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PORT SAID, AT THE NORTHERN END OF THE SUEZ CANAL.

He was there for some months in 1819, and in 1820, and again in 1823, and had much intercourse with the priests and monks of the Coptic Church, the Patriarch giving him letters of introduction to several of the convents; and he distributed many Arabic copies of the Scriptures. One of the most interesting results of his visits was the purchase of a remarkable manuscript translation of the Bible in Amharic, the vernacular language of Abyssinia. This translation had been made a few years before by the French Consul at Cairo, M. Asselin de Cherville, assisted by an aged Abyssinian monk named Abu Rumi. The manuscript consisted of no less than 9,539 pages, the whole written out by Abu Rumi in the Amharic character. It was purchased by Mr. Jowett for the Bible Society; and portions of it

were printed, many thousands of copies of which were afterwards circulated by Gobat, Krapf, and other C.M.S. missionaries in Abyssinia. The revision of this version for the Bible Society was one of the tasks of Krapf's old age, and it was only finished three years ago, and printed at the St. Chrischona Mission press, near Basle.

At the close of 1825 five missionaries were sent by the Society to Egypt. These were Samuel Gobat (afterwards Bishop of Jerusalem), J. R. T. Lieder, Theodor Müller, William Krusé, and Christian Kugler. All five were Germans from the Basle Seminary. Gobat and Kugler afterwards went on to Abyssinia; the rest travelled up and down Egypt, visiting the Coptic schools, distributing portions of the Bible, and making known the true Gospel; and subsequently opened schools at Cairo. As in all these Eastern Missions, the Society's ultimate purpose was to reach the Mohammedan population; but the diffi

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THE WORLD OF MISSIONS.

[The GLEANER does not often borrow from others. But we feel sure that our readers will thank us for reprinting the following comprehensive review of Missions all over the world, which was delivered a year or two ago at the Coautauqua Foreign Mission Institute in America, by Mr. H. K. Carroll, Editor of the Religious Department of the New York Independent. We have somewhat shortened it, and made one or two very slight corrections.]

HE history of the rise and course of the modern missionary movement, brief as it is, is a history of noble sacrifices, of Herculean endeavours, of marvellous successes. It has been less than two centuries since the first Protestant missionary society was formed, and less than one century since the work of converting the heathen was actively and earnestly begun. The results have been wonderful. The standard raised in India has

been carried round the world, and people of every country have been gathered under it. There is scarcely a tribe now that has not heard the sound of the Gospel.

The Protestant idea of heathen Missions is as old as Protestantism itself. There were some among the first Protestants who were desirous that nations living in idolatry should have the Gospel. Luther was concerned about the "misery of pagans and Turks," and asked for prayers and missionaries for them. But Protestantism was engaged in a struggle which required all its attention and all its energies, and it could not respond to Luther's request. The first foreign missionaries were sent from Geneva to Brazil, in the middle of the sixteenth century; but they were soon driven from the country, and the Mission came to naught. A few years later the King of Sweden established a Mission in Lapland. Some of the German princes tried, in the seventeenth century, to awaken an interest in foreign Missions, but without success. It is said that three conversions are necessary in the case of a German: first, of the head; next, of the heart; and lastly, of the pocket. Baron Von Wels proposed a "Jesus Association," to send the Gospel to the pagans; but there were few, perhaps, besides the baron himself, who had experienced the "three conversions." The association was not organized; but, as was fitting, the man who had the honour to propose the first missionary society went himself into the field, and died in the midst of his labours in Surinam. The Dutch, who were a great commercial people in those days, sent many missionaries into their East Indian colonies, who baptized a large number of converts, especially in Ceylon. Of other missionary enterprises in the seventeenth century there were none worth mentioning, except that of Eliot, Mayhew, and others, among the Indians of America.

In none of the Missions of those days was there promise of permanence or great results. The labourers were few, and their support uncertain. There were needed the "third conversion" and concerted action. The time for a beginning, however, was near at hand. In the first year of the eighteenth century there was organized the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. It was formed especially for the benefit of British colonists, and did not for more than a century send missionaries of its own among the heathen. The Society still carries on its colonial Missions; but its work among the heathen is an important and growing one.

The call of Luther for missionaries for the " pagans and Turks" may be called the first epoch in Protestant missions; the organization of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel may be regarded as the second epoch; the third epoch was, perhaps, the entrance of the Moravians into the Mission field, with the declaration of the principle that the Church of Christ is under obligation to send the Gospel to the heathen. Faithfully have these people kept that obligation, from the day they planted their first Mission in the West Indies, in 1732, until now, nearly

one hundred and fifty years. They have been, in the true sense, a Missionary Church, counting the majority of their communicants in the Mission field, and devoting head, heart, and pocket to the cause.

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The fourth epoch in Protestant Missions was the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in England, in 1792. There were then but two societies in existence, the Moravian and the Propagation Society. The latter had roused but little missionary spirit, and when William Carey, a young and devoted minister, began to plead before his brethren the cause of the heathen, he received no encouragement. On one notable occasion he was sternly rebuked. Young man, sit down," cried an aged minister; when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine." The Baptist Society was the first of five societies which sprang into existence in the last decade of the last century. The London Society was formed as a union society, in 1795, and now represents the Congregationalists. The Church Missionary Society, the leader of all societies in income, was instituted in 1799. The other societies formed in that decade were the Scottish and the Glasgow, whose names and missions were turned over to the present missionary organizations of Scotland, after many years of honourable labour. The Wesleyan Society dates its rise from 1813.

In Scotland, the Kirk was opposed to heathen Missions for many years. Its General Assembly passed a resolution in 1796 declaring that the idea of converting the heathen was "highly preposterous." Twenty-eight years later this action was reversed, and the Kirk sent forth, in 1829, Alexander Duff as its first missionary. The division of the Kirk, in 1843, which gave rise to the Free Church, gave also to the seceding body all the Missions and missionaries of the Kirk, which thus had a second beginning to make. The United Presbyterians entered the Mission field in 1847.

On the Continent more than half a century elapsed, after the beginning of Moravian Missions, before another society came into existence. The Netherlands Society was formed in 1797; but most of the Continental societies now at work are less than fifty years old. Among them are the Basel, the Rhenish, the Berlin, the Leipsic, the Hermannsburg, the Swedish, and the Paris Evangelical. Although the Continental Churches have been tardy in the support of Missions, they have probably furnished their full quota of missionaries. Some of the earliest missionaries sent out by the English societies were Germans, and German names are still frequent in the lists of those societies. Such men as Ziegenbalg, Schwartz, Krapf, Rebmann, Vanderkemp, and Gossner have added to the dignity and success of missionary labour.

The Churches of the United States were slower in taking up the work of Foreign Missions than those of England, partly because they had a large and increasing work at home to do. Churches were to be built, colleges to be endowed, and a rapidly increasing population to be provided with the Gospel. Besides, there were heathen enough at their own doors to employ their spare men and dollars. But there was little enough of the missionary spirit. The men who founded the American Board, in 1810, were regarded by many as visionary and fanatical; and when the application for a charter for the Board came before the Legislature of Massachusetts, a member opposed the granting of it. 66 We have," said he, "no religion to spare." He feared that if much of the precious commodity were exported, the country would be impoverished. We have learned since then the great truth that prodigality begets wealth in our dealings with the Gospel. The American Board was organized as a union society, and for many years Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and the Reformed (Dutch) Church co-operated in its support. The Reformed Church organized a Board of its own in 1832, and with the reunion of the Old and New School Presbyterians,

in 1870, the old Board was left entirely to the support of the Congregationalists. The Presbyterian Board constitutes one of the chief Foreign Mission agencies of the United States. The Baptists formed a society in 1814, of which the American Baptist Missionary Union is the direct successor. Two other societies were organized in the first quarter of the present century, the Methodist Episcopal (1819) and the Protestant Episcopal (1820).

There are now not less than eighty-five missionary societies, where there were only nine or ten eighty years ago. Of these societies thirty-five are American, twenty-five British, and twenty-five Continental. More than fifty of them have been organized in the last fifty years. Their aggregate income is nearly, if not quite, $7,000,000 (£1,400,000) a year, as against about $250,000 (£50,000) eighty years ago. The British

societies raise more than half of the whole amount..

It was a task of appalling magnitude which the missionary societies had before them at the beginning of the present century. The vast majority of the population of the world lay in the thick darkness of heathenism and unbelief. The pagans, with the Mohammedans, occupied substantially three whole continents, were scattered in great numbers over the other two, and were supreme in the islands of the sea. The societies thus had the world for their field; but they had only a few labourers to send into it. The most they could do was to make a feeble beginning, and occupy a few outposts, with the hope that God and the Churches would co-operate in strengthening their hands. The first missionaries were widely distributed. Those of the English Baptist Society went to India; those of the London Society to the South Seas; the first Mission of the Church Society was begun in Africa; the Wesleyan Society planted its first mission in Ceylon; the American Board chose India for its first field; and the first missionaries of the American Baptist Union began their work in Burmah. The Moravians already had Missions in Greenland, the West Indies, Africa, and elsewhere; and the Dutch and Danish missionaries had made beginnings in the East. The societies entered into new fields as rapidly as possible; and some, like the Church Missionary Society, are represented in every quarter of the globe.

The greatest of the enterprises undertaken, was, perhaps, the conversion of India. This great country, including Ceylon, contains 240,000,000 of people, or more than one-sixth of the population of the world. The people are attached chiefly to the Hindu and Mohammedan religions, the former counting, perhaps, 170,000,000 adherents. The obstacles to Missions have been almost overwhelming. "Where in all the world," exclaims Dean Schlier, "is there such a Satansburgh as India?" Hinduism, as the religion of the people for twenty or thirty centuries, has become so strongly entrenched in the thought and habits of the Hindus that to convert them to Christianity is to revolutionize completely Hindu thought, Hindu society, and Hindu customs. There are among them a body of men, regarded as divine, who have assiduously cultivated Hindu philosophy. The poor Hindu has the utmost confidence in them. He is happy if one of them will but condescend to dip his foot into a vessel of water, which is thereby consecrated, and is drunk reverently. The most minute system of caste known to man separates the people into classes, and builds up an impassable barrier between them. Even the shadow of a low-caste man may not fall on those of the higher castes without polluting them. Formerly, those who ventured too near the sacred person of a Brahmin could be put to death without question. The Mohammedans, numbering about forty million souls, have been even less accessible than the Hindus. They hear the missionaries advance and defend the idea of one God before the polytheistic Hindus, with approval. O yes! and Mohammed is his prophet.

there is but one God, Allah, They will not hear of Jesus. They will not hear of Jesus.

As if the difficulties growing out of diversity of race and language, old religions thoroughly established, and a Satanic system of caste, were not enough to discourage the missionary, his own countrymen have added to them. Every European resident in India represents, to the native mind, the Christian faith which the missionaries preach. Many of these foreigners lead immoral lives, and the Hindus say that the religion which produces such men cannot be worth much. Thus India has been a field of great difficulties.

When Carey and his colleagues of the English Baptist Society entered India in 1793, the Danish missionaries, who had been at work on the Coromandel coast nearly a century, had won many thousands from heathenism; but the Mission was declining, and the death of Schwartz, the apostle of India, virtually closed the first period of Indian Missions. The second period was begun by the Baptist missionaries, who worked until 1813, in the face of the prohibition of the Government, which endeavoured to conciliate the natives by protecting their religions. After the restrictions were removed, sixty-seven years ago, missionaries from Europe and America began to pour into India. The forty societies now at work have abundant reason for hopeful

ness.

The conversion of China seemed to be a hopeless task when Dr. Morrison, the first missionary, was sent to Canton by the London Society. The population is much larger than that of India, embracing, perhaps, 350,000,000. The people are peculiar in dress, language, religion, and customs, and are decidedly averse to communication with foreigners. When Dr. Morrison arrived in Canton, which was the only port open to trade, in 1807, he found himself surrounded with difficulties. The East India Company, which had refused him passage in their ships, were hostile to his purpose, and he was obliged to sail from New York; the Portuguese governor and the Catholics of Macao were bitterly opposed to his Mission; and he was denied access to the Chinese. He taught, however, as he could make opportunity, and baptized his first convert in 1814. He also translated and printed the Scriptures, against the strenuous opposition of the Company, who feared that mischief would come of it; in other words, that trade would be injured. In 1812 five ports were open to foreigners; but it is only since 1861 that missionaries have been permitted to go to every part of the empire. Thirty societies now have missionaries in China, and Missions are being rapidly extended from the coast cities and villages to the towns and hamlets of the interior provinces.

The prevailing religion of China is Confucianism. It is not uncommon, however, for a Chinaman to hold three religions at the same time-Confucianism, Taouism, and Buddhism. Ancestral worship, and distrust of foreigners, are the chief obstacles met by the missionaries; but the fact that a Christian nation forced the dreadful opium trade on China is not a recommendation of the Christian religion to the Chinese, nor is it suited to remove their prejudices against foreigners.

Japan, with its 35,000,000 of population, is an easier and more fruitful, as well as a smaller, field than China. The people are intelligent, respectful, and progressive, and adopt Western ideas and customs with an unexpected facility. The popular religion is Buddhism, which has largely superseded Shintoism, the State religion. Japan opened two of its ports to foreign trade in 1854. Since then the restrictions against foreigners have been gradually removed, and the whole empire is now practically free to the missionaries, the first of whom were sent out in 1859 by the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Reformed Boards of the United States. Twenty societies are now at work in Japan, against few serious obstacles, and with great encouragement.

In the large territory lying between India and China, known as the Indo-China Peninsula, with its mixed populations, influenced on the one side by China, and on the other by India,

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