which, if missionaries are to be believed, present obstacles more insurmountable than those of paganism itself. Such are some of the problems missions are called to solve. Let us not belittle them, and let us profoundly thank God for whatever measure of wisdom and success has been hitherto given in grappling with these great and formidable foes. The methods whereby these manifold perplexities have been, and are to be, met deserve now our brief survey. First of all, the most successful missions in every part of the globe have depended, first and foremost, upon one great, divinely authorized weapon, the pure Gospel, faithfully and persistently preached. Christ has not been lifted up in vain. He draws "all men," that is men of all classes and peoples to himself, from the lowest to the highest. And a fatal mistake is made whenever anything else displaces or belittles the courageous preaching of Christ. We emphasize this, for it is in connection with this that the greatest wonders and modern signs have been wrought. Where the barriers seemed like walls that could be neither battered down nor scaled, preaching Christ has proven the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation, and, after years of seemingly fruitless evangelism, suddenly and unaccountably the obstacles have given way as mists are dissipated before the sunrise. The great peril is that, because blessing is delayed, the preacher shall be discouraged and turn to other methods as his resort. It is very important that the preaching shall be in the vernacular. Interpretation has well been called interruption. When in 1822 Robert Moffat lamented to his wife that so far there was no apparent fruit from his preaching, that wise woman reminded him that not yet had he preached to the people in their own tongue in which they were born, but that as yet they had heard it only through interpreters who had neither a just understanding of, nor real love for, the truth, and she besought him not to relax his efforts till he could with his own lips tell into their ears the Gospel message. From that hour Moffat gave himself without cessation to the acquisition of the language. instance of the disadvantage of using an interpreter is given in his rendering of the sentence: "The salvation of the soul is a very important subject," which he rendered, "a very great sack"-a version ridiculously intelligible. An We must not forget that God has singled out this one weapon— oral preaching-as the all-conquering one, and to abandon it for any other, or put any other in its place, is a confession of weakness, and a forfeiture of success. Next to that, in practical power, is the translation and diffusion of the Holy Scriptures. We do not now refer to the utility of the Bible, as used side by side with the oral proclamation of the Gospel, or in building up and making permanent the native churches. The instances are countless where the simple reading of the Scriptures by men who had had no contact with believers has been blessed to conversion. Mexico and South America, Japan and Burma, Siam and India, and papal countries have been especially rich in examples of this fact. War introduced copies of the Word of God into Mexico in the knapsacks of American soldiers; and when, in after years, missionaries followed, they found in some cases little groups of converted people who had found the truth and the Christ through these stray copies of God's Word. God has set a special seal on this sword of the Spirit, even where there was no human hand to wield it; and where missionaries have been able to do little else, they have planted this, the original seed of the kingdom. In Madagascar, during the long period of exclusion of missionaries and persecution of Christians, what wonders God wrought by the Word, alone, the translation of which the missionaries providentially completed before their expulsion! Next comes the Christian school, especially for the training of the young. Education, when conducted by a true missionary who never loses sight of regeneration as his ultimate hope, has been and is a mighty factor in solving the problems of missions. To introduce Western learning as such and for its own sake into Oriental lands is a doubtful, certainly not an unmixed, good. It is often destructive without being constructive; it demolishes the superstitions that rest on ignorance, but too often only leaves students to be without any faith in anything. They give up their false gods and sacred books without getting the true God and loving His Book. Educated Hindus and Japanese are to-day largely agnostic and infidels, or at least unbelievers and skeptics. It is a question how far it pays in the end to educate and acuminate the heathen mind only to leave it in a state of utter irreligion. But schools and colleges, where definite Christian teaching as such is the actual method used, and by instructors deeply imbued with the Christian spirit, can not but be a blessing. The sanction of God upon medical missions has been too conspicuous to be doubted. In fact, here has been found the key that has opened long closed doors, as in Korea. The relief and cure of bodily ailments has in countless cases, as in that of Li Hung Chang's wife, predisposed parties to be favorable to the missionary, and has often opened the heart, as nothing else had done, to the teaching of Gospel truth. The century's history shows clearly that, as in education, if the medical missionary keeps before him as his goal the healing of sin sick souls, and wisely adapts his methods to that end, God is peculiarly with him. The advance in this form of ministry within the last half century constitutes a distinct epoch in missions. The use of a Christian literature must not be overlooked among the means of overtaking the needs of men. It belongs among the secondary agencies, but among them takes a front rank. When a heathen people begin to read, it is of vast consequence what they read. And, to supply books and tracts, saturated with the spirit of Christ, as the basis of a new literature, is to lay foundations for a Christian State. But one method transcends all others in importance, because without it all else is weak and comparatively worthless-the actual witness of a Christ life. If the missionary exhibits a transformed character, his preaching and teaching, his whole ministry and method, have a savor which is of God. Men, instinctively, look for the fruits of faith in the teacher of truth, and the sublimer the truth the more are the fruits expected to correspond. Here is the living epistle which is known and read of all men. This is practically the world's Bible, and alas! it is generally a very poor version, sadly needing revision if not entire reconstruction. It was the character of Schwartz, George Bowen, and William C. Burns in India, of Judson in Burmah, of Mrs. Grant in Persia, of Verbeck in Japan, of Livingstone in Africa, of Patteson in Melanesia, of Crossley in Manchester, that made more impression than any words they ever spoke. And what every field most needs is the good seed which our Lord teaches us is found in the "Children of the Kingdom." Without Christ in the life, preaching and teaching, schools and medical missions are vain-the most complete apparatus of missionary work lacks its motive power. Here, in a higher type of piety, a character thoroughly permeated by true godliness, lies the final solution of all the problems of missions. THE CHANG-SHA DEED. BY GRIFFITH JOHN, D.D., HANKOW, CHINA. This deed, the cut of which we have reproduced,* has an interesting history. It takes us back to the remarkable journey which was made by Mr. Sparham, Mr. Greigs, and myself in Hunan, in April and May of 1899. In that journey we spent two days, April 27th to 28th, at Changsha, receiving officials and discussing various points of interest with them. The first point that came up was that of admission to the city. The officials at once allowed our right to enter, but begged us not to press it, on account of the examinations that were going on at the time. The second point was that of our being allowed to procure a house at Chang-sha for missionary purposes. Seeing that entering the city would amount to nothing more than being carried into it and out of it in a closed chair, and that in the dark, we came to the conclusion that it would be our wisest policy to give up the first point, if * See Frontispiece, opposite page 561. by so doing we could secure the second. So we told the officials that, tho very anxious to enter the city, under the circumstances we would not press our right to do so if they would give us the permission to purchase a house at Chang-sha, stamp the deed in the event of our finding a seller, and protect the mission when once established. This purpose was no sooner made than they jumped at it, thinking, no doubt, that any effort put forth by us to procure a house at Chang-sha would be labor lost. But, fortunately, we had already found a man who was willing to sell, and he was in the boat at the time, listening to the conversation between the officials and ourselves. No sooner did they leave the boat than our friend expressed himself as perfectly satisfied and quite prepared to complete the bargain. The deed was written out on board the boat and the earnest-money paid. Having thus purchased the house, we sent word to the officials to inform them of the fact, and to request them to seal the deed according to promise. For this, however, they were not prepared. The fact is, they never expected us to succeed, and they never expected that their promise should be taken as serious by us. On the morning of the 29th we waited some hours to see if any action would be taken by the officials, but not a man among them would come near us. The district magistrate sent his card, but would do nothing more. I sent my card to the military official in charge of the city, who had on the previous day shown great friendliness, but he went so far as to return it, and thus added insult to injury. Later on, however, a messenger was sent by him to say that tho nothing could be done at that time, the matter would be taken up and put through on our way back from Hengchou. Another empty promise, of course. Seeing that the officials had come to their wits' end, and that to wait longer would be simply wasting valuable time, we resolved to proceed on our journey without further delay. On our way back to Hankow we called at Chang-sha again, and made another attempt to get the deed sealed. Mr. Peng, our native evangelist, took it to the yamen, and asked the magistrate to kindly fulfil his promise and stamp it with his official seal. The magistrate took the deed and bagged it, telling Mr. Peng that he would return it after consulting the higher officials. This was on the 29th of May, 1899. Thus began a fight between ourselves and the Chang-sha officials over this precious bit of paper, which lasted nearly two years. The English consuls at Hankow gave us every help in their power, but apparently to no purpose. The Chang-sha officials had made up their minds to keep us out of the city, and we had made up our minds to get in. They fought hard, and but for the trouble of last year would have succeeded in carrying on the fight a year or two longer. The Hengchou riot, however, supplied us with the very leverage we needed in order to deal effectively with them and gain our point. It has been a long fight and a hard one, but it has ended in a great triumph for the missionary cause in Hunan. The deed was sealed in February and sent to Mr. Peng, who received it at Heng-chou. He forwarded it to Hankow, and I received. it on the 19th of March. The sight of this deed, I need hardly say, made my heart glad. No foreigner had ever held property in Changsha till now. Even the Roman Catholics have not succeeded in gaining a footing in that famous city. We, however, have succeeded, and have the full permission of the Chang-sha officials, both higher and lower. It is now about twenty years since I first saw Chang-sha. Ever since then it has been one of my great ambitions to establish a mission at that splendid center. For years there was nothing in the outlook to inspire hope. At one time it looked hopeless. Thank God, it is now an accomplished fact. But the opening of Chang-sha really means the opening of Hunan. Being in possession of the capital, we shall have no great difficulty in securing a footing in any other part of the province. Christians will, I feel sure, join in praising God for the good news. P. S.-I am receiving very good news from Heng-chou. Mr. Peng has returned to the city several weeks since, and was received with every demonstration of cordiality by the officials and people. The magistrate had provided a large house for him, in which he might live with his family and carry on his evangelistic work. He is surrounded by about fifty converts, who meet regularly for worship. He is now arranging to start building, so we are hoping to have our chapel and dwelling-house at Heng-chou restored before the end of the year. ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM IN FRANCE. BY REV. RUBEN SAILLENS, PARIS. For the last seventy-five years France has been under the influence of secularism. Convinced, and rightly so, of the impossibility of reconciling the spirit of Rome with the modern craving for liberty and progress, the fathers of the present republic enforced a system of public education based on Agnosticism. They hoped that compulsory instruction, with a set of teachers more enlightened than the "friars and sisters" who had so long been in charge of the French youth, would not only rid the country from superstition, but also give the people a superior morality. Every religious notion, therefore, was banished from the standards of the national schools--not that disrespect was meant to the beliefs of any one, but in order to leave perfect liberty to all in the matter of belief. Much blame, and even abuse, was poured upon the authors of |