An no boats larger than an Indian canoe had ever yet been seen. adequate force must make its way over such a region with all the needful equipment of modern warfare and suitable provisions for a long journey to and fro. Lord Wolseley, as he is now known, was the officer who undertook to lead this band of soldiers against the rebels in Fort Garry. He both organized and commanded the Red River Expedition, and won himself a high reputation for skill and persistence. This has been pronounced to be the one solitary example of an army advancing by a lengthened and almost impracticable route, accomplishing its task, and returning home without the loss of a single life either in battle or by disease.* Twelve hundred fighting men he led, and they had two hundred boats, besides artillery and provisions for two months. To pass along the great lakes until they reached Thunder Bay in Lake Superior, was a comparatively easy task. But it took six weeks to get from Thunder Bay fifty miles to Lake Shebandowan, toiling up the steep ascents to the ridge of the watershed. Then they rowed along the chain of small lakes, disembarking at the portages, and carrying on their shoulders what they could not drag across the intervals of land. Before they got to Lake Winnipeg they had thus disembarked nearly fifty times, and performed these labors. Yet they did the work, and after three months they reached their terminus. Twenty-five times. were the stores unshipped and the boats drawn ashore while going along the Winnipeg River, to avoid the numerous and treacherous falls. No spirituous liquors had been dealt out, and not only was no life lost, but order perfectly reigned, and the fort was evacuated on their approach without firing a gun. What results might crown mission enterprise if into our spiritual service more of such daring, energy, persistence, and heroism were introduced! THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE. IV. We must learn, too, the success of failure-that we are to do our work as unto God and consent to seeming defeat if it be His will. The section of Isaiah from which our Lord read at Nazareth, Luke iv: 16-30, announced His whole mission, its Divine character, and His special endowment and enduement for His work; and this passage, couched in such terms in the first person singular, and so remarkably fitted to be His utterance when He first opened His mouth in His capacity as a prophet, and in His own village, reads and sounds as tho it were expressly written for this very occasion, as indeed it was in the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. It is, however, very noteworthy that of that section of Isaiah's prophecy, the great burden McKenzie's "America," 418. is THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. Seventeen times the expression, "My servant," "His servant," "Thy servant," or, the "Servant of Jehovah," occurs, and often coupled with such phrases as "Mine Elect, in whom My soul delighteth," "My Messenger," etc.; and yet, this same Servant is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, abhorred of the nation, imprisoned, judged, led as a lamb to the slaughter. What a lesson on service! In visage marred more than the son of man! All outward signs being symptoms. of defeat and discouragement! Judged by human standards, His life was a FAILURE. He labored in vain and spent His strength for naught. There was not a token of success, that could be discerned by a world's standards of judgment. But He was, nevertheless, Jehovah's Servant, doing His will, even in His suffering, triumphant, and in His defeat and death, victorious. To Him it was and is given to raise up the tribes of Jacob, to be the true Isaiah-God's prince; before Him all kings are to fall down and worship, and He is to be for salvation to the ends of the earth. We have only to turn to the Apocalypse (v) and see how God's "lion" king is a slaughtered "Lamb." The pangs of travail, in a sense, have already lasted two thousand years, and not yet does He see the satisfying result that shall fill even His Divine "soul." But the day is coming, and prophetically already He sees it and is glad. A WORKINGMAN'S THREE MOTTOES. Some years ago in a workingmen's magazine, in Britain, a Christian mechanic wrote an article on his "Three Mottoes." They were, "I and God," "God and I," "God and not I." The paper was a simple history of the three stages of his service as a disciple: First, when he conceived of the work as his own and asked God's help; then, when he thought of the work as God's, and himself as a coworker in it; but the last and most restful and successful stage, when he saw God as the one Great Worker and himself as only an instrument, taken up, fitted for service, and used in God's way and time. Nothing is more needful than for us to feel that we are simply and only tools in His hand, and the highest perfection of a tool is that it is absolutely ready for the workman and perfectly passive in his grasp. When we learn this lesson, that it is His yoke we take on us and His burden that we bear, we cease to feel any of that care which implies a responsibility we can not sustain, and an anxiety we can not endure. There is an ability we do not possess, a strength we can not command, a result which we can not control. Obedience is ours, and only obedience; He assumes all responsibility, both for the command and the consequences. V. The old lesson needs constant reiteration, that no large success is possible in God's work without the mind of Christ. Modern history has furnished a marvelous example of a Christian hero in Gen. Charles George Gordon, the lamented martyr of Khartum. The four great laws of his life were these: 1. Absolute selfoblivion; 2. Absence of all pretension; 3. Utter indifference to worldly honors; 4. Complete absorption in the will of God. And he lived by these laws with strange fidelity, even to tearing out pages from the manuscript of his would-be biographer, who, in giving the story of the Taiping rebellion, unduly eulogized him; and to melting down his gold medal, that the starving operatives of Lancashire might have bread. It is obvious to all spiritual-minded disciples that a higher type of piety is the one pressing need of our day. The new reformation needful is not only doctrinal, but above all ethical, spiritual, practical. We need more Christlike Christians. Worldliness dims the vision of the unseen, and paralyzes the grasp of faith and hope upon the verities of God's true Word, and chills the very heart of love. Selfishness is the dearth of all true godliness and the death of all true benevolence. It is a melancholy fact that the standard of holy living God has set up is no longer the practical model adopted, or even accepted, by the average disciple. We have used the emphatic word, accepted, for the most melancholy feature of it all is that the Scriptural pattern is virtually disallowed as no longer fitted to, or binding upon, disciples of our day. When attention is called to the astounding contradiction between our Lord's injunctions (as in Matt. xvi: 21-26) and current types of Christian character and conduct, we are told that this teaching was for the apostolic age, and is not appropriate for the time now present; that such principles make monks and nuns, recluses and ascetics; that we are in the world and must not be sour and gloomy separatists like the Pharisees; that if we would win men, we must mingle with men; and that our esthetic tastes were given us to indulge, not to crucify, etc. The modern wine-drinking, card-playing, theatergoing, horse-racing, party-giving disciple, extravagant in dress, in house appointments, in whole style of expenditure, cultivates luxury on principle, and takes ease on the soft couch of selfish pleasure, with a conscience void of offense. The Bible is not a book for to-day in all these austere views of life. Self-denial has had its day, or may be in vogue for heroic missionaries, but it is out of date in Christian lands. It is not only lawful, but commendable to hoard great wealth and leave great fortunes to one's heirs. Houses full of expensive furniture and garniture, are not thought of as "the things that make a deathbed terrible," even when the luxurious liver sees millions dying of spiritual famine. Surely unless the Lord Jehovah has abdicated his judgment seat, or reversed His judicial decisions, there is a day of destiny ahead, where the modern "disciple" is going to be put to shame! (TO BE CONTINUED.) THE PERSECUTION OF CHINESE CHRISTIANS. BY REV. HUNTER CORBETT, D.D., CHEFOO, CHINA. Almost immediately after the queen dowager usurped the "dragon throne," in September, 1898, bitter and relentless persecution of Chinese Christians began in the Shantung province. Armed men went from village to village in search of Christian families. Houses were forcibly broken into; grain, furniture, dishes, cooking utensils, bedding, clothing, and everything that could be carried off, seized. Even doors, windows, and roof timbers of the houses were taken. Cattle driven off; clothing in some instances was stripped from the backs of Christians, and the people left in cold winter weather in utter destitution. Any who locked their doors or tried to protect their property were savagely beaten and compelled to flee for life. Heathen neighbors and relatives were warned that if they received or aided the Christians they would meet with similar treatment. The families connected with the Roman Catholic Church were first attacked. Soon, however, Protestant families met with the same treatment. Officials were deaf to all appeals for justice or mercy. They refused to arrest rioters or protect the persecuted Christians. One officer, who had been friendly to the missionaries, admitted that in consequence of secret instructions from headquarters he was helpless. One official, who was appealed to for protection, angrily replied to the Christians: You have brought all this misery upon yourselves. You have allowed yourselves to be deceived by the foreigners. You have embraced the depraved and hateful foreign religion, and by so doing you have provoked the righteous indignation of the Boxers, who, stirred by patriotic motives, were constrained to inflict upon you the punishment you so richly deserve. Earnest appeals from John Fowler, Esq., U. S. consul at Chefoo, secured many official proclamations, speaking in high praise of the Christian religion, and of the protection due to all loyal Chinese subjects, etc. One Boxer leader, who was not only a terror to the Christians, but to all peace-loving and law-abiding people, told the Christians that they were simple people in not understanding that the proclamations were meant solely to blind the foreigners, whereas all intelligent Chinese understood the true meaning to be the very opposite of the language used. Subsequent events have proved that he had the key to the situation. The anti-foreign governor, Yu IIs'ien, took advantage of the excitement which followed the murder of two Catholic German priests, and the seizure of the Kiao-chou port by the German admiral, encouraged and fostered the organization since known as the Boxer or "Great Knife Sect" movement. (The latter so-called from the long and broad heavy swords used by the Boxers.) Imperial proclamations were published, calling on the people everywhere to organize for selfprotection. This met with a most enthusiastic reception. Boxer leaders traveled over the country organizing and drilling recruits, living at the expense of those who enlisted. The leaders claimed to be acting not only under imperial sanction, but also to be aided by invisible spirits, who would make them invulnerable, and aid in exterminating or driving off all foreigners, and either killing or compelling all native Christians to recant. Boxer flags and banners were seen wherever this sect was organized. Four large characters were written on each flag, meaning protect the Manchu dynasty and destroy foreigners. The whole province was rapidly drifting into a state of anarchy, endangering not only the life and property of native Christians, but also of foreigners, whether missionaries, railroad men, miners, or others. Through the remonstrance of foreign ministers at Peking the governor, Yu Hs'ien, was removed. He went immediately to Peking, where the queen dowager received him with distinguished honors and special reward. Subsequently, against the strong protest of the foreign ministers, Yu Hs'ien was appointed governor of the province of Shansi, and during the few months he has been there has gained the notoriety of securing the massacre of probably one hundred foreign missionaries, and the almost total extermination of native Christians. THE MASSACRE AT TAI-YUEN FU. A trustworthy Chinese, who for nearly two years has been connected with a printing press at Taiyuen fu, the capital of Shansi, has returned to Shanghai, and gives the following account. He says he saw with his own eyes the mission buildings on fire, and the pitiable picture of ruthless massacre of missionaries and native Christians. He says early in June, in obedience to the governor's command, Boxers began to scour the whole country, seizing missionaries and converts to the number of several hundred, all of whom they brought to the provincial capital for slaughter. Men, women, and children were assembled at the great gate of the governor's yamen, and entirely surrounded by the governor's troops, so that none could escape, and at the governor's command were all massacred. The heads of the missionaries were subsequently hung up at the various gates of the city, and their mangled bodies were thrown into a large pit outside the city, and covered with earth. Governor Yu Hs'ien notified the empress dowager of his wonderful success, and claimed the reward promised. Later he had the honor of entertaining the empress and her court for a time after the flight from Peking. Rev. Ting Li Mei, pastor of two country churches, which pay the entire salary of the pastor, was arrested July 7th at his home one |