FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE mm HELENBARRETTMONTGOMERY Q..7-i.lLi- ^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^ Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. 1- BV 2520 .M7 Montgomery, Helen Barrett 1861-1934. Fol lowing the sunrise BURMA S PKOPIIECY TREE GROWING OVER IMAGE OF BUDDHA Following the Sunrise A Century of Baptist Missions, 1813-1913 ..--"[jru^ *'''-^^ FEB '.^3 19 HELEN BARRETT MONTGOMERY Author of " Christus Redemptor " and " Western Women in Eastern Lands " " I am the Light of the World. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." " The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light." Published in Connection with the Centennial of the AMERICAN BAPTIST FOREIGN MISSION SOCIETY by the AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY PHILADELPHIA BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS Copyright T913 by A J. ROWLAND, Secretary Published December, 1913 TO THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP OF BAPTIST MISSIONARIES IN EVERY LAND who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained prom- ises, stopped the mouths of lions, out of zveakncss were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens; who had trial of cruel mockings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment, of whom the world was not worthy; to them, both the liv- ing and the dead, that great cloud of witnesses zvho summon all disciples to look to Jesus and to run valiantly the race set before them in full assurance that their labor is not in vain in the Lord, THIS IMPERFECT STUDY IS REVERENTLY AND LOVINGLY DEDICATED TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Pagb I. Back of the Beginnings i II. Beginnings in Burma 21 III. Among Animists in Assam 65 IV. India, the Rudder of Asia 95 V. The Chance in China 139 VI. In the Island Empire 175 VII. Pioneering on the Congo 215 VIII. Buttressing Democracy in the Philip- pines 245 Limitations of Present Study 281 Supplementary References 284 Index 287 ILLUSTRATIONS Page Tree growing over image of Buddha .... Frontispiece Early Baptist leaders 26 Adoniram Judson ^2 Ann Hasseltine Judson 5-? A Karen Association meeting 5^ Getting an audience in Burma 38 Gushing Memorial Buildings, Rangoon Baptist Gol- lege 50 The Vinton Memorial at Rangoon §0 Burmese Ghristian women 56 Ghristian Tangkhul Nagas at Ukhrul yo In the Industrial School at Jorhat 70 A heathen Garo 86 An educated Christian Garo 86 Ongole High School for Boys ii3 Ramapatnam Theological Seminary 112 Indian Christian converts from three castes. 12^ Preaching to a village audience in South India 124. Church and congregation at Bhimpore 132 ILLUSTRATIONS Pagb Sinclair Orphanage at Balasore 1^2 On the Mission Compound at Sivato^u 1^0 Chinese Bible-women and missionary 1^0 Missionaries traveling in West China 1^6 A morning congregation at Hanyang 1^6 Yates Hall, Shanghai Baptist College 164 Chinese medical students at Nanking 164 Mary L. Colby School at Kanagazva 186 Kindergarten at Morioka 186 The nezv gospel ship in Japan ig6 Waseda dormitory students at Tokyo 1^6 A meeting for the ivomen 2^0 Orphanage girls at Sona Bata learning to sezv 2^0 Starting for a tour on a monocycle 240 An operation under difficulties 240 Boys of Jaro Industrial School at work 262 A village congregation in the Philippines 262 On the veranda of the Union Hospital at Iloilo 2^2 A girts' Bible class in the Philippines 272 BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS CHAPTER I BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS Preparation for Missionary Century. Behind the beginnings of the century of Baptist missionary his- tory now closing, lay a great preparation of the Eng- lish-speaking Protestant church, of which the Baptists were so unregarded and insignificant a portion. Through the English Revolution of 1688, the Ameri- can Revolution, and the French Revolution, the bases of democracy had been so established that a new sense of the worth of the individual had been developed, a new freedom won, and a new sense of personal respon- sibility had been created, without which no foreign missionary movement was possible. Discovery and exploration had begun to batter down the thick barriers which divided nations and races. The control of the seas and the leadership in colonization were passing from the Spanish and Portuguese to the English and Dutch. The great spiritual revival of Methodism had permeated and transformed the religious life of England and America. A new spirit of prayer had led to a movement in England in 1774 to undertake a concert of prayer of two years " that God's kingdom may come " ; and America, under the apostolic call to prayer of Jona- 3 4 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE than Edwards, had entered upon a seven-years period of intercession " for the spread of the gospel in the most distant parts of the habitable globe." Two Providential Preparations. Of these wider providential preparations for the new era of missions it would be impossible to speak at length in the limits of the present text-book. It is necessary, however, in order to get proper background, to mention more fully two preparatory movements — the missionary or- ganization of English Baptists, and the historical prepa- ration of the American Baptists, which antedated the beginning of the missionary movement in the nineteenth century. Carey, "A Consecrated Cobbler." On October 5, 1783, in Northampton, England, a little group of Bap- tists gathered on the banks of the river Nen to witness the baptism of a young man. The minister. Doctor Ryland, who made entry in his journal, " This day baptized a poor young shoemaker," little dreamed that William Carey would become within nine years of that day one of the great missionary leaders of the age. He was no ordinary yotmg apprentice, even then. While he learned his trade at the bench he studied unremittingly. At the age of twenty he mar- ried and set up a little stall for himself. With a book by his side as he wrought, he became as expert in handling books as in repairing shoes. In seven years he became familiar enough with Latin, Greek, He- brew, French, and Dutch to read and enjoy books written in these languages. He had time besides to read the just-published " Voyages of Captain Cook," BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS 5 that was the talk of the day. As he read this stirring story of exploration and discovery he made a rude map of the world to hang upon the wall of his little room, and on this he followed the adventurous voy- ager, and as he read he prayed. The vision of the world dawned on him ; the great world untouched by the message of the gospel. As he read and prayed and meditated, a mighty purpose was born within him. Called to Preach. A little Baptist church invited him to become its pastor. His salary was about sev- enty-five dollars a year. By teaching the village children and working at his trade, he managed to increase this to a total income of one hundred and thirty dollars a year. Sometimes he and his wife and children went hungry. They could seldom have meat, but depended largely on the vegetables he raised in his famous garden. At length he was formally or- dained as a Baptist minister, and began endeavoring to communicate the visions and purposes stirring within him to his brethren of the Association. His ordination sermon was preached by Andrew Fuller, the most eminent Baptist minister of the day. A story is told that Doctor Fuller, one day wishing to have a shoe-buckle repaired, stepped into Carey's little shop, saw on the wall the big, home-made map of the heathen world, and there, for the first time, became acquainted with the vast dreams stirring in the heart of the young apostle. A Famous Pamphlet. At that time Mr. Carey was writing a pamphlet entitled, " An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conver- 6 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE sion of the Heathens." When he had it written and could not pay to print it, one of those obscure saints who have done so much in all the ages to further the kingdom of Christ cheerfully gave the price to pay the printer. To-day a worn copy of that rare little pamphlet is worth its weight in gold, but his brother ministers did not highly regard it. At a meeting where he was propounding the question whether the command to disciple all nations laid on the apostles was not equally binding on every generation of Chris- tians, the chairman shouted out : " You are a mis- erable enthusiast to ask such a question. Certainly nothing can be done before another Pentecost." Doc- tor Ryland, the pastor who had baptized him, said sternly on another occasion : " Young man, sit down. When the Lord gets ready to convert the heathen he will do it without your help or mine." " Expect and Attempt." But finally his persistence did gain a hearing. He was appointed to preach the sermon at the annual meeting of the Association, and chose for his text Isaiah 54 : 2 and 3. The heads of his sermon were two: "Expect great things from God ; attempt great things for God." While the powerful sermon was evidently making a deep im- pression, still it was true as of old, " Some believed, some doubted." As they left the meeting Mr. Carey grasped Andrew Fuller's arm, exclaiming, "And are you, after all, again to do nothing?" A Momentous Meeting. In response to his appeals the Association passed a minute that a plan be pre- pared for the next ministers' meeting to form a Bap- BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS 7 tist society for propagating the gospel among heathen nations. A little later, October 7, 1792, there met in the little parlor of the widow Wallis, in Kettering, twelve Baptist ministers, who proceeded to form a missionary society. Out of their deep poverty these twelve servants of God contributed thirteen pounds, two shillings, and sixpence. The richer churches and ministers of the denomination stood aloof from the movement, and it was the poorer churches, rich in faith, because nearer to the deep and simple verities of life, who by June, 1793, were able to send out as their first missionaries to India William Carey, a min- ister, and John Thomas, a surgeon. Missions Not Wanted in India. It is not within the scope of this book to follow in detail the story of these pioneers. The undertaking w^as regarded with the utmost scorn by the great majority of educated and even religious men in that generation. It had to run the gauntlet of opposition of the British East India Company, which at that time controlled India in the interests of dollar diplomacy. The officers of the Company would not permit Carey to live in India, unless he took out a license as an indigo planter and lived there ostensibly as a trader. Even as a planter Carey was so harassed in attempting to do any mis- sionary work, that he had to secure in the Dutch settle- ment at Serampore the protection which his own flag denied him. Here for seven years he continued his work of translating and printing the Scriptures. The scholarly work of this obscure Baptist missionary is one of the miracles of history. 8 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Carey as a Translator. Says Professor Henry C. \'edder : Between 1801 and 1822, thirty-six translations of the Scriptures, in whole or in part, were made and edited by Carey at Serampore. Of these thirty-six versions, six were complete translations of the Bible. Twenty-three more were translations of the entire New Testament. And to six of these some Old Testament books were added later. In four cases the Gospels only were trans- lated, in whole or in part. In making every one of these versions Carey had some share. Several of them he made throughout. In other cases he did only part of the work, but revised the whole. In all, he was directly concerned in the printing of forty-two distinct transla- tions. Four at least of these — the Bengali, Hindu, Marathi, and Sanskrit were his exclusive work from title- page to colophon. (Slightly condensed.) The Serampore Brotherhood. This first mission was started with the idea of being pecuniarily inde- pendent of the home churches. Doctor Carey, Doctor Marshman, and Mr. Ward formed an organization known as the Serampore Brotherhood. It was a simple and beautiful example of Christian com- munism. All their earnings were to be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the mission. Their per- sonal expenses were to be made as modest as possible. The little community of nine adults and ten children, with the native helpers and assistants, lived a life of singular beauty and happiness, as it is pictured in the remarkable letters of Hannah Marshman. Dur- ing a term of years the Brotherhood earned and turned in to the support of missionary work a half-million BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS 9 dollars. Of this amount, Carey gave half and Mrs. Marshman one hundred thousand dollars. In dividing the work, translation fell to Carey, the schools to Marsh- man, and the printing-press to Ward. Services to Science and Society. Many people have an idea that the early missionaries were narrow- minded in their vision of the scope of the task by them begun, in that they interpreted it as purely a service of evangelism. To such, the career of these pioneer English Baptists will be a surprise. The serv- ices to science and society rendered by the Serampore band have been summed up by a recent historian as follows : The first complete or partial translation of the Bible printed in forty languages or dialects of India, China, Central Asia, and other neighboring lands at a cost of eighty thousand, one hundred and forty-three pounds; the first prose work and vernacular newspaper in Ben- gali, the language of seventy million human beings ; the first printing-press on an organized scale ; the first paper- mill and steam-engine seen in India ; the first Christian primary school in North India ; the first efforts to edu- cate native girls and women : the first college to train native ministers and Christianize native Hindus ; the first Hindu Protestant convert; the first medical mission; the establishment and maintenance of at least thirty sep- arate large mission stations ; the first botanic garden and society for the improvement of agriculture and horticul- ture in India ; the first translation into English of the great Sanskrit classics. (Henry C. Vedder.) Influence on Other Churches in England. This enterprise of the English Baptists, while little appre- 10 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE ciated in many quarters in England, exerted a great influence throughout the world. The Church of England soon after organized its foreign missionary society. The London Missionary Society organized by the English Congregationalists, but having from the first an undenominational charter, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Religious Tract Society are among the organizations in whose establishment one can trace directly the influence of the pioneer Baptist society. Influence in America. The English Baptists exerted a great influence in America also, through their mis- sionary enterprise. Auxiliary groups were organized in many Baptist churches in the United States in sup- port of the Serampore mission. It is pleasing to Amer- ican pride to recall the fact that at that time many of the English missionaries sailed to their field of work in India in American ships, via New York. Doc- tor Wayland has said that he remembered as a boy listening to English Baptist missionaries who were entertained in his father's home in New York City while they were waiting for their ship to sail for India. It will be recalled that the first woman's missionary society in the United States was organized in Boston by Miss Mary Webb to help in the support of the English Baptist work in India. Death of Carey. In the death of William Carey, in 1834, there passed from earth one of the greatest men who have adorned the history of the Christian church. In character and ability, in labors and sufferings, he was no unworthy successor of the Great Apostle. The BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS ii words which, by his expressed direction, were cut upon the simple stone which marks his grave, are eloquent of the humility and simplicity of his char- acter : A wretched, poor, and helpless worm On Thy kind arms I fall. Nothing could be farther removed from the bustling and self-confident discipleship of to-day. Yet per- haps, in these words, with their quaint and almost forgotten theology, we may find the secret of the power which made William Carey different from other men. Preparation of American Baptists. We have traced briefly and imperfectly the beginnings of the modern foreign missionary enterprise in England. It remains to speak of the further preparation by which the Bap- tist churches of America had been fitted to take their part in the world-wide enterprise of Christian mis- sions. The Baptists had enjoyed the advantages which come from thoroughgoing and long-continued perse- cution for opinion's sake. Because of their peculiar views they had found themselves unwelcome in many of the colonies, and in the defense of those views had undergone whipping, the loss of property, imprisonment, and banishing. Some Baptist Principles. The views which made them singular at that time are those held now by the great majority of Protestant Christians. But in the early days of this country they were regarded as heretical and dangerous. From the days of Roger 12 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Williams the glory of the Baptist denomination has been that it was the steadfast defender of absolute freedom of conscience and complete separation of Church and State. When Roger Williams set up his new government in the wilderness of Rhode Island it was the first time in history that a civil govern- ment had recognized the equality of opinions before the law, " leaving," says Bancroft, " heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unprotected by the horrors of penal statutes.'' Freedom of Conscience Unpopular. It is difficult for us to appreciate how strange these ideas of Bap- tist Roger Williams seemed to the men of his own times. The best men in those days defended the necessity of rooting out wrong opinions in politics and religion by fines, imprisonment, banishment, or worse. They called toleration a word of infamy, and really believed that unless the State tried to make men think alike, there could be no settled govern- ment. Even Milton's noble essay in favor of tolera- tion, called the Areopagiticus, went only so far as to plead that " the many be tolerated rather than all be compelled." Roger Williams' Radical Position. Roger Williams went further than this, even to the full length that men have come in the three hundred years since he lived. " It is the will of God," he said, " that a per- mission of the most pagan, Jewish, Turkish, and anti- christian consciences be granted to all men in all nations and countries." These brave words were in a little book which according to the quaint custom of BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS 13 the time had a most thundering and imposing title: " The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Con- science." The book had two editions its first year; a great sale for those days. It represented a dialogue between two sorrowful angels, Truth and Peace, who, after long wanderings over the earth, had met in some dusky corner to confer over the hate and passion which curse mankind and fill the earth with tumult and misery. Controversy with John Cotton. When the little book, with the great thought and the long name, reached New England it stirred up Rev. John Cotton to make a reply. This he did with great earnestness arid the conviction that he was demolishing a danger- ous heresy. He called his work " The Bloody Tenet Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lamb." W^e must not even peep between its pages to see how the good man tried to answer Roger Williams. We must remember, however, that he was a good man and true, zealous in controverting what he, with nine out of ten educated men of his day, regarded as dan- gerous heresy. If there was one thing Roger Will- iams loved almost as well as succoring some poor fugitive, or repairing some injustice, it was a good fight. We are not surprised, therefore, to find him thundering out a reply to Mr. Cotton. " The Bloody Tenet yet more Bloody by Mr. Cotton's Endeavor to Wash it White in the Blood of the Lamb," was the name he gave his book. They were hard hitters, the controversialists of those days. They called each other names, hard, mouth-filling names, and indulged in all sorts of personal abuse. 14 FOLLOWING THE SUXRISE In his reply to John Cotton, in spite of its contro- versial defects, Roger Williams wrote one of the noblest defenses of soul-liberty ever written. It ar- raigns the bloody doctrine of persecution for opinion's sake before the bar of man and the bar of God. It sweeps in stormy music through argument, persuasion, humor, pathos, sarcasm, tenderness, hatred. It finally gathers in a great surge of pas- sionate invective to hurl against the tenet he abhors: " Yet this is a foul, a black, a bloody tenet; a tenet of high blasphemy against the God of peace, the God of order who hath made of one blood all mankind to dwell on the face of the earth, a tenet against which the blessed souls under the altar cry aloud; this tenet having cut their throats, torn out their hearts, and poured forth their blood in all ages as the only heretics and blasphemers of the world ; a tenet loathsome and ugly, a tenet that kindles the devouring flames of combustions and wars in most nations of the world, a tenet all besprinkled with the bloody murders, stabs, poisonings against many famous kings, princes, and states ; a tenet that corrupts and spoils the very civil honesty and national conscience. No tenet that the world doth harbor is so heretical, blasphemous, seditious, and dangerous to the corporeal, to the spir- itual, to the present, to the eternal good of men as the bloody tenet (however washed or whitened) of persecution for cause of conscience." Triumph of His Ideas. When Roger Williams died, an old man, poor in money, but rich in friends, rich in faith, rich in noble enthusiasm, the State he had BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS 15 founded was one of the smallest and weakest in a young, weak country. It did not seem possible that the ideas for which he stood were to influence the whole world, and to control one of the greatest nations of the earth. Professor Gervinus, in his " Introduc- tion to the History of the Nineteenth Century," sums up the matter as follows: Roger Williams founded in 1636 a small, new society in Rhode Island upon the principles of entire liberty of conscience, and the uncontrolled power of the majority in secular affairs. The theories of freedom in Church and State taught in the schools of philosophy in Europe were here brought into practice in the government of a small community. It was prophesied that the democratic attempt would be of short duration. But these institu- tions have not only maintained themselves here, but have spread over the whole Union. They have superseded the aristocratic commencements of Carolina and New York, the high-church party of Virginia, the theocracy of Mas- sachusetts. They have given laws to one quarter of the globe ; and dreaded for their moral influence, they stand in the background of every democratic struggle in Europe. Baptists in Revolutionary Times. Their steadfast adherence to these unpopular doctrines had been at once the glory and the source of strength to the Bap- tist churches of America. They were for the most part composed of poor and obscure men. Most of the ministers received no salaries, but worked at vari- ous trades during the week. At the time of the Revo- lution there were not a half-dozen highly educated Baptist ministers in the entire country, but the pres- i6 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE sure of persecution had welded them into a brother- hood, and the progress of liberal ideas was making them increasingly strong throughout the country. The outbreak of the Revolution found the Baptists doubly zealous. They had not only the patriotic stake common to all the colonists, but also the disabilities and injustices under which they suffered, to impel them to throw themselves whole-heartedly into the great struggle for human freedom. In fact, the majority of the chaplains in the Revolution were Bap- tists. With the accomplishment of the Revolution the repressive statutes against the Baptists were for the most part repealed, although it was not until 1833 that the last trace of repressive legislation disappeared in Massachusetts. Baptist Growth. Following the close of the Revo- lution there came a considerable expansion in the numbers and influence of the Baptists. In 1770 there had been but ninety-seven Baptist churches in the Colonies, and many of these so small that one pastor supplied several. A large number of churches too were entirely dependent on the chance services of traveling evangelists for the preaching of the gospel. In 1792 the membership of all the Baptist churches was thirty-five thousand, and in 1800 they numbered one hundred thousand. The proportion of Baptists was one to two hundred and sixty-nine of the total population in 1776, and one to fifty-three of the popu- lation in 1800. Their history of persecution and the necessity of vigorous upholding of religious convic- tion had not been without evil results. The danger BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS 17 of the Baptists at the beginning of the century was that a certain hardness and sectarian sufficiency had come to characterize them, as they saw the triumph ol their principles so long opposed. It was just at this time that the new vision of the world's need summoned them to undertake greater tasks, and led hem out into a deeper and more vital piety. The World of One Hundred Years Ago. The con- trast in the numerical status of the Baptists at the beginning of the nineteenth century and their posi- tion to-day is not more striking than that which exists between the world at the opening of the twen- tieth century and that of the nineteenth. When Jud- son sailed, one hundred years ago, the population of the United States all told numbered less than that of New York State to-day. The young nation was wrestling for its life in the second war with England. Except for a fringe of thinly settled States along the Atlantic seaboard, the territory of the United States was unsettled and for the most part unexplored. Roads were few, communication difficult, credit poor, money scarce. There were no railways, steamboats, trolleys, or telegraph and telephone lines. Europe was shaken by Napoleonic wars. In place of the German nation there was a group of weak and jealous States ; in place of United Italy a huddle of little despotisms harried under the big Austrian despotism of the North and the Papal despotism of the South. Italy had become " only a geographical expression." The Turkish power held southeastern Europe in its grasp. India, under the exploitation of the East India B i8 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Company, was closed to missions. China, except for a few jealously guarded ports, was a forbidden land. Japan and Korea were hermetically sealed against free intercourse with the rest of the world. Africa was a dark land of mystery and cruelty. Moral Conditions of a Century Ago. The moral condition of the world was almost as depressing as the political situation. The great wave of infidelity that swept over France, Germany, and England in the latter half of the eighteenth century was sharply felt in the United States. Not even the mighty im- pulse of the Methodist awakening had been sufficient to arouse fully the churches of England and America. It was in 1802 that the " Morning Herald " of London recorded that a butcher at Hereford had sold his wife at auction for one pound, four shillings at the last market day. Less than seven per cent of the population of the United States were church-members at the opening of the nineteenth century. In the colleges and among the leading men skepticism was both flaunted and fash- ionable. The churches were not only weak in num- bers, but lax in discipline and discouraged. In the beginning of the century there were only three pro- fessing Christians among the undergraduates at Yale, and in 1813 only one in Princeton College. Drunken- ness and gambling were common and unrebuked. Liquor flowed freely at every house-raising, even when a minister was to be ordained or a church dedi- cated. The lottery was so respectable that it was not frowned upon as a means of supporting enterprises BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS 19 of highest character. And, in fact, it was not at all unusual for a church about to build to appeal to the legislature for a franchise to run a lottery in order to raise the necessary funds. The Awakening. It is easy to see by the perspective of a century that the beginnings of the missionary enterprise, feeble though they were, marked the turn of the tide. The foreign mission enterprise was both the sign and the stimulus of the new life, acting and reacting on the life of the Church. When the philo- sophic history of the nineteenth century comes to be written there is little doubt but that foreign missions will be appraised as one of the profound movements of the human spirit breathed upon by the Divine Spirit. Bibliography Culrocs, Carey the Pioneer Missionary. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society. Marshman, The Serampore Missionaries. New York, Ward, 1867. Williams, Seramp^ore Letters. New York, Putnams, 1892. Straus, Roger Williams. Tilley, British in India, 1600-1828. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands, pp. 11, 12. New York, Macmillan Company, 1911. BEGINNINGS IN BURMA BURMA SIIOWIXO STATIONS or THE A3IKRICAN BAPTIST FORKKiN MISSION 80CIETT Stations of A. B.p.n.R.: Moulmeln SO LE O F MIL6 8 ■ I 1 I- ^ B Um^ltude V6 But from C Orccnwlob 08 CHAPTER II BEGINNINGS IN BURMA Beginning of the Moral Awakening. As the Reformation of the thirteenth century began with a young man, St. Francis of Assisi, and his twelve disciples, and the arousing of the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century, with Ignatius Loyola and his six disciples, so the missionary awakening of the Protestant church of America, about a hundred years ago, began with a group of five young college stu- dents. Their story is the richly illuminated border wrought by God's providence to embellish the text of the apostle, " The foolishness of God is wiser than man ; the weakness of God is stronger than man ; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty." The Haystack Prayer-Meeting. When in the sum- mer of 1806, a thunder-shower drove to the shelter of a haystack five students in Williams College, nothing was more improbable than that anything they could do or say should have echoes heard around the world. They had been talking of the spiritual dark- ness of so large a portion of the world and had been debating the bearing of Christ's last command on their own lives. As they waited for the shower to end, Samuel J. Mills proposed that they devote them- 23 24 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE selves to sending the gospel to the heathen. In response to the objections of his comrades that this was too great an enterprise for them to undertake, he said, in words which will never die, " We can do it if we will." Then they knelt down and prayed, and, the shower being over, went quietly home. The people whom they passed were as unaware that a crisis hour in the history of the world had come as were those others who thronged the Master on his way to Calvary, long ago. Obstacles in the Way. Nothing could be more quixotic, more impossible to the eye of calculating diplomacy than the undertaking to which they had devoted themselves. In 1806 not a denomination in the United States had a purely foreign missionary organization, and the English Baptist Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society had been organized scarcely more than a decade. The senti- ment of the vast majority of Christians was actively opposed to such an organization. Money was not abundant. There were almost no avenues of pub- licity through which to reach the churches, and the avenues of approach to the non-Christian world were for the most part tightly closed. But God could use these men, and he did. Recruits at Andover. These five young men, Samuel J. Mills, James Richards, Francis L. Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and Byram Green, with other stu- dents of like mind, formed a brotherhood, which met regularly to pray for the salvation of the heathen world. Later, when three of these young men entered BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 25 Andover Theological Seminary, they met with another group of students whom God had led to a similar devotion of their lives: Samuel Nott, Samuel Newell, and Adoniram Judson. These men joined the brotherhood, and all continued to meet and to plan ways in which they might realize their common pur- pose. Judson became the recognized leader of the group. Organization of the American Board. Their first idea was to write to one of the English missionary societies for appointment, but through the good advice of Prof. Moses Stuart they were induced to lay their hopes before the general association of the Con- gregational churches. As a result of their solemn and moving appeal, the first denominational society in America for the promotion of foreign missions was organized September 5, 1810. This was the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions repre- senting a group of Congregational churches. But even then the faith of the directors was too weak to undertake full financial responsibility for the enterprise ; and corre- spondence was entered into with the London Missionary Society, proposing joint support. This proposition was declined, and it was a year before the American Board plucked up courage to appoint Adoniram Judson, Samuel Newell, Samuel Nott, Gordon Hall, and later, Luther Rice, as its first missionaries. During this year missionary enthusiasm received a strong impetus from the visit of William Johns in the interest of the Serampore mission of the English Baptists. His appeals through- out New England had no small part in securing the 26 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE support of the people for the projected mission of the American Board. The churches responded feebly to appeals for money; but after long and careful consideration, the Board voted to send the men out in faith that God who was so evidently leading the enterprise would provide the funds. Within three weeks of this deci- sion, six thousand dollars came in from all quarters. The announcement of the first large bequest for for- eign missions, $30,000 from Mrs. Alary Norris of Salem, still further encouraged the little circle of sup- porters. Adoniram Judson and Samuel Newell, with their wives, sailed from Salem on the nineteenth day of February, 1812, and Luther Rice, Gordon Hall, and Samuel Nott a little later from Philadelphia. Judson and Rice Become Baptists. The events of the few months following the sailing of the young missionaries and their brides were to demonstrate how God was using the consecration of these young men, not only to stir the Congregational and Pres- byterian churches, but also to bring the Baptists within the sweep of world-wide evangelism. On the long voyage to India by slow sailing-vessels, both Judson and Rice, quite unknown to each other, as they sailed in different ships, were led to examine anew the Scriptural grounds of their belief on the subject of baptism, and both arrived ultimately at the same conclusion, namely, that the Baptist posi- tion was that justified by the New Testament. Some time after reaching Calcutta they were immersed by one of the English Baptist missionaries. Later, while EARLY BAPTIST LEADERS I. RICHARD FURMAN 2. LUCIUS BOLLES 3. THOMAS BALDWIN 4. FRANCIS WAYLAND 5. WILLIAM STAUGHTON 6. DANIEL SHARP BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 27 on the Isle of France, it was decided that Luther Rice should at once return to America to lay the mat- ter before the Baptists, and to urge upon them the adoption of these young missionaries as their own. It was the hardest trial in the life of Adoniram Jud- son to write the account of his changed views to the Board which had sent him out. Yet that which seemed such a tragedy to the infant undertaking proved, by God's grace, a wonderful stimulus in widening the circle of missionary interest and responsibility. Luther Rice Returns to America. The young mis- sionaries thus cast adrift in a strange land, had good hopes of enlisting the Baptists of America to begin an enterprise of their own, and Luther Rice proved just the man for the task. Word had been at once sent to the Rev. Thomas Baldwin, D. D., of Boston, and the Rev. Lucius Bolles, of Salem, asking them to use their influence to secure the cooperation of the Baptists of Massachusetts. These Baptists adopted Mr. Judson as their missionary, and ap- pointed Mr. Rice to speak in Philadelphia, and then to go throughout the churches of the South. Within a year he had organized twenty-five auxiliaries. Scant justice has been done to the memory of this young man, whose self-denying labors in the homeland were as necessary a part of the missionary enterprise as were those of Judson in Burma. He traveled con- stantly from church to church, he gave himself but five or six hours daily for sleep, he denied himself all but the bare necessities of life, and for twenty years, without wife, or child, or home, in constant weariness 28 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE of journeyings among the churches in city and in country, he urged the claims of missions and of ministerial edu- cation. The Baptists Organize, In Philadelphia, May 18, 1814, thirty-six delegates from eleven States and the District of Columbia met, and on the twenty-first organ- ized " The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions," afterward known as the Triennial Convention because it met but once in three years. For thirty years all foreign missionary work of the Baptist denomination in America was done through this Convention ; but in 1844 the unhappy divisions growing out of the anti-slavery agitation led to a separation between the Baptists of the North and those of the South. The churches South organized the following year the Southern Baptist Convention, which continues to this day their agent for foreign missionary activities. In 1846 the Northern churches arranged to carry on tlieir foreign missionary work through the American Baptist Missionary Union, with headquarters in Boston. After the organization of the Northern Baptist Convention, the name of this organization was changed in 1910 to " American Bap- tist Foreign Mission Society." Driven Out of India. The difficulty in securing financial support was the least of the troubles of the Judsons. The East India Company was implacable in its opposition to missions, an opposition strength- ened at this moment by the news of the war between England and America. Ten days after leaving BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 29 Serampore all the missionaries were peremptorily ordered to leave the country and return to America. Permission was finally secured to embark in a vessel bound for the Isle of France, and the Judsons, who had failed to secure a pass, found a sea-captain who agreed to take them without a pass. They were over- taken when two days down the river by a government despatch boat and forced to go ashore. When all hopes of escaping deportation to England seemed gone, a mysterious letter containing a pass on the very ship which they had been compelled to leave was handed to Mr. Judson. The source of this kindness he never knew. They started with their precious pass in the dead of night, rowed hard all night and all day over seventy miles of the river, on the desperate chance that the vessel might not yet have sailed ; and at dawn, exhausted, saw the " Creole " lying at anchor. The Judsons and Luther Rice were for some time in the Isle of France. The Judsons subsequently went to Madras, and were again ordered to be deported. After a series of exciting adventures, in order to es- cape being sent to England they finally took refuge in a ship bound for Burma, at that time an independ- ent kingdom under a despotic and semi-civilized gov- ernment. To Judson it was the last resort. A mission to Rangoon we had been accustomed to regard with feelings of horror, but it was now brought to a point; we must either venture there or be sent to Europe. All other paths were shut up ; and thus situated, though dissuaded by all our friends at Madras, we com- mitted ourselves to God, and embarked. 30 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Beginning Work in Burma. There have been few more difficult or more unpromising situations. They were alone, unprotected, under a cruel and despotic government. Rangoon was at that time a straggling fishing-town, pestilential, and unlovely. They did not yet know what action the Baptists of America would take in regard to their support. The audacity of the undertaking was staggering. Here this young Ameri- can of twenty-five and his bride addressed themselves to learn a language of which they had neither gram- mar nor printed helps, among a people to whose cus- toms and ideas they were utter strangers. Here Mrs. Judson brought forth her first baby with no attendant save her husband. Here, while toiling terribly to learn the language, the Judsons lost no opportunity to speak or write to those about them in regard to the great purpose for which they had come — the dissem- ination of the gospel of Christ. It was not until 1815 that they learned of the action of the Triennial Con- vention in formally adopting them as the first mis- sionaries of the American Baptists. Meanwhile, a little wayside chapel had been built in which Mr. Judson received any who would come to him, and here he reasoned with them of life and death, of God and the soul, and the love of Christ. First-Fruits. At last the thrilling day came when he faced his first inquirer, six years from the time he had landed at Rangoon. Soon after came the exquisite joy of secretly baptizing their first timid convert, for it was death for a Buddhist to apostatize at this time. When, at nightfall, two others were later baptized, BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 31 Mrs. Jitdson wrote to a friend in America, " We felt, on the banks of the water, as a little, feeble, solitary band. Perhaps Jesus looked down on us, and pitied and forgave our weaknesses." Slowly, one by one, the group of believers augmented until in 1822 Mr. Judson baptized the eighteenth convert. In 1820 this infant Burmese church addressed a letter to the breth- ren in America that thrills one with a sense of apos- tolic fervor. It began, " Brethren all, who live in America, the brethren who live in Burma address you," — and closed with this postscript, " Brethren, there are in the country nine persons who have be- come disciples," Days in the Prison Pen. Dark and terrible days were ahead of the little church. Since the Apostle Paul penned the story of his sufferings for the gospel, there is no more heroic story than that of the hard- ships endured by the Judsons during this period. With the outbreak of war between Burma and Eng- land in 1824, Air. Judson and Doctor Price were thrown into the death-prison at Ava, there to lie in a hot, stifling, dark, and filthy hovel, in which lay hud- dled a hundred prisoners in heavy chains. Here, with no food except what his heroic wife could get to him, part of the time dragging five heavy fetters, Judson was confined for eleven months. At the end of that time the prisoners were removed to the death-prison at Aungbinle for execution, under conditions of such terrible suffering that one of them died on the journey. No aspect of horror was wanting: the filth and stench of the dungeon, the ferocity and cruelty of the jailers, 32 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE tlie physical tortures to which the prisoners were sub- jected, the daily selection of one or another for death, the roars of the captive lioness, who, in her cage next the dungeon, was slowly starved to death because she was the emblem of the English, the never-ceasing apprehension of what their own fate might be, the stifling heat, the constant attacks of fever, the insuf- ficiency of food and water, Ann Hasseltine Judson, Heroine. During her hus- band's imprisonment Ann Hasseltine Judson showed that she was made of the stuff of heroes. Although the only free European in the city, and absolutely without protection, she never lost her faith or courage. She besieged the governor daily with argument and petition for the release of her husband, she begged food from door to door, she brought clothing and drink to the prisoners, she bribed the jailers to miti- gate a little now and then the cruel sufferings of their victims, she built a little bamboo shelter in the yard where during the day the prisoners were allowed to stay, and under this protected her husband from the buming heat of the sun. After the death of the lioness she secured the lion's cage as a shelter for him. Dur- ing the imprisonment, attended only by a faithful servant, she gave birth to a little daughter, and as soon as she could walk, staggering from weakness, she appeared again at the prison with her frail baby in her arms to take up once more her daily ministrations to her husband and the other prisoners. When the prisoners were secretly removed to Aungbinle she followed. Here she nursed her baby and her native BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 33 helpers through smallpox, contracted the disease her- self, and was later brought to death's door with spotted fever. During the time of her terrible illness at Aungbinle, Mr. Judson, although not released from the prison, was allowed to go about comewhat more freely, and dragging his heavy fetters he used to take the little wailing baby in his arms from door to door, begging kind Burmese mothers to give it nourishment. A Pen Portrait by Her Husband. We are indebted to the loving portrayal of her husband, many years later, for our only picture of the young heroine as she appeared during those terrible days. It seems that on the advice of her friend, a Burmese princess, wife of the governor of the palace, she had adopted Burmese dress as an added safeguard. " Behold her, then,", said Mr. Judson, " her dark curls carefully straight- ened, drawn back from her forehead, and a fragrant cocoa blossom drooping like a white plume from a knot upon the crown ; her saffron vest thrown open to display the folds of crimson beneath ; and a rich silken skirt, wrapped closely about her fine figure, parting at the ankle and sloping back upon the floor. Behold her, standing in the doorway (for she was never permitted to enter the prison), her little blue- eyed blossom, wailing as it almost always did, upon her bosom, and the chained father crawling forth to the meeting." Joy Cometh in the Morning. When the war was ended in 1826, Mr. Judson, after rendering valuable aid as translator and interpreter during the negotiations between the English and Burmese, found himself, c 34 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE with wife and baby by his side, on the deck of a boat floating cahnly down the IrawacH on a cool moon- Hght night, a free man. " I can never regret my twen- ty-one months of misery," he said, " when I recall that one delicious thrill. I think I have had a better appre- ciation of what heaven may be ever since." Judson's Courage in Prison. Not once during the long months of imprisonment had Judson given way to despair. While undergoing extreme suffering he used to encourage his fellow prisoners, by reminding them that the outcome of the war was sure to turn out to the weakening of the power of the tyrannical gov- ernment. Think what the consequence of this invasion must be. Here have I been ten years preaching the gospel to timid listeners who wish to embrace the truth but dare not; beseeching the emperor to grant liberty of con- science to his people, but without success ; and now, when all human means seem at an end, God opens the way by leading a Christian nation to subdue the country. It is possible that my life may be spared ; if so, with what gratitude and ardor shall I pursue my work ; and if not, His will be done. The door will be opened for others who will do the work better. Escape of Wade and Hough. At the end of the war the work of years at Rangoon seemed swept away and the little mission completely broken up. Mr. Wade and Mr. Hough, Judson's fellow missionaries, had es- caped with their lives by what seemed a miracle. The orders had been given for their execution, the execu- tioners had sharpened their knives, and strewn the BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 35 floor with sand to receive their blood, the prisoners with bared necks had knelt to receive the blow, when a broadside from the English war vessels so fright- ened the executioners that they threw down their knives and fled. Meanwhile, the wives of the heroic missionaries, disguised as Burmese servants, had eluded arrest, and when rescued by the English were all sent to Calcutta for safe-keeping. Here they were joined by George Dana Boardman, a new recruit for the mission. Mission Removed to Moulmein. It was out of the question to think of remaining at Rangoon, as the English were merely holding the place temporarily. It was, therefore, thought best to remove the mission to that portion of the territory ceded by the king to the English, a strip extending five hundred miles along the seacoast. Here it was decided to establish the mission in Amherst, a new town which the British government was building to be the seat of govern- ment. Through an unfortunate misunderstanding, how- ever, between the civil and military commissioners, the latter, Sir Archibald Campbell, decided to make another town, named Moulmein, the headquarters of the army. When it became evident that Moulmein and not Amherst was to be the successful aspirant for population, the mis- sion was again moved thither to a site presented by Sir Archibald Campbell, about a mile from the army post. Here Mr. Boardman brought his young bride, to " a lonely spot, for the thick jungle, close at hand, was the haunt of wild beasts, whose howls sounded dismally on the ears in the night-time." 36 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Death of Mrs. Judson. Within a few months after the close of the war, while her hushand was still at Ava conducting negotiations regarding the treaty, Mrs. Jud- son died at Amherst. Six months later her little Maria was laid hy her side under the hopia tree — "the tree of hope." The agonizing suspense, the wearing illness had proved too much for the frail body, but the light of her dauntless soul burned undimmed to the last. Her life, so pure, so lofty, so heartening in its heroism, is the precious possession of all Christian women. Judson's Translation of the Bible. It is difficult to estimate the depth and weight of influence of an apostolic man like Judson, but in the long procession of the centuries it may well be that his widest and most permanent influence will emanate not from his work as an evangelist, ever the dearest and most con- genial to his spirit, but from the laborious drudgery of translation, proof-reading, and publishing to which he compelled his eager spirit. When he fell on his knees in gratitude to God over his completed transla- tion of the Bible into Burmese, he had finished one of the noblest translations ever made, a work that was to exert the same influence over the intellectual and spiritual life of Burma that the translations of Wyclif and Luther had over England and Germany. " I have commended it to His mercy and grace; I have dedi- cated it to His glory," wrote Judson in a humble post- script of praise and dedication. Bible at Aungbinle. One of the cherished stories in regard to Judson's Bible is that relating to the loss and recovery of a portion of the manuscript. In order BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 37 to preserve the precious pages, the work of years, Mrs, Judson had hidden it in a cushion which she sewed up in a pillow-case, and took to him to use during his imprisonment at Ava. When the prisoners were hur- riedly removed from Ava to Aungbinle the cushion was carelessly thrown out in the yard, and here the hidden manuscript was rescued by a faithful servant, and at the close of the war was recovered by the Jud- sons. The Karens. With the close of the war and the re- moval of the headquarters to Rangoon a new chapter in the story of Baptist missions opened. Heretofore the work had been for the most part among the Bur- mans; from this time on, its greatest development was to be among the Karens, or " wild men." These were a subject people found throughout Burma, but located for the most part far back in the jungle. The paths that led to their hamlets were obscurely marked, along steep declivities and in the dry bed of mountain streams. They spoke a different language from the Burmese, by whom they had been persecuted and oppressed until they were a timid, irresolute, and servile people, filthy and drunken. These Karens, numbering one-tenth of the population, were parts of a far more numerous aboriginal race, scattered from Tibet southward through China and Siam. Mr. Jud- son had first observed them in Rangoon ; " small parties of strange, wild-looking men, clad in unshapely garments." They were called " Karen pigs " by the Burmese, and treated with great cruelty. It meant death to a Karen to be found with a book in his pos- 38 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE session. As late as 1851, the Burmese viceroy of Ran- goon told Air. Kincaid that he would instantly shoot the first Karen he found who could read. Karen Traditions. The Karens were not Buddhists, but spirit worshipers. They had strange traditions of a father, God, named " Yuah," whom they once had worshiped, and of a book of life which they had lost. This book, they believed, would he recovered some day when strangers coming in ships from the West should bring back the book of God. Meanwhile, they believed that God had forsaken them because of their sins, and they propitiated the evil spirits, or nats, who thronged the dim depths of the forest. So similar were many of their traditions to the records in Genesis that it is evident that at some time in their wander- ings, through some source, they had been taught these stories. The Karen a Living Witness. The story of the introduction of Christianity among these simple and debased people, is one of the wonderful chapters in the history of Christian missions. Out of this despised race Christ has created a new nation. The breath of God has blown upon these slain in the valley of dry bones and they have lived and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army. One who to-day goes among the Christian Karen villages, sees the neat homes, the tasteful dress, the little schoolhouse built and maintained by their own voluntary taxation, hears the church bell summon them to listen to the preach- ing of their own pastor, cannot believe that seventy- five years ago their ancestors were cowering savages A KAREN ASSOCIATION MEETING GETTING AN AUDIENCE IN BURMA BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 39 without homes, or property, or education, or hope. The Karen is a living witness of the power of the gospel. Ko Tha Byu, the Karen Apostle. The human agent through whom the missionaries gained their first access to the Karens was a fresh illustration of the power of God to use the unlikeliest means. He was a robber and murderer, a slave of violent temper, indolent and ignorant, stupid and no longer young, by name Ko Tha Byu. He had been redeemed from his master by a Christian Burnian, and by him transferred to the family of Mr. Judson, as a house servant. While serving the Judsons in Moulmein his poor, maimed soul seemed slowly to respond to the truth, and when in the spring of 1828 Mr. Boardman re- solved to make Tavoy the center of his Karen work, he took Ko Tha Byu with him to interpret his sermons from Burmese to Karen. Here, on May sixteenth, he was baptized, the first Karen convert. His services were of the utmost value to Judson, Wade, Boardman, and Mason in their early attempts to reach the Karens. The people were so wild and timid that they fled to the jungle at the sight of a white face, and so suspicious that no hearing could be gained unless the way had been prepared by their own people. The old man, Ko Tha Byu, was terribly limited. His slow mind could never apprehend the full message of the gospel. Ac- cording to Doctor Mason: He had very few thoughts, but those were grand ones : The fall of man, his need of a Saviour, the fulness of Christ, and the blessedness of heaven; and he used these 40 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE thoughts Hke an auger in drilHng a rock. It was round and round and round until the object was accomplished. Up and down throuj^h the mountains went this hum- ble apostle, preaching, praying, distributing tracts. Hun- ger could not daunt liim. He waded rivers, he threaded jungles, he slept in the forests. His converts were fined and imprisoned, but persecution could not quench the fire he was lighting in the jungle. Little groups of Karens met stealthily at daybreak to read the one tract then translated into their language, or stole down at nightfall to receive secret instruction from the missionaries. When Ko Tha Byu died in 1840, after twelve years of disciple- ship, he had led multitudes of his people to Christ. The year he died, the Christian Karens in Pegu numbered twelve hundred and seventy, most of whom he led to the Saviour through his exertions. (Harvey.) In 1878 Karen Christians built in honor of his mem- ory Ko Tha Byu Hall at Bassein, at a cost of fifteen thousand dollars. George Dana Boardman: Founder of the Karen Mission. George Dana Boardman is rightly given the honor of being the founder of the Karen mission. He had the longing of the pioneer to learn what lies be- hind the mountains, and was the first of missionaries to leave the river paths and strike out for the interior of the country. He spoke Burmese with unusual flu- ency, and without waiting to master the Karen, deter- mined to go on tour through the jungle with Ko Tha Byu as interpreter. For three years he worked with the zeal of an apostle before death closed his brief service. When too weak to walk he was carried on a stretcher to the hills, there to see the newly arrived missionary, Francis Mason, who was later to become BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 41 the translator of the New Testament into Karen, bap- tize thirty-four of his converts in a beautiful mountain stream. That same night he celebrated with them the Lord's Supper, and died peacefully next day as they were carrying him to his home. Sarah Boardman. His beautiful young wife, Sarah Boardman, carried on his work for three years. She founded schools that came to be regarded as models by the government, she made long missionary tours through the jungle with her little son by her side. " She climbed the mountain, traversed the marsh, forded the stream, and threaded the forest. To Mrs. Mason at Tavoy she wrote : You would better send the chair; it is convenient to be carried over the streams when they are deep. You will laugh when I tell you that I have forded all the smaller ones. In the beginning of the fourth year of her widow- hood, she became the wife of Mr. Judson, and removed to Mandalay. She was radiantly beautiful in her home life as wife and mother, but found time to super- intend school work, direct the translation of the New Testament into the pagan language and interest her- self in all that concerned the mission. She died at sea on her way to the homeland in 1845. Work of Jonathan Wade. Closely associated with the name of George Dana Boardman in the founding of the Karen mission, must be placed those of Jona- than Wade and Elisha Abbott. Doctor Wade, by means of his great gifts as a linguist, reduced the 42 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Sgaw and Pwo Karen dialects to writing, and com- piled a great dictionary and thesaurus of the Karen language in five volumes. In 1833, while on furlough, he estahlished in Hamilton, New York, classes for in- tending missionaries, and so successfully taught the Karen language that his pupils were able to begin work almost at once when they reached Burma. When he returned in 1834 he took with him eleven recruits for the mission. Ilis stirring addresses, given in hundreds of churches, had created a new tide of mis- sionary enthusiasm, a service sadly needed at the time. The old hero lived until 1874 to see many of the tri- umphs of the mission. Elisha Abbott; His Training of Karen Pastors. It was in 1837 that Elisha Abbott began his course in Bible instruction to the pioneer Karen pastors. The Burmese had forbidden them to possess a book or to learn to read. Their instruction had to be in secret, at night-time, in secluded spots. The story is told of a chief who came to Doctor Abbott to beg books. He refused him, saying: "But yesterday the heavy fetters fell from your ankles. Should you be found with books in your possession you would lose your head." " So much sooner to heaven," was the nonchalant reply. In Mr. Abbott's time fierce persecutions by the Burmans had made the Karens unusually timid and nomadic in their habits. It was unsafe to hold meetings or to administer baptism save at night. Mr. Abbott has left an account of one of these meetings, when, in a village, three days back in the jungle from Bassein, he spoke from ten in the morning until mid- BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 43 night, hardly taking time to eat. Whole companies of Karens surrounded him, who had traveled all day through the forest paths without eating, for fear lest they should be too late to hear the white teacher. The people hastened out, spread a mat on the ground in the open field, upon which I sat, and they themselves gathered around and sat on the ground. A few old men sat near who would question me. All around was the darkness and stillness of night. Not a cloud obscured the heavens, which was spread out over our heads as a beautifully bespangled curtain. In one hand I held a dimly burning taper, in the other the Word of God. Mid- night had long passed away ere we dispersed, and then they withdrew reluctantly. His Advocacy of Self-Support. Mr. Abbott was one of the earliest advocates of the principles of self- government and self-support. In this, he was ahead of his time. The custom had been universal to sup- port native pastors on missionary funds. He agitated, spoke, wrote letters : self-support was the burden of his addresses. It was due to his championship and that of the missionaries who followed him that the Karen mission in Bassein was the earliest mission station in the world to demonstrate on any large scale how superior to the older system of missionary sub- ventions is the policy of throwing the burden of sup- porting their own pastors on the native Christians. Rev. H. C. Carpenter, the historian at the Bassein mission, has written a full account of this matter in his book entitled " Self-Support in Bassein," published in Boston in 1863. It is a matter of pride to Baptists 44 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE to realize that this principle, not generally recognized before the opening of the twentieth century, found such early championship and testing in the Karen mission. It has met such success in the Karen field that out of seven hundred and thirty churches, seven hundred are self-supporting, and that virtually all of' the six hundred village schools are self-supporting. " We use no mission funds for village schools," says a typical report. Parents pay tuition fees for their children in higher schools, and raise money for build- ings in addition. The boarding-school for girls at Nyaunglebin is supported by sixteen small churches, who raised money for the girls' dormitory in addition to paying all tuition. This very station was, not so long ago, a home mission station opened by Karen Christians of Bassein. Thanbya, the veteran Karen pastor in Rangoon, is one of the few pastors wlio receive compensation from America. Practically all the other Karen workers are supported by the people. The Coming of the Vintons. The name which has been most closely entwined with the story of the Karen missions in the affections of American Baptists has been that of Justus Vinton, who, with his young wife, landed in ]\Ioulmein in December, 1834. They had studied Karen to such good purpose for a year at Hamilton and on the long voyage across the seas, that they were enabled to begin work within a week after they had landed. There were so many invita- tions from Karen villages to come and tell them of the gospel that, with superb courage, they separated, each took a band of native Christians, and went thus BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 45 evangelizing from village to village. This plan they followed until 1848, for the most part in the district around Moulmein. Mr. Vinton's sweetness of spirit, his beautiful voice, his power in prayer, and life of self-denying. Christlike love so endeared him to the people that his name was known throughout Burma. Their Service While on Furlough. There are two services rendered by him and his wife which are deserving of special mention. The first occurred when they were in America, enjoying a much-needed fur- lough for rest and recuperation. The work which they accomplished during this furlough was perhaps as important for the interest of the kingdom in Burma as anything which they accomplished on the field. For 1848 was ebb-tide. The early enthusiasm of the missionary enterprise had departed, and a generation had arisen that knew not Judson. A nation has its moods, and the American mood was anti-mission. Religious feel- ing seemed cold and dead. Judson had written in 1847: It is my growing conviction that the Baptist churches in America are behind the age in missionary spirit. They now and then make a spasmodic efifort to throw off a nightmare of debt of some years' accumulation, and then sink back into unconscious repose. Then come paralyzing orders to retrench. New enterprises are checked in their very conception, and applicants for missionary employ are advised to wait. , . I thought they loved me, I thought my brethren in America were praying for us, and they have never once thought of us. The income of the Board had been so reduced that in 1846 they were seriously discussing abandoning 46 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE some of the missions. In such an hour Mr. Vinton returned home, and, going from church to church, made his appeal for the mission in Burma. Those who heard him could never forget his inspired prayers, his victorious faith, his story of the triumphs of re- deeming love. He warmed the frozen heart of the church with his wonderful singing of the " Mission- ary's Call." It is no exaggeration to claim for him a large part in saving the day for missions. Meanwhile Mrs. Vinton was doing equally wonderful work for the women from her sick-bed. The Second War Between England and Burma. The second notable service of the Vintons occurred after their return to Moulmein. Here they found the relations between the English and the Burmans be- coming strained, and the poor Karens suffering all kinds of persecution. One day one of the converts in Moulmein said to Mrs. Vinton, " Mama, is it wrong to pray for war ? " " Why? " said Mrs. Vinton. "Be- cause we are tired of being hunted like wild beasts, of being obliged to worship God by night in the forest, and never daring to speak of Jesus above a whisper. O Mama, may we not pray that the English may come and take our country, so that we may worship God in freedom and without fear? " " Yes, you may," she answered. And from that day the devout prayers of the Karen Christians were offered daily for the coming of the English. Their Service During the War. When the war broke out, in 1852, Eugenio Kincaid, the great evan- gelist to the Burmans, summoned Doctor Vinton to BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 47 come to Rang-oon to help protect the Christian Karens. Every village within fifty miles of Rangoon had been burned. Five thousand refugees were living in carts and under trees. Their standing crops had been fired, nameless cruelties had been inflicted on their women and children, and two of the pastors had already been crucified by the Burmese. Many of the Karens had been forced into the Burmese army to build the for- tifications and dig the trenches, but they could not be forced to kill their deliverers. No Karen bullet ever hit an Englishman. They either fired into the air, deserted in a body to the enemy, or fell pierced by the bullets of the men for whose coming they had prayed. The success of the British arms was ma- terially aided by both the active and passive co- operation of these despised Karens. Caring for the Refugees. The Vintons and Kin- caids were quartered in a deserted Buddhist monas- tery, and began their work of mercy. They built a smallpox hospital and placed it near their houses, so that they could better care for their patients. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the home- less, and ministering to the dying, they toiled both day and night. Companies of Karens came into Ran- goon from the jungles daily to take refuge under the protection of the English. A large school numbering over two hundred was built up, in which old people and children sat side by side learning to read the word of God. At the close of the war, the school was removed to Kemendine, and the foundation was laid for the present wonderful educational work in that place. 48 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Teacher Vinton and the Famine. After peace was made, the famine followed the pestilence. Thousands had lost all they possessed through robbery and war. Rice was selling at starvation prices. The Karens looked to Teacher Vinton to help them. People lay dying of hunger in the streets. He began to give out his little store of rice. When he had exhausted all available supplies he went to the rice traders and said : "Will you trust me for a sliipload of rice? I cannot pay you now, and I do not know when I can pay you, for I have received no remittance from America in a year. I cannot see these people die. If you will let me have the rice I will pay you as soon as I can." They answered, " Mr. Vinton, take all the rice you want. Your word is all the security we ask. You can have a dozen cargoes if you wish." He filled his granaries and outbuildings with rice, and gave it out to Christian and heathen alike without discrimination. So great was the need and so few the helpers that it was impossible to keep accurate ac- count. His friends in alarm said : " You are ruining your- self. You do not know the names of half of these people to whom you are giving the rice. How do you expect to get your pay? " His answer was, " God will see to that." And he did. Every cent of the money expended was recov- ered. When the famine was over that one act had opened the hearts of the people to the message of the gospel as nothing else could do. " This is the BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 49 man who saved our lives," they said. " His religion is the one we want." Thousands were baptized. Churches were organized. Chapels and schoolhouses were built, and the hearts of both Burmans and Karens were turned toward God. An Unrealized Opportunity. The glowing hopes of a speedy triumph of the gospel in Burma raised by the wide-spread awakening of this time were destined not to be realized. The plastic moment passed, the exalted mood of the people changed, and their will- ingness to listen was replaced by indifference. One of the critical opportunities in the history of missions was thus unrealized because of the lethargy of the church on the home field. Then, as now, the crux of the situation was in the home base. Baptists kept their " thin red line of heroes " on the field, but neg- lected to support them adequately. Stations were un- dermanned, promising work was opened, then aban- doned, because illness or death drove the workers home, and there was no one to take their places. " There are abundant signs of energetic and success- ful work in early days and of comparative neglect since then," wrote Mr. Cross, of Sandoway ; " there have been no male missionaries who stayed long enough to know the language, the work, or the people." If in that crisis hour of the early fifties, a serious, com- pact, concerted advance, adequately manned and sup- ported, had been made, Burma might have been won for Christ. Achievements on the Field. In spite of inadequate forces, illness, retrenchment, absence of comprehen- D 50 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE sive policy, the. work accomplished was a miracle of achievement. " Where in the middle of the last cen- tury there was a dispirited and uncivilized people, there is to-day a Karen Christian community of one hundred and fifty thousand, supporting their own churches and schools. They have, moreover, a foreign missionary society which they support liberally. All the churches contribute to the theological seminary, for the endowment of which they are raising a gen- erous fund. The Burmese also contribute to the main- tenance of the Burmese theological seminary, schools, and churches. Baptist Educational System. The magnificent schools of the Baptist mission in Burma are worthy of the greatest pride and loyalty. What other mission can show such schools? There are thirty-five high schools and boarding-schools; among them schools of the highest rank, such as Kemendine and Morton Lane, for girls; Mandalay High School and Ko Tha Byu High School, for boys. In these schools are about five thousand boys and fifteen hundred girls. The Rangoon Baptist College, the Christian college in Burma, enrolls over a thousand students — twelve hundred in all departments, forty-eight in college proper — and is a tremendous power for Christ. In 1912 the Baptist Christians of Burma supported over six hundred village schools without any help from America and paid, besides, in board and tuition fees to the higher schools, $93,000. It is in these schools that there is being generated the power which shall make Burma Cliristian. If the young jicople who are M b FB— CUSHlNc; MEMORIAL BUILDINGS, RANGOON BAPTIST COLLEGE THE VINTON MEMORIAL AT RANGOON BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 51 to be the leaders go out from the schools consecrated, aggressive Christians, nothing can prevent the tri- umph of Christianity within a century. Baptists hold the key to the situation. Karen Devotion to Education. As an illustration of the remarkable interest taken in education by the Karens, the Shwegyin schools may be mentioned. The churches in this district, in addition to doing foreign mission work in Siam, have built a house for the missionary ladies costing 8,000 rupees,* a school building costing 10,000 rupees, and a girls' dormitory costing 2,000 rupees. They raised every bit of this without any outside assistance whatever. In 1898 they bought about thirty acres of land for the school compound at Nyaunglebin, and have invested in build- ings already 25,000 rupees. The school at Nyaukkyi (pronounced Nowk-jee) has never had the oversight of a missionary, but has been entirely in charge of a Karen evangelist, who has put up buildings, engaged teachers, managed the boarding department, and made the school such a power that children have come four or five days' journey to attend his school. Fifteen evangelists have already come from this one school. The Mission Press. One of the strongest agencies in the dissemination of the gospel in Burma has been the printing-press, organized by Rev. George Hough in 1816, and conducted by him until 1829, when Rev. Cephas Bennett began his many years of devoted service. His successor, Mr. Frank D, Phinney, has * The rupee is equivalent to about thirty-three cents. 52 FOLLOWING THE SUx\RISE been in charge since 1882, and has brought the press to a splendid state of efficiency. This press has printed not only Bibles, tracts, commentaries, and periodical literature, but translations from the best works in English literature, and a large number of the text- books used in the schools throughout Burma. In a recent year, for example, ninety thousand tracts and pamphlets were printed for the Christian Literature Society of India, twenty-five thousand books for the British and Foreign Bible Society, and many thousand school-books for Macmillan to be used in government schools, besides Sunday-school papers, lesson leaves, and religious periodicals printed for the mission itself. This press alone is one of the greatest agencies in the uplift of all the people of Burma. It has been said to be Christianizing a nation by ma- chinery. Work Among Primitive People. Baptist missions in Burma have had a distinct call to the many primi- tive races found holding the mountain territory to the north and scattered over the plains. There are the Chins, 180,000 strong; the Kachins, numbering about 100,000, with much larger numbers across the border in China; the Kaws and Muhsos, and the more civilized Shans and Talains of the plains. Each story is of thrilling interest. The first convert among the fierce Chins, drunken and filthy, was a woman who was won to Christ by a Burmese Christian woman. It was the undiscourageable faith of Mrs. B. C. Thomas that established the first Chin school in Henzada. Out of this most hopeless-looking material BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 53 a thousand Christian communicants have been gath- ered, and recently thirty people from one village came at one time, were baptized in the beautiful pool with its background of splendid mountains, and sat down for the first time to the Lord's Supper. At Tiddim, Mr. Cope reports such an eagerness for education that boys who have worked all day in the fields come to school at night, study until they fall asleep, stay all night in the schoolhouse and get in two more hours before going to work in the morning. The Chin teacher preaches during the day and teaches at night. He works from 5 A. M. to 9 P. M. There are four such schools in the Tiddim field. The Kachins had, as their pioneer and advocate. Dr. W. H. Roberts, of Bhamo. Like the Chins, they are wild mountain people, always at war among them- selves, full of fear and superstition in regard to evil spirits. They too have proved to be fine raw material out of which to build men and Christians. Forty- four Kachin pupils from the school at Myitkyina tried a recent government examination, forty-two of them passed. The British Commissioner, Sir Harvey Adam- son, visited the school and was delighted with the industrial work. With his own hand he turned several furrows with the plow, much to the astonishment of the pupils, who marveled that such a grand person did not despise manual labor. Kachin Sapolio. " Before I came to Bhamo," writes Miss Ragon, " I had always heard the Kachins re- ferred to as the dirtiest people on the face of the earth, and I have never had cause to doubt the state- 54 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE ment till the other day. Now I know that the desire to be clean did exist in one girl's heart. She came to me for medicine ; her face, neck, and hands were all swollen and the skin burned off. Upon inquiry, I found that she had mixed wood-ashes and soap and had washed with it, rubbing it in well. When I asked her what possessed her to do such a thing, she very meekly said she had noticed that when I wanted things nice and clean I had my cook use ashes with the soap. . . The work is evangelistic in the truest sense. They come from such depths that Christianity must be lived into them before they are able to grasp it. Ask them if they understand the message, and they will answer, * We understand what you say, but we don't know what you mean.' The thoughts and ideals of Christianity are so foreign to their point of view that a statement of them simply means nothing to the mind of a jungle person. He must see them active in a man's life before he can grasp them, or before they appeal to him. I have always believed in school work, and for Kachins find it absolutely essential." The Shan States. The Shans belong to one of the great races of the Far Fast, numbering several mil- lions scattered through Siam, Burma, China, and As- sam. In Burma is the advance guard, numbering some three-quarters of a million, that through several centuries struggled with the Burmans for the mastery of the peninsula. They are, like the Burmans, Budd- hist, and have been very slow to respond to the preaching of the gospel. Since the opening of worl^ in the Shan States in 1860, at Toungoo, by Dr. Moses BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 55 H. Bixby, work has been done among the Shans. But in the Shan country, as among the Burmans, the richest results have been achieved among the un- civiHzed mountain tribes, the Muhsos, Kaws, Lahu, and others. Ingathering at Kengtung. It was in 1901 that Mr. Young, who had gone to work among the Shans, came in contact with the immigrant Muhsos. Here were people with a cotton cord tied around their wrists in sign of their belief in one God, their abhorrence of intoxicants, and their search for teachers to tell them the will of God. In great mass movements during the next few years, ten thousand of these brave, primitive people cut the cords from their wrists and received Christian baptism. The revival has spread quietly and irresistibly into other tribes and across the moun- tains into China. The first chapter of mass evangelism is barely closing; the second of the education and training of these primitive people is just opening. The language proved very inadequate to express the ideas of the Bible. For two years it was impossible to translate the Lord's Prayer, for there was no word for " kingdom," " hallow," " temptation," or " evil." The missionaries had to hammer out the language, as a goldsmith does gold, to make it cover new words. These people had a set of traditions which were as wonderful a preparation for the gospel as were those of the Karens, and were similar in character. The Christian Karens made magnificent response to this new opening for the gospel at Kengtung. Ba Te, a prosperous lawyer in Rangoon, gave up his 56 FOLLOVVL\G THE SUNRISE practice and was sent as a missionary to these wild people. He went on a salary of seventeen dollars a month, and, after years of devoted service at Kengtung, is now teaching in the theological seminary at Insein. Already the Christians in the mountain tribes are beginning to do personal work for Christ. Men in many villages have given from ten days to a month of their time in personal evangelism. Present-Day Problems. Interesting and valuable as has been the work among these primitive peoples, it is clear that the time demands a new emphasis on other work. Burma is to-day the richest province of British India. It is attracting immigration through- out the Orient. There are hundreds of thousands of Chinese, and the time is in sight when there may be a million. This great and growing and influential Chinese population demands attention. From penin- sular India come multitudes of Telugu and Tamil and Bengali people, who already number a million and a quarter. Jostling the self-satisfied Burman Buddhists are Mohammedan traders, Hindu money-lenders, Telugu coolies. In Burma's little " melting-pot " it looks sometimes as if the Burman himself might be overwhelmed. Work Among Immigrants from Peninsular India. The work among the Tamil, Telugu, and other immi- grants is in charge of Rev. W. F. Armstrong, his wife, his son, and his daughter Kate, a remarkable family. The Woman's Society supports eight day-schools, with six hundred and thirty-five pupils; a school at Ahlone, fifty-five pupils; Union Hall, Rangoon, two BURMESE CHRISTIAN WOMEN BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 57 hundred and sixty pupils; Mizpah Hall, Moulmein, one hundred and ninety-two pupils. One entire church is composed almost wholly of converts from Islam. There is a beautiful Bible-woman, Sarahama, who speaks Tamil and Telugu fluently. The Chris- tian teachers in the schools — they themselves the products of mission work in India — number forty- eight men and ten women. They teach for five days and do evangelistic preaching the other two. For six years Mizpah Hall, in competition with all India, has won a medal in the International Sunday-school examinations. One of the orphan boys has won four silver medals in four years. The buildings are in- adequate and unworthy of the mission. Mrs. Arm- strong says that the crowded temporary quarters of the kindergarten " are a disgrace." " Unless some- thing is done soon we shall lose all chance to keep what has been gained in the Indian work in Burma." The Unreached Burmans. But the greatest present- day problem and unreached population in Burma to-day are the Burmese. Baptist work began among the Burmans. To them it gave the Burmese Bible, and the precious lives of many of the greatest mis- sionaries, among them that Pauline woman, Mrs. Maria B. Ingalls, whose story of the Queen's Bible is so well known to every Baptist. But the great mass of the Burmese are to-day unreached. Are they unreachable? The three thousand Burmese church- members, the splendid churches like that at Moul- mein, are sufficient answer. Some of the most beautiful Christians in Burma have been Burmans. S8 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Yet the field is difficult. There are in the Bap- tist mission staff forty-seven missionaries working among Burmans, and only thirty-nine among the Karens. The problem of the immediate future is a determined, adequate, systematic evangelization of the Burmans. The time is ripe for it. Burman villages are beginning to ask for teachers. Ninety per cent of the Burmans live in rural communities. It is there that they are most approachable. The next few years should see a faithful, courageous facing of the whole Burman problem. As long as the Burman remains unwon, Christ is defeated in Burma. To say that Buddhists cannot be won is to deny the power of the gospel. It may need a generation of secret prayer to prepare the church for this advance, but it must come. The Baptists of America surely have some- thing to communicate to the Buddhists of Burma. Work Among Eurasians. Scattered throughout Burma are large numbers of Eurasians, those who descended from English fathers and native mothers. As these are all English-speaking, missionary work may be done among them in the English language. While not the most numerous, the Eurasians are among the most influential portions of the population, as is clearly shown by the numbers who succeed in the civil service in capturing important positions in the government. Their ability as teachers and skilled workers is recognized everywhere. Because of their mixed parentage they have command of two lan- guages, and usually understand one or two others. They also understand the customs and ideals of the BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 59 people of Burma in a way that it is very difficult for a foreigner to achieve. Four Centers. The four centers of Baptist work among Eurasians are Moulmein, Rangoon, Mandalay, and Maymyo. The schools located at Moulmein and Mandalay have more calls for teachers than they can supply. The Catholics are keenly alert to the impor- tance of securing the Eurasians. The richest man in Burma to-day is a Catholic Eurasian who was a little boy in a Baptist school years ago when it was decided to abandon work among Eurasians. His loyalty and gifts very properly go to the church which took him in and educated him. The future of Baptist work will be strongly influenced by the manner in which re- sponsibility to these Eurasian people is discharged. If soundly converted, they may do a great work for other Burmese natives. In fact, the Eurasian work, begun in the days of Judson in Moulmein, was the parent of the English-speaking church in Bangalore. The Mandalay Eurasian church has its daughter church in Maymyo. A Burmese church in Maymyo is another ofifshoot, and the likelihood is that Tamil and Telugu work, already maintained at Maymyo by these Eurasians, will result in churches among these immigrant peoples. Mr. Davenport at Mandalay has been called the " Apostle to the Eurasians," in that he has clearly seen the strategic importance of these half-brothers and sisters of the English in the conquest of Burma for Christ. 6o FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Facts About Burma Population 12,141,676 Buddhists number (1911) 10,384,579 Protestant Christians number (1911) I49i799 Roman CathoHcs number (1911) 60,282 Baptists number (1911) 64,035 From 1901 to 1911 Buddhists increased 13.2% From 1901 to 191 1 Christians increased 434% Protestant adherents number not less than 300,000. Protestant communicants number one to eighty-one non- Christians. Christians number one to fifty-seven non-Christians. Great majority of Buddhists strongly animistic. Education of girls chiefly in hands of Christians. Mendicant Buddhist monks, a great drain on country, estimated to number 100,000, Baptist Educational Institutions in Burma Karen Theological Seminary, Inscin, Burma. D. A. W. Smith, D. D., president; W. F. Thomas, D. D., and native faculty. Established in 1845, it has an annual enrolment of from 125 to 150. The Karen churches contribute liberally toward its cur- rent expenses, and have also provided a substantial endowment. A number of the graduates go each year as missionaries to uncvangclizcd tribes. Burman Theological Seminary, Insein, Burma. John McGuire, D. D., president, and native faculty. At least six of the races of Burma arc usually represented in this seminary. It is, however, much smaller than its sister institution on the same compound, the average attendance being twenty-five. It was given a new building in 1909. BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 6i Burmese Woman's Bible School, Inscin, Burma. Miss Harriet Phinney, Miss Ruth W. Ranney. This school, nearly a mile distant from the theological sem- inary, is entirely supported by the Burma churches, and its graduates are doing a noble work in all parts of Burma. Karen Woman's Bible School, Rangoon, Burma. Mrs. M. M. Rose. The Karens support this school, to which about seventy-five young women come annually. Rangoon Baptist College, Rangoon, Burma. E. W. Kelly, Ph. D., principal ; L. E. Hicks, Ph. D., principal emeritus ; David Gilmore, M. A., J. F. Smith, Wallace St. John, Ph. D., H. E. Safford, M. A., F. C. Herod, R. L. Howard, M. A., R. P. Currier, and large native faculty. The only Christian college in Burma. Many converts made each year from the student body. It was founded in 1872, and has an attendance of 1,100 in all departments. The Cushing Memorial Buildings were dedicated in 1909, and a new high- school building is to be erected. Mandalay High School, Mandalay, Burma. H. W. Smith, principal. Only Baptist high school for boys in upper Burma. Attend- ance, 300. Ko Tha Byu High School, Bassein, Burma. Miss Clara B. Tingley, principal. Karens pay all current expenses of this boarding-school of 800 pupils, besides erecting and equipping the buildings. Morton Lane Girls' School, Moulmein, Burma. Miss Agnes Whitehead, Miss Lisbeth B. Hughes, Miss Elsie M. Northrup. A strong normal department in this school. 62 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Kemcndinc Girls* School, Rangoon, Burma. IMrs. Ida B. Elliott, Miss J. G. Craft, Miss Margaret M. Sutherland, Miss Lillian Eastman. Nearly 400 girls enrolled from kindergarten to normal school department. English Girls' High School, Moulmein, Burma. Miss A. L. Prince, Miss Lena Tillman. A valuable work done among English-speaking and Eurasian population. American Baptist Mission Press, Rangoon, Burma. F. D. Phin- ney, superintendent ; J. B. Money, S. E. Miner, P. R. Hackett, assistants. Established in 1816, the service rendered by this press has been an outstanding feature of mission work in Burma. In 1906 a large, well-lighted building on the principal street in Rangoon was completed. Over 200 men and women are employed in the press, which supplies Scriptures, text-books, tracts, and other literature for all the principal races of Burma, and is the chief supply house for educational material. Bibliography Haystack Prayer Meeting, One Hundredth Anniversary of. Boston, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1907. Strong, Story of the American Board, pp. 3-20. Boston, Ameri- can Board, 1910. Vail, Morning Hour of American Baptist Missions. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1907. Describes the various missionary efforts of Baptists before 1814. Hill, The Immortal Seven. Philadelphia, American Baptist Pub- lication Society, 1913. BEGINNINGS IN BURMA 63 Judson, Adoniram Judson, a Biography. Philadelphia, Ameri- can Baptist Publication Society. Wayland, Memoir of Adoniram Judson, 2 Vols. Boston, Phillips, Sampson & Company, 1854. Valuable for letters, descriptions, and other details not found in briefer treatment. Hubbard, Ann of Ava. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publica- tion Society, 1913. Taylor, Memoir of Luther Rice. Baltimore, 1841. Centennial Dates. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1913. Merriam, A History of American Baptist Missions, Chaps. I to III. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1913. Hull, Judson the Pioneer. Philadelphia, American Baptist Pub- lication Society, 1913. AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM CHAPTER III AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM The Land of Assam. The province of Assam Hes between Bengal on the west, Tibet on the north, Burma on the southeast, and the Indian Ocean on the south. In shape it is a majestic amphitheater, surrounding the great valley of the Brahmaputra River. The Him- alayas guard the north, and to the east and south the noble ranges known as the Garo, the Mikir, and the Naga Hills, though we should call them high moun- tains. Assam lies about as far south as Florida, but is far hotter, with steaming valleys and dense jungles filled with wild beasts; one section records the heaviest rainfall in the world. Here are the famed tea-gardens and cotton-plantations that are drawing to the province laborers from many countries. In the mountains are wonderful mineral wealth and noble forests of hard woods. The Races of Assam. Assam too is a melting-pot for many races. At least eighty languages are spoken in a population of six millions. The Assamese, about a fourth of the whole, are valley people, a mixed race descended from those who conquered the land cen- turies ago. They are idolaters after the sort of the most degraded Hinduism, full of caste and supersti- tion and hideous immorality. They are indolent too, 67 68 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE with indifference and contempt for new forms of thought or hfe. There is also a large section of the population made up of Bengali immigrants from the west, both Hindu and Moslem. There are, besides, Chinese and Laos and Shan folk, who come to work in the tea-gardens and rice-plantations. On the moun- tains and in the forests are the many tribes of primi- tive people, the Garos, Nagas, ]\Iikirs, and others, savage and bloodthirsty. In the old days their fierce marauding bands made life insecure to dwellers in the plain, and the Garo and Naga head-hunters wore with pride their necklaces of cowrie shells, each shell of which represented the head of a human victim they had slain. Planting of the Mission. Assam is one of the oldest of the mission fields entered by the American Baptists. When the mission was planted it was thought that Assam would prove the highway by which the gospel should enter into closed China. The caravan routes from India lay through Assam, and it was planned to establish a chain of missions by which the mission- aries should introduce the gospel into the western provinces of China. The opening for the mission came through the invitation of the English commis- sioner residing at Gauhati. He promised to give one thousand rupees if the American missionaries would settle in Assam, and a thousand more for the first printing-press. Two missionaries in Burma, Nathan Brown and O. B. Cutter, a practical printer, were set apart for this work. In the two months before leav- ing Burma Mr. Brown acquired a vocabulary of three AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 69 thousand words in Shan in the expectation that this would be the language of the territory in Assam to which he was going. Adoniram Judson wrote in re- gard to the enterprise, " My heart leaps for joy to think of Brother Brown at Sadiya and of all the inter- vening stations between there and Bangkok, Siam. Happy lot, to live in these days." The Browns and the Cutters went over to Calcutta, and from there set sail in a crazy little native boat for a voyage of eight hundred miles across the bay and up the Brahmaputra River. They journeyed for four months, seeking a location for the mission. After numerous adventures and hairbreadth escapes, they settled at Sadiya. Dur- ing the months of the voyage they had been diligently studying the language, with the aid of a Shan teacher sent to them by Major Jenkins, the British commis- sioner. Imagine their consternation when on visiting the villages around Sadiya they found only a handful of Shans in the population, and learned, on further investigation, that the main body of these people were gone out of their reach, beyond the mountains. There was nothing to do but put to it and learn Assamese. Quality o£ the Pioneers. Of what splendid stuff are missionaries made ! Nothing daunted by this bad be- ginning, they adjusted themselves to building a home in the wilderness. They made the axes by which timber was to be cut for their dwellings ; they made the bricks and baked them, burned the lime for the mortar, and in the meanwhile, in their struggle for life, picked up Assamese without dictionary, or gram- mar, or interpreter. It was the same old methodless 70 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE method that John Williams used with such good effect in the South Seas, and it gave them a grip on the every-day vocabulary of the people that no book study could ever have given. In three months Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Cutter were teaching girls, and Mr. Brown, true to Yankee traditions, had compiled a spelling-book. A Genius for Languages. Nathan Brown had a genius for languages. In twenty-seven months after they had settled their huts in the forest he had trans- lated into Assamese eleven school-books, containing two hundred and thirty pages, and thirteen chapters of Matthew's Gospel. Mr. Cutter had printed school- books and Gospels, nearly five thousand copies of them. Later, Mr. Brown became the translator of the New Testament into Assamese, and saw it through three editions. He wrote a life of Christ, a catechism, and a story of Joseph. He translated " Pil- grim's Progress," and wrote many hymns. After twenty years of unremitting toil in Assam it became evident that in order to save his life Nathan Brown must return to America. This he did, in 1855, and later, despairing of restoration to health, he severed his connection with the society, afterward, however, be- coming one of the first missionaries to Japan. Bible Translations. In fact the missionaries in Assam have added laurels to the many won by Bap- tist missionaries as translators. In the field of lexi- cography and translation the denomination has cause to feel great pride in the record made by its mis- sionaries. E. W. Clark, D. D., the beloved missionary CHRISTIAN TANGKHUL NAGAS AT UKHRUL IN THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AT JORHAT AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 71 to the Nagas, so recently deceased, gave them the book of God in their own tongue. Scholarly and distinguished service on the revision and translation committees has been rendered by E. G. Phillips, D. D., M. C. Mason, D. D., P. H. Moore, D. D., and A. K. Gurney, D. D. Early Industrial Missions. When we conceitedly suppose that industrial missions are a modern devel- opment, due to the broader equipment of our foreign missionaries, it is good to remember the English Baptist beginnings in India, and that the very first year in Assam Mr. Brown wrote to the Board in Boston, telling of the piteous destitution of the people, and asking that a scientific farmer be sent out to teach the people agriculture. " The soil around Sadiya," he wrote, " is inferior to none in the world, producing all the tropical fruits, and would produce nearly all those of the temperate regions." In every land where mis- sionaries have gone they have been the pioneers of better industrial life. Tea, an indigenous plant, was discovered by an early missionary to Assam. They have introduced coffee-culture into Africa, orange and cotton growing in the South Sea Islands, have been weavers, smiths, bricklayers, printers, lacemakers, architects, road-builders, and civil engineers. The slow- ness and indifference of the home church has been the only limitation to their efforts. Mission at Sadiya Abandoned. While the Browns and Cutters were toiling in the language, translating the New Testament and preparing school-books, the wild hill-folk broke out in insurrection in 1839, fired the town, killed the commandant and forced the mis- 72 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE sionaries and townsfolk into the fort, where they existed through four months of famine and disease. The town and surrounding country was depopulated through fear of these fierce hill-tribes, and the mission was broken up. The Bronsons decided to go to Jaipur, where large tea-gardens were being established and where there was a prospect of a growing population. Thus rung down the curtain on the first act of mis- sions in Assam. It was sixty-six years before the work so disastrously interrupted at Sadiya was re- sumed. In 1906, however, the station was reopened by the Jackmans, who began work for the Abors, but hoped also to reach the Miri people in the mountains. The following year Doctor and Mrs. Kirby joined them to begin medical work. Sadiya is at present an important center for many tribes, and because on the road to one of the leading passes into Tibet it seems destined to be increasingly important from a political and commercial standpoint, and hence increasingly valuable as a center for missionary work. Printing-Press at Jaipur. When the missionaries were driven out of Sadiya they decided, as has been said, to establish the work at Jaipur. Here the print- ing-press was soon set up and was busy in getting out the first books in five different languages. Few people have any idea of the incessant and exhausting work done by missionaries in every land in the composition and printing of text-books. It is no exaggeration to say that the missionaries have provided the text-books for the schools of most of the non-Christian world. A terrible epidemic of fever in Jaipur forced the mis- AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 73 sionaries for a time to take refuge in the mountains, and there they hved Hke tree-men on a phitform in a big tree, with only the leaves for a roof. It is related of Mrs. Brown during this period that when she had started home with two sick children, she snatched time to complete the manuscript of the arithmetic she was preparing for the press, while tossing about in the wretched little boat which took her from Jaipur to Calcutta. Perceiving the importance of the station, Mr. Brown kept writing home to plead that a mis- sionary be sent for each race, saying that this work was but a drop in the ocean, and would be soon lost in the desolate darkness unless reenforcements were at once sent. Reenforcement Sent to Assam. In 1837 Miles Bron- son and Jacob Thomas, with their wives, braved the perils of the eight-hundred-mile voyage from Calcutta in the usual native boat, nearly perished during the hard- ships of the trip, and when they were within an hour of Sadiya Mr. Thomas was accidentally killed. When an English officer had urged Mr. Bronson not to attempt the ascent of the river that season, his reply was characteristic of the quality of the man : " Would you hesitate," he asked, " if you were ordered to join the regiment in Sadiya?" " No, sir," came the quick reply. " Then we dare not delay when our heavenly Cap- tain bids us advance to join the little force awaiting and expecting our arrival." Planting a Mission at Sibsagor. In 1841 it began to be seen that Jaipur was not the best location for 74 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE the mission, as the tea-gardens had proved disappoint- ing and the population was continually fluctuating. After a tour in which a number of locations had been investigated, it was agreed that Sibsagor furnished the best opening, and in 1843 Jaipur was abandoned. By 1846 there were six hundred pupils in the Sibsagor schools; and nearly four million pages of school-books, hymnals, catechisms, tracts, and Gospels had been printed by the mission press. The work in Sibsagor, however, has proved disappointing as far as numerical results among the Assamese are concerned. Statistics, gathered at the time of the Jubilee Conference in 1896, showed that only forty-four Assamese converts had been baptized through the Sibsagor station during the fifty years. During this same period, many hun- dreds of baptisms had occurred among the hill people. Nor was the experience at Sibsagor unique. In gen- eral it may be said that the most encouraging results in Assamese missions have been met among the primi- tive hill people, and not among Assamese. Some Early Converts. During the first ten years at Sibsagor but twelve self-supporting churches were formed among these hill people, with a membership of six hundred and fifty-two. Yet some of those few scattering early converts among the Assamese were wonderful trophies of the gospel. The first convert. Nidi Levi, became a great preacher, poet, and trans- lator, and wrote hymns that will never be forgotten among his countrymen. Another, Kandura, a con- vert from the orphanage established by Doctor Bron- son in Nowgong in 1843, had grown up to be a good AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 75 scholar, and held a government position paying him twenty dollars a month. When Mr. Whiting, the mis- sionary at Gauhati, was compelled to return home, and the little church would be left shepherdless, Kandura voluntarily relinquished his distinguished position (for such it was in native eyes) and became pastor at a salary of seven dollars and fifty cents a month. " Can you hold out until help comes ? " asked the missionary. " My wish," replied Kandura, " is to hold on until death." An Old Bard. At the time of the Jubilee Confer- ence a letter was read from I. J. Stoddard, giving reminiscences of the early days in the Assam Mission, in which he told the story of another early convert, a little dried-up old man whom he first met at Gauhati in 1867. This man had been in Goalpara when the English evangelist Bion was distributing tracts in the bazaar. He took one called the " True Refuge." The old man had been a sort of village bard, going from village to village, chanting songs about the gods. So he learned this new sura and chanted it over many times until he began to understand it a little, and to be a bit interested and a little frightened. The people, when he began to chant the " True Refuge," ridiculed him. But finally he started for Gauhati to find a teacher who could tell him the meaning of the strange writing. He and his wife were nine days on the journey, wading through water and mud, sleeping under trees, wet and hungry and almost starving. The people in the vil- lages through which he passed thought him crazy, because he called out to every one he met, " Life, life, eternal life! Who will tell us about it?" At 76 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Gauhati he found the missionaries, who taught him the answer to the questions that were perplexing him, and later baptized him, and from this time the old man went from village to village with a joyful heart, chanting salvation to the people. Heroic Endurance. Assamese missions in these early years needed the kind of courage which could hold on until death. ^lissionaries were invalided home, or died on the field. Families were broken up by the death of wife or mother. Stations were left for months without any missionary care. The feeble flame seemed almost to go out, yet nothing could quench it. The Danforths, the Stoddards, the Wards, the Whitings, the Barkers, were added to the forces at Gauhati, Nowgong, Sibsagor. After long years of slow, uphill, discouraging, unending work, of the kind that tests faith and discloses character, a brighter day began to dawn for the mission in Assam. It is worthy of record that at one time Gauhati was left for nine years, from 1858 to 1867, without any resident mis- sionary, and again for seven years. Opening of the Garo Villages. When the encour- agement came, however, it was not so much in the mission devoted to the Assamese as in the newer enterprises which had turned to the wild hill-people. The story of the opening of the Garo villages to the gospel of Christ is one of the romances of missions. In 1847 the British Government had started a school in Goalpara in hope of gaining some influence over the wild Garos. There were only ten pupils in the school, but two of these boys were destined to be the AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 'jy instruments by whom God would open the work among the people. A Handicap that was a Blessing. One of these boys was named Ramkhe. He had from a child longed for education, but only secured the coveted opportunity because a broken arm prevented him from being useful in the field. The terrible prospect of future transmigration of souls, in which all the Garos believe, haunted the boy, and he wondered if there were not a " spirit better and stronger and wiser and greater than Garo demons, and if this spirit could not bless him if it so chose." So he used to pray to this unknown God. Ramkhe and the Torn Tract. The other boy was named Omed, and he and Ramkhe used to talk over their spiritual difficulties. After a time they became sepoys in the British army, and one day Ramkhe was sent to guard an empty mission house which was to be prepared for the use of an army officer. While sweeping one of the rooms he picked up one of the torn fragments of a tract. Now that tract was one of a number which an English missionary had scattered in great quantities throughout Assam some time be- fore this, while making a tour. As Ramkhe read the tract he was pricked to the heart. He sought out a native Christian who could tell him more of the message which he believed to be that of the true gospel, found at last in this torn fragment. He told Omed what he had found, and both were later baptized by Doctor Bronson, February 8, 1863. Soon after this Ramkhe was dismissed from the service on account of his 78 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE crippled arm. Omecl also secured release, and he and Ramkhe decided to return to their people in the hills to carry the good news of Christianity. At this time the Garos were living in the wild hill-country, a tract about three thousand, six hundred square miles in area. The district was wholly composed of sharp, ridgy mountains, divided by rough ravines, impassable to carts or even ponies, and only to be reached on foot. Telling Their Own People. The Garos were true savages, wild, brave, and cruel, afraid only of the evil spirits by whom they believed the mountains to be peopled. In a few months seven of the relatives of these two men accepted Christ. Ramkhe opened a school, while Omed went from village to village, tell- ing the story of the gospel. A terrible persecution soon gathered against the little body of believers, the fury of which drove them from the mountain villages. Omed stationed himself by the path where all the hill- folk must pass when they came down to market at Gauhati. Here he built a hut of grass and lived in it. He spoke to all who would stop to hear his message. Gradually others followed him, until a little village was built up, whose inhabitants were wholly com- posed of the persecuted Garo Christians. This village they called Rajasimla. Here Doctor Bronson organ- ized the first church of forty Garo Christians. Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard made the first extended tour through these hidden mountain villages, perched in the fast- nesses of the Garo Hills. They found wide-spread in- fluence of the work of Omed and Ramkhe. The chiefs .4 AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 79 were friendly, and the people willing to listen to the message. By 1869 there were one hundred and forty Christians in the Garo Hills. Beginning of Schools. From the beginning the missionaries found it necessary to emphasize educa- tional work. The Garos were ruined by sin. To leave them without any training for their leaders was to doom them to an evanescent and powerless type of Christianity. The government attempts to introduce education had failed among these hill- tribes. The people were too besottedly ignorant to desire or appreciate an education. In the govern- ment report of 1881, the chief commissioner of edu- cation reported as follows : " It is difficult to convince a Garo or a Naga of the advantage of learning. The only lever that has been found effective is that of religion." Proposition by the Government. Experience showed that where the government failed in estab- lishing secular schools, the missionaries were able, little by little, to create in these darkened minds an appetite for better things. In 1873 the government proposed that if the Baptist mission would prosecute the educational work with vigor, and locate a mis- sionary in each of the hill-tribes, it would turn over the entire educational work to the care of the mis- sion, and would liberally support the enterprise. But the Baptists of America had neither men nor money to take advantage of this offer. It was not until 1878 that the proposition could be accepted, and the normal school for the training of teachers removed 8o FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE to Tura. The missionaries were left in immediate control of all the schools in heathen villages, and had, of course, in the Christian villages, full direction of the work. Their aim was to get each Christian vil- lage to build its own schoolhouse, buy its own school- books, and make what contribution it could to the salary of the school-teacher. Education as an Evangelizing Agency. Dr. E. G. Phillips gave a striking testimony to the spiritual efficiency of these schools in the paper which he read before the Mission Jubilee Conference in Assam, Our school work has been an efficient agency in evangelization. Our Christian school-teacher is in a position to exert a constant influence. Not infre- quently the interest awakened by the evangelist has been followed by a petition for a Christian school- teacher, and around these Christian teachers all of our Christian communities, with perhaps one or two ex- ceptions, have sprung up. First the pupils are brought to Christ, and then the parents and others. In 1877, in one day Mr. Mason and a native pastor baptized eighty converts, the result with God's bless- ing of such school work. . . Nine or ten miles from Goalpara a grand work began in 1880. The gos- pel had been preached there from the first coming of the missionary. In one place a few converts had been gathered, but the heart of the people seemed hard. But in 1877 a teacher (a native Christian) was sent to this village. . . What seemed to be a gospel- hardened community became a Christian community. In 1880 seventy-eight were baptized, in 1881 fifty- eight, and in 1882 thirty. And now in 1886 the church supports its own pastor. AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 8i Again Doctor Phillips says, in speaking of the Boys' Training School at Tura : I know of none for years who have passed through the school unconverted except a few sons of Tura policemen. Two hundred and thirty-seven had been in the school since it began. Some of them stayed only for a short time. Of these two hundred and thirty-seven, I know of but fourteen who left school unconverted, and of these . . . six were Hindus, leaving only eight Garos. . . One hundred and three have engaged in teaching or have been employed in some religious work. Of those who have not been thus employed, some have been helpers in church work. This school is considered, and must continue to be considered, a very important part of our work. The Garo Women. While the educational work for boys presented serious difficulties, these were as nothing as compared with those which beset the un- dertaking to train and educate Garo girls and women. To be sure, these Garo women were free. They could come and go as they pleased, visit the markets, trade, and engage in business. When speaking of the hus- band and wife, the woman's name always came first. This was no sign of respect, for the Garo men re- garded them with deep contempt. A man might beat his wife if he chose, and felt disgraced to have a woman sit in front of him. The women were beasts of burden, digging in the gardens, helping clear the jungles, cultivating the fields. And after the day's work was over for their husbands, they still had their work to do in collecting the fire-wood, bringing the F 82 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE water from the spring, cooking the rice, and attend- ing to the primitive housekeeping. Difficulties in Starting a Girls' School. It was in 1874 that Mrs. Keith gathered together the first group of sliy little wild girls from the Garo Hills. Parents regarded the attempt to teach girls to read with amused incredulity, and were so unwilling to let their daughters come, that the undertaking was given up at the end of the year. In 1887 Mrs. Burdette made another attempt in Tura. She sent out word for Christian girls to be l)rought in to her to attend school, and then sat all day at her window watching to see the little procession of parents and daughters coming down from the hills. She might as well have watched for an airship. Not to be defeated by the indifference of the people, she resolved that, if the girls would not come to her, she would go to the girls. She gathered a group of heathen coolies and alone undertook the difficult task of threading the deep jungles, and fording the mountain streams, and finding her way along the precipitous paths that led to the villages in the hills. The journey to the nearest Christian village occupied her one week. She then went from village to village, visiting fifteen villages in her attempt to overcome the prejudices of parents so far that they might allow her to take their daugh- ters back to the station with her for a term of school- ing. She stayed to the meeting of the Association, and as a result induced ten girls, mostly orphans, in such wretched circumstances that any change was welcome, to make the great experiment. At the end AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 83 of a year all but three returned to their villages, and when the time came for school to open in the fall only one old student and one new student presented them- selves. " Mahomet goes to The Mountain." Mrs. Burdette decided to go herself and spend a year in one of the mountain villages, to see if she could not break down the prejudices of the people and secure the foundation of a permanent school for girls. Here for a year she lived in a little bamboo hut in a Garo village, and gathered a village school numbering thirty-eight girls, some of whom had come to her from surrounding villages. As the result of this heroic treatment she had at the beginning of the next season twenty-one girls who were willing to go down to the boarding-school at Tura. The Unselfish Mother-Heart. She tells one touch- ing incident which shows that some of these ignorant Garo mothers were able to rise to heights of unselfish- ness that are not easy for American mothers to at- tain. There was one very bright little girl, about twelve years old, whose mother was ill, and just as the girls were starting away, the child weeping, said that she could not leave her mother, that she felt she ought to stay and take care of her. To whom the sick mother said: " Don't you cry, God will take care of me. Go to school and learn all that you can. You must not worry. If I die I will go to Jesus. Go, and may God be with you." But as they were leaving the village the girl's love for her mother proved too strong, and she returned to minister to 84 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE her, and later paid with her own life the penalty for her loyal devotion. After all, in America or in the Garo Hills, we are all " just folks." Work Among Many Tribes, The illustrations of work among the Garos are typical of what has oc- curred in the missions to the Nagas, Mikirs, and other hill-tribes. The limits of the chapter prevent the telling of the story in detail. It was true of all of them that they were wild people, fierce and blood- thirsty, who were believed to be untameable. It has been true that the gospel has proved powerful to change and uplift in the case of all alike. An intimate record of life among the Nagas may be found in Mrs. Clark's, " A Corner in India." The Schools at Jorhat. One of the most significant developments in educational work in Assam has been in the schools at Jorhat. Here are the Bible Train- ing School, the Middle English High School with government recognition, and the Industrial School. About one hundred boys, big and little, representing many of the tribes and peoples of Assam, comprise the pupils. They have four hours of work, four hours of lessons, and two hours of study each day. A car- penter shop under the direction of a Chinese car- penter turns out work that finds ready sale, and helps to pay the way of about twenty boys. A printing- press, it is hoped, will offer opportunity for self-help to others. Industrial Training. While it has not been found possible to make the industrial work in which all share pay all the expenses of the boys, it is felt to be AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 85 of the utmost value in inculcating a new attitude toward labor. The missionaries are planning to sup- plement the work which each boy does toward his own support by " workships," rather than scholar- ships. Meanwhile, the missionaries must undertake the long process of educating the parents to permit and desire their boys to be educated. Churches, as- sociations, and individuals are urged to provide " workships " in aid of needy students. In this work there is no reason why American supporters should not share. The industrial training has the cordial approval of the government, to meet whose standards it will be necessary to do the work on a scale larger than has before been attempted. The very careful survey of the missionaries calls for an investment in buildings and land of at least fifteen thousand dollars. But these schools so equipped may help to transform the daily life in Assam. Tremendous Obstacles to Overcome. There have been many problems in the school work in Assam. The difficulties due to the scattered population, the dense ignorance and poverty of the people, the diffi- culty in securing competent teachers, have continually complicated the situation. In 1906 the government made the experiment of taking back into its own care fourteen of the village schools in the Naga Hills which had been entrusted to the missionaries. But the experiment did not prove successful, and by 1911 almost all of them were closed. The schools were again turned over to the mission to be reopened and built up. There are now two hundred and fifteen 86 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE village schools, the springs of life hidden in the hills. Nothing but superb courage and determination which cannot be broken, has held the missionaries true to their tasks. The results, however, are beginning to be seen. The situation grows more encouraging every year. Good Stuff in the Mountain People. If the work can only be supported on any adequate basis of num- bers or equipment, there is no reason why great re- sults for Christianity and for civilization may not be accomplished among these brave and hardy moun- taineers. The people are dirty and ignorant and de- graded, but they have good stuff in them. The pic- ture shown on this page of the contrast between the ordinary wild Garo of the village and the trained col- lege student, is the record of a transformation that is little short of miraculous. A good test of the value of the schools was afforded in taking the govern- ment census in 1910. There were one hundred enumerators and fifteen supervisors appointed to take the census among the Nagas, and every one of them was chosen from those who had been educated in the mission schools. Improvement Among the Women. Even on the women the results are beginning to tell. Although the villagers still retain to a good degree their prejudices against the girls, the number of girls in the schools steadily increases, until they are about one-fourth as numerous as the boys. Two of the graduates of the school have recently taken training in Calcutta in midwifery, and one of them on her return has secured AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 87 a g-overnment position in a hospital. One Naga trained in the school at Impur has also become a physician to his people. Only a beginning has been made in reaching the hill-people. Numberless vil- lages and many tribes are yet untouched. The way into Burma, into Siam, or into Tibet is bridged by these tribes who form the links between the popula- tion of these countries and that of Assam ; and it is quite possible that a chain of missions might be estab- lished which would bring the missionaries face to face with the work in the other countries. Boarding-School at Nowgong. One of the most interesting recent developments among girls' schools has been the one at Nowgong in which the distinct purpose is to reach the upper-class Assamese girls, both Hindu and Mohammedan. If Assam is to be- come Christian we must reach these influential classes with the gospel. The school has had very rapid growth and now numbers one hundred and ninety pupils, ranging all the way from the kindergarten and primary to the normal department. The new normal department is regarded by the government with great favor. At the time of the last inspection Miss Doe took her courage in both hands and asked for a piano. The inspector graciously granted one thousand rupees. " I accepted it with thanks," wrote Miss Doe, " and felt as natural as if I were accustomed to having pianos tossed to me every day." Tribute of a Hindu Official. A beautiful tribute was recently paid to the quality of the work done by these missionaries in Nowgong. It is hard for one 88 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE not fully acquainted with the exclusiveness and isola- tion of caste to realize how surprising and significant the incident was. The wife of a government official had died. The man was a Brahman, one of the priestly twice-born caste who claim almost divine honors from the common people. But this man sent to ask if our Christian school would receive and care for his motherless infant until it was three or four years old. He knew of the kindergarten, of the clean- liness, the tender care of the Christian school, and was willing to violate his caste rules and brave the deepest prejudices of his nation in order to save the child's life. People have not yet recovered from the surprise. The incident is an eloquent evidence of the deep impression made on the non-Christian com- munity. A Noble Heritage. The Baptists of America have a rich heritage in the story of missions in Assam. There is no other body of Christians in Assam who have a work in any way comparable to that which has been effected by the devoted heroism of our pioneer missionaries. Through a series of misfortunes which has threatened at times to overwhelm the mission, the work has been steadily prosecuted. Names dear to every Baptist are found on the roll of the workers. As an illustration, consider the life of Dr. Miles Bron- son. For thirty years he and his heroic and saintly wife journeyed among the hills and valleys of Assam. It was he who founded the orphanage in Gauhati which for years was the very heart of the mission. When it was given up in 1854, on the recommenda- AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 89 tion of a deputation sent out from headquarters, it was in opposition to the unanimous judgment of the missionaries, as the strongest Christian leaders in Assam were men who had been trained in that early orphanage and under the inspiration and care of Miles Bronson. One of the most beautiful deeds in his life was his unquestioning and unhesitating acceptance of an order from the Board which took him into a difficult and untried field, when he had been worn out with nearly forty years of work. Like the good soldier that he was, he undertook the task, and laid down his life in its doing. " I believe the Sahib loved the Assamese better than his own folks," said one of the Garo Christians. Tribute to Women Missionaries. Time would fail us to tell of the Wards, the Whitings, the Masons, the Phillips, the Moores, the Burdettes, the Stoddards, and the Clarks, men and women of whom the world is not worthy. But it is not unfitting to pay special tribute to the heroism of the women who helped to carry on the work in this most difficult field. For long months and years they have had to live in iso- lated stations with no other European within a week's journey. Sometimes during the absence of their hus- bands, who were touring the district, they and their children have been left absolutely alone in the mis- sion station. They have endured loneliness, hunger, and racking attacks of fever. One by one the diffi- culties of the climate have broken them, but never once discouraged them. Their heart has ever been given to the winning of dark Assam for Christ. 90 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE The Great Revival. The most striking feature in the work in Assam during recent years was the great revival in Nowgong in 1906. Early in 1905 a few Christians had begun to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on their work, and in May a circular letter was sent to all the stations in Assam asking that special meetings for prayer be held, and from June to October meetings were held every night in most of the stations. These meetings were small, not more than ten or twenty people present, but were charac- terized by earnest prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. During this time the majority of the Christian people remained apparently untouched. In the boarding-school at Nowgong began the awakening which led to the great revival. It was in Novem- ber of 1906 that a great spirit of prayer and consecra- tion was evident among the girls of the school. After Sunday-school and the usual preaching service, they had a little prayer-meeting, beginning at two o'clock in the afternoon. A little girl of eight or nine years had offered a prayer of deep penitence, pouring out her childish heart to God in a sincere petition for forgiveness. " The effect upon the listeners," said Mr. Moore, " was contagious. As if by common im- pulse the whole congregation kneeled and began to pray. Strong and matter-of-fact men seemed held by an irresistible power. The meeting went on until after eight o'clock in the evening, and closed in a great mood of joy and thanksgiving. Meetings of similar power have been held since, but no two of them alike. Human leadership has been conspicu- AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 91 ously absent. The Holy Spirit manifested his power in ways and times quite unforeseen and unexpected." As one reads the accounts of the intense spiritual experiences through which the Christian churches of Assam passed, one is reminded of the revival seasons in the early history of our country when whole com- munities were transformed by the power of God. The reports of the missionaries show that the effects of the revival have been seen in permanent uplift in the lives of many Christians. Boys and girls now in school have been fitted to enter into a new life of power and freedom in Christ which shall prepare them to be the leaders and inspirers of their people in the coming generation. An Association in the Hills. To see what the gos- pel has done in Assam one needs to go back from the cities away from the big institutions to the hill villages, to attend an annual association. At the village of Derek, for example, the central unit of churches numbering seven hundred and thirty-nine members, an association meeting was recently held. Some members traveled five days' journey to be present. Every church but one sent a letter, and that church was a week's journey distant. While the guests paid for their food at the association, the en- tertaining church had to work hard to make prepara- tion. The women pounded and cleaned nearly two and one-half tons of rice, besides helping to gather fire-wood and plaintain leaves to serve as dishes. The men removed two walls from the bamboo chapel and built a large temporary addition, and made thatch 92 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE sheds for all their guests. On Sunday morning 1,276 people were present. Over four hundred women gathered at the women's session on Sunday afternoon. An excellent Sunday-school session was held, and many promised to go back home to do better work in their Sunday-schools. In such gatherings as these one can see the gospel seed taking root. A Garo chief recently sent in a contribution for schools, say- ing: " Let not one be given up for lack of funds," Strong Meat for Babes. Into the lives of these primitive people is being carried the greatest trans- forming power l^nown to man, the free gospel of the grace of God. The very primer in which the child learns to read in the Welsh mission among the Khassia hills is charged with revolutionary ideas, con- ceptions foreign to him and to his fathers. " I sin, he sins, you sin. All sin is wicked. Do not sin any more," reads the first lesson. " Strong meat for babes," you say? Yes, in the hideous heathenism of Assam they need strong meat, if they are to become strong men. The books prove themselves valuable by a generation of clean, virile, ambitious boys and girls who are growing up in the Garo and Naga Hills. AMONG ANIMISTS IN ASSAM 93 Facts About Assam Missionaries 64 Native workers 378 Churches 122 Membership 12,057 Baptisms i,i34 Sunday-school pupils 7,164 Percentage of increase ( 1912-1913) 9 Village schools 215 Pupils 4,614 Average cost of village schools $25.00 Contributions of native Christians $4,392 Garo Christians number 6,636, more than half the whole number. Naga Christians number 1,614. Among immigrant peoples Christians number 3,456. At present the only other missionary society doing extensive work in Assam is the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists', whose work lies in the Khassia hills. Their communicants are, per- haps, about as numerous as are the Baptists. Baptist Educational Institutions in Assam Garo Training School, Tura, Assam. Rev. W. C. Mason, principal. The source of supply for Christian Garo teachers and preach- ers. Self-support is secured in part by a cotton-ginning plant. The attendance yearly is over 200. Jorhat Bible School, Jorhat, Assam. Rev. S. A. D. Boggs, prin- cipal; Rev. C. H. Tilden. 94 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE It was not until 1906 that a school was opened for the very important task of training Christian workers speaking the Assamese language. Beginning in a small way, its numbers have grown to over one hundred. The industrial department is strong. Bibliography Brown, Whole World Kin: A Pioneer Experience of Nathan Broun Among Remote Tribes, pp. 109-436. Philadelphia, Hubbard, 1890. Clark, A Corner in India. Philadelphia, American Baptist Pub- lication Society. Gunn, In a Far Country. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publi- cation Society, 191 1. A biography of Miles Bronson, D. D., missionary to Assam, 1836-1879. Missions in Assa7n. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1909. Merriam, History of American Baptist Missions. Chap. XIII. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1913. INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA MAP 8H0W1NQ A PORTION OF SOUTH INDIA OCCUPIED BY THE TELUGU8 " U lu 2U 40 CU Stations of the Amerioan Baptist Forei^ Mission Socict/ In .this typo Madras Railroads thus 7S LoiiKiludc Kast 7'J from CiiTinvicli SO CHAPTER IV INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA A. THE LONE STAR MISSION — SOUTH INDIA Telugu Land. The Teltigu country is located in southern India, between the land of the Tamils on the south and Bengal on the north. It is not a recog- nized political division, but comprises a strip of country about six hundred miles long and from three to four hundred miles wide, stretching along the shore of the Indian Ocean. In it are included portions of the Madras presidency and the independent state of Hyderabad — called also the Deccan — ruled over by a Moslem prince, the Nizam of Hyderabad. The land is for the most part level, with one range of moun- tains running north and south called the Eastern Ghats. The country is exceedingly populous. The Telugu people proper number about seventeen mil- lions, and in addition to these there are in the same territory Moslem and Tamil people, and scattered Bengali. Establishment of a Mission. It was in 1835 that the attention of American Baptists was called to the Telugu field by Amos Sutton, one of the English Baptist missionaries living to the north of the Telugu country in Orissa. Only one agency, the London Missionary Society, he said, was working in this large field. This G 97 98 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE society had sent in two missionaries who had ac- quired a knowledge of the language, prepared and published a revised edition of the New Testament, based probably on the translation of Carey, and had established Sunday-schools and a girls' boarding- school, and had built the first Christian chapel among the Telugu people. It was resolved by the American Baptists to send out Rev. Samuel F. Day to open a mission in this very large and populous district; as it was evident that the London Missionary Society was touching only the edge of the field. For three years, while studying the language, the Days were located in Madras, a Tamil city with a large Telugu population. During repeated and extensive tours throughout the country, Mr, Day found that there were within a distance of four hundred miles at least ten million Telugu people without a resident mis- sionary. It was his conviction that as he had been sent out to the Telugus he ought to be in the heart of the Telugu country, and he therefore decided to move to Nellore. Station in Nellore Located. In order to cover the one hundred and eight miles between Madras and Nellore, it was necessary in those days to take a slow and wearying journey by native boat and bullock- cart. Mr. Day reached Nellore in 1840, and bought eight acres of land for a mission compound. On this he built a solid and substantial bungalow, in firm faith that he was founding something that was going to last. It took robust faith to believe such a thing, for the mission seemed a sickly plant. The people INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 99 were indifferent and suspicious, when not actually hostile, and listeners were few and converts fewer. In 1841 the first convert was baptized, and the church of eight members, four of them missionaries, was organized in 1844. The health of the little missionary group was seriously impaired. In five years the Van Deusens were invalided home, and the Days were left alone. Mr. Day wrote touching appeals to the board begging for reenforcements, without result. In 1846 his own health was so alarmingly impaired that his physicians ordered an immediate return to America. But he went reluctantly. The thought of leaving for our native land gives little satisfaction. Oh, the mission we leave, the little church, the few inquirers, the schools, the heathen, yes, the hun- dred thousand heathen immediately in our vicinity, the million in the district, the ten millions in our mission field ; what will become of them? First Proposal to Abandon the Mission. When Mr. Day reached home he found the executive committee of the Missionary Union, infected by the lack of faith and missionary zeal of the churches of that period, seriously discussing the giving up of the mission. His determined and manly protest turned the scale, and it was decided to wait and see the outcome. When the ten years of fruitless effort were contrasted with the results in Burma, it was felt by many that it would be wise to close up the mission in Nellore and transfer the missionaries to Burma. Mr. Judson, who was home on a furlough at that time, said : '' I would 100 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE cheerfully, at my age, cross the Bay of Bengal and learn a new language rather than l)y the lift of my hand vote for the abandonment of this work." The Jewetts Reenforce the Mission. The committee left the matter without final decision, and meanwhile Lyman Jewett and his wife volunteered to go to Nellore. Mr. Day recovered his health and was longing to go back. The Board of Managers discussed the question of con- tinuing the mission, and finally agreed to put over the decision until the annual meeting at Troy, New York. Rev. William R. Williams, chairman of the committee to report on the continuance or discon- tinuance of the mission, wrote a powerful report in favor of retaining the mission. After the reading of this report it was voted to instruct the committee to reenforce the mission. Leaving his wife, who was not yet so recovered that she could return, Mr. Day and the Jewetts sailed from Boston in the " Bowditch," in October, 1848, and arrived in Nellore in April, 1849. WHio can measure the discomforts of the voy- age in the tiny sailing-vessels of those days, with poor food, and insufficient supply of water, and cramped quarters? It took real heroism to endure the perils of the journeys, but these missionary pioneers were not thinking of discomforts. We are told that the captain and many seamen were con- verted by the efforts of the missionaries during the long voyage. Discouraging Condition in Nellore. If the brethren of America had known what had happened in Nellore, it is to be feared that not even the eloquence of Doc- INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA loi tor Williams could have induced them to vote to continue the mission. Mr. Day had left the schools and little church in charge of two Eurasian Christian teachers who, as soon as he was gone, " ran down " in alarming fashion. They disbanded the schools, scattered the church, and made the mission bungalow the scene of debauchery and shame. In a letter to his wife, written just after his arrival in Nellore, Mr. Day says : I have seen our once happy home and walked through the empty, desolate rooms, now how changed. . . The assistants have turned aside from follow- ing the Lord, and by their wickedness the name of God is every day blasphemed among the heathen in Nellore. Thus we find things. But could we have expected better? Was it right for the mission to be neglected thus long by the churches in America? . . . My heart is at times troubled and cast down because of the fewness of missionary laborers here, and the little success in the way of conversions at- tending the labors of that few, but my faith has not failed a moment since my return. Great things ere long will appear, and many will turn to the Lord among the Telugus ere many years pass. Early Trophies of the Faith. The noble Jewetts were there to put their mighty faith under the fainting little mission. They soon gained remarkable com- mand of the language and began touring among the villages. Mrs. Jewett gathered a girls' boarding- school, sometimes numbering only two or three girls. One of these, however, was Julia of Nellore, a splen- did trophy of the work. Mr. Day had opened other 102 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE schools in which two hundred and seventy hoys were gathered, when in 1850 there came an order from Boston to close all the schools. Schools Ordered Closed. This order was in re- sponse to a wide-spread belief among Christians of that day that schools were not really missionary work; that sacred funds such as missionary money were not to be spent except to " save souls." This feeling sprang from a failure to see that the Great Commission included teaching as well as preaching, and from a false idea which divided the interests and tasks of life into the sacred and the secular. This mistaken notion had tragic results in many fields in the retarding and weakening of the Baptist native church. The order was a crushing blow to Mr. Day and the Jewetts. Mr. Day wrote to his wife: Yesterday, September 30, 1850, we dismissed nine schoolmasters and two hundred and seventy children, all of whom were daily occupied as the chief part of their duty in reading and committing to memory the precious word of God in their own tongue. The Deputation of 1853. As if the abandonment of the schools was not a sufficient discouragement, along came a missionary deputation in 1853 to look over the field and report. There was not much to show. In fact, for the first twenty-five years of the Telugu Mission, it was one continuous, wide-spread sowing, and very little reaping. The missionaries, poor things, thought they could see signs of promise, now and then, as they talked with earnest inquirers. INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 103 But the deputation saw nothing but the bare, brown fields, for they had planted no seeds of faith or hope. So, on their return home, like the spies sent into the promised land, they told only of the giants in that land; and there were no Calebs or Joshuas among them to bring back a cluster of the grapes of Eshcol. At the very next annual meeting up bobbed the ques- tion of abandoning the mission. Why not? It was always more or less painful to part Baptists from their money for missionary purposes, and to do it for a forlorn and fruitless field, was too unpleasant to con- template. Why all this waste ; this gift of substance poured out on feet that seemed to heed it not? The Lone Star. A proposition was made that a letter be written to Doctor Jewett requesting him to close up the mission and move to Burma. Dr. Ed- ward Bright, then corresponding secretary, said: " Who will write that letter, and who zvill write that letter?" In the evening, during the public discus- sion, one speaker pointed to the map where the mis- sion stations were marked by stars, and called Nellore " the lone star mission." The phrase caught the at- tention of Rev. S. F. Smith, the beloved author of " My Country ! 'Tis of Thee," and " The Morning Light is Breaking." Before he slept that night he wrote the lines beginning: Shine on, "Lone Star," thy radiance bright Shall spread o'er all the eastern sky; Morn breaks apace from gloom and night; Shine on, and bless the pilgrim's eye. I04 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Shine on, " Lone Star," thy radiance bright The light that gleams with dubious ray; The lonely star of Bethlehem Led on a bright and glorious day.* When the poem was read the next day it went straight to the heart of the delegates; and it was unanimously voted to continue and reenforce the mission. Meanwhile things were not very much brighter in Nellore. Mr. Day's health had been broken down, and he was obliged to return home, never again to return. When Mr. Jewett learned that it had been proposed to remove him to Burma, and how narrowly the peril had been averted, he said : " I would rather labor on here as long as I live, than to be torn up by the roots and transplanted. Faith and my own conscience tell me that I am not labor- ing in vain in the Lord." A Sunrise Prayer-Meeting. During the latter months of the year 1853, the Jewetts and three helpers, among them Julia of Nellore and Christian Nursu, made a long evangelistic tour as far as Guntur to the north, and on their return reached Ongole at about Christmas time. After they had spent the week in street preaching, it was decided to hold a sunrise prayer-meeting on a bare and stony hill over- looking the town. From every side of its scrubby eminence there was a prospect over the wide, populous plain, twinkling like the Milky Way with thick-set *The complete poem can be had from the headquarters of either of the missionary societies, printed in attractive leaflet. INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 105 villages, and in that thronging plain there was not one professed Christian. Very early in the morning, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the year, the little group of Christians climbed the hill to be alone with God. There was nothing dramatic in their action, no consciousness on their part of taking part in a historic scene. They were a little obscure band, quite naturally and simply obeying the desire of their own hearts for an hour of communion and dedication. But generations yet unborn will visit that sacred hill, where in faith God's children, in the name of Christ, took possession of the land of the Telugus. The story of what happened at that sunrise prayer- meeting is best told by the Bible-woman, Julia of Nellore : First we sang a hymn and Father Jewett prayed. Then Christian Nursu prayed. Then Father read a portion of Isaiah, fifty-second chapter. " How beauti- ful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace." Then Mother Jewett prayed, then I prayed, and then Ruth prayed. After we had all prayed, Father Jewett stood up and stretching out his hand, said : " Do you see that rising piece of ground yonder, all covered over with prickly-pear? Would you not like that spot for our mission bungalow and all this land to become Christian? Well, that day will come." Then we all spoke our minds, and just as the meeting closed, the sun rose. It seemed as if the Holy Spirit had lifted us above the world, and our hearts were filled with thanksgiving to the Lord. Doctor Jewett on Retrenchment. Faith was not to be fulfilled in sight, however, for weary years. io6 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Extensive touring was done by the Jewctts and the Doug- lasses, who joined the mission in 1855, and a few choice first-fruits were gathered, among them Kana- kiah, the first ordained pastor, who later married Julia of Nellore, and Lydia, a caste woman, whom Doctor Smith called " Anna, the Prophetess." The scanty rjcsults lowered the subnormal temperature of the church at home, and in 1856 the executive committee wrote, fearing that " retrenchments " would be neces- sary. Doctor Jewett's reply ought to be committed to memory by every Christian. Oh, Father, forgive the churches. To rob God's treasury is not to distress missionaries primarily, but it is a robbery of souls, a shutting away the gift of eternal life. The missionary must part with what he loves far more than any earthly boon, yet Christians at home refuse the help they could so easily give. The very idea of retrenchment is hostile to everything that deserves the name of missionary. Satan says, " stop giving." Jesus says, " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel." Second Proposal to Abandon the Mission. In 1862, after thirteen years of apparently fruitless labor. Doc- tor Jewett's health gave way, and he and his family were obliged to return to America. It was provi- dential that he had to return, for Mr, Little Faith and Brother Much Afraid were again raising their voices in the home field, and bringing up the peren- nial question of abandoning the Lone Star Mission. Worldly Wisdom had a good case too. He might pertinently point out that they had yielded to the INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 107 sentimentalists twice; that once the Convention had actually been stampeded by a poem. Was it not quite evident, after twenty-five years of vain endeavor, that the soil about Nellore was too hard or too thin for the gospel to take root? Why not put good Bap- tist money where it would count for something, and not waste money and break down valuable lives in a vain endeavor? Doctor Jewett Saves the Day. The resolution came up at the annual meeting in Providence in 1862, and would undoubtedly have passed, such was the senti- ment, but for the plea of the corresponding secretary. Doctor Warren, that final action be deferred until after the arrival of Doctor Jewett, now on the sea. This was reluctantly agreed to. When Doctor Jewett came later before the Executive Committee, his mag- nificent faith and assured conviction of ultimate suc- cess could not be resisted. He said he had strong faith that God had much people among the Telugus, and if the society declined to aid him, he should go back alone, there to live and die. Such faith won the day. It always does. " Great is thy faith ; be it unto thee even as thou wilt " ; " Little is thy faith ; be it unto thee even as thou wilt," are obverse sides of the same shield. Doctor Clough Enters the Field. When the Jewetts returned they took with them for the Nellore field a man of might, John E. Clough, as rugged, strong, and uncompromising as is the sound of his name. The legend goes that the Executive Committee was not quite sure of his qualifications for the place. He io8 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE seemed a bit too rugged and unfinished. But when one of the members asked him, so goes the story, what he would do if they thought best not to send him, he rephed that he would go anyway, if he had to work his passage. So he had his way, and sailed from Boston, November 30, 1864. Awakening Among the Outcastes. As, after some long, cold winter, one wakes some morning to breathe the breath of spring, mysterious, unmistakable, though bluebirds and apple blossoms are weeks away, so the returned missionaries found evidence that the seed long sown in tears was soon to spring in joy. The missionaries, in faith that reenforcements would be needed, sent urgent appeals home for two more men. When the break on the field came, however, it was not in the direction in which it had been ex- pected or even desired. The outcastes began to turn to God! Without the pale of Hinduism, shut out from its ritual, denied the ministry of its priests and the consolations of its religion, are the multitudes of the outcastes of India, " the untouchables," re- garded by all the Hindu world as almost less than human. The law of Manu had said regarding these Pariahs or outcastes : " Their abode must be out of town. Their clothes must be the mantles of the dead. Let no man hold any intercourse with them." They were not allowed to draw water from the village wells frequented by the caste people, lest their shadows should pollute them. They were forced to yield the street to the caste people, and in some sections of the country where caste prejudice was strongest, the INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 109 women of the outcastes were not allowed to wear any- clothing on the upper part of the body. Born in filth, reared in filth, dying in filth, the Madigas, Malas, and Pariahs passed their wretched lives. They were made up of the weavers, cobblers, tanners, fishermen, sweepers, and farm laborers. Even among these poor people caste held sway. Outcastes whose income was only four dollars a month would hire the family wash- ing done ; for so disgraceful was the dhohi's, or wash- erman's, work considered that even the sweepers would not eat with him nor have any social intercourse. In all India there are about fifty millions of these hope- less folk, sometimes spoken of by high-sounding euphemism as the " depressed classes." The First Madiga Convert. Now it was the pur- pose of God to show the triumphs of his grace on these feeblest, most persecuted, most ignorant, hope- less, and unlovely people in all India. The first con- vert among these outcastes came while Doctor Clough was on a visit to Ongole in the year 1866. He was named Periah, one of the Madigas. Although unable to read a word, he yet gave such convincing evidence of his grasp of the saving truths of Christianity that, without question, he and his wife were baptized one day, at set of sun. Glowing with joy, he began to go among the outcastes, from palem to palem. Three native preachers from Nellore agreed to join him, and were amazed at his burning zeal. Long before daybreak he would have them on the way. In the hottest weather he went with them, carrying a huge jar of buttermilk on his head, so that the preachers no FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE might drink when thirsty. When the preachers re- turned to Nellore, Hke the first disciples, they mar- veled, for two hundred outcastcs were believing in Christ. Providential that the Outcastes Came First. In no way is the guiding hand of God more clearly seen than in gathering his church in India first from the outcastes. Not because they are the best material. They are the worst, perhaps. Nor because they are the most influential; they are least. But if, after the plans and efforts of man, the missionaries had succeeded in building up a church of caste people, so terrible is the bondage of caste in India that it would never have been possible to receive into the same church the outcaste converts. This was illus- trated in the early days in Ongole. A number of caste people had come asking baptism, but when they heard of the IMadigas who had been baptized in Periah's village, they objected to being in the same church with them. Doctor Clough told them that these outcastes were forty miles away, and could not hurt them. They seemed pacified. But just then twelve men, converts from an outcaste village, came asking baptism. The missionary almost hoped that they might fail in the examination, for to admit them seemed the ruination of the promising beginning among the caste people. But the outcastes witnessed a good confession. Prudence said, " Do not throw over these people of influence for these despised Madigas." What did Duty say? In their dilemma, Doctor and Mrs. Clough went apart to their rooms to INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA in ask counsel of God. Each opened to the same passage of Scripture, 1 Corinthians 1 : 26-29 : " For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the fiesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called ; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence." As they came from prayer each told the other God's answer. There was no further question. The out- castes were baptized. The caste people turned away, saying : ** If these are received, we cannot enter your church." Days of Growth. The years between 1867 and 1876 were filled with hope and progress. New recruits joined the mission staff. Doctor and Mrs. Downie came in 1873, and Rev. R. R. Williams was assigned to the theological seminary in Ramapatnam. The same year Mr. Campbell became the pioneer in the Deccan. The Timpanys and McLaurins, after excel- lent service in Ongole, later founded the Canadian Baptist Telugu mission at Cocanada and Akidu, farther north. The newly organized Woman's For- eign Missionary Society of the West sent out in 1872 Miss Lavinia Peabody, the first unmarried woman to join the mission. She collected the pupils for a girls' school in Ramapatnam. " I shall begin my school if I have to gather my pupils under a banyan 112 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE tree," she wrote. In 1874 Doctor Clough visited America, stirred up some of the churches, and inci- dentally raised fifty thousand dollars to endow the theological seminary at Ramapatnam. Then sud- denly all the baptizing, the teaching, the preaching, the touring, and the organizing of schools was broken off by a terrible calamity, the great famine of 1876 to 1878. The Great Famine. This was one of the most ter- rible in the long list of Indian famines, affecting as it did a territory in which lived fifty-eight millions of the people. The northeast monsoon, the wind that brings the rainy season, failed, then the southeast monsoon. Green things burned from the face of the earth. Grain merchants began to hoard their grain. Panic seized the people. The cattle died, the streams dried up; then came pestilence, starvation, death. The mission compounds were thronged with gaunt, starving creatures, begging for food. The ears were filled with the wailing cries of children, the eyes haunted with the sight of starving men. The government began relief work by digging canals and building rail- ways, and established great famine camps. Mission- aries gave themselves up to relieving the sufferers, by means of funds sent from America. Doctor Clough took a contract to cut four miles of canal ; and on this he set the starving Christians in Ongole at work. Said the British engineer in charge, " Of the thirty- five miles built under my direction, your portion is the best." Missionaries in various districts were made agents for the distribution of the great Mansion ONGOLE HIGH SCHOOL FOR BOYS RAMAPATXAM THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 113 House Fund, collected in England for the relief of the famine sufferers. Famine Orphans Saved. Day-nurseries and or- phanages were opened. Mrs. Downie, in Nellore, fed four hundred of the children for seven months, at a per capita cost of two cents a day. She made the children thrive too. Many of the orphans rescued in these days of famine became most valued leaders in the Christian community later on. One Bible- woman now working was sold by her mother in 1876 for four annas (eight cents), and later rescued by the missionaries. The story is told of another Christian worker, that during one of the Indian famines, her parents, having no food, buried the tiny child alive in order to get rid of her cries. She worked her head out of the loose dirt, and was seen and rescued by a policeman who brought her to one of the Christian orphanages. Here she was kept and educated, and when grown married to a native pastor. She reared a family of twelve children, and became herself one of the most influential women in the Christian com- munity. The Great Ingathering. After the famine came a great ingathering. While they worked on the canal, the Christian pastors and teachers had many oppor- tunities, in the intervals of the work, to speak of the Christian faith to the thousands of workers to whom the canal furnished means of livelihood. The spectacle of Christians giving work alike to all, with no dis- crimination in regard to caste, and with equal solici- tude for the humble and the educated, made a pro- H 114 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE found impression upon the people. It was new to them to see the religious leaders and teachers giving themselves to the service of humanity. Their whole idea of religious leaders, gained through their own, the Brahmans, had been of those who accepted wor- ship from them, but gave no ministry to them in re- turn. For fifteen months all applicants for baptism were refused. Not until after all work was completed, and there could be no longer any financial motive leading the people to enroll themselves as Christians, were any candidates for baptism examined or re- ceived. But it was impossible longer to refuse the people. They could not be kept away. In Ongole, from the middle of June to the end of December, 1878, nine thousand, six hundred and six were bap- tized, making Ongole the largest Baptist church in the world, with a membership of over twelve thou- sand. On the third of July two thousand, two hun- dred and twenty-two were baptized by six native pas- tors. When the missionaries urged caution and de- lay, and tried to send the people back to their vil- lages, the multitude, one and all, said to their leading men and preachers : " We do not want any money. We will not ask you for any, either directly or in- directly, now or hereafter. As we have lived thus far by our work, by the blisters on our hands we can prove this to you, so we will continue to live, or if we die we shall die, but we want you to baptize us." Within ten years no fewer than twenty-five thousand converts were baptized on the Telugu field, most of them from the outcastes. Such an ingathering from INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 115 such a class brought with it inevitably many serious problems. The people were bankrupt financially, mentally, and spiritually. The transformation wrought in two generations is an evidence of the power of the gospel to uplift and transform. Work Begun in the Deccan. The year before the great famine began, the field of missionary operations had been extended into the independent state of Hy- derabad. This territory lying to the north of the Madras presidency contained some eleven million people, a large proportion of them speaking Telugu. The stations in this territory are Secunderabad, Hanumakonda, Palmur, Nalgonda, Sooriapett, and Jangaon. First Problem: That of Self-Support. The first prob- lem was the building up of an organized, self-propa- gating, self-supporting church. While none of these ends have to this time been fully realized, such prog- ress has been made as no one would have dared to prophesy in 1876. There are at present one hundred and thirty-three organized churches, and seven hun- dred and forty meeting-places where religious services are held. Some of these churches are isolated groups of believers in tiny hamlets; others are large, well- organized, orderly bodies, with their own pastors, officers, Sunday and parish schools, and Bible-women. The question of self-support has been most difficult of solution. The people were poor, with a sodden, hopeless poverty of which we have no conception. There are more people who lie down hungry in India every njo-ht than live in the United States. British officials Ii6 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE have estimated that one-third of the people from the cradle to the grave never have enough to eat. To be always hungry, to earn a few pennies a day when one earns at all, to be squeezed between the two millstones of rent and taxation, to be shut out from economic betterment by the inexorable customs of caste, to have the ever-present dread and the often realized suffering of famine, are a few of the reasons that prevent Telugu Christians from wholly support- ing their own churches. The statistics show that out of one hundred and thirty-three churches only twenty- two are to-day absolutely independent of any missionary aid. Telugu Liberality. In spite of difficulties things do move, and self-support is being manfully and per- sistently sought. There are thousands of Telugu homes where a handful of rice for God is taken out of the portion that goes into the family kettle at each meal. There are churches which have no money to bring to the collection, which bring in their tithes in good Old Testament fashion: chickens, eggs, grains, and pumpkins to adorn the collection, Sunday after Sunday. The spirit of the Telugu evangelists is fine. One of them is supporting himself, his wife, and three children on fifteen rupees (five dollars) per month. He never complains, and when the su])jcct was brought up by a visiting American he replied : " I do not mind if I have to live like a buffalo so long as I may preach about Jesus." The children too catch the spirit of sacrificial giving. Many of the children are so poor that they have no clothing what- INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 117 ever, and bring to the meeting their little collection, a few grains of their food, taken almost grain by grain from their small daily portion, tied up in a wee bit of rag. Some Girl Heroines, Mr. Baker says that the On- gole church is loyally supported by the schoolgirls, most of whom never have any money to spend. When the church made an effort, recently, to increase its receipts, the girls of the school held a meeting to see what they could do. After careful consideration the whole school decided that as Sunday was the day on which there were no hard lessons to learn or any garden to dig, plenty of food on that day was not so essential. They asked that they might go with- out the morning meal on Sunday, and give this money to their Lord. Seventy Miles with a Pumpkin, An old man at Gowanda, thirty-five miles north of Ongole, had a blessing manifestly from heaven, and a great desire to give something to Jesus took possession of him. The only suitable thing he had to give was a mag- nificent pumpkin he had raised with great care and protected a long time from thieves. But how was he to get it to the Lord? The hamlet had no Chris- tian teacher to tell him. " I will take it to the mis- sionary. He will know what to do." In India this vegetable is worth about four cents. The old man walked seventy miles, and one-half the distance car- ried on his head a weight of about thirty pounds and the food for his journey, that he might present to the Lord an acceptable gift of four cents. Ii8 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Self-Support and Unselfishness. It is interesting to find that in India too, the shortest way to self- support is the long way around the world. The churches that are doing most in paying their own expenses are those that have been stirred with the missionary passion, and are thinking not solely nor chiefly of keeping the breath of life in their own or- ganization, but rather of making that organization a power for evangelizing the world. The Telugu Baptist Missionary Society is the greatest stimulus in the church life of India. Its work includes both home and foreign missions. It works among heathen tribes in India and among the Telugu immigrants in South Africa. First Telugu Foreign Missionary. It was in 1902 that John Rungiah and his wife offered themselves to go as foreign missionaries to South Africa to labor among the Telugu immigrants at work in the mines and plantations. In 1910, Mr. B. C. Jacob, a faithful and able Telugu professor in the seminary at Rama- patnam, volunteered to go as a second missionary to South Africa. The reflex influence of the going of these men upon the home church was quite as re- markable as the good efl^ected through their work as missionaries in the foreign field. For example, the little church at Hanumakonda, which had given fifty-four rupees for its own work and had no outside interests, is now able to raise two hundred and sev- enty-seven rupees for missions and self-support, and has been stimulated also to pay two hundred and fifty rupees for the education of its children. INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 119 Second Problem: That of Industrial Betterment. Closely connected with the problem of self-support is that of improving industrial conditions. Because the bulk of the converts w^ere from the outcastes, Christianity itself became an outcaste faith, and its converts were subjected to severe persecution. If one became a Christian he faced denial of the right to draw water from the village well, loss of trade, ostracism, and sometimes starvation and death. The industrial helplessness of the people has still further complicated the situation. When the majority of a village become Christians, the situation is somewhat easier. And it is in these Christian Telugu villages where the most striking transformation in the con- dition of the people has been wrought. The caste problem has terribly complicated matters. If a con- vert were not originally from the carpenter class, it was useless to teach him carpentry, as the whole weight of the carpenter caste and the cooperation of all the other castes would be thrown in the scale to shut him out from getting work altogether. The great work of the next twenty-five years will be to impart such industrial education as shall help to raise the economic status of the people. What Tuskegee and Hampton and Spellman Seminary are doing for the colored people of America must be done, under infinitely harder conditions, for the outcaste Telugu Christians. An Industrial Experiment Station. Beginnings have already been made. In 1904, at Hanumakonda, a committee of the mission was appointed to study I20 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE the whole question of industrial education, especially the establishment of a normal agricultural training school, through which the average farmer should be taught to get a better living. An industrial experi- ment station was later organized in Ongole, and Rev. S. D. Bawden sent out as the first industrial mission- ary. For seven years he has been studying the whole problem and making a number of interesting experi- ments. One of these was to attempt to apply to conditions in India the principles of dry farming as developed in America. At this same experiment station pumps to use in irrigation were imported, with the result that a schoolboy running a pump could put as much water upon the land in a given time as could two yokes of bullocks. Improved Looms Needed. Another plan was con- sidered by which the large Christian community of the weaver-caste might be shown how to lift itself into competence and independence. Under the present conditions the weavers are at the mercy of the Sudras and local merchants, and the rates for weaving are so low that it is almost impossible for them, under present methods of work, to make a bare living. Improved looms are to be had ; and improved methods of carding and spinning the cotton, and in winding and sizing the warp, might be introduced. Says the report: "The American who is a skilled weaver, with sympathy and patience, who will bring consecrated ingenuity to bear upon the task of so organizing the weavers in their villages as to reduce INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 121 the cost of production by a very little, will be able to render a signal service to the advancement of self- support in our Christian churches." The Bapatla Cooperative Association. Mr. Thoms- sen, of Bapatla, writes that he has noticed in his thirty years of ministry that poor Christians are, as a rule, poor Christians; for grinding poverty means slavery, and it is almost impossible for a desperately poor man to be honest, truthful, and God-fearing. He believes that the basis of all effective industrial work must be cooperation. In 1909 he started at Bapatla the Cooperative Association, Limited, The government gave a tract of valuable land on which the shares, valued at five rupees, could be entirely paid for in ten years. Caste people and Moslems, as well as Christians, became members of the asso- ciation. Every cultivator of the land belonged to the association. He received loans for the cultivation of the association's lands, without interest, and every- thing was done to help the poor member to become well-to-do. During the year 1910 great strides for- ward were made. The dumping-ground of Bapatla was abolished, and the association converted the refuse and sweepings into a valuable fertilizer. A swamp near the town was drained and protected against floods. This was the first land association of this kind ever established in India. It has at- tracted favorable comment and aid from the govern- ment, and demonstrated that mission industries, if they are to be successful, must be carried on in cooperation with the people. 122 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Forestry at Donakonda. At Donakonda the school- boys have been used to plant the big compound with five thousand trees. While these are growing, hay, fire-wood, fodder, gum arabic, and acacia seed can be raised so as nearly to pay for the cost of the planta- tion. In a few years the products from the trees will be profitable. The missionaries at Donakonda are of the opinion that forestry is the best way to utilize big compounds, where the soil is too poor for intensive farming. Dairying and Gardening. Mrs. Curtis has demon- strated at Donakonda the possibilities of dairy farm- ing on American lines. It remains for some conse- crated dairyman with a big fund of knowledge, adaptation, grit, and common sense to demonstrate on a larger scale what can be done for the uplift of the community by the introduction of better dairy methods. Industries at Ongole. At Ongole Miss Dessa was the first to lend a hand to industrial education. For years the boys in her school had the best vegetable and flower gardens in the district. They raised last year twenty-six kinds of fruits and vegetables and paid all their school tuition-fees with the profits. These oriental boys do not regard drawn-thread and 1)ead work as girls' occupations, but do skilled and beautiful work. All the senior boys passed a recent government examination. The boys' earnings enabled them to support a native preacher, run two Christian Endeavor Societies, and have a balance of seventy- two rupees at the end of the year. INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 123 Miss Evans is requiring the girls in her school, in Ongole, in a similar way, to work out their fees by gardening. She has had the whole garden dug out to the depth of a foot and good soil put in. Fertilizer has been furnished, from the school sanitation sys- tem, following scientific Japanese methods, and each girl from her garden-plot has had vegetables, grass, and fruit to sell. In addition, she teaches cotton- ginning, thread-making, crochet, knitting, and plain sewing. Hardships at Kurnool. In Kurnool the mission has helped native Christians secure about nine hundred acres of land from the government, on condition that they meet certain requirements. There have been found great difficulties, for the land is poor, the people poorer, without tools or skill. The Sudra neighbors who supply cattle and tools with which to work the impoverished little patches of land take half the crop as rent, although the entire crop is barely sufficient for livelihood. A Model Farm Needed. At Kurnool too, the mis- sionaries long for an expert agricultural missionary. He should establish families on these lands wher- ever possible. A motorcycle would make it possible for him to reach in a few hours the most distant farm. The chief object should be to bring these farms to a high state of cultivation. The effect of such a plan would do more than simply raise a few families out of poverty. India is now on the threshold of great advance along agricultural lines. We should be add- ing our mite toward raising the depressed classes. We have the land, we have the people willing to work 124 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE these lands. Shall we assist them in the manner in- dicated? The opportunity of an agricultural mission- ary for doing good would be second to none in the mission field. His work on the land would bring him into intimate contact with the people. Third Problem: Caste. Greater even than the in- dustrial problem has been that of caste. Wherever these poor Christian people have tried to rise, they have met the solid opposition of the privileged classes, backed by the teaching of a religion which has built caste as the very corner-stone of its existence. Human nature in India is not so diflferent from that in Amer- ica that the caste people have given up without a struggle any of their old privileges. Evidences of Caste Weakening. But caste itself, the greatest obstacle to the Christianization of India, is being slowly undermined. Cracks in its hard sur- face are already evident. One morning a little Madiga girl came into the school at Cumbum and asked that she might enroll in the school. Mr. Newcomb put his arm around her and said, "All right." After the missionary had left the room, the caste girls said to the native teacher, " How can our missionary come near us again after touching that little outcaste girl?" The teacher replied, " That is how Jesus loves every one, whether they have caste or not. You all love me very much, but I was a Madiga like that little girl when the missionary took me into school, and now I am your teacher." Community Celebration of Coronation. Perhaps the greatest evidences of the weakening of caste INDIAN CHRISTIAN CONVERTS FROM THREE CASTES m ^ ki£iSI»i ■^ ^ ,y- ■ w M % ^ ^ n *^ ^Km n W 9 f 1 ^R H H^B H t^ ^ L Uifi M^^l r ;h PREACHING TO A VILLAGE AUDIENCE IN SOUTH INDIA INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 125 prejudices were given at the time of the recent cor- onation festivities. At Ongole, the temple umbrella, an exceedingly sacred object which is held over the gods when they ride out to take an airing, was lent by the Hindu community to be held over the pictures of the Emperor and Empress of India, carried in Mis- sionary Baker's American carriage. The Christian schoolboys and girls, drawn for the most part from the outcaste portion of the community, received medals given by the Brahman district magistrate's own hand. In many places Hindus, Moslems, and Christians worked on the same committees in ar- ranging for the coronation festivities. In Kandukuru one of the features of the procession was the singing of songs by the school children. It was noticeable that the songs of the Christian school children elicited the most applause. Even the orthodox Hindus applauded. Opportunity in Mass Movements Among the Out- castes. The Bishop of Madras believes that the greatest opportunity before the Christian church in India to-day is in the ingathering of great masses of the outcaste people. Hinduism has had no place for them, no part in her ritual, no ministration from her priests, no hope for the future. In Christianity for the first time they realize their manhood. The bishop believes that within the next generation thirty millions of this people will be perfectly accessible to the work of Christian missions. No churches are better situated than are the Baptist for prosecuting a cou- rageous evangelistic, educational, and medical cam- paign among the outcaste peoples of South India. 126 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE They already have the largest Christian community as a basis. They have behind them seventy-five years of work, a fine system of common schools, a theological sem- inary, and training schools. All that is needed is the men and money for prosecuting the work on a scale adequate to the opportunities. Fourth Problem: Medical Missions. The medical service has been proved to be of inestimable value as an evangelizing agency. The ordinary evangelist has to go to a heathen. The medical evangelist has the heathen come to him. The records of the hospital at Hanumakonda in 1910 show that patients came from five hundred and twenty-nine villages. Among the patients were five thousand, five hundred and twenty-eight Hindus, two thousand, two hundred and forty Moslems, nine hundred and ninety-five Chris- tians, six hundred and sixty-five outcaste Hindus, forty Parsees, forty-eight Europeans and Eurasians. To every one of these the gospel was explained in word and song, and illustrated in lovely service. Medical Missions in Social Service. Medical mis- sionaries are valuable as a means of social service. Dirt, disease, and death are three foes which war against Christianity. A hospital is equipped to fight all three. The auxiliary work done in a Christian hospital in teaching sanitation, banishing cruel treat- ment of disease, preventing or stamping out epi- demics, and saving life cannot be overestimated. It is good and worth while apart from any religious value. Sixty-two per cent of those dying in Calcutta re- ceived in 1909 no medical attention of any kind. INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 127 Every hospital is an emancipator of mothers from the frightful and needless suffering in childbirth due to native malpractice. The sacrifice of infant life in India is perhaps unequaled in any other country of the world. The Inspector General of Civil Hospitals in Bengal states, in his last report, that to supply the rural districts with the minimum number of dispen- saries, absolutely necessary, agencies must be multi- plied forty times. Superior Health of Christian Community. The hos- pital also helps to fight the plague, and to teach the poor people how to fight it. The Christian hospitals of India have been so successful in this that an ap- preciable effect has been made on the health of the Christian community. During the visitation of the plague in 1898 the native Christians followed the simple directions in regard to sanitation given them by medical missionaries, with the result that they had almost complete immunity from the plague. In Bombay, out of fifteen hundred native Christians, only six were attacked, although exposed to great risks because of their unselfish m.inistry to the sick. Scientific Value of Medical Missions. Medical mis- sionaries make discoveries of great scientific value. One such is reported in the practice of the hospital in Palmur. An antidote for the deadly bite of the cobra has been found in permanganate of potash. After giving a number of examples in which life has been saved by this drug, Mr. Chute says : " To us the bite of the cobra has lost its terror. In no case where permanganate of potash has been applied has 128 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE the patient died after being bitten by the cobra. The remedy is also specific for the sting of the scorpion, and I believe that it may yet prove a specific for the bite of the mad dog. The only case in which we have known it to be used for this purpose has been followed by no bad symptoms." Evidential Value of Medical Missions. The med- ical missions are following in the path of the Great Physician. There is no surer way to incarnate the spirit of Jesus than by ministering to the suffering. As of old the people see the lame walk, the blind receive sight, the sick healed. When Doctor Stait, alone, for months bore the burden of caring for the sufferers through a violent epidemic of typho-malarial fever, she did more to translate the gospel to the people of India than she could have done through years of preaching. Night and day she and her band of Christian workers stood at their post. In many homes every member of the family was ill, and when brought in on cots to the hospital, they had received no care or bathing for weeks. Her loving hands washed, cleaned, and wrapped the poor fever-stricken bodies in clean, cool clothes. After months of cease- less toil, day and night, the brave doctor, who had been left to face alone this deadly epidemic, was her- self stricken with the disease and lay ill for many weary and anxious weeks. When, upon her recovery, she left for her furlough, a large meeting of non- Christians was held, and an address was read by a prominent government official, in which he said : " We hope that you, dear madam, will carry with you the INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 129 esteem, love, affection, and gratitude of one and all of us without exception. You are loved by every Hindu, Mohammedan, and Christian resident in Udayagiri." Needs of Medical Missions among the Telugus. The needs of the medical branch are many. For the' most part the hospitals have been manned by women, and perhaps this is wise. The women of India are the most needy, destitute, suffering, and oppressed class in the world. It is abhorrent to all their ideals to employ men as physicians. If they are reached and helped it must be by the work of consecrated women physicians. Mrs. Heinrichs and Mrs. Elmore have both urged the strategic value of Ramapatnam in influencing the whole Telugu field through the medical training of the wives of the pastors during their years of residence at the Ramapatnam Theolog- ical Seminary. The trustees of the seminary have recently taken favorable action in this matter in pro- viding for the beginnings of a course in medical train- ing and practical midwifery. The work that these pastors' wives, thus instructed, can do in raising the standards of health and hygiene in their villages is simply incalculable. The Babies' Doctor. At Nellore is located the hos- pital for women and children whose physician. Doc- tor Degenring, is called the " Babies' Doctor." This is because her salary is raised by the offerings of the tiny tots in the Cradle Rolls. Each Baptist mother of a baby or tiny child is asked to pay ten cents each year to make her little one a member of the Cradle I 130 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Roll. If only all did this there might be a " babies' doctor " in every other foreign mission as well as in Nellore. A woman physician is greatly needed in Palmur. Why cannot one result of this centennial study be that enough little ones join the Cradle Roll to supply two doctors for the babies of India? Fifth Problem: Education. The Telugu schools may be considered as an achievement or as a problem. It is gratifying to enumerate the Normal School at Bapatla, the Boys' High School and Girls' High School at Nellore, the High Schools at Ongole and Kurnool, the score of station boarding-schools, the six hundred elementary and village schools. With greater fruitfulness, however, we may consider their difficulties and problems ; for in India all educational work is entering upon a period of testing and read- justment. The government influence has weighted the academic ideal in education so heavily that all schools have had to conform more or less closely to English standards. The government institutions have fitted men for clerical, government, or professional life, by the severe academic training imported from England, and applied with little adaptation to India's needs. The result has been a large body of men whose training leads them to despise manual labor, and whose economic needs make them centers of dissatis- faction. Agricultural Education. To-day a new spirit is stirring in India. It is realized that education ought not to mean training apart from environment. With eighty per cent of her population agricultural, India INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 131 needs that the village schools be schools of agricul- ture. The work which Canada and Japan are doing through their rural schools to transform rural life must be done for the Indian village community. Says Rev. W. H. HoUister, of Kolar, Mysore Prov- ince, India: I believe it possible to broadcast a new type of vil- lage schools all over India, each school having farm and garden-plots where boys and girls will be taught the best methods of agriculture, horticulture, and stock- raising, and with unpretentious workshops in which to teach handicrafts suited to rural lives. For some time government grants to village schools have been decreasing. This may not be such a tragedy, but rather a first-class opportunity, if only the funds can be furnished to the missionaries to make experiments which were impossible as long as the rigid academic standard was the price of the gov- ernment grant. A type of schoolmaster can be trained who shall not regard his function to be simply the hearing of recitations, or the preparation of pupils for academic examinations so that " good marks " can be secured; but who shall aim to make the school an expression of community life and an agency for community betterment. B. THE BENGAL-ORISSA MISSION The vote of the Free Baptists, taken at their Gen- eral Conference in July, 1910, to cooperate with the Baptists of the Northern Baptist Convention in mis- 132 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE sion work, marked the achievement of the most sig- nificant advance in Baptist polity made during the opening years of the twentieth century. There was a poetic justice in the union of the two bodies in mis' sionary work, since the history of their Indian mis- sions had been intertwined at the very beginning. An Apostolic Letter. A remarkable chain of cir- cumstances linked the Baptists of England and America together in the founding of the Bengal Mis- sion. Rev. James Colman and his wife were among the first party of Baptist missionaries who sailed out of Boston harbor in 1817. When the Burman war began they were exiled to Calcutta, where he died, July 4, 1822. Mrs. Colman, who had become super- intendent of the schools for girls, with over two hun- dred pupils enrolled, was later married to Rev. Amos Sutton, a missionary of the English Baptists. It was because of a suggestion of his wife that a letter was addressed by Amos Sutton to the Free Baptists of America setting forth the great needs of the field, and asking their cooperation. Since Mrs. Sutton could not remember the address of the " Morning Star," the organ of the American Free Baptists, this letter was pigeon-holed for several months and forgotten. One day a package came to Mr. Sutton from England. One of its wrappings proved to be an old copy of the " Morning Star." The letter was sent to America and printed in the " Morning Star," April 13, 1832. As God had used Judson's appeal to rouse the Bap- tists, he now used this letter to summon the Free Baptists into missionary activity. Two years later CHURCH AND CONGREGATION AT BHIMPOEE SINCLAIR ORPHANAGE AT BALASORE INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 133 Mr. and Mrs. Sutton came to America and did a wonderful work among the churches. It was through the appeals of Air. Sutton that the Baptists decided to begin mission work among the Telugus. When the Suttons returned to India in 1835 they took with them not only the first missionaries of the Free Bap- tists, Rev. and Mrs. Jeremiah Phillips and Rev. and Mrs. Eli Noyes, but also Rev. and Mrs. Samuel S. Day, the founders of the Lone Star Mission. After seventy-five years of separate existence these two missions were brought together under the manage- ment of the American Baptist Foreign Mission So- ciety in 1910. The Field. The field selected by the Free Baptists for their mission stretches one hundred and fifty miles along the Bay of Bengal to the southwest of Calcutta. Through it runs the old pilgrim road trodden by mil- lions of pilgrims on their way down from the north through Midnapore, Jellasore, and Balasore to the sacred cities of the south. There are four millions of people living in the closely scattered villages of the Bengal and Orissa Provinces in which the mission is located. Work is done chiefly in the Bengali and Oriya languages, though Santali, Hindustani, and Telugu are also spoken. While most of the people are Hindus, there are seventy-five thousand Moslems in the cities. The aboriginal Santals number about two hundred thousand. Varieties o£ Work. The pioneers began with street preaching and touring in the country districts. As Christians were gathered the work of education and 134 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE training began. The Boys' High School at Balasore, the Phillips Bible School, and the Bible-woman's Training School at Micfnapore, with one hundred vil- lage schools, are laying the basis of a Christian com- munity. Industrial education has received successful emphasis. At Balasore there are sixty boys in the industrial school. Weaving is taught so successfully that the school sells enough cloth to maintain itself. It received the gold medal given by the government recently for the best display of cloth at the Balasore district industrial exhibition. A successful lace in- dustry is maintained by Mrs. Kennan at Bhimpore. Medical missions have taken a prominent place. One of the features of the mission has been the orphan- ages for boys and girls at Balasore, Bhimpore, and Santipore. Many of the leading Christian v^rorkers have been from among these orphans. The Santals. The Free Baptists share with other Baptist brethren a predilection for work among primitive people. The Santals, like the Karens, have responded in a remarkable way to the preaching of the gospel. There is no brighter page in the history of the mission than that of the transformation effected in Santal villages by the entrance of Christianity. Converts. There have been no mass movements in the Bengal-Orissa Mission. The converts have been won individually, a good proportion of them from the caste people. Hence the influence of the Christian community is very marked in comparison with its numbers. There are fifteen hundred communicants and four thousand children in the Sunday-schools. INDIA, THE RUDDER OF ASIA 135 The mission has been notable in the number of strong Christian workers which it has developed. Some of the native preachers have proved competent to direct the work of a whole station. Facts About India Population (census of 1911) 315,000,000 Hindus 217,580,000 Mohammedans 66,620,000 Christians 3,870,000 Christian increase in ten years ■>>?>% Hindu increase in ten years 5% Increase of Catholic Christians 24% Increase of Protestant Christians A^V/fo Increase of Syrian Christians 27% Christian population of India from 1891 to 1901 increased twenty times as fast as the population. Medical missionaries number 404 Total missionary force numbers 5,200 Joseph Cook called India " The Rudder of Asia." " Less than one per cent of children of school age are in school."—/. R. Mott. India feeds and cares for 5,000,000 religious mendicants. Indian Christians, out of their deep poverty, contribute one dollar per capita, per annum. Average income of Christian family is Rs. 5, or one dollar and sixty-six cents per month. British and Foreign Bible Society has issued 17,500,000 copies of the Scriptures in Indian languages. Total circulation of the Scriptures in India, Burma, and Ceylon for 191 1 equals 1,009,008. Growth of circulation in ten years, 77 per cent. 136 FOLLOWING THE SUiNRlSE Baptist Educational Institutions in South India Ramapatnam Theological Seminary, Ramapatnam, South India. Rev. J. llcinrichs, president; Rev. W. T. Elmore, and native faculty. A spacious and beautiful wooded compound at Ramapatnam by the sea came into the possession of the Telugu Mission, and here the seminary was established in 1872. Not only the young men, but also their wives, are educated here, and some of the Telugu women have proved brilliant students in the highest classes. The students number about 100. Bapatla Normal Training School, Bapatia, South India. Under management of Rev. G. N. Thomssen. The great need among the Christian hamlets of South India is for teacher-pastors, and such the normal school supplies for all the mission. It has a large " practice school." It needs new buildings. American Baptist Mission High School, Ongole, South India. L. E. Martin, A. M., principal; and native faculty. Ongole is one of our largest mission centers in South India. About 325 boys attend the school, many of them Hindus and Mohammedans. American Baptist Mission High School, Nellorc, South India. Rev. L. C. Smith, principal. This has a high standing among the schools of Madras Presidency and continues to attract many Hindus, in spite of bitter protests against its pronounced Christian character. About 300 boys attend. A new Iniilding has been erected. Coles Memorial High School, Kurnool, South India. Rev. Henry Huizinga, Ph. D.. principal. The new building for the high school is one of the finest in South India. INDIA, THE RUDDER OE ASIA 137 Ncllore Girls' High School, Ncllorc, South India. Miss Ella M. Draper. Only high-school work is done in this school, where the ma- jority of the girls arc from the non-caste peoples. Baptist Educational Institutions in Bengal-Orissa Phillips Bible School at Midnapore. This is a training school for native workers. Ninety-five per cent of workers in the Bengal-Orissa Mission are graduates of this school. Boys' High School at Balasore. Rev. G. H. Hamlen, principal. This school, which has an enrolment of 258, is rapidly enlar- ging its work, is receiving aid from the government, and is more and more chosen by non-Christian parents as a school for their sons. Additional rooms and a chapel constitute the imperative needs at the present time. Bibliography I. Telugus Ware, Christian Missions in the Telugu Country. London, So- ciety for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1912. Downie, History of the Telugu Mission. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1893. Clough, From Darkness to Light. Boston, 1S82. A story of the Telugu awakening. Mott, Decisive Hour of Christian Missions. New York. Student Volunteer Movement, 1910. A critical study of movements and forces in non-Christian world. See under " India " in index. Missions in South India. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. 138 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Merriani, History of American Bat'tist Missions. Chapter XIV. Year Book of Missions in India, Dur)na, and Ceylon. New York, Missionary Education Movement, 1912. An indispensable source for knowledge of many features described in this chapter. Chamberlain, The Kingdom in India. New York, Rcvcll, 1908. 2. Bengal-Orissa Mission Griffin, India and Daily Life in Bengal. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1912. Stacy, In the Path of Light. Chapters XI, XII. New York, Revell, 1895. Free Baptist Cyclopedia. 1889. Good articles touching on persons and history of this mission. Missions in Bengal. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1912. / 'Gharbapta BENGAL MAP SnO"VVING THE STATIONS OF THE AMERICAN BAPTIST rOBEIGN MISSION SOCIETY Stations of A.B.F.n.S. BalasofB Railroads ■ Scale of Miles PTTERSiENGR^ ..BOSTON XoDgitude Eut from Qreenwlcli THE CHANCE IN CHINA 106 LoD^tudo C 110 Eut O from 115 Qreetiwich £ CHAPTER V THE CHANCE IN CHINA China's Giant Bulk. The fact bulking biggest in the world to-day is China. Her sheer physical mass is overwhelming. Says Doctor Gracey : " Lay all Europe on China, and you will have thirteen hundred square miles uncovered. Lay China on the United States and it will overrun the Gulf of Mexico and four degrees into the Pacific Ocean. Reverse the experiment and lay the United States, including Alaska, on China, and you may gem the edges with a half-dozen Great Britains and Ire- lands. Change China from its present shape to that of a belt of land a mile wide, and there would be room for a walking match, from end to end, of thirty miles a day continued for more than four and a half centuries." China's numbers are bewildering. Here, under one gov- ernment, are gathered together four hundred and thirty millions of people, nearly one-fourth of the entire popu- lation of the globe. When it is considered that half the world lives in Asia, and of the population of Asia forty- six per cent is included in India and China, one gets a dim conception of the enormous numbers of the popula- tion of China. Her Imperial Resources. China's resources stagger the statistician. Here are untouched fields of anthracite coal that make those of Pennsylvania seem parochial in 141 142 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE size; vast iron fields, great oil territory, unexcelled min- eral wealth, rivers so deep that ocean steamers can sail six hundred miles inland, and a network of streams and canals that insure an unsurpassed system of water trans- portation. There are undeveloped wheat-fields vaster than those of Canada. China has productive land ade- quate to feed and clothe its people for a thousand years. The Revolution. On this rich country is placed a great people, at once the oldest, youngest, most con- servative, most radical among nations; a race that sur- vives overcrowding, underfeeding, unending toil, tyranny, dirt, and disease. This people, after stereotyping a system of education and resting apparently content for centuries in the contemplation of their past, are on the move once more in a revolution that, for extent, variety, depth, swiftness, and sobriety, is unparalleled in history. It has been a change in government by which a foreign dynasty, upheld by force for two centuries and a half, has been replaced by a republic. This feat has been accomplished with less shedding of blood than accom- panied single battles of the Civil War in America. Educational Upheaval. It has meant the most amazing educational reformation in history. A system of schools that was well established when Abraham went out of Ur in Chaldees has been abandoned. The Chinese have thrown over the old learning, methods, text-books, subject-matter, examinations, theory. They have begun again from the beginning. In one generation they must make the transition from the oldest to the most modern theories in educational science. They cannot make it successfully without help. THE CHANCE IN CHINA 143 Social Changes. It has meant a revolution in social custom. For the first time, women as well as men are to be admitted to the institutions of higher learning. Foot-binding has been discredited and prohibited by the government. Marriage customs are in process of chan- ging. Judicial procedures are being overhauled. The whole system of criminal jurisprudence has been altered. The wearing of the cue, that distinct badge of the Chinaman, has been abandoned. European dress is superseding the old Chinese costume. The Chinese New Year is set aside for the first of January. In his travel and amusements, in his social engagements and his schools, in his marriage and in his funeral customs, the Chinese is definitely committed to a policy of bringing himself into harmony with the rest of the world. The Industrial Revolution. It has meant a revo- lution in industry. Within one brief generation one- fourth of the human race will be transferred from the age-long method of hand production to the new factory system. Its water-power will be harnessed to the service of factories, smelters will be begun, steel-mills opened, flouring-mills established. The cotton which is raised in China will be there woven into cotton cloth. Silk-mills will take the place of the old hand-looms. Nor does one need to put this in the future tense. The process is already begun. When one considers that within the bounds of the Chinese Empire is gathered a most numerous, hardy, and industrious people, trained through long centuries to unremitting toil, and gifted with a genius for commercial afifairs, the stupendous issues at stake are clearly evident. China has a superlative quality K 144 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE and quantity of coal, oil, and iron, the triad on which industrial supremacy is built. Her entrance into the fields of modern industrial organization, with the devel- opment of her water and electrical power, means much to the world for good or for ill. Urgency of the Crisis. All these revolutionary changes must be accomplished within the space of one generation. Said the Chinese Commissioner at Edin- burgh : " My nation is a people which has broken with its past. We are like a crystal in solution. We shall re- crystallize." As has been said : " If the Classical Revival, the Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the French and American Revolutions, and the modern era of machine production be conceived of as operating at the same place and time upon a single people, one may gain some faint conception of the magnitude of the revolution now taking place in China." The land, the people, the present crisis, make China the focal point in the interest of the mission forces of to-day. The aim of the present chapter will be to trace the part played by Baptists in the planting of Christianity in China, to note the present- day opportunities, and to indicate the pressing needs of that part of the work committed to their hands. Pioneer Missionary Endeavor. Baptists were not the first to enter China. In 1807, Robert Morrison, the pioneer to China, was sent out by the London Missionary Society. While yet in England he had begun work on the Chinese language by copying the Chinese manuscript in the British Museum. The ships of the British East India Company would not sell passage to a missionary, so Morrison was forced to go to China by way of New THE CHANCE IN CHINA 145 York. When he reached China he was not allowed to land on the mainland, or to do any except secret mis- sionary work. He became a translator in the factory of the East India Company, located outside Canton, and was virtually a prisoner in his own house. Here he worked untiringly on a dictionary and translation of the Bible. In 1814 the first copies of the Chinese New Testament left the press. And in May of the same year, near the seashore, beside a spring which issued from the foot of a high mountain, the Chinese printer, Tsa Aku, who had helped Morrison to print the New Testament, was bap- tized. Meager First-Fruits. When Morrison died in 1834, after a life of heroic self-devotion, there were but three Protestant Christians in China. The Bible had been translated by the help of two Chinamen who had been obliged to work in secret, hidden behind piles of mer- chandise in the Canton warehouse of the East India Com- pany. If detected they would themselves have suffered death by horribly cruel punishment. In the years between 1829 and 1834, the American Congregationalists sent out Elijah C. Bridgman, David Abeel, and Peter Parker, the first medical missionary, to establish a precarious footing in Canton. All missionary work was interrupted by the opium war, and not resumed until the treaty of 1840 won for the missionaries the right to reside and to teach in the five treaty ports. " The same war," says Dr. Robert Speer, " which fastened the opium curse on China, opened the country to the mis- sionary and set on foot the vast movement of the Tai Ping Rebellion." 146 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Tremendous Obstacles to Overcome. Doctor Milne, the coadjutor of Morrison, has said of the diffi- culties of learning the Chinese language, that it was a work for men with " bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of spring steel, eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and lives of Methuselah." But great as were these difficulties, the moral and spir- itual obstacles were even greater. When Morrison died the prospects for any successful outcome of the enter- prise to which he had devoted his life were dark indeed. To unabated intolerance and contempt on the part of the Chinese, exclusion and fanaticism and official arrogance without parallel, were added uneven and meager support, a force never sufficient for the task put upon it, and the disheartening apathy of the Church at home. Three helpers had come to Alorrison, but these had either died or withdrawn, so that in 1829 he was absolutely alone. It is to the period which immediately followed the open- ing up of the treaty ports that the work of American Baptists, like that of the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Church of England, belongs. Baptist Work Begun in Siam. The story of Amer- ican Bajitist missionary work in China, strangely enough, does not begin in China, but in Siam, where it is inter- woven with the story of missions in Burma. Chinese im- migrants had been going into Siam in increasing streams for decades, attracted by the rich resources and sparse population of the land. Even to this day Siam has a population of only six million people in a territory larger than Germany ; hence Siam does not feel the pres- sure of life as do many oriental nations. THE CHANCE IN CHINA 147 Circumstances of Siam's Opening. It was Ann Hasseltine Judson, the heroine of Burma, who first called the attention of Baptists to Siam. She found time in her brief life of unsurpassed toil and suffering to learn enough of the language from an immigrant Siamese to translate the Gospel of Matthew into Siamese. Then the very ship which brought the Siamese twins to the United States brought also an appeal to American churches to enter Siam. The Congregationalists responded first in a mission that seemed a failure, but really had long, long influence, for it gave Siam a tutor to the Crown Prince, who made him the first progressive monarch of the Far East, Chulalongkorn, the steadfast friend of missions. Doctor Jones Goes to Siam. The first Baptist mis- sionary who entered Siam was John Taylor Jones, of Moulmein, Burma. During his missionary service in Moulmein he had become interested in an interior tribe called the Talains, among whom no work had yet been done. While attempting to learn their language, he found that they were very numerous in Siam, where they could be more easily reached through the Siamese lan- guage. Those were the days of pioneer experimentation in missions. So Doctor Jones light-heartedly set out for Bangkok, and there began in earnest the study of Siamese. He hoped by this means to reach the Talain people scat- tered throughout Burma and Siam, who had no written language. Doctor Jones was another in the long roll of Baptist missionaries who have been distinguished in the translation of the Bible. In 1843 he had completed his translation of the New Testament into Siamese, and as an interpreter had rendered valuable services to the 148 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE government of Siam and to the English and American ambassadors in their treaty negotiations. William Dean Sent to the Chinese. While Doctor Jones during his service in Bangkok had come into con- tact with Chinese immigrants, it was William Dean who was sent out as the first American Baptist missionary to the Chinese, under instructions to proceed to Bangkok and there begin his study of the Chinese language. At that time entrance into China was so difficult, and a foot- hold there so precarious, that it seemed to the Board that Siam offered the best door of entrance into China. Adventure with Pirates. It was a notable group of missionaries that sailed from Boston on the good ship " Cashmere," July 3, 1834. In addition to the Deans, there were the Wades, with the two Karen Christians who had accompanied Mr. Wade in his wonderful meet- ings throughout the country; the Howards, the Vintons, the Osgoods, the Comstocks, all bound for Burma. At Moulmein, where the Burmese missionaries left the ship, a frail little six-year-old boy was brought on board and entrusted to the Deans as far as Singapore. This was George Dana Boardman, later one of the best loved and most distinguished ministers of the Baptist denomina- tion. He was a son of George Dana Boardman, the asso- ciate of Adoniram Judson. Those were perilous days. The Deans, after a few weeks' delay in Singapore, took the little fellow in a Chinese boat to put him aboard the " Cashmere," which was about to sail for the United States. On the way, when ten miles from shore and five miles from the ship, they were attacked, while alone and unarmed, by fierce Malay pirates. Mr. Jones was thrown THE CHANCE IN CHINA 149 into the water and nearly drowned, and both he and Mr. Dean received numerous spear-thrusts. But the child, hiding under the seat of the boat, was unharmed. First Protestant Church in Siam. The work among the Chinese had already had its small beginnings when William Dean arrived in Bangkok. Among the little com- l^any who had been coming to Doctor Jones' house for in- struction, was a Christian Chinese convert and a little band of inquirers. These became a nucleus of the first Protestant church in Siam, organized by Mr. Dean in 1837. During his ministry in Siam Mr. Dean organized five Chinese churches, and baptized about five hundred Chinese disciples, a larger number probably than were gathered in during the same period in all China. Many of these emigrants, upon their return to the mother coun- try, became obscure sowers of the seed of the gospel, whose abundant harvest we are witnessing in our own times. Echoes of an Old Dispute. As soon as the signing of the treaty in 1842 threw open the five treaty ports to missionary eflfort, the Baptist mission was planted on the mainland of China. Mr. Dean moved up to Hongkong from Siam, and John L. Shuck and Issacher Roberts, from the settlement of Macao, where they had gathered a tiny church, the first Baptist church of China. The com- ment of an early historian casts an amusing side-light upon the distance we have come from those early days of uncompromising and sometimes prickly standing up for opinion. It seems that in 1847 Mr. Roberts had made a vain eflFort to unite a little church in Canton, founded by Mr. Shuck, with a church of three members which he ISO FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE himself had organized. Because Mr. Shuck had hecn, in 1845, the only one of the Baptist missionaries in China to cast his lot with the Southern Baptist Convention, this very sensible proposal of Mr. Roberts was bitterly opposed and defeated. The historian solemnly, and with a wise shake of the head, thus comments : He seems not to have considered that only one wronged and oppressed Baptist is sufficient to commence pulling down a church, and so making no end of noise and dust. Dear reader, harken to the voice of experi- ence. Thank God, we do not live in those dear old days. John L. Shuck Enlists. It was this same gallant soidier of Christ, John L. Shuck, about whom the follow- \^g story is told : At the close of a missionary meeting, when the deacons were counting the offering, they found with the coins and bills a card on which was written one word : " Myself." " Who put this in ? " asked one. " Oh, a young man back in the congregation," was the answer. But this young man was destined to be one of the noblest soldiers of the Cross sent into China by the Baptists of the South. Beginnings in Kw^angtung. The province in which the Baptists had now established their mission was Kwangtung. Here, in the territory about as large as Oregon, lives a population as numerous as that of France. From this province come most of the immigrants to the United States; the Cantonese, sailors, adventurers, mer- chants, traders — restless and democratic. It was not until after the war of 1857 that the mission was transferred to ON THE MISSIUX COMPOUND AT SWATOW ! 15*^ *■ ' CHINESE BIBLE-WOMEN AND MISSIONARY THE CHANCE IN CHINA 151 Swatow, then for the first time thrown open to foreign trade and residence. Here in Swatow the Ashmores, Johnsons, and Partridges addressed themselves to the task of laying deep foundations for the present wonder- ful center of the South China Mission. The story of Swatow is another illustration of how one man sows and another reaps. The Rhenish and Basel missions of Ger- many had entered Kwangtung in 1847. One of their great men had made a heroic and persistent attempt to establish a station there and had been repulsed by the insolence and contempt of the people. Yet, in this very region, William Ashmore, of the Baptist, and William C. Burns, of the English Presbyterian mission, were to found one of the great Christian centers in China. Troublous Days for the Missionaries. The first twenty years after the opening of the five treaty ports were calculated to test the fiber of the missionaries. Everywhere they were surrounded by opposition and mis- understanding, by the covert threatenings of politicians, the anti-foreign feeling of the people, the constant pres- ence of war. For fifteen years the Tai Ping Rebellion devastated the empire, interrupting mission work alto- gether for long periods. Baptist missionaries were close to the springs of this most terrible civil war in history, a war in which whole provinces were made deserts, and during which fifty millions of people perished. One can understand neither the past nor the present of Chinese missions without taking account of the Tai Ping Rebel- lion, so long misunderstood and belittled. Victorious March of the Tai Pings. Sweeping out of the South came the terrible iconoclasts, breaking up 152 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE idols, throwing them into the rivers, conquering all before them, until they had taken their victorious army to Nan- king, the ancient capital of the nation. They were never checked until the government forces were drilled and officered by an American, General Ward ; nor conquered, except by the genius of General Charles G. Gordon, the hero of Khartoum. Says Dr. W. A. P. Martin : " Had foreign powers promptly recognized the Tai Ping chief, might it not have shortened a chapter of horrors that dragged on for fifteen years and caused the loss of fifty millions of human lives ? Is it not probable that the new power would have shown more aptitude than did the old one for the assimilation of new ideas?"* An Unrealized Possibility. Many of the best in- formed observers were of the opinion that in the Tai Ping Rebellion were great possibilities for the Christiani- zation of China, unrealized because the so-called Christian nations were not ready when the crisis came. It was the day of all days for the evangelization of China. God seemed to stay the sun in the heavens to pro- long it, but it passed at last. The shadows fell again across the land, and in the dark the temples rose, and once more the idols came back and looked down on their worshipers, and the Christian church, barring here and there some eager soul, who felt the anguish of it all, slept content, not knowing what the day was that had gone. — Robert E. Speer. Issacher Roberts, First Missionary to Lepers. Dur- ing the entire twenty years preceding the collapse of the * Cycle of Cathay, p. 14. THE CHANCE IN CHINA 153 Tai Ping Rebellion in 1865, the whole nation had been kept in a constant whirl of excitement and terror which made the prosecution of missionary work difficult or im- possible. One of the picturesque figures of these early years was the Issacher Roberts who has already been mentioned in connection with the Tai Ping Rebellion. He gave his own property to create the fund which sent him out in 1836. He worked at his trade of saddlery to support himself while in Macao, and was probably the first missionary in China to begin Christian work among the lepers, as he was the first to pay with his own life the price of such ministry. For in 1866 he returned to his country, himself a leper, to die. Second Center Opened Among the Hakkas. It was not until 1882 that the second center in the South China Mission was opened among the Hakkas in the hill- country. These Hakkas are an immigrant people speak- ing a dififerent dialect from that of Swatow. They are a powerful people, of strong intellectual capacity, showing an unusual passion for education. Their women have never bound their feet. The vicissitudes which have de- layed the pioneer work among this people are shown in the simple statement that out of twenty missionaries assigned to the Hakkas sixteen have died or been compelled to retire for ill-health, so that for years the burden of the work rested on one family, the Whitmans. The last five years have seen the determined reenforcement of this field. In 1911 the Missionary Conference of South China urged upon the Society to give a paramount place to the needs of the Hakka Chinese. Little has been done up to this time to carry out this recommendation. 154 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Original Contribution to the Science of Missions. Miss Adelc I'ield was the first missionary to train and employ Bible-women, a form of service so fruitful that it has been caught up and developed by the missionaries of every denomination in the mission fields of the world. Lil:e all great inventions, it is so simple that we wonder why every one did not think of it. Miss Field's practice was to gather together groups of Christian Chinese women to teach them some simple gospel truth, and to send them out to teach this in the homes of the com- munity, wherever a door was open to them. When they returned, she patiently taught another lesson, and sent them out again. This simple method of hers marks the call of a new regiment into the army of mission work. It is recognized to-day that the Bible-woman is one of the most essential and efficient factors in the spread of Christianity in any country. Beginnings of the East China Mission. The sec- ond field to be entered was East China. All the stations but Nanking and Shanghai are located in Chekiang, the smallest and most eastern province of China, with a population of eleven millions in a territory no larger than that of Ohio. This busy province, with its rich commer- cial cities, its hills and mountains, its fertile valleys, and many rivers, is one of the richest in the Empire, and con- tains Hangchow, the ancient capital of the country during the Sung dynasty. In this province many missionaries from many lands and churches are working together, and some might feel that the Baptists were not really needed. " What? Three hundred missionaries in one province? " Yes, but that only means one missionary to thirty thou- THE CHANCE IN CHINA 155 sand people. In America it would take twenty-seven thousand Protestant ministers to look after the eleven million, five hundred thousand people, besides all the other church workers and the Catholic priests. So, per- haps, the modest Baptist contingent of fifty missionaries, more or less, does not overcrowd the situation. Here are Ningpo, and Shaohsing, and Kinhwa, and Huchow, and Hangchow, all great cities, centers of influence, not only of this province, but of the entire country. In the ad- jacent provinces of Kiangsu there are stations in Shanghai and Nanking, the " New York " and " Boston " of China. Work in these two East China provinces was opened by the first Baptist medical missionary to China, D. J. Mac- Gowan, M.D., who opened a hospital at Ningpo in 1843, and did for this part of China the same sort of work that Dr. Peter Parker had done in Canton. His cures and operations seemed nothing less than miraculous to the Chinese. Notable names of the East China Mission are ^he Goddards, the Knowltons, and the Jenkinses. Doctor Goddard's translation of the New Testament in the vernacular of the common people was published in 1872 by the American and Foreign Bible Society. Beginnings in West China. It was forty years after the opening of the work before a third field. West China, was added to Baptist missions. On the western edge of the Empire lies the Empire State, Szechuan (Four Rivers), the largest and most populous province of the republic, with an area greater than that of California, and a popu- lation of sixty-eight millions. Here is an imperial land of mountains and streams and fruitful valleys, of great mineral wealth, with an industrious, ambitious, and pro- 156 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE gressive people whose standard of living has never been reduced to that of the crowded East and South. The recent revolution began in Szechuan, and here is one of the centers for all forward-looking movements. When our first missionary entered Szechuan in 1884, it was really primitive pioneer territory " three months up the river." The missionaries assumed Chinese dress and met narrow escapes at the hands of Chinese mobs before they could plant the mission at Suifu. " I went to find a heathen, I found a brother," said one of them on his first furlough. Work Interrupted by Anti-Foreign Riots. Stations have been established at Suifu ( 1889 ) ; Kiatingfu ( 1894) ; Yachowfu (1894); Ningyuanfu (1905); and Chengtu (1909). The first bitter prejudice of the people seemed softened, when the terrible riots of 1895 made it neces- sary for all the missionaries in Szechuan to flee for their lives, and broke up all missionary work for a year. The work was again beginning to thrive, when came the Boxer uprising. All missionaries were ordered to leave. When they returned after the storm had calmed, they were rejoiced to find that the little Christian community had come through the terrible ordeal unscathed, faithful unto death. Central China Mission, The last of the quadrilat- eral of missions to be formed is the Central China Mission, located in the very ganglion of industrial China, in the province of Hupeh. Ocean steamers can come six hun- dred miles up the Yangtse to Hanyang, Hankow, and Wuchang, the three centers of China's new industrial civilization. Here are the government iron and steel- MISSIOXARIIiS TRAVELING IN WEST CHINA A MORNING CONGREGATION AT HANYANG THE CHANCE IN CHINA 157 mills, the arsenal and gun-works, the smokeless-powder factories, the brick-kilns and rolling-mills, the water- front, the docks with the warships of many nations at anchor. It was not until 1893 that Rev. Joseph S. Adams removed from the East China Mission to Hanyang. After conference with representatives of other denominations, there was assigned to the mission a territory a hundred and fifty miles long and one hundred miles wide, contain- ing a population of five millions. Fruits of Labors. In these four fields the mission- aries have been building up with infinite care and patience a Chinese Christian Church. What are the fruits of their labors? In 1862, after twenty-six years, there were ninety-nine Chinese Baptist church-members connected with the missions of Northern Baptists. Twenty years later the number had risen to one thousand and eighty- two. In 1902, there were two thousand, eight hundred and thirty-nine. Ten years later, in 1912, there were numbered in these Chinese Baptist churches, six thou- sand and seventy-one members. This shows a larger numerical gain in the last ten years than in the preceding twenty. The contributions of the same Chinese Baptist churches show an equally encouraging increase. In 1862, members of Chinese churches connected with the mission, gave $59.56, or sixty cents each. In 1882 the aggregate was $778.79, or seventy-two cents per capita. In 1902 the contributions were $2,987, or one dollar and five cents per capita. In 1912 the amount was $8,167, or one dollar and thirty-four cents per capita. Comparison with Work of Other Denominations. While the gains are both full of encouragement and an 158 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE evidence of the thorough work done by a widely scattered and often depleted band of missionaries, yet there is another side to the question that ought not to be lost sight of. Three other denominations doing missionary work in the same period and under similar conditions can show results even more encouraging. The Congregationalists entered the field eleven years later than the Northern Baptists, and had, in 1911, eleven thousand members, as against five thousand, two hundred and fifteen. The Presbyterians, entering ten years later, had twenty- one thousand, three hundred and nine members; the Methodists, thirty thousand, one hundred and ninety-one. The missionary forces of the four denominations in 1911 were : Northern Baptists, one hundred and twenty-three ; Congregationalists, one hundred and thirteen ; Methodists, two hundred and forty-one; and Presbyterians, two hun- dred and seventy-four. If we compare the adherents in each case, the Christian community ministered to by these four missions, and not merely the church-membership, we shall have, perhaps, a fairer comparison. The Baptist constituency numbers thirteen thousand, eight hundred and twenty-eight; the Congregationalists, thirteen thou- sand, nine hundred and twenty-seven ; the Methodists, fifty-three thousand, three hundred and thirteen ; the Presbyterians, sixty-seven thousand, nine hundred and thirty-nine.* Education an Aid to Evangelism. Can we discover any reason for the more bountiful harvests enjoyed by the brethren of other churches? In some cases their * Sec World Atlas Christian Missions, p. 87. THE CHANCE IN CHINA m work has been more centralized and less scattered than that of the Baptists ; in some cases, perhaps, better equipped and more adequately supported. But in regard to the two denominations having the greatest accessions, there has been a difference in emphasis. The Presby- 1862 1872 18,82 18,92 1902 19J2 LLij 60orts: I. pp. 81-107, Oc- cupation. Ill, pp. 64-121, 247, 252, Education. IV, pp. 38-72. Speicher, The Conquest of the Cross in China. New York, Revell, 1907. IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE M SOU-TMWESTPRN PART OF JAPAN 0am SutD 5c&le as M&la Map V ■^ " uooki CHAPTER VI IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE Transformation of Japan. In all the remarkable features of the nineteenth century, none was more unbelievably strange than the rebirth of Japan. In fifty years she passed from a medieval and feudal to a modern and industrial civilization; created a constitutional monarchy; introduced railways, tele- graph, telephone; established a postal system that had a perfected free rural delivery long before we attempted one in the United States; organized a pub- lic school system, free and compulsory, that developed a whole nation of newspaper readers in one genera- tion ; built up an army and navy that have fought successfully two great wars, and revolutionized her industrial system by the wholesale introduction of steam and electricity in factory production. She captured the carrying trade of the Pacific, elevated herself out of isolation into a position among the great world powers ; provided for the higher educa- tion of her youth in government universities, some of them numbering from four to nine thousand students, introduced the practice of modern medicine into hos- pitals, dispensaries, and training schools. In short, in the space of a half-century Japan changed the em- phasis or reversed the view-point in almost every 177 178 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE feature of her national life. Yet there are those who think that the Japanese are a bit inclined to be con- ceited. Perry's Expedition. Every school child to-day knows of the great importance of the American ex- pedition under Commodore Perry in 1853 in opening Japan to intercourse with the modern world. It is amusing to note the very different estimate placed upon the expedition by contemporaries. The Phila- delphia " Ledger " doubted whether there were money in the treasury for the Administration to pursue such a romantic notion. The Baltimore " Sun," two days before the sailing of the expedition, remarked : " It will sail about the same time with Rufus Porter's aerial ship " ; and after the sailing insisted on " aban- doning this humbug, for it has become a matter of ridicule abroad and at home." So little did the great newspapers appreciate this great project of American statesmanship. London newspapers were not more discerning. The London " Times " doubted " whether the Emperor of Japan would receive Commodore Perry with more indignation or more contempt." The London " Sun " said : " For ourselves we look for- ward to the result with some such interest as we might suppose would be awakened were a balloon to soar off to one of the planets under the direction of an experienced aeronaut." Christianity's Part in the Process. Christianity and the Christian missionary will be found wrought into the very foundation of these changes. It was Guido Verbeck who suggested and helped to or- IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 179 ganize the imperial embassy which went around the world in 1871. Moreover, more than half of the men selected by the mikado to make this world survey Avere former pupils of Verbeck. The first Japanese dictionary on which were to be based the treaties with Western government, was the monumental work of another missionary, Doctor Hepburn, who was also the pioneer in introducing modern medicine into Japan. Of Dr. S. R. Brown it has been said, that he was the teacher and inspirer of men who became the teachers and inspirers of new Japan. A Providential Preparation. In fact, back of the apparently sudden opening of Japan to foreign inter- course, is a long and thrilling story of providential preparation. At a time, for example, when it was a capital offense for a Japanese subject to emigrate, and when, if a subject, either by shipwreck or acci- dent, had been driven away from his native land, he might never return home, there were some Japanese waifs who were found in captivity to the Indians in the Oregon country. They were ransomed by Chris- tian men, and since they could not be returned to their own home, were sent to China. Here they taught the Japanese language to Dr. S. Wells Wil- liams, who was thus enabled to become the interpreter to Commodore Perry, when the American Navy opened Japan to intercourse with the world. An Influential Conference. It was this same Chi- nese missionary. Doctor Williams, who in 1837 took passage for Japan on the American ship " Morrison," in the hope of gaining entrance into that country, i8o FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE only to be driven away by the batteries in Yeddo Bay. He and two chaplains of the American Navy talked together in 1858 at the one Japanese port open to foreigners, the Dutch Settlement at Nagasaki. After this conference the two men, believing that the day was about to dawn for the planting of Christianity in Japan, wrote letters to their Missionary Boards in the homeland, urging the sending out of missionaries to Japan. As a result of these letters the five pioneer missionaries were sent out to Japan : Liggins, Wil- liams, Hepburn, Brown, and Verbeck. These reached Japan within a few months of one another, and for ten years constituted the advance guard of Christian- ity. They represented the Protestant Episcopal, the Presbyterian, and the Dutch Reformed churches. Forerunners in America. An even more remark- able preparation for the opening of Japan to Chris- tianity was made by a group of Christian women in America. A circle of women was accustomed to meet to sew and pray for missions in Brookline, ]\Iassachu- setts. While meeting one day at the home of Mrs. William Ropes, their interest, it is said, was attracted to Japan by a curiously wrought basket which had been brought over in one of Mr. Ropes' ships. As the women handled the delicate thing and realized that the country where it was made was absolutely closed to the gospel of Jesus, their hearts were drawn out to pray that Japan might be opened. For years, while Japan was fast closed and a price was set on the head of one who should be even suspected of har- boring a Christian, these far-away American women IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE i8i met regularly to pray for Japan. When they prayed they gave gifts to be used in Japan when their pra3'ers should be answered. Before the little group had scat- tered during the passage of the years, they had paid into the treasury of the Congregational missionary society, the American Board, over six hundred dol- lars designated for Japan. Before the time came when the Board could enter the field, this sum had amounted, with interest, to four thousand, one hundred and four dollars and twenty-three cents. Baptist Pioneers. While American Baptists were not among the first who sent out missionaries in 1859, they had a representative among the marines on Com- modore Perry's flagship in 1855, Jonathan Goble by name, a real Yankee character. While he was not at all the type that one would select for a pioneer missionary, it was his absorbing interest in foreign missions which had impelled him to join the expedi- tion in the hope of gaining an opportunity to look over the possibilities of Japan as a mission field. He undoubtedly used his shrewd eyes to good advantage, and when he returned home with the expedition he took with him a Japanese sailor who had been res- cued from the sea. This waif, who was later baptized in Doctor Coble's home church, at Hamilton, New York, was so far as is known the first convert of modern Protestant missions to the Japanese. The Services of Jonathan Goble. When we next hear of him, the carpenter sailor has become Rev. Jonathan Goble, and in 1860 has returned to Japan with his wife as the first missionary of the American i82 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Baptist Free Mission Society, a body organized and supported by abolitionists. Although foreigners were permitted to reside in the port cities of Japan, anti- foreign feeling was still very strong, and it was possi- ble to do little open or aggressive Christian work. Mr. Goble seems to have worked at his trade while making a translation of the Gospel of Matthew into colloquial Japanese, the first portion of the New Testa- ment to be printed in Japan. The work was neces- sarily imperfect and was circulated under difficulties, and with a great deal of secrecy. Perhaps Jonathan Goble will be longest remembered by his invention of the jinrikisha, an institution so interwoven with all our associations with Japan that it is difficult to believe that it was invented a bare half-century ago by an obscure American Baptist missionary. Lost at Sea. The Southern Baptists about this time sent out two men and their wives, who sailed from New York in the " Edwin Forrest " and were never heard from again. When the records of the kingdom are made plain these sealed orders of the King may be understood. Surely, they who went down with the ship in some unknown sea were his messengers, living or dying, and He who had accepted their consecration of life could make their service not in vain with the Lord. Northern Baptists Enter the Field. In 1872, the very year that the antichristian edict boards were removed from the street-corners of Japan, the North- ern Baptists began their Japan IVIission. The Free Mission, before alluded to, wound up its affairs and IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 183 turned over its mission to the Northern Baptists, who appointed Rev. Nathan Brown and Rev. Jonathan Goble as their first missionaries. The latter termi- nated his connection with the mission shortly after- ward, so that Doctor Brown is rightly regarded as the founder of Baptist work in the Empire. The life-story of Nathan Brown is a romance. He was, as we have seen, one of the pioneer missionaries in Assam, the friend of Judson and of Miles Bronson. Doctor Brown in Japan. To this veteran mission- ary, after eighteen years in the homeland, there came the call from God to go once more as a pioneer to a new land and to learn an unknown tongue. Those who be- lieved that his genius for language might be of service in the opening years of the Japan Mission little ex- pected that this worn veteran, then sixty-six years old, would live to see thirteen years of fruitful service in Japan. According to the bent of his genius he gave himself to the acquisition of the language with an al- most uncanny ability. When it is remembered the Jap- anese is regarded as perhaps the most difficult language in the entire mission field, his accomplishment seems little less than miraculous. As soon as his own severe canons of scholarship would permit, he began to trans- late and to write hymns for the Japanese as he had for the Assamese. Translation of the New Testament. The crown- ing work of his life was the publication in 1879 of the first translation of the entire New Testament into Japanese. This version, although later superseded in popular use by that of the Union Committee, has i84 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE always held a high position among scholars. Said Prof. E. W. Clement, himself a most accomplished Japanese scholar: "The version does not enjoy a wide circulation, but it is generally acknowledged to be clearer, simpler, and more in harmony with the original than is the other translation." Is it not a pity that the unhappy sectarian divisions of Christendom with re- gard to the translation of mooted terms should have deprived the infant Japanese church of the full benefit of the work of this great translator? Death of Doctor Brown. When the old man fell asleep in Yokohama in 1886, at the age of seventy- nine, he was beloved by the Japanese as one of their very own. Like the aged apostle John, with his ever- repeated " Little children, love one another," the old missionary summed up the passion of his life in one reiterated prayer, carved later on his tombstone : " God bless the Japanese." Women Pioneers. Only two years after the estab- lishment of the mission, the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society sent out as its first missionaries two w^omen whose names are woven into the very heart of the mission : Miss Clara Sands (Mrs. J. C. Brand) and Miss Anna H. Kidder. A few months after coming to Japan Miss Kidder witnessed the baptism of the first Japanese woman who is known to have made confession of the Christian faith, Uchida San, first of a long procession of beautiful Christian women in whom lies the hope of the new Japan. Miss Kidder's Work. Miss Kidder is one of the spiritual assets of the denomination. In the history IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 185 of the school which she founded she has had part in the whole story of woman's education in Japan. It is a rather interesting coincidence that the first woman missionary in Japan was another Miss Kidder, Miss Mary E. Kidder, who in 1869 founded the Ferris Seminary for girls in Yokohama. Our Miss Kidder was the founder of the Sarah Curtis Home School in Tokyo, where she still lives and works. An editorial appeared recently in one of the most powerful daily newspapers published in Tokyo, which gives some idea of the veneration with which Miss Kidder is re- garded by the Japanese. The editorial was headed " The Incarnation of Love," and proceeded to describe an elderly foreign lady in simple dress, who for twenty years had been accustomed to leave money with the official in the Kanda Ward office in Tokyo, asking him to distribute it among the poor. After describing Miss Kidder's work in the school, the editorial con- cludes : " She was merciful from her youth, and num- berless times she gave to the poor by her self-denial. . . She is very humble, and avoids social circles; she does not speak or preach in public. Even the school founded by her has another's name. Only once has she gone back to her homeland during these forty years. She was once beautiful as a flower, but has now frost in her hair. She says : ' I have come to love Japan; I do not regret offering my life for the loved One.' . . There are so many hypocrites in this world that it makes us feel good to know of this beautiful story." (The editorial from which this quota- tion is made was translated for " Gleanings.") i86 FOLLOWLXG THE SUNRISE Educational Work of Woman's Boards. Tlic work committed to Baptist women in Japan has been exceptionally strong. Four boarding-schools for girls are maintained: at Tokyo, Yokohama (Kanagawa), Himeji, Sendai. There is the Bible Training School at Osaka; the kindergartens at Morioka, Tokyo, Kobe, Naha, in the Liuchiu Islands; the Kindergarten Train- ing School in Tokyo, and boarding and day-schools for boys and girls are maintained in Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kobe. Importance of Schools for Girls. It is rapidly be- coming recognized that in Japan, as elsewhere, the problem of woman's elevation is fundamental. Hence these schools in which there is opportunity for Jap- anese girls at close range and for long periods to see the Christian life incarnated, are of immeasurable importance. It is the peculiar glory of Christianity that it cannot be communicated in terms of history, exposition, doctrine, creed, or catechism. Like its Founder, it must take on flesh and tabernacle among men. The social ideals of Christianity are many of them revolutionary to Japanese ideals and customs. They can become controlling in the nation only as they become naturalized in the life of the Japanese family. Said a prominent government ofificial : " You missionary ladies have done a vastly greater work for Japan than you ever dreamed of. Our government had no hope of success in establishing girls' schools until we were inspired by your successes." The thou- sands of women who have had Christian training are helping to create that public opinion which has found MARY L. COLBY SCHOOL AT KANAGAWA KINDERGARTEN AT MORIOKA IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 187 expression in the new civil code of Japan, in which the word concubine does not appear. Advantages of the Small Boarding-School. Criti- cism of the small family type of school, to which most of our girls' boarding-schools in Japan belong, is some- times made on the ground of their necessarily high cost. But when it is remembered that since Sendai was opened but one girl has been graduated without open confession of her faith, that in Himeji twenty- seven conversions were recorded in one year, and that in all of the schools it is the single aim and confident expectation that each girl shall be an out-and-out Christian, the cost seems not so high. The testimony of a leader in a recent senior class is in point. She said that long ago she had made a great resolve never to become a Christian. She had been in another large mission school for a time, and when she came to the small Baptist school she was for the first time brought into contact with a new atmosphere, an indefinable something which the Christian girls had and she had not. The Bible too was taught in Japanese instead of in English, as heretofore. And this, she said, made it more real to her. At last the kindness and evident interest of her classmates and the wonderful Christian atmosphere of the place brought her to a vital personal experience of Christ. What Japanese Schoolgirls Do. The work done by these Christian schoolgirls in the boarding-schools is an inspiration. The girls of the school in Sendai conduct fifteen Sunday-schools each Sunday. They have a teachers' training class, visit in the homes, and i88 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE are continually striving to pass on the blessings of Christianity to non-Christian people around them. Miss Dithridge's students in the Kindergarten Train- ing School have opened a " Garden of Love " for poor children in one of the crowded quarters of the city. In ten days they enrolled fifty neglected children. Among Miss Whitman's girls in Tokyo the work is done in four Sunday-schools. One of the day pupils has a Sunday-school in her own home, with thirty children in attendance. The Kanagawa students teach in six Sunday-schools. In Himeji there are nineteen Sunday-schools in which girls from the boarding- school are doing valiant service as teachers. In fact, the growth of recent years in Sunday-school work in Japan has been due very largely to the work of the pupils and graduates of these girls' schools. Sunday- school membership is now fourteen thousand, nearly three times as great as is the membership of the churches. Kindergartens as Evangelizing Agencies. The kindergarten has proved to be one of the most power- ful evangelizing agencies in Japan. It seems to fit the genius of the people. The little children open doors for Christ that no other hands can set ajar. This fact is beginning to find recognition in the homeland also. The pastor of one of the largest Baptist churches in the United States has recently established a kinder- garten in his Sunday-school building during week- days. He says that the hundred or more children of this kindergarten have already brought many recruits into the Sunday-school, and opened many homes to IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 189 the visits of the Sunday-school missionary that were hitherto inaccessible. The Christian kindergarten, moreover, has a peculiar field in Japan. There is something about it, a power to transform child-life, which, according to the frank admission of officials, the government kindergartens lack. It is for Ameri- can Christians to decide whether they will hold the position of preeminence already gained in kindergarten work by adequately equipping the schools which they have established. No second-grade work in any depart- ment will long satisfy the Japanese. Story of Baptist Kindergartens. The Baptist kin- dergartens have had a wonderful history. The Zenrin kindergarten was located by Mrs. Thomson in one of the most notorious sections, not only in Kobe, but in all southwest Japan. Police protection had to be accorded in the beginning. Now the love of the transformed neighborhood is its best protection, and the courteous Japanese officials who see what the kin- dergarten has done are its firmest friends. Here a double kindergarten is held, one group coming in the morning and another in the afternoon. In addition to the kindergarten proper, there are the mothers' meetings, the constant visitation in the homes, the Friday Club, Mrs. Watanabe's interesting class among the older girls, and three Sunday-schools. Mrs. Brand opened the Tsukiji kindergarten in Tokyo in a little, dark building, crowded on the back of the mission lot between servants' quarters, yet she soon had forty-six pupils enrolled, and could have had twice that num- ber had there been room for them. In Morioka the 100 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE kindergarten is enlisting support of the leading people of the place. Many of these pupils are able to pay full tuition, yet are willing to come to this Christian kindergarten where the children of government officials and the children of the people sit side by side. The Morioka kindergarten has done such beautiful things. The little ones have gathered flow^ers for the hospitals, made grape-juice to give to the sick at Christmas, learned the delights of gardening, and have been led by Mrs. Topping's gentle teachings to think of the famine sufferers in China. She said that when she noted that the Japanese papers made no mention of the thousands dying in China, she felt that she could not allow to pass the opportunity for enlarging the sympathies of the children. It was proposed to them that they forego the customary Christmas treat and send the money to save the lives of starving Chinese mothers and babies. The children entered into this with all the eagerness of their loving little hearts. But Mrs. Topping could not help being glad when an unexpected Christmas box from ladies in Cincinnati enabled her to make the usual treat for the children at Christmas time. Kindergarten Training School. The Kindergarten Training School was opened in Tokyo October 2, 1911, for the purpose of giving thorough training to Jap- anese Christian kindergarten teachers. The school was fortunate, not only in its principal, Harriet Dith- ridge, but also in the kindergarten director, Ishihara San, a cultivated Japanese girl, who had received years of training in the best professional schools in IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 191 the United States. Miss Dithridge has a keen appre- ciation of the tremendous importance of this work, and a big vision of what these kindergartens can accomplish for the future. She says : We ought to open new kindergartens in Tokyo. In the^ poor districts they are of inestimable value, and in all neighborhoods they are a means of entrance into the homes and hearts of the mothers. Some one has said that the kindergarten is in Japan what the doctor is to India and China. If this be true, and it certainly is, why are we Baptists so far behind other denominations in recognizing the fact and acting upon it? At present, mis- sion kindergartens are far ahead of government kinder- gartens educationally, and Japanese teachers and workers recognize that fact. Oh, let us strike now, and dot this city with kindergartens. Since I have the training school girls to help, I ask only ninety dollars a year for the teacher's salary in each kindergarten, and for a place in which to hold it. How I wish I could make the people at home realize the importance of the kindergarten in Japan ! Possibilities of the Kindergarten. When one thinks of the marvelous possibilities of the kindergarten in Japan, of the hospitality of the people toward it, of its proved efficiency, and then considers the meager equipment and inadequate provision with which the Christian church is meeting the opportunity, one is reminded of the remark of a Japanese street urchin. He had attended a little Sunday-school and playground maintained by one of the missions in Tokyo. One of the periodic deficits of missionary funds compelled the missionaries to shut up the Sunday-school and the playground because they could not pay the rent. Half N 192 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE wistfully, the little chap said, " I wonder if Jesus is getting poor." Educational Opportunity. Except in the kinder- garten, there is very little opportunity for primary education in Japan. Most people, Christian and non- Christian, send their children to the public schools. Hence the wide evangelism which formerly took place through school children no longer exists. The oppor- tunity to-day is in the boarding and secondary schools. Here the Christian church is not awake to its oppor- tunity. There are only twelve Christian secondary schools for boys, and eleven for girls in all Japan. Yet, on these and the higher schools depend the hopes of the future for the Japanese church. Doctor Schneeder, principal of the North Japan College, at Sendai, says: The Christian schools have had to compete with a splendid system of government education. They have been hampered by insufficient support. Yet, in spite of it all, the degree of success that Christianity has achieved in Japan must be ascribed very largely to the direct and indirect work of the Christian schools. The Edinburgh Conference report finds that most of the able Christian readers of Japan are the products of mission schools. The report further shows that these schools have powerfully affected the tone of current litera- ture in Japan, producing novelists, poets, educators, and editors " who have led the way in creating a new litera- ture for Japan, a literature that is fast familiarizing the whole nation with the best ideals of the West, and the influence of which upon national life and character is simply beyond calculation." IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 193 Duncan Academy Takes Advance Step. In view of these facts it is encouraging to know that Baptist missions in Japan have taken advanced ground in re- gard to Duncan Academy, the splendid school for boys in Tokyo. On April 10, 1913, a union was formed with the Presbyterians, who also have a fine boys' school in Tokyo. The higher departments of both schools have been united under a faculty composed of the teachers from both missions. The Presbyterian school has a fine location, with a ten-acre campus, beautiful chapel, dormitories, and school buildings. The Duncan Academy boys will have the advantages of this equipment, and the faculty, made up of teachers from the two schools, will be exceedingly strong. Both Boards will save expense in the duplication of buildings and equipment necessary in building up two separate schools. The union school too will have far greater prestige and influence among the Japanese. The preparatory department of the Baptist Theologi- cal Seminary is also cooperating with this union higher school. Dean Chiba, of the seminary, Profes- sors Tenny, Sone, Sasaki, Yamaguchi, Ishima, and Gressitt are teaching in the union school. It is hoped that other missions that are maintaining boys' schools will join in the project, so that this may be the founda- tion for the Christian university which is so sorely needed in Japan. There is not a Christian college in the country fully equipped to compete with the gov- ernment in offering equally advanced and specialized courses under the advantages of a moral and Christian atmosphere. 194 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Theological Seminary, Tlie P.aptist Theological Seminary at TokNo is pcrhai)s the most important educational enterprise in Baptist missions in Japan, It also marks an advance in that it is a union institu- tion, made by joining the two theological seminaries formerly maintained by the Northern and Southern Baptists. The Conference of Japanese Baptists has representation on the Board of Trustees equal to that granted the two Missionary Boards. If Japanese pas- tors are to be leaders, it is absolutely essential that they be given the very best advantages during their years of preparation for the Avork of the Christian ministry. The Islands of the Pendant Tassels, Curving south- west from Japan to Formosa stretches the archipelago of little islands, known as the Liuchiu, or Pendant Tassel Islands. The name signifies that at one time they were considered a fringe on the edge of China's ample robe of dominion. After some centuries, in which the people tried to live at peace with their powerful neighbors by paying tribute to both China and Japan, the islands were formally annexed by the Japanese in 1878. Commodore Perry, in writing of his experiences of Japan, said that he had never seen people whom he pitied more than these Liuchiu islanders, crushed as they had been between two for- eign despotisms. Says Doctor Griffis : " Ground be- tween the two millstones of their foreign masters and the native aristocracy, the Liuchiuans feared the Chi- nese, hated the Japanese, and groveled before their local rulers." It is interesting to remember that IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 195 Commodore Perry was presented two inscribed bells that had hung centuries before in some Buddhist mon- astery, and that the musical chime of one of these still rings through the halls of Wellesley College. Introduction of Christianity. It was quite natural that these isolated islands should be strongholds of conservatism and prejudice against foreigners. The early introduction of Christianity was attended with such difficulties that for forty years no attempt was made by any Board to carry the gospel to the half- million islanders scattered on these thirty-four islands. The pioneer missionary was a Dutchman, sent out by a few English naval officers, who had become inter- ested in the islands. He met with the most polite and stubborn opposition. If he distributed tracts, officers were sent to follow him, and with true Jap- anese politeness to return to him the tracts in a neat little parcel. Even the very money he used was not allowed to pass into circulation, but was gathered to- gether and put into sacks. When Doctor Bettleheim and his family sailed away discouraged, the money was dumped on board their vessel in order that the Christian contagion might not spread. The Success of a Japanese Evangelist. In 1891 the Baptist missionary. Rev. R. A. Thomson, of Kobe, be- came deeply stirred over the neglected condition of the islands. He succeeded in interesting a Christian tourist, Mrs. Alexander Allan, of Scotland, to make a donation with which to begin the work. A Japanese evangelist was sent, and at the end of the first year he had baptized eleven converts and organized the 196 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE first Baptist church at Naha. Since that day a steadily growing work has been maintained by the Japanese pastor and evangehsts. There are now eight hundred members, two hundred and twenty-five of whom were baptized in 1912. The people seem thirsting for God. The Christians go, as did the early disciples, from house to house, carrying the glad tidings. One of the evangelists, Mr. Nishihara, who had received a govern- ment pension of 2,000 yen ($1,000), used it all to buy the land and build a chapel in a town where a new church was to be planted. The first year after that he baptized sixty-eight believers into the tiny church. Activity of Liuchiuan Women. " In Liuchiu," says Miss Lavinia Mead, " the wonderful ingathering of the past years has been in large degree the fruit of the faithful eflforts of the women of the Church. Almost all of these women have worked without salary as volunteer helpers. In this they have caught inspira- tion from the work of that indefatigable Bible-woman, Mrs. Haragachi, who has led them to the true source of the inspiration for service." One of these women was the wife of the pastor mentioned above. She was so eager to get Bible training that, with the full con- sent of her husband, she exiled herself from her family for two years of training in the Osaka Bible School. On the recent return of Mrs. Nishihara to her happy husband and children, she sent back to fill her place in the school a bright and energetic young woman from the islands, who expects to continue in this apos- tolic succession of Bible-women who are bearing the light into the Liuchiu Islands. THE NEW GOSPEL SHIP IN JAPAN WASEDA DORMITORY STUDENTS AT TOKYO IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 197 Unique Work on the Inland Sea. In one respect surely the Baptists may claim preeminence in mis- sionary work in Japan. They may not have the most numerous body of believers, nor the largest and best equipped schools, but they have the most picturesque, useful, and best managed evangelistic mission in Japan, in the " Fukuin Maru," the gospel ship of the Inland Sea. What could be more picturesque than the setting of the mission in the famed Inland Sea of Japan, a land-locked archipelago, between the large southern islands of the Empire? Travelers grow weary trying to depict the beauties of this sea, with its clus- tering wooded islands, its mountain backgrounds, its quaint little villages perched on hilly summits, its swift tides, and slow sailing-craft. Up and down the length of this inland sea, daring all the dangers of the leaping tides that swirl through the narrow channels, goes the white-winged " Fukuin Maru " with her mis- sionary skipper. Captain Luke Bickel, and her Jap- anese crew. Parish of the " Fukuin Maru." Surely no mission could be more useful. Here is a heavy population scattered on many hundreds of islands, practically un- touched by the impact of Christianity when Captain Bickel began his first cruise in 1899. These people in isolated hamlets could be reached only by boat or by rough mountain paths from village to village. They represented the intrenched conservatism of the Jap- anese. Reaching Japan's Rural Population. The " Fukuin Maru " has been one of the agencies which have brought 198 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE into clear relief what is now recognized as the strategic c)j)ening in Japan, Ciiristian work among the country people. Because of the restrictions that confined foreign residence to the treaty port, it has quite nat- urally come about that most of the missionary forces were concentrated from early days. Sixty per cent of all Protestant missionaries are found in the eight largest cities, yet three-fourths of the population of Japan is found outside the cities, in small towns and farm-villages. If Christianity is to permeate Japanese society, the laborers, the fishermen, the farmers, and the artisans must be reached. When Captain Bickel undertook his labors in these untouched fields the outlook was believed to be so discouraging that he himself said that he was willing and prepared to work for ten years without apparent results. The unex- pectedly encouraging fruit of his labors has strength- ened the courage of all those missionaries in Japan who believe that the next advance must be in the coun- try districts. The Guiding Principles of Captain Bickel's Work. In speaking of the " Fukuin Maru " recently, a mis- sionary of another denomination, himself an evangel- istic missionary of note, said that he regarded the work of Captain Bickel as the most significant piece of evangelism being done to-day in Japan, the best organized and most promising of permanent results. That this great tribute was not imadvised will become evident on studying the fixed principles upon whicii that work was founded. It has been farthest from that type of evangelism which consists of merely itin- IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 199 crating the country, speaking to the drifting crowds which curiosity brings together; that casual seed-sow- ing which invites the birds of the air to snatch up the precious seed. Captain Bickel set for himself five principles : Comity, thoroughness, democracy, organi- zation, responsibility. (1) He built on no man's foundation, and never entered a location in which another denomination was at work. (2) He planned to visit every village of every island entered, with such persistence that entrance should be obtained, (3) In presenting Jesus Christ he recognized no dis- tinctions of caste or class. (4) He divided the islands into groups, stationed an evangelist in each group, and made him responsible for all work carried on in the group. (^5) He limited rigidly the number of paid workers in each group, and steadily sought to throw the responsibility for lay evangelism upon each mem- ber of the Church. Originality of These Principles. Some of these prin- ciples were contrary to precedent and custom. For example, it has been a missionary custom to await an invitation for opening before beginning new work. Quicker results could have been secured in this way, but not that broad foundation for the transformation of an entire community or province. Again, the re- ligious training of the Japanese had led them to regard all religious activity as professional, hence it is very difficult to make the individual church-member realize that he is to be a sharer in the work of spreading the gospel. " Believers they thought should be believers, and teachers be teachers." 200 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE EfBcacy of the Principles. These principles are proving tlicir soundness for a much wider application than that made by Captain Bickel. The splendid method too, of the mission is an inspiration and a chal- lenge to all evangelistic missionaries. Captain Bickel has an orderly sequence of topics to be presented, a selection of truths to be emphasized. God, man, sin, the Saviour, are the four great truths emphasized by such orderly presentation that as the evangelist fol- lows up his first message by his second the mind of the hearer is prepared to receive it. Why should there not be a science of evangelism? Not only is there this orderly presentation of the message, there is also a splendid system of following it up by letters, litera- ture, and visits to scattered disciples that keeps up a close, personal touch with the whole field. This is not working in the dark, but in the light of a method as well considered as is that which the best business house demands of its employees, but which the King's business, alas, does not always secure. Fascinating Development of the Work. How fas- cinating has been the development of the work ! The stanch sailing-vessel, the gift of Mr. R. S. Allan, the Scotch ship-builder, in memory of his mother, has been replaced by a larger steam vessel. This shortens the time of the trips and enlarges the field of the visits. There is also a little steam launch which can penetrate where the larger vessel cannot go, and which does away with the necessity of long mountain tramps to reach the more isolated hamlets. Then there is the little " Fukuin INIaru, Number Two," built in Japanese IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 201 style and used in colportage work. Her very building is the outward evidence of a miracle-working conver- sion. The Japanese colporter, who uses the little ves- sel to go in advance into every section whither the gospel ship itself will come later, is a living letter, breathing the power of the living gospel. The Regeneration of Hirata San. Hirata San was a thorough reprobate, the coxswain of the crew of the *' Fukuin Maru." " His crafty eyes," says Captain Bickel, " looked straight in the direction of the eight cardinal points of the compass all at once. He had one virtue; he was cheerfully, openly evil. He gam- bled, stole, and lied by preference, drank heavily, and loved to fight. All this he did — and worse. Man has a soul, they say; we tried to find his for two years, but never got a glimpse. . . Then something hap- pened. He began to inquire, but how? Ignorant to the extent of not being able to read or write the sim- ple Japanese Kana alphabet, morally crooked in all his ways — was there any hope of his being changed? We did not believe him sincere then, nor did we later when he professed faith in Christ. We refused bap- tism, but there was a change, a change at last, slight indeed, but growing in force continually, until the man became completely new. No figure of speech, no saintly cant is this, but hard, solid fact. He was changed from a gambling, lying, thieving, quarrel- some, ignorant tool of the Evil One into a true child of God. He pored over the old Book of books in every spare moment. And so we left him to God's Spirit. The harsh hands became gentle, the pride of other 202 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE clays became loving humility that would not be re- fused, the shrewdnes of evil times turned to a re- markable thoughtfulness and resourcefulness in find- ing ways of service." So the new Hirata San, like the man whom the people found clothed and in his right mind at the feet of Jesus, goes everywhere tell- ing his own friends how great things the Lord has done for him and how he has had compassion on him. Magnitude of the Work. Four hundred towns and villages are now on the ship's visiting list. These are divided into four groups, with a Japanese convert in charge of each. There are forty organized Sunday- schools, two of them held in Buddhist temples, and one in the temple of the sailors' god, Ebeshi Sama. There are two kindergartens, many mothers' meet- ings, night-schools, week-day Bible classes, traveling libraries, and a monthly magazine, which goes to the scattered Christians hidden in the tiny villages. Stories of Individual Converts. Oh, the life stories hidden away among these island Christians ! There was the honored school principal, for example, who was dismissed from his position and disowned by his family because of his baptism. Then followed weeks in which none would give him work. One morning he cheerfully took a pedler's pack on his back and started out to sell paper, pencils, and the like, preach- ing as he went. He is now in the theological sem- inary in Yokohama, a tried and true disciple. Then there is old " Pilgrim's Progress," the seventy-year- old jinrikisha puller, who keeps up an old people's society and a book society, and visits from house to IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 203 house telling the good tidings. There are the man and his wife on the barren hillside farm who have set aside their best field for the " Sunday field," whose products belong to the gospel and and its work. There are the faithful Bible-women, who journey from vil- lage to village by boat in all weathers. They often go ten miles on Sunday in order to hold a Sunday-school class. Then there are the members of the crew of the " Fukuin Maru," who, after a hard day's work, walk many miles to conduct a neighborhood prayer-meeting. A Living Epistle. Captain Bickel says that, being very tired one night, he asked one of his crew, a recent convert, to take a Bible to a certain man. He replied, saying, "No, no, captain; he does not need that." "But why not?" "Because it is too soon. That is your Bible, and thank God it is now mine, but it is not his Bible." "What do you mean by that?" " Why, simply that he has another Bible ; you are his Bible; he is watching you. As you fail, Christ fails. As you live Christ, so Christ is revealed to him." No wonder that Captain Bickel adds : " I did not sleep that night. I knew it, in a way, of course ; but to say, * As you live, so Christ lives in that man's soul, in that house, in that village, in four hundred villages,' God help me ! " Opportunities for Advance. Forty villages which cannot be entered for lack of men and money are call- ing for teachers, Sunday-schools, and chapels. Think of this in a location where ten years ago there was not a single friendly village. Another island group, the Goto Islands, must be permanently opened, and 204 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE for them additional helpers must be secured. The only limitation to the work is that set by the limitation in tlie faith and vision of the home Church. A New Spirit Stirring: The Tokyo Tabernacle. A splendid spirit is stirring in Baptist missions in Japan that needs only determined and adequate backing on the part of the churches at home to enable them to take the part in the spiritual emancipation of Japan which is in keeping with Baptist resources. There is the Tokyo Tabernacle, for example, under the inspir- ing leadership of the Axlings. Here are developed all the agencies used by a successful institutional church in the homeland. There are night-schools, young men's and women's Bible classes, with more than one hundred enrolled, mothers' meetings, a kindergarten, a nursery, a monthly magazine, nightly evangelistic services, frequent institutes for training the Christian workers. The night-schools, with an enrolment of three hundred students, are yielding a surplus revenue to help in supporting the other work. The afternoon- school is nearly self-supporting so far as current ex- penses go. Japanese supporters contributed more than a third of all the money needed to maintain the varied lines of work centered at the Tabernacle. In the kindergarten nursery fifty little children, whose mothers work in the factories, are beautifully cared for. This work began on the solicitation of a city official, and has proved the means of securing entrance to many families. The children's club enrolls one hundred and fifty older children. Between five and six hundred different people are regular attendants IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 205 at one or more of the weekly services at the Taber- nacle, and a larger number in addition of those who occasionally come when there is some special service to attend. Burning of the Tabernacle. When the cable flashed the news of the total destruction of the Tabernacle by fire last February it seemed a terrible calamity. But already it is evident that the fire will only result in an enlarged work. Many Japanese friends came forward with pledges toward rebuilding, and at the time of the Northern Baptist Convention, in Detroit, a move- ment was inaugurated by the divinity alumni of the University of Chicago to provide $30,000 for a new plant. A considerable portion of this has already been pledged. Student Dormitories at Waseda. Another exceed- ingly interesting development is that of the student dormitories in connection with Waseda University in Tokyo, where are gathered eight thousand students. When the building was opened Count Okuma, the founder, was represented by his son, who gave a con- gratulatory address. The idea back of the dormitory is to make a Christian home for Christian students who are attending the university. The building has become headquarters for the Christian activities in this great university. Meetings are held in the large assembly hall, some of them addressed by professors in the university. The Japanese authorities are so pleased with the possibilities of the dormitory for university men that they have asked Mr. BenninghofI to open one for middle-school boys. The conduct of 2o6 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE affairs is largely by self-government. A fine spirit of brotherhood and personal consecration is developing. Since the dormitory opened seven of its students have united with Christian churches. One of the conditions for membership in the dormitory is membership in the Waseda Christian Association. This organiza- tion, which has grown directly out of the work of the dormitory and the majority of whose officers and committees are from among its members, has now a membership of over a hundred Waseda students and eight members of the faculty. Through the Bible classes, prayer-meetings, student conferences, pleas- ant social life, and intimate Christian fellowship, a new moral tone is being made in the university. The opening of this dormitory points out a line of work which has very great possibilities for good. With the cordial approval of Japanese authorities. Christian hostels could be erected in connection with government universities and high schools for both boys and girls. Dormitory for Business Men. Under somewhat similar lines a dormitory work has been carried on by Doctor Bearing for business men in Yokohama. It now has twenty-eight boarders, and is developing a fine institutional and club life. There are thousands of Christian young men in business in the city who are wholly cut ofT from all Christian or home influ- ence. This boarding-house is in no sense a charity, but is wholly self-supporting. It affords an oppor- tunity to bring missionaries into close and helpful contact with young men who may become great powers for good. Men from the student dormitory IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 207 from Waseda and from this business dormitory in Yokohama have gone off to do evangelistic service on Sundays, and in many ways have proved helpful to the work of the churches. Extent of Unreached Territory. What of the fu- ture and the duty of the immediate present? While the opening in Japan is not so spectacular in its invi- tation as that in China, it may be questioned whether there is in the whole world a field making greater de- mands on the Christian world than does Japan. Take, for example, the Baptist portion of the Sendai field. Here are more than six hundred thousand people who have, by the consent of all the Christian bodies work- ing in Japan, been assigned to American Baptists. If they are to be evangelized at all they must look to Baptists. The people in this province are widely scattered and cannot be reached from populous cen- ters. There are one hundred villages of a population of from fifteen hundred to nine thousand. The pres- ent missionary force is able to visit but fifteen of these villages, containing a population of sixty-five thou- sand, and this with no great regularity. Again, take Mito, in the Ibaraki Province. There are thirteen million people in the province, forty thousand of whom live in the capital, Mito. In this province there are forty-five cities, three hundred and thirty-six towns, and two thousand and thirty-three villages. Christian workers are located in eleven cities, two towns, and thirty-six villages. The entire number of places where Christianity has been preached at all is seventy-two. There are thirty Christian workers in o 2o8 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE the province, of whom the Baptists have two mis- sionaries, seven paid and one unpaid Japanese work- ers. Not five per cent of the population have had sufficient Ciiristian instruction to make intelligent be- lief possible. Not ten per cent have once heard the story of Christ's redeeming love. Is there any con- sideration that ought more powerfully to drive Chris- tians to their knees than that of the great unused power of the Church and the great unmet needs of the kingdom? Minimum Standard for Efficiency. The Edinburgh World Missionary Conference has set as a minimum standard for efficient evangelization one missionary to each twenty-five thousand of the non-Christian popu- lation. With this number of foreign missionaries working in cooperation with a very much larger num- ber of native evangelists and ministers, it would be possible to give every one an adequate opportunity to have the gospel presented to him. How does the Baptist mission for Sendai, in which it will be remem- bered there is no other denomination at work in the portion assigned to Baptists, meet the needs of six hundred thousand people? There is one ordained minister, his wife, and two unmarried women, a total of four missionaries. There are twelve Japanese men and ten Japanese women who are doing the work of preachers or evangelists. If the minimum standard set by the Edinburgh Conference were attained there would need to be twenty-four missionaries, including ministers, their wives, and unmarried teachers, and a Japanese staff much larger than the one hundred and IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 209 thirty-two which a proportional increase of the pres- ent inadequate staff would demand. Could the Standard Be Met? Doubtless the one million, five hundred thousand Baptist communicants of the Northern States spent their full share of the half- million dollars daily paid into the moving-picture shows last year. Since there is one Baptist to every sixteen of the population of the United States, their bill for moving-pictures would be about nine million, three hundred thousand dollars a year. Doubtless, too, Baptists bought their full proportion of automo- biles, which would cost them fifty million dollars. When the spreading of the gospel of Christ becomes as important to them as automobiles and as interesting as moving-picture shows, they will find that all of them, rich and poor, have resources enough to man and equip every mission station which the needs of the world demand. It has been estimated that an in- vestment of fifty million dollars a year on the part of the Protestants of the United States would enable their Missionary Boards to meet the standard for ef- ficient evangelism set by the Edinburgh Conference. As Baptists North and South are now giving about one- tenth of the foreign mission oft'ering of the United States, this would require five million dollars as their share — less than a dollar per member! Resources of Northern Baptists. It would be pos- sible for the one million, five hundred thousand Bap- tists grouped together in the Northern Baptist Con- vention to give the whole five million dollars yearly by the contribution of a cent a day from each member. 210 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE It is perfectly possible, perfectly practicable, perfectly necessary if the task is to be done. Baptists were given a giant's size, as some one has said, that they might do a giant's share. There is many a little Benjamin of a denomination that is putting them to shame. There are the United Presbyterians, with their aver- age of two dollars and forty-eight cents per member for foreign missions; the Reformed Church in Amer- ica, with its one dollar and seventy-seven cents per capita; the Adventists, with one dollar and thirty-nine cents per capita ; and Northern Baptists with seventy-four cents ! And this is their contribution toward their share in bringing six hundred million of the heathen world to Christ. It would be ludicrous were it not so shameful. In 1912, if the amounts given by the women of Baptist churches through their Woman's Foreign Mis- sionary Societies be deducted, Northern Baptist men gave fifty-eight cents each. To represent more fairly the whole shame of the situation, some specially large amounts given by a very few individuals should be deducted. When these are omitted the regular offerings of the churches aver- aged forty-one cents per member for the entire year of our Lord 1912. It is time to face the task, and either to do it or quit it ; time to cease playing at it and to begin to treat it as the great business of the Church. In the year ending March 31, 1913, Northern Baptist churches contributed for beneficence two million, four hundred and eighty-eight thousand, two hundred and three dollars and fifty cents. Of this amount, counting contributions from women's circles, six hun- dred and fifty-eight thousand, one hundred and seventy- IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 211 four dollars and sixty-seven cents was given for foreign missions, about one-fourth of tlic whole amount. (See Annual of Northern Baptist Convention, 1913, pp. xxxix and 340.) Facts About Japan On an area a little greater than that of California are gathered 51,287,091 people. One in 270 of the population of Japan is avowedly Christian; one in 566 is a Protestant Christian communicant. Protestant Christian constituency numbers at least 180,000. Protestant Christian communicants number 90,464. Roman and Greek Catholic Christians number 98,935. Baptist church-members number 4,084, including 504 under Southern Baptist Convention. There are 962 missionaries in Japan — one to 60,000 of the population. Baptist missionaries number 81, nearly one-twelfth of the mis- sionary force. Japanese Baptist Christians number one-twentieth of Protes- tant communicants. Baptists in United States number one-fourth of Protestant communicants. Increase in Japanese Baptist churches averages 10 per cent annually. Increase in American Baptist churches averages one and nine-tenths per cent annually. Baptist Educational Institutions in Japan Japan Baptist Theological Seminary, Tokyo, Japan. W. B. Parshley, D. D. (American Baptist Foreign Mission Society), president; Yugoro Chiba, D. D. (Southern Baptist Con- vention), dean; C. K. Harrington, D. D., Rev. C. B. Tenny, Rev. T. Takahashi, Rev. S. Mitamura, of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society ; Rev. G. W. Bouldin, Rev. K. Sato, of the Southern Baptist Convention. A new site has recently been purchased in Tokyo. 212 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Woman's Bible Training School, Osaka, Japan. Miss Lavinia Mead and native teachers. The students of this school, which was opened in 1908, are chiefly graduates of the excellent Baptist girls' home schools in Japan and do a high grade of work. Duncan Baptist Academy, Tokyo, Japan. Mr. J. F. Gressitt, principal; Rev. D. C. Holtom. Government recognition, which is difficult to obtain in Japan, was accorded to Duncan Academy in 1905, and since then an advanced course has been added. The school cooperates with a Presbyterian school. Sarah Curtis Home School, Tokyo, Japan. - Miss A. M. Kidder, Miss M. A. Whitman, Miss M. M. Carpenter. Also known as the Suruga Dai School. The oldest girls' school in the mission. Among its graduates are many teachers, nurses, and other Christian workers. Pupils number forty-seven. Mary L. Colby Home School, Yokohama, Japan. Miss Clara A. Converse, Miss Ruth D. French. Nearly 100 students are in attendance each year. New build- ings have been erected at Kanagawa, a suburb of Yokohama, and a college department has been added. Ella O. Patrick Home School, Sendai, Japan. Miss Annie S. Buzzell, Miss Amy A. Acock, Miss Mary D. Jesse. Well known in Japan for the excellence of its work. Prac- tically all the girls are Christians. Pupils number fifty-seven. Himeji Girls' Boarding School, Himeji, Japan. Miss Edith F. Wilcox, Miss F. M. Rumsey, Miss Marjorie Hiscox. About eighty girls attend this school. Conversions are fre- quent. Tokyo Kindergarten Training School, Tokyo, Japan. Miss Har- riett L. Dilhridge and native teachers. IN THE ISLAND EMPIRE 213 Bibliography Griffis, Verbcck of Japan. New York, Revell. Whole World Kin: A Pioneer Experience . . . of Nathan Brown. Chapters XXXV to XL. Philadelphia, Hubbard, 1890. Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands, pp. 17, 18. New York, Macmillan, 191 1. Clement, Christianity in Modem Japan. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1905. Gives a bird's-eye view of the work of Christianity, especially since 1853. DeForest, Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom. New York, Mission- ary Education Movement, 191 1. A study text-book serviceable for reference. For the Liuchiu Islands see Christian Movement in Japan. Bickel, The Log of the Gospel Ship. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1910. Sketches of the unique work of the " Fukuin Maru " in the Inland Sea. Newcomb, With Our Kindergarten Babies in Japan. Boston, Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. Duncan Baptist Academy. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Merriam, History of American Baptist Missions. Chapter XVII. Missions in Japan. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Japan Baptist Annual. Annual reports of the Japan Mission; descriptive of features of our work in progress. 214 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Christian Movement in Japan, 1903-1913. New York, Missionary Education Movement. In its yearly issues may be found such descriptive and statisti- cal data about the missionary and other phases as the reader of this chapter may need. World Missionary Conference, 1910 Reports: I, pp. 50-67, Occu- pation. II, pp. 122-165, 252-256, 307, 308, Education. IV, pp. 77-121, Religions. PIONEERING ON THE CONGO CHAPTER VII PIONEERING ON THE CONGO Africa's Redemption. " Where sin abounded grace did much more abound " might almost epitomize the missionary story of Africa, for it is in the Dark Con- tinent, full of cruelty, of savagery, of lust, and super- stition that Christianity has won some of its most glorious triumphs. There is no wealth of missionary heroism that quite equals that of Africa. There are no miracles of redemption that surpass those per- formed by Christ in the Dark Continent. And Africa, the backward, bewildered, undeveloped, and despised continent, sees the day of her redemption dawning. The black man and his land, last of all, shall find their place in the story of human progress. When the story of Africa's civilization and redemption shall be written the missionary will be seen to be its founder and builder. From Prince Henry and the Jesuits to Krapf and Rebmann, Livingstone, Coillard, Grenfell, Good, and the long roll of missionaries less widely known, the African frontier was pushed steadily inland through a century. *' The African frontier has advanced on the stepping-stones of missionary graves," says W. T. Stead. The Frightful Cost of Life. When we consider the frightful cost of life in the early days before the con- 217 2i8 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE ditions under which white men could live in Africa were understood, the dauntless faith of the missionary pioneers is nothing less than sublime. In 1835 the Milnes and Crockers sailed for Liberia. Within a month after landing Mrs. Milne died of African fever, and the others were so ill that their lives were de- spaired of. In reply to a friend, Mr. Crocker wrote : " You ask whether I am not, by this time, sorry I came to Africa. I can truly answer, ' No.' Every day I bless God for bringing me hither." In two years Mr. Milne was compelled to return to America. Mr. Crocker lost both his first and second wives by fever, each after a service of a few months. The Fieldings went to Liberia in 1840, to die of the terrible fever within six weeks. Rev. Calvin Holton died after a service of four months. Mrs. Anderson lived only five days after settling in her new home. All these were Baptist missionaries from America. " In the first seven years of the Livingstone Inland Mission ten white men and one woman were laid to rest in Congo earth, and others invalided to England. Dur- ing the twenty-five years' history of the English Bap- tist mission, thirty-three men and sixteen women bought the road with their blood for thirteen hun- dred miles inland and one hundred and twenty miles south to Zimbo."* Between 1804 and 1824 fifty-three missionaries of the Church of England, men and women, laid down their lives for Sierra Leone. The Swedish Missionary Society on the Congo, in the * Parsons' " Christus Liberator," p. 21 1. PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 219 twenty-five years following 1884, lost fifty-three out of one hundred and thirty-five missionaries, by death. On the east coast John Ludwig Krapf buried wife and child a few months after arriving at Mombasa, and sent this challenge home : There is now on the East African coast a lonely mis- sionary grave. This is a sign that you have commenced a struggle with this part of the world; and, as the vic- tories of the Church are gained by stepping over the graves of her members, you may be the more convinced that the hour is at hand when you are summoned to the conversion of Africa from its eastern shores. At the end of a heroic life of unavailing struggle, he said : Though many missionaries may fall in the fight, yet the survivors will pass over the slain into the trenches and take this great African stronghold for the Lord. Be mindful of the memorable words spoken by the French Guard at the battle of Waterloo, " The Guard does not surrender — it dies ! " Alexander Mackay's Heroism. When Alexander Mackay departed for Uganda in response to Stanley's appeal in 1875, he said to the Board of Directors of the Church of England Missionary Society : " I want to remind the committee that in six months they will probably hear that one of us is dead — when the news comes do not be cast down, but send some one immediately to take the vacant place." Within two years Mackay was the only one of the eight young men, the flower of England, to survive. Years later. 220 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE in his last letter home, wlicn he had been driven into exile by the people among whom he worked, and when the whole undertaking was apparently a failure, he wrote : What is this you write ? " Come home." Surely, now in our terril^le dearth of workers it is not a time for any one to desert his post. Send us only our first twenty men, and I may be tempted to come home to help you find another twenty. White Men Conquering the Climate. Conditions have greatly changed since those early days. The terrible sacrifice of life has proved to be not in vain. The missions have been established, a great work has been done, and white men have learned how to live, and to a certain extent, to thrive in the tropical cli- mate of Africa. The recent developments in scientific medicine have disclosed the origin of many of the fevers and contagious diseases. Better sanitation, destruction of the mosquitoes, inoculation for typhoid, the study of tropical diseases, and increasing medical skill in combatting them, have all contributed to change conditions. There are to-day many mission- aries in tropical Africa who have given a score or more of years of continuous service. Of the American Baptist force now in the Congo Mission, Doctor Sims, Mr. Frederickson, the Clarks, Mr. Richards, Mr. Bill- ington, and Mr. Harvey have all seen thirty years of service. The Halls, Mrs. Richards, Miss Cole, Mrs. Billington, Mrs. Frederickson, the Bains, the Hills, Doctor Leslie, the Moodys, and Doctor Lynch have PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 221 all seen twenty years or more. And there are others with ten or more years. Great Possibilities of Africa. The sacrifice of life and treasure that have been poured out so freely in Africa has not been expended in an unrewarded quest. Africa is so vast that the United States, Europe, India, China proper, and Great Britain might all be carved out of its territory with generous margins to spare. Africa has marvelous water-power, rich mineral de- posits, gold and diamond mines, vast grazing fields, uncounted forests of rare wood ; she has magnificent wheat, cotton, cofifee, and banana lands. In every national resource she is an imperial land. But the future of the land is bound up with that of her people ; one hundred and fifty millions of primitive, undevel- oped, yet powerful men. The conservation of human resources is the problem of Africa. Here too, while the task is more terrible than that of reclaiming the land, it is neither hopeless nor unrewarded. There is good stuff in these black diamond mines. It may well be that in the roomy providence of God with whom one thousand years are as a day, the African, so long the despised slave, may some day have a great, new word to say. Some Gifted Africans. The common expression about " inferior races " is misleading and unscientific. There are races in which the majority of the individ- uals are backward and undeveloped, but there is no race in which has not been found some individual who could prove that the limitations were not bio- logical and racial, but social and circumstantial. Africa, 222 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE for example, has been rich in these sons of hers, who have set forward the hopes of her friends. There was Crowther, the slave boy, who became saint and bishop ; Kaboo, the son of a Kru chieftain (Sammy Morris), a man shining for God ; John Dube, grandson of a Zulu king, who has been called the Booker T. Washington of South Africa; and Paul, the Apostle of the Congo. There is now studying in this country a young man who proves the splendid mental capacity of the native African. Although only nine years " out from the bush," he speaks and writes French and English, studies Latin and higher mathematics, maintains a high academic standard in one of the best fitting schools in the United States, and is liked and respected as a man by all his student associates. Yet this boy came from a tribe with no written language, which is still in the blackest savagery. Importance of the Native Population. Says Profes- sor Naylor: "Africa's importance to the world is de- pendent, not so much upon what the country possesses of natural resources, nor upon what it develops of domestic or foreign commerce, as upon what the na- tive himself becomes." This is the task laid upon the Christian church, to reach the native in advance of the disintegrating and deadening influences of avaricious traders. There is no more pressing or momentous task. In many sections the Church is already too late. A spiritless, drunken, and degraded population has replaced the primitive savages. It will take years, perhaps centuries, to recover the ground already lost. The church must husband what remains. PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 223 Pioneer Efforts Inspired by Africans. It is notable that pioneer missionary efforts in this country and in England were inspired by black men. The organiza- tion of the missionary societies of the Methodist Epis- copal Church was inspired by the missionary zeal of a Negro. It was a Negro Baptist of Richmond, Va., who in 1815 organized among his fellows the Rich- mond American Baptist Missionary Society. For five years these simple freed Negroes contributed their gifts for the redemption of Africa. Before it was possible for them to send out their first missionaries they had accumulated seven hundred dollars. Through the swaying curtain of the years it is difficult to gain a clear idea of this remarkable colored man, Lott Carey. He had bought his own freedom and that of his family by extra work at his trade. He had ac- cumulated property and had taught himself to read to such good purpose that he read with enjoyment books like Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." He left prospects that for a Negro were remarkable, to go to Liberia, as the first colored missionary. Here his native force made him the bulwark against the powers of savagery that were threatening to overwhelm the infant colony. The first British missionary to Africa was a manumitted slave of the West Indies. After England had emancipated the blacks in the West In- dies, a Negro named Keith purposed to return to Africa and preach the gospel in the very place where he him- self had been captured as a slave. He worked his passage to Africa before the mast, and was later adopted by the colored Baptists of Jamaica as their p 224 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE missionary. " Perhaps they will make you slaves again," said some timid brethren to these early mis- sionaries. " As we have been made slaves for men, so we can be made slaves for Christ," they answered. Following these tirst beginnings, the Southern Bap- tists maintained missionary work in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and later in the Yoruba country. The North- ern Baptists, after the separation from the Southern Baptists, did nothing further for Africa until 1884. Baptists Acquire the Livingstone Inland Mission. The Livingstone Inland Mission of England, organ- ized in 1879, had founded a chain of seven stations up the river, had launched the steamboat " Henry Reed " in the upper Congo, had reduced the Congo language to writing, published a grammar and dictionary, and sent out fifty missionaries. This entire plant, repre- senting an investment of one hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars, with a missionary stafif numbering twenty-six, was ofifered to American Baptists of the North. Although there were some who were doubtful about the wisdom of accepting this ofTer, it was de- cided to adopt the mission. It is said that Dr. Ed- ward Bright was one of the leaders whose ringing editorials in " The Examiner " had much to do with preventing Baptists from making the blunder of re- treating before such an opportunity. The Congo Free State. At that time the vast region known as the Congo Free State had only recently begun to occupy the public thought. Stanley, by his exploration in 1879, had unwittingly laid the basis for the personal domination of King Leopold of PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 225 Belgium in the Congo Basin. The purpose of the great nations who joined in the Berlin Conference of 1884 to create the Congo Free State, was sadly frus- trated by the tyrannical and sordid apology for a gov- ernment which King Leopold set up throughout this whole region. Concessions in rubber and ivory were farmed out to greedy commercial companies. Through these King Leopold waxed rich by the tribute wrung from millions of helpless people. By forced taxes, cruel exactions, burnings, mutilations, and death, great regions once populous were made desolate. It was only because of the fearless and persistent pub- licity which the missionaries gave to these dark deeds perpetrated in the heart of Africa that the Congo atrocities were ultimately terminated. Present Conditions on the Congo. The swarming population that Stanley found throughout the Congo basin has been sadly reduced. Social conditions are changed, often for the better. The dark shadow of cannibalism still remains in localities far back from the river. Polygamy, nakedness of body and spirit, cruelty, and the terrors of an overshadowing animism still characterize the land, but these " wild, rowdy Congo people " have proved to have the making of men and to be peculiarly open and responsive to the preaching of the gospel. Those longest on the field believe that the worst conditions have been reached and that already a change for the better is observable. American Baptists have shared the responsibility of the Congo field with the English Baptists, the Swedish, the Disciples, the Alliance Mission, the Plymouth Breth- 226 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE ren, the Southern Presbyterians, and the Regions Beyond Missionary Union. Yet all of them together have only made a beginning in the work which must be done in these vast fields of equatorial Africa. The Pentecost on the Congo. In 1886 Henry Rich- ards, one of the missionaries who had gone out under the Livingstone Inland Mission, had been laboring at Banza Manteke for seven years with few results. When he had traveled through the pathless wilderness in 1879, there was not one person who knew Christ. He built himself a hut of the long grass and settled down to pick the language from the lips of the people and reduce it to writing. In his little note-book he wrote down all that he learned. The savages mocked him, stole from him, lied to him, and lived quite openly their shameless and evil lives. The difficulties were enormous. For example, it took Mr. Richards three months of study to find out their word for "yester- day." He found that there w^ere sixteen declensions of nouns and seventeen conjugations of verbs, with tenses galore, each with its special form and delicate shade of meaning. In fact, one of the mysteries sur- rounding these Central African peoples is the superi- ority of their languages. How did such savages ever invent such smooth, mellifluous, flexible, and rich language forms? After gaining the language, he made acquaintance with the ideas and superstitions of the people. He found that they had a shadowy belief in a Supreme Creator, " Nzambi " ; but him they did not worship, because they thought he had gone away and did not concern himself with them. They were PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 227 engaged rather in the attempt to placate the spiritual powers of darkness, with which they believed the world to be peopled. The Turning-Point. Mr. Richards thought that he must begin his preaching with the idea of creation, and that of God as a loving heavenly Father. For four years he tried this, leading them along the path of Old Testament story. Then he began to preach the law, the Ten Commandments, the terrible pun- ishment of sin. The people remained quite indifferent. They said that these laws were good ; that they them- selves kept them, and calmly refused to make any uncomfortable personal application. (How much like us they are !) In despair Mr. Richards began anew a study of the missionary life of the apostles, and saw that the heathen were converted, not with the preach- ing of the law of condemnation, but by the good news of grace. This was the turning-point. He began sim- ply with Luke's Gospel, translating twelve verses every day, and then explaining them to the people. When he came to the thirtieth verse of the sixth chapter he did not know what to do. The people were shameless beggars, thieves too. Why not pass over that verse? He studied and prayed. Did the verse mean what it said? Here he was in the wilderness. If he gave the people what they asked him for they would strip him to the bone, and heartlessly leave him to perish. At last, after weeks of prayer, he decided to translate the verse with absolute fidelity to the word of Christ; to say that this was a high standard, but that from thenceforth he meant to try to live up 228 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE to it. After the address was over the people flocked around him, and then began to ask him for his things until they left him with barely a roof over his head. That night he laid the whole burden upon Gr d, and lay down to sleep. Before the early dawn Ke was wakened by the stealthy footfalls of those who were returning the goods which they had begged. " This must be ' Nzambi's ' man," they said. " If he is God's man we must not rob him. We cannot keep what he has given us." Coming of the Revival. As he continued to tell the story of Christ's life, the solemnity grew until, when he came to the crucifixion, the Holy Spirit itself seemed to be working in the hearts of the people. Then came the first convert, Lutate, whom Mr. Rich- ards had to take into his own house for safe-keeping, because his enemies tried to poison him. The chief's son was converted, and then the number of believers swelled to ten. Taking these disciples, ]\Ir. Richards went throughout the territory telling the story of Jesus. A thousand names were enrolled in the list of believers. W^hen the news reached America the mem- bers of Dr. A. J. Gordon's church in Boston sent out a chapel in sections, all ready to put together. The Christians walked sixty miles and carried it all upon their heads to Banza Manteke in seven hundred loads. Some of them made the rough journey five times, each trip taking a week, and did it all for love, with laugh- ter and bright faces. From Banza Manteke the revival spread to other stations up and down the Congo. To- day there are enrolled in all the churches of the Amer- PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 229 ican missions working in this section of Africa, four- teen thousand baptized Christians. There are in the Christian community more than three times this num- ber of people. If we add to the American societies the English and Continental, we have eighteen societies in all, with forty-five thousand communicants or one hundred and three thousand adherents.* Generosity of Congo Christians. These Africans make pretty good church-members too, when it is considered that most of them are not one generation away from savagery. Their generosity puts more ad- vanced Christians to shame. The average income of a man is about sixteen dollars a year, yet the per capita average for each contributing member at Ikoko was one dollar and thirty-eight cents. The church at Wathen, in the English Baptist mission on the Congo, established fifty-two new branches last year. The church boasts one hundred and ninety- six evangelists ; ninety-two of them are paid workers and one hundred and four voluntary workers. One out of every ten of the one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five members of this church is an evan- gelist. Is there a church in America which can match this record? At Ikoko the church recently passed the rule that any one refusing to help in the Lord's work when called upon by the church should be ex- pelled. Many of these people do not see a franc (twenty cents) once a month. On one of his trips Mr. Hartsock found in the collection arrows, cloth, plates, * Statistical Atlas, published by Edinburgh World Conference 230 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE and so on. In some cases these were all the posses- sions which the contributors had. He speaks of one woman who had a piece of cloth about two feet long and a string of beads. These were all the property she possessed in the world. She gave them both to help build a chapel in her town. Mr. Metzger tells of a group of seventy men and boys who turned over to him all the rubber they had on hand, worth in all about twenty-five dollars. They gave this as a special donation in addition to their monthly gifts in order to avoid a debt which confronted the mission. Striking Changes Brought About. Some of the vet- eran missionaries of the Baptist mission have stated in a very impressive way the differences made among these people by the preaching of the gospel in one generation. Rev. Joseph Clark, of Ikoko, writing after his last furlough in 1912, says: Eighteen years ago we came to a people whose lan- guage was not known, and to whom the gospel story had not been told. All the men were reputed cannibals, de- lighting in warfare and every form of evil, and each carried bows and arrows, spears and knife. The women were treated as slaves, or beasts of burden, were almost nude, and devoid of every womanly feeling. Now, as they stood on the beach to welcome us, we saw scores of women and girls decently clothed, with smiling faces and cheerful voices, as they sang hymns of praise to God. The men were clothed and carried no weapons. The old savage, sullen, heathen face was gone. . . Look at that sturdy, well-dressed woman, whose face lights up with a smile, and note her nicely clothed baby and her six little ones. She was one of the wildest women when we first made her acquaintance. On the slightest provo- A MEETING FOR THE WOMEN ORPHANAGE GTRLS AT SONA BATA LEARNING TO SEW PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 231 cation she would challenge any one to fight her, and would stand out, nude, waiting for some one whom she could bite and tear. For years she has been a follower of Jesus, and tells others the story of his wondrous love. . . As Mrs. Clark stepped off the gangplank, her face was pale and drawn with emotion. . . In a mo- ment she was lifted on the shoulders of these strong women, who carried her up from the beach and into her house before they laid down their old " Mama." Mrs. Frederickson's testimony is not less striking: It will be twenty-seven years since I landed at Banana to give my life for the evangelization of Congo. , . It required fifteen days then to travel between Matadi and Sona Bata, where coolies carried us by hammock. The train takes us now in two days. . . The people were superstitious and thought that we were the cause of their death and that we took their souls to Europe. They lived in fear and hatred, in wars and slavery, and few wore clothes. Slavery is officially stopped, so are the wars. To-day there are Christians in many villages where over one hundred thousand people must have heard some of the gospel. Surely, the dawn is here. Come over and help us. Mr. Moody, of Lukunga, says that, whereas ten years ago the people used to run away from him, they will now come a distance of tw^enty or thirty miles in order to attend the quarterly communion service; will walk two days on the road, will sleep five nights on the ground, and provide their own food. The Apostle of the Congo. There are not wanting notable individual Christians. Perhaps the story of Paul, the Apostle of the Congo, is best known. He 232 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE had been a violent opponent of the gospel, the wild young son of the chief. He sought with drink and the beating of the old heathen drums to draw away the Christians from the worship. His heathen name was Nloko, " the curse." But one time this man, whom none could tame, found himself in great peril on the mighty river, whose thunders drowned his weak cries as he called for help. He vowed a vow that if the Christians' God would help him he would be his man. God saved his life, and, true to his word, he presented himself as a convert before the amazed and perhaps excusably skeptical missionary. He soon proved that his repentance was no scheme to make trouble, but the genuine thing. The rowdy robber and murderer had become a new man in Christ Jesus. The new life grew swiftly, rooting out his old evil habits. He asked to be given the hardest tasks; and after his baptism, no longer Nloko, " the curse," but Paul, the missionar}^ he w^as allowed to go to Kun- zama, a town where it had been impossible to gain a foothold for the gospel. The people were afraid of him. and would not admit him to the tow^n. Nothing daunted, he made him a hut just outside the village, and began his siege. They would not sell him food, and tried to prevent his getting water. He nearly starved. He endured cruel persecution, but he stuck to his post. After some months a man came out from the town, saying: "I too am a Christian." He built another hut near Paul's, and the two united in prayer and work. One by one the people were won over, until there w^as surrounding Paul's hut a Christian PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 233 village containing a chapel that would seat three hundred people. Out into the dark forest these Chris- ,tians went, from village to village, into regions where the missionaries had never penetrated. Wherever they went they told the story of the cross. " It is this which breaks men's hearts," they said. Before Paul died he had gathered about him a church numbering six hundred members, and his evangelists had gath- ered other hundreds beyond the river. Said Mr. Rich- ards: "All that Paul dreamed of was souls and how he could reach them. He was a born preacher. No man's prayers helped me so much as his." Returning Good for Evil. The finer flowers of the gospel philosophy of life do not prove out of reach of the African. Perhaps nothing is harder even for ma- ture Christians than to act upon the Saviour's counsel of perfection in regard to loving one's enemies and praying for those who are persecutors. There was the son of an African chief wdio was insolently beaten one day by a Belgian official because he did not instantly yield the path. Now, in his own eyes and in the opinion of all the natives, this young chief w^as a very grand person indeed. To be beaten like a common slave was infinite degradation, unless the insult could be atoned in blood. The young fellow was a Chris- tian. He came into the mission, shaking with passion, unable to tell the story of the unprovoked assault. Yet he was able to come quietly into prayer-meeting that night and pray for his enemy with free forgiveness. Those who think that this was an easy triumph do not know the fierce courage of these Congo tribes, or 234 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE their code of blood-revenge. The courage and faith which it required for the young chief to do this thing were not less than sublime. He took up his cross and followed his Master. Just One Tribe. If missions among primitive people accomplished little else they would be worth all that they cost simply to demonstrate the unity of man and to break the crust of the colossal race-egotism of the whites. The paths on the steepest heights of the spirit are not marked, "Reserved for white men." Daily the scientific accuracy and profound spirituality of Paul's great saying become more apparent — " God hath made of one blood all men for to dwell on the face of the earth." This is beautifully illustrated in a story told recently regarding Miss Jean McKenzie, a Presbyterian missionary, working to the north of the Congo country, in Efulen. The women of Efulen, it seems, had asked her to make them clothing like the long robes she wore. "Who am I," she answered, "that I should make you clothing? Am not I the speaker of the Word who walks from village to village at the bottom of the forest sea?" " Whence then get you your own long garments, white teacher? " " I will tell you. Do you remember Memba, the girl who went from our village to Elat with her husband ? " The women nodded. " Who is it that says to the traveler through the forest ' Go you to Elat, the village of Memba ' ? " " Her mother, surely." " In my father's village, called New York, is my mother, and when travelers come across the great water PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 235 she says to them, ' Go you to the village of Jean Mc- Kenzie ? ' and when they answer ' Yes,' she loads them with garments for me." " Oh," said the women, " we perceive you also are of our tribe." Baptist Schools on the Congo. One of the important features of missionary work on the Congo is the schools. The American Baptists were perhaps slow to realize the need of well-equipped station boarding- schools in which to train the leaders and apostles of the people. The Congo can never be evangelized or Christianized by white men. They can only give their lives each one to inspire a score of Africans who can speak where they only stammer, live where they only languish, understand where they stumble in darkness. The English Baptists have a much better developed system of these station schools. The language prob- lem becomes ever more acute. French is the language of the government, and the one which it is most im- portant for the Congo native to learn. If Protestants are to hold and gain the Congo for Christ there must be missionaries who can teach French as well as or better than the Jesuits teach it. Boarding-Schools. There are seven boarding- schools. At Banza Manteke, a girls' boarding-school with fourteen pupils ; at Lukunga, one for boys with thirty pupils; at Sona Bata, one for boys with forty- four pupils, and one for girls with thirty-two pupils ; at Ikoko, one for girls with twenty-five pupils ; at Kimpesi, the Evangelical Training School with six- teen pupils; at Palabala, a school with twenty-five 236 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE pupils ; at Tshiimbiri a girls' school with nine pupils. Some of these have little or no equipment or build- ings, and are only maintained by the self-sacrificing care of missionary wives who take in a family of from ten to twenty children, and mother and train them. Mr. Clark speaks of the equipment at Ikoko as follows: The school is prospering, but the equipment is some- what primitive. The main building is an open shed, floored with small loose stones and sand from the lake shore. The furnishings are three tables and desks, and a case of slates given by a Boston friend. There are no maps or pictures of any kind. We do not worry, how- ever, over the things we lack, but think of these attractive young pupils in whom are great possibilities. Mrs. Metzger, who has begun a girls' school in Tshumbiri, writes that four of her girls are from the Bateke tribe, whose women have been so difficult to reach, because the men will not allow them the priv- ilege of hearing the gospel. She said that when they came, they wore only loin-cloths, and their hair was matted with oil. She now has them clean, wearing dresses which they have made themselves, with their hair nicely cut. They have even reached the point of making combination suits of underwear for them- selves! Need for Better Equipment. Is it not a challenge to American Baptists to send men and women to this neediest and most difficult field, and then to equip them with what would be necessary on the homeland in similar undertakings ? Dr. Catharine Mabie's indignant query will find an echo in many hearts: PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 237 When shall we have boarding-schools like those of the British Baptist Missionary Society, properly staffed and equipped, to meet the crying need of our largely evangel- ized but ill-shepherded lower Congo field? If only our Banza IManteke school, opened ten years ago, could have lived to perform its proper functions, we should not to- day have such a dearth of trained native workers. Mrs. Frederickson, after long pleading, was grateful beyond words for five hundred dollars with which to build a dormitory for her girls, formerly housed in native huts and sheds. When one thinks of the addi- tional labor which this entailed in the way of super- vision, and of the impossibility of teaching order, neatness, and better standards of living under such conditions, it seems a shame that this apostolic woman had to toil so long with her needs unsupplied. Kimpesi Evangelical Training Institution. At Kim- pesi there has recently been established a new type of school, the Congo Evangelical Training Institution, to which the men in training as evangelists and teach- ers may come for a three years' course and may bring their families. In this school English and American Baptists unite. Mr. McDiarmed and Mr. Cameron put in their vacation superintending the making of one hundred and thirty-five thousand bricks with which, under their direction, the students built seven double- brick houses in which they and their families were to live. The compound was cleared of a year's growth of tall grass, gardens were made and trees planted. Here they will have a regular African community life, so under the direction of the missionaries that it will 238 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE be possible greatly to elevate the standards of these who are to be the leaders of the people. Doctor Mabie has been transferred to Kimpesi, and has undertaken the teaching of the women in physiology and hygiene. She also has Bible classes for the women and children, and supervises the practice schools of the normal de- partment. She is working out a set of primary text- books, and beginning a course with the women on the duties and privileges of wifehood, motherhood, and church-membership. In Africa too, we are discover- ing that the source of conservatism and reaction is among the wives and mothers, and that it is quite as important to train the wives of teachers and preachers as to train the men themselves. Industrial Training, One of the greatest needs of Baptist schools on the Congo is the introduction of industrial training suited to the needs of the people. The men have behind them centuries of the free, lazy life of the hunter and fighter. The women have been the immemorial drudges. It is necessary to teach the men to work if they are to be led out of the savage into the civilized state. These Congo Negroes are not wanting in energy, and have much native aptitude as artisans in the working of metals. Those who are skeptical in this matter should read the story of Love- dale in South Africa, the Livingstonia Industrial Mis- sion in Central Africa, and that of Uganda.* The Village School. There are a total of two hun- dred and forty-seven village schools in Baptist Congo * See " Daybreak in the Dark Continent," p. 160. PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 239 regions, with seven thousand, six hundred and ninety- two pupils. The following table was obtained from the combined reports of the Woman's Boards and those of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society for the past two years. Owing to furloughs and the under- manning of stations, it is sometimes impossible to get reports from all the stations every year. VILLAGE SCHOOLS IN CONGO MISSION Average No. Schools. Pupils. Pupils. Palabala 17 872 51 Banza Manteke 72 3,261 43 Lukunga 15 255 17 Sona Bata 39 708 18 Matadi 2 67 33 Cuillo 1 50 50 Tshumbiri 24 1,120 46 Mukimvika 48 850 17 Ikoko 14 500 35 One of the indispensable factors in the elevation of the people is the training of the young children, the capturing of the beautiful young spirits before they are warped and stunted by the evil conditions about them. The day will come when there will be kinder- gartens in the African forest, and kindergarten train- ing schools. Now, the problem is to keep the breath of life in the little village schools under the leadership of the half-trained and partially effective native teach- ers on whom for the present the mission must depend. With all their failings, these village schools are the Q 240 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE springs of progress. In them are discovered the bright boys and girls to send up to the station-schools for further training. Out of them come the most prom- ising converts. Salaries of the Teachers. One of the difficulties is the low salary paid to the teacher. Each school now costs on an average sixteen dollars, the price of the teacher's salary. This is too little; it really is! If there could be two hundred and fifty Sunday-schools in American Baptist churches who would each agree to pay twenty-five dollars a year for the support of a village school in Africa, new life would come into the whole village-school situation. Think of it ! Twenty- five dollars a year for a school in which thirty or forty little children are taught to read and write, to sing beautiful hymns, to learn whole chapters from the New Testament, to have their first lessons in decency and in truth. The difficulty is in holding teachers to their work on their present low salaries. Mr. Hill, of Lukunga, reports that eighteen teachers left their schools to go to work on the railroad or in the copper mines. In the copper mines the workmen are paid from four to six dollars a month ; as teachers they receive from sixty cents to a dollar and twenty cents a month. They have to pay a tax of nine francs a year to the Belgian Government. So it becomes necessary for them to earn more money. It does look as though it might be a little difficult even for a Congo native to pay a tax equal to one dollar and eighty cents out of an annual income of sixteen dollars. The mission would not have to pay teachers as much as they could STARTING FOR A TOUR ON A MONOCVCLE AN OPERATION UNDER DIFFICULTIES PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 241 earn in the mines. Africans are like Americans; they would rather teach than work in copper mines. Even the slight raise in salary to twenty-five dollars a year would, doubtless, hold most of them. Enlarged Opportunity for Village Schools. Every year the people are growing more appreciative of the value of these village schools. Mr. Geil tells of receiv- ing a very urgent communication from a chief beyond the river, asking for teachers. " The chief wants to know why it is that his people cannot have teachers when he has asked for them so often. There hasn't been a teacher in all his territory. The chief says that the priests are coming to ask permission to put teach- ers in his villages. But he doesn't want their teachers ; he wants teachers from the mission." Mr. Geil says that with a list of twenty such villages open before him he is compelled to write that he has no teachers to send. Medical Work on the Congo. Medical work on the Congo offers a unique opportunity. Among all ani- mistic people (spirit worshipers) the witch-doctor and the priest are one and the same person. Hence, it is the natural thing to a Congo mind that a minister should also be a doctor. In fact, it is a distinct handi- cap to a preacher, if he is not also a physician. So true is this that, perforce, the missionaries have all done more or less in the healing of disease. For years, at Sona Bata, Mrs. Frederickson, without any hos- pital building, with only native huts for dispensary buildings, has done a remarkable work in medical min- istry. In 1912 she treated in the dispensary nearly 242 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE six thousand cases, cared for forty-six in-patients and collected thirteen hundred and forty-four francs* in medical fees. Mrs. Bain, during the furlough of Doc- tor Mabie, heroically assumed charge of the medi- cal work in Banza Manteke in 1912, pending the arrival of Doctor Parsons. She reported a thousand and seventeen treatments, eighteen in-patients, one hundred calls in villages, and eight patients treated in villages. Mrs. Billington also, while in Tshumbiri, did a splendid medical work. Mr. Rodgers, at Ikoko, kept up active dispensary practice. All these mission- aries were limited to the treatment of the common ailments which their skill allowed them to undertake, and welcomed most gladly the fully trained physicians recently sent to the reenforcement of the mission. Medical Staff on the Congo. There are now in the Congo mission. Doctor Sims, the splendid pioneer of thirty years' service, at Matadi ; Doctor Lynch at Mukimvika, Doctor Nauss at Sona Bata, Doctor Os- trom at Ikoko, Doctor Leslie at Vanga (recently re- moved from Cuillo), Doctor Mabie at Kimpesi. Every one of these heroic physicians ought to have a well- built modern hospital, equipped both for the saving of life and the carrying on of those researches in tropi- cal diseases which will make all life on the Congo safer. They ought to be supplemented by trained nurses, who should begin the task of training native nurses and midwives and of securing better sanitation in daily life. There are individual churches, as well as ♦Nearly $269. PIONEERING ON THE CONGO 243 individual believers in the home church who, without any straining of their resources, could put a hospital in every station. Facts About Africa Three Af ricas : Pagan Africa, population 90,000,000 Christian Africa 5,500,000 Mohammedan Africa 40,000,000 Eight hundred and forty-three languages in Africa; not one of them written when missions began. One hundred million people to-day without a written language. Five blocks of unoccupied territory, containing 50,000,000 people, outside the reach or plans of any missionary society. Missionaries number 1,585. Average parish to each missionary, 900,000. Unoccupied Portuguese African territory is four times the size of New York State. In the Sudan is territory as large as the United States of America, containing 15,000,000 souls, without one resident mis- sionary. Twenty African languages reduced to writing in 1913. Fourteen out of fifteen Presbyterian churches in Kamerun are self-supporting. Baptist Educational Institution in the Congo Evangelical Training School, Kimpesi, Belgian Congo. Rev. S. E. Moon, Miss Catharine L. Mabie, M. D., representing the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. English and American Baptists unite in this teachers' training school, which has about forty-five pupils. The equipment in- cludes dormitories, lecture-rooms, built of iron with grass roofs, and a central building, the Bentley Memorial, Industrial work is a feature. 243 244 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE " We must bear tlie brunt of danger. We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! " On and on the compact ranks Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping. Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! " —Walt Whitman. Bibliography Stanley, Henry M., Autobiography of. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Naylor, Daybreak in the Dark Continent. New York, Mission- ary Education Movement, 1912. A study text-book useful for reference. Parsons, Christus Liberator. New York, Macmillan, 1905. An outline study of Africa. Harrison, Mackay of Uganda. New York, Armstrong, 1898. Gammell, History of American Baptist Missions. Chapter XIX. Boston, 1854. Medbury, Memoir of William G. Crocker. Boston, 1848. Merriam, History of American Baptist Missions. Chapter XVHI. Missions in Africa. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1905. Paul, the Apostle of Banza Manteke. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1913. Pentecost on the Congo. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1906. World Missionary Conference, 1910, Reports: I. pp. 224, 225, Oc- cupation. II, p. 422, Education. Ill, pp. 7-27, Religions. BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY IN THE PHILIPPINES CHAPTER VIII BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY IN THE PHILIPPINES Phoebus' chariot race is run Look up, poet, at the sun. — E. B. Browning. The Wonder Year. Did the sun ever shine on a more surprising year than that of 1898? A year that saw the world's greatest despot issue a peace rescript to bring together the nations of the world for the abro- gation of war; the downfall of Spain as a colonial power, and the annexation of the Philippines without the loss of an American life; the promulgation of twenty-seven reform edicts by the Emperor of China, his consequent deposition, and the seizure by Russia, England, France, and Japan of nearly all China's seaports ! America in the Field of World Politics. Suddenly America rubbed her eyes. The ship of state was un- moored, and with all sails set was making for the high seas. Policies of isolation were at an end, whether she would or not, for good or ill, she was afloat on the sea of international politics. Doctor Barrows, on his return after delivering the first course of lectures in India on the Haskell Foundation, commented on the sudden shifting of public interest. When he went 247 248 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE away he said audiences were small and evidently bored by the discussion of such remote and uninteresting topics as the Far East. When he returned at the end of 1898, the largest halls would not hold the people, eager to hear more of the strange, distant nations, with whom, for the first time, they recognized com- mon interests and a common destiny. Acquisition of the Philippines. When Admiral Dewey's cablegram was received, announcing the re- sult of the battle of Manila, there were not wanting those among well-educated people who hastened to consult the atlas before the children could ask them where the Philippines were. It was as if a great Hand suddenly reached in to our little games of statecraft and politics and rearranged the pieces. " America," says Charles W. Briggs, in his fascinating book, " The Progressing Philippines," " like Magellan nearly four hundred years earlier, sailed into the Philippines under sealed orders of vaster import than could be known at the time. The battle of Manila Bay was an act in a drama of far greater design than the chief actors even guessed." * Size. The islands which dropped so unexpectedly into the hands of America in 1898 form one of the world's fairest archipelagoes. Thousands of them dot the surface of the tropic seas, three hundred are in- habited, eleven are large islands. They extend a thou- sand miles north and south, and five hundred miles east and west. California or Japan has each a some- * See " The Progressing Philippines," p. 163. BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 249 what larger area, but the Philippines could sustain as large a population as Japan with her forty-five millions of inhabitants. The Philippine area is greater than that of Italy, which sustains a population of thirty- two millions as against the seven million, six hundred thousand of the Philippines. The Middle Atlantic States, with a population of nineteen millions, have virtually the same area. The longitude is such that when it is noon at Washington, D. C, it is ten o'clock the following morning at Manila ! Climate. The climate of the islands is distinctly tropical, yet so tempered by the ocean that there is comparatively little variation in temperature through- out the year. Many Americans who have become ac- climated are enthusiastic about the climate, and prophesy that when once the islands have been made sanitary they will become a health resort for Europeans and Americans. Resources and People. While minerals are not lacking, the chief wealth of the Philippines is in their forests and their agricultural products : rice, hemp, copra, sugar, tobacco. The people of the islands are Malay in origin. The elaborate theories in regard to many diverse race-stocks have all gone to pieces in the face of first-hand investigations on the spot by government scientists. The Filipino is a Malay. Lan- guage differences are those of dialect produced by the isolation of the various tribes. The mountain ranges running north and south forbade communica- tion between tribes living on the eastern and western sides of the islands. In addition to the Filipino tribes. 250 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE there are the dwarf Negrito, or aboriginal tribes, who were driven by tlie Malay invaders to the mountain fastnesses of the interior. Only a few thousand of these shy savages survive. The name Filipino is confined to the Christianized portion of the Malay population. The pagan Malay tribes — Igorotes, Ifu- gaos, Nangianes, and others — are found in the moun- tainous interior of the larger islands only. These num- ber about a half-million, and are supposed to represent the first wave of the Malay invasion. These savages preserve primitive Malay social institutions virtually unchanged. They are exceedingly conservative, brave, hardy, and industrious. American army officers de- clare that they think some of the best raw material in the islands is to be found among these primitive folk. The Moros, of Mindanao, the southern island, are also Malay, representing the last wave of Malay immigration to the Philippines. They are very fierce and aggressive Moslems. They were in process of conquering the whole archipelago when the Spaniards took possession of the islands and checked their ad- vance, but were never able to subdue them. Race Unity. The Philippines are seen to have one of the bases of nationality, a homogeneous people, divided it is true, but capable of being brought to- gether. Furthermore, the great majority of the in- habitants are unified by religion and social customs. While Spain did not accomplish all that could be wished during her three hundred years of dominance, she did give the Filipinos what no other Malay race ever had, ideas of monotheism and monogamy. She BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 251 cleared the ground for the superstructure of a freer and purer religious and political life. In our prejudice against Spanish medieval ideals of government and religion we must never forget the real debt which the islands owe to Spain. To one-tenth of the people she gave the knowledge of the Spanish language, with its noble literature; to all, the traditions of the Christian family, with its tenderness toward childhood and old age. The depth of her influence is clearly seen by the very revolutions which the Filipinos waged against Spain herself. What other Malay people ever held the idea of liberty in Church and State so as to be willing to pour out its blood like water to obtain it? Filipino Tribes. In this brief study of Baptist mis- sions it is unnecessary to enumerate all of the Filipino tribes. The Tagalogs, found in the principal island of Luzon, are the most restless and adventurous, the most citified and Spaniardized. They comprise about one and a half millions, and are located chiefly in the territory in which Manila is situated. Baptist work is among the Visayans, who are found in the islands of Panay, Negros, Cebu, Samar, Leyte, and Bohol, sta- tions being located only on the first two named. The other civilized tribes are found for the most part in northern Luzon. Filipino Characteristics. Travelers do not give the Filipino a very good reputation. They say he is lazy, improvident, a gambler, and without ambition. This is undoubtedly true of the large number of semi- parasitic middle-class mestizos (mixed race) who have drifted into the towns. But those who have come 252 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE into contact with Visayans of the provinces have a far more encouraging story to tell. Mr. Briggs speaks of the friendship of many Filipinos of all classes as a " priceless boon." There are many v^ho tell of the sweetness, patience, courage, and devotion of Filipino Christians. Furthermore, in judging a people, one must always discriminate clearly those qualities that are the result of social institutions. The well-nigh universal use of drugs, narcotics, and alcohol by men, women, and children, for generations, has depressed the powers of the race physically, mentally, and mor- ally. " The Filipino," says Mr. Briggs, " is a drugged and drunken Malay, falling far short of his highest capacities." His church has borne no clear testimony, his physicians have universally recommended stimu- lants, he has had no glimmer of an idea of the nature of these evils which were sapping his very life. One of the strongest arguments for pushing mission work in the Philippines is that missionary preachers and teachers form the only body of radical temperance workers in the islands. The Land Question in the Philippines. Filipino life is cleft in twain by the land question. There are two classes, the landed and the landless: the Spanish- speaking mestizo, and the tazvos or common people. Between the two there is a great gulf fixed. The friars have consistently despised the native, and taught the mestizo to be proud of his Spanish birth. The feudal land system has established a landowning aris- tocracy composed of the mestizo, or Spanish-speaking portion of the population, and the friars. The back- BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 253 bone of Filipino social life is feudalism. A failure to understand this makes it impossible rightly to inter- pret conditions or movements. Primitive Malay so- ciety had been composed of three classes, the datos, or chiefs, big and little, the tazvos, or common people, and the slaves. It was an easy thing to build upon this social organization a feudal state and a feudal church. The abuses of the friars as landlords were the chief reasons for the revolt of the Filipinos against Spain. The friars had come to hold a large portion of the best land in the islands, on which they paid no taxes, and from which they derived very large rev- enues. The Man at the Bottom. Each little barrio, or country village, is governed by a head man, who is responsible to the presidente of the pueblo, or town. No one expects to be independent. Each pays tribute to the chief above him for protection in the good old feudal way. The condition of the peasant at the bot- tom is one of peonage, and sometimes virtual slavery. He is never out of debt to the owner of the hacienda for the bare necessities of life. He passes from gen- eration to generation as part of the property of the estate. The helplessness, improvidence, and lack of ambition which centuries of such conditions have cre- ated will not be removed in a day. The Filipino is drugged not only with narcotics, but with feudalism. Coming of the Missionaries. The city of Manila was still in the throes of insurrection when the first American missionary services were held by the Meth- odists and Presbyterians. Early in 1900 came the 254 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Baptists, the United Brethren, the Disciples, and the Congregationalists. It was soon seen that some or- ganized plan of dividing up the territory must be made. Accordingly an Evangelical Union was formed in 1901, and it was agreed that the Methodists and Presbyterians should be assigned territory in Luzon, while the Baptists and Presbyterians were to divide the terri- tory in Panay and Negros. It was further agreed that the name Protestant should not be used, but that the churches should be known as Evangelical churches, and that members moving from one location to another should be accepted by letter, irrespective of denomination. Filipino Response. There never was such a re- sponse to the preaching of the gospel as the Filipinos gave during the next ten years. It was a new thing for them to have liberty to say anything or to read any book contrary to the will of the friars. At first they could not understand that the protection of the American flag meant the right to free thought, free speech, and a free Bible in a free state. Men had been put to death for owning a Bible in the Philippines. There had been, however, an unconscious preparation for freedom. Sefior Zamora, imprisoned and exiled for reading the Bible, returned from Europe after the coming of the Americans to find his son Nicholas also secretly believing, and these two formed the nucleus of the first Methodist Episcopal Church in Manila. One whole village church went over in 1901, assem- bling on their knees with tears to partake of the first communion in which they were allowed to take the wine as well as the bread. BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 255 Baptist Pioneers. It was at first supposed that Spanish would be the language of instruction in the Philippines, and the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society hastened to lay hands on Rev. Eric Lund, who had for years been faithfully shepherding a little Baptist church in Spain. When Mr. Lund replied to the letter from the Board asking him to take up work among the Visayan islanders, he was able to tell them that he had with him in Spain a converted Visayan, a for- mer student for the priesthood, with whose help he had already prepared a Visayan translation of a por- tion of the New Testament and some Spanish tracts. When Mr. Lund and Mr. Manikan began their work in Jaro they found that the Spanish-speaking people were a very small proportion of the inhabitants. These, moreover, were bitterly prejudiced and inac- cessible. They realized that if the Filipinos were to be evangelized it was to be through the despised ver- nacular languages. With Manikan as helper, Mr. Lund set himself to the study of the Visayan language and to the completion of the Visayan Gospel already begun while in Spain. Vernacular Translations of the New Testament. During the first ten years of American occupation the Filipino dialects received their first respectful atten- tion. An immense amount of study was given to them and the ideas regarding the possibilities of the dialects modified. The educated Filipinos had been ashamed of their own languages. There was no litera- ture in any of them, and there had, of course, never been a translation of the Bible into any of these R «56 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE dialects. The achievement of Mr. Lund is a triumph of modern scholarship. In a time that would be deemed impossibly brief he was able to present to the Visayans the entire New Testament in their own tongue. Be- cause of his perfect mastery of Spanish he was able to explain to Spanish-speaking Visayan scholars the sense of the original, verse by verse. Through com- parison of all the best translations and versions with the original he was thus enabled to be sure that the translation was both faithful to the original and ex- pressed in the idiomatic phrase of the mother tongue of the Visayans. He has recently completed the trans- lation of the entire Bible into Visayan. The Filipino Languages. Other Protestant mis- sionaries have translated the Bible into Tagalog, and Ilocano, and the New Testament into minor Filipino dialects. They have thus performed a great service, not only for religion and social progress, but also for the cementing of national unity and the dawn of na- tional self-respect. So long had the Spanish friars taught the Filipinos to scorn their own language that the educated people were ashamed to attend a meeting conducted in the vernacular. It was at first thought that these variant forms of the Malay tongue were too meager, too rude, too primitive to permit of a worthy translation of the Bible. " As a matter of fact," says one who has for ten years used the vernacular con- stantly, " their dialects are all very beautiful. The vocabulary is large and expressive, and the grammati- cal structure is very wonderful and ingenious. The Bible loses nothing by translation into the oriental BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 257 imagery of the Filipino dialects. The gospel that was first clothed with the robe of parable and figure is at home in the warmly imaginative speech that reflects the luxuriant verdure of the tropics." * Emergence of a Unified Language. For the present the Bible must be translated into all the dialects, but may it not be possible that ultimately some one of these may become the dominant language? We know that there were many dialects of early English, Ger- man, and Italian, which gave place in time to one form of speech. When it is considered that the Vi- sayans number one-half the islanders, and that many of the tribes number at best but a few thousands, it is not at all impossible that the Visayan dialect may ultimately assume this place. The translation and circulation of the Bible will be very powerful factors in the outcome. The tribe which peruses the most newspapers, and fosters the circulation of the Bible and the spread of education will probably be the one whose speech survives. Inasmuch as the Tagalogs and Vi- sayans are found intermingled on the Visayan Islands, it may be that the final form of language will be a combination of these two dialects. Printing of the Baptist Version. Most of the ver- nacular translations were printed jointly for the mis- sions by the Bible societies, but the Baptists gave themselves the pleasure of paying for their own splendid Visayan version, all for the sake of the privi- lege of translating the word baptizo by the word * " The Progressing Philippines," p. 143. 258 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE " immerse." It would be one of the strange turns of his- tory if that one word were enough to prevent the wide- spread use of this great version, and therefore the ulti- mate triumph of the Visayan dialect. One thing is sure, that that Filipino version of the Bible which gets itself most widely read during the next hundred years, the most deeply loved and best committed to memory, is the version that will do for the Filipino mother tongue what Luther's Bible did for the German, Wyclif's for the English, and Dante's " Divina Com- media " for the Italian. Work of Padre Juan. Baptist work began with a great spiritual uprising of the Visayan peasants in the island of Panay. Forty or fifty years before, a wandering friar preacher had gone throughout the country district to instruct the people of the barrios in the holy faith. He was like one of the little brown brothers of St. Francis of Assisi in the hill-towns of Italy in the thirteenth century. Poor, simple, hum- ble, and loving, he threaded his way from barrio to barrio. He had one story to tell, the love of Christ; one book to read, the gospel. The poor people, who, like most of the barrio dwellers, had been utterly neglected by the friars, gathered about the friendly brother and drank in this wonderful new story that he told. Sometimes he warned them dimly of trouble that might come to him, and prophesied that if he should be imprisoned for teaching them, men would come some day from across the sea bearing a book and speaking of the love of God. News of what Friar John was doing in this far-away island reached Manila. BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 259 He was recalled and thrown into prison. Some said that he was killed. The peasants were sternly warned against his heresies and strictly bidden to forget them ; but this only drove his teachings deep down from their stupid brains into their patient hearts. Awakening of the Peasants, Now Jaro (pronounced haro) is a great market-place. From all over the province of Iloilo come the barrio folk to trade. Thou- sands of them walk into market every week with their produce on their shoulders. The market is to them newspaper, club, social relaxation, as well as trading- place. When Mr. Briggs and Mr. Lund first began to preach in the market-place there were groups of peasants shyly watching. They saw the book in their outstretched hands, they heard, in their own tongue, of the love of God. The next week they brought others from the barrios. The news spread : " Padre Juan's prophecy has come true, the men with the books are come." All through the barrio country the word was carried, and multitudes gathered to hear the missionaries. Presenting of the Petition. One day, after the mis- sionaries had been speaking in the market-place for about nine months a deputation of these tazvos brought them a document signed by thirteen thousand names. The undersigned, so the document read, were already Protestants, and wished to be evangelized, taught, and protected as Protestants. In the word " pro- tected " their Malay instinct and experience spoke true. All the life they had ever known had needed the protection of powerful superiors if it were to be safe. The vengeance of the friars they well understood. 26o FOLLOWL\G THE SUNRISE Inadequacy of the Response. Is it not a tragedy that this great door and effectual thus opened by God could not have been enthusiastically entered? There was no question here of proselyting from the Roman Catholic Church. These peasants had received little shepherding for three hundred years. They were so meagerly instructed in the essentials of Christianity that they hardly knew what they were. They came asking for preachers and teachers. The great Baptist denomination hardly stirred in its sleep. To be sure it sent out a few faithful men and women, who have done a wonderful work. But the giant strength of the denomination was not in any measure bent to this new task. Had the Baptists been ready to respond aggressively to this appeal with sufficient funds and adequate force there seems little doubt that the barrio people en masse would have moved into evangelical faith. Money was wanting, and zeal ; and while the churches were busy here and there, time was given for a counter-movement to arise, and some doors were closed. Still the patient people wait, in great spiritual destitution. Glorious results, however, have followed the sparse sowing of the field which the small and ofttimes depleted force of missionaries has been able to give during the decade just past. A church of four thousand, three hundred and thirty-seven membe's has been gathered, one for every day of the time spent on the islands. The barrio people have built and paid for their own chapels, have done much personal work, have stood firm, and have kept the faith under trying persecution. BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 261 Growth of Baptist Churches. The statistics of the growth of Baptist churches in the Phihppines, as ex- hibited in the accompanying chart, are full of encour- agement to larger endeavor. The churches have in- creased since 1911 from thirty-four to fifty-seven, a gain of sixty-seven per cent. Churches entirely self- supporting number seventeen in 1913, as against eight Number of Communicants Number of Churches Number of ■wholly self- supporting Churches Number of Sunday-school Members Number of Sunday-schools Increase : 67 per cent 112.5 per cent 29 per cent 25 per cent 164 per ce*^ Two Years' Growth of Baptist Churches in the Philippines. 262 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE in 1911, a gain of one hundred and twelve and five- tenths per cent. Communicants have increased twenty-nine per cent, ahnost ten per cent a year, grow- ing from three thousand, three hundred and fifty- eight to four thousand three hundred and thirty-seven. In 1911 there were forty-four Sunday-schools, now there are fifty-five. At that rate they would double every four years. The gain in Sunday-school mem- bership is most encouraging of all. In 1911 the forty- four schools averaged twenty-three pupils each, an aggregate of one thousand and fourteen. In 1913 the fifty-five schools averaged not quite forty-eight pupils each, an aggregate of two thousand, six hundred and eighty, or an increase of one hundred and sixty-four per cent. A field so fruitful that it responds with such harvests to the sparse sowing given it through ten years ought to receive more enthusiastic attention. The Student Dormitory, or Hostel. One form of work which has proved very valuable was first intro- duced by the Baptists, but is now being employed by other denominations also. In Bacolod, Mr. Forshee conceived the idea of a Christian dormitory for pupils attending the public high school of the province, which brought together into Bacolod the brightest boys and girls of the surrounding country. A dormi- tory for boys and one for girls have been established, and during this last year land has been bought adjoin- ing the high-school compound, where it is proposed to erect larger and more suitable buildings to replace the small native buildings now utilized for the boys' dormitory. BOYS OF JARO INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AT WORK A VILLAGE CONGREGATION IN THE PHILIPPINES BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 263 Influence of the Dormitory. Says Doctor Lerrigo, in speaking of the boys' dormitory at Iloilo : Many of the dormitory boys are on the high school athletic team and these ties give us a strong hold on the young people, which we are strengthening daily. I feel that the dormitory is a most important part of our work and that it should be enlarged and every advantage taken of the influence it gives us with the students and their families. The prospects for the coming year are ex- cellent. A large number of boys have expressed their desire to enter the dormitory, and the teachers in charge of the athletics are hoping to place the whole athletic team wnth us, recognizing the great advantages which accrue to the boys from the wholesome moral surround- ings of the mission dormitory. Industrial School at Jaro. Among the strong fea- tures of Baptist educational work is the industrial school at Jaro. One of the fundamental weaknesses of Filipino society is its scorn of manual labor. As in any feudal society, the laborer is looked down upon as a serf, and the last thing that any educated man wants to do is to engage in skilled labor. One of the benefits of the American occupation of the islands is the im- parting of a new view-point in regard to the dignity of labor. The Jaro Industrial School was founded with the idea of turning out not merely students, but manly men. On a farm of sixty-five acres, some two miles out of Iloilo, two large buildings have been erected for classrooms, dormitories, and trades buildings. The equipment has often been so meager that plain living and high thinking have been perhaps too much in 264 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE evidence, yet the very plainness and simplicity of the school has given it the life and tang that Tuskegee and Hampton have had in America. Nature of Industrial Work. There are five hun- dred boys, ranging from eight to eighteen years of age, who are gathered into the Jaro Industrial School from the near-by provinces. Tuition and board are free, but each boy has to work for what he gets. Here is no dilettante manual training for the sake of learning how a thing might be done. Things are done, and done so well that they have commercial value. Furni- ture is made, and so beautifully polished that it has a reputation and sells. Sugar-cane is cultivated, and rice. An irrigation system has been introduced that secures superior quality in both rice and cane. Live- stock is raised, and buildings are repaired and erected. The school is a miniature republic too, organized some- what on the lines of the Junior Republics in Amer- ica, with much discipline in self-government and manli- ness, and incidentally, a fine experience prepara- tory for the duties of citizenship. There are daily Bible classes that lead not to talking about religion, but to the conducting of village Sunday-schools, and to vacation evangelistic trips on the part of the older boys. Forty-eight of the boys were baptized last year. They are now planning how the student body may be instrumental in evangelizing the towns from which they. come. The " gang instinct " is to be har- nessed up for the service of the Kingdom. Already one revival has been reported as the result of work done in vacation by some of the Jaro schoolboys. BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 265 Appreciation of the School. It is expected that in time the school will be self-supporting, except for the salaries of the American missionaries. Even now the larger number of the teachers are Filipinos. The car- penter shop already pays a profit. Mr. William T. Ellis, writing in the Philadelphia " Press," says that it is the best school in the islands. The secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association affirms that it is the best missionary idea in the Philippines. A dis- trict superintendent of schools said that it embodied the very idea for which he had been looking ever since he came to the country. Needs of the School. It seems a pity, does it not, that with such a school to be proud of, one million, five hundred thousand American Baptists have not yet been able to afford a grinding-mill for sugar-cane? To be sure it would cost five hundred dollars, and the budget must not get too big. But the request sounds reasonable, or would if it were a mere business enter- prise ! A recent report states : Our sugar-cane is a very fine quality, weighing some thirteen ounces more to the cane than it did last year, all on account of irrigation. Where we lose is in sending this cane to a mill across the river. The price of grind- ing it is at least one-third the value of the sugar, and we must add to this the cost of transporting to the mill. . . If we had a small mill costing about $500 all this would be saved. The supplying of this minor need by some good sisters with a practical turn of mind ought not to interfere in the least with plans for meeting the needs 266 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE of this significant school for adequate equipment. Lit- erally hundreds of students are turned away each year for lack of buildings and land. One hundred thousand dollars invested here would bless the islands through centuries to come. The returns on such an invest- ment cannot be exceeded anywhere in the mission field to-day. Girls' Schools in the Philippines. There are some notable developments in Baptist educational work for girls in the Philippines. The Filipino woman is, with- out doubt, the most influential and the freest woman of the Orient. She can be made one of the most power- ful evangelizing agencies, as she is now the strong- hold of conservatism and ignorance. One of the Bap- tist missionaries writes that he is rejoicing because forty-two per cent of recent converts have been wo- men, and this means a gain in the number of fam- ilies reached. There can be no permanent work with- out reaching the families, and much of the labor ex- pended upon the education of boys and men is wasted unless corresponding emphasis is given to the enlight- enment of the girls and women. Bible-Woman's Training School at Jaro. The Bible- woman's Training School in Jaro is doing a work of incalculable good in the training of Bible-women, who go out to the barrios scattered over three islands to do direct evangelistic work. The term of instruction is for six months each year, the other half-year being spent in practical work on the field. The full course covers four years. The first class of fully trained workers was graduated in 1911. These women are BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 267 trained not only in the Bible and Christian funda- mentals, but in home nursing-, first aid to the injured, Sunday-school work, and the first principles of do- mestic science. One of these trained women, a widow of forty-five (a great-grandmother, by the way), has a Bible class of sixty men in a church of five hundred members. Other women are carrying on day-schools, kindergartens, Sunday-schools, preaching services, and colportage work in the sale of Christian literature. ** The school," says Miss Johnson, " would increase by the hundreds if there were buildings and teachers to care for the students." Every year she has had to refuse admission to large numbers. School for Upper Class Girls. In the same place the Woman's Society has opened a boarding-school for the mestizo girls of the upper classes. The school was organized by Miss Bissinger in 1910 with these aims: " First, direct religious instruction, aiming to develop a womanhood of serving Christians, saturated through and through with the atmosphere of the kingdom of God. Second, a full public school course from first grade to the high school, aiming to make our students dominant factors in a land peculiarly fitted to be influ- enced by its women." Pupils in the School. Miss Bissinger says that she finds the girls peculiarly teachable and incomparably lovable. In the very first class were the daughters of the governor of the island. The school was at once antagonized by a Romanist bishop, himself an Ameri- can, and the people forbidden to come to the opening reception — but they came. 268 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Needs of the School. The greatest need at present is a suitable building. Land has been bought, but the school is housed in a rented building. In Miss Bis- singer's appeal for the building she says that this, the only Christian school for girls of the upper classes in the Philippines, ought to have a suitable building. She has very definite ideas, and very good ones, of the type of building that is needed. It ought to be of concrete in order to withstand the onslaught of the terrible storms to which the Philippine Islands are subject. It ought to be beautiful, even ornate, in order to evi- dence to the people the dignity and the quality of the work. If they find the buildings of the Catholic schools large and massive, and the Protestant school housed in a small and unattractive temporary shelter, the people reason, not unnaturally, that the enterprise itself must be of little moment. Home School at Capiz. At Capiz the Woman's Society has maintained a unique institution, the Home School. Little waifs and the children of the very poor, between the ages of four and seven, are taken to the home to be sheltered and educated until old enough to go to work^ or to be placed in other schools. " Ah," says the suspicious reader, " an orphan asylum. I thought they were thoroughly out of date." It may look a little like an orphan asylum on the surface, but there the likeness ends. If all the waifs and orphans in the United States of America could have a Miss Suman in such an asylum there would be no problem of the delinquent child, for the school really is a home, bubbling with laughter, blossoming with motherly • BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 269 kisses and cuddlings, strong with wise discipline. The results are little short of miraculous. Brownies at Work. " These degenerate Filipinos won't work," say the critics. You should see Miss Suman's Brownies ! She takes them, diseased, emaci- ated, filthy in speech and body, cleans them up, clothes them, and sets them — no, not sets them, but loves them, into work. " Of course they don't like to work," she bristles like a small, motherly hen, whose chickens are menaced, " when all the work they ever knew about was done for others' profit, with little but kicks and curses coming their way." It's a heart-warming sight to see those Brownies at work, each child, even the tiniest tot of three, with its task. They prepare the vegetables, help get the meals, make the gardens, keep the house clean, make all their clothes, and wash and iron them. They are as busy as bees, and happy as birds. A squad of four and six-year-olds has a leader aged ten, who is responsible for his men. Be- fore any one even heard of the Montessori system. Miss Suman was putting into practice the very prin- ciples of self-activity and development through re- sponsibility that are supposed to be so very scientific and modern. When a cyclone blew away her roof, twelve-year-old boys, tied to the rafters lest they blow away, worked like soldiers to repair the breach. In- itiative, daring, steadiness, and mental alertness are all to be seen hanging thick as precious fruit on her educational tree. Religious Atmosphere of the School. All her chil- dren become Christians. A recent report said that 270 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE • there were not very many baptisms to report because all the children old enough to understand had already joined the church. Some of these little children make great missionaries too. Miss Suman told of one little blind beggar, so wretched that, to practical people, he would hardly seem worth saving, who fearlessly found his way to a head-hunting tribe in the mountains that the government had been unable to pacify, explained to them the purpose of the government, and brought them to consent to let their children come down to school. Need of New Buildings. Two terrible hurricanes that have wrecked the buildings and inflicted great suffering on teachers and pupils have proved the need for strong cement buildings, with iron roofs, such as the government finds are needed to resist the tropical storms to which the Philippines are so subject. Who is going to have the privilege of building this house? It costs twenty dollars a year to support a child in this school. Are there not a hundred Baptist Sunday- schools that will each take a scholarship at twenty dollars, and so provide for the whole? An extra five dollars added to each scholarship would provide for enlargement and betterment, and would not be out of place. Medical Missions. Medical missions form one of the great needs of the Philippines. The misery, dirt, and disease of the people are appalling. The Christian physician can do much, both as an evangelist, and in removing the present evil conditions which make wholesome life impossible for multitudes. The birth- rate in the Philippines is large, forty-seven and nine- BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 271 hundredths per thousand ; but the infantile death-rate is nearly twice as great as that in the United States. The old religious training of the islands had little of social service in it. The emphasis of the friars had been on " spiritualities, not temporalities." Hence the islands had been left to become one of the plague centers of the world. Tuberculosis is everywhere, the hookworm with its consequent tropical anemia is so prevalent that it is said that eighty per cent of the prisoners in Manila jail were found to be infected. Malaria and tropical dysentery are endemic. Surely the very physical suffering and ignorance of the peo- ple constitute an overwhelming appeal to the Chris- tian physicians of the United States, where there is one physician to every five hundred of the popula- tion. Some of them could be spared. The mis- sionary hospitals have done magnificent service in interpreting true Christianity as a religion that came not merely to get people to heaven, but to heal the broken-hearted, to make the deaf hear, the lame walk, the blind see, and to set at liberty them that are bruised. The Baptist physicians. Doctor Lerrigo, Doc- tor Thomas, and Doctor Steinmetz have found homes open to them that were fast closed to all the other missionaries. They testify that there is an appalling need of medical care. There are towns which, with their surrounding barrio districts, number fifty thou- sand inhabitants, utterly without medical aid of any sort. The Filipino doctors are not numerous, arc for the most part in the cities, and few of them have any humane ideals which require them to go to the service s 2^2 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE of the poor /azco. The gratitude of these peasants when they see an educated physician willing to min- ister to them in their suffering in the humblest tasks is beautiful to see. " Jesus walks again on earth," they say. Union Hospital, Interdenominational cooperation in hospital building and maintenance is already accom- plished in the Union Hospital at Iloilo,the joint respon- sibility of Presbyterians and Baptists. Doctor Lerrigo reports that the current expenses of the hospital and dispensary at Capiz are all met by medical fees. One gains some insight into the self-sacrifice and devotion of the medical missionary, on learning that Doctor Lerrigo, in addition to treating eight thousand, eighty- five out-patients, two thousand, one hundred and sixty- five in-patients, and making six hundred and seventy- two visits to patients in their homes, supervised a large evangelistic field and had oversight of the boys' dormitory. Training School for Nurses. One of the most useful functions of the medical work is the training of nurses. The first class of nurses graduated in the Philippines was trained in the Union Hospital at Iloilo. The Filipino woman makes a good nurse, and every nurse is an apostle of better times to come. The earnest Christian students from Miss Johnson's Bible Training School who come to the hospital for training make ideal nurses. Their opportunity for Christian service is very great, as they have access into the most bigoted homes, at a time when they are peculiarly open to spiritual influences. In one of his reports Doctor Ler- ox THE VERANDA OF THE UNION HOSPITAL AT U.OKO A GIRLS BIBLE CLASS IN THE PHILIPPINES BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 273 rigo speaks with the greatest admiration of the work of Miss Rose Nicolet, the head nurse of Emmanuel Hospital in Capiz. The building with all its virtues was wanting in bath- rooms and those little closets and storerooms dear to the hearts of all women. . . Those useful acces- sories of modern nursing made their appearance, bath- rooms with home-made cement tubs, closets here and there with shelves and compartments for linens and supplies, . . curious devices of many kinds, owing them- selves to her wisdom and ingenuity. Little bedside tables have been introduced, screens of superior pattern and graceful frames to support mosquito-nettings. . . A young Filipino who had been in America and traveled widely in the Philippines recently gave this testimony: " I have been in several hospitals both here and in Amer- ica and my stay here has pleased me better than any pre- vious experience." Bible School at Iloilo. In accordance with the policy of concentration and intensive development recently adopted by the Board, the Bible School at Iloilo for the training of native pastors and evangelists is to be given up for the present. Brief courses in Bible study are to be offered by the missionaries in the different stations. In the near future it is hoped that the mis- sion may unite with the Presbyterians in establishing one central Bible Training School, where, with a larger number of students, and with greater efficiency and less expense the workers for both denominations can be trained. The Mission Press at Iloilo. The Baptist Mission Press at Iloilo, Mr, F. L. Snyder, superintendent, is a 274 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE powerful factor in the work. Here is printed the little monthly called " The Pearl of the Orient," that circu- lates not only in the field, but goes to supporters in the homeland. Commercial work of good grade is done which helps to carry the financial burden of the press. Testaments, tracts, and a monthly magazine in Visayan, also Sunday-school helps and quarterlies, and school outlines for the missionaries, are among the lines of work which keep the busy presses going. Need of an Aggressive Policy. What of the future? To the Baptists and Presbyterians has been committed the work on the Visayan islands. By vote of the Mission and the Board of Managers the Baptists de- cided not to enter the island of Samar, but to confine their work to Panay and Negros. On these two islands live about a million people, for whom Baptists are solely responsible. It is plain that only a beginning has been made in discharging this responsibility. What could eight ministers, four physicians, one printer, nine school-teachers, and one nurse do to meet the spiritual needs of a million people? This force of twenty-six missionaries, moreover, can rarely muster more than half its strength on the field, owing to the necessity of furloughs and the heavy drain made upon health and strength by the climate. Comparison with Methodist Work. The wasteful- ness of such scant provision of men and funds is ap- parent when we consider the story of the Methodist missions in the Philippines. The Methodists, with a force of forty-five missionaries, a large corps of native helpers, and adequate financial backing, have gained a BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 275 membership of thirty-three thousand. They have eleven thousand pupils in the Sunday-schools. The self-supporting Filipino churches contributed more than ten thousand dollars the last year, and the mis- sion received in contributions from friends and sup- porters in the Philippines double that amount in addi- tion. They had no better native material to work upon than had the Baptists, nor had they better mis- sionaries. They were better supported by larger plans and more adequate financial contributions. Says the Baptist missionary, Mr. C. W. Briggs, " The achieve- ments of this great mission (Methodist) in twelve years of work are a challenge to the Church in America to occupy every unoccupied field." The Unreached Field. None of the missions is meeting the need. The Methodists are responsible for two million Filipinos ; the Presbyterians for three and a half millions. When one contrasts what Ameri- can churches have done for the spiritual regeneration of the Philippines with what the American Govern- ment has done in education and social betterment, the showing is not one in which Christians can take pride. Government Services in Education. When the five hundred and forty-two American school-teachers were landed in Manila from the transport " Thomas," August 23, 1901, there began the most striking experi- ment in popular education which the world has ever seen. There are in the Philippines about one thousand American teachers, and eight times as many Filipino teachers, with six hundred and ten thousand pupils. There are thirty-five provincial high schools, and the 2^6 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE foundations of the government university of the Phil- ippines are already laid. Religious liberty and free education were both the gifts of the flag. So successful has the public school system proved that already a surprisingly large percentage of the Filipinos are literate. Government Work in Sanitation. The government found Manila one of the most unhcalthful cities in the world, and has made it one of the most healthful cities in the tropics. Government medical men have deprived smallpox of its terrors by the vaccination of millions of Filipinos. The cause of beriberi has been discovered, and the way to avoid it shown. The num- ber of lepers is rapidly decreasing, since the govern- ment has made provision for their segregation. A campaign for fighting tuberculosis has been inaugu- rated, and the plague has been controlled. Industrial Betterment. The government bought the friar lands — great estates of the richest lands which were held away from the people — and resold these lands to settlers in severalty. It has already received sixty million dollars in payment, thirty per cent of the price paid. The government guarantees land titles. Harbors have been deepened, very perfect government roads built and railways on three islands. River chan- nels have been cleared, and a post-office system was es- tablished with a postal savings bank four years before people had it in the United States. One hundred and forty-two lighthouses have been built to safeguard the treacherous channels, and Filipinos have been trained to be the lighthouse keepers. A revenue system has BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 2^7 been perfected that enables the island treasury to report a balance every year. All this has been done at the cost of a bonded indebtedness of only twelve million dollars, involving a per capita debt of one dollar and fifty cents, and a per capita interest charge of six cents. All the annual budget of fourteen million dollars is provided for by the resources. With the exception of the three hundred millions paid out by the United States Government in the beginning for army and navy expenses, no money raised in America is used for the running of the Philippine Government. It is Filipino taxes which provide for the schools, roads, post-offices, lighthouses, hospitals, and all other government un- dertakings. A better article of government is provided and more for less money than anj'- other colonial power has ever given to one of its colonies. There is no great army of American office-holders ; just as fast as Filipinos can be trained for positions these are filled by Filipinos. The chief justice of the Supreme Court is a Filipino. There are Filipino assemblymen and postmasters, jus- tices of the peace and policemen, lawyers, civil officers, and teachers. With the American occupancy of the Philippines a new type of colony came into being, the nearest approach to the Good Samaritan in politics that the world has ever seen. Opportunity of American Christians. These achieve- ments of our government cause every American heart to thrill with pride. But what is needed to make all this magnificent work permanently valid? The crea- tion of a new type of character. The one power which can do this is the pure gospel of Christ. The time is 278 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE short, m the few generations that must elapse before the Philippine Islands are given over to the Filipinos for complete self-government, it is for the American church to do a work which the government is helpless to accomplish. The apathy, selfishness, and narrow- ness of vision of the Christian church may stamp with failure the most lively experiment in national altru- ism that the world now holds. The Church must not fail " Old Glory." She must not fail her Divine Leader, whose heavenly Kingdom waits its consum- mation because of her sloth and faithlessness. Facts About the Philippines The most recent foreign mission field. The most fruitful foreign mission field. Protestant Christians in 1900, none. Protestant Christians in 1910, 76,000. There are 55,000 Chinese in the Philippines, who control 90 per cent of retail trade. There are 167 Protestant missionaries in the islands. The English language is more widely diffused in ten years than Spanish was in three hundred years. Cost to United States of America of insurrectionary period, $300,000,000. Baptists responsible for evangelization of 1,000,000 Filipinos. Baptist investment in 1912, $55,725.71. Theological students of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Dis- ciples are taught in union theological classes. BUTTRESSING DEMOCRACY 279 Baptist Educational Institutions in the Philippines Industrial School, Jaro. Rev. W. O. Valentine, principal; Rev. F. H. Rose, Miss A. B. Honger, Miss E. Grace Williams, Miss Mary J. Thomas, American members of faculty. Enrolment, 349 pupils. Instruction in scientific agriculture, carpentry, cotton-ginning, etc. All the 500 boys in this im- portant school are taught some industry. The students are a self-governing body, organized into the Jaro Industrial School Republic. A new building is greatly needed. Woman's Bible Training School. Miss Anna V. Johnson, principal. Only school for the training of Bible-women in the Visayan islands group. Academy for Girls, Iloilo. Miss Caroline M. Bissinger, princi- pal; Miss Alice M. Stanard. Only school in the Philippines for girls of the higher classes. BiBLIOGEAPHY Blount, The American Occupation of the Philippines. New York, Putnams. Census of the Philippine Islands, 4 Vols. Vol. I, Population, geography, history. Vol. II, Population. Vol. Ill, Mortality, defective classes, education, families. Vol. IV, Agriculture, social and industrial statistics. A valuable source book for official information on varied features of the islands and the people. Washington Government Printing Office, 1905. Briggs, The Progressing Philippines. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1913. A recent book, attractive and informing, especially upon pres- ent conditions. 28o FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE Brown, A New Era in the Philippines. New York, Revell, 1903. Missions in the Philippines. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1906. Jaro Industrial School. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mis- sion Society. The Kindergarten a Factor in Missionary Work. Boston, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. World Missionary Conference Report. Chapter I, pp. 121-124. LIMITATIONS OF PRESENT STUDY In swift review we have watched the movement of Baptist missions in the Orient through a century. It was hoped to include in the present volume a study of Baptist missions in Europe, but it was found imprac- ticable, even to tell in brief the story of missionary effort in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, and Scandinavia. It would be an inspiring- study to trace the reflex influence of American Baptists on the coun- tries from which emigrants come, but that is a story which would need an entire volume. As we look back over a century filled with the mercy of God, over weak enterprises which he has strength- ened, feeble beginnings which he has brought to glori- ous outcome, the whole denomination must receive a fresh baptism of power. If so much has been done through the partial consecration, the fitful endeavor, what might he not do through a church alive to her high calling. Three needs stand forth. The Need of Money. One of the tragedies of life is the wasting of money — such wealth and such need drifting helplessly by each other like ships becalmed. The giant power of the Church is poured out on trifles; while for her great task she reserves only her mites. It would be quite possible, out of the selfish indul- gences of Christians, to finance every missionary enter- 281 282 FOLLOWING THE SUNRISE prise tenfold. The kingdom might come bravely- marching over the mountains to-morrow, if the full tithe were poured into the treasury of the Church. Rev. O. P. Gifford once said that money was the true polyglot answering each man in his own tongue. Christians could make it speak first of the kingdom, if they would. The Need of Sacrifice. In the face of the unbeliev- able opportunities of the present there is demanded a new measure of adventurous faith — some such pas- sion of sacrifice as made men and women brave and fearless in the war of the rebellion. What is needed is not a calculating sending out of small parties of scouts, but a massing of the whole army for advance. Each church must have its investment of life; each family its ofTering of the first-born. It is the King's business that we do. The Need of Prayer. The water of life in the hills of God can be brought to the desert by free channels of prayer. A break in the higher conduits means drought in the fields below. To change the figure, the plants of the Spirit cannot grow in a prayerless atmosphere. A revival of intercessory prayer could double the efTect- iveness of the missionary force without the addition of a new man or a better building. Let the church- member at home realize his missionary calling to prayer to be as compelling and as arduous as that of tlie foreign missionary to work. Let both recognize that there is only one Christian calling, though many occupations; that the power of God is behind and LIMITATIONS OF PRESENT STUDY 283 underneath every man who adventures himself upon it. Let the devotional exercises that decorate, but do not en- liven missionary meetings, be replaced by real prayer for actual needs of concrete mission fields. Let Christians enter into the secret place of power through intercessory prayer, and a new sunrise of beatitude will glorify the whole church of God. SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES General Patterson, Geography of India. London, Christian Literature Society for India, 1909. Statesman's Year Book. London, Macmillan Company, 1913. World Missionary Conference, 1910, Reports. Nine volumes. New York, Revell, 1910. Invaluable for knowledge of the real situation in lands treated by this book. World Atlas of Christian Missions. New York, Student Volun- teer Movement, 191 1. Contains a directory of missionary societies, a classified sum- mary of statistics, an index of mission stations, and maps show- ing the location of mission stations throughout the world. Periodical Literature Missionary Review of the World. New York, Funk & Wagnalls Company. International Review of Missions. New York, Missionary Edu- cation Movement. The Moslem World. London, Christian Literature Society for India. English Periodicals in our Missions. See Handbook of Ameri- can Baptist Foreign Mission Society, p. 72. Baptist Work Newman, A Century of Baptist Achievement. Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1901. Merriam, History of American Baptist Missions. Revised Edi- tion with Centennial Supplement, Philadelphia, American Baptist Publication Society, 1913. 284 SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES 285 Gammell, History of American Baptist Missions. Boston, 1854. Serviceable for certain facts, especially statistics of the early period. Annual Reports of: Northern Baptist Convention. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West. The Handbook of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, Boston, 1913. A story of the year in the words of the missionaries; illustra- tions of the work; complete list of fields and stations; brief description of every mission station ; complete directory of mis- sionaries; accurate, colored maps. An indispensable help in this study. Our Work in the Orient. Boston, 1910-1913. An account of the progress of the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. Missions. A Baptist monthly magazine. Boston. A current record of Baptist progress at home and abroad ; having special articles on many phases of the work treated in this book; profusely illustrated with many photographs taken on the field. An essential side-light on the topics treated. For special phases, see publications of American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, and Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West, and Department of Missionary Education, 23 East Twenty-sixth Street, New York. Several of the books and items referred to in the bibliographi- cal notes can be secured from the Department of Missionary Education, 23 East Twenty-sixth Street, New York. There are many more valuable helps illustrative of separate chapters concerning which information can be had, or which can be consulted, at the New England Baptist Library, 708 Ford Building, Boston, Mass. INDEX Abbott, Elisha, 42-44. Abors, 72. Africa: redemplion of, 217; loss of life in, J 18; heroism of mission- aries in, 219; conquering the cli- mate of, 220; possibilities of, 221; importance of, 222; salaries of teachers in, 240; opportunities in, 241- Africans: gifted, 221; pioneer mis- sionaries, 223; generous Chris- tians, 229. Agricultural Missions: at Kurnool, 123; in India, 130; at Jaro, 263. Ahlone, 56. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 28, 209, 224, 235, 239, American Baptist Missionary Union, 28, 99, 149, 182. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 25, 26, iSi. American Revolution, 3, 16. Amherst, station at, 35. Animism, 226, 227, 241. Annexation of Philippines, 247. Armstrong, Rev. W. F., D. D., 56, 57- Ashmore, Rev. William, D. D., 151. Ashmore Theological Seminary, 163. Assam, 65-94. Assamese converts, 74-76. Aungbinle, 31, 36. Ava, 31, 37. B Babies' Doctor, The, 129. Bacolod, 262. Banza Manteke, 226, 235. Bapatla Cooperative Association, 121. Bapatla Normal School, 130. Baptists, American: preparation of, ii_; growth of, 16; organized for missions, 28. Baptist Missionary Work Compared, 157-161, 209, 274. Baptist Educational Ideals, 160. Baptists, English, 4, g, 10, 24, 25, 97. 132, 225, 235. Baptist Principles, 11-14. Bassein, 42, 43. Bawden, Rev. S. D., 120. Bengal^Orissa Mission, 131-133. Bengalis, in Assam, 68. P.ennett, Rev. Cephas, 51. Benninghoff, Rev. H. B., 205. Bhamo, 53. Bible, translation of, 9, 36, 70, 98, 14s, 147, 15s, 182, 183, 226, 227, 255-258. Bible-women, work of, 154, 196, 266. ]5ickel, Capt. Luke W., 198-204. Bissinger, Miss C. M., 267. Bixby, Moses H., 55. Bixby, Josephine, Hospital, 167. Boardman, George Dana, 35, 39-41, 148. Boardman, Sarahj 41. Bolles, Rev. Lucius, 27. Brahmaputra River, 67. Briggs, Rev. C. W., 248, 252. British and Foreign Bible Society, 10. British East India Company, 7, 17, 28. Bronson, Miles, 72, 73, tj, 88. Brown^ Nathan, 68, 70, 183, 184. Buddhists, 19, 30, 54, 56, 58, I9S, 202. Burmese Bible, 36. Burma, 19, 30-59. Calcutta, 69. Campbell, Sir Archibald, 35. Canadian Baptist Mission, iii. Capiz, Home School at, 268, 269. Carpenter, Rev. H. C, 43. Carey, William, 4-10. Caste, 108, 120, 124-126. 287 288 INDEX Chcngtu, 156, 163. China, 18, 08, 141-173. Chinese Christians, 158, 159, 164, 166, 168, 169. Chinese in Hurma, 56. C hristian Endeavor, 122. (lark, Kev. E. W., D. D., 70. Clark, Rev. Joseph, 230. Clough, Rev. John E., D. D., 107- 1 12. Colman, Rev. James, 132. Conquest of Burma, 46. Congo Free State, 224, 225. Conscience, freedom of, 12. Cooperative Missionary Work, 163, 193. "94. 272. Corner in India, A, 84. Cotton, Rev. John, his controversy with Roger Williams, 13. Curtis, Sarah, school in Tokyo, 185. Cutter, O. B., 68. Cradle roll, 129. Evangelism in Missions, 166, 185- 188, 19s, 197-204, 228-231, 264. Famine: in Burma, 48; in India, 1 1 2- 1 14. Feudalism in the Philippines, 252. Field, Miss Adele, Originator of training Bible-women, 154. Filipinos: characteristics of, 230; drunkenness of, 252; responsive- ness of, 254; languages of, 256. Forestry taught at Donakonda, 122. Free Baptists, 131, 132. Frederickson, Mrs. P., 231. Friar lands, 276. " Fukuin Maru," 197-204. Fuller, Andrew, 4, 5. D Dairying and Gardening Taught, 122. Day, Rev. Samuel F., 98-100, 133. Dean, Rev. William, 148. Deanng, Rev. J. L., D. D., 206. Deccan, 97, 115. Degenring, Miss Anna, M. D., 129. Deputation of 1853, 102. Dessa, Miss Amelia E., 122. Ditliridge, Miss Harriet, 188, 191. Donakonda, forestry at, 122. Dormitory for business men, 206. Downie, Rev. David, D. D., iii. Dry farming in India, 120. Duncan Academy, 193. E Edwards, Jonathan, 3. Edinburgh Conference of Missions, 208, 229. Education an evangelizing agency, 80, 8^, III 158, 187-189, 192, 239. Educational Alissions: in Burma, 50, 51; in Assam, 79-82; in India, J30 131, 134; in China, 158164; in Japan, 186-194, 205; in Africa, 235-238; in the Philippines, 262- 270. Efficiency, Edinburgh standard of, 208, 209. Eubank, Rev. M. D., M. D., 168. Eurasians: in Burma, 58; in India, loi. Garos, 68, 76, 78-86. Gauhati. 68, 75. Gifts 01 Tclugu Christians, ti6. Girls, education of, 8j, 86, 87, iii, 129, 186-191, 266-269. Goalpara, 76. Goble, Rev. Jonathan, 181. Goddard, Rev. J. R., D. D., 155. Green, Byram, 24. H Hakkas, Missions among the, 153- 167. Hall, Gordon, 25, 26. Hangchow, 155. Hanyang, 167. Hanumakonda, 115, n8, 126. Haystack prayer-meeting, 23. Head-hunters, 68. Himeji, 188. Hinduism, 67, 108, 125. Hirata San, conversion of, 201. HoUister, Rev. W. H., 131. Hopia Tree, grave under, 36. Hospitals, 126-128, 15s, 162, 167, 242 272. Hough, Rev. George, 34, 51. Huchow, 15!;, 167. Hyderabad, Nizam of, 97. Ikoko, 230, 23s. Industrial Missions, 71, 84, 119-124, 23^, 263, 264. INDEX 289 Ingalls, Mrs. Maria B., 57. Ingathering of Telugus, 113, 114. Inland Sea, work on, 197. Ishihara San, 190. Isle of France, 29. Lone Star Mission, 99, 103. Loomis, Harvey, 24. Lotteries, 18. Lukunga, ^35. Lund, Rev. Eric, D. D., 255-258. Jaipur, printing-press at, 72. Japan: transformation of, 178; in- fluence of Christianity in, 179; in- troduction of Christianity in, 181; Inland Sea of, 197; country popu- lation of, 197; University dormi- tories of, 205; extent of unreached territory in, 207. Japanese Christians, 186-188, 195, 202. Taro, 259-263. Jewett, Rev. Lyman, n. D., 100-107. Jones, Rev. John Taylor, 147, 148. orhat, school at, 84. Judson, Adoniram, 17, 25, 26-36, 99, 100. Judson, Ann Hasseltine, 30-36, 147. ulia of Nellore, loi, 104, 105. Kachins, 52-54. Kanagawa, 188. Kandura, 74. Karens: 38-53; language of, 37, 42; traditions of, 38; elevation of, 38; trainirig of, 42. Kemendine, 47, 50. Kengtung, 55. Kidder, Miss Anna H., 184. Kimpesi Training School, 235-238. Kincaid, Eugenio, 46. Kindergartens, 188-191. Kinhwa, 155. Kityang, 156. Ko Tha Byu, 39, 40, 50. Kurnool, 123, 130. Kwantuug, Missions begun in, 150. Lerrigo, Rev. P. H. J., M. D., 263. Lesher, C. B., M. D., 168. Levi, Nidi, 74. Liberality of Native Christians, 116, n8, 122, 157, 196, 229. Liuchiu Islands, 194. Livingstone Inland Mission, 224. London Missionary Society, 10, 97, M Mabie, Dr. Catharine L., 236, 238. MacGowan, 1). J., M. D., 155. Mackay, Alexander, 219. Madigas, 109. Malas, 1 09. Madras, 29, 97, 98. Mandalay, 41, 59. Manila Bay, battle of, 248. Manu, Code of, 108. Marshman, Hannah, 8. Mass Movements, 125. Maymyo, 59. McDiarmid, Rev. P. A., 335. Medical Missions, 72, 126-130, 155, 161, 167, 179, 241, 242, 270-273. Methodism, 3, i8. Methodist Missions, 158-161, 254, 274- Mikirs, 67. Mills, Samuel J., 23. Missionary Organizations, 10. Moral Conditions of Eighteenth Century, 18. Morioka, 190. Morning Star, The, 132. Morrison, Robert, 144. Morton Lane School, 50. Moulmein, 44, 46, 59. N Nagas, ()T. Naha, church at, 196. Nalgonda, 115. Nellore, 98, 100, 129. Newell, Samuel, 25, 26. Nicolet, Miss Rose, 273. Ningpo, 15s. Northern Baptist Convention, 131, 157. Nott, Samuel, 25, 26. Nowgong, 74, 87. Noyes, Rev. Eli, 133. Nyaunglebin, 51. O Omed, conversion of, 77, 78. Ongole, no, in, 114, 122, 125, 130. Opium traffic, 145. 290 INDEX Orphanages, 113. Osaka Bible School, ig6. Uulcastcs, lub-iiu, 124. Padre Juan, 258. Palabala, 235. Paltnur, 115. Papacy, 17. Pariahs, 108. Paul, the apostle of the Congo, 231. Peabody, Miss Lavinia, iii. Perry, Commodore, expedition of, 178, 194. Philippine Islands: acquisition of, 248; size of, 248; climate (if, 249; people of, 249, 250; racial unity and divisions of, 250, 251; land question in, 252; peonage in, 253; response to gospel in, 254; gov- ernment achievements in, 275-277. Phillips, E. G., M. i)., 80. Phillips, Rev. Jeremiah, 133. Phinney, F. D., 51. Physicians, women, 128, 129, 161. Pirates, attack of, 148. Poverty in India, 113-115. Prayer, concert of, 3, 180. Presbyterian Missions, 160, 254, 275. Primitive Peoples of lUirma, 5--55. Printing-press: in lUirma, 51; in Assam, 72 ; in the Philippines, 273. Q Queen's Bible, 57. R Rajasimla, 78. Ramapatnani, iii, 112, 129. Ramkhe, 77. Rangoon, 29, 30, 47, 57. Rangoon Baptist College, 50. Reea, Henry, steamboat, 224. Retrenchment, 106. Revival: in Assam, 90; in India, 113; in Africa, 226; in the Philip- pines, 259. Revolution in China, 142-144. Rice, Luther, 25-28. Richards, Rev. Henry, 226-229. Richards, James, 24. Robbins, Francis L., 24. Roberts, Rev. Issacher, 140, 153. Roberts, Rev. W. H., D. D., 53. Rungiah, John, 118, Sadiya, 69, 71-73. Saint Francis of Assisi, 23. Sandoway, 49. Santals, 134. Scott, Anna K., M. D., 167, 168. Secunderabad, 114. Self-support, 43, 44, 50, 114, 117. Sendai, 187. Seramporc Mission, 7, 8, 25, 29. Shanghai College and Seminary, 1O4. Shans, 54, 55 Go. Shuck, Rev. J. L., 149. Shwcgyin, 51. Siam, 37, 54, 146. Sibsagor, 73. Social Service in Missions, 205, 206. Sooriapett, 115. Southern Baptist Convention, 28, 149, 150, 164, 168, 182, 224. Stait, Mrs. F. W., M. D., 128. Stoddard, Rev. I. J., 75, 78. Student Hostels, 205, 262. Suifu, 156. Suman, Aliss Margaret, 268. Sunrise Prayer-meeting, 104. Sutton, Amos, 97, 132. Swatow, 167. Szechuan, Mission in, 155. Tai Ping Rebellion, 151, 152. Tamil and Telugu emigrants, 56. Tavoy, center of Karen work^ 39. Telugu Baptist Missionary Society, 118. Telugu land, 97. Telugu Mission, 97 f. Theological Seminaries, iii, 163-165, 202, 237. Thomas, Jacob, 73. Thomas, John, M. D., 7. Thomson, Rev. R. A., 195. Thomson, Mrs. R. A., 189. Ting Li Mei, 160. Tokyo: home school in. 185; board- ing-school and kindergarten in, 186-192; Duncan Academy in, 193; theological _ seminary in, 194; tabernacle in, 204. Tong Tsing En, 164. Topping, Mrs. Genevieve, 190. Toungoo, 54. Training School :_ in Cliina, 162; in Tokyo, 190; in Osaka, 196; in Kimpesi, 235; in Jaro, 266; in Iloilo, 272, Triennial Convention, 28, 30. INDEX 291 Tsukiji Kindergarfeii, 189. Tura, 8o-8j. Tshumbiri, 236, 239. U Uchida San, first Japanese Woman Christian, 184. Udayagiri, 129. Union in Missionary Work, 163, 193, 272. United States of America, popula- tion of, in 1813, 17. V Vedder, Henry C, his estimate of Carey, 8. Verbeck, Guido, influence of, in Japan, 178. Vinton, Justus, 44-49. Visayans, 252, 256, 257. W Wade, Jonathan, 34, 39-42. 148. Wallis, Widow, meeting in parlor of, 7. Wascda University, 205. Wataiiabe, Mrs., 189. Weavers' caste. 120. Webb, Miss Marv, 10. Wellwood, Rev. Robert, 168. Welsh Mission, in Assam, 92. White, F. T., President Shanghai College, 164. Williams College, 23. Williams, Roger, 12-15. Williams, S. Wells, 179. Williams, Rev. William R., 100. Woman, degradation of^ 81. Woman s Missionary Societies, 10, 56, 161, i6j, 165, 184, 189. Women: heroism of, 76, 89, 117, 184, 196, 217; disabilities of, 127. Yokohama Theological Seminary, 202. Yu, Miss Dora, 166, 167. Zenrin Kindergarten, 189. ^j, 5,m.na'> Sp«" l'l>'»1 |||l||l|lll|ll|l"l' 1 1012 01102 2607 ^^ ^-^ DATE DUE -^0^ ^w^ HIGHSMITH #^ J5230 Primed In USA