the two projected for the South not being at present in opera tion. Its general administration is in the hands of an Execu tive Committee, composed of three delegates from each Branch, meeting annually. And whatever affairs of a general character need attention in the interim, are submitted to a Committee of Reference composed of the Corresponding Secre taries of the several Branches, with Mrs. H. B. Skidmore of New York as Chairman. Each branch is also thoroughly or ganized with a multitude of secretaries, one above another (there are 34I in all), with a view to secure the most energetic supervision and extension of the work. It has, in its 5,557 auxiliaries, young ladies societies, and children's bands, 38,956 members, an increase over last year of 3,72I. About I40 missionaries, 25 of them medical, have been sent to foreign fields, and nearly one hundred of them are now at work : 34 in India, 23 in Japan, 20 in China, 7 in Mexico, 4 in Korea, 4 in South America, 2 in Bulgaria, I in Italy, and I in Malaysia. The Society publishes an excellent monthly, called The Heathen Woman's Friend, of which Mrs. W. F. Warren has been from the first the editor, and to which there are about 20,000 subscribers. It issues also a zenana paper in four of the languages of India—Hindee, Urdu, Bengali, and Tamil. During the past year an illustrated monthly for children has been issued which has already over 5,000 subscribers. The Friend has been more than self-supporting from the beginning. The Society has in the various countries where it works about $250,000 worth of property, including many hospitals and dispensaries, orphanages for girls, homes for homeless women, together with two hundred boarding and day schools containing over 8,000 pupils. There are also a great number of native Bible-women and teachers, who, in thousands of zenanas, are carrying joy and comfort and hope to those who have so long awaited the coming of the light. It and its thirty-eight sisters in this country alone, with 700,000 members, gathering $I,250,000 annually (together with an equal number in other lands gathering $750,000 more), mostly from hidden and remote corners, as the result of constant self-denials, have greatly quickened the conscience of the Church on this subject, undoubtedly aiding instead of hindering, as was feared by some, the older general societies. And they have also abundantly demonstrated and clearly illustrated the full competency of women for the conduct of the largest THE AUXILIARY ORGANIZATIONS. benevolent, educational, and evangelistic enterprises. Long may they continue to shed their holy radiance upon the dark places of the earth, and ever may they expand until each sin- cursed home has felt the healing influence of their gentle touch ! The second of the great auxiliaries is the WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. According to its constitution, ' ' the aim of this Society shall be to enlist and organize the efforts of Christian women in behalf of the needy and destitute women and children of all sections of our country, without distinction of race, and to co-operate with the other societies and agencies of the Church in educational and missionary work." Here also one dollar a year is the membership fee. This Society was formally organized at Cincinnati, July I0th, I880, and its first missionary was sent that fall to Atlanta. Its receipts for the first two years were $7,000, and for the first four years $54,000. Last year its general treasurer received $II3,333, and in addition to this there was paid into local treasuries $4,563, and supplies were contributed whose estimated value was $53,952. The total amount raised for the ten years has been $387,534 in cash; $I3,II0 for local work; and $235,425 in supplies. Its relations to the general Missionary Society and its Disciplinary restrictions are the same as in the case of the W. F. M. S. Its constitution is somewhat different. It has a president, who was for many years Mrs. Lucy Webb Hayes, and is now Mrs. John Davis ; five vice-presidents, a treasurer, a recording and a corresponding secretary, the latter being Mrs. R. H. Rust. Its General Executive Board consists of twenty-one members, residing in or near Cincinnati. Each Conference has an organization consisting of all the auxiliary societies within its bounds. A large part of the local management is in the hands of sixteen Bureaus, covering different sections of the country and different departments of work, namely, East Southern States, East Central States, West Central States, West Southern States, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona (Spanish), New Mexico and Arizona (English), Mormons, Indians, Alaska, Mission Supplies, Young People's Work, Local Missionary Work, Lectures and Reading Circles, Immigrants, and Deaconess Work. A great number of Industrial Homes and Schools are maintained, mainly for the Freedmen in the South and the Mormons in Utah, from which beneficent influences of every kind go forth. There are 74 Conference organizations, I,925 auxiliaries, and 48,200 adult and juvenile members. The periodical organ of the Society, known as Home Missions, recently closed its seventh year of existence with fifteen thous THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. and subscribers. Mrs. H. C. McCabe is its editor. About sixty missionaries and teachers are at work under the direc tion of the Society in various States of the South together with Oklohoma, Utah, Alaska, and New Mexico territories. Dur ing the past year 34 candidates were accepted by the Board, and 20 received appointments. If the estimate of Mrs. Rust, in her last report, is correct, that ' ' seven-eighths of the members of the W. H. M. S. belong also to the W. F. M. S. and labor with great zeal for the success of both of these branches of Church work," then indeed the permanent harmony and co-ordinate efficiency of these two sister organizations would seem to be placed beyond doubt. May they each abide in strength and accomplish great things for the Master! The third auxiliary organization gathering missionary contributions in the Methodist Episcopal Church is known as "TH E TRANSIT AND BUILDING FUND SOCIETY OF BISHOP WILLIAM TAYLOR'S SELF-SUPPORTING MISSIONS." It was incorporated at New York in I884, under an Act which says: "The particular business and objects of said Society are to provide the ways and means, and to manage, appropriate and apply the same as follows, namely : to procure a suitable outfit for missionary preachers and teachers, to pay their passage to foreign countries, to pay the traveling expenses of pioneer evangelists in those countries, to build or purchase dwelling houses, school houses and houses of worship for the use of missionaries, also to translate the Sacred Scriptures and suitable religious and literary publications into foreign languages, and to print and publish the same. The funds of this Society shall not be used to pay salaries of agents at home, nor of preachers or teachers in foreign countries." It is added, among the regulations, that ' ' the Society makes no provision for missionaries returning from their field of labor, nor does it deem itself justified in paying the outgoing expenses entire where less than five years' service is rendered." Bishop William Taylor is President, Rev. Asbury Lowrey, D.D., and Anderson Fowler, Esq., Vice-Presidents, Rev. Alexander McLean, Corresponding Secretary, and Richard Grant, Treasurer. There are a few other officers, but there would seem to be no private members. This Society, which is perhaps more strictly a Finance Committee, comprising eight men and four women, was practically inaugurated (though not formally incorporated) in May, I878. When William Taylor, not then Bishop, opened his Transit Fund and publicly appealed for contributions, he said: ' ' I do not wish to receive a dollar that would otherwise go into the regular missionary treasury. This self-supporting THE AUXILIARY ORGANIZATIONS. work which the Lord of the harvest is opening with such success is outside of all missionary societies, but not antagonistic to any." In answer to these calls for help, $42,500 were received and acknowledged between May, I878, and May, I882, with probably $30,000 more in the next two years. For the four years following [884 the receipts were $I52,000, for I889 they were $45,562, and for I890, $5I,I5I. So that the grand total must be not far from $325,000. This committee, up to November, I889, had general charge of the missions established by Bishop Taylor, both in South America and Africa. But the Bishop at that time, for reasons of his own, took over the entire control of the African missions, appointing (later) his son, Rev. Ross Taylor, of Evanston, treasurer of such funds, and editor of his organ, The African News. So that the committee now raise funds simply for South America, helping also to some extent the work of Rev. C. B. Ward in South India, and a few mission churches in charge of Rev. Stephen Merritt in New York City. Its latest report gives $I20,000 as the cost of the real estate held by the Society in South America (subject to a mortgage of $48,600), but estimates its present value at $I75,000. The value of the property in the African mission is put by Bishop Taylor at $5I,I00. IX. Our Foreign Missions. WE have no room in these pages for history, properly so- called. Even a very meagre summary of the principal facts connected with all our foreign work would fill the entire pamphlet. They who would know these things are respectfully referred to Dr. Reid's two-volumed History of our Missions, which conies down to I878, and to the shorter "Historical Sketches," by the Rev. E. B. Otheman, reaching to the end of I880. The annual reports are easily available for the years that are more recent. A sort of bird's-eye view, however, in briefest compass, of our various missions, it has been thought, might be compendiously presented with profit, and would be, indeed, an essential feature of such a hand-book as is here attempted. It is hoped the following epitome may be found useful. LIBERIA. Begun by the Rev. Melville B. Cox in I833. Organized as a Conference in I836, with 340 members and probationers. Members in I846, 790; in I856, I,396; in I866, I,35I; in I876, 2,488, in I886, 2,656; in I89I, 3,I94. In the first twenty years 25 missionaries were sent out by the Board, since then only seven; none lately. At least nine died in the field, and many more returned with shattered health to die at home. For five consecutive years, I853-57, an average of $35,000 a year was given to Liberia. For the last I3 years the average has been $4,275. Total appropriations from the beginning, $82I,079. At present there are 26 members of the Conference, 58 local preachers, and 36 churches. Bishop William Taylor was put in charge in I884, and has developed a line of stations, manned chiefly by white missionaries, along the Cavalla river, in the south of the republic, which report I4I adults and 6I children baptized last year. The outlook for Liberia is not as yet very bright. SOUTH AMERICA. Begun by the Rev. Justin Spaulding at Rio de Janeiro, and the Rev. John Dempster, at Buenos Ayres, in I836. Discontinued in I84I Resumed at Buenos Ayres in I842, and continued there for over twenty years almost exclusively as a kind of chaplaincy to the English-speaking mercantile community. Spanish house-to-house work was begun in 1864 and Spanish preaching in I867. In I883 the mission was strongly re-inforced, and a policy of aggressive evangelization 011 direct lines was heartily adopted, since which good progress has been made. Members and probationers in I883, 592; in I887, I,270, and in I890, I,865. Superintendent 54 OUR FOREIGN MISSIONS. from I842 to I846, Rev. W. II. Norris; from I847 to I854, Dr. Dallas D. Lore; from I854 to I856, Dr. G. D. Carrow; from I856 to I868, Dr. William Goodfellow; from I868 to I878, Dr. Henry G. Jackson; from I878 to I887, Dr. Thomas B. Wood; from I887 to the present, Dr. C. W. Drees. The mission has in late years become widely extended, especially through its vigorous Bible distribution, not only in many parts of Argentina and Uruguay where the chief force is employed, but also in Paraguay, Brazil and Peru. Dr. T. B. Wood, for some time president of the Theological Seminary, has recently removed to Peru to supervise the work in that quarter. The average annual appropriation to South America for the past three years has been $5I,500; the total amount spent upon it from the beginning has been $679,022. FOOCHOW. Begun in I847 by the Revs. Judson I). Collins and Moses C. White. Superintended by Dr. Robert S. Maclay most of the time from I848 to I872, after which Dr. S. L,. Baldwin had charge for a few years. First baptism July I4, I857. First annual meeting, I862, with 87 members and probationers. In I872 there were I,805; in I882, 2,436, and in I890, 4,I72. A most useful Mission Press, whose issues have been in late years from twelve to fourteen million pages annually, was established in I862. In I872 was founded a Biblical Institute, and in I88I an Anglo-Chinese college, toward which Mr. Tiong Ahok gave $I0,000. In I877 the mission was organized into an Annual Conference by Bishop Wiley with 35 members in full and on trial, and 46 circuits averaging four stations each. There are now I36 native preachers, of whom 62 are ordained; there are 6I members of Conference, eight of them Americans. Seventy- two missionaries in all, men and women, including the appointees of the W. F. M. S., and including such men as Dr. I. W. Wiley, Dr. Erastus Wentworth and Dr. Otis Gibson, were sent to Foochow in the first thirty years of the mission; since which time fifteen or twenty others have gone. The amount of money annually granted to this mission for the past .few years has been about $2I,000, and the mission itself has raised about $2,500. A very fine class of native preachers has been raised up, much has been done in the way of self-support, and the baptism during the past year of 2S4 adults and 563 children shows that there is a good degree of spiritual life in the native churches. GERMANY. Begun at Bremen in I849 by Dr. Ludwig S. Jacoby. Organized into a Conference in I856 with only five preachers in full connection and a membership, including probationers, of about five hundred. In I858 the ministers and helpers were 26 and the members over a thousand. In I878 eighty men were stationed and the membership was II,525. The number in the churches now, including those in Switzerland, which was set off as a separate Conference in [886, is I6,342. The only Americans who have served in this field have been Drs. W. F. Warren and J. F. Hurst, THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. who each gave five years to what is now the Martin Mission Institute at Frankfort, the former in I862-67, and the latter in I867-72. The Mission Press at Bremen in the first twenty years of its history sold 382,000 books; it issues eight well-supported periodicals, and prints from thirty-five to forty million pages a year. People and preachers have had to suffer much persecution from the clergy of the State churches, but, though oppressed with poverty and burdened with large chapel debts, they are making good progress, and the influence of Methodism in the country, as the best judges more and more admit, is extremely salutary. SWITZERLAND. Switzerland, set off as a Conference from Germany in I886, has before that no separate history, nor since has there been anything of very special note. The Conference includes two districts in the Swiss Republic, Berne and Zurich, besides some adjacent parts of France in which the German language is spoken. There is more freedom of conscience and worship than in Germany. We have churches in Basel, Berne, Biel, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, and over twenty other places. In I885 there were 5,I37 members and probationers; in I890,6,II3. The collections last year amounted to I74,608 francs, or 28 francs per member, certainly a most creditable record, surpassing, it is claimed, all other foreign conferences. NORWAY. Begun in I853 by the Rev. O. P. Peterson, a Norwegian converted in I846 at Pastor Hedstrom's Bethel Ship, New York Harbor. Organized into a Conference in I876 with I8 churches and 3,500 members and probationers. In I890 there were 5,I32, with 77 preachers and helpers, 3I of them ordained. Here, as in Germany, oppressive laws hinder the work, and there is also a great drain by reason of constant emigration to America. But the people make heroic struggles and sacrifices, and are more and more conquering a good position. SWEDEN. Begun by Rev. John T. Larsson, also converted at the Bethel Ship, in I853. For some time united with Norway and Denmark under the general heading Scandinavia, it was set off in I868 as a separate mission under the superintendence of Rev. Victor Witting, with I,326 members. Vigorous revivals have constantly prevailed in this mission, and there have been extraordinary outpourings of the Spirit. In I870 the membership was 2,000; in I875 it was 5,000; in I880, 7,825; in I885, I2,746, and in I890, I5,997. This is indeed marvelous growth, showing that primitive Methodism has taken root in good earnest in this ancient land. Probabl after a few more years of fostering care the way will be opened both here and in Germany for autonomy. It is worthy of note that in connection with the Finland District of this Conference a work of considerable promise has been opened in St. Petersburg. OUR FOREIGN MISSIONS. DENMARK. Preaching was begun at Copenhagen in I857 by Rev. C. Willerup, a Dane, then superintendent of the Norway Mission. In I866 there was dedicated here a handsome and commodious church building, valued at $65,000, largely the gift of the late Harold Dollner, Esq., of Brooklyn, a liberal Danish merchant. The work in this land is much the same as in the other northern countries, though not progressing quite so rapidly, and it has not as yet been formed into a conference. There were in I890 of members and probationers 2,053, with I6 circuits, and 508 conversions reported for the year. Summing up now the whole of this work in these five missions of central and Northern Europe, mainly among the Lutherans, we find the present number of members and probationers 39,524, with 49,0I0 Sunday scholars, and 34I regular preachers, 20I of whom are ordained. All this in less than 40 years, amid so many difficulties, must be accounted good success. The total amount of money spent on these five missions has been $2,339,424. NORTH INDIA. Begun by Dr. William Butler in I856. Swept away by Sepoy Rebellion in I857. Permanent work entered upon in I858. First convert, Zahur-ul-Huqq; baptized July 24, I859. In I868 there were 625 members and probationers; in I878, 2,526; in I888, 7,944; in I890, I3,421. During the past nine years there have been II,000 adult baptisms, 3,600 of them in I&90. Dr. Butler superintended till I864, when a Conference was organized by Bishop Thomson with I7 full members. It has now 79 members and probationers, of whom only 28 are Americans. There are eight districts in the Conference with 80 appointments and at least 250 centers of work. There are over 300 native preachers, 67 of them being ordained; besides some I,200 more teachers and helpers, including the women. About I30 foreign workers, 50 men and 80 women, have been sent to Northern India, some 75 of whom are now there. The number of day schools is 655; of Sunday-schools, 8I0. In the latter are gathered 30,823 scholars. There is a native Christian community of 20,000. Including the school fees and grants more than a hundred thousand rupees are annually collected in India for our Mission work, or about $40,000. The average amount given by the General Committee for the past three years has been $7I,900. The Mission Press at Luck now has been and is a mighty power, printing last year 35 million pages, while its daughter at Calcutta printed I7 millions more. The Christian College at Lucknow, the Theological School at Bareilly, the Orphanage at Shahjehanpore, are each worthy of study. In a paragraph only the barest outline can be given of this magnificent mission, by far the most flourishing of any we have. If the work is vigorously pushed on the lines which have already proved so productive of results, there is every reason to believe that the next quarter of a century will witness in North India one of the greatest triumphs which the Cross has ever achieved in any land. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. SOUTH INDIA. Begun by the Rev. William Taylor at Bombay in 1872. Organized into a Conference by Bishop Andrews in I876, with 24 ministerial members and probationers, 40 local preachers, and I,596 lay members, I,II2 of these being in what is now South India territory, or the Bombay and Madras Districts. In I890 it had only 879 members and probationers. This work has not prospered as was expected and loudly prophesied by its very enthusiastic founder. The money grant for the past three years has been $2I,000 annually. There are 46 foreign missionaries, men and women, and I2 native preachers, besides I50 teachers and other helpers. BENGAL. Begun by the Rev. William Taylor at Calcutta in I873. Operated as a part of the South India Conference from I876 to I886, when it was set off by itself. In I885 it had 966 members and probationers, against 922 in South India; in I887 it had I,338; in I889, I,650; in I890, 2,240, besides setting off Malaysia in I888. It includes the following five districts: Calcutta, Burma, Tirhoot, Mussoorie. and Nerbudda Valley or Central India. It has the most extensive territory of any Conference in Methodism. In its Mussoorie District, which is on the extreme north, close beside the North India Couference, and in its Central India District, where it has found the same classes of people and is carrying on work in the same way, there has been great progress of late, and the outlook is excellent. Calcutta also has proved a good field, having English, Bengali, Hindustani, and Oorya churches, besides prosperous boarding schools and a useful press. The Conference has 46 missionaries, 56 native preachers and I35 other helpers. The annual appropriation from the Missionary treasury is $I8,300. Uniting the three Conferences we have in India as a whole, I6,540 lay members, 42,423 in the Sunday-schools, 185 missionaries and 3S0 native preachers. In I870 there were only I,067 lay members and I,I77 in the Sunday-schools; so there is an increase of over fifteen fold in the former, and almost forty fold in the latter. What hath God wrought! Surely he hath not dealt so with any other mission. India receives annually from the Missionary Society $III,200, and has received in all from the beginning, $2,457,4II. BULGARIA. Begun in I857 by Dr. Albert L. Long, left without a resident missionary in I864, abandoned in I87I, reoccupied in I873, broken up by war in I877, renewed in I879. The mission has had an exceedingly checkered career; there have been many political complications and other almost insuperable difficulties. It has been for the most part but feebly prosecuted, and the results have been correspondingly small. A more vigorous policy has been adopted in the last few years, and the church still has hopes. A new superintendent, the Rev. Geo. S. Davis, has just been appointed. There are eight American missionaries and fifteen native preachers, together with I63 members and probationers. The sum of $I9,000 is annually expended here. OUR FOREIGN MISSIONS. CENTRAL CHINA. Begun in I868 at Kiukiang on the Yangtse, 500 miles from its mouth, by the Revs. V. C. Hart and E. S. Todd, sent there from Foochow. Dr. Hart was superintendent from I869 to I888. The Rev. Leslie Stevens now has charge. In I878 there were 78 members and probationers, in I890 there were 536. Thirty-four missionaries are laboring here in the cities of Kiukiang, Chinkiang, Nanking and Wuhu. There are I8 native preachers, but only two of them are ordained. The Philander Smith Memorial Hospital at Nanking, finished in I886, and the more recently inaugurated university at the same place, are doing good service. Medical, educational, and evangelistic work are being prosecuted with vigor for some 300 miles along both banks of this mighty river, and in due time there will doubtless be large harvests. An average annual appropriation of $37,953 has been of late years made to this field. NORTH CHINA. Begun in I869 at Peking by the Revs. L. N. Wheeler and H. H. Lowry, who were sent thither from Foochow. Tientsin, the seaport of the capital, on the Peiho river, was entered in I872, and Tsunhua in I873. Dr. Wheeler superintended it until his health failed in I873, since which time it has been in charge of Dr. Lowry. The work is on substantially the same basis as in Central China, but larger success in the matter of converts has been reached. The first ten years yielded 246 members, and the present number, including probationers, is I,644. This is due in part no doubt to the favorable impression made by Christian beneficence in the terrible famine of I878. As yet only fourteen native preachers, six of them ordained, have been raised up. There are 38 missionaries. The Peking university, head of the educational system, is gradually getting on its feet, and there is also a large medical work. The money granted is $43,399 a year. WEST CHINA. Begun in I88I by the Rev. L. N. Wheeler at Chungking, I,400 miles up the Yangtse, in the province of Szechueu. The Rev. F. D. Gamewell superintended it from [883 to I886. The Rev. Spencer Lewis now has charge. In I886 the mission was totally destroyed by a furious riot directed against all foreigners, but none of our people were injured. Re-established in I887, it already has 45 lay members, and there is good prospect of large usefulness in the near future. In all China, combining the four missions, we have a force of no foreign workers, including 27 ladies supported by the W. F. M. S., and 35 wives of missionaries. There are I70 native preachers. The total number of communicants gathered is 6,405, with adherents numbering some 5,000 more. In the Sunday-schools there are 4,387, The Missionary Society is giving to this field about $ II0,000 annually, and has expended upon it from the beginning, $ I,754,534. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. ITALY. Begun by Dr. L. M. Vernon in I872. The headquarters were first at Bologna, then at Rome, and more recently at Florence. Milan, Turin, Venice, Pisa, Naples and some twenty other places have been taken up. Dr. Vernon superintended the mission until I888, when he returned to America, and his place was filled by Dr. William Burt, who is in name presiding elder, the mission having been constituted a Conference in I88I. This field has not been found as fruitful as was expected. It has absorbed large sums of money (the average annual appropriation for the last three years being $44,740), but has developed very little relish for self-support among the people, nor has it produced many satisfactory native preachers. A theological school, recently established, in charge of Dr. E. S. Stackpole, it is hoped may remedy this latter defect. There has been no advance in numbers for ten years, the communicants in I88I being I,0I9, and in I890, 94I, a decrease of 78. There are only 436 in the Sunday-schools. There are six missionaries and nineteen ordained native preachers, members of the Conference. Italy scarcely seems likely to add much to our missionary laurels, or repay the strength and treasure given to it. The total expense so far has been $578,449. MEXICO. Begun in I873 by Dr. William Butler, who superintended it till the beginning of I879, when the Rev. C. W. Drees took charge, keeping it till the organization of the Conference in I885. There are now four districts and I0I appointments, the past year showing a gain of 28 in the number of congregations and 394 in the number of members. There are 2,437 communicants, and the adherents are put at 6,000. This is certainly a good showing for I7 years, considering all the difficulties. The Government has been favorable and for the most part able and willing to afford entire protection, but there have been some local persecutions, and a good deal of mob violence has been stirred up from time to time by the priests. One of our native preachers was killed at Apizaco in I88I, and others have been seriously injured. We have a grand total of I65 foreign and native workers, fully one-fourth of the whole Protestant force in the Republic, though there are ten other missions. Of this I65, 27 are foreign and the rest native, 40 being native preachers, I0 of them ordained. Our mission in I888 had property to the value of $238,850, while the other denominations altogether had only $4I4,260. Since then our property has increased to $303,840. Eighteen thousand of this belongs to the Mission Press, which has been signally useful, sending out in all some twenty-five million pages crowded with gospel truth, and publishing an illustrated Christian Advocate semi-monthly, with a circulation of 3,000. This mission has had liberal expenditures from the beginning, and receives now over $53,000 a year. JAPAN. Begun in I873 by Dr. R. S. Maclay. Organized into a Conference in I884. It now has six districts and 55 appointments or centers of work, OUR FOREIGN MISSIONS. the chief being Tokio, Yokohama, Nagoya, Hakodate, Hirosaki, Fukuoka and Joso. There has been prosperity from the beginning. At the second annual meeting there were I7 members reported, at the third 73. In I883 there came a wonderful visitation of the Holy Spirit, and the membership, which had hung at about 600 since I879, leaped at once to 943, and gained in the next four years over I,500. In I888 it showed a still more wonderful expansion, increasing from 2,500 to 3,700. It has lost a little since, and now stands at 3,533. The mission has paid much attention to Sunday-schools, collecting in them 4,022 scholars, or nearly as many as in all the China missions together. It raised in I890, $I5,726 for self-support, chiefly as receipts for tuition. Besides ten high schools, it has a well-equipped Anglo-Japanese university at Tokio, where handsome buildings in a twenty-five-acre campus delight the eye of the Christian visitor. There are 60 native preachers, 22 of them ordained, and 64 foreign workers. About 80 in all have been sent to this field. It has received $6I3,000 of money, the appropriations for the last three years averaging $60,000 annually. KOREA. Begun in I885 by Rev. and Mrs. H. G. Appenzeller, and. Dr. and Mrs. Scrantou, Mr. Appenzeller being superintendent. Medical, educational, literary, and evangelistic work is going on, the latter somewhat quietly, there not being yet full religious liberty, or any recognized treaty rights for missionaries. The first Quarterly Conference was organized in December, I889. A press has been established, as well as a hospital, a dispensary, and two high schools. There are eleven foreign workers, two native preachers, 45 communicants and I65 adherents. We have expended so far upon Korea about $90,000, and have appropriated $16,000 to it for the current year. MALAYSIA. Begun in I885 by the appointment of the Rev. W. F. Oldham to Singapore, where in February he and Dr. Thoburn inaugurated the new movement. It was connected with India until I888, when it was organized as a separate mission with Dr. Oldham as superintendent. His health compelling a return to America last year, Dr. J. C. Floyd is now in charge. The chief feature so far has been the wonderfully successful, self-supporting Anglo-Chinese school, where over 400 eager Chinese youth are being well trained. There is preaching in English, German, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. Work has this year been begun in Borneo; other points in Malaysia, such as Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, will be soon entered upon if Providence permits. Present force, I5 foreign missionaries and teachers, I7 native preachers, teachers, and helpers. There are I20 members and probationers, and I95 adherents. The appropriation for the current year is only $7,250. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. SUMMARIES. In our ten Asiatic missions, the only ones of any impor tance in which our Missionary Society is at work strictly among the heathen, we have 26,627 communicants; weemploy 390 missionaries; we have 6I6 native preachers, of whom I69 are ordained; there are in their Sunday-schools over 50,000 scholars The Church has expended on these fields about $5,000,000, and is giving- to them now about $300,000 a year. In the last ten years they have more than trebled their mem bership, while the other foreign missions taken together have not quite doubled, and the Church at home has only gained 33 per cent. Of the whole 20 missions now reviewed, ten are among non-Christians in Asia, and ten among nominal Christians in Europe, America, and Africa. To the first ten we appropriate about $300,000 a year, to the second ten about $260,000. The Asiatic missions have 27,627 converts, the Lutheran missions 39,524; all others 8,580 ; making a grand total of 74,731. The foreign missionaries number I82; assistant missionaries. I70; W. F. M. S. missionaries, I22; foreign teachers, 72; making a total foreign force of 546. There is a native working force of paid helpers, teachers and preachers, of 3,77I. There were II,I89 conversions last year. The students in the day schools of various kinds number 33,444; in the Sunday- schools, I07,085. The number of churches, chapels, halls and other places of worship is I,459. The volumes printed during the year at the Mission Presses were about a million, the pages over fifty-seven millions. The amount of money raised on the mission fields, as far as reported, was $304,969, of which $II,364 was for the Missionary Society. In other words, they raise about half as much per member as do the Methodists of America, while the most liberal estimate of their wealth could not put it beyond one-fourth as much, and probably one-tenth would come nearer the truth. The amount expended for foreign missions by the M. E. Church, through all channels, last year, was $889,6I3; the Presbyterian Board raised $794,066 ; the American Board, $762,947; and the Baptist Board, $440,788. All the American Protestant churches raised for foreign missions a little over $4,000,000, which is just about thirty cents for each communicant. OUR FOREIGN MISSIONS. BISHOP TAYLOR'S MISSIONS. To complete the epitome of our entire foreign work a few words should be added concerning the two Methodist missions founded and still controlled by Bishop William Taylor. One is in South America, chiefly in Chili, with three stations in northern Brazil. In October, I877, Bishop Taylor sailed for South America and speedily arranged for some twenty stations along the west coast, from Panama, on the north, to Patagonia on the south,and in Northeast Brazil. Over a hundred men and women have been sent to this coast in the last twelve years, but some have died and most of the rest have returned, leaving about 30 still in the field. Only six of the sixteen stations founded along the Pacific are still held, namely, Santiago, Concepcion, Coquimbo, Iquiqui, Valparaiso and Aspinwall; one, Serena, has been added, making a total of seven. It has been from the beginning almost wholly a school work, but there are now a few organized churches with a small membership, and the purpose is to develop it still further in this direction, as men and funds may be secured. The ministers and churches in Chili have been formed into a Presiding Elder's District, in connection with the Cincinnati Conference, and those in Brazil have been united in the same way with the New England Southern. The Africa mission is in three divisions. In I885 five stations were planted in the Portuguese province of Angola. These are now accounted self-supporting, through the mercantile, agricultural, and educational abilities of the men in charge, and they report seventy members and probationers. In I866 a chain of fourteen stations, now reduced to five, was inaugurated on the Congo, and in I887 eighteen more stations were planted along the Cavalla river in Southern Liberia. These latter stations are not yet self-supporting, but are advancing toward it, and they report I86 probationers. A mission steamer, costing some $25,000, has been put upon the Lower Congo, and an attempt is being made to get one for the interior rivers. Over I00 persons of all ages have been sent to these African missions, of whom more than half have either died or returned. Bishop Taylor will next year, have completed eight years of heroic service here. May he long be spared to lead on this valiant detachment of the army of Christ! X. Our Domestic Missions. OUR Missionary Society, unlike most others, combines within its sphere of operations both the home and the foreign field. This has some advantages, but we believe the best interests of both would be subserved, and a much larger amount of money raised, if there should be a division. People give more heartily and freely when they know that their own convictions as to the direction of the funds will be carried out. The two causes are so different in their spheres of labor, their style of administration, their reports and appeals, that it seems incongruous to yoke them so closely, and to compel people, if they wish to contribute to the one, to contribute an almost equal amount to the other. It seems also very clear that our great Church will never do its full duty to the linevangelized nations under present arrangements. As Bishop Fowler said at Kansas City, "The plea on which we raise at least nine- tenths of our money is the great need of the heathen world. If the money is not used for this purpose we shall strangle the benevolence of the Church." The money has not been used for this purpose in any proportion at all approaching the stress laid upon it in popular appeals. The sum total of the Missionary Society receipts down to the present time is $24,623,000, of which twenty-two millions have been expended directly on the missions; and of this, eleven and three-quarter millions have been expended at home, and ten and one-quarter millions abroad, the foreign appropriations having considerably increased of late. Down to I877, of the total expenditure, which was $I2,220,982, domestic missions had received $7,337,577, or over three-fifths, and foreign missions $4,883,465, or less than two-fifths ; and of this two-fifths more than half had been devoted to nominally Christian lands, and less than half to the heathen, so that less than one-fifth of our missionary money had gone for the chief, if not the only proper, object of missions, the Christianization of non-Christian countries. Of the ten and a quarter millions which have been, down to the present, sent abroad, only five millions have gone to the heathen, which is only a little more than one-fifth of what has been contributed. From three to five times the space in our annual mis sionary report is given to the presentation of the foreign missions as compared with the domestic, nor can it well be otherwise; it fairly represents the comparative interest and importance of the two works. But when it comes to the division of the money the proportion is very different indeed. According to 64 OUR DOMESTIC MISSIONS. the division last year our Church gave, through all channels, twenty-four cents per member to the heathen, and thirty-nine cents for both classes of foreign missions ; it gave a little less than fifty cents a member to the Missionary Society, and sixty- six cents to all the four societies of the Church which are accounted missionary. It would probably be better every way, and certainly more honest, to let each stand on its merits before the people, and be pushed by its own special friends. Full justice would then be done to both causes, as is hardly possible now, and there is little doubt that, soon after the readjustment, the full two millions which we ought to be giving would loom in sight. What has been done with this nearly twelve millions of dollars expended for missions on our own soil ? The most of it has gone to help establish self-supporting English-speaking Methodist churches in all the States and Territories of this Union. The purpose to do this, and the arrangement of an organization whereby the wealthier churches could give systematic, judicious aid to the feebler ones, was mainly what led to the formation of the Missionary Society. Indeed, for at least seven years before it was instituted, Bishop Asbury had carried about in his tours a subscription book to obtain funds for furnishing laborers in those parts of the frontier settlements where there was otherwise no hope of obtaining even the necessary food for the itinerant and his horse. For this reason, I8I2 is set down in the Annual Reports as the time of the origin of our domestic missions, though the Society did not come into being till I8I9. From this latter date it gave itself exclusively for fourteen years to the calls immediately around it. Too much cannot be said in praise of the mighty work it has done for almost three-quarters of a century, in helping to make this country more nearly true to its original name, found on the earliest known maps, " The Land of the Holy Cross." It has been a most potent factor on our rapidly extending frontiers, and in the sparsely settled districts, north, south, east and west, as well as in the slums of the great cities. It has saved the new communities from relapsing into practical heathenism, and mightily aided in holding this vast continent for Christ. The aborigines of our own country were the first heathen to arouse Methodist sympathy and call forth Methodist funds. John Stewart, a negro, began the work among the Wyandottes of Ohio in I8I5. The mission to the Flathead Indians of Oregon, begun in I834, and carried on with vigor for about ten years, stirred the Church as nothing previously had done. Its immediate results were very disappointing, but it had an important influence in saving that portion of the Pacific coast THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. to the United States. Since then there has been but little enthusiasm in our Church regarding Indian missions. We have at present missions among this people in the territory of eight Conferences, from Northern and Central New York on the east to Puget Sound on the West, besides the mission among the Cherokees and Choctaws of the Indian Territory begun in I879, and the mission among the Navajos of Arizona just entered upon. They receive in all about $8,000, and number about I,500 members. The colored people of the South, that is, the blacks or slaves, from the earliest years of the Society were carefully sought out by it, and supplied as far as possible with ministrations. Particularly since the emancipation of the blacks and the close of the war have the necessities of this part of the land been found extremely pressing. The negroes flocked to the " old John Wesley church" by the hundred thousand, and the Missionary Society undertook the stupendous task of grappling with these immense masses of intense ignorance and poverty. It appropriated to the work in I866, $280,000; in I867, $260,000; in I868 about $I40,000 ; in I869, about $I50,000, and down to the present day it is giving from $II0,000 to $I30,000 a year to the South in the form of grants-in-aid, for the struggling churches of that section. Not counting the Indian dialects, the Missionary Society is preaching the gospel in not less than thirteen foreign languages within the territory of the United States. These are Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Bohemian, German, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Welsh. Of these, by far the most important is the German. The work of-Methodism among this people was begun in I835 by Prof. William Nast, a young German scholar of thorough but rationalistic education,, who had been soundly converted at a Methodist altar, and thus reclaimed to the faith of the Reformation. He and those who were soon raised up through his instrumentality, labored among their countrymen with such zeal and Success that by I849 they had gathered 7,000 church members, and by I858, I6,000. By I866 there were 24,000, by I87I, 30,000, and by I885, fifty years from the start, 56,000, with 900 preachers, and 800 churches valued at $2,524,000. These, it must be remembered, are simply those who still cling for a time to their native tongue, and so can better be reached through this medium. Other thousands, especially of the second generation in this country, as they acquire the English, transfer themselves to English-speaking or American congregations; and so the German churches, depleted in this way, have to keep themselves full by constant OUR DOMESTIC MISSIONS. aggression upon the fresh arrivals. In I864 the German Methodists were organized into three Annual Conferences. They now have eight complete Conferences, besides several missions outside such boundaries. And the eight Conferences contributed last year to the Missionary treasury $35 902, or nearly as much as was given them from the treasury. And one of them, the East German, led the entire Church in pro rata giving, bringing in $I.64 a member. The Germans have a very large publishing house at Cincinnati, issuing three periodicals, and an immense number of books and tracts. They have also five literary institutions and two orphan asylums, in short, everything necessary for the accomplishment of a most blessed and ever- widening work among the millions who have sought our shores from the lands beyond the Rhine. Next in importance to the German, and very similar, though of smaller extent, is the Scandinavian work; that is, the endeavor to spread Methodism among the Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, who have taken to coming in large numbers to the United States. It was in I845 that the Rev. O. G. Hedstrom, so honorably and widely known in connection with this work, was appointed to begin the Swedish Bethel Mission at the port of New York. The report for I86I was able to say that the revival begun in that Bethel ship in I845 " continues to this day, a revival productive of the best type of Methodism in every one of its essential features." It was these conversions, acting upon the friends and acquaintances of the converts in Northern Europe that led to the establishment of our missions there, just as it was the work under Nast in the West that brought about our mission to Germany. Pastor Hedstrom continued at the Bethel ship till I875, when his place was taken by the Rev. D. S. Sorlin, and afterward by the Rev. O. P. Peterson. The fire thus kindled at New York speedily spread to the States westward, whither the immigrants tended, and in I870 there were about 4,000 members. At present there are nearly I4,000, organized into two Annual Conferences, and with some sixteen other districts or missions scattered about. These missions receive aid the present year to the amount of $5I,500, or more than the Germans, who get $47,290. They are poorer than the Germans, but contribute very liberally, according to their means, for the maintenance of the gospel. The work in the other languages is comparatively small, although taking them all together they consume nearly $50,000. The French work is growing in importance because of the great numbers of Canadians that are flocking over the border into our manufacturing cities and towns. The increasing colonies of Bohemians, Hungarians, and Italians in New THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. York, Chicago, Cleveland, and the mining districts of Pennsylvania very properly are receiving larger attention. And the Chinese and Japanese on the Pacific coast have every claim on our Christian compassion. Work among them was begun in I868 in response to the manifest call of Providence demanding of the American churches that they make a vigorous endeavor to Christianize the tens of thousands of idolaters thronging to our shores. The Rev. Otis Gibson, for ten years missionary at Foochow, did yeoman service here till incapacitated by disease, in I885, and death, in I889. A well-furnished mission house was erected in I870, regular preaching has been earnestly carried on, and both Sunday-schools and day-schools have been industriously gathered. The first baptism was in October, I87I, and since then no year has been without considerable fruit. A number who were converted here have returned to China. The same is true of the Japanese, who now number three thousand or over in San Francisco, and who are very accessible to the gospel. We have been preaching to them for about ten years. In I886 the Rev. M. C. Harris, who had been fifteen years in Japan, took charge of the Japanese Mission. A pleasant feature of this work is the branch church established a few years ago in Honolulu, where, among the rapidly increasing Japanese population, very many converts have been won. Over 3,000 Chinese and about 300 Japanese have received instruction in our schools since the California Mission was established. Over I85 Chinese women and girls have been rescued from domestic and brothel slavery. Nearly 300 Chinese and Japanese have been baptized and admitted into the church. There are at present about 200 members. Such is a brief summary of the work on our own soil, for which the General Committee at its last session appropriated $459,648. Without question a full million could profitably be devoted every year to the ever-pressing needs of this field to which our Church is so eminently adapted, and in which it has won such laurels. May the time soon come when this amount can easily be obtained l XL The Conference Missionary Society. IT is very evident that the wise men who framed our most admirable system of Missionary agencies thought that the Conference Missionary Society could do much for the cause of missions. They made ample provision for it, as will be seen by consulting Art. IX of the Constitution of the Missionary Society, which reads: "I t is recommended that within the bounds of each Annual Conference there be established a Con ference Missionary Society, auxiliary to this institution, under such regulations as the Conferences shall respectively pre scribe." Paragraph 353 of the Discipline is still stronger, running as follows: " It shall be the duty of each Annual Conference to form within its bounds a Conference Missionary Society, which shall appoint its own officers, fix the terms of membership, and otherwise regulate its own administration. But it shall pay all its funds into the treasury of the Parent Society." Here is not only full authorization for the Society, but its formation is made obligatory, and manifestly much was expected of it. Has this expectation been realized? No. For in most cases the Conference Missionary Society is a merely nominal affair. What ought to be a power is simply a form if not a farce. As commonly managed, the Society has no other function than to hold an anniversary at the time of the Conference session. It should, and might, do much more than this if it were really organized for work. We are fully persuaded that its relation to the Conference ought in every case to be speedily changed from supernumerary to effective. There is a sphere for it to fill which cannot be occupied either by the preachers-in-charge or by the Presiding Elders. The latter should be in the closest relations with the Society, and can do much for it; but as the authority of each Klder is confined to his own district, and as his hands are full of a multitude of things, it is plain that something more is necessary if the Conference as a whole is to be kept wide-awake about Missions. It is also plain that the General Secretaries at New York, already greatly overworked, cannot supply information and inspiration in any sufficient degree for each one of a hundred Conferences, much less for each one of twelve thousand ministers and churches. The labors of these Corresponding Secretaries need to be supplemented by the labors of a body of Conference Secretaries, 69 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. one in each Conference, who will form a connecting link, a channel of communication between the officials at the center and the local pastors. Such a corps of enthusiastic men, one hundred strong, glad of the opportunity to expend time and strength in the cause they love the best, would be invaluable to the Society, and would easily add one hundred thousand dollars to its collections. They could do very much to inaugurate and hold local conventions at appropriate centers, not simply here one and there another, but in a series successively, on some definite plan, and with an economical marshalling of all available resources. They could formulate and carry through with fine effect simultaneous meetings in a given week through the whole length and breadth of a Conference, reaching every church with circulars and literature and specially designated speakers. They could arrange a system of missionary deputations, which has done such wonders among our Wesley an brethren in England and Canada. They could greatly extend the circulation of our excellent missionary periodicals, and could stimulate the missionary organization of the Sunday-schools, which in many places is still so greatly neglected. All this has been done during the past few years by the New England Conference Missionary Society, and possibly by a few others. Enough certainly has been accomplished to demonstrate the feasibility of this proposed utilization of what Bishop Thoburn well called "an unused right arm." Why should not the movement spread? Let each Conference adopt a simple Constitution, elect officers under it, and go to work. We give further on, as a working model, that in use by the New England Conference, simply adding that the sixteen members there provided for have been thus far made up of eight pastors, the four Presiding Elders, and four laymen, one from each district; and the arrangement has worked very well. Much depends, of course, on the careful selection of the managers, and the still more careful selection of the chief executive officers, especially the secretary. With the right ones in control, chosen solely for their zeal and efficiency in this particular branch of effort, and with sufficient powers entrusted to them so that they shall not be hampered, there is no reason why great good should not be effected. There is in every Conference, it may be assumed, a group of ministers whose hearts are in this work of missions and who are ready to make sacrifices to further it. Let them be gotten together occasionally round a council table, and they will soon find ways to do something that will tell on the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom in the world at large. It ought not to be impossible anywhere to bring this about. Let some one who reads these THE CONFERENCE MISSIONARY SOCIETY. lines and on whose heart God may place the burden move in the matter with vigor at once, and see that his own Conference wheels fully into line. We cannot afford at this time to lose any agency or let any part of our skillfully devised machinery lie idle. Much larger sums of money must be raised for the cause and for the nations which cry to us so mightily on every hand for help. Our past deficiencies have been due not so much to the poverty of the people or even perhaps to their lack of the requisite consecration, as to the lack of adequate information and its accompanying inspiration. The Conference Missionary Society can greatly aid in supplying this need. It is the missing link. It is the idle wheel that should be put in working order without delay. So shall the twelve hundred and fifty thousand dollars which we now raise for both Home and Foreign Missions before many years be increased to one million for each, and many a long-neglected wilderness be made to blossom as the rose. CONSTITUTION. ARTICLE I. This Society shall be known as the Conference Missionary Society, and shall be auxiliary to the Missionary Society of the M. E. Church. ARTICLE II. All members of the Conference shall be members of this Society. ARTICLE III. The Conference at each annual session shall appoint a Board of sixteen Managers, who shall choose from their own number the other officers of the Society, viz., a president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. These latter officers shall perform the duties usually connected with their names, and shall together constitute an Executive Committee. ARTICLE IV. It shall be the chief duty of the Board of Managers to aid the Presiding Elders and the preachers-in-charge to carry out the directions of the Discipline in the chapter on Missions, so as 10 diffuse Missionary intelligence, increase the Missionary collections, and promote in all available ways the interests of the Missionary cause. They shall present a report to the Conference at each annual session, this report to include nominations for a Board of Managers for the ensuing year. They shall have entire charge of the Conference Missionary anniversaries; they shall hold meetings for consultation as often as practicable, and shall be authorized to make all necessary by-laws not inconsistent with this Constitution. ARTICLE V. This Constitution may be amended at any annual session of the Conference, by two-thirds of those present and voting. XII Simultaneous Missionary Meetings. THIS term has come into use to describe a multitude of meetings held in many places, under one general direction, within the compass of a single selected week. The idea seems to have originated with the Church Missionary Society of England which first held such meetings in Great Britain in February, I866. It was taken up on this side of the water by the Presbyterian Synod of New Jersey in November, I887, and later by the whole Presbyterian Church. Several of the Methodist Conferences, notably the New England, have also put it in practice, and the American Board has now for three years united with the Methodists in its observance during the first week in October. The main thought of the movement is to help to educate the people in the principles of missions by presenting the cause divorced from the usual appeal for money and the urging of the claims of a society. The main stress is laid on obedience to the command of Christ, and on the glorification of the Savior as the great Head of the Church. The aim is to keep it on a high spiritual level, and to profoundly impress the people that the gospel is a sacred trust which we must pass on to others as rapidly as possible or else forfeit our right to be accounted followers of Jesus. Each church is permitted to select for its meeting that particular day which will be most convenient to itself so far as may be consistent with the necessary arrangements for speakers and with the observance of the same week. One or two speakers, usually one, are furnished from a central agency to each church agreeing to arrange for a meeting, entertain the speaker, and pay the small sum needed for his traveling expenses, any little balance left over being remitted to headquarters for use in the general conduct of the campaign. The pastors are almost exclusively the speakers, moving about to one another's churches, thus increasing the connectional feeling and promoting church fellowship. Not the least of the benefits of the plan is also found in the fact that the ministers who are called upon to speak are thus led to study the question very closely with the result of greatly increasing their own information and enthusiasm. An effort is made to furnish them with special material that will assist in the preparation of the addresses. Union meetings are a frequent feature of the week, several churches of the same, or, preferably, of different denominations, joining forces, either for a mass meeting 72 SIMULTANEOUS MISSIONARY MEETINGS. on the same night, or for a series of meetings on successive nights. In some cases there are all-day meetings, in others the gatherings are afternoon and evening, the ladies being assembled at one time, the children at another, but in the greater number of places only an evening meeting is attempted. All the pastors, or nearly all, also agree to preach, on the Sun day with which the week begins, a special missionary sermon, by exchange, in some other pulpit than their own. It can readily be seen how great are the advantages that must accrue from the thorough carrying out of such an arrangement as has here been briefly outlined. The simultan eousness of the movement over a wide section of country pro duces no little moral effect. Special facilities can be provided from the central agency in the way of fresh information and interesting addresses. The magnitude of the undertaking arrests attention. And the concentration of prayer and labor during this specified time gives the topic a place in the hearts and minds of the people it could not otherwise secure. A special week being set apart for this particular work, it re ceives an amount of thought which, in the pressure of multi farious affairs, it would not otherwise be likely to get. It reaches a much larger proportion of the membership of the churches than District Conventions, because it does not attempt to transport them to some more or less distant center, but takes the meeting to their own place of assembly. It also brings into co-operation and participation in the benefit a very much larger number of preachers. The expense is slight and easily borne, as the speakers make no charge for their services. It is something that can be kept up year after year, as it does not depend upon securing the presence of special officials or extraordinary attractions. It is in full harmony with the important principle that people will give to missions only in proportion as they are interested in them, and will become interested only in proportion as they are informed about them. It closely resembles the scheme of deputations by which, among our Wesleyan brethren in England and Canada, the interest in the world-wide spread of the gospel has been so greatly promoted. They far surpass us in pro rata giving and in general comprehension of the underlying principles of the great theme, because of the systematic, thorough-going way in which, year after year, they have been rooted and grounded in those principles. And it is on this kind of work that we must increasingly rely as a church if we are to do our part in saving the world. Extraordinary appeals and spasmodic exertions will not meet the real needs of the case. The educating processes must go on quietly, steadily, strongly, all the THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. while, until all the people, or most of them at least, come to see that no church of Christ is fulfilling its appointed purpose or meeting the expectation of the Master unless it is working heartily for the evangelization of the heathen millions. Last year four of the New England Conferences joined in observing the same week. One of the presiding elders in the East Maine Conference writes as follows: "The meetings with us were a grand success. Glowing reports come from all the charges where they were held. They were held in all the charges except four. The people who attended enjoyed them very much. They have given increased interest to the missionary cause on this district. Our preachers took hold of them finely and made the most of them. I think another year they will be of still more profit to us." A presiding elder in, the Maine Conference writes: "The missionary meetings in this district were almost universally observed and were a success. Both ministers and people enjoyed them. They awakened interest which in some instances approached enthusiasm. We shall certainly hold them next year." A presiding elder in the New England Southern Conference writes: " The plan was more generally carried out than last year. I think I could make the movement more efficient for good another year than it was this. I strongly favor the continuance of the meetings." In all these Conferences the matter was managed by districts, the elder being the chief prompter, and a committee or committees taking charge of details. In the New England Conference, while all the elders are in hearty sympathy with the movement and lend their co-operation, the management of the details for all the districts is left with the secretary of the Conference Missionary Society. During each of the past two years not far from I50 missionary meetings have been held in the churches of this Conference during the same week, besides a great number of missionary sermons preached by exchange on the Lord's Day which begins the week. And the Conference at its session last April unanimously voted hearty approval of the continuance of the plan, and pledged its personal cooperation to make the week a success for another year. It is undoubtedly owing, in part at least, to these and other means of this sort employed that the contributions of this Conference to the treasury of the Missionary Society have increased from $I5,938 in I885 to $30,064 in I891. In other words, while in six years past the receipts from all the Conferences have increased about sixty per cent., the receipts from this Conference have increased about ninety per cent. SIMUL TAN ROUS MISSION A R Y MEE TINGS. Why should not all the Conferences adopt the plan ? It requires much hard work, no doubt, to carry it through successfully. But in view of its great value as an aid in the herculean task of arousing the churches to some adequate comprehension of their responsibility for the evangelization of the world, who will say that the work is not well worth while. And surely in every Conference some one can be found with zeal and influence sufficient to make the enterprise prosper. For the Master's sake and for the sake of the perishing world, let it not fail to be done. XIII. Texts for Missionary Sermons. No attempt is made here to give an exhaustive list of all passages that refer directly or indirectly to the subject of missions, or of such passages as may be made the basis of trains of thought appropriate to missionary occasions. If this were done no inconsiderable part of the Scriptures must needs be transcribed. The Bible is crowded with missionary themes and missionary principles. It has been well said, 'If you cut out of the Bible whatever pertains directly or indirectly to missions—all precepts, promises, parables, discourses, all the drift and tendency of prophecy, and history, and gospel, and epistle in the direction of missions, and all dispensational dealing and leading having the same significanee—you will have nothing but the covers left." We have aimed to give in what follows simply a convenient assortment that might be suggestive and helpful to the hurried pastor seeking a text. GEN. iv., 9. "Am I my brother's keeper?" GEN. xxii., I8. "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." GEN . xlii., 2I. "We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us." LEV. xix., 34. "Thou shalt love the stranger as thyself." NUM. xiii., 30. "Caleb said, Let us go up at once and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it." NUM. xiv., 2I. "The Lord said, As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord." JUDGES V., 23. "Curse ye Meroz, because they came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty." II. SAM. xxiv., 24. "Neither will I offer burnt-offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing." II. KINGS vii., 9. "We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief wall come upon us: now, therefore, come, that we may go and tell the king's household." II. CHRON. ii., 5. "The house which I build is great: for great is our God above all gods." PSALMS ii., S. "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance." PSALMS xxii., 27. "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord." PSALMS xlv., I0, II. "Forget thine own people and thy father's house; so shall the King greatly desire thy beauty." PSALMS lxviii., 3I. "Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God." PSALMS lxxii., I6, I7, I8, I9. "An handful of corn upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon. All nations shall call him blessed. Let the whole earth be filled with his glory." 76 TEXTS FOR MISSIONARY SERMONS. PSALMS lxxxvi., 9. "All nations shall glorify thy name." PSALMS cii., I5. "The heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory." PSALMS cxix., I30. "The entrance of thy words giveth light." PROV. xxiv., II, I2. "If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain : if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it, and shall not he render to every man according to his works?" ISAIAH ii., 18. "The idols he shall utterly abolish." ISAIAH vi., 8. "I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us ? Then said I, Here am I, send me." ISAIAH ix., 2. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light." ISAIAH xi., 9. "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." HAB. ii., I4. ISAIAH xiv., 26. "This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth." ISAIAH xxxii., 20. "Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters." ISAIAH XXXV., I. "The wilderness shall be glad, the desert shall blossom as the rose.'' ISAIAH xl., 3. "Make straight in the desert a highway for our God." ISAIAH xlii., 4. "He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law." ISAIAH liv., 2. "Enlarge the place of thy tent, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes." (Win. Carey's text, May 3I, I792.) ISAIAH lv., 5. "Nations that know not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God." ISAIAH lx., 22. "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation; I, the Lord, will hasten it in his time." EZKKIEX xxxix., 2I. "I will set my glory among the heathen." EZEKIEL xlvii., I-I2. The vision of the waters. EzEKIEL, xlvii., 9. "Everything shall live whither the river cometh." DAN. ii., 35. "The stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth." DAN. vii., I8. "The saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom." DAN. vii., 27. "All dominions shall serve and obey him." ZEPH. ii., II. "Men shall worship him, even all the isles of the heathen." HAGGAI ii., 7. "The desire of all nations shall come." ZKCH. iv., 6. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit." ZKCH. iv., 7. "Who art thou, O great mountain ? before Zerubbabel. thou shalt become a plain." ZECH. xiv., 9. "The Lord shall be king over all the earth." MAL. i., II. "In every place incense shall be offered unto my name." MATT, V., I3, I4. "Ye are the salt of the earth, the light of the world." MATT, vi., I0. "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." MATT. vi. 20. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." MATT, vi., 33. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." MATT, vii., I2. "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. MATT, ix., 28. "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth laborers." MATT, X., 8. "Freely ye have received, freely give." MATT, xiii., 33. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened." MATT, xiii., 38. "The field is the world." MATT, xvi., I8. "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." MATT, xix., 26. "With God all things are possible." MATT, xxv., 45. "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." MATT, xxviii., I8, I9, 20. "All power, all nations, all things, all the days. Go ye, make disciples, baptizing, teaching : I am with you, unto the end of the world." MARK xii., 3I. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." MARK xvi., I5. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." LUKE vi., 38. "Give and it shall be given unto you. For with the same measure that ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again." LUKE ix., I3. "Give ye them to eat." LUKE x., 36, 37. "Which was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? He that showed mercy to him. Go and do thou likewise !" LUKE xiv., 23. "Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in." LUKE xxiv., 47. "Repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem." JOHN i., 4. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." JOHN iii., I6. "God so loved the world." JOHN iv., 35. "Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest." JOH N xvii., I8. "As thou, Father, hast sent me unto the world, even so have I also sent them unto the world." JOH N XX., 2I. "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." ACTS i., 8. "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.'' ACTS xiii., 2. "The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.'' ACTS xiii., 47. "I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth." ACTS xvi., 9. "Come over into Macedonia and help us." ACTS, xvii., 26. "God hath made of one blood all nations of men." ACTS xxviii., 28. "The salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and they will hear it.'' ROM. i., I4. "I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians." ROM. i., I5. "I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also." ROM. x., I3, I4, I5. "How shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?" TEXTS FOR MISSIONARY SERMONS. ROM. xv., I. "We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.'' I. COR. xv., 25. "He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet." II. COR. V., I4. "The love of Christ constraineth us." II. COR. x., I6. "Preach the gospel in the regions beyond." GAL. ii., I0. "Remember the poor." GAL. vi., 2. "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." GAL. vi., 9. "In due season ye shall reap if ye faint not." EPH . III., II. "According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." PHIL, ii., 5. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ." PHIL.. ii., TO, II . "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." II. THESS.. iii. I. "Brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified." I TIM. ii., I. "I exhort that first of all supplications be made for all men." HEB. viii., II. "All shall know me, from the least to the greatest." HEB. xiii., 3. "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I JOHN iii., I7. "Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ?" REV. xv., 4. "All nations shall come and worship before thee." REV. xxii., 2. "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." The principal missionary chapters suitable for reading in whole or in part at pnblic gatherings are these: PSALMS 2, 72, II5, I35; Isaiah 2, 9, II, 35, 40, 44, 49, 54, 55, 60; Ezekiel 47; Matthew 25, 28; Luke I0; Romans I. XIV. Topics for Missionary Addresses. TH E special topics for missionary addresses are almost numberless, since the general theme may be (and, indeed, for adequate treatment, must be) quite minutely subdivided, and each particular occasion will demand the presentation of a particular phase or the employment of a particular method. There is now such an immense amount of material available, and different minds work so variously upon it, making their individual selections, and treating it from their personal points of view, that scarcely any two speeches or sermons can strictly be given the same title. The subjects noted below are, of course, but a few out of many. It is hoped they may be found useful in suggesting lines of thought and speech. Motives for Missions; Why Should We Push Them? Current Objections Answered. The Missionary Idea in the Old Testament. The Missionary Idea in the New Testament. Religious Outlook of the World. Results of Missionary Effort. Reflex Benefits of Missionary Exertion. Heroism of Missions. Obligation of the Church to the Heathen. True Place of Missions in Church Work. The World for Christ and Christ for the World. The Kingdom of God. Methods of Promoting the Missionary Spirit. Some Striking Missionary Successes. Why Has Not the World been Wholly Evangelized ? Origin and History of the Modern Missionary Enterprise. Relations of Missions to Commerce. Missions One Hundred Years Ago and Now. Have Missions been a Failure ? Impress of Christianity upon Japan. The Hope and Peril of India. China's Millions. Africa as a Mission Field. The Island World. Responsibility of the United States for the Evangelization of the World. Responsibility of Methodism for the Evangelization of the World. The United States as a Field for Evangelization. The Demands of the West. What We Get for What We Give. Methodism in Many Lands. Master Missionaries. The Great Commission. The Map of the World. The Great Religions. Our Duty to the American Aborigines. Our South-American Cousins. 80 TOPICS FOR MISSIONARY ADDRESSES. Our Next-Door Neighbor. Missions to Romau Catholics. Islam and Christianity. Missions to the Jews. Child Life in Foreign Lands. The Gods of India. Domestic and Social Customs of the Hindoos. Moravian Missions. Woman Without the Gospel. Fetichism and Devil Worship. Work Among the Lepers. The Epworth League and Missions. The Student Volunteer Movement. Missionary Conferences. The Living Church a Missionary Church. Aims and Claims of Christian Missions. Praying and Paying. The True Missionary Spirit. Pentecost and World-Wide Missions. Geography and Missions. Philology and Missions. The Sunday School and Missions. Missions in Literature. Missionary Work the Highest Glorification of God. Missionary Work the Exactest Imitation of Christ. The Philosophy of Christian Missions. Difficulties and Encouragements. Some Missionary Heroes. Martyrs on the Mission Field. Romance and Reality of Missions. Moffatt, Livingstone, Stanley. Miracles of Missions. Marvelous Madagascar. The Story of Siam. The Bible in Burmah. Woman's Work for Woman. The Evangelization of the World in the Present Generation. Buddhism in America and Asia. Self-Supporting Missions and Missionaries. Christianization and Civilization. Medical Missions. Heroines of the Mission Field. A course of lectures delivered at Andover a few years since by the Rev. Edward A. Lawrence treated the following subjccts : Providence in Missions, The Philosophy of Missions, The Asiatic Field, The Departments of Work, The Mission Home and Rest, The Church and Missions. A recent course of three lectures by the Rev. Dr. S. L. Baldwin at the Drew Theological Seminary had topics as follows : The Nature and Scope of Christian Missions, False and True Conceptions of Missionary Work, The Call and Qualifications of Missionaries. The Rev. Dr. Arthur T. Pierson lectured at Rutger's College in the early part of this year on the following themes : The Idea of Missions a Thought of God, The Plan of Missions 82 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. a Scheme of God, The Work of Missions a Fellowship with God, The Spirit of Missions an Inbreathing, The Field of Missions an Assignment, The Success of Missions the Seal of God, The Present Crisis of Missions. Dr. J. H. Latimer, Professor of Systematic Theology in the Boston University School of Theology, was accustomed for many years to deliver to his classes the following course of lectures: Obligations of the Missionary Enterprise, Potencies of the Missionary Enterprise, The Inadequate Methods, The True Theory of Missions, Successes of the Missionary Enterprise, Reflex Benefits of Missions, Obstacles to Missions, Heathenism in the Field, History of Protestant Missions, Literature of Missions. The preparer of this pamphlet delivers annually at the school last mentioned the following fifteen lectures : Christian Missions Defined and Defended, Leading Incentives to Missionary Activity, Current Objections Answered, Mission Economics, Life in the Mission Field," Who Should Go? The Home Pastor's Part, Primitive Missions, Medieval Missions, Roman Catholic Missions, Protestant Missions in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Protestant Missions in the Nineteenth Century, M. E. Missionary Societies, M. E. Missions among Non-Christians, M. E. Missions in Christian Lands. Bishop John P. Newman in holding a series of Missionary Conventions lately discoursed on the following topics : The Uplifting Power of a Great Thought—the Conversion of the World; Why Does the Missionary Cause Move so Tardily ? Why Send the Gospel to the Heathen ? The Entire Sanctification of the Believer the Sure Guarantee of the World's Speedy Conversion ; Goodness, Intellect, and Wealth, the Three Elements of Conquest, but the Greatest of these is Goodness ; Indications of Progress in a Hundred Years ; Christ the Great Need of Humanity, and the Only Remedy for Our World's Sin and Misery. Bishop James M. Thoburn in I887 and I888 gave five missionary lectures before the students of the Garrett Biblical Institute and five before the School of Theology of Boston Uni versity. The subjects treated were as follows : The Spirit 0I Missions, The Young Missionary's Call and Equipment, Missionary Methods, The Moral State of the Heathen, Missionary Service as a Career, The Farewell Commandment, The Beggar at Our Gate, The New Missionary Era, The World's Pentecost, The Prophet to the Nations.* *Published by the Methodist Book Concern, New York, I888. TOPICS FOR MISSIONARY ADDRESSES. President Julius H. Seelye of Amherst College, returning some years ago from a tour in heathen lands around the globe, delivered the following six lectures: The Condition and Wants of the Unchristian World, Failure of the Ordinary Appliances of Civilization to Improve the World, The Adequacy of the Gospel, The Millenarian Theory of Missions, The True Method of Missionary Operations, Motives for a Higher Consecration to the Missionary Work.* Dr. Augustus C. Thompson gave in I889 ten lectures before the Senior Class of the Hartford Theological Seminary, treating these five subjects : The Minister's Sphere, Missionary Obligation, Prayer and Missions, Missionary Concerts, Missionary Conferences, † Dr. Rufus Anderson, for so many years Foreign Secretary to the A. B. C. F. M., gave an extended course of lectures in I868 and I869 before the students of six Theological Seminaries, beginning with Andover. The following topics were treated : An Opening World, An Uprising Church, Development of the Idea of the Christian Church, Characteristics of Apostolic Missions, Irish Missions in the Early Ages, Historical Development of Modern Missions, Principles and Methods of Modern Missions, Value of Native Churches, Missionary Life Illustrated, Hindrances at Home, Diffusion of Missions, Success of Missions, Claims of Missions on Young Ministers, Romish Missions as an Opposing Force, ‡ *New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., I876. †New York, Chas. Scribner's Sons, I889. ‡New York, Chas. Scribner & Co., I870. XV. Missionary Thoughts in Poetry. To round a paragraph or point an appeal a poetical putting of the truth is oftentimes most serviceable. A stanza or a hymn will carry home with double power the thought which has been already, in tamer fashion, presented in prose. Besides the thirty-seven selections, Nos. 908-944, specially devoted to this subject in our Hymnal, many verses in other parts of the book will be found to have immediate application to this theme and to be very suitable for comment or quotation. Examples may be seen in the second stanza of the first hymn, the first stanza of the eighth, the first and third stanzas of the seventeenth, and the fifth of the 248th : — " My gracious Master and my God, Assist me to proclaim, To spread through all the earth abroad, The honors of thy name." " From all that dwell below the skies, Let the Creator's praise arise ; Let the Redeemer's name be sung, Through every land, by every tongue." ''Let all on earth their voices raise, To sing the great Jehovah's praise, And bless his holy name ; His glory let the heathen know, His wonders to the nations show, His saving grace proclaim. " Come the great day, the glorious hour, When earth shall feel his saving power, All nations fear his name : Then shall the race of men confess The beauty of his holiness, His saving grace proclaim." " Let every kindred, every tribe, On this terrestrial ball, To him all majesty ascribe, And crown him Lord of all." In fact, the whole Hymnal, like the whole Bible on which it is built and whose Psalms it so closely copies, is permeated in every part with the principles that underlie the evangelization of the world. And frequently by the allowable change of a single word some familiar hymn not peculiarly or strictly missionary may receive a turn in this direction, to the enrichment of its thought and the deepening of its holy impression. It is said that Bishop Janes loved to substitute, in the third line of " A charge to keep I have," the word world for soul; 84 MISSIONARY THOUGHTS IN POETRY. 85 and who cannot feel how much the stanza thereby gains in breadth and depth. No one can thoughtfully sing the long metre doxology, " Praise him all creatures here below," without breathing a prayer for the world-wide reign of our glorious Lord. Outside of our Hymnal there are very many selections in verse appropriate for use in missionary sermons and addresses. We append a few : Have you found the heavenly light ? Pass it on ! Souls are groping in the night, Daylight gone ! Hold thy lighted lamp on high, Be a star in some one's sky, He may live who else would die— Pass it on ! We know not where in agony of waiting, Our veiled and silent company may be ; From India, China, Persia, Syria gathered, Or islands of the sea ; But let us lift our eyes, with faith-taught vision, Their bitter griefs and cruel wrongs to see, Or let their pain and degradation utter For them, a piteous plea. Oh for this holy dawning We watch and wait and pray, Till o'er the height the morning light Shall drive the gloom away ; And when the heavenly glory Shall flood the earth and sky, We'll bless the Lord for all his Word, And praise him by and by. Far and wide though all unknowing Pants for Thee each mortal breast, Human tears for Thee are flowing, Human hearts in Thee would rest. Thirsting as for dews of even, As the new-mown grass for rain, Thee they seek as God of heaven, Thee as man for sinners slain. Fling out the banner ! heathen lands Shall see from far the glorious sight, And nations, crowding to be born, Baptize their spirits in its light. Fling out the banner wide and high! Seaward and skyward let it shine — Nor skill nor might nor merit ours ; We conquer only in this sign. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. We are living, we are dwelling, In a grand and awful time, In an age on ages telling ; To be living is sublime. Hark, the waking up of nations, Gog and Magog to the fray, Hark, what soundeth ? Is creation Groaning for its latter day ? Worlds are changing, heaven beholding, Thou hast but an hour to fight; Now the blazoned Cross unfolding, On, right onward for the right! On, let all the soul within you For the truth's sake go abroad, Strike, let every nerve and sinew Tell on ages, tell for God. Lands, long benighted, the morning is nearing, Lift, with the waves, the glad song of the free ; He that was promised, in triumph appearing, Now wields his sway o'er the land and the sea. Loud from the tops of the mountains sing praises ; Valleys shall ring with the echoing strain ; Mighty in war, He the standard upraises, Glorious in peace, He advances to reign. TELL US OF THY GOD. A distant sound oft breaks upon mine ear, In solemn cadence, like the hollow moan of dying winds ; List, list, I hear it now. Perchance 'tis but the sighing of the waves, For oft I've heard them in the silent night Chant mournful dirges for the buried dead. Again I hear it, 'tis the sound of woe ; It swells from human hearts, it is the voice Of millions starving for the bread of life. With gasping breath they send the cry abroad, Tell us, O Christian, tell us of thy God. That voice pursues me, and where'er I go, By day, by night, its wailing fills mine ear; To me it calls, O tell us of thy God ! My Saviour I behold—with pierced hand He points to heathen shores, he bids me go, And break the bread of life to dying souls. And can I linger, when my Lord commands ? ( lad I obey, His presence will attend, His grace will strengthen, and I ask no more ; Then let us send the gospel news abroad, Till all shall know and love the Christian's God. MISSIONARY THOUGHTS IN POETRY. THR KINGDOM COMING. From all the dark places Of earth's heathen races, O see how the thick shadows fly ! The voice of salvation Awakes every nation ; Come over and help us,' they cry. The sunlight is glancing O'er armies advancing, To conquer the kingdoms of sin, Our Lord shall possess them, His presence shall bless them, His beauty shall enter therein. With shouting and singing, And jubilant ringing, Their arms of rebellion cast down ; At last every nation The Lord of salvation Its King and Redeemer shall crown. The Kingdom is coming, O tell ye the story, God's banner exalted shall be! The earth shall be full of his knowledge and glory, As waters that cover the sea. THE CALL FOR REAPERS. Far and near the fields are teeming, With the sheaves of ripened grain ; Far and near their gold is gleaming, O'er the sunny slope and plain. Lord of Harvest, send forth reapers ! Hear us, Lord, to Thee we cry ; Send them now, the sheaves to gather, Ere the harvest time pass by. Send them forth with morn's first beaming, Send them in the noontide's glare ; When the sun's last rays are gleaming, Bid them gather everywhere. Oh thou, whom thy Lord is sending, Gather now the sheaves of gold, Heavenward then at evening wending Thou shalt come with joy untold. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. THE WORLD IS GROWING BETTER. The world is growing better, No matter what they say ; The light is shining brighter In one refulgent ray; And tho' deceivers murmur, And turn another way, Yet still the world grows better, And better every day. We mark the steady foot-falls, We hear the tramping host, The lines deploying widely. Encompass all the lost; And while the gospel banner Floats over all the way, We'll shout, the world grows better, And better every day. The Bible cause and missions, The Church and Sunday-school, The steady flow of money, To keep the coffers full, While thousands of young converts. Rejoice and sing and pray, We know the world grows better, And better every day. O for an inspiration, To thrill the mighty throng, A bugle note of triumph, A gospel wave of song, A deeper obligation Toward what we ought to pay, And give to God the glory, Far better even day. "SO SEND I YOU. The night lies dark upon the earth, and we have light; So many have to grope their way, and we have sight ; One path is theirs and ours of sin and care, But we are borne along, and they their burdens bear. Foot-sore, heart-weary, faint they on their way, Mute in their sorrow, while we kneel and pray ; Glad are they of a stone on which to rest, While we lie pillowed on the Father's breast. Father, why is it that these children roam, And I with thee, so glad, at rest, at home ? Is it enough to keep the door ajar, In hope that some may see the gleam afar And guess that that is home, and urge their way To reach it, haply, somehow and some day ? May not I go and lend them of my light ? May not mine eyes be unto them for sight ? May not the brother-love thy love portray ? And news of home make home less far away ? MISSIONARY THOUGHTS IN POETRY. Yea, Christ hath said that as from thee he came To seek and save, so hath He, in his name, Sent us to these; and, Father, we would go, Glad in thy love that thou hast willed it so That we should be partakers in the joy Which even on earth knows naught of earth's alloy— The joy which grows as others' griefs grow less, And Sould not live but for its power to bless. "IT IS MORE BLESSED." Give ! as the morning that flows out of heaven ; Give ! as the waves when their channel is riven ; Give ! as the free air and sunshine are give ; Lavishly, utterly, joyfully given ; Not the waste drops of thy cup overflowing ; Not the faint sparks of thy hearth ever glowing ; Not a pale bud from the June roses blowing ; Give as He gave thee who gave thee to live. Pour out thy love like the rush of a river, Wasting its waters for ever and ever. Through the burnt sands that reward not the giver ; Silent or songful, thou nearest the sea. Scatter thy life as the summer's shower pouring ; What if no bird through the pearl rain is soaring ? What if no blossom looks upward adoring ? Look to the life that was lavished for thee ! So the wild wind strews its perfumed caresses ; Evil and thankless the desert it blesses ; Bitter the wave that its soft pinion presses ; Never it ceaseth to whisper and sing. What if the hard heart give thorns for thy roses ? What if on rocks thy tired bosom reposes ? Sweeter is music with minor keyed closes, Fairest the vines that on ruin will cling. Almost the day of thy giving is over ; Ere from the grass dies the bee-haunted clover, Thou wilt have vanished from friend and from lover : What shall thy longing avail in the grave ? Give as the heart gives whose fetters are breaking,— Life, love, and hope, all thy dreams and thy waking ; Soon heaven's river thy soul-fever slaking, Thou shalt know God, and the gift that he gave. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. YOUR OWN. What if your own were starving, Fainting with famine pain, And yet you knew where golden grew Rich fields and ripened grain ? Would you hear their wail as a thrice-told tale, And turn to your feast again ? What if your own were thirsting, And never a drop could gain, And you could tell where a sparkling well Poured forth melodious rain ? Would you turn aside while they gasped and died, And leave them to their pain ? What if your own were darkened, Without one cheering ray, And you alone could show where shone The pure, sweet light of day ? Would you leave them there, in their dark despair, And sing on your sun-lit way ? What if your own were wandering Far in a trackless maze, And you could show them where to go Along your pleasant ways ? Would your heart be light till the pathway right Was plain before their gaze ? What if your own were prisoned Far in a hostile land, And the only key to set them free Held in your safe command ? Would you breathe free air while they stifled there, And wait, and hold your hand ? Yet what else are we doing, Dear ones by Christ made free. If we'll not tell what we know so well To those across the sea, Who have never heard one tender word Of the Lamb of Calvary ? " They're not our own," you answer ; " They're neither kith nor kin." They are God's own, his love alone Can save them from their sin ; They are Christ's own, he left his throne And died, their souls to win. MISSIONARY THOUGHTS IN POETRY. 9I THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD FOR JESUS. The whole wide world for Jesus ! Once more, before we part, Ring out the joyful watchword From every grateful heart. The whole wide world for Jesus ! Be this our battle cry, The lifted Cross our oriflamme, A sign to conquer by ! The whole wide world for Jesus! From out the Golden Gate, Through all Pacific's sunny isles, To China's princely state ; From India's vales and mountains, Through Persia's land of bloom, To storied Palestina, And Afric's deserc bloom. The whole wide world for Jesus, Through all its fragrant zones ! Ring out again the watchword, In loftiest, gladdest tones. The whole wide world for Jesus ! We'll sing the song with prayer, And link the prayer with labor, Till Christ his crown shall wear. TH E GREAT FAMINE-CRY. ["Tell your people how fast we are dying; and ask if they cannot send the gospel a little faster."] Woids of a heathen woman. Hark ! the wail of heathen nations ; List! the cry comes back again, With its solemn, sad reproaching, With its piteous refrain : " We are dying fast of hunger, Starving for the Bread of Life ! Haste, O hasten ! ere we perish, Send the messengers of life ! "Send the gospel faster, swifter, Ye who dwell in Christian lands ; Reck ye not we're dying, dying, More in numbers than the sands! Heed ye not His words—your Master— ' Go ye forth to all the world ?' Send the gospel faster, faster— Let its banner be unfurled!" THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. Christian ! can you sit in silence, While this cry fills all the air, Or content yourself with giving Merely what you well " can spare? " Will you make your God a beggar When he asks but for " his own ? " Will you dole him from your treasure, A poor pittance as a loan ? Shame, oh shame ! for very blushing, E'en the sun might veil his face : " Robbing God "—ay—of his honor, While presuming on his grace ! Keeping back his richest blessing By withholding half the " price " Consecrated to his service ; Perjured, perjured, perjured thrice! While you dwell in peace and plenty, " Store and basket " running o'er Will you cast to these poor pleaders Only crumbs upon your floor ? Can you sleep upon your pillow With a heart and soul at rest, While upon the treacherous billow, Souls you might have saved are lost ? Hear ye now the tramp of nations Marching on to Day of Doom ? See them falling, dropping swiftly, Like the leaves, into the tomb ; Souls for whom Christ died, are dying, While the ceaseless tramp goes by ; Can you shut your ears, O Christian, To their ceaseless moan and cry ? Hearken ! Hush your own, heart-beating, While the death-march passes by— Tramp, tramp, tramp ! the beat of nations, Never ceasing—yet they die— Die unheeded, while you slumber, Millions strewing all the way ; Victims of your sloth and " selmess "— Ay, of mine, and thine, to-day ! When the Master comes to meet us, For this loss, what will He say ? " I was hungered, did ye feed me ? I asked bread ; ye turned away ! I was dying in my prison, Ye ne'er came to visit Me ! " And swift witnesses those victims, Standing by will surely be. MISSIONARY THOUGHTS IN POETRY. Sound the trumpet ! wake God's people ! " Walks " not Christ amid his flock ! Sits He not " against the Treasury! " Shall he stand without and knock— Knock in vain to come and feast us ? Open, open, hearts and hands ! And as surely his best blessings Shall o'erflow all hearts, all lands. XVI Praying for Missions. WHOEVER has been at a farewell missionary meeting, where consecrated men and women about to set sail for distant lands were bidding good-bye to country and friends, must have been impressed by the earnestness and persistence with which the departing ones begged that much prayer might be offered in their behalf. And whoever, with heart drawn out in this direction, has been a constant attendant at the home churches must have been 'equally impressed by the strange habitual silence concerning the matter on the part of both pastors and people. Nothing carries more convincing proof of the little hold this theme has yet secured on the souls of Christ's modern disciples than the slight, infrequent mention of it at the throne of grace. Even in so-called "concerts of prayer" for missions it is often extremely difficult to secure two or three genuine supplications kept with some degree of defiuiteness to the subject in hand. This is no small defect. It is an appalling fact. The Missionary Secretaries in a recent circular well say, "Our chief need is prayer." Dr. A. T. Pierson, in a late number of The Missionary Review, writes: "With full consciousness that no other editorial may ever issne from the pen and hand which write these lines, we here record the profound conviction that, back of all other causes of the present perplexity in our mission work; behind all the apathy of individuals and the inactivity of churches ; behind all the lack of enthusiasm and the lack of funds; behind all the deficiency of men and of means, of intelligence and of consecration, of readiness to send and alacrity in going, there lies one lack deeper and more radical and more fundamental—viz., THE LACK OF BELIEVING PRAYER.". There must then, positively must, be more praying for missions, in the closet, in the social gathering, and in the pulpit. Few pastors appreciate how much they might do for missions simply by the indirect influence of their public prayers at the stated Sabbath services. If this theme is regularly, or at least frequently introduced, not with a mere cursory formal reference but in earnest, heart-felt petitions, the people who listen and unite with such leadership will insensibly catch its spirit, and their own habits of supplication will be gradually shaped in the ;ame direction. More can sometimes be accomplished in this manner than by the formal discourses against which it is easier for prejudice to arm itself. And each minister, how 94 PRAYING FOR MISSIONS. ever small the sphere he seems to be filling, may in this way stretch his arms around the globe, and, like the great founder of Methodism, make the world his parish. To argue that prayer is a genuine power, and not a mere formality with some retroactive effect, is certainly superfluous here. But a few out of many instances of its mighty results in the particular direction now under survey may not unfittingly be mentioned to stimulate our lagging faith. From Dr. A. C. Thompson's ''Lectures |n Foreign Missions'' we cull and condense the following:— | Dr. C. H. Wheeler, President of Euphrates College at Harpoot, writes, "I have an abiding conviction that much of the wonderful success of the Harpoot work is due to the supplications of persons in the home field." A missionary of the American Board among the Mahrattas in India tells of a wonderful revival that broke out there on the first Monday in January, I833. He could only account for it on the supposition that the Christian friends in America must be praying for them. And sure enough it turned out that, unknown to him, many bodies of Christians in America had appointed that day as one of fasting and prayer for the heathen world. A missionary of the Gossner Society in Java, Mr. Michaelis, wrote to his brother-in-law at home, the Rev. Gottlob Heinrich, detailing the many and great hindrances to the work. Mr. Heinrich gathered a little company together and made the matter a subject of special supplication. After awhile came another letter saying that a revival had broken out among the natives, and, giving the date of the first indication of the change, he asked, " Did you not on that evening pray expressly for my work?" The date proved to be the very one on which the company had gathered. The Rev. Dr. James L. Phillips, of the Free Baptist Mission, Orissa, India, gives in The Missionary Review for September, I888, an incident very similiar to the last. On the 6th of March, I887, the concert topic in many home churches was New Fields, and particular mention was made of a little station recently opened amid very serious obstacles on the Orissa coast. The missionary there in charge wrote to an American friend about the middle of the same month, ''On the 6th and 7th of March I received a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Such courage I have never felt in my work, and all the native Christians felt more or less the same spirit of consecration. The following Sabbath I baptized six, and there are a number seeking Christ. The Spirit of the Lord goes before us everywhere, and we are all amazed at the wonderful way in which the people are accepting the gospel." By THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. the slow course of the ocean mail that brother learned on the 3d of April from a Boston paper dated Feb. 24th, that the missionary concert of March 6th was to make him and his field the special subject of prayer. Then it flashed upon him that here was the full explanation of what they had been receiving. More prayer for missions, of the kind that moves the arm that moves the world, there should certainly be. It is well to have a map to pray by, and take up the countries and stations in order. It is especially well to pray for the laborers by name, particularly when anything fresh has been learned concerning them or interest in them has been newly aroused. As a help to definite supplication and intelligent petitioning, perhaps some who have not given careful study to the matter may welcome the following suggestive subjects : That the missionary may have wisdom, patience, love, and tact in presenting the truth to the ignorant, prejudiced minds of his hearers in the bazars, villages and fairs. That the native preachers may be faithful, zealous, and eminently successful in winning their countrymen to Christ. That the inquirers may have courage to come out boldly in the open confession of the Saviour, and endure joyfully the spoiling of their goods. That there may be seen on the part of seekers genuine conviction of sin and manifest proofs of the Spirit's work. That the native Christians may be moved by a mighty impulse to bring each one his brother to Jesus, and may be strengthened so to live that the heathen around may be impressed by the manifest change for the better. That the Bible, wherever sold or distributed, may be illumined by the Holy Ghost, and be the nucleus for groups of believers. That those engaged in preparing, printing and circulating papers, tracts, and other Christian literature, may be divinely guided and see much fruit. That teachers in colleges and schools may be able to lead their students to a love of the truth as it is in Jesus. That God would raise up able evangelists to do for heathen lands something such a work as Wesley and Whitefield did for England. That the hearts of kings and others in high places of authority may be touched, and their great influence turned on the side of the Lord. That the women who go to the Zenanas may be able to arouse an interest in the true salvation among those so long debased with frivolous superstitions. That the hospitals may more than ever be made mighty auxiliaries in breaking down opposition and preparing the way for the gospel. PRAYING FOR MISSIONS. That the orphanages may be very tenderly watched over by the God of the fatherless, and may turn out many useful laborers. That Christian villages may be examples of everything good to the surrounding towns among which they are set as a city on a hill. That the Sunday-school agency may be still more wonderfully owned of God in turning the minds and hearts of hundreds of thousands of the children and youth of non-Christian lands to Christ. That God would send forth laborers into his harvest. That the vast wealth of the present day locked up in nominally Christian coffers might be set free to bless the earth. That young men and women debating the question of a missionary vcation might be led to a right decision. That missionary secretaries and editors may have all the strength and wisdom their important and difficult positions require. That missionaries on sick leave may speedily recover their health so as to be able to return to their fields. That missionaries' children, providentially separated from parental supervision, may have special divine watchful care, and receive training for large usefulness in mission fields or elsewhere. That the Governments of the earth may be restrained from putting obstacles in the way of mission work, and that the time may speedily come when there shall be perfect liberty of opinion and public worship. That white men may cease to oppress the black and colored races, and in particular some way be found to stay the ravages of rum among the defenceless children of nature. That the slave trade may soon become a thing of the past, and that all intercourse, commercial or political, of nominal Christians with those of other religions may impress them with the superiority of our faith. XVII. Reading About Missions. IN order to think and feel and speak and pray about missions in the most effective manner no little reading about them must be mixed in. And the time has long passed when there any deficiency of attractive reading matter. In The Gospel in All Lands for February, I888, the full titles of a classified missionary library of something like a thousand volumes were printed. In the first volume of the London Missionary Conference report, issued near the close of the same , nearly two thousand titles of missionary books are given. And in the excellent Encydoptedia of Missions, just published by Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, not far from seven thousand titles are noted. Nor is either of these: lists by any means exhaustive. But, of course, to the ordinary pastor such lists are of little ON account of his limitations in regard to both time and money. He would like, perhaps, a few suggestions about a carefully selected number of books that would come within the range of his purse, and for whose perusal a place might be found in his busy life. There is also sometimes an inquiry respecting a definite course of study in missions for those who wish to go into the matter more thoroughly. To meet the latter need we offer the following, not as an ideal list impossible of improvement, but as a suggestive summary to show the main lines deserving to be considered, and some at least of the works under each head that best merit attention : I. THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MISSIONS. Dr. John Harris's "The Great Commission." Boston, I842. Dr. Rufus Anderson's "Foreign Missions, their Relations and Claims." New York, I869. Dr. J. H. Seelye's "Christian Missions." New York, I875. Rev. W. F. Bainbndge's "Around the World Tour of Christian Missions." Boston, I882. Dr. Gustav Waeneck's" Modern Missions and Culture." Edinburgh, I883. Dr. A. T. Pierson's "Crisis of Missions." New York, I886. Bishop J. M. Thoburn's " Missionary Addresses." New York, I888. 98 READING ABOUT MISSIONS. II. HISTORY OF MISSIONS. a. General. Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn's "Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism." New York, I879. Dr. Alfred Plummer's "Church of the Early Fathers. External History." New York, I888. Dr. G. F. Maclear's "History of Christian Missions in the Middle Ages." London, I86I. Dr. Fleming Stevenson's "Dawn of the Modern Mission." New York, I888. Dr. Theo. Christlieb's " Protestant Foreign Missions." Boston, I880. Dr. G. Warneck's " History of Protestant Missions." Edinburgh, I884. b. Special. Dr. J. M. Reid's " Missions and Missionary Society of the M. E. Church." New York, I879. Rev. W. Moister's "History of Wesleyan Missions." London. I87I. Dr. R. Anderson's "Missions of the American Board." Four vols. Boston, 1872-75. Rev. H. W. Tucker's "The English Church in Other Lands " New York, I888. Dr. A. C. Thompson's " Moravian Missions." New York, I882. Dr. M. A. Sherring's "Protestant Missions in India." London, I875. Francis Parkman's "Jesuits in North America." Boston, I872. III. NON-CHRISTIAN FAITHS. Archdeacon Hardwick's " Christ and Other Masters." London, I863. Dr. J. F. Clarke's "Ten Great Religions." Boston, I872. Dr. J. M. Reid's "Doomed Religions." New York, I884. Dr. Fradenburg's " Living Religions." New York, 1886. Rev. J. Vaughan'S "The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross." London. Rev. H. C. DuBose's " The Dragon, Image, and Demon." London. Rev. M. Dodd's "Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ." London, I877. Sir Monier Monier Williams' "Buddhism in its Connection with Brahmanisim and Hinduism, and in its Contrast with Christianity." London and New York, I889. 100 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. Monier-Williams' " Hinduism." T.W.Rhys David's "Buddhism." S. P. C. K., London R. H. Douglas' "Confucianism." and J. W. H. Stobart's " Islam." New York, I880. Sir W. Muir's "The Koran." IV. THE GREAT MISSION FIELDS. Dr. S. Wells Williams' "The Middle .Kingdom." New York, I883.. Dr. W. E. Griffis' " The Mikado's Empire." New York, I884. P. Lowell's "Chosen, the Land of the Morning Calm." Boston, I886. J. T. Wheeler's "India Under British Rule." London, I886. V. MISSIONARY BIOGRAPHY. " Missionary Heroes and Martyrs." Hartford, I852. "Master Missionaries." By A. H. Japp. New York, I88I. " Missionary Life of Xavier." By Henry Venn. London, I862. "My Missionary Apprenticeship." By J. M. Thoburn. New York, I886. "Among the Turks." By Cyrus Hamlin. New York, I878. " Among the Mongols." By James Gilmour. New York, I883. Lives of Adoniram Judson, John Coleridge Patteson, Henry Martyn, David Brainerd, William Carey, Alexander Duff, John G. Paton, James Chalmers, John Calvert, Robert Moffatt. VI. MISSIONARY CONFERENCE REPORTS. London, 888; Mildmay, I878; Liverpool,I860; Calcutta, I882; Bangalore, I879; Allahabad, I872; Shanghai, I877 and I890 VII. MISSIONARY PERIODICALS. The Gospel in All Lands. New York. The Missionary Review of the World. New York. Annual Reports of the Missionary Societies. Missionary Year Book, vol. I, I889. London and New York. READING ABOUT MISSIONS. VIII. MISSIONARY CYCLOPÆDIAS. The Encyclopaedia of Missions. New York, I89I. Conquests of the Cross. London, I89I. There are many other books of a more composite character, not easily classified in any of the above lists, but intensely interesting, like Dr. William Butler's " Land of the Veda" and "From Boston to Bareilly ;" Rev. E. R. Young's "By Canoe and Dog Train ;" Rev. C. H. Wheeler's "Ten Years on the Euphrates ;" volumes of travel, adventure and description every way suitable for the Sunday-school library or the family circle. We would call special attention to Dr. John Robson's '' Outlines of Protestant Missions'' in the series of Bible Class Primers now issuing by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, as a cheap, compact, convenient presentation of the main points in the history of the movement. The Rev. John Liggins' " Great Value and Success of Foreign Missions," and the Rev. Josiah Strong's "Our Country" (both in paper covers), are also to be highly commended. There is a cheap edition also (in paper covers) of Pierson's "Crisis of Missions." These four can be procured for about a dollar, and would give any person no mean furnishing for more than one rousing missionary address. Though one may not be able to read with any completeness the current numbers of the periodicals above mentioned, it is of the highest importance to file them away for reference and for use in the monthly concerts. They are an invaluable repository of fact and thought ; a cyclopaedia on an extended scale. The Missionary Conference Reports—of which only the London is readily procurable in this country—furnish the best collection of essays and discussions by experts on practical missionary themes. Lectures of great value on Comparative Religions are being delivered at Boston University by President William F. Warren, at the Ohio Wesley an University by Dr. J. T. Gracey, and at the New York University by Dr. F'. F. Ellin wood ; but in neither case have they as yet been published. Missionary tracts in large variety can be procured at small expense—some of them gratuitously—from our Mission Rooms, I50 Fifth avenue, New York. Their judicious sale or distribution, after careful perusal, should by no means be neglected. XVIII. Heart Throbs of Missionary Heroes. NOT the least among the benefits which the Missionary- enterprise has conferred upon the Church has been its affording- an unstinted supply of the most inspiring examples of Christian devotion. What used to be said a generation ago as to eloquence being dog-cheap at the anti-slavery meetings, might well be applied perennially to heroism and self-sacrifice in mission fields. So close an affinity exists between them that we expect to see them joined as a matter of course. Nor are we often disappointed. There is not so much opportunity for the display of heroism in these more peaceable modern times as in the primitive pioneer periods ; but that it plentifully exists just the same, and is forthcoming whenever called for, there can be no question. We hold that the missionaries of the Cross, the host of those who in all lands have counted not their lives" dear unto them that they might accomplish the work for which Jesus died, are by far the grandest body of men and women that this world has ever seen. The Church has no choicer legacy than the lives they have left. She has no richer privilege than that of communion with their deathless spirits. There is no higher type of manhood and womanhood than that which they present. Surely they best reproduce the very life of Jesus, for they give themselves in behalf of those bound to them by no other tie than that of broad humanity. They best exhibit the highest developments of faith and hope and love; for, without these qualities, they never could stand the strain they do. Toiling for years without fruit, daring great dangers undismayed, undeterred by appalling obstacles, gladly welcoming pain, and shame, and earthly loss, they afford us new views of the power of God's grace and bequeath to us examples that stir our souls as with a trumpet-call. As we contemplate what they have done and dared for our common Lord ; as we note the thoroughness of their consecration, not in word only, but in deed; as we perceive the completeness of their loyalty, the intensity of their longing to fulfil the desires dearest to the Saviour's heart, shame for the paltry littleness of our labors and the imperfection of our service kindles upon our cheeks. Instinctively we cry out, Noble men, may we be worthy to unloose the latchet of your shoes; may we follow on up the path of brightness; may the fragrance and the radiance of your lives yet linger, till we catch sight of you hard by the throne of the all-conquering Christ! 102 HEART THROBS OF MISSIONARY HEROES. 103 Are these words too fervent ? Others at least, well qualified to judge, have spoken or written similarly. Dr. R. N. Cast of England, a retired British-Indian civilian, thoroughly conversant with the Christian workers of that great empire, says, "The missionary appears to me to be the highest type of human excellence in the nineteenth century, and his profession to be the noblest. He has the enterprise of the merchant, without the narrow desire of gain ; the dauntlessness of the soldier, without the necessity of shedding blood ; the zeal of the geographical explorer, but for a higher motive than science." Col. Charles Denby, late American Minister to China, in a letter to Gen. Shackleford of Evansville, Indiana, dated Peking, March 20, I886, and also one to Dr. Ellinwood, writes, "I have made it my business to visit every mission in the open ports of China. This inspection has satisfied me that the missionaries deserve all possible respect, encouragement and consideration. I find no fault with them, except excessive zeal. Civilization owes them a vast debt. Leaving all religious questions out of consideration, humanity must honor a class which, for no pay, or very inadequate pay, devotes itself to charity and philanthropy. They have remarkable learning, intelligence and courage. It is perhaps a fault that they make no effort to attract attention—fight no selfish battle. They are honest, pious, sincere, industrious, and trained for their work by the most arduous study. I can tell the real from the false. These men and women are heroes and heroines, as truly as Grant or Sheridan, Nelson or Farragut." The missionaries in the Turkish empire have made an equally good impression on those that have most closely observed them. The American Ministers to the Sublime Porte, such as Gen. Lew Wallace, the Hon. Geo. P. Marsh, the Hon. E. F. Noyes, have said, " The salutary influence of American missionaries and teachers in the Turkish empire cannot possibly be overrated;" "If anywhere on the face of this earth there exists a band of devout Christian men and women it is there ;" "I take special pleasure in bearing testimony to their eminent piety, zeal, learning and ability." The Earl of Shaftesbury, speaking of them in I860, said, "I do not believe that in the history of diplomacy, or in the history of any negotiation carried on between man and man, we can find anything to equal the wisdom, the soundness, and the pure, evangelical truth of the men who constitute the American mission. They are a marvellous combination of common sense and piety !" For a few further testimonies see the concluding pages of this book. 104 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. But since men's characters appear more adequately and vividly in the words they themselves say, rather than in what is said about them, we propose to let a few of these heroes speak. An unstudied sentence or two of their own, warm with heart's blood, will show their fine quality, will test their fibre. Be it well remembered, however, that many of the very best have left no such utterances for quotation, and that these which follow are merely stray specimens gath ered here and there in missionary biography, a handful of samples from the fire-touched lips of those that one day shall gather in the innermost circle round the throne. William Carey, more than any one man the inaugurator of the modern missionary enterprise, summarized the great sermon which he preached at Nottingham, May, I792, from Isaiah liv. 2, in the words, " Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God," and they became the motto of the movement. And when that wonderful career was closing, after he had not only attempted but accomplished great things for God in forty years on the soil of India, leaving the Bible translated into forty languages for his monument, we hear him cry on his dying bed, " I have not a single desire unsatisfied," and we read on his tomb stone in the little mission cemetery at Serampore the thrilling, self-abjuring lines, "A wretched, poor and helpless worm, on thy kind arms I fall." Count Zinzendorf, that genuinely great man, administrator, statesman, poet, preacher, noble not simply by birth but by character, declared in his sermon at Herrnhut, about I732, " I have but one passion, it is He, only He." And his whole life bore witness to the truth of the assertion. On his heart lay day and night the desire that all the ends of the earth might see the salvation of God. His high station was ever made subservient to the lowliest labors, his large wealth was lavishly expended in the promotion of God's cause, and his great abilities, with unwearied energy and most self-denying faithfulness were placed always at the disposal of the Redeemer. He adopted for his motto " Eternitati," and certainly it was for eternity and his fellowmen that he lived. One of his sayings was, " I consider that country my home which is most in need of the Gospel." Robert Morrison was the first Protestant missionary to China, I806. The ship-owner at New York, in whose vessel he embarked, after settling for his passage, turned from his desk and said with sarcastic expression, " And so, Mr. Morrison, you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the great Chinese empire?" " No, sir," replied the missionary, with characteristic firmness, " I expect God will." HEART THROBS OF MISSIONARY HEROES. 105 " Look up ! look up 1" were the words oftenest on the lips of this much-enduring man who saw so little to cheer him in other directions. He looked ever up to God and was not dis appointed. Adoniram Judson sent home from Burmah, in I8I6, to friends in America, the soul-stirring words, " Do you ask what prospect of my success there is ? I reply, as much as there is in an almighty and faithful God who will perform his promises." Unspeakable were his sufferings, untir ing his toils ; but none of these things moved him. He wrote on the fly-leaf of his Bunnan Bible : "In spite of sorrow, grief, and pain, Our course be onward still ; We sow on Burmah's barren plain, We reap on Zion's kill." Robert Moffatt, and Mary his true helpmeet, were missionaries in South Africa over fifty years. For the first ten years they labored among the Bechuanas, whose obstinacy and stupidity seemed impregnable. Yet it was at that very time that Mary Moffatt, asked by an English friend as to what would be of the most service to her, had the faith to reply, "Send us a communion service; we shall want it some day." And on the day preceding their first communion with native converts three years afterward, the service arrived. Robert's similar spirit is shown in his exclamation, "O that I had a thousand lives and a thousand bodies ! all of them should be employed to preach Christ to this degraded and despised yet beloved people." Reviewing the more than half a century of toil and privation, he says, " I never complained ; I never felt a murmur. It was a glorious work. It was doing the will of God; and had I perished beneath it I should have lost nothing and gained everything." David Livingstone married Robert Moffat's daughter. Though his sufferings and dangers were oftentimes extreme he was never weary of praising God that he had been chosen for so noble and sacred a calling. "People talk," he said, "of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word. It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say, rather, it is a privilege. I never made a sacrifice. All these things are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed." He went to South Africa in I840 at the age of 23. He died on his knees at Ilala, near Lake Bangweolo, in May, 106 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. 1873, after forty attacks of fever, crying, "Be he American, Englishman, or Turk, who helps to heal the open sore of the world, I pray that God's choicest blessings may rest upon him." His noble example of unflagging zeal, persevering energy, Christian heroism and love has stimulated very many; and when that "open sore," the slave trade, is healed, as it will be ; when that great continent is fully opened up to civilization, and through its dark dens of ignorance and sin the blessings that flow from the peaceful reign of Christ are spread, no one will have done more to bring about that happy day than this frank, simple, manly Christian explorer. The earnestness and the motive of his whole career are well epitomized and explained in his well-known declaration, "Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair; I encourage myself in the Lord my God and go forward;" and also in the touching entry in his journal on the last birthday but one of his splendid life, "My Jesus, my King, my Life, my All, I again dedicate my whole self to Thee." Captain Allen Gardiner, with six companions, died of starvation in Terra del Fuego in I850, after a desperate attempt to introduce Christianity among a people that had been called the most degraded on the face of the earth. But the last journals, subsequently found, breathe nothing but praise and hope. He declares that he would not exchange situations with any man living and implores that the mission be not abandoned. The following are some of the expressions used : "Asleep or awake, I am happy beyond the power of description." "Poor, weak, though we are, our abode is a very Bethel to our souls, for we feel and know that God is here." "Great and marvelous are the loving-kindnesses of my gracious God to me a sinner. I neither hunger nor thirst though five days without food. Yet a little while and through grace we may join that blessed throng to sing the praises of Christ to all eternity." And thus he went up to glory. William G. Crocker, a Baptist missionary in Africa, I837, after the very severe blow which the mission had suffered by the deaths, within two weeks of each other, of Mr. and Mrs. Fielding, his associates, writes, "This event may discourage our friends at home, but it does not discourage us. Till we have evidence that the Lord has forsaken us we will not be disheartened." Board and of its mission in Ceylon, sailed for that country Oct. 23rd, I8I5. When asked how he could refrain from weeping at separation from friends and country he answered, "Why should 1 weep? I had been waiting with anxiety almost eight years for the opportunity to go and preach Christ among HEART THROBS OF MISSIONARY HEROES. 107 the heathen ; I had often wept at the long delay; but the day on which I bade farewell to my native land was the happiest day of my life." Dr. Asahel Grant, also of the American Board, who did such glorious work in the mountains of Koordistan, and died of fever at Mosul, April 24th, I844, gave utterance to these burning words: "I stand ready to go in the face of danger and death to any part of the world under the dominion of the prince of the powers of darkness. What though I tear myself away from all the endearments of home, wear out life amid toil and suffering, and find a grave among strangers! Only let me be the means of salvation to some lost sinner who shall meet me in heaven, and I shall bless God for it to all eternity." It was of this missionary that Dr. Rufus Anderson wrote, "His courage, his calmness, and yet firmness of purpose, his skill in the healing art, his devotion to the cause of his Saviour, his tact in winning the confidence of those who never before trusted their own friends, his fearlessness in the presence of unscrupulous and cruel men, and his ascendency over them, his lively faith under appalling discouragements, and his unyielding perseverance, form an array of excellences rarely combined in one man. In the pursuit of his heavenly calling he was more happy in the savage wilds of Koordistan than he would have been in the most favored portions of his native laud." Bishop James Hannington, who fell on the northern shores of Lake Victoria Nyanza, Oct. 29th, I885, cruelly shot to death by the people he came to bless, in times of doubt and difficulty was accustomed to encourage his companions with these favorite words: ' 'Never be disappointed, only praise.'' A letter written home shortly before his death carried the following significant message : "If this is the last chapter of earthly history, then the next will be the first page of the heavenly—no blots and smudges, no incoherence, but sweet converse in the presence of the Lamb ! In the midst of the storms around me I feel in capital spirits and can say, " 'Peace, perfect peace, the future all unkuown ; Jesus we kuow, and He is on the throne.' " His death was tragic and heroic. As he was dragged violently over the ground by his legs he simply said, "Lord, I put myself in thy hands ; I look alone to Thee." Believing that his last hour was come he sang "Safe in the arms of Jesus." And when a few days after it was plain that the fatal moment had arrived, drawing himself up he calmly said to the savage warriors who hemmed him in with leveled spears, "Tell the king that I die for the Baganda, and I have bought the road to Uganda with my life." THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. Other African heroes there are. Not least among them stands Melville B. Cox, dying in I833, the first foreign missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church. "Do yon not know," said a friend, "that you cannot live long in Africa?" He replied, "I do not expect to; but I hope to live to get there; and it is the height of my ambition and the brightest vision of my life to lay my bones in the soil of Africa. If I can only accomplish this I shall establish a connection between Africa and the Church at home that shall never be severed until Africa is redeemed." After taking leave of his widowed mother he passed through Middletown, Conn., and said to a young man, a student of Wesleyan University there, "If I die in Africa you must come and write my epitaph." "I will," his friend replied ; "but what shall I write?" "Write," said Cox, "Let a thousand fall before Africa is given up." Of the same spirit was Golaz, of the French Mission to Zenegambia, who died, together with his young wife, within a year after their arrival. His farewell words were, "Do not be discouraged if the first laborers fall in the field. Their graves will mark the way for their successors, who will march past them with great strides." McCall of the Congo Mission, struck down in the midst of his bright promise of great usefulness, left as his last words these : "Lord, I gave myself, body, mind, and soul to Thee. I consecrated my whole life and being to Thy service. And now if it please Thee to take myself instead of the work which I would do for Thee, what is that to me ? Thy will be done!" Father Damien, a young Belgian priest, moved by love to Christ and by the sufferings of the wretched lepers of Molokai, in I873 took up his abode on that island that he might give his life to alleviate their lot. In I886 the dreadful malady seized him, and April I0, I889, he passed away to his eternal reward. A year or two before the end, from the midst of his excruciating pain he wrote as follows : "In regard to the cure of this our incurable malady, I leave that in the hands of Almighty God who knows far better than I do what is best for our sanctification during our short stay in this world. For myself, I am very happy and well pleased with my lot." He said at another time, "I would not be cured if the price of my cure was that I must leave the island and give up my work." It is no wonder that men of all creeds contributed to his work while he lived, and have joined heartily in his praises since he died. John Hunt, who did such glorious service on the Fiji Islands, then thoroughly cannibal, dying there Oct. 4th, I848, at the early age of 36, sent up from his dying bed, besides the hallelujahs which were latest on his lips, most fervent suppli HEART THROBS OF MISSIONARY HEROES. 109 cations for the people he had come so far to save. Amid copious tears and sobs that could not be suppressed he cried again and again, "Oh, let me pray once more for Fiji! Lord, for Christ's sake, bless Fiji, save Fiji 1 Thou knowest my soul has loved Fiji ; my heart has travailed in pain for Fiji. Save this people !" Entirely similiar was the soul of Samuel Dyer whose words were, "If I thought anything could prevent my dying for China, the thought would crush me. My only wish is to live for China, and to die pointing the Chinese to His redeeming blood." Francis Xavier, greatest of the Roman Catholic missionaries (a band whose self-abnegation and sacrifice and love for souls has not been surpassed in human annals), gave up his life on Chinese soil, after having spent himself heroically for India and Japan. His continual cry, both in regard to the perils and labors to be endured, and the souls to be won for Jesus, was "Amplius,"—More, Lord, more. Surely we need not add more, though it would be easy, to this list of those of whom the world was not worthy. That we may be more worthy to stand in their company by and by on high, must certainly be the prayer of every true Christian heart. XIX. The Noble Spirit of the Native Converts. Quite often, from people but little acquainted with missions, is heard the inquiry, made in all seriousness, as to whether those who become Christians in heathen lands are really changed in heart. They who know the facts in the case can hardly help smiling at such a question, or answering with some degree of indignation. While there are, of course, some special weaknesses incident to the heritage from heathen ancestors, there are, on the other hand, special excellences growing out of the sacrifices they are compelled to make ; and on the whole they will compare very favorably with the members of the churches in the home lands. We append a very few illustrations, out of the many that might be given, from the sayings and doings of these simple-minded, earnest-hearted children of different nations, showing that they do indeed most sincerely love the Lord. The Canadian Presbyterian records this significant testimony from a Japanese convert: " I can't tell it in this foolish Japanese tongue ; I don't believe I could tell it in your tongue: but one poor heart can feel it all." A widow in the Santal country was asked by the missionary, "Your house is the last in the village, don't you feel lonely at night?" "How can I feel lonely when He is with me?" was the ready and earnest reply. "Why does God send you troubles?" a native clergyman asked a Christian native woman in Tinnevelly. "To make me long for heaven," was the answer. " Take the love of Jesus out of your heart," cried a chief on the Niger to his slave, "or die ! " "I cannot do it," said the Christian Negro, '' for the Lord Jesus Christ came from heaven and put His love in my heart. He put a padlock on it, and has taken the key with Him up to heaven." When a teacher was wanted by the missionary, Dr. Mason, of Burma, for the warlike Bghais, he asked his boatman, Shapon, if he would go, and reminded him that, instead of the fifteen rupees a month which he now received, he could have only four rupees a month as a teacher. After praying over the matter, he came back, and Dr. Mason said: "Well, Shapon, what is your decision ? Can you go to the Bghais for four rupees a month ?" Shapon answered, " No, teacher, I could not go for four rupees a month, but I can do it for Christ" And for Christ's sake he did go. 110 NOBLE SPIRIT OF THE NATIVE CONVERTS. A recent missionary periodical makes the following state ment : "I n one of the stations of the China Inland Mission, an old woman had satisfied the missionaries, by her conduct and earnestness, that she was truly converted; but, for some unknown reason, she did not apply for baptism. At last one of the missionaries asked her why she delayed. Then she said : ' You know Jesus said to his disciples, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. I am a poor old woman, nearly seventy, and almost blind; I cannot go into all the world, and preach the gospel. I am willing to tell my hus band, and my son, and his wife when he marries; I am willing to tell my neighbors ; and I could, perhaps, go to one or two villages; but I cannot go unto all the world.' She was as sured that the Lord would accept her services according to her ability, and was joyfully baptized. Would it not be well for some more highly favored persons, who call themselves Chris tians, to apply to themselves the old Chinese woman's test of discipleship?" In I873 an Indian living at Lansdowne, on the Winnepeg River, N. W. America, was admitted to baptism. While a heathen he had four wives; one he sold, and one of the others having offended him he had her nose cut off as a punishment. When he became an inquirer, he was told that before he could be baptized he would have to give up two of his three wives and marry only one. His affections seemed to decide in favor of one of the youngei; but, previously to baptism, he, in the presence of a native clergyman, the Rev. H. Cochrane, addressed his two youngest wives thus : " I do not mean after baptism to drive you out of the house ; you may remain as long as you like, but from henceforth you are free; you may marry whom you like, I shall not interfere. I injured and disfigured the other one in my passion, and I feel it my duty to care for that one. I shall marry her.'' The Rev. T. S. Smith of Ceylon, at one of the meetings of the International Missionary Union, related the following incident : The youngest but one of the native pastors connected with, the Jafna Mission was baptized when a boy of twelve, coming out of a heathen home, and coming five miles to be received into the church. He received a salary of eight dollars a month. A large fraction of it came from two families who seemed to desire by their large contributions to purchase liberal consideration in the matter of church discipline. The pastor after trying in vain for many months to bring them to more orderly conduct made up his mind that something more decided must be resorted to. When they brought him their contributions, he said: " No, I cannot consent to receive this so long as you are walking disorderly." In consequence of this step 112 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. he was soon brought into serious financial difficulty. After two or three weeks the supplies for the family were exhausted. The wife came saying, " There is scarcely anything left, how can we endure it ?" He said, "We have been faithful, God will not forsake us.'' Just then as they had eaten the last thing there came in, unsolicited, a large basket of gifts from his heathen mother who had long forsaken him and turned against him. Then that night came those very brothers for whose sake he had been suffering, bringing all the arrears, which had been untouched, melted into tears by his conduct, and saying, " Do receive this and we will walk henceforth in the right way." From that day to this they have done so, being among the most faithful there. In the Life of James Hannington is told the touching story of the martyrs of Uganda whose courage and devotion have in these last few years so thrilled the hearts of Christendom. Among the occurrences was this : Three Christian boys were tortured by command of the cruel heathen king. Their arms were cut off, and they were bound alive to the scaffolding under which a fire was made, and so they were slowly burned to death. As they hung in their protracted agony over the flames, Mujasi, the executioner, and his men taunted them and dared them to pray now to Isa Masih if they thought he could do anything to help them. The spirit of the martyrs entered into these lads, and together they raised their voices and praised Jesus in the fire, singing, till their shrivelled tongues refused to frame the sound, the beautiful hymn beginning, Killa sikku tunsifu, the first stanza of which reads, in English, as follows: " Daily, daily sing to Jesus, Sing, my soul, his praises due ; All he does deserves our praises, And our deep devotion too." One of the executioners, struck by the extraordinary fortitude of the lads and their evident faith in another life, came and asked that he might be taught to pray. Nor did the martyrdom in the least daunt the other Christians. The Rev. Sylvester Whitehead, in an address at the anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, narrated the following: A man who had been keeper of the Confucian temple at Potlan, an ancient town on the Canton East river, having received a copy of the Scriptures from a colporteur of the London Missionary Society, believed, and was baptized by Dr. Legge. He at once gave up his employment, and occupied himself as a Scripture reader among his friends and acquaintances. He was a sort of moving conscience among the Chinese. He went about the streets of the city and into the interior with NOBLE SPIRIT OF THE NATIVE CONVERTS. boards upon his back bearing texts of the Holy Scripture ; and so abundantly were that man's labors honored that in about three years a hundred persons were ready to receive Christian baptism. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed that in a short time excitement began to appear, and then hostility, and then persecution broke out; Christians were driven from their villages, and their property plundered. This man was taken, and twice within forty-eight hours was had up before the mandarins to account for his conduct, and he was called upon to recant; this he sedulously refused to do ; they, therefore, tried what torture would do, and suspended him by the arms through the night; the next morning he was brought forth, pale, wan, feeble, almost ready to drop, for a second trial, still resolved to cleave to the Bible and to Christ, and he ventured to express the hope that his persecutors and judges might some day accept the new doctrine. This was too much for them. They rushed upon him, like the judges of Stephen, ''with one accord," and killed him on the spot, and threw him into the river. Thus perished one of China's first Protestant martyrs. The Rev. J. Vaughan, in his admirable volume, "The Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross," relates the following: Rammakal Chowke is a village eight miles from Calcutta, and a station of the London Missionary Society. One day three from this village visiting Calcutta heard the message of salvation. They became inquirers and were at length baptized. One of them, Ramjee, was the headman of the village, and owner of the temple of Shiva before which thousands of people paid their devotions. It was built by his ancestors, stood on his estate, and he had hitherto mainly supported the Brahmin priests who performed the services. But now, what should he do ? He could no longer support the priest or permit the idol shrine to remain. But the bare mention of its destruction raised a fearful storm of indignation. He and his two Christian friends were openly told that dire vengeance awaited them if they lifted a hand against the venerable temple or its god. They betook themselves to prayer. At length Ramjee announced his intention, on a given morning, to destroy the shrine. Popular fury knew no bounds. The heathen all around breathed out threatening and slaughter. The three friends and their wives met for united prayer on the eventful morning. A vast concourse of infuriated idolaters had assembled before the temple. When the three prepared to sally forth on their hazardous undertaking, their wives seized their feet and with bitter tears implored them to forego their purpose. It was a time of fiery trial. They had every reason to apprehend fatal consequences, but with a courage rhore than human they calmly set 114 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. forth on their errand. No sooner were they seen than a wrathful howl of execration greeted them. They fully expected to be seized before reaching the temple, but strange to say they passed untouched through the dense crowd; curses were poured upon them, but not a finger was raised to arrest them. Their weeping wives followed them with trembling apprehension. Ramjee and his friends ascended the platform on which the temple stood. He then turned to the excited multitude, beckoned for silence, and with affectionate earnestness appealed to the spectators to choose whom they would serve, the one true and living God or the senseless block which stood before them. He then rushed upon the idol, raised it from its pedestal, and, with a shout of " Behold your god 1" hurled it to the ground at their feet. The effect of this bold act was to electrify the astounded crowd. They were overwhelmed with horror, dismay and surprise; surprise, because as they looked on expecting to see the vengeance of Shiva wreaked on his impious desecrators they saw the noble confessors look down calmly upon them uninjured and unabashed. Ramlee availed himself of the crisis of consternation to make another appeal to the awe-stricken beholders. At this moment a timid cry was heard. It proceeded from the weeping group of women: "Jai, jai, Yisu Christ!" That cry so seasonably raised, struck the key-note to which many a bewildered, astonished heart in the crowd responded, and presently one loud shout went up to heaven—' Jai, jai, Yisu Christ!" (Victory to Jesus Christ!) Perhaps the first public shout of victory to Jesus in India proceeded on that day from the lips of Indian women. Rammakal Chowke may now be called a Christian village, and a Christian church stands on the spot formerly occupied by the Shiva temple. Major-General Haig, of India, tells this: Some three or four years ago I was at a little mission with which I was connected on the Godavery, some eight or nine hundred miles from Tinnevelly,. and I was very anxious that a new station should be formed. I was aware that it was of no use writing home for men, and I thought to myself, "Why should not Tinnevelly Church send us men?" I wrote to Bishop Sargent, and he laid it 'before the native church council, for the churches there are self-governed, and have their councils and committees. The council replied, "We will send you two men; and what is more, we will pay them." They did so. One man died soon after he arrived ; the other was left without a companion, in the midst of lonely jungles, eighty miles from the nearest mission station. He wrote to Tinnevelly to have some one sent to him, but the country in his neighborhood was very unhealthy, and at first no one would go. At last an old man NOBLE SPIRIT OF THE NATIVE CONVERTS. sixty years of age said, "If nobody else will go, I will go." And though this old man had never been outside of his own little village, he at once prepared to set out on a jonrney of nearly a month. He reached the headquarters, and then found that in his hurry he had left his little box of clothes behind him on the coast. They tried to persuade him to wait until his box came, but he said, "Let me go; give me a guide, I must go," and at once set off through the jungles to join his brother. Some months afterward, when a missionary went up that way, the people of the district said, "Who is that strange old man, who, whenever he comes, has only two words to speak to us in our language ?" The old man was a perfect stranger to the place, and, being a Tamil man, he did not know their language ; but he had learnt the words, '' Believe in Jesus," and he said them on every possible occasion. He spent about a year there, but at last got very ill, and had to be sent back to his native place, which he had hardly reached ere he died. I say that old man laid down his life for Christ, and for the Kois. I often wish I could put up a tombstone, or some memorial to him, in that wind country, and just write. upon it, for the people to read, these words: " He laid down his life for us." To us the name of "Hottentot" has by old habit come to signify the extreme of human degradation, But the Missions- Bfaff of the Moravian Brethren for February gives a narrative which presents them, as Christians, in a very different light. It seems that in I8I0, a wealthy South African Boer, or farmer of Dutch descent, named Burgers, besides his extensive farms, bought at some distance from them, in a mountain basin, a pasturing ground of a number of hundred acres which became his favorite resort, while his farms were managed by his sons. After nearly thirty years of pastoral contentment in this grassy and well-watered valley, he found, in I838, that he was likely soon to be left alone in it, as his slaves, whose hour of freedom dawned with the first of August in that year, had been so discouraged by him in their religious longings that they would be sure to leave him for some missionary station. He therefore took a great resolve. Surrendering his farms to his sons, he bequeathed his broad pasture-lands, or rather the usufruct of them, to six Hottentot slaves, on condition that they should care for him till his death. When the last of the six should be dead, the lands were to be divided among their children. They immediately established at Biirgerskloof a flourishing Moravian station named Goedvorwacht. But it was surrounded by wealthy Boers, worshipers of Mammon and enemies of Christ. These, conscious how plethoric their purses were and how lean those of the missionaries, waited 116 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. grimly year after year, till the last of the six Hottentots, who had been so suddenly raised from the depths into the rank of landed proprietors, should have passed away, nothing doubting but that with their long purses they could then buy up Biirgerskloof from all competitors, and scatter all godliness to the winds. Year after year passed, and one after another of the six dropped away, until the whole continuance of the station, as it appeared, hung on the life of one frail old Hottentot woman, fitly named Christiana. The hearts of the missionaries grew heavy. But for many years "many were engaged in building up an invisible wall of prayer around Biirgerskloof." At last, December 28, I888, old Christiana fell asleep, 92 years old. There were now thirteen heirs, all poor Hottentots, some a good deal in debt, to whom the Boers around stood ready to pay twice, thrice, nay five times as much for the rich pasture land, with its plentiful springs, as the mission had any hope of raising. And the courts decided that if one of the thirteen insisted on it, the whole must be put up to auction, in which case the Boers were sure of the result. It must be remembered that the Moravians claim no authority over the property of their members. They can advise but they cannot control, either civilly or ecclesiastically. Not one of the thirteen, however, could be moved to sell the land to any one except the mission, for the moderate sum of £750, which it could afford to give. And thus Goedvonvachl through Christ's providence and His humble people's faithfulness, fulfilled its name of Well- guarded, and Mammon retired discomfited. In the various transactions connected with the final settlement, involving the fate of two stations, the Brethren remark that the Hottentots have displayed a dignity, a self-restraint, a submission to Providence, a preference of spiritual to temporal interests, which places them not among the lowest but among the highest of their converts. XX. Nuggets and Arrow Points. "TH E reason many people have no interest in missions is because they invest no principal." " Had the Apostles stayed in Jerusalem till they had converted their countrymen, Christianity would have been strangled at its birth." " Keep before the minds of the children a kingdom of God co-extensive with all the earth."—R . S. Storrs. " I feel age creeping upon me. I know that I must soon die. I hope it is not wrong to say it, but I cannot bear to leave this world with all the suffering in it."—Earl of Shaftesbury. " The church is a gold coin of divine minting. One side shows the likeness of its Lord, the other the map of the world. Both devices are so indelibly stamped into the coin that to mar either means loss, to efface either destroys the coin."—E. A. Lawrence. " Nothing has contributed more to ensure scanty contributions than the mistaken policy of making the missionary cause a religious charity rather than a church enterprise ; the appeal has been made to the pity of the public rather than to the conscience of the church ; it has been made a beggar, and has received a beggar's portion."-J. M. Thoburn. "Know, and you will feel. Know, and you will pray. Know, and you will help. You will be ashamed of the sluggishness, of the isolation, of the selfishness, which has made you think only of your own people and your father's house."—C.J. Vaughan. "I understand that they spend here, in this parish, £600 a year on their choir, and £30 a year on foreign missions, which is a piece of refined selfishness I cannot describe."—Edward Roper. "In the whole compass of human benevolence there is nothing so grand, so noble, so Christian, so truly God-like, as the work of evangelizing the heathen."—Wm . Swan. " How slowly, how languidly missionary efforts advance, as compared with what we spend upon the luxuries and indulgences by which we are surrounded."—D. Wilson. " A world of sinning and suffering men, each one of them my own brother, calls on me for work, work, work."—Wm . Arthur. "The interest which a truly Christian people take in missions is equal to their correct knowledge of them."—R . Anderson. " If Christian missions had done nothing more than to build up such a character as that of Adoniram Judson, they would be worth all they cost."— Theodore Parker. 117 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. "The world's strongholds lie before us like Jericho with its prostrate walls, and we have only to march on straight forward and take possession."— A. T. Pierson. "A missionary spirit! What is this but a Christ spirit—the pure flame of His love to souls burning brightly enough in our hearts to make us willing first, then longing, to go anywhere, and to suffer any privations, in order to seek and find the lost in the distant mountains and trackless deserts of the whole earth."—Mrs. Bannister. " On the clock of history the hour for missions has sounded. The Church, the Family and the Individual who do not place the duty of conquering new kingdoms to the Lord in the first line of their obligations abdicate their position."—R. N. Cast. "What is the outlook ? It is good. There's light ahead ; there's help in God; there's wealth in Jesus; there's power in prayer."—David Preston. " Two out of every three persons who walk this earth have never heard of the Gospel of Christ, or seen a copy of the Bible ; and of this more favored third, two-thirds are in the almost pagan darkness of an apostate church. And yet many of Christ's disciples think they are called to do little or nothing for Christian missions."—R. Montague. " If any man be engaged at home in any serious work for the cause of Christ, if to the utmost of his powers, unselfishly, at all costs, he is trying to make his life a contribution to God's truth at home, then I will admit that his objection to foreign missions, though narrow and mistaken, is at least sincere. But if he be only living in selfish ease, doing nothing real to make the world better, then for him to talk of the folly of trying to convert the heathen because we have heathens at our doors is a base and boundless hypocrisy."—Archdeacon Farrar. " There is but one lake on the surface of the globe from which there is no outlet, and that is the Dead Sea, which receives much but gives nothing. Such a lake is a perfect illustration of a church, all whose efforts terminate upon itself. Around it there will be desolation and in it there will be no life."—Wm. M. Taylor. "The romance of missions is a home dream; but the blessedness of the missionary life is a reality gloriously verified in the experience of every one baptized for the work. Oh, it is glorious work ! I know no work like it—so real, so unselfish, so apostolic, so Christ-like. I know no work that brings Christ so near to the soul, that throws a man back so completely upon God, and that makes the grand old Gospel appear so real, so precious, so divine."—Griffith John. "We believe we may confidently assert that among the hundreds of men and women engaged in missionary labor who were gathered in the Conference, there were none who regretted that they had given themselves to this cause, or who believed that there was any nobler work to which they could have consecrated their lives."—Secretaries, Decennial Missionary Conferencey Calcutta. NUGGETS AND ARROW POINTS. " The more we connect the missionary cause with the person of Jesus Christ, rather than with effort and organization, the more divine will be the inspiration for each detail of the work. We belong to Christ! Then His cause is our cause, His work ours, His triumph ours. We shall be so wrapped up in His honor that we shall feel enriched when He is glorified, and His kingdom is enlarged, and His soul satisfied in the salvation of sinners."—Miss A. Braithwaite. " Between the solemn urgency of the last great command of the risen Saviour to His disciples to preach the gospel to every creature, and the practice of many who call Him Lord, there is a discrepancy which may well provoke thought. With Him it was the one great work above all others, and that its difficulties might not dismay those to whom it was committed, He assured them of His power, and for their comfort promised His own presence. Did He make too much of the work, or do His people make too little ? One of the two it must be , which is it ?"— B. Broomhall. "The church at home must learn to give up without a murmur to foreign service, not her meanest but her mightiest. She must never speak of any man as too learned, or too eloquent, or too useful, or (in any sense) too good to be sent abroad. On the contrary she must impress early upon the hearts of her children, of those who are to be hereafter her chiefest and her foremost ones, the dignity, the honor, the sanctity of that most responsible trust, of that indeed highest preferment. ''—C. J. Vaughan. "The aim of missions is not simply the conversion of souls, the evangelization of the world, or witness-bearing for Christ. The distinct, ultimate aim is to plant in every land a self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating church. Every land is to be won for Christ by the native church. The work of missions is to found that church, develop the native ministry, establish all Christian institutions, and then say, with John the Baptist, 'Thou must increase, but I must decrease.' The scope of missions extends to all countries where no living church already occupies the ground."—E. A. Lawrence. " Christ is the motive to missions, as to all Christian work. As Elisha on the dead child, so he lays himself upon the dead body of his church, kindles it to life, and impels it to world-wide activity, constraining it alike by his love, command, and energy. In such contact with Christ lies the whole secret and power of missions."—E. A. Lawrence. "In the foremost rank of powers destined to change the face of the world stands Christian Missions."—R. Mackenzie. "The Church has two unused powers, the power of consecrated money, and the power of covenant prayer."—A. T. Pierson. "The claims of this work are supreme, none can touch it to help it without personal blessing, none may neglect it without serious spiritual loss." " In making a missionary address be short, spirited, and spiritual."— Geo. W. Wood. "Attend to the presence of God, that will dignify a small congregation, and annihilate a large one."—Richard Cecil. THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. " It is inconceivable that a true disciple can be brought face to face with the facts both of man's extremity and the church's opportunity, without an immediate and enthusiastic response to man's wail and to God's will."—A. T. Pierson. " I have had many people resort to me for confession. The confession of every sin that I have known or heard of, and of sins so foul that I never dreamed of them, has been poured into my ear, but no one person has ever confessed to me the sin of covetousness."—Xavier. " The sublimest and the most effective words known to human history are those in which these four colossal alls were proclaimed as the foundation of the kingdom of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the Christian Church. All power ; all nations ; all commands ; all times. These four alls of Christ, from His supreme commission to His disciples, are the four corner-stones of the Church of Christ."— Joseph Cook. " In every age and land the greatest stimulus to labor and sacrifice in the cause of evangelism is loving loyalty to Christ, a sensitive concern for His honor, enthusiasm for the coming of His Kingdom, and a determination that His will shall be done on earth, even as it is done in heaven."—James Gall. "If you have a living faith in a living Jesus, if you know and feel that in this work you are doing, you are working to lift the world, not so much from sin as for Christ and to Christ and with Christ; if you realize in your heart of hearts the promise whose music is louder than the storm at its wildest—' Lo, I am with you alway '—then you can do everything ; you can confront an embattled world, you can dare, if need be, the fiercest demons of the pit and of its flame."—Morley Punshon. " Ah, if in this age of sentiment, of little sense of God, of loosened grip of conscience and of obligation, the Lord's professed people could only be got face to face with Him, as Moses when the bush flamed with the ineffable presence of Jehovah! or as Isaiah when the splendors of the eternal throne, with its attendant seraphim, flashed before him ! And if while they were conscious of the over-shadowing of God, and of the allegiance they owe to him there could be stamped on their souls in letters of fire, that old and almost forgotten word OBEDIENCE, a revival of missionary zeal would be sure to follow."—E. P. Goodwin. "We have no fires of martyrdom now to test our fidelity to Jesus Christ ; but we are not left without a test. God is testing us all continually ; testing the measure of our faith, of our love, of our devotedness to his Son, by the presence of eight hundred millions of heathen in the world. It is a tremendous test ! Gifts that cost us no personal self- denial are no proofs of devotedness. Consecration to Jesus in a world tenanted by eight hundred millions of heathen means constant self-denial and self-sacrifice, means unwearied well-doing even unto death."—Mrs. Gratlan Guinness. "The people of God waste their strength and wealth on unprofitable pleasures, and, with hundreds of millions of dollars under their control, permit churches and missions to starve. If Christians spent every cent of wages, salary and income on themselves, and gave to missions only NUGGETS AND ARROW POINTS. one cent on a dollar of their real and personal property, their contribution would be $87.284,000 instead of $5,500,000. The luxury, extravagance and unfaithfulness of God's people must be removed or our nation is doomed."—Rev. Dr. Barrows. " The great glaring denial of faith and duty which stands out before the world to-day so clearly that it cannot be concealed is the refusal of those who bear the name of Christ to execute the great commission which their Master has given them. Christianity is thus made to testify against herself. A thousand Ingersolls in every country under the sun would not do so much to create disbelief of the truth among men, as this spectacle of a church inheriting promises which she seems unable to believe, and receiving commandments which she seems unwilling to execute."—J. M. Thoburn. " To sneer at missionaries—a thing so cheap and so easy to do — has always been the fashion of libertines and cynics and worldlings. So far from having failed, there is no work of God which has received so absolute, so unprecedented a blessing. To talk of missionaries as a failure is to talk at once like an ignorant and like a faithless man."—Archdeacon Farrar. " The success of the Terra del Fuegan mission is most wonderful, and charms me, as I always prophesied failure. Had it not orcurred it would have been to me incredible. I should certainly have predicted that not all the missionaries in the world could have done so much. The lesson of the missionary is the en< banter's wand."—Sir Charles Darwin. " I went to the East with no enthusiasm as to missionary enterprise. I came back with the fixed conviction that it is, under Providence, the great agent of civilization ; and I feel it my duty to add that everywhere in Asia and Africa, among the Kaffirs in Natal, on the continent of India, among the forests of Ceylon, and over the vast expanse of China, the testimony to the success and zeal of our countrymen as missionaries of truth is earnest and concurrent. I heard it everywhere and from high authority."— Mr. Reed, Treaty Commissioner of the U. S. " Before I went to the far East I was strongly prejudiced against the missionary enterprise and against foreign missionaries ; but after a careful examination of their work, I became convinced of its immense value."— The Hon.. David B. Sickles. " I believe, notwithstanding all that the English people have done to benefit India, the missionaries have done more than all other agencies combined."—Lord John Lawrence, Viceroy of India. "Whatever you may be told to the contrary, I assure you that the teaching of Christianity among the millions of civilized, industrious Hindoos and Mohammedans in India is effecting changes, moral, social, and political, which for extent and rapidity of effect are far more extraordinary than anything you or your fathers have witnessed in modern Europe.''—Sir Bartle Frere, Govemo)' of Bombay. " I have during my life in India been the local Governor of I05,000,000 of people in different provinces. Thousands of Europeans have served under me, and I ought to know something of the value and the character of men. I have also been acquainted with the Missionary 122 THE PASTOR'S MISSIONARY MANUAL. Stations throughout the length and breadth of the country. I believe that a more talented, zealous, and able body of men than the missionaries does not exist in India. In a country abounding in talent and learning they fully hold their own. Those who undervalue missions will belong to one of two categories, either persons who do not care for religion, or persons who are not experienced in the interior of India."—Sir Richard Temple, Governor of Bombay. " I know of no class of Englishmen who have done so much to render the name of England, apart from the power of England, respected in India as the missionaries. I know of no class of Englishmen who have done so much to make the better side of the English character understood. I know of no class who have done so much to awaken the Indian intellect, and at the same time to lessen the dangers of the transition from the old state of things to the new. The missionaries have had their reward. No class of Englishmen receive so much unbought kindness from the Indian people while they live; no individual Englishmen are so honestly regretted when they die."—Sir William Hunter.