\ STUDIA IN / THE LIBRARY of VICTORIA UNIVERSITY Toronto Ecumenical Forum PRESENTED TO THE CANADIAN SCHOOL OF MISSIONS ..Ti'H TH3 GOMEL mSKffS OF THE ESTATE OF J. LOV5i I^URRAY Co. T HUMAN PROGRESS THROUGH MISSIONS Should Foreign Missions Be Discontinued? Here in concise form is the very informa tion long wanted. It contains a mass of testimony from many of our great statesmen, scientists, philosophers, army and navy offi cers, as to the immense value and success of the work the world over. The Missionary and His Critics JAMES L. BARTON, D.D. I2mo, Cloth, $1.00 net "A book to banish utterly the last suspi cion that may linger in the mind of the lover of missions, and to furnish perfect explosive shells to put into the minds of our friends who do not believe in missions. It is full of bright and pointed ammunition for the preacher and the speaker in missionary meetings ; every page is an arsenal, and all written in most pleasing style." New York Observer. HUMAN PROGRESS THROUGH MISSIONS By JAMES L. BARTON, D. D. Foreign Secretary of the American Board Author of "The Missionary and His Critics / "The Unfinished Task," "Daybreak in Turkey," etc. NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1912, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY ff New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street FOREWORD MUCH of the contents of this little volume appeared as articles in the Missionary Herald under the title, " By-products of Missionary Work." At the continued solicitation of a wide circle of readers, it was decided to assemble these articles with additions into a small book under the original name. When the manuscript was in the hands of the printer, Dr. Headland's interesting book with practically the same title came from the press. In preparing these chapters, those who have been troubled by what seemed to them a conflict between evangelistic missionary work and other conspicuous features have been in mind. Does such disparity exist ! and, Do the modern varied forms of mission ary activity and influence indicate a loss of the original ideals or a radical change of purpose ? are some of the questions an attempt is here made to answer. It is the purpose of the author to show in a com pact form the far-reaching and fundamental influence, in the East, of the modern missionary movement as it affects various sciences, commerce, industries, sanita tion, social order, national life, morals, general intel ligence and religion. An attempt is here made to im part the larger view and the real meaning and import of a work that is now well entered upon its second century and that directly affects, even at the present time, more than three-fourths of the human race, des- 5 6 FOEEWOED tined to change radically aiid fundamentally their thought, character and beliefs and calling for the effort and devotion of men and women of the broadest train ing, deepest faith and widest vision. It becomes therefore manifest that there is no inter national endeavour to-day that assumes the same fundamental and permanent importance or that em bodies so many and varied possibilities. The un- parallelled success of foreign missions during the century establishes beyond a doubt the divine char acter of its origin and its supreme worth. Only the uninformed or the willfully prejudiced can lightly speak of an enterprise so commanding, without ignor ing well-established facts of history and doing violence to ordinary intelligence. Swam Island, Me. J. L. B. CONTENTS DEFINITION II Changes in mission products during century Varied results Development of the science of society By-products of Missions. II. EXPLORATIONS . . . . . .19 Missionaries sent to unexplored countries Special capacity for exploration Pioneer work of mis sionaries in Turkey, Pacific Islands, Africa, China, India Missionaries' reports most com prehensive. III. LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE .... 26 Necessity for mastering vernaculars Facilities for so doing Testimonies to effectiveness of this phase of missionary work Foreign merchants' investigations insignificant Results of missionary linguistic studies Contributions to philology. IV. MODERN EDUCATION . . . . .32 Missionaries educators from first Schools ungraded and without classification Effect of missionary education in India, China, Japan, Turkey, Pa cific Islands 30,000 Protestant missionary schools Relation of the Church to education. V. INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE 40 Place of permanent institutions in missionary en deavour Relation of agriculture to prosperity in the East Missionary contributions to improve ment of the same New farm products introduced Exaltation of manual labour Development of industries among women Place of modern print ing in industrial- development Improvements in the native Christian community. 7 8 CONTENTS VI. A NEW COMMERCE ..... 47 Missionaries not commercial agents Trade follow ing the missionary New commerce develops by demands created through missionary work National value of missionary enterprise Com mercial honesty taught Commercial schools opened Quotation from Hon. Charles Denby, United States Minister to China, on value of missionary work. VII. NEW SOCIAL ORDER . . . . 53 Quotation from Dr. James S. Dennis Relation of religions to life Christianity elevates com munity and regenerates society Sociological power of the missionary home Missionary work and slavery Amelioration of inhumanity Effect on opium trade, social evil, caste system Development of the spirit of philanthropy Ex altation of womanhood. VIII MODERN MEDICINE IN THE EAST . . .61 Medical missions not new in the Christian scheme Native doctors trained Medical schools devel oped under Eastern governments Improvements in Eastern modes of sanitation Relation of medi cal missions to plague in Manchuria, 1911 Trained nurses Effect on pest-holes of civiliza tion Modern medicine becoming indigenous in Asia. IX, COOPERATION AND UNITY .... 68 Conspicuous example set by missionaries Processes of development CoSperation compelled by enormity of task Union in educational work Interdenominational conferences among mis sionaries National missionary organizations Examples of cooperation in education The United Church of South India Effect of co operation upon the societies and churches at home Interdenominational and international missionary conferences. CONTENTS 9 X. INTRODUCTION OF THE EAST TO THE WEST. . 77 Separation of East and West Missionaries the me dium through which the two classes of civilization become acquainted with each other Japan and China as illustrations Missionaries the producers of books that reveal Eastern customs, thought and life The discoverers of the intellectual and spiritual worth of Eastern races International assemblies comprising Asiatic and European largely missionary Our thinking changed by new knowledge of the East. XI. CHANGED ATTITUDE OF THE EAST TO CHRISTIAN ITY 83 Original hostility of Eastern races and nations to Christianity Illustrations of this hostility : China, India, Japan, Spain, Africa Marked changes in China, Mexico and other mission fields. XII. MISSIONS AND NATIONAL LIFE .... 90 Missionaries loyal to local governments Christian ity produces superior statesmen in mission coun tries Augustine's testimony Missionary institu tions and conspicuous leaders in Japan, China, Turkey and the Pacific Islands Lack of material and national progress in countries hostile to mis sions The non-Christian religions unable to meet national requirements Christianity alone provides adequate motive and power. I DEFINITION GEEAT and striking changes have taken place in foreign missionary work during the last century. These changes include not simply the enlargement of the fields occupied and great in crease in the number of missionaries engaged and vastly multiplied sums used in the propagation of the work even in these respects the changes have been phe nomenal but there are other changes, not so spec tacular, that have swept over the great mission fields and the work of the different missionary societies during the entire century, and more especially during the last twenty-five years. These changes may be called changes in methods of approach to the people, changes of emphasis in the work, and especially / changes in the presentation of gospel truth to the life / of the people. Methods of missionary work that are now almost universally employed by leading missionary societies were little, if at all, thought of at the beginning of the last missionary century. We speak now of at least five great departments of foreign missionary endeavour, namely, the evangelistic, the educational, the medical, the literary and the industrial departments. These are often spoken of as if each were quite distinct from all the rest, although all who are familiar with the details of missionary work know that this is not the case. 11 12 HUMAN PBOGBESS THROUGH MISSIONS It is a most interesting fact that when, at the be ginning of the last century, the attention of the people of Europe and America was first definitely and specifically turned towards foreign missionary work, there was but one idea in the minds of those who pressed the claim of the heathen world upon the Christian Church : that idea was that the non- Christian world is lost and that it is the duty and privilege of Christendom to present to that world Jesus Christ as the Saviour from sin. In other words, the thought and purpose that inspired those who laid the founda tion for our modern missionary endeavour was that of evangelism alone, unmixed with any other department of missionary work and looking to the saving of indi vidual souls from eternal loss. During the first half of the last missionary century the reports that the missionaries sent back to their supporting constituency put almost exclusive em phasis upon the number of those who had been re ceived into the Christian Church. We would expect this in the face of the fact that the charters of the mis sionary societies organized in those days made refer ence only to the evangelistic side of the work. However, while recognizing this fact it is to be remembered that many of the earlier missionaries had broad visions of what constituted the Church, and laid deep foundations for institutions that should make the Church influential and stable. Yet we must acknowl edge that to-day there are many who would have the missionaries do nothing but preach and baptize. At the missionary exhibit opened in connection with the recent meeting of the National Council in Boston, a devout soul was heard to remark as she watched some DEFINITION 13 little children modelling in clay, "I can't see any Christianity in that kind of work." There are those who sincerely believe that legitimate missionary work consists only in holding meetings, undertaking per sonal effort to reach individuals, and gathering as many as possible into the Church. In the earlier days of missions probably the large majority of those who contributed to their support, or even those who went out as missionaries, had practically the same idea. In the instructions of the Prudential Committee given to the first missionaries commissioned by the American Board, the following sentence occurs : i i The great ob- ject of your mission is to impart to those who sit in darkness and in the region and shadow of death the saving knowledge of Christ." In an address seven years later, to Messrs. Fiske, Spaulding, Winslow, and Woodward, among many statements of a similar character occurs the following : " Go and make known to the poor, besotted Hindus the God who made the earth and heavens and the in carnation for the life of the world. . . . Go, and from the heights of Calvary and of Zion proclaim to the long lost tribes of Israel, to the followers of the pseudo-prophet, and to the bewildered people of dif ferent lands, tongues, and religions, the fountain there opened for the cleansing of all nations, the banner there displayed for the gathering of all people." In the sermon delivered at the ordination of Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston, the supremacy of the Church and its ultimate triumph was the key-note : " Immense regions of the earth which belong to the Church are still unsubdued ; " " The world belongs to the Church ; " " Nearly the whole of Asia yet remains 14 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS to be possessed " (by the Church). In a charge a little later to a company of new missionaries repeatedly there appears the idea expressed by the sentence : " Wher ever you go, make it your supreme concern to preach the Gospel of Christ ; no circumstances whatever can justify you in turning aside from your great design of promoting the reign of Christ, or in attempting to do this by any other means than the preaching of His Gospel." These quotations might be indefinitely multiplied, showing that in the earlier days of the modern mis sionary enterprise the one prevailing idea among those interested in the cause was that missionaries should always and everywhere be oral proclaimers of the Gospel, the direct object of which was to bring men and women into the Church. It is true that now and then even in those earlier days a vision of educated and civilized communities seemed to unfold before the speaker, as in the address to the first Hawaiian mis sionaries by Dr. Worcester ; but those cases were not common. We would not have had it otherwise. In this single Scriptural purpose and aim we can trace the mighty success of those early endeavours to gain a foothold in hostile lands and among opposing peoples. This ob ject of mission work has not changed or weakened dur ing the century that has gone. Whenever a different purpose has been proclaimed, effort and the spirit of sacrifice have diminished, until endeavour languished and the work came to an end. No missionary motive that fails to include human redemption and the erec tion of the living Church of Jesus Christ in all lands and among all peoples can hope to command the sup- DEFINITION 15 port of the Church at home, to enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit, or to be clothed with victory. No missionary society and no missionary can afford to lose sight of the fact that, when effort to lead men into the Church fails, whatever else it may do, it is no longer the work Christ sent His disciples into the world to accomplish in His name and through His strength. It can be said with all truth that this has been the end towards which all missionary societies have aimed, and their success has been measured by the number of those who, out of many races and nations, have come into the Church of Christ and there have served Him as His true disciples. While the missionaries were conducting their work with their eyes directed almost wholly to the Church and the augmenting of its membership, and while em phasis was placed on increasing the number of the churches established, filled with multitudes of devout- followers of Christ, much beside was being accom plished. These results, apart from the number who were baptized, were hardly noticed at the beginning, and were not looked upon as necessarily a part of the outcome of missionary work but as almost incidental to that work. It is only in later years that a careful study of the progress of the missionary enterprise dur ing two generations of endeavour has begun to make manifest the fact that, while the missionaries were building up the Native Church and extending the borders of that Church widely throughout non-Christian countries, they had been at the same time building up a new form of society. In the early days there was little study of the science 16 HUMAN PEOGBESS THROUGH MISSIONS of society, and the work that was done in this line came about as a natural result of the planting of Chris tian truth in the hearts of Eastern peoples and of that truth manifesting itself in the lives of those peoples as it appeared in the home and community. Gradually we have come to recognize that in India, Turkey, Africa and China, the Church of Christ can no more be confined in its operation and in the manifestation of its life within the four walls of a building or embodied alone in a group of persons than it can in the West ; in fact, it has become apparent that a group of Chris tian men and women, living in the midst of a non- Christian community, become at once conspicuous to that community and exert an influence, far out of pro portion to their numbers, in a variety of ways almost unknown in what are called Christian countries. It was inevitable, in the very nature of the case, that Christianity planted in Eastern communities would build churches, but, more than that, it proved to be absolutely essential that it should build schools and hospitals and asylums ; that it should prepare and distribute enlightening and elevating literature ; and that it should stand as an advocate of peace, temper ance and fraternal love ; that it should demand of its followers industry and thrift and enterprise ; in fact, it was inevitable that the Church, planted within a pagan civilization, should produce a new society which upon first observation may appear to be quite separate and remote from the Church in which it had its birth and from which it has drawn its inspiration and its very life. In a word, the missionaries in setting out only to plant the Church and to gather into its fold such as "were being saved " have sown in the East the DEFINITION 17 seed of a new society which is revolutionary in its char- ; acter and resistless in its power. In many instances and to some people, these out ward and more spectacular manifestations of the pres ence of the Christian life in a mission country appear so conspicuous that it has been declared that these are themselves the ends of missionary labour, more im portant than the Church itself. Herein lies the error of such a conclusion, that the by-product is given the place that belongs to the direct result of missionary labours. These are the inevitable results of the en deavour to plant immovably in the East the living Church. A church that did not produce these fruits, found in every land where the Church exists, would not be and could not be the living Church of Jesus Christ. It is therefore proper to refer to what certainly in the order of procedure have come as secondary prod ucts of the missionary enterprise as legitimate indica tions of the strength of the Church as revealed in terms of human progress. We must not be understood to mean that these tokens of development are of less im portance or value to the Church and community ; we mean only that they were not aimed at or sought after at the time the modern missionary movement com menced, and were apparently unexpected by the earlier missionaries when they began their work. We may draw an illustration from the commercial arts to make clear our meaning in this instance. It is not an uncommon experience for a manufacturer to set out to produce a certain commodity and, in the process of manufacturing the commodity for which the plant was established, to find other products which prove more profitable than the original product aimed at. 18 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS This analogy does not hold true in all respects in the case under consideration. There has been no los ing sight of the original purpose, namely, of the neces sity of individual men and women accepting Jesus Christ as their Eedeemer and Lord and of their union in the creation of the Christian Church ; but, at the same time, more spectacular and, to many people, more attractive results have appeared, which, in some respects, have more widely commended the cause of missions to an ever-increasing constituency than the original purpose for which they were undertaken. In a word, we may say that through the discovery or development of what at the beginning were unknown or incidental features of missionary endeavour, the plan of work has become enlarged and broadened in its scope and power ; and whereas, at first, the pur pose was primarily to reach the individual, now the endeavour seems to be, through the individual brought into the Church, to reach the communities and the en tire society of the East, and through a reformed and Christianized society to produce the Christian nation and the consummated kingdom of God on earth. In the following pages the endeavour is made to direct attention to some of the tokens of human prog ress resulting from modern foreign missionary en deavour. This does not signify results of minor importance or less far-reaching influence, but in each instance it does indicate results dependent for their power and success upon the living Christ manifesting Himself through His Church and working out His will upon the hearts and in the society of the human race. II EXPLORATIONS ALTHOUGH missionaries were sent out to "preach the Gospel, 77 it was necessary for them to find the people to whom they should preach. By glancing at the map of the world in 1810 as printed in "The Story of the American Board," we see that when that Board was organized all the interior of Africa and Australia is marked as unexplored. It is understood that practically nothing was then known with certainty about the interiors of China and Japan, while most of the Asiatic countries, like Persia, Tur key, etc., had been visited, but in a limited measure. By far the larger number of missionaries, during the first half century of mission planting, were pioneer ex plorers of the countries they were sent out to serve. In fact, in the instructions given to the earlier mission aries, they were directed to explore the country, dis cover the strategic centres for occupancy, and plant their mission stations at such places as the local con ditions of health, influence, and future development demanded. The missionaries by ability and training were well qualified to do this work, having received the best education the leading colleges and seminaries of the time could give them. Fully realizing the crucial responsibility of planting mission stations, and, attracted by the mystery of the unknown regions be yond, the first missionaries and, in unexplored regions, 19 20 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS the missionaries of all periods gave themselves to the direct work of prospecting and map making. For the time being, and until their task was accomplished, these missionaries of the cross were explorers and geographers as well as evangelists. The importance of careful and scientific exploration of a country that is to be occupied for missionary work can be readily understood when we recognize the fact that the institutions of the Gospel necessarily depend for their cost and effectiveness upon the accessibility of the regions occupied, the means of communication with the other parts of the same country, the rain fall, productivity, waterways, capabilities of future physical development, and many other geographical features which it was the express business of the mis sionaries to learn and report to the home office. In many instances these investigations resulted in the location of missions in the countries thus explored ; in others the interested Board decided not to venture upon work, as in the case of Patagonia, to which an exploring missionary party was sent by the American Board, but without result in the opening of a mission. The first few years of missionary endeavour in Tur key were given to exploration and translation. The missionaries soon discovered'.that the available maps of the interior of the country were of but little value. The centres of population, the connecting highways, the resources of the country had to be searched out and tabulated, not only for their own uses, but for the use of those who should follow them. Long, laborious, and hazardous tours were taken through Syria, over into Egypt, across Asia Minor in various directions, through Kurdistan, into Persia and Northern Mesopotamia, EXPLOBATIONS 21 for the purpose of discovering the country, its strategic points, and its geographical setting. The tours of Messrs. Smith and Dwight across Asia Minor, Kurdistan, and into Persia, related in detail and with scientific accuracy, were not only of enormous value to mission work in that country, but were also a direct contribution to the science of geography. Dr. Grant w;is the first to pass months in the heart of that un tamed and unknown section of Turkey called Kurdis tan and to make elaborate report of his observations. As a medical missionary he was able to accomplish what a purely scientific explorer had previously at tempted, and in that attempt had lost his life. In the islands of the Pacific the missionaries as geographers have been of the greatest possible service to the world. At the beginning of the last century but few of those islands were at all known. With only a fraction of these had any form of trade been established, and that, for the most part, with the people at a single point in a group. Many of these islands were known to be inhabited by the most cruel savages, and to them foreign sailors gave wide berth. Such conditions con stituted a challenge to the missionaries, and to these islands attention was early directed. Group after group and island after island were approached, oc cupied often with terrible loss yet held, explored, mapped, sometimes named, and so added to the con tent of the world's known geography. One of the best examples of such exploiting is that of the Sand wich or Hawaiian Islands, as the missionaries pene trated to all parts of the territory, and with maps and minute descriptions made the whole archipelago known to the world. 22 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS The explorers of Africa in the earlier stages of the investigations of that dark and unknown continent were missionaries. They ventured into the unmapped, fever-guarded, and unknown interiors. They dis covered many of the highways and waterways, and made known the fact that the highlands of the interior were more free from fevers perilous to the white man than the lowlands of the coast. David Livingstone was a missionary, and as such he blazed a track into the undiscovered heart of Africa, opening the way for Stanley and the long line of successors who together have removed the words " unknown and undiscovered " from the map of that great continent. To-day one can traverse Africa from west to east and from north to south in many directions, and cross at a hundred points well-worn paths of the exploring missionaries, who have given their lives to letting in the light of geographical knowledge as well as of gospel truth. In China it was the Christian missionary that first endeavoured to gain residence in the interior of the country. He pushed his way from the coast towns until by scores and even hundreds he is now found in every one of the eighteen provinces. In the regular promotion of the work of his high calling he has ex plored China's rivers, her ancient highways of travel and unique barriers of defense; he has accurately located and become familiar with her great walled cities, and has written the story of her resources. Even to-day our most extended and accurate knowl edge of China, especially of her extensive interior regions, has been obtained from the investigations and reports of Christian missionaries. In India, at the beginning of the missionary propa- EXPLOEATIONS 23 ganda, there was little known of the country except the port cities and the points to which the trader had penetrated. The missionaries, while making their headquarters at these centres, in order to learn the condition of the people and to find locations further in the interior were compelled to force their way into the interior districts and make themselves familiar with conditions there prevailing. There would have been little missionary work indeed carried on in India dur ing the first half century of modern missions, had the missionaries been content to follow the trader simply or the British official. And what is stated here as true of India can be as truly stated of all the mission fields. The missionaries have been the pioneers, in a large degree. They have not waited for any other class to precede them, but have themselves preceded nearly all the investigators of life and conditions in the countries to which they have been sent. They have not waited for maps to be made but have gone in advance of the map maker ; they have not waited for roads to be built but have made use of the rude paths trodden for centuries by the feet of the native peoples ; they have not waited for histories to be written of the religions of the people whose welfare they were seeking, but in utter igno rance of what they should find they have continually pushed on into the hitherto unpenetrated depths and mysteries of the great dark continents and unexplored areas of the world, and as they have gone they have reported their discoveries, and made maps of the country, and have sent back descriptions of the peo ple, thus opening to the Western world regions that had been hitherto closed. "Without the results of their 24 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS observations and reports, their maps and suggestions, we would know but little even to-day of these widely extended sections of the inhabitable world. Geographical journals and societies have not been slow to acknowledge the value of the contributions missionaries are able to make and have made to the science of geography. Missionaries have been elected fellows of the Eoyal Geographical Society and of other societies of a similar character and purpose, and their aid has been repeatedly sought in prosecuting investi gations. The missionaries were especially equipped for this work of exploration not only because of their broad training in the best colleges and universities of the West but because the work to which they had given their lives demanded preliminary investigation for the best execution of the commission which was put upon them. They were in the country not for a few months or a year, or a series of years, but they entered the country to which they were sent, for life, many of them never expecting to return to the home land and their friends. They were investing their lives in the coun try and, in order to make the investment the most prof itable possible, it was essential for them to make themselves acquainted with the country, with its peo ple, with its resources, and with the best methods of approach. Having learned the language spoken by the people, they had unusual facilities put into their hands for receiving information which they were able to impart to the world. However much the missionaries may have accom plished in leading in philological investigations and ethnical studies, and in both of these lines they have EXPLOEATIONS 25 done much, they will undoubtedly stand supreme as geographers and explorers, who by penetrating into the very heart of nearly every uncivilized or partially civilized country have laid bare the secrets of their location, physical conditions, and accessibility. They have cast up great physical and intellectual highways, along which with certainty and safety others may fol low ; thus the world has been made a neighbourhood. When one adds the marked advance of steamship travel and the construction of railroads to and through those countries that were not only unapproachable but even unknown at the beginning of the century, it is easy to understand the meaning to the Christian Church of 800,000,000 of non-Christians, within easy reach of Christian institutions, ready for the message that shall make them new creatures in Jesus Christ. The missionary as an explorer has brought the foreign world as a waiting suppliant to the door of the Chris tian Church. in LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE MISSIONARIES cannot preach the Gospel until they discover and master the language in which to preach. From, the beginning of modern missions English has been of little or no use in mission countries as a preaching tongue. Wherever the missionary settled down for work in the early days he found himself among a people who had no knowledge of the language he spoke and no particular desire to learn it. If he expected to influence them there was only one thing for him to do and that was to make their language his own. This was no mean task, especially when the language itself had never been embodied in writing, as was the case with many languages of Africa and of the islands of the Pacific as well as elsewhere. It meant more than the creation of an alphabet ; it demanded the making of grammars and lexicons, followed by the creation of a general literature. The early struggles of the new missionaries were primarily with the languages of the countries to which they went. These strange, unwritten, Eastern tongues stretched like impassable barriers across the approach to the people, and it was only by persistent effort and superior intellectual application that the conflict was won. 26 LANGUAGES AND LITEEATUEE 27 How much the world owes to the philological achievements of the missionaries could hardly be re corded in a single volume, even of large proportions. They have made a far greater contribution to this sub ject than all other students of language combined. Commissioner Sir H. H. Johnston, of British Central Africa, emphasizes the huge debt that philologists owe to the labours of missionaries in Africa. He reports that nearly two hundred African languages and dialects have been illustrated by grammars, dictionaries, vocab ularies, and Bible translations ; that many of these tongues were upon the point of extinction and some have since become extinct ; and that we owe all the knowledge we have of them to the intervention of the missionaries. When we turn to the Pacific Islands we find that our knowledge of the many languages spoken there is due almost, if not wholly, to the missionaries. As we go over the groups, the Sandwich Islands, Ponape, the Mortlocks, the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, as well as the more remote, the Fiji, the New Hebrides, and the Solomon Islands, we cannot but be impressed with the value of the missionaries' contribution to the world's knowledge by their discovery of the languages spoken by these peoples and the embodying of the same in an orderly literature. It seems but yesterday that Dr. Hiram Bingham was with us, who, together with Mrs. Bingham, gave to the Gilbert Islanders their own tongue, with a grammar and dictionary, embody ing it in hymns, a New Testament, a Bible Dictionary, and other books. Starting with William Carey in India, who is credited with translating the Bible in whole or in part into 28 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS twenty-four Indian languages and dialects, until the present time, the missionaries have been searching out the unknown tongues spoken by that great polyglot people, in order to put them into permanent form as the channel through which Christian truth may be con veyed. In a word, wherever missionaries have gone they have been students of the vernacular before they were preachers of the Gospel ; and they have been architects of grammars, vocabularies, and lexicons and creators of a Christian literature in the form of Bible transla tions before they erected churches. If missionaries had not done this work, who would have undertaken it f It could not have been expected that independent students of philology would have been content to bury themselves for a lifetime in the centre of Africa or upon an island in the midst of the Pacific or in the interior of China, simply for the pur pose of giving to the world a correct knowledge of the vernaculars spoken by the people in those different regions. The sacrifice demanded would have been too great for the promised reward. No one would expect that the merchants who touched but the fringes of the great Eastern countries would give much attention to the niceties of the language of the people with whom they traded. 1 1 Pidgin English ' ' seems quite good enough for their uses, and in fact is one of the mer cantile contributions to the philological museum of the world. It is only the missionaries, as a class, who have had a motive strong and permanent enough to carry men and women of the highest intelligence and training into the uttermost parts of the earth and there hold LANGUAGES AND LITEBATUBE 29 them at the task of language study until it eventuated in an extensive and orderly literature. Over four hundred effective and living versions of the Bible, translated for the most part by missionaries and native co-workers trained by them, are now in use. These have stood the test of scientific scrutiny and are the crowning proof of the thoroughness with which the chief languages of Africa and the East have been mastered by the missionaries. It is not claimed that the missionaries have done ex tensive work in comparative philology. Their task has been to make themselves masters of one, two, or, as in the case of Dr. Elias Biggs, of Turkey, of several languages, not for the purpose of comparing one with another, but solely for the purpose of coming into the closest relations with those to whom the conquered lan guage was a household tongue. Philologists of the "West have made the accurate preliminary work of these pioneers the field for their own investigations and comparisons. The literary work of the missionaries has introduced into all of these countries the modern art of printing and has built up extensive printing establishments in all the eastern centres of population which are produc ing millions of pages annually of vernacular literature. This includes not only the Bible in whole or in part, but all kinds of educational books, besides translations and original productions, religious, scientific, and lit erary, for the general enlightenment of all classes. This work has now made such progress that many presses which began under the direction of mission aries and were aided with funds from the missionary societies are now owned and conducted by native firms. 30 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS Much of the publication work of the missionaries them selves in some countries, like Japan and India, is now done entirely by native companies. But we have digressed from philological contribu tions to literary output, which is nevertheless a part of the same subject. It is through this extensive out put that comparative philology is kept up to date and that the rapid changes taking place in so many of the Eastern languages are traced. This study is materially aided by the great number of vernacular periodicals published upon mission presses and forced to keep up with the modern linguistic trend in order to command the attention of their clientele. Educated native scholars are now carrying on this work. The missionaries are following closely, as are the native scholars, the linguistic changes that are taking place in languages spoken by peoples that are making rapid progress in general education, like the Bul garian, the Armenian, and Turkish, some of the lan guages of India, the Chinese, and the Japanese. It is the business of the missionary to keep close watch of all literary changes in order that he may put his mes sage into such form that it will command respectful hearing. If it were possible to bring together in one place samples of all the grammars, dictionaries, hymn-books, Bibles, school-books, and works of general literature of every kind and from all parts of the world which have been written or translated during the last century by missionaries or under their supervision, it would make one of the most complete exhibits of the lan guages and dialects spoken by more than five-sixths of the people of the world that could be produced. On LANGUAGES AND LITEEATUEE 31 the other hand, if there could be collected all that has been done in this direction by others than missionaries or by those working with them, we would find but a meagre exhibit 5 showing conclusively how indebted we have been and yet are to the missionaries for their persistent, scholarly, and accurate endeavours along philological and literary lines. While the work in this respect has been unquestionably missionary, it has at the same time been highly scientific ; and while it has contributed directly to the success of missionary work, it has added enormously to the philological knowledge of the world. The results of this labour are now available for the Church to employ in reaching the intellects as well as the hearts of the people of the East. rv MODEBN EDUCATION ONE of the first lines of work to be under taken by missionaries was some form of edu cation. The first approach to the people was mostly through children who, from curiosity at first and later from real interest, were not disinclined to have intimate relations with the strangers from the West. The almost universal employment of this method of approach by all of the earlier missionaries makes evident the fact that the missionaries believed the best way to begin their work and to give it a firm foundation was through the school. The early schools were primitive in the extreme, but they formed a valued point of contact between the missionaries and the people. Out from these early, primitive schools, moreover, came the first native helpers. For the first fifty years of missionary endeavour these schools had little grading or classification and attracted little attention. That they have been greatly developed during the last forty or fifty years shows the judgment of the missionaries as to the place of educa tion in the effort to evangelize the Eastern races. It is now generally agreed that in order to establish the Christian Church and the institutions which belong to it in any Eastern country, there must be connected with that Church systems of education for the training of the Christian youth ; and it is also agreed that such 32 MODEBST EDUCATION 33 systems of education must be open to all. It has been demonstrated that without such methods of educa tion, including the college and theological seminary, the missionary can never raise up native leaders upon whom the responsibilities of the work can be placed. In addition, it has been made evident that the Chris tian community must stand for enlightenment and education. This has been the record of the Protestant Christian Church everywhere and in all ages. The Christian communities in the East to-day command an influence far in excess of their numbers because of their superior spirit and intelligence, and this superiority is secured through the unusual Christian educational ad vantages afforded them by the missionary institutions. Christianity stands as an intelligent faith to the people of the East, and as such it must be maintained in order that it may have the commanding influence it deserves. Out of this educational endeavour there have grown up in the East systems of schools which were at the be ginning far in advance of any indigenous educational systems. Take the case of India. There was no mod ern education in India when the missionaries entered the country. For a generation or more a conflict was waged between the missionary system of education, which was based upon the learning of the West, given to the people in the vernacular, and the Indian system, which based its education on the use of Sanskrit. The missionary plan prevailed and finally secured the ap proval of the government, and has now become the system of education throughout India. English is taught in all the mission schools as the classic modern 34 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS language, since the government of India is in the hands of the English people, and it is manifestly an advantage to the Indian youth to have a reading and speaking command of that language. To-day the In dian and Ceylon governments give large subsidies to mission schools, because of their value to the com munities where they are placed and their recognized worth to the government itself. The present educa tional system of India may be said to be primarily missionary in its origin and development, and largely in its conduct. The government of Ceylon has recently passed a law of compulsory education for the entire island. The government will not be able to create and conduct a sufficient number of schools to accommodate all of the children of school age, but it proposes to subsidize the schools of the missionaries in which they have confi dence and which come up to established standards, allowing the missionaries to select the teachers and arrange for the religious training of the pupils. When we turn to China, we find that within three- quarters of a century modern education for the Chinese was begun by the missionaries. The Chinese system of education, although possessing great disciplinary value, contained little that could be regarded as a legitimate part of an educational system, according to any method of Western thinking. It conveyed no in formation to the pupils and gave them no knowledge of the world or of science or of anything outside of China. There was intense opposition to the missionary schools and, previous to 1900, progress was slow. At the same time many Chinese youth, receiving their impulse for a modern education from the missionary schools, MODEEN EDUCATION 35 turned to the West and soon made places for them selves in the best American and European institutions of learning. After returning to China they became the advocates of modern learning. In the meantime, the missionaries adhered to the idea that education, called by the Chinese " Western learning," must ulti mately prevail in that empire. After the Boxer up heaval in 1900 and the return of the court to Peking, " Western learning " was looked upon with far greater favour by the official classes, and under the leadership of Yuan Shih Kai and others, that despised learning, which had for fifty years met so much opposition from the Chinese, was adopted by the government and its whole educational system was revolutionized. Chinese boys and youth were sent to America and Europe in large numbers to complete their education ; the exam inations for civil service were put upon the Western basis of learning and the old system of education was done away. To one who has followed the influence of modern Christian education in China during the last few years and more especially since the beginning of the revolu tion that resulted in the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, there can be no doubt that in giving a Chris- tain education to the Chinese youth who came within their sphere of influence the missionaries built more wisely than they knew. Not only are these schools now patronized by the present leaders but many of the leaders themselves are the product of such train ing. One does not need to prophesy in order to de clare that under the new rule in China, modern and Western learning will have full sway and those who will have the responsibility of organizing the new 36 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS system must be the pupils of the modern schools introduced by the missionaries. The missionary influence in Japan has been along the same lines as in China, although " Western learn ing " met with a far more sympathetic response on the part of the Japanese than with the Chinese. The Japanese were quick to see the value of modern edu cation and rapidly revised their own educational system. While the credit for the great advance in education in Japan cannot be given to the mission aries alone, yet the Japanese themselves do not hesi tate to speak freely of their obligation to the earlier as well as later missionaries for the introduction of modern schools and modern teaching into the empire. In the Turkish empire the situation is even more clear. The schools in Turkey eighty years ago were all connected with the Oriental churches and mosques, and the curriculum consisted largely in teaching pupils to read an ancient ecclesiastical literature in an unknown tongue of the meaning of which they understood little or nothing. Into these conditions the missionary brought the modern school with modern text-books. These schools were immediately popular with the Armenians and Greeks, but were not so quickly appreciated by the Mohammedans. Persist ently the missionaries have adhered to the idea that the future of the Turkish empire required the modern school, and that the future of the Protestant Christian Church and the new Christian society must have its foundation in Christian education as well as in the gospel of redemption. These schools have met with the cooperation and support of the Armenian and Greek populations. MODERN EDUCATION 37 They have rapidly developed until the missionary college stands to-day for the highest and most com plete form of education to be found in the empire. The Turkish government is now endeavouring to establish its own modern educational system, and, in doing so, is accepting as its model the missionary school. Space will not permit mentioning the development of modern education in Africa, which is due almost if not wholly to the missionary endeavour. What ever of modern education is found to-day in the Dark Continent traces its origin to the humble missionary school in which the missionaries have persistently pursued their work until they have reached hundreds of thousands of the youth of Africa. The same can be said of the islands of the Pacific and of other countries in which the light of modern learning is shining to-day with increasing brilliancy. In grade the missionary schools include everything from the kindergarten and primary departments, up through the boarding and high schools, industrial and normal schools, to colleges and medical schools and theological seminaries. During the last ten years the missionary educational system has been rapidly developing. Greater em phasis is placed upon normal training, not only for the missionaries who engage in teaching, but for the natives in the various countries who expect to become teachers. This whole educational system is far nearer self-support than any similar educational system in England or the United States. Many schools are wholly self-supporting. In the 30,000 Protestant missionary schools of all 38 HUMAN PEOGBESS THEOUGH MISSIONS grades in mission fields there are to-day more than 1,500,000 of the choice youth of the East. But what is more significant, these schools are becoming the models on which are organized the schools of the country. The missionaries, by the work they have done and the success of their endeavour along educa tional lines, have won for themselves in the East an influential position as educators. It would be impossible to treat this subject fairly without referring to the development of woman's education by the missionaries in the Orient, where their work has been even more conspicuously suc cessful perhaps than in the development of the edu cation for boys. They have everywhere been the champions of the high place women should hold in Christian society, and as such the schools have played an important part. The conflict in this department of education has been more acute than in any other, but the struggle is now past and the great nations of the East have accepted it as an established principle that their girls must have educational privileges. It is an interesting fact that the Church has been the conserver of education in all history. It was so in the Middle Ages in Europe, when the learning of Greece and Eome was preserved through church institutions. The great universities of Europe and America were established for the purpose of developing the Church and furnishing it with adequate leadership. From these ecclesiastical institutions have grown the colleges and great universities of national and international repute. It is evident that history is repeating itself in Asia and Africa. Institutions established by mis sionaries for the promotion of the Church are to-day MODEBN EDUCATION 39 rapidly becoming national in their reputation and in fluence. Men and women trained in mission schools and under the tuition of missionaries are even now organizing the educational systems in Eastern countries and directing their operations. It is of greater im portance to shape the educational methods and customs of a country than to determine the form of its govern ment. Only when one remembers that all missionary education is preeminently and distinctively Christian can he realize the significance of educational missions. Out of these mission schools and colleges are emerging permanent institutions, which will stand at the centre of the educational systems of the Eastern nations as have their prototypes, the Christian colleges, in the lands of the West. V INDUSTBIAL ADVANCE r ""^HE missionaries' work with the native Chris tian community is not completed until the institutions they have planted have become self-supporting, independent, respected, and self-per petuating. Not only must the converts contribute to the strength of the Church, but they must conspicuously add to the civilizing development of the entire com munity. This includes and involves a measure of material prosperity, as well as of moral, spiritual, and intellectual achievement. In the midst of rich but undeveloped natural re sources, he would be indeed a short-sighted missionary who would not show the people how to extract from the soil, produce from the forest, and wrest from the natural resources of the country a measure of the wealth of whose presence they were largely if not wholly ignorant. Take, for instance, the field of agriculture. All Eastern people are more or less dependent upon the soil for a living. Usually the methods of farming in the East were rude in the extreme, wasteful, and cir cumscribed by tradition and custom. The tools ordi narily in use were of ancient pattern, few in number, and ill adapted to the needs of the farmer. The plows employed in Turkey over wide areas even to-day are made from a branch of a tree with an iron point stuck 40 JNDUSTBIAL ADVANCE 41 upon the stump of an amputated limb, the kind that Abraham used in that same country. It was but natural for the missionaries to import shovels, spades, hoes, plows, etc., and teach the men how to accom plish far better results with a smaller expenditure of strength. In Turkey and Persia the old threshing floors separated the grain from the straw, as they did in David's time, and the grain lay piled with the chaff on the threshing floor until the fall winds blew strong enough and long enough to permit of their separation. It often occurred that the rains came before the winds, and so the year's crop of wheat or barley was lost. The missionary introduced the winnowing or fanning mill, that has now become a commonly owned machine throughout the two countries, and no crop needs to lie exposed to the weather for any length of time. This one machine alone, now made and sold entirely by the people, is worth hundreds of thousands of dol lars a year to the two countries. In large sections of Africa and among the Pacific Is lands there was little cultivation of the soil and no at tempt at fertilization. The missionaries, as Dr. Moffat reports, began the cultivation of fields and gardens with the use of fertilizer saved from the cattle folds, and demonstrated to the curious and incredulous natives that gardens might be " kept young " and as tonishingly productive in that way. The entire method of agriculture was thus revolutionized and made unprecedentedly profitable. In many countries the people depended wholly upon the rain for their crops, although there were many streams available for irrigation. This was the case 42 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS among the Kafirs of Africa. The missionaries con structed irrigation ditches and systems of ditches, and taught the people that they had it in their power to control their water supply. They were alert and eager pupils, and so famine was banished from among them. In China scientific methods of irrigation from deep wells through the aid of force pumps, of which the Chinese had no previous knowledge, were introduced and proved of great value. The missionaries, observing that in many countries the entire population were almost wholly dependent upon a single staple food supply as, for instance, wheat or rice and that when for any reason that crop failed, a disastrous famine was sure to follow, intro duced other crops, as potatoes, tomatoes, a variety of fruits, peanuts, and many other things. In Turkey and in China the potato is known as a product of mis sions. As the first potatoes introduced into China by the Catholic missionaries have about run out, while the newer varieties brought in by the Protestant mission aries are most flourishing, the people refer to the small kind as " Catholic potatoes" and the large and new kind as " Protestant potatoes." Peanuts have become a most helpful and profitable article of food and are widely cultivated, especially in China. Western fruits and berries without number flourish and their use is extending in nearly all modern mission fields, the natives themselves becom ing the chief producers as well as consumers. In some countries, as in China, the missionaries have prepared books and pamphlets on agriculture for the guidance of the natives, who seem eager to adopt any new crop or new method of production that will yield INDUSTBIAL ADVANCE 43 greater returns. Practically all that is known of scientific methods of farming in Africa, in the islands of the Pacific, and in wide areas in Turkey, India, and China originated in missions. The Director of Agri culture for the leading agricultural state of the Turkish empire, the Adana vilayet, is a graduate of a mission college. The profit has not all been on one side. David G. Fairchild, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Depart ment of Agriculture in the United States, recently said : "The best varieties of wheat now grown through the South originated from seed sent over to Georgia by missionaries. Our most profitable pear originated as a cross between seedlings imported by missionaries from China and an American pear. The soy bean from Japan and China was also introduced by mission aries. " He acknowledges our indebtedness to mission aries for many improved varieties of plants and fruits now grown in this country. Missionaries have always maintained that manual labour is not ^degrading, but wholesome. Many an African, who scorned to use former implements of trade, became so interested in the new devices intro duced from the West that he was willing to use them himself, thus removing some of the heavy burdens from the backs of his women and introducing a new fashion for men. It was not a difficult task to set the African to making bricks and tiles and preparing lumber, and later to building new houses for himself and his people, which had no more resemblance to their former places of abode than a cottage resembles a dug out. 44 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOTJGH MISSIONS The new outdoor industries brought with them the advanced idea that these were for men and not for women ; the men were rather proud of the distinction thus conferred upon them, while the women experi enced a real emancipation from galling servitude. To more than one-half of the population of the world the modern printing-press was carried by the mission aries as an implement of education. As printing was a new industry, there was no classification among all the castes of India for the man who engaged in the business. The Brahman could learn the trade and still remain a Brahman, while the pariah was not de barred. The demand for the products of the press in creased with such rapidity that, before the middle of the first half century of modern missions, there were great publishing and printing houses in India, Burma, Turkey, Madagascar, and other mission countries, in which nearly all of the workmen were natives. By 1860 many of these establishments had passed entirely under native control, and native contractors were do ing the mission's printing. These establishments rap idly multiplied everywhere, not only affording lucra tive employment to a large number of educated natives, but furnishing a powerful means of general en lightenment and education for the people as a whole. The printing-press is everywhere to-day turning off daily and weekly periodicals by the thousands in cities where a century ago modern printing was wholly un known. When a missionary in Africa suggested to some na tives that a much-used public trail should be con structed, they replied, " Never since the Zambesi ran into the sea was such a thing dreamed of as that we INDUSTBIAL ADVANCE 45 should make a road for other people to walk on." That is the idea that has held Asia for centuries in the grip of selfish and narrow-minded individualism. Eoads across Asia and Africa traversed by the feet of a hundred generations have never had a stroke of work put upon them beyond what was demanded to permit a caravan to pass some obstruction. Short, well-constructed roads, made to connect mis sion compounds, then stations, and, later, reaching out still farther, have opened the eyes of the natives to the superior value of a good road as compared with the old, winding paths that were passable at all only at certain seasons of the year. The introduction of wheeled vehicles necessitated giving greater attention to the making of roads, and new conveyances assisted road building, while the bet ter roads led to a wider use of wheels. The spirit of road-making has now entered many of the mission countries, revolutionizing intercommunication and trade. There are few Oriental mechanical trades that have not been greatly improved or even recreated through the teachings of the missionaries, who with Western methods and tools have shown the natives of those countries the wastefulness of their crude ways and the possibilities of accomplishment with new tools and skilled labour. The missionaries have been the inventors of ma chines and implements by which the natives were able to make their labour count for vastly more than for merly, as, for instance, the hand loom invented by a missionary in India and manufactured in a mission in dustrial school by means of which an untrained village 46 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS weaver can increase his daily output of native cloth from four to eight fold. These trades, some of which have been either newly introduced or practically reconstructed in many regions, are cabinet work, carpentry, masonry, methods of agriculture, tinsmithing, shoemaking, road-making, printing, bookbinding, fibre raising and rope-making, weaving, iron-working, copper and silver hammering, embroidering and lace-making, carpet and rug manufacturing, and a long list besides of trades and professions introduced and developed by the missionaries, by which men and women have been made self-respecting and independent, while industrial conditions of the countries in which missionaries re side have been materially advanced. Naturally the Christian communities are the first to appreciate the value of these new enterprises and so the first to profit by them. Thus has come to tfee Christians of the East the deserved reputation of energy and enterprise, which accounts in no small measure for the large con tributions made by the people themselves for the sup port of their own Christian institutions. This is but one of the processes by which a strong, independent Christian community is rapidly forming in all mission countries, untrammelled by the industrial traditions of the past, ready to adopt that which promises intellec tual, material, and social advance. The missionary points men to Christ, and at the same time to self-re specting manhood by the help of honest, productive industry. VI A NEW COMMEECB MISSIONABIES do not engage in commerce, and to increase trade is no part of their commission. Often the argument is used that foreign missions should be supported since the work of the missionaries is of such value in promoting trade. The twelve million dollars' worth of goods purchased last year from the United States by the Hawaiian Islands, and the twenty-seven million dol lars' worth sold to the United States by Hawaii, are facts often employed to show the commercial value of the missionary enterprise that opened up these islands to the world. The impression is too frequently left that one of the chief purposes of the missionary is to develop commercial relations between Christian coun tries and pagan lands. This is an error. At the same time all must acknowledge that as rapidly as the East opens to Christian ideas and Christian enlightenment, it demands and procures in an increasing measure the manufactured products of Christian countries. It is impossible even to think of a people who have lived for centuries in an unsanitary and backward state not taking to soap, kerosene, and sewing-ma chines as soon as the fruits of Christian civilization begin to appear. It would be well worth while for the soap manufacturers of Christendom to combine for the 47 48 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS support of the Christian missionaries because of the impetus they give to the soap business. It is a fact of mission as well as of commercial his tory, that the merchant follows hard after the mission ary wherever he goes ; for the intelligent traders know well that the missionary creates conditions favourable to selling legitimate trade products. There are few regions of Asia into which the missionaries have gone where the sewing-machine also has not penetrated. To-day hundreds of thousands of machines are at work sewing seams that in more ways than one unite the East and the West. The missionaries introduce the printing-press, books, and schools, and at once there follows a demand for better-lighted homes. Trade, alert to its opportuni ties, sends the kerosene lamp and cases of oil up the rivers, across the mountains on camels, horses, and donkeys, even upon the heads of men, until the prod ucts of Standard Oil and other companies are provided by the pint, gallon, or case to the humblest peasant of Kurdistan as well as to the yamen of the mandarin in the most remote region of the Chinese empire. The introduction of the art of printing into the East and its wide and rapid use by all of the awakening races have created a demand for all kinds of printing supplies, from large power presses to type and paper. It is now possible to purchase products of Asiatic printing establishments in American and European markets, and many a periodical issued regularly from these presses circulates widely in those countries which first sent out the missionaries. As Western education gains headway among Eastern peoples, invariably there follows a tendency to assume A NEW COMMEECE 49 what i8 called " European " dress. This is especially true of the educated and official classes. One need not search far in the great Eastern cities to find stores in which European and American material for clothing can be purchased, while American shoes are rapidly walking their way around the world in the paths opened by the missionaries. Not long since a German professor who had travelled widely in Asia Minor wrote an article in which he took his country severely to task for permitting Tur key to be occupied by American missionaries rather than by Germans, on the ground that since the atten tion 4 of the natives had been turned to the United States through the missionaries, their schoolmasters, and friends, they naturally purchase their foreign- made goods from the country that gave them their education. His contention was that, in the interests of commerce alone, Germany ought to take an active part in missionary work in Turkey. As an illustra tion of the above position is the fact that a native graduate of an American college in Turkey, now Min ister of Agriculture in one of the most prosperous and progressive agricultural states in Turkey, is in cor- Irespondence with two of the leading manufacturers of agricultural implements in the United States, which firms are providing him with agricultural implements, appliances and tools for introduction into the large district under his control. His son, now a student in an American college, at the expense of the Turkish government, is fitting himself for official work in Tur key and will naturally turn to this country for the supplies required. This is but one illustration of a multitude that might be given. 60 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS The commercial opening of Africa is in itself a mar vellous story of missionary endeavour and trade de velopment. In 1857 Livingstone said in Cambridge University, "I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity." At the present time Livingstone's own haunt, Blautyre, has become the commercial centre of British West Africa, and the missionaries are training the natives in indus trial habits and business enterprise. In 1839 African natives, whom the missionaries of the Church Mission ary Society had rescued from slavery, purchased an old slave ship and opened up a flourishing trade along the west littoral ; foreign commerce quickly followed. The trade of America with Africa in agricultural im plements is almost wholly in those sections_,where mis sionaries are labouring. One does not need to turn back the pages of history far to arrive at the point when no trader dared to land upon the Fiji Islands, and reports of the world's com merce made no allusion to them. To-day the popula tion of those 200 islands is only about 125,000, of whom nearly one hundred thousand are regular at tendants upon Christian Church services. It is an interesting fact that these islands, rescued from sav agery by missionaries, have within a century taken their place in the commercial columns of the " States man's Year-Book " as both producers and consumers. The total foreign trade of the group, according to the last obtainable figures, was valued at over six million dollars for the year, of which one-half was for goods purchased abroad. Did it pay commercially to Chris tianize the Fiji Islands f Hundreds'of similar illustra tions could be given did space permit. A NEW COMMENCE 51 Among" the principles which missionaries promul gate that are of special value to Western commerce we may name six : 1. Missionary teaching creates ~new material needs fjj> and desires that the people, as they are able, will en deavour to gratify. 2. Christian communities are characterized by un usual enterprise and thrift and are better able to gratify their new ambitions and to become purchasers of West ern products. The first savings bank in India was established by missionaries and was patronized chiefly by Christians. 3. The presence of missionaries and their institu tions and the creation of a new order of society through Western education have favourably predis posed the native peoples towards the Western mer chant. This is notoriously true if the merchant comes from the same country as the missionary and is him self in sympathy with Christianity. 4. Missionaries teach the value of integrity and commercial honesty, thus laying among the people themselves the foundation for permanent trade rela tions with the West. The Minister of Foreign Affairs in Japan once remarked to a representative of a large American mission board that the merchants of his country were in grave need of Christian instruction regarding the necessity of strict honesty in their deal ings with foreign merchants. 6. Missionaries have opened commercial school? and commercial departments in their colleges, in MVt* which the youth of the various Eastern countries are given a business education. This is true of all the American colleges in Turkey, as well as of many 52 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS similar schools in India, Ceylon, Japan, China, South America, and Mexico. Affiliated societies of a mis sionary character have been formed to promote industrial and commercial progress among native peoples. 6. The missionaries have introduced to one another men of widely scattered races. Some of these have needs to be supplied, while others have goods to sell. International trade and commerce inevitably and naturally result from such an introduction. The mis sionary would indeed be short-sighted who attempted to "prevent it, and he would soon learn his impotence should he make the endeavour. The following quotation from the late Hon. Charles Denby, United States Minister to China, may ap propriately close this brief survey of a broad sub ject : "It must be admitted that civilization promotes trade, that the more a nation becomes civilized, the greater are the wants of the people. Then if the mis sionary promotes civilization, he also promotes trade. When he opens a school, he opens a market. Inspired by Christian zeal, he goes to countries that were never trod by the merchant's foot ; but the * drummer ' follows on behind, and soon our textiles, our iron, our flour, our coal-oil, and many other things are regularly bought by eager customers. To the missionary all these results are subsidiary to his purpose. His supreme object is to convert the heathen ; and the college, the school, the doctors, and the charity are but means towards this end ; but they are noble means in which even the infidel and the unbeliever may well take part." VII NEW SOCIAL ORDER DR. JAMES S. DENNIS, speaking upon the sociological scope of Christian missions, in his monumental work, " Christian Missions and Social Progress, " says : u The evangelistic aim is still first, as it ever will be, and unimpeachable in its import and dignity ; but a new significance has been given to missions as a factor in the social regeneration of the world. They begin to appear in the somewhat unexpected rdle of a sociological force, with a beneficent trend in the direction of elevating human society, modifying traditional evils, and introducing reforma tory ideals.' 7 The non- Christian religions have as direct a bearing upon the lives of the people professing them as Chris tianity has upon its followers. Some go so far as to say that these religions are more sociological than is the religion of Christ. The castes of India are prima rily religious in their government, and Mohammedan ism fixes the place of woman in the home and in society. It would be manifestly impossible to replace the practices of one of these Eastern religions with the be liefs and practices of Christianity without producing a corresponding reformation of the social life of those who experience the change. In fact, in most cases altered religious views are primarily noted, not through 53 54 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS public profession, but by changed attitudes in the home and in the community. The method of missionary approach in the East has from the first tended to lift up the community and re generate society. Mission stations in all countries are always social settlements in that the home of the mis sionary is the centre of the new life. In the midst of the people whom the missionary expects to reach he plants his home and rears his children. When death comes, there he buries his dead. When the head of the household completes his labours, sons and daughters take up the work where the parents laid it down, until even to the third generation a missionary's teaching and living of a social Christianity is projected among the same people. In comparison with this form of social settlement, experiments in Christian countries seem but child's play. The sociological power of the Christian missionary home is vastly multiplied by the rapid creation of native Christian households widely scattered among the people. These homes are constantly open to the curious and the interested, who are not slow to note their characteristics and to take an inventory of their desirable features. We can here do no more than name some of the fundamental sociological victories already won in the work of missionaries, or such as are now being wrought out in Eastern countries where, through missions, Christianity is taking root : 1. Slavery is disappearing. It is impossible to con ceive of Christianity and slavery living in peace side by side in the same community or even in the same country. Not only does the teaching of Christ strike NEW SOCIAL OEDEE 55 at the heart of the system, but all missionaries have so lifted their voices in protest that the ownership of one human being by another is becoming less and less pos sible anywhere on earth. 2. The shocking inhumanities among Eastern peoples are yielding. Medical missions are teaching the value of human life. A missionary physician, braving a severe storm in the middle of the night to attend a sick girl baby, sets to wondering the entire community in China, or for that matter in almost any Oriental country, whether or not that little life may not be worth saving, even at considerable cost. It was through the appeal of the Christian mis sionary that China awakened to the cruelty of the custom of binding the feet of her girls ; and the custom is doomed. For fifty years Christianity cried out against the awful practice of widow burning in India, until that was made impossible. Through the agitation of Christians the attention of India's lead ers is being called with convincing emphasis to the cruelties of child marriage. Wherever the missionary has gone he has stood uncompromisingly for kindness, mercy, and fraternity, and on these Christian virtues Eastern society is reshaping itself. 3. The opium curse is lifting from China. The mis sionaries opened refuges in which the victim of opium might escape the evil, if he would. Thousands flocked to these refuges and were emancipated. At the same time was demonstrated the enormity of the burdens carried by China in its production and consumption of the drug. China woke from her stupor and, with the cooperation of the missionaries, the production of the drug was made illegal and its consumption a 56 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS crime. The Chinese have given the missionaries credit for arousing them, and have sought their co operation in the application of the restrictive laws. 4. The East has become ashamed of the social evil. Within the memory of many who will read these lines, Japan seemed to regard social impurity as a necessary part of society, and gave it official standing, making and executing laws for its profitable propa gation. Christianity lifted its voice and the leaders in the country blushed for the stain upon their nation, and amended their laws of control so as to made pos sible the escape of one who, repenting of the rashness of her choice, desired to be free. Impurity has been made to appear an evil thing, bringing destruction upon the individual, upon the home, and upon society, and to these facts the entire East is awaking. 5. The caste system is giving way. Caste lies at the centre of Brahrnanism, and all the selfish interests of the Brahmans call for its retention. Christianity teaches that one is the Father of all and that all are brethren. Many predicted that Christianity could never make headway in India unless it recognized caste. For three generations Christian ideas have been promulgated and exemplified. To-day among the loudest to proclaim that caste is the curse of India are the Brahmans themselves. They openly tell the people that Christianity is right in its contention that caste is an evil and that it must be abolished. A number of native organizations have laid down the principle that caste is a curse and cannot be retained. So far as a wide acceptance of the idea of the brother hood of man is concerned, the battle has already been won. It yet remains to overcome deep-seated preju- NEW SOCIAL OEDEE 67 dices and create a new social order to take the place of the old. 6. A spirit of philanthropy has been developed. Apart from the idea, among Moslems and some others, that merit is obtained by deeds of charity, the East has made little or no sacrifice to relieve the suffering of its afflicted and unfortunate ones. It seemed proper to the Chinese to drown their mentally weak and insane, while among none of the Oriental peoples has there ever appeared any clear sense of corporate or individual responsibility for the poor, the infirm, the orphan, and the incompetent. The missionary intro duced the Christian asylum for the blind, the leper, and the orphan, which has commanded the attention of national leaders and has led to the beginning of similar institutions upon the part of the people them selves. The fact that the missionaries have been made agents for the distribution of Christian relief funds given in times of national disasters, such as those caused by plagues, floods, and massacres, has already been so influential that in recent years ap propriations from national treasuries have been made for similar purposes. 7. The position of woman in Eastern society has been almost revolutionized. In the sphere of the home and of woman's relation to it the most sweeping and funda mental social changes have taken place. It is only in comparatively recent years that woman in the East has become recognized as a factor in society and capable of taking a leading part in promoting re forms. This has proceeded from the general educa tion of girls, at first insisted upon by the missionaries and later accepted and nationally promoted. 58 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS The temperance, Eed Cross, and anti-vice move ments in Japan, promoted and directed by Japanese women ; the anti-footbinding, anti-opium, and girls' educational movements in China, in which eminent Chinese women figure prominently ; the endeavours in India to make child marriage impossible and to ameliorate the unhappy condition of widowhood; not to mention similar movements in Turkey and other Eastern countries that have already sprung from the activities of an awakened and enlightened womanhood, are all illustrations of the important place now held in Oriental society by women. Such women as Pundita Eamabai, and hundreds of others who might be named, have come to the front out of the oid impossible conditions, and these in rapidly multiplying numbers constitute a Christian izing and socially revolutionizing force that nothing can resist. A purer conception of home, of the worth and strength of womanhood, and of the need of a re formed social order, finds in these, and in the multi tudes they lead, champions whose influence is rapidly deepening and extending. A social revolution is al ready taking place among the principal Asiatic na tions which began with the Christian education of Oriental girls, but which has now become of national and even international import, affecting nearly all phases of society. 8. The external conditions in the Eastern home have met with marked change. It is impossible that the same relations shall continue to exist between the educated and intelligent wife and her husband that formerly prevailed between the husband and his ignorant and untutored wife. Eapidly the wife's position is rising NEW SOCIAL OEDEE 59 from that of a servant or a toy to that of a companion and associate, possessing a common interest with her husband and capable of contributing to the intellectual, moral, and social equipment of the home. It is inevitable that there follow the "one man, one woman" theory in the home as in Japan and other countries, and that it should assume a place of greater importance in society. Simultaneously has come an endeavour to make more beautiful, wholesome, and sanitary the externals of the home itself. In Turkey this appears in the form of floors and windows in the houses, with living- rooms raised above the stables ; in India it manifests itself in better buildings and comfortable furnishings ; in Africa in an entirely new style of houses, even to the displacement of the old kraals with orderly vil lages ; and in all countries in making the home not only attractive but possessed of a permanent social standing in the community. There is probably no feature of Christianity that is making a more marked external impression upon the life of the East ; there is none that more quickly impresses itself upon the traveller and casual observer. The contrasts between the old and the new homes, customs and general ap pearance of the people who have been influenced by the work of the Christian missionaries and the institu tions planted by them, are patent and convincing. One needs but to compare a group of untutored chil dren in the streets of some Eastern city with a similar group of the same caste or class that have been trained in a Christian school to have indelibly impressed upon him the real sociological value of Christianity in the training of youth. 60 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS When we recall that in all mission countries there are now under Christian training, including Eoman Catholics, over 2,500,000 children, in whom funda mental changes in tastes, ambitions, ideals of social order and righteousness and moral character are tak ing place, we can gather some conception of the in fluence these are destined to exert over the old socie ties from which they are emerging, when they are leaders in it, as they inevitably must become. The social order of the East is rapidly undergoing funda mental changes that amount already in some countries to a social revolution whose origin can be directly traced to the Christian missions. VIII MODERN MEDICINE IN THE EAST L ET no one imagine that medical missions are here classified as a by-product. From the days of Christ until the present hour the sacred art of healing has been one of the most powerful means of winning an indifferent or an openly hostile people to a recognition of the truth. The medical missionary preaches by the silent practice of his pro fession as powerfully and at times even more elo quently than does the clerical missionary speaking from the sacred desk. The medical missionary and his dispensary and hospital are not a by-product ; they are among the most irresistible forces for the Christianization of the East. We ask, therefore, wherein human progress con spicuously appears in medical missionary operations? First. In the training of native young men and women of the East to become self-supporting medical practitioners according to the modern practices of the West. Every medical missionary trains a large num ber of hospital assistants, who not only receive much instruction in Christianity, but also in the simpler de tails of common medical practice and surgery. Some of these have shown unusual aptitude in the profes sion, and have later established themselves as self-sup porting modern physicians and surgeons. For many years at one of the large mission stations in Turkey, 61 62 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS where there were over twenty American missionaries and children and over six hundred pupils in mission ary schools, the general medical care of the station was in the hands of an Armenian physician, whose only training was obtained through years of service with a medical missionary. In this way, and not as the re sult of any plan for the extension of medical mission ary work, a large number of native men and a few native women have, during the century, gone into dif ferent parts of their own countries to practice among their own people according to the principles of West ern surgery and medicine. These, although incom petent when measured by the standard of the schools, are so vastly in advance of any other professional help at hand that their work has been a great blessing. Second. The introduction of modern medical col leges for scientifically training a force of native physi cians. This development of medical missions has had great significance. It has introduced into the East that conflict between old, traditional, unscientific, and often inhuman methods of treating accidents and dis ease, and modern methods based upon the best knowl edge obtained after years of careful experimentation in Europe and America. The controversy is now well under way in the great centres of population, and is rapidly extending into the remoter and less accessible areas. The medical colleges, either begun by missionaries, as the Medical Department of the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, or begun and conducted by them, as the Medical College at Peking, China, are increasing in popularity and in fluence, and are sending out each year men who, in all circles of society and government, demonstrate the MODEEK MEDICINE IN THE EAST 63 supremacy of science over tradition in treating the ills of humanity. Third. The establishment by native governments of modern medical schools. While missionaries had the high honour of carrying modern medicine and sur gery to Africa, Japan, China, India, and Turkey, no longer can they claim the monopoly. Japan has clearly demonstrated to the world the high character of the medical department of her Imperial University. Turkey has her school of modern medicine at Con stantinople, before whose faculties even foreign medical missionaries must pass an examination before securing permission to practice in the empire. China is mak ing rapid progress in this direction, and even India and Ceylon are considering the passage of a law that will prohibit from the practice of medicine all who do not qualify before a properly constituted medical board. The Indian government is handicapped by the fact that much of the traditional native medical practice is closely allied with religious rites, orders, and privileges. It is only a matter of time when the principles of modern medicine, carried into the East by the modest medical missionary, will become the foundation upon which all national schools of medicine will be estab lished. Fourth. Medical missionaries introduced into the East modern methods of sanitation. It would be an interesting piece of work to collect the list of medical missionaries who have served or are now serving upon local and municipal sanitary boards. In many places where no medical missionary is located the clerical or the educational missionary serves in the same capacity. 64 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS Out of such service have come better ventilated pub lic buildings, more sanitary sewer arrangements, the cleansing of sinks of contagion, scientifically organized methods of combating and stamping out plagues and epidemics, and, in fact, the development of machinery for correcting local unsanitary conditions, and for meeting such emergencies as constantly arise in all Oriental countries. It is a matter of interest in this connection that last winter when the plague in Manchuria was threatening Peking, the responsible Chinese officials held the meet ing to outline offensive and defensive measures in the missionary medical college at Peking. Medical mis sionaries took prominent part in organizing and car rying out preventive measures, and the students in the mission college were the mainstay of the Chinese government in the crisis. The Chinese officials in Manchuria and at Peking are free to proclaim that but for the effective services of the medical mission aries and the men they had trained, North China and perhaps all of China would have been devastated. Had such a wide extension of the plague taken place in China, it is impossible to understand how its rav ages could have been kept from all Europe, Asia, Japan, and even our own shores. This condition so impressed itself upon the officers and legislators of several of our Western states that they have made ap propriations from the state treasuries to help Harvard University establish and maintain at Nanking, China, a medical school for the training of Chinese young men in modern medicine, and for studying Oriental diseases and their cures. The motive for making these appropriations seemed to be the protection of MODEKN MEDICINE IN THE EAST 65 our own country from Eastern scourges, the very work medical missions have been doing for generations, but until these latter days without appreciation by the world at large. Fifth. Medical missionaries introduced into the East the new profession of the trained nurse. It is less than a generation ago that a class for the training of Japanese young women in scientific nursing was be gun in a missionary hospital in Japan. It was an idea wholly new to the country but it met with such favour that one of the nurses trained in those earlier classes was called upon to go to the palace and care for the young prince. At that time there were but few trained nurses sent out as missionaries, but the importance of the service they were so well able to render was quickly recog nized and at the present time there are comparatively few mission hospitals in any country that do not have a missionary trained nurse who conducts training classes in nursing for the young women of the country. In these hospitals the principal part of the direct care of the sick is in the hands of the native nurse. This has opened an entirely new profession for Christian young women educated in mission schools and ready for a life of real service and sacrifice. The ability they display and the spirit they exhibit in the practice of their profession is an object lesson to those who have been accustomed to believe that the Eastern woman is incapable of training for a service of the highest usefulness. Sixth. Medical missions are developing facilities throughout the Asiatic world for clearing up the great pest holes from which stalk forth at stated intervals 66 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS the spectre of plague and contagion, carrying terror and death in its grasp. An illustration of this point was given under the second point just mentioned. Wherever the medical missionary has gone and in whatever place the Christian hospital and dispensary have been established, these plague conditions, the character of tropical diseases and their remedies, the origin, cause and treatment of the various contagious diseases and epidemics have been the object of obser vation, experiment and report. In the school of trop ical medicine in London and Liverpool the reports of medical missionaries in Africa and their observations of African diseases constitute their best and most re liable data upon the subject. Cholera in Turkey is no longer regarded with the abject fear it once was because it is so much better un derstood and its treatment is so much more successful. If the sources of the scourge at Mecca were accessible to Christian physicians, there is little doubt that in a few years the disease would become obsolete in Turkey. When the missionary medical colleges have been more fully developed and when national hindrance to the thorough treatment of the plague scourges of humanity are removed, there is little doubt that they will disap pear i off from the face of the earth. In this the medi cal missionary is leading. Medical missionaries introduced modern medicine into the East and have taught the people to trust it and to make it indigenous to the soil. They have planted there institutions for the treatment of the sick and the wounded who, even to-day, are ministered to in large part by trained natives of the country, under the general direction of the missionary physician. They MODEBN MEDICINE IN THE EAST 67 have planted medical colleges for the training of the young men, and even, in some cases, of young women of those countries, in the modern practice of surgery and medicine. These are rapidly increasing in the popularity and confidence of the people, and already they figure largely in the new awakening life of the people themselves. Medical missions have not lost in the least degree their original aim and purpose. They represent the compassionate Christ yearning over the suffering masses of His ignorant children, to whom He stretches out His hands in loving invitation. At the same time they are introducing among the people of the East a new profession, are making the modern medical school x and hospital indigenous to the Orient, and are con structing barriers through which the epidemics and scourges that seem to breed in those countries may not break. This movement, steadily increasing in area and force, must eventuate even in the elimination of the breeding grounds themselves. IX COOPEKATION AND UNITY NO charge against missions "and missionaries has been so persistently and even viciously made as that they are spreading sectarianism among non- Christian peoples and exhibiting to the East the failure of Christendom to work in harmony. There has been some ground for such a charge, es pecially when made by those who have never visited mission fields or who have little except inference upon which to base it. It is true that missionaries sent by different com munions have gone out to establish work that, in a more or less direct manner, has some special relations to the supporting church or churches. In this way Bap tist, Methodist, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches have been organized among the native populations in the great mission field. At the beginning, the mission stations of the various societies and boards were for the most part widely separated, and the native Christians from one field saw little of their Christian brethren from the other fields. In such cases it made practically no difference to which communion they belonged. The label " Christian" was the prominent feature, while the denominational title became secondary. As these various missions expanded, the separating unoccupied areas were more completely covered, and 68 COOPEBATION AND UNITY 69 at the same time, union meetings of these communities began to be sought. It was then quite impossible for the native Christians of any country to recognize the vital difference between the Northern and Southern branches of the American churches, whose division originated in questions gathering around our Civil War that had been happily settled for a generation. Neither could the differences existing between the main branches of the Church of Christ be so explained as to convey to the mind, say, of an intelligent Chinese, the idea that these differences were worth perpetuating. Why should a Chinaman call himself a Scotch or an Irish Presbyterian, or an Indian in Northern India label himself a Southern Baptist? In the meantime the missionaries of all these organ izations were confronted with the enormity of the task before them. All about were millions of people who had never heard of God, or of Christ, or of salvation. It was impossible even in the lifetime of the mission ary upon the ground, and with the combined resources in sight, to reach an appreciable fraction of them with the simplest story of the Gospel. There was no time to explain denominational differences or even to make generally intelligible the denominational names which haply the people could not pronounce. Under pressure of these conditions, the missionaries of all communions at many common centres formed mis sionary associations among themselves for mutual help and cooperation. They were little inclined to discuss with one who was seeking after God the subject of church orders, or modes of baptism, or the best way to organize and direct a church. It ^vas but natural that missionaries should put increasing emphasis upon the 70 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS essentials of the Christian faith and forget, or at least neglect the teaching of, those tenets which make dif ferent denominations at home. These conditions drew the missionaries of all churches together in their common endeavour to Chris tianize the country to which they had been sent. Union and interdenominational schools, union medical work, and, in these last days, union churches have emerged rapidly and in great numbers. This move ment has gone so far that upon the mission fields, as in North China and in Southern India, there are theo logical training schools controlled, directed, and sup ported by different denominational boards and mis sions for the purpose of training ministers for work in connection with all of them. At the present time there is no little talk in China, Japan, and India of a National Church of Christ that shall bear the name of no denomination. Since this manuscript was put into the hands of the printer a movement has been started in Peking, China, by the Chinese Christians to organize the members of all the communions in the city into a single Chinese Church of Christ, having no special relations to any mission and to bear no name except that of Jesus Christ. This spirit of cooperation, compelled by the great ness and urgency of the task to be accomplished, led to the creation of conferences in the mission field in which missionaries of all denominations took part, and where general principles and methods of work, as well as facts relating to work in the country as a whole, were presented and discussed. Some of these confer ences, like those held in Japan and China and the decennial conferences in India, proved notable events COOPEBATION AND UNITY 71 and have exerted a wide influence over the work in their respective countries. Out of these conferences have grown national mis sionary organizations or committees, interdenomina tional in composition and character, commissioned to work in the interest of the missionary cause as a whole and not for any denomination. From these committees have come wide-reaching interdenominational publica tions, both for their respective countries and for Chris tendom, and through them the work in the field has been united, solidified, and strengthened. To be a little more specific with reference to these interdenominational movements in the mission field, we will refer, (1) to the interdenominational associa tions of missionaries, formed in most of the large mis sion centres. Such associations have been formed in Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, Hankow, in China, as well as in Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan, in Bombay, Madras and other cities of India. The list is too long to enumerate here, and there are large numbers of these associations even in the countries to which reference has not been made, where periodically in most instances once a month the missionaries labouring in the city or immediate vicinity as semble, not only for personal intercourse and spir itual uplift, but for the consideration of questions of mutual interest in connection with the missionary work in their district. Out of these associations have come committees who have in hand the sub ject of cooperation in all lines of missionary work in the field and other questions growing out of the work. Through these associations the forces in opera tion have been made more effective, economy has been 72 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS practiced and a spirit of the solidarity of the work fostered. (2) The union in higher educational work. It re quires a long stretch of the imagination to conceive of collegiate or ordinary educational work as denomina tional. As the demand for education increases and high .schools and academies begin to grow into col leges, the waste of the rivalry that had formerly existed between different missionary societies in higher educational work carried on in the same general area became conspicuously apparent. In the city of Pe king, North China, it became evident that the Presby terians, the London Missionary Society, the Methodists, and the American Board were developing their higher educational work along the same lines and in the same area. The great waste of this method of work, to say nothing of the influence upon the Chinese themselves, led to the formation of an interdenominational com mittee and ultimately to the creation of the North China Educational Union, which has under its direc tion not only the academic training for Chinese young men and young women, but also medical training for young men and young women, and theological educa tion. The plan contemplates, and has already largely effected, the absolute union of the collegiate educational work for young men, the same for young women, medical training for young men, medical training for young women, as well as theological training. The board of control is interdenominational as are the faculties of these institutions and the students come from all the missions located in that region and go out for work into the same missions. A similar educational work centres in Nanking, COOPEKATION AND UNITY 73 another in Szechuen, the great Western province of China, another is being developed and put into opera tion in Foochow, while the same process is at work in other great mission fields. Space will not permit even the cataloguing of these union educational institutions now established for the higher education of the young men and the young women of the East. (3) In theological training. Eeference has already been made to the union theological training for young men for the Christian ministry in the mission field. This method of cooperation, which, to theologians of a controversial type of mind, would be regarded as the last to be consummated and perhaps the first to be dissolved after consummation, has made steady prog ress in every place where it has been attempted. Not only is there a union theological training in Peking, Foochow, Canton, Bangalore, India, and some other great centres, but there is a movement in that direc tion which promises to make the theological training in mission fields wholly interdenominational. The school that has recently been opened in Bangalore, Southern India, for the purpose of training young men who have received a college course or the equivalent thereof for the ministry, is under the control of an interdenominational body and its faculty is chosen from missionaries representing several communions. Difficulties that were anticipated at the beginning have not appeared in this form of union work, while on the other hand, a strength and an enthusiasm have been developed that surpassed expectation. (4) Another form of cooperation which has not be come common as yet but which is full of promise, is demonstrated in the formation of the United Church 74 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS of South India, in which several missionary societies representing different communions unite. The various churches of the district covered, hitherto connected with different missions and bearing different names, have united in one general assembly, adopting common rules of order and assuming a single name. The churches thus combining to form the United Church have laid aside their denominational names and stand to-day as a united body representing the undivided Church of Christ. The number of baptized persons into the United Church of South India is more than 100,000 with half as many more who are on the rolls as catechumens or adherents though not yet admitted to full church-membership. The United Church holds its annual General Assembly and it is expected that other churches will join, until throughout Southern India at least there shall appear but one Church of Christ. These union church movements, of which only a hint can be given at this time, are full of promise for the future in the way of increasing the effectiveness of the missionary work done while saving a large part of the expense. The movements abroad to which allusion has been made have had important influence upon the work of denominational missionary societies in the West, and through these societies, upon the churches themselves. One of the marked results of these methods of co operation has been the formation of missionary con ferences of an interdenominational character at home. A little past the middle of the last century such a con ference was held in Liverpool, followed by one of more general import in Mildmay, England, in 1878. Then followed the historic Conference at London in 1888, COOPEBATION AND UNITY 75 the New York Ecumenical Conference in 1900, with the recently held, most significant Edinburgh Mission ary Conference in 1910. All these conferences have been interdenominational and international in char acter, in which assembled the leaders of evangelical communions, for the discussion of questions of common interest relating to missionary work. These confer ences mark the great, most influential and significant gatherings of Christians of all Protestant communions ever witnessed, and they are the direct outgrowth of the missionary endeavour in the foreign field. The coming together of missionaries upon the one basis of their common Christianity is compelling the churches of the West to rise above denominational barriers and combine upon a higher plane for the Christian con quest of the world. Growing out of the Edinburgh Conference is the Continuation Committee, appointed by that conference, composed of thirty-five members representing some thirty different denominations and sixteen different countries. This is the first body of its kind ever ere-, ated having for its object the unification of Christen- \ dona in the evangelization of the world, and is the di- j rect outgrowthjand a part of the missionary enterprise. It represents the first effort in the history of the Church of Christ to lay aside matters that have divided and to unite upon those things that it everywhere holds in common, in order to complete the unfinished task before it. Christian missions have been for the last century, but more especially for the last fifty years, the great force binding together, both at home and abroad, what were formerly rival if not contending denominations j 76 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS and they are now welding them into a cooperative body, working in harmony under the leadership of their one Lord and Master. Foreign missions would have justified all that they have cost in life and treas ure if they had accomplished nothing but the massing of Christendom for the winning of the world to Christ. INTRODUCTION OF THE EAST TO THE WEST IT is difficult to imagine how we of the West could have come to know in any adequate measure the life and thought of the Eastern races had they not been introduced to us by the missionaries. The merchants and the traders have taught us much re garding the products of Asia and the ability of its people to make what the West needs and to purchase what the West sells. Information thus obtained, al though valuable, has been gained through endeavours to make the contact of the West with the East finan cially profitable to the Anglo-Saxon, and not because of any altruistic interest in the Asiatic or any unselfish desire to see him improve. And in the contact of diverse races upon the commercial basis alone, the best of each nation is liable to be thrown into the back ground, if not entirely concealed, while the mutual endeavour to profit financially from the relations thus formed is bound to bring to the surface the worst side of all races. We can but wonder what the North American Indians would think of white men had they known only the politician and the trader, and how the Chi nese would regard England and America were their conclusions formed upon the opium trade, exclusion acts, and the endeavours of Western syndicates to ex ploit China. The claim is not that the mercantile 77 78 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS relations of the West with ^the East have necessarily been dishonest ; only that i because the relations were formed and maintained for the purpose of gain, it is impossible that such contacts should have brought out the best side or even the good side of the character of either race. It is wholly different with the missionaries. They enter no country and come into relations with no peo ple for the purpose of financial profit. It was and is the missionaries 7 business so completely to enter into the religious life and thoughts of the people among whom they live, that their customs, ideas, and deepest aspirations may be correctly understood and inter preted. It has been repeatedly stated that no Anglo-Saxon can understand the Japanese or the Chinese, and in general the declaration may be regarded as containing much that is true. Some who have been boldest in their en deavour to interpret the Japanese to the West, like Lafcadio Hearn and Sir Edwin Arnold, have gone farthest astray. If we should ask the Japanese, "Who have come nearest to understanding you, and have been most faithful in interpreting you to the world?" they would at once reply, " Yerbeck, Brown, Davis, DeForest, and many more who, after long residence in the country, using our language as their own tongue, and after the most intimate relations with us, involving the deepest and most sacred things upon which men think, have come to know us as no others have." When the treaties which did away with extraterri toriality between Japan and the United States were under negotiation, the missionaries were chief spokes- INTEODUCTION OF EAST TO THE WEST 79 men for the Japanese in the face of persistent opposi tion from, merchants and others. The missionaries, from their intimate knowledge, had the fullest confi dence in the ability and purpose of the Japanese to meet the new international obligations thus imposed. Time has proved that they were correct. In China the contrasts are even more marked. Our judgment of the Chinese and of China, if formed only from the information obtained through travellers, traders, and laundrymen, would be wholly different from what it is to-day. In saying this, we call atten tion to the fact that it is through the missionaries that the thought of Chinese students was first turned to America. It was the American missionaries that introduced the Chinese students to American uni versities and colleges, and even to-day the stream of young men from missionary schools to these institu tions continues to flow. Chinese students in America, coming from all parts of the empire, have been a powerful agency for breaking down our prejudices, and they have revolutionized our ideas of the country itself. Books of travel give a passing picture only of the patent and superficial, when written by the most painstaking of authors, while as ordinarily prepared they abound in misinterpretations of what is observed, with misinformation as to facts and erroneous con clusions based upon distorted data. No one would presume to give to an ordinary book of travel more than passing attention or refer to it for proof of the true character of a race or nation. He who attempts to interpret an Eastern people to the "West must know their vernacular as he knows his own mother tongue, 80 HUMAN PEOGBESS THEOUGH MISSIONS he must have passed years in their society and be familiar with their religions, thoughts, the life in their homes, and their personal aspirations. It is only the Christian missionaries as a class who have thus qualified to introduce the Eastern races to the West. The books that tell us of the people of the East, that take us into their home life and sympathetically reveal to us their loftiest desires and deepest thoughts, and the handicaps under which they live and strive and hope, are written by missionaries, who by virtue of their sacred commission have opportunities of learning and ^knowing them intimately. The mis sionaries have introduced to us the faiths and religious practices of the people of the East, interpreting these to us in a language we can easily understand. No longer do we look upon an Asiatic as inferior, simply because he is Asiatic. We have learned to measure him in the light of the traditions of his country and race, of his religious inheritance and his social environment. The missionaries have com pelled us to believe, and subsequent events have con clusively proved, that a man may have a dark skin, eat with chop-sticks, and do many things contrary to our Western customs and yet not be inferior in intel lect, in sensibilities, or in capabilities of advancement, moral, mental, and spiritual. The missionaries have discovered intellectual and spiritual giants among races upon whom we have been accustomed to look with contempt and have made it clear to the world that an Indian, a Chinese and an African are not by virtue of their birth neces sarily inferior in capabilities for intellectual, social, INTEODUCTION OF EAST TO THE WEST 81 moral aud religious advance. Missionaries have opened the eyes of the West to the unmeasured capabilities of the man we once despised. During the last century almost the only agencies to bring to the knowledge of the world the various races that comprise the populations of the Turkish and Persian empires have been the missionaries. We of America know the Armenian, the modern Greek, the Syrian, the Koord, the IsTestorian, the Persian and the Turk in their true light only through the extensive writings of the American missionaries who have been in Persia and Turkey for over three-quarters of a century. Even at the time of the inauguration of constitutional government there were more American missionaries in those two countries than all other Americans of whatever trade or profession. These have made it possible to understand not only these various nationalities but also their mutual relations and the bearing of these relations upon the existing state of affairs. It is only within the last decade that Asiatics have appeared in any conspicuous degree in great inter national assemblies. One of the first that attracted much attention and led to extended discussion and criticism was the Parliament of Eeligions in Chicago at the time of the World's Fair in 1893. The mis sionaries were responsible for the conditions that made that Parliament of Eeligions possible. In great international religious, peace, and moral and reform movements, during the last decade, the man from Asia, and even from Africa, has gradually taken his place as having something worth while to contribute. At the Edinburgh Missionary Conference 82 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS last year the native delegates from Asiatic countries, in proportion to their number, contributed far more that was of permanent value to the discussions than did the delegates from the so-called Christian countries. Three Asiatics were appointed upon the Continuation Committee of that conference, out of a total member ship of thirty-five. Because of what the missionaries have taught us in regard to the Eastern races, we have begun seriously to revise our thinking and our language with reference to these peoples. We have come to recognize their intellectual and spiritual equipment, which, under proper guidance, touched and illumined by the Spirit of God, may reach any stage of development, second in no measure to that to which we ourselves aspire* We have sent our missionaries to work for the people of the East, and are now learning that when they come to know the Christ in His quickening love and power, a partnership results in which new and potent forces are joined for further conquest. We have learned that we may be co-workers together with them in the ac complishment of the task we once thought wholly our own. Directly or indirectly, through missionary en deavours and what missionaries have taught, all classes of people in America and Europe look with more favour and appreciation upon Oriental peoples, are more tolerant of their so-called peculiarities, more confident of their powers of development, more sym pathetic with their mistakes, and more ready to recog nize that God hath indeed "made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." XI CHANGED ATTITUDE OP THE EAST TO CHEISTIANITY ANOTHEE of the great results of missions not entering into the plans of those who were in strumental in inaugurating the modern mis sionary movement, certainly not in the measure in which they now appear, is the complete change in the way in which leaders in the non-Christian world look upon Christianity and its promoters. Apparently it was expected that the East would be continuously and universally hostile to the approach of Christianity. There were no precedents or reasons for thinking otherwise. There was no disappointment in the op position with which missionaries were confronted when they first entered upon their work ; it was anticipated, and the character and vigour of it met every expectation. Eobert Morrison in China was so hampered by re strictions and open persecution that he was compelled to withdraw to Portuguese territory at Macao in order to continue at all. Chinese were forbidden under penalty of the severest punishment to teach him the Chinese language or to render any assistance. China closed her doors against all Christian teachers, and in tended so to bar them that an entrance could not be forced. The attitude of her officials was that of open and uncompromising hostility. For three missionary generations China as a great 83 84 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS nation maintained a stolid opposition to Christian teaching and to the institutions that the missionaries introduced, culminating in the Boxer uprising of 1900, which was aimed, not at missionaries and Christianity alone, but at everybody and everything foreign. The missionaries who attempted to enter India at about that same time met with the same spirit. The East India Company, governing the parts of India that were then approached, would have none of them. During the first generation of missionary occupancy a petition, signed by several hundred leading Moham medan, Parsi, and Hindu citizens of Bombay, was pre sented to the governor, urging him to expel at once all Christian missionaries as disturbers of the peace and as calculated to make trouble by their presence and teaching. The Brahmans as a class maintained their attitude of hostility, which at times broke out into fierce opposition to the foreigners and persecution of Indians who became identified with the new religion. Among Moslems as well as Greeks and Armenians in Turkey the attitude towards missionaries and their teachings was one of open conflict. The nominal Christians declared that the missionaries had come to disintegrate and destroy their nation, while the Mo hammedans saw in their work only that which would weaken the national power of Islam, if not lead to its complete overthrow. The school, the printing-press, the hospital, the church, all were looked upon as ene mies of the then existing order, which in the minds of all classes was to be maintained at all hazards. In Japan open defiance to Christianity continued down to within forty years. In my office in Boston there hangs a board upon which is painted in Japanese CHANGED ATTITUDE OP THE EAST 85 characters a notice that all Japanese are forbidden, at the peril of their lives, to look with favour upon Chris tianity or to countenance it in any form ; this board and thousands of its kind were posted at the crossroads in that country up to within forty years. Japan as a nation stood in fear of the encroachment of that re ligion, and fought against it by restrictive laws and regulations. In Spain even to within thirty years missionaries were subjected to much open persecution and personal indignities. The right to meet for worship in any way not under the direction of or sanctioned by the State Church was regarded as a perilous precedent. Spaniards were intimidated, boycotts were practiced, assemblies were stoned, and almost every measure, short of actual murder and expulsion, was used to stop the spread of Protestant ideas. Practically the same experiences followed the attempt to enter Mexico, ex cept that here one missionary was put to death and missionaries even withdrew for a time to permit the storm of opposition to pass. The story of the entrance of Christianity into Africa is too well known to call for repetition here. The many martyrdoms that cast their grim shadow over the history of the approach of missionaries to different parts of that dark continent tell their own tale of hatred and hostility surpassed by that of no other country. Missionaries at the beginning of the century of modern missions entered almost every field against barred doors, guarded by prejudice, hatred, and de termined opposition. They were not surprised at their reception or daunted by it. They were there as 86 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS the ambassadors of Jesus Christ to seek and to save the lost. To this work they gave themselves with abandon, paying little heed to the leaders of the per secuting forces. To them their commission was plain and their duty clear. Largely within the last ten years we have been wit nessing among Eastern governments, official classes, and recognized native leaders changes in their attitude towards Christianity that constitute almost a revolu tion. The atmosphere of their religious thinking seems to have undergone a change that has reversed the old order of things, giving to Christ and His Gos pel a place in their estimation that fifty years ago would not have been deemed possible. No longer is Christianity in China the religion of the " foreign devils." The attitude of the official and educated classes towards the religion of the leading nations of the West is friendly and becoming more and more so. Since 1900 thousands of proud mandarins have given thought to the fundamental claims of the Gospel of Christ. The highest officials are ready to send, and are sending, each year at the expense of the government from fifty to one hundred of her choicest young men for education in Christian America, that they may be better equipped for the widest service to China. Chinese Christians are not barred from pub lic office, and China's attitude towards Christianity is no longer that of suspicion and hostility. The revolution in China culminating in the over throw of the old Manchu dynasty has produced also a revolution in the religious ideas of the leaders or rather has thrown the leadership of one-quarter of the human race, one-third of the non-Christian world, into the CHANGED ATTITUDE OF THE EAST 87 hands of those who are either professing Christians or who are not hostile to it. One of the first proclamations issued by the Pro visional President, Dr. Sun, and by the president, nominated by the retiring Manchus and elected by the National Assembly, Yuan Shih Kai, proclaimed re ligious liberty for all Chinese subjects. Christianity is looked upon with favour by the leaders of New China while a large proportion of the members of the Cabinet and the provincial officials of different prov inces are men who have for years identified them selves with the Church. Suddenly and unexpectedly, suspicious, hostile China has changed her attitude and is making it possible to nationalize Christianity in the heart of that old empire. One needs but to study the recent literature of India, and especially the periodicals, to learn of the sweeping changes that are taking place among the Hindus in their attitude towards Jesus Christ and His teachings. He is almost universally praised by all classes in that country, and multitudes of Hindus declare that the religion of Christ is to be the religion of all India. The governments of India and Ceylon are wholly friendly to the missionaries, for the support of whose work large annual subsidies are given. Officials of almost every rank in all parts of the country freely declare their appreciation of the work missionaries are carrying on in the country by way of medical work, education and industrial training. Former hostility has been converted into helpful cooperation in promoting many lines of missionary work and a full recognition of the civilizing influence and the social uplift of the presence of missionaries in 88 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS the country and the institutions they have been instru mental in establishing. All India has become the friend and the supporter of missionaries. In Turkey all classes, including many of the highest officials of the leading races, are outspoken in their ap preciation of what missionaries have accomplished for the people of that country. The counsel of the mis sionaries is sought by Moslem officials, their aid in many directions is solicited, missionary institutions are widely patronized. The warmest friends and most liberal supporters of Protestant institutions are found among the Armenians and the Greeks. Mission Christian schools have come to be recognized as belong ing to New Turkey and as constituting a large part of the reform movement. In Catholic countries, like Spain and Mexico, the whole atmosphere in which the missionary lives and works has undergone a sweeping change. A great political party in Spain stands for precisely those prin ciples of liberty of conscience and freedom to worship God according to its dictates for which Protestant mis sionaries and Spaniards were severely persecuted a generation ago, and Mexico has at its head a president who is not regarded as a Eoman Catholic, but who in his sympathies represents Protestantism. Soon after his inauguration as president, in acknowl edging the receipt of a Spanish Bible presented to him by a body of missionaries, Madero said, "I heartily congratulate you on the good work you are doing in cooperating for the moral upbuilding of the Mexican people. Continue your good work and you will thus cooperate with me in the uplifting of the masses." The changes in Japan are not less fundamental and CHANGED ATTITUDE OF THE EAST 89 sweeping. No longer is the profession of Christianity a crime, but the Japanese are beginning to think in terms of Christianity. Christians edit the leading journals, while parliament shapes the laws of the empire to harmonize with the laws of Christ. A Japa nese, himself not a member of the Church or even a professing Christian, declared in an article in the September, 1911, number of the Century Magazine that / W he believed that not less than 5,000,000 Japanese to-/ day accept Jesus as Master and are trying to serve Him to the best of their ability. In the winter of 1912, the Vice-Minister of Home Affairs in Japan assembled a conference of represent atives of Buddhism, Shintoism and Christianity. The calling of such a conference is interpreted by the Jap anese as the recognition of Christianity as one of the three religions of the empire, to be utilized by the state for the promotion of national morality. It is understood that this was the purpose of the assembly, the plan con templating the putting of Christianity upon the same official footing as the other two religions. Thus within forty years from the period of open persecution, official suggestion is made that Christianity have national rec ognition and be classed as one of the religions of Japan. In a word, the former hostile attitude of the non- Christian world towards Jesus Christ and His Gospel has met with an overwhelming change. The Christian teacher is welcomed, the Christian Gospel in many of its essential features meets with wide intellectual assent, Christian institutions are regarded as among the most beneficent institutions of the laud, and the missionaries are recognized as the best friends and most helpful pro moters of good order and the coveted new civilization. I XII MISSIONS AND NATIONAL LIFE f | ^HEEE are few topics upon which one can more easily go astray or that are less under stood. If the title as given imparts the im pression that Protestant missionaries have political aims in the prosecution of their work, then the topic should be reconsidered or a clear explanation made. Protestant missionaries carry on their work with no political or national aim. Any missionary or group of missionaries that should undertake to lead, foster or encourage a political movement hostile to the existing order in any country would not be tolerated by any Protestant missionary society. The missionaries are the guests of the countries to which they are sent, and as such their loyalty and the loyalty of their institutions to the government are im peratively demanded. Under Abdul-Hamid in Turkey native preachers who were known to participate in revolutionary propa ganda were always summarily dismissed from mission- f ary service, and active revolutionary students in mis- sionary schools were sent to their homes. In recent months in China the missionaries have exercised the closest supervision over their college students, that the colleges themselves should not become involved on either side of the great political question that was shak ing the empire to its foundation. In one instance at 90 MISSIONS AND NATIONAL LIFE 91 least over two hundred male students were dismissed and the college was closed to prevent the entire body from joining the new party in revolution while the Manchu dynasty was still upon the throne. Only a few weeks ago the grand vizier of the Turkish cabinet in conference with the American Ambassador at Constantinople raised an objection to the extension of American missionary schools in Turkey, " be cause," said he, "they are hotbeds of revolution and sedition." The ambassador replied, "In your own national schools, even here at the capital, during the last five years you have arrested, punished, and sent into exile hundreds of young men for disloyalty ; give me an instance where you or your officers have traced a single case of seditious propaganda or revolution to an American missionary school." The grand vizier was forced to acknowledge that he could not name a case. In the fourth century Augustine, in answer to the charge that Christianity is adverse to the interests of state, said : "Let those that profess that the Christian religion is hostile to the republic give us military men, provincials, husbands, parents, sons, masters, serv ants, kings, judges, and administrators equal to those Christianity has formed. Instead of resisting this doctrine, let them rather own that if all obeyed it, it would powerfully increase the prosperity of the re public." A prolonged and minute study of the results of mis sions with relation to the national life reveals the fact that in the Christian and missionary institutions of the last generation, as well as in the present, there have been trained men of outstanding ability, wisdom, fore- 92 HUMAN PEOGKESS THROUGH MISSIONS sight, and leadership who have wrought mightily in directing their respective countries into much needed and now highly appreciated reforms. In Japan we have but to name such men as Count Okuma, Prince Iwakura, Baron Komura, Yiscount Hayashi, Count Inouye, and Viscount Ito, who figured so conspicuously in the revolution that changed Japan from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional govern ment. Then follow more modern leaders in the re organization, like Lord Ichigo, Mr. Taguchi, Shimada Saburo, Mr. Nakashima, the first speaker of Japan's new parliament, and Mr. Kataoka, who succeeded him. In new Japan, occupying positions of com manding influence and power, such men have been found from the beginning and are found to-day who acknowledge their indebtedness to the training re ceived in Christian schools. In all the history of that empire there have been no more loyal sons than these, none who have worked more devotedly for the good of their country ; and yet it was through such that the world has been given a new Japan. In China the situation is still more striking. Old China was hermetically sealed against the invasion of modern learning and science, and Western methods of thought were ruled out as antagonistic to everything Chinese. Old China had cherished its time-honoured customs for 3,000 years and more, till, by common consent, it had become almost a crime even to suggest that traditional methods and ideas be changed. >' The missionaries pursued methods destined to alter these conditions by teaching the Chinese to read his tory, pursue a modern curriculum, and become familiar with a universal religion. This was revolu- MISSIONS AND NATIONAL LIFE 93 tion in the realm of ideas and in living, but without politics. The Chinese educated in Christian schools were as loyal to their country, often far more so, than scholars of the old regime, while at the same time they were compelled to think upon plans for the reform of national abuses. From these came the opium reforms, the abolition of the practice of binding the feet of girls, the adoption of a modern educational system, the inauguration of a periodical press, and many other measures for the improvement of local conditions and the strengthening of the government in relation to the other nations of the world. The very measures adopted widely disseminated new and modern ideas, until with a marvellous unanimity the country was ready for the overthrow of the old regime, which had shown itself incapable of reform, and for the inaugura tion of a constitutional and republican form of govern ment. A close observer of the East has remarked that " Asiatics trained in irreligious modern schools be come political iconoclasts, while those trained in similar schools that are decidedly Christian become constructive reformers." The facts will undoubtedly bear out this declaration. In China to-day the majority of the constructive statesmen who are direct ing the affairs of the new republic have either been well grounded in the principles of Christianity or are in sympathy with its teachings. It is the Christian scholar and statesman who is able not only to see the glaring defects in the life of his own nation, but who also understands the remedy and the best method of ite application. It is a fact against which we cannot argue that Chris- 94 HUMAN PEOGEESS THEOUGH MISSIONS tian missions entered Japan in 1859, and planted there the institutions of Christianity. In 1872 the new era was inaugurated, and within fifty years from the open ing of the country Japan took her place upon an equal footing among the nations of the West. Missionaries began work in China in 1807, but it was not until 1860 that any degree of freedom was allowed them, and not until 1901 that open and persistent opposition upon the part of the national leaders was overcome. In 1912 China proclaimed a constitution upon a modern basis. Missionaries began in the Turkish empire in 1819, and in the face of a system of opposition and persecution experienced in no other country, Chris tian institutions were established in all parts of the empire. In 1908 a constitution was proclaimed with general education. This is practically also the story of Persia, Korea, Burma, and the islands of the Pacific, and of the entire Eastern world where Christian mis sionaries have entered and established institutions of the Gospel. Beneficent national changes have inevi tably followed the planting of Christian institutions, through which the conditions of the people have been improved, society elevated, a better order maintained, and a new national life inaugurated. It is interesting to compare the progress made in any one of these countries named with that made in coun tries like Tibet or Bokhara or Afghanistan, from which the modern missionary movement has been barred. These last stand intellectually, socially, religiously, and politically wnere they were a century and more ago, while every country in which missionaries have established themselves has made conspicuous progress. It is not to be understood that credit is claimed by MISSIONS AND NATIONAL LIFE 95 missionaries for all recent progress made in Eastern countries. Many Christianizing and civilizing forces other than missionary have been in operation during the last half century influencing mightily the intel lectual, moral, and national life of Asia. Many of these forces have acted in conjunction with mission institutions, and some have been wholly independent. We must, however, give missions first place in the organization and execution of the plan to establish Christianity in the minds, hearts, and lives of Asiatics, and with the purpose through the seed thus planted, to produce a New East. Buddhism, Shintoism, and Confucianism did all in their power for old Japan, but were incompetent to produce the changes necessary to meet the demands of the modern era. Until the present year Confucianism and Buddhism provided the moral and religious foun dation for China, but this proved wholly inadequate to meet the needs of an awakened empire. Paganism in its grossest form produced the government of the is lands of the Pacific until Christianity entered, and now the islands are few that do not possess an orderly and righteous government which is practically Christian. Mohammedanism has shown itself throughout its his tory incapable of providing a just and safe adminis tration for any people, and history tells us the kind of government Hinduism and Mohammedanism together gave India until England interfered. None of these religions furnish a moral or ethical background suffi ciently broad and deep and strong to give stability and power to a nation, and to enable it to maintain its in dependent position when brought into close relations with the Christian nations of the West. The mission- 96 HUMAN PROGRESS THROUGH MISSIONS aries and influences exerted by contact with Christian countries lay the foundation in new religious and moral conceptions which eventuate in Christian character, a new society, and reformed national practices. Christianity alone, altruistic, enlightened, aggres sive, can create the motive and furnish the training re quired by individuals and by society, in America or Europe or any other country, to produce the highest type of social and national life, and to give to that life a stability that selfishness, ignorance, and fanaticism cannot imperil. Printed in the United States of America