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 Woman in missions 
 
WOMAN IN MISSIONS: 
 
 PAPERS AND ADDRESSeSSSoFPBi;'^;., 
 
 OCT 20 1933 
 
 PRESENTED ^T \ > ^ 
 
 TEE WOMAN'S CONGRESS OF MISSI^ 
 
 OCTOBER 2-4, 1893, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 HALL OF COLUMBUS, CHICAGO. 
 
 COMPILED BY 
 
 y 
 
 REV. E. M. WHERRY, D. D., 
 
 CORRESPONDING SEC'Y WORLD'S CONGRESS OF MISSIONS. 
 
 \xia 
 
 6 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETV, 
 
 10 EAST 23d STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1S94, 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The great Columbian Exposition of 1893 was dis- 
 tinguished above all other Expositions by the Series of 
 Congresses which were held in connection with it. 
 These Congresses covered almost every branch of 
 science and art. None among them was of greater 
 interest to the multitudes who attended than the series 
 known as Religious Congresses. Among these, special 
 interest attached to the Woman's Congress of Missions, 
 which had been organized and convened by a com- 
 mittee of ladies with Mrs. Franklin W. Fisk, of Chi- 
 cago, as chairman. The programme was comprehen- 
 sive. The writers and speakers chosen represented 
 woman's work in all parts of the Christian world. The 
 Congress extended over three days, and was full of 
 interest throughout. 
 
 The compiler of the papers and addresses contained 
 in this volume has endeavored to present them in such 
 form as will insure to the reader a participation in 
 some of the best things enjoyed by those who were 
 fortunate enough to be present at the Congress itself 
 Many excellent papers and addresses presented at the 
 Congress have been omitted, partly from necessity, 
 partly because they covered substantially the same 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 ground as those now published, and partly because 
 they did not fall in with the special purpose of this 
 volume. 
 
 While, therefore, this work cannot be regarded as a 
 report of the Woman's Congress of Missions, we be- 
 lieve it will accomplish in some degree the purpose 
 suggested by the Hon. C. C. Bonney, President of the 
 World's Fair. Congress Auxiliary, in the following 
 words, quoted from his address introductory to the 
 proceedings of this Congress: "However important 
 the proceedings of this Congress may be to those 
 who will have the pleasure of participating in them, a 
 thousandfold greater will be their use if they should be 
 widely published and circulated throughout the world. 
 We hope, therefore, that the government of the United 
 States, or some other providential aid, will enable us to 
 put the proceedings of this and the other Congresses 
 of this wonderful Exposition season in the leading 
 libraries of the world, where they will be accessible to 
 those who lead the thought of the world in the differ- 
 ent departments of progress." E. M. w. 
 
 Chicago, Sept. 12, 1894. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Introductory Address to Woman's Congress of Missions.. page 7 
 By Mrs. Franklin W. Fisk. 
 
 he Reason Why 10 
 
 By Mrs. Benjamin Douglass. 
 
 WOMAN AND THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS. 
 
 Woman Under the Ethnic Religions 20 
 
 By Mrs. Moses Smith. 
 
 Women Under the Jewish and Christian Religions — 36 
 
 By Elizabeth Rundle Charles. 
 
 HISTORICAL PAPERS ON WOMAN'S MISSIONS. 
 
 English Female Missionaries 57 
 
 By Charlotte Mary Yonge. 
 
 The Society for Promoting Female Education in the East 73 
 
 By Miss E. Jane Whately. 
 
 History of Woman's Organized Work as Promoted by Amer- 
 ican Women 83 
 
 By Miss Ellen C. Parsons. 
 
 The Zenana Bible and Medical Mission 112 
 
 By Lord Kinnaird. 
 
 Woman's Work in Connection with the London Missionary 
 
 Society 121 
 
 By Miss Caroline WJiytc 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 WOMAN AND THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 
 
 Woman's Work for the Afro-American 125 
 
 By Miss Mary G. Burdetle. 
 
 WOMAN AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. 
 
 Medical Missions — their Importance 145 
 
 By Isabella Bird Bislwp. 
 
 Woman's Medical Work in Missions 156 
 
 By Mrs. J. T. Gracey. ^ 
 
 THE WORK OF DEACONESSES. 
 
 Methodist Deaconesses in England 17, 
 
 By Miss Dora Stephenson {"Sister Dora "). 
 
 Deaconesses and their Work 182 
 
 By Mrs. Lncy Ryder Meyer. 
 
 WOMAN AND EDUCATION IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Work of Woman's Schools and Colleges in Missions 198 
 
 By Mrs. Danvin J?. James. 
 
 Place of Woman!s Missionary Work Among the Evangelistic 
 
 Forces of the Church 213 
 
 By Mrs. A. F. Schaxiffler. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD .-. 226 
 
 By Edna Dean Proctor. 
 
WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 IHTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
 
 BY MRS. FRANKLIN W. FISK. 
 
 There has been much confusion in the minds of 
 many people, and it is no wonder there should be, with 
 regard to all the various Congresses and Conferences 
 which have been held and are still to be held within 
 these halls. There have been many queries and much 
 discussion as to their significance and their relative 
 value. Each particular Committee has felt that its 
 work was the most important, and its own special 
 Congress was paramount to all others in importance, 
 and perhaps the only one which, like beauty, was " its 
 own excuse for being." 
 
 There have been Educational, Literary, and Musi- 
 cal Congresses ; Congresses Scientific, Medical and 
 Philosophical ; Congresses considering Law and Order, 
 Capital and Labor, Moral and Social Reform, House- 
 hold Economics, and many other subjects. These are 
 all of acknowledged importance and have proved emi- 
 nently successful. But a very large number of people 
 all over the world have been looking forward to the 
 
8 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 various Religious Congresses with surpassing interest, 
 as being those which should transcend all others in 
 importance — which should include all the good to be 
 found in the others, and should anticipate the very 
 highest, the most far-reaching and permanent results. 
 
 It has been said that " the spirit of Missions is not 
 simply a phase of Christianity — it is Christianity ;" and 
 also that the crowning glory of the nineteenth century 
 is the great work that woman is doing for the elevation 
 of her own sex. Accepting these propositions as true, 
 it is upon this two-fold basis we rest our claim, and 
 submit the question whether this Woman's Congress 
 of Christian Missions should not be considered pre- 
 eminent in importance, and demand the very highest 
 consideration and effort. The great Parliament of Reli- 
 gions, with all its picturesque impressiveness, its schol- 
 arly addresses, its remarkable magnanimity and toler- 
 ance, will now belong to history, and generations may 
 pass away before its influence will be fully realized. It 
 has taught us many lessons. "We have been enter- 
 tained and instructed. 
 
 We recognize much that is beautiful, much that 
 is good and true, in the many religions that have been 
 so lately represented upon this platform. We see much 
 to admire and even to love in their representatives. 
 We believe that " of a truth God is no respecter of 
 persons, but in every nation he that feareth God and 
 worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." But we 
 also believe that " God so loved the world that he gave 
 his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
 should not perish, but have everlasting life." "There 
 is none other name under heaven given among men, 
 whereby we must be saved." 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 9 
 
 We may see much to admire in the teachings of 
 Confucius or of Buddha, and yet we know their names 
 " with His great name are no more worthy to keep 
 company than the pale fire-fly with the risen sun." 
 And are we not more than ever sure that the much 
 boasted " Light of Asia" is but as the milky way com- 
 pared with that purer, brighter radiance which ema- 
 nates from him who hath himself declared, " I am the 
 light of the world "? 
 
 Therefore it seems most fitting that this great Par- 
 liament of Religions should be so closely followed by 
 this World's Congress of Missions. As we are made 
 more familiar with these blind gropings after truth, as 
 we are brought to a keener realization of the universal 
 need of mankind, do we not the more fully realize the 
 all-sufficient power of the gospel of Christ to supply 
 that need ? Are we not more than ever grateful for 
 our own glorious heritage, and also more than ever 
 desirous to shower its blessings over all the earth ? 
 
 We know in whom we have believed, and he hath 
 bidden us declare what truth we know. And so may 
 this Congress of Missions, whose watchword shall be 
 Jesus only, inspire all hearts and minds with fresh 
 enthusiasm in his service. May it bring to each of us 
 a heightened sense of our own responsibility, and awa- 
 ken in us new strength and courage for his work. May 
 it bring to us a firmer faith, a calm reliance upon " the 
 sure word of prophecy," and a brighter hope for the 
 speedy coming of the time " when the earth shall be 
 filled with, the knowledge of the Lord as the waters 
 cover the sea." 
 
 And amid all the calls that come to us for help, 
 above all the voices that cry to us from every land, 
 
10 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 above the voice of duty itself, may we ever hear the 
 voice of Christ in that sweet invitation to nations as 
 well as to individuals, " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
 and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." 
 
 THE REASON WHY. 
 
 BY MRS. BENJAMIN DOUGLASS. 
 
 " The Reason Why," I find assigned on the pro- 
 gramme as my topic at the opening of " The World's 
 Congress Auxiliary on Christian Missions." There is 
 a kind of indefinite definiteness about the subject which 
 at first seems perplexing. My limits are very strictly 
 circumscribed. Had only the little additional letter 
 " s " been allowed me — " The Reason.? Why " — I 
 should have been entitied to give free rein to fancy 
 and speculation, and to present many possible reasons 
 for our assembling together, leaving my audience fi-ee 
 to choose from among them any which they Judged 
 most adequate. Or had I even been given an indefi- 
 nite article — "A Reason Why" — I could have pre- 
 sented one out of many reasons which might seem 
 equally worthy of acceptance. But no such privilege 
 is allowed me. I am restricted by a definite article to 
 a single reason — " The Reason Why." Apparendy the 
 Committee in charge thought there was but one reason 
 worthy of being presented as a sufficient inducement 
 for the gathering together of this representative body 
 from the East and from the West, from the North and 
 from the South. 
 
 If this be so, if but one is necessary, why be 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. II 
 
 encumbered with many? Where one suffices, more 
 are superfluous. I remember that my husband used to 
 say years ago, when that great lawyer, Charles O'Con- 
 or, of New York, had charge of important matters in 
 litigation, that his clients, and even his associate coun- 
 sel, often felt that their case would be surely lost because 
 he would concede so much to his opponents — declining 
 to contest this or that argument which seemed to him 
 immaterial, but that finally, after they had exhausted 
 themselves, he would bring forward one vital, funda- 
 mental point on which he was willing to risk and rest 
 the whole case. And well might he do so, for so 
 incontrovertible was the argument founded upon it 
 that, like a great sledge-hammer, it battered down all 
 the enemy's defences, grinding them to powder, and 
 leaving them to be swept away like chaff before the 
 whirlwind. One such point was enough. Why em- 
 barrass the court with a multiplicity of arguments when 
 one sufficed ? What need of a fusillade of small arms 
 when Long Tom has the range and can cover effec- 
 tively the entire field ? Why light innumerable tiny 
 tapers when through one electric flash " the night shi- 
 neth as the day"? 
 
 Need I complain, then, that I am hampered by 
 being limited to a single reason ? Not if that is one 
 which minifies and swallows up all others, a supreme, 
 ultimate, comprehensive reason, embracing within its 
 scope the whole wide range of earth and heaven, time 
 and eternity, God and man. One such reason all 
 would be constrained to accept as a sufficient founda- 
 tion on which to base the whole superstructure of 
 Christian Missions and to lead them to build wisely 
 and well upon it. What single reason, then, can I pre- 
 
12 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 sent as entirely adequate for the calling together of this 
 great assembly in the highest interests of humanity? 
 Could there be one profounder or more sublime, one 
 that could more move to vigorous action, than that 
 embodied in the song of the heavenly hosts which her- 
 alded to the congress of shepherds the advent to earth 
 of its first great Foreign Missionary : " Glory to God, 
 good will to man " ? Surely all other reasons for mis- 
 sion work are subordinate to and summed up in this 
 sublime and only reason which brought the Saviour 
 from heaven to earth, and which alone can stimulate 
 the saved to Christlike service in saving others. God's 
 glory as magnified in good will to man, and man's 
 resulting obligations to God and his fellows, what 
 theme is comparable to this for arousing the highest 
 thought and enlisting the noblest endeavor? Well 
 might the attention of the whole human race be con- 
 centrated on this one vital point — man's good, God's 
 glory. 
 
 But am I transcending my limits ? Are not these 
 two things distinct and separate ? Nay, verily, they 
 are made one through inextricable blending and weav- 
 ing together, as seven colors blended make but one 
 beam of light. They are two halves of a perfect 
 whole— twin hemispheres, which, " fitly joined togeth- 
 er," make up the whole rounded sphere of love and 
 duty. 
 
 But how can one touch on so comprehensive a 
 theme in a few brief moments of time? " It is as high 
 as heaven — what can one do ? The measure thereof is 
 longer than the earth and broader than the sea." It is 
 a soundless depth which no finite intelligence can 
 fathom. Yet it is our privilege and our duty rever- 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. I3 
 
 ently to look through the glass of revelation and to see 
 how the glory of " Him who is invisible " shines forth 
 preeminently in his wonderful dealings with the human 
 race. 
 
 Were God's glory and his good will to man 
 manifested in nature only, it should call forth un- 
 bounded praise and adoration. Every fruit and flower, 
 beast and bird, star and sun, attests the greatness and 
 goodness of its Originator. But the creation of ani- 
 mate or inanimate nature — of an orange, for instance, 
 built up mechanically, as it were, into symmetrical sec- 
 tions, stored with delicious juice, and coated with ham- 
 mered gold : of a rose, with its graceful form, vivid 
 coloring and delicate fragrance ; of a humming-bird, 
 gay of plumage and swift of wing ; of behemoth and 
 leviathan, even of Arcturus and Orion — the creation 
 of all these might have been, as it were, the Creator's 
 pastime ; but when God made man he gave Himself : 
 fashioning him in His own image, not by some external 
 manipulation merely, but by the in-breathing of a 
 breath of life — the bestowal of a living soul. The 
 body, wondrously adapted as it is to the soul's needs, 
 is still but its tent to dwell in, while the soul received 
 at its birth the ineffaceable stamp of immortality. Free 
 communication with his Maker was also made man's 
 privilege, and no compulsory power could be brought 
 to bear on him which would inevitably swerve him 
 from his natural relations of love and allegiance. Could 
 higher evidence be given than this of God's " good will 
 to man " ? Yes ; wonderful as this is there are heights 
 beyond. Redemption far outranks creation in glory. 
 To create was great — to re-create greater. When 
 man voluntarily forfeited his God-given privileges, with 
 
14 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 full knowledge of the dread consequences of disobe- 
 dience, he was helpless to save himself, and none 
 " could by any means redeem his brother or give to 
 God a ransom for him." Eternal loss seemed inevit- 
 able. But it was the glory of Divinity to come to the 
 rescue of humanit)'. " Help was laid upon One mighty 
 to save." He who was "the brightness of the Fa- 
 ther's glory, the express image of his person," became 
 " near of kin " to us. " Son of God, Son of Mary, Son 
 of man ; the generic term," as one has said, " including 
 the specific as if the blood of the whole human race 
 were in his veins." He, the essential essence of Deity, 
 the consummate flower of humanity, voluntarily paid 
 the wages of man's sin," bearing in his own person 
 the full equivalent of the punishment due to the sins 
 of a world. Is not this perfect vindication of justice at 
 infinite personal cost, this " love beyond all mortal 
 thought," an ideal which unaided imagination could 
 never have reached, a conception of which no religion 
 but Christianity has given the faintest foreshadowing ? 
 Surely such evidence as this of God's good will to man 
 more magnifies his glory than even the heavens de- 
 clare or the firmament showeth forth. 
 
 " Its height, its depth, oh, who can span — 
 Glory to God and grace to man !" 
 
 But was salvation from eternal loss all that redemp- 
 tion implied of God's good will to man ? Ah, there 
 are still higher heights beyond our climbing — themes 
 passing comprehension : sonship, real • and unchal- 
 lenged ; joint-heirship to an undefiled and incorruptible 
 inheritance ; partnership, a word we should not dare 
 to use did not the inerrant word of inspiration write us 
 down " partakers of the divine nature ;" unification of 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 1 5 
 
 the creature with the Creator : " unutterable things," 
 even a ghmpse of which by the apostle caught up into 
 the third heavens caused him to exclaim, " Eye hath not 
 seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered ipto the heart 
 of man, the things which God hath prepared for them 
 that love him." 
 
 Is all this glorious vision of the past and the 
 future something with which we of the living present 
 have nothing to do but to gaze at, appropriate and 
 admire ? Have we no part in making known to men, 
 the wide world over, the exceeding riches of God's 
 grace ? Ah, God has given added proof of his good 
 will to man in permitting his redeemed ones the 
 glorious privilege of association with him in the work 
 of redemption : " committing unto their trust the words 
 of reconciliation," commanding them to offer unto all 
 nations the glorious gospel of the everlasting God, 
 promising them his own pecuUar presence in the work, 
 and sharing with them his own joy " in bringing many 
 sons to glory." Co-operation with the King of the 
 universe in a work so divine confers a patent of no- 
 bility on the humblest of his subjects. " Now then 
 are we ambassadors for Christ, as though God did 
 beseech you by us ;" we are to pray the world in Christ's 
 stead, " Be ye reconciled to God." This bugle-call of 
 our great Commander, " Go, teach all nations," summons 
 to action, continuous action, from the time of his as- 
 cension to receive the kingdom till he return again to 
 claim it. " But who may abide the day of his coming ? 
 who shall stand when he appeareth ?" For he shall sit 
 as a refiner and purifier of silver and purge away the 
 dross of our earthliness and indifference, and our 
 wretched shreds of excuses for neglecting to execute 
 
l6 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 his great commission will be shrivelled up in the heat 
 of his fiery indignation, and if we are saved at all it will 
 be so as by fire. 
 
 Assembled, then, as we are to-day, in the name of 
 Christ, " looking for the blessed hope and appearing 
 of the glory of our great God and Saviour," it be- 
 comes us to consider well whether we are one with 
 him "whose we are, and whom we " profess to " serve," 
 in his great purpose of good will to man. Have we 
 proved ourselves to the extent of our ability " workers 
 together with God," in sending " good tidings of 
 great joy to all people"? There should be "great 
 searchings of heart " in this matter. If we have vir- 
 tually echoed Cain's sneer, " Am I my brother's 
 keeper?" if with that selfishness which is the world's 
 bane we have been content to " eat the fat and drink 
 the sweet " of the gospel feast, sending no " portions 
 to them for whom nothing is prepared," we may well 
 fear the doom of those who refuse to share their good 
 things with others, " I will even curse your blessings," 
 and that the gifts of God's bounty of which we make 
 our boast be taken from us and "given to a nation 
 bringing forth the fruits thereof" 
 
 Let us, as we sit in Congress assembled, diagnose 
 carefully the condition of the church whose well-being 
 and extension is our highest aim ; and if we find it 
 plethoric, congested, frigid or paralytic, let us not 
 touch the matter lightly. It demands heroic, not 
 superficial treatment. Let us not fear to thrust in the 
 probe and let out the venom of selfishness ; to apply 
 such stimulants as shall excite its powers to vigorous 
 action. Stagnation means death and putrescence. A 
 living, healthy church is of necessity an aggressive 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. 1 7 
 
 church. Genuine Christianity is saturated with the 
 missionary spirit. It throbs and palpitates with an 
 onward movement. It is convinced that its mission is 
 the evangelization of the world, and how is it straitened 
 till it be accomplished ! It hears the pathetic cry of 
 the nations, " Our fathers have inherited vanities and 
 lies, things wherein no profit is," and it hastens to in- 
 troduce to them the one God and Father of all, and 
 to persuade them to turn from idols unto the living 
 God and to wait for his Son from heaven. It recognizes 
 the truth that " principalities and powers in the heavenly 
 places " are to learn through the church new lessons 
 of the manifold wisdom of God ; and it would not 
 keep angelic learners in the lowest form, teaching 
 them merely the alphabet of religion, but would de- 
 monstrate to them the marvellous power of God in 
 " exalting them of low degree ;" in enabling ignorant, 
 untutored souls to understand and apply the highest 
 science, even " the dispensation of the mystery which 
 from all ages hath been hid in God," but which is now 
 revealed in his " work for man through man." 
 
 It becomes us in this Congress of Missions to 
 make clearly understood the wide world over that 
 the reason for our assembling here is that "according 
 to the riches of God's glory," and in furtherance of his 
 purposes of good will to man, we, with an unselfishness 
 which is his gift, will strive to make all men everywhere 
 " comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and 
 length and depth and height, and to know the love of 
 Christ, which passeth knowledge," that they too may 
 be " filled with all the fulness of God." How can we 
 accomplish this gigantic undertaking? This is the 
 question of questions for the church of God to-day ; 
 
 Woman id MIesions. 2 
 
1 8 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 not, how can we give all men our civilization, our 
 education, our commerce, though all these will follow 
 in Christianity's train, but how can we make known to 
 them our Christ ? Never was a time more ripe than 
 this for the wide dissemination of gospel truth. " The 
 world is all before us where to choose." " Many run 
 to and fro and knowledge is increased." Humanity 
 groans under a pressure of intolerable evils. All honor 
 to those who in the name of philanthropy attempt to 
 mitigate physical ills, who "stretch out their hands to 
 the poor and needy." But what poverty so great as 
 poverty of spirit ? What needs so great as soul needs ? 
 By so much as the tenant outranks the tenement, by 
 so much as the immortal is beyond that which is per- 
 ishing, by so much as eternity transcends time, let the 
 souls of men have your profoundest interest — your 
 most unremitting attention. If t;onvinced that the 
 greatest good to the greatest number most greatiy 
 redounds to the glory of God, then devise the wisest 
 methods for reaching the greatest number with the 
 highest good in the shortest time. Don't waste time 
 in answering objections to the cause. We are past that 
 age. We have no chair of Apologetics for Missions. 
 We are " elect unto obedience," and the simple com- 
 mand of our divine Leader is the only needed spur to 
 action. Let love to him be the motive power which 
 sets all our machinery in motion, the driving wheel 
 which guides it in the right direction. Only an en- 
 thusiasm for the God-man can produce that " enthu- 
 siasm for humanity" which religion is defined to be. 
 The love of God which passeth knowledge must be 
 shed abroad in the hearts of all who would do success- 
 ful work for him. Oh, if this Congress of Missions is 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESSES. I9 
 
 Stirred with a desire for God's glory and man's good 
 " as the trees of the wood are stirred by a mighty wind," 
 if hearts here are opened wide to the Holy Spirit and 
 he enkindles there a flame of love to God and man, then 
 its zeal will stir many. It will prove that it had indeed 
 a " raison d'etre " and its result will be the inaugura- 
 tion of such an era of propagandism of the true faith as 
 the world has never before known. Let us make it 
 our mission to lift before man's despairing eyes the 
 divine Deliverer ; to flash forth that great search- 
 light, " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
 in the face of Jesus Christ," into the thickest darkness; 
 to lay hold with united power on that gospel lever 
 which alone can lift up from its depth the black soil 
 of humanity into the sweet influences of sun, wind and 
 dew, light, love and life as revealed in Father, Son and 
 Spirit. So shall the angels' song at our Lord's first 
 advent, " Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, 
 good will to men," be gloriously supplemented at his 
 triumphal return by the grand choral of " multitudes 
 redeemed unto God out of every kindred, people, 
 tongue and nation," who shall lift up glad voices in 
 the new song, 
 
 " Unto Him that loved us, 
 And washed us from our sins in his own blood, 
 .And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father> 
 Be glory and dominion forever and ever." 
 
20 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 WOMAN AND THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS. 
 
 JVOMA N UNDER THE E THNIC RELIGIONS. 
 
 BY MRS. MOSES SMITH. 
 
 For two weeks we have been listening to the 
 presentation of religions. We have heard philosophies 
 of religion profound and subtle, to some minds fasci- 
 nating in their grace and mysticism. It may be a 
 wholesome, if not so agreeable a thing now to have 
 our attention called to the practical workings of some 
 of these religions and their effect on the life and destiny 
 of man. Moreover, as missionary workers, it is wise 
 for us to know not only the present needs of the peo- 
 ple, but the religious forces which long centuries have 
 wrought into every tissue of their thought, feeling and 
 action. 
 
 Without question religion is the supreme force in 
 history. Religion creates the ideals and aspirations, 
 and so chisels the character of mankind. In the order 
 of nature the worshipper becomes like the being wor- 
 shipped. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 
 
 The world has known many religions, some of 
 them eminent for the tremendous power with which 
 they have held millions in their sway over centuries 
 of time ; eminent also for profound philosophy, lofty 
 ideals, and sometimes a high morality. Our Lord 
 Jesus Christ gave us the test for himself and his teach- 
 ing : " By their fruits ye shall know them." The con- 
 ditions of society, temporal and spiritual, are the fruits 
 by which any religious system may be known. 
 
WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 21 
 
 In the nature of things the factor that most univer- 
 sally moulds society is woman. The boy is father of 
 the man, but the woman is mother of the boy ; hence 
 the study of the teaching of any religion concerning 
 woman, and of her character and place in society as 
 the result of that religion, is vital both to the correct 
 understanding of the system and of what it has wrought 
 for the world. 
 
 The most venerable and possibly the most power- 
 ful ethnic religion is Brahmanism. Rising in India 
 when that was the land of literature and art, the home 
 of the cultured Aryans, for fifteen centuries this religion 
 wrought unhindered on the people. At first a simple 
 nature worship, it degenerated into a pantheon in which 
 all the powers of nature were gods. On this was built 
 a sacerdotalism with caste and idol worship. It be- 
 came an oppressive tyranny. At this juncture, 500 
 years before Christ, a new and forcible factor entered 
 the life of the people in the birth of a king's son, 
 Gautama Buddha, known in history as the great re- 
 former of Brahminism. I have no time to speak of 
 the fierce theological war that ensued — for 400 years — 
 or of the bright coup d'etat of the Brahmans in final- 
 ly accepting Buddha as the ninth incarnation of 
 Vishnu. 
 
 Each of these systems evinces profound thought 
 and lofty ideals. Buddhism a high morality. Each 
 contains elements of truth, and each has a tremendous 
 power in the history of the race. Striving for suprem- 
 acy on the same field, the result was a coalition. To- 
 gether they enter the stream of history under the name 
 of Hindooism. The time has been long enough, the 
 field favorable and broad enough for the completest 
 
22 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 results, and the present condition of society affords us 
 opportunity to see the results. 
 
 Sir Monier Williams, the distinguished Sanscrit 
 scholar of Oxford, says : "Although India in the early 
 periods of Brahmanism was a land of literature and 
 science, the present characteristics are poverty, ignor- 
 ance and superstition. Whatever profound thought 
 lay about the roots of Hindooism, it held and still holds 
 the 280,000,000 of India in the bondage of degradation, 
 cruelty and immoraUty." " The average income per 
 individual is less than that of any other civilized coun- 
 try, barely $13 50 per year, against $20 even for the 
 Turks, $165 for every Englishman, and $200 for every 
 man, woman and child in the United States."* Dr. 
 John Short, Surgeon General of India, long resident 
 among the people, says, " Wherever the Hindoo reli- 
 gion predominates, there immorality and debauchery 
 run riot." 
 
 The Code of Manu is the highest 
 eac ings. rgiigjous authority among the Hindoos. 
 You ask a Hindoo about the date and age of his great 
 law-giver and he quickly replies, " He was the son of 
 the self-existent Brahm." Manu's whole teaching 
 about woman is based on the assumption of her impu- 
 rity. For instance, a Brahman is enjoined " to suspend 
 reading the Veda if a woman come in sight." Her 
 ear is not pure enough to hear what the vilest man may 
 read. " Though unobservant of approved usages, or 
 enamoured of another woman, or devoid of good qual- 
 ities, yet a husband must be revered as a god by a vir- 
 tuous wife."t 
 
 " Let the wife who wishes to perform sacred obla- 
 » Rev. N. G. Clark, D. D. f Dharma Sastra, ch. 3, p. 154. 
 
WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 23 
 
 tion wash the feet of her husband and drink the water, 
 for the husband is to the wife greater than Vishnu." 
 Again, " Women have no business with the text of a 
 sacred book, and having no evidence of law, and no 
 knowledge of expiatory texts, sinful woman must be 
 foul as falsehood itself, and this is a fixed rule."* And 
 it has remained fixed for forty-three centuries. 
 
 The modern Brahmans like to 
 
 Seclusion. , ■ 1 i r • 
 
 claim that the present custom 01 im- 
 muring their wives in prison-like rooms had its origin 
 in the Mohammedan invasion. This is certainly not 
 the whole truth, for in the unalterable law of Manu, 
 written 900 years before Christ, we read, "A woman is 
 not allowed to go out of the house without the consent 
 of her husband, she may not laugh without a veil over 
 her face or look out of a door or a window." " It may 
 be that when the Mohammedans came, some fifteen 
 centuries after these laws had been in force, they put 
 the crown on the arch already waiting for them. They 
 may have tightened the chains by which woman was 
 already enslaved,"t but the teachings of Manu are suf- 
 ficient to account for all we see in India to-day. 
 
 The people of the Western World 
 
 have long wondered why the Hindoos 
 were so tenacious of their, to us, revolting custom of 
 child marriage. It is only when we learn that it is not 
 simply a custom but a part of their religion that we 
 apprehend the reason. The sacred laws of the Hindoo 
 declare, " If a daughter is married at the age of six 
 the father is certain to ascend to the highest heaven. 
 If the daughter is not married before seven the father 
 
 * Dharma Sastra, chap. 5, pages 155, 156. 
 t Wilkin's " Modern Hindooism," page 326. 
 
^4 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 will only reach the second heaven. If a daughter is 
 not married until the age of ten the father can only 
 attain the lowest place assigned the blessed. If a girl 
 is not married until she is eleven years of age all her 
 progenitors for six generations will suffer pains and 
 penalties."* When recendy an effort was made to 
 induce the Government to raise the legal age of mar- 
 riage to twelve years, great excitement prevailed. The 
 Brahmans set apart days of fasting and prayer. Multi- 
 tudes came in processions to the temples, in some cases 
 beating their breasts and calling aloud to the gods to 
 spare them from such calamity. 
 
 The worst feature of the system of child marriage 
 is seen among the Kulin Brahmans, the highest of all. 
 Girls in these families must not marry into a lower 
 caste, and the supply of Kulins is limited, so fathers 
 who have not money to induce some young men to 
 marry their daughters are compelled to give their 
 litde girls to those who make a living by being hus- 
 bands. Thus a child of twelve may be given as the 
 fortieth or fiftieth wife of some old man. Although it 
 is certain she will soon be a widow, even that is prefer- 
 able to allowing her to remain unmarried. 
 
 " The code of Manu forbids a 
 
 Infanticide. ... „. 
 
 woman to read the scripture or otter 
 prayer by herself. She is to have no individuality. 
 She exists only in her father or her husband : without 
 a husband she is soulless." This doctrine bears its 
 legitimate fruit m the custom of murdering infant girls. 
 It is easy reasoning that it is better to murder a soul- 
 less child than not to be able to betroth her, and so 
 bring disgrace on the whole family. 
 
 * " Women of the Orient," page 135. 
 
WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 2$ 
 
 " The Hindoo sacred books reach 
 * °^^' their~cUmax of cruelty in the require- 
 ments concerning the widow. She may have been 
 only a betrothed infant or a child of a few years. It 
 makes no difference." The Shasters teach that if the 
 widow burns herself alive on the funeral pile of her 
 husband, even though he had killed a Brahman, that 
 most heinous of deeds, she expiates the crime. For 
 long centuries widows have been a literal burnt offer- 
 ing for the redemption of husbands.. The English 
 Government has prohibited the suttee, but, being con- 
 sidered by the family as one rejected of the gods, the 
 widow's life is such a degradation, such a sorrow, it 
 would seem merciful to let her die. Manu wrote, " Let 
 not a widow ever pronounce the name of another man, 
 for by remarriage she brings disgrace on herself here 
 below, and shall be excluded from the seat of her 
 Lord." To-day in India under the Hindoo religion the 
 widow may not take food more than once in the day. 
 She must go without food and water for forty- eight 
 hours twice in the month. At a meeting of the highest 
 religious court a few years ago it was gravely decreed 
 that if, acting on medical advice, a widow did some- 
 times take a little water on fast day, the offence might 
 be condoned. Oh the burning pathos of the Hindoo 
 widow's prayer : " O God, let no more women be born 
 in this land!" India has now 21,000,000 of widows, 
 nearly 100,000 of them under nine years. 
 
 Hindooism touches its lowest 
 
 The Nautch Girl. , , . , , , . 
 
 depths in the degradation of woman 
 in what the enlightened Hindoo, Mr. Mozoomdar, 
 called in the Parliament of Religions "consecrated 
 prostitution " of the Nautch or dancing girls in the 
 
26 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 temples. The subject is too delicate and too horrible 
 for me to speak of in detail, but as it is a much 
 honored part of this religion it cannot be omitted. 
 The Brahmans claim that it is a most sacred service, 
 having its origin in prehistoric ages in a promise made 
 by Vishnu himself. In a few words the reason and 
 method is this : Parents who have a son very ill will 
 vow to some god that if the son's life is spared they will 
 consecrate a litde girl to the temple ; or the parents, be- 
 lieving that hqnor or wealth will be the result, conse- 
 crate a girl to the god ; or the Brahmans select the most 
 beautiful Uttle girls, the parents rejoicing in the relig- 
 ious honor. 
 
 From the hour of consecration the little thing is 
 treated with peculiar respect. She alone of the girls of 
 the family is taught to read. When she becomes ten 
 or twelve years old, her father, mother and nearest 
 relatives take her to the great temple. They go with 
 the priest into the inner shrine. The girl places her 
 hand in the idol's hand, the priest repeats certain 
 prayers and charms. He then hangs a wreath of cow- 
 rie shells around the girl's neck and the poor little 
 thing repeats after him her marriage vow, which vow is 
 to prostitute herself to any pilgrim to the shrine who 
 demands it.* The position of these religious prostitutes 
 in Hindoo society is so highly respectable that no festi- 
 val or wedding is celebrated without their presence. 
 They are asked to tie the wifely ornaments on the neck 
 of the bnde. They, bemg married to a god, can never 
 be widowed, and their touch is lucky. In elegant attire, 
 with cosdy jewels and perfumes, charmingly graceful, 
 they lead their wretched lives, bnng great sums into the 
 * Prof. T. M. Lindsay, University of Glasgow. 
 
WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 2/ 
 
 treasury of the temple, and, as they are religiously 
 taught, accumulate a store of blessing for themselves in 
 a future state. John Short, M, D., Surgeon General of 
 India, Member of the Anthropological Society, London, 
 says : " The Nautch girl is recognized and patronized 
 by the Hindoo religion." 
 
 There was a time in the fair eastern land when 
 women were in a position of respect similar to that 
 among the ancient Hebrews. Husband and wife were 
 equal in all domestic, social and religious life. " The 
 Brahmins have themselves preserved the record of wo- 
 men engaging in philosophical discussions, and discon- 
 certing their most celebrated doctors by the depths of 
 their objections."* Some of the Vedic hymns were 
 composed by women. By degrees the condition of wo- 
 man has deteriorated until by the law of their religion 
 she is " now consigned to degradation probably without 
 a parallel in the history of the race." It is true, Buddha, 
 in the sixth century before Christ, taught that men and 
 women were equal, but even his influence has never 
 been strong enough to reform the Brahminical laws 
 about women. The Hindoos have a saying : " Educa- 
 tion is good, as milk is good, but milk given to a snake 
 becomes venom, and education given to a woman be- 
 comes poison." 
 
 A quotation from the personal experience of Prof. 
 T. M. Lindsay, D. D., so pertinentiy sums up the Hin- 
 doo creed about women that I quote it " I remember 
 asking a learned Vedantist, who had spent two days in 
 teaching me something about his beliefs — a man who 
 had read Spinoza, Berkeley and Hegel — whether he 
 could give me any definite proposition which all the 
 * J. Murray Mitchell, LL. D. 
 
28 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 people who were Hindoos could accept. He very 
 readily said, ' That woman is a wicked animal. That 
 the cow is a holy animal.' " No brilliant presentation 
 of Vedic learning, no poetic picture of Brahmin or 
 Buddhist philosophy so recently heard in the Parlia- 
 ment of Religions, will prevent the world from arraign- 
 ing Hindooism for cherishing, in the sacred name of 
 religion, the grossest vices, and basely degrading wo- 
 man and all society. " By their fruit ye shall know 
 them." 
 
 Religions of ^^ ^hc Empire ol China, under a 
 
 China. government distinguished for its stabil- 
 
 ity and justness, among a people spoken of before 
 Christ as " those who dwell apart,' and known from 
 the time of Ptolemy as just, mild, frugal and industri- 
 ous, comprising one-fourth the human race, three 
 religions of confessed power, not as rivals but as coor- 
 dinate and supplemental, have for many centuries sought 
 to solve the problem of life, death and immortality. 
 The time has been long enough, the conditions favor- 
 able for a perfect experiment. Confucianism, the oldest 
 of the three, gave what is probably the best code of 
 morals man ever gave to men. Confucius was himself 
 an earnest reformer. Dr. Legge, professor of Chinese 
 in the University of Oxford, says : " Confucius saw the 
 terrible wretchedness of his people and set himself to 
 find a remedy. Yet to the one principal cause of the 
 misery of the masses, polygamy and the low social con- 
 dition of woman, he gave no thought." In his treatise 
 on human relations, in that of husband and wife, he re- 
 gards the wife as the servant of the husband and enjoins 
 absolute obedience. During all these forty-three cen- 
 turies, while Confucius has done much for good gov- 
 
WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 29 
 
 eminent and has set some high moral standards for 
 men, women have reaped no benefit from the teachings 
 of the sage. 
 
 ^ . Lao-tsze, the founder of Taoism, a 
 
 Taoism. r ,■ , • ^1 • 
 
 rehgion of no httle power m Chma, 
 made no effort to elevate the people, and his religious 
 system does not recognize the existence of woman. In 
 the beginning the work of Taoism was to repress the 
 passions. 
 
 " JVoi to act is the source ol all power,"* was an 
 ever present thesis. To-day Taoism is a system of 
 magic and spiritism. 
 
 Buddhism. ^"^^ vaunted "gentle Buddha" 
 
 gives to the women of China one only 
 hope. Through the doctrine of transmigration of souls 
 it is possible that through obedience to her husband 
 and his relatives and the birth of a son she may in 
 some future aeon have the happiness of being returned 
 to this world a man. If a man commits crime he may 
 be returned to earth a woman. The one fervent prayer 
 of the women as they crowd the Buddhist temples is 
 that they may be returned to earth as men. • When the 
 women apply to the priests for instruction they are told, 
 " When you die your soul will pass into the land of spirits, 
 where it may remain ages before it is allowed to return 
 to earth and inhabit the body of a man. You will need 
 ■ money to pay toll on the bridges, and you must fee the 
 ferrymen, especially on the lily boat to cross the lake of 
 blood. "t (This fee is $30.) The priests claim to have 
 opened communication with the spirit land and their 
 drafts are honored there. In one part of the temple 
 
 * Ten Great Religions. James Freeman Clark, 
 t China and the Chinese. Rev. J. L. Nevius, 
 
30 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 these drafts are sold, the priests placing the seal of the 
 temple on them. Of the $400,000,000 annually given 
 for idol worship in China at least seven- eighths is given 
 by women, and three-fourths of that by women too poor 
 to obtain enough of even the coarsest food. 
 
 The customs and principles of 
 
 Marnage. . , ^ 
 
 marnage among any people are the ex- 
 ponents of woman's place in the social scale. Chinese 
 women are bought and sold in marriage. The wife is 
 for ever subject to the husband and his parents ; only 
 when she becomes the mother of sons does she receive 
 the respect of the family. Divorce is practically at the 
 pleasure of the husband, or he may sell her to another 
 man. Undesired at birth, liable to be sold while a child 
 for prostitution, never educated, her low estate naturally 
 leads to the crime of infanticide. Little wonder that 
 they innocently ask, "Why save the life of a girl?" 
 
 What to-day is the place of this vast Empire among 
 the nations ? The combined force of these three reli- 
 gions, working for twenty-three centuries upon one- 
 fourth of the human race, has shed no light on the two 
 great foci, the family into which every human being is 
 born and that immortality to which every human soul 
 aspires, nor has any single ray of light emanated for 
 the enlightenment of the other three-fourths of man- 
 kind. Alas ! a nation cannot rise higher than its mo- 
 thers. 
 
 Mohammed- There are few more pathetic scenes 
 
 amsm. jj^ history than the casting out of Ha- 
 
 gar and Ishmael from the polygamous home of Abra- 
 ham. " Abraham rose up early in the morning and 
 took bread and a bottle of water " and gave it unto 
 Hagar and her child " and sent them away." The pic- 
 
WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 3 1 
 
 ture is realistic : that erect, well-poised figure with the 
 bottle on her shoulder, that dark Egyptian face with 
 chiseled lines of sorrow illuminated now with righteous 
 anger, as she gives one last haughty look towards 
 Sarah's tent and turns towards the wilderness of Beer- 
 sheba. Very soon the curtain lifts upon the desert 
 scene. The water is spent. Hagar places the child 
 under the scant shade of a shrub, and lifting up her 
 voice, weeping, cries out, " Let me not see the death of 
 the child." At this crisis a voice is heard from heaven: 
 " Lift up the lad. I will make of him a great nation." 
 And they dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and his mo- 
 ther took him a wife out of the land of the Egyptians. 
 
 The years go by and centuries are numbered. 
 We find the fulfilled promise of a " great nation " in a 
 people in whose veins on the one side is filtering the 
 blood of the great Abraham mingling with the larger 
 proportion of the idolatrous Egyptian, nomadic in 
 habit, with a genius for conquest, with a language dis- 
 tinguished for softness and copiousness, with a litera- 
 ture of great antiquity and high poetical merit, dwelling 
 in the Peninsula of Arabia. Of these people, in the 
 fifth century of the Christian era, Mohammed, the 
 founder of Islam, was born. A youth of great sincerity 
 and purity, his domestic life with his wife, Khadija, is 
 as beautiful as could be found among a non- Christian 
 people. But when at the age of fifty-two he sets him- 
 self up as a prophet, and becomes the husband of eleven 
 wives, we find him guilty of the grossest crimes, rob- 
 bery, murder and butchery which rival the Emperor 
 Nero. 
 
 " Judged by the smallness of the means at his dis- 
 posal, and the extent and permanence of his work, his 
 
32 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 name is illustrious. By his will he abolished a cher- 
 ished idolatry and bowed to himself the hearts of his 
 countrymen, and gave to the world a creed which has 
 been a tremendous force in the destinies of the nations. 
 To the impulse he gave, numberless dynasties owe their 
 existence. Fair cities, stately palaces and temples have 
 arisen. At a thousand shrines the voices of the faithful 
 invoke blessings on him."* " He saw with a correct 
 spiritual vision the elemental truth of all religion: 
 There is only one God."t For twelve centuries the 
 teachings of Mohammed have borne fruit in human 
 lives ; not only in the land of its birth, but in many 
 lands. 
 
 We turn the pages of the Koran 
 with eager hope that we may find in the 
 writings of this man some teaching that shall lead to the 
 uplifting of woman. The most hopeful word the Koran 
 has for woman is in the second chapter : " Whoso 
 doeth good works and is a believer, whether male or 
 female, shall be admitted to Paradise." The practical 
 exegesis of a woman's " good works " is obedience to 
 the husband. Without that good work she cannot 
 enter Paradise. Again, in the fourth chapter, entitled 
 " Women," we read, " Men shall have pre-eminence 
 above women, because of those advantages wherein God 
 hath caused the one to excel the other, and for that 
 which they expend of their substance in maintaining 
 their wives. The honest women are obedient, careful in 
 the absence of their husbands, for that God preserveth 
 them by committing them, to the care and protection of 
 the men. But those whose perverseness ye shall be 
 apprehensive of, rebuke, and remove them into separate 
 * Marcus Dodd. f Dean Millman. 
 
WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 33 
 
 apartments and chastise them." The degraded and 
 degrading practice of scourging and beating wives, 
 having the sanction of the Koran, will be, in the words 
 of Dr. Jessup, " indulged in so long as Islam as a faith 
 prevails." 
 
 Note the polygamous teaching of 
 the Koran. " Every Moslem is allowed 
 four free wives and as many concubines as his right 
 hand possess ;" and the faithful are positively promised 
 that in Paradise they shall have seventy-two houries for 
 wives, besides the wives they have here. 
 
 According to the Koran, the hus- 
 
 Divorce. , ,. .... 
 
 band may divorce a wife without warn- 
 ing or assigning a reason. The husband has only to 
 say, "Thou art divorced." Even life may be taken at 
 the will of the husband. Woman is practically a chat- 
 tel. A Mohammedan being asked, " What is the price 
 you pay for a good wife?" replied, "About the same as 
 for a mule, twelve or fourteen pounds." 
 
 A polite Mohammedan would not 
 
 speak of his wife without using the same 
 apologetic formula he would use if he was speaking ol 
 a donkey or a hog. Indeed, so degrading is the ortho- 
 dox Mohammedan's idea of womanhood we cannot 
 mention it here. The Koran says nothing about a 
 woman's praying, therefore she is excluded from the 
 Mosques at the hours of prayer. Behold a religion 
 that practically excludes one-half the human race! It 
 was not until Mohammed was fifty-eight years of age, 
 and the husband of many wives, and had under his own 
 roof experienced what the Moslem women of to-day 
 declare — when there is more than one wife " there is fire 
 in the house " — that he wrote in the Koran the " ordi- 
 
 Woman In Mlttlooi. '2 
 
34 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 nance of veil" — that badge of jealous subjugation which 
 marks an era in the degradation of women in all the 
 Orient. The regulation costume shrouds the woman 
 from the head to the ankle in a cotton or silk sheet of 
 black or white. Around the head is tied a yard-long 
 linen or cotton veil in which before the eyes is a piece 
 of open-work, about the size of a finger, which is the 
 only look-out and ventilator. No part, not even a 
 hand or an eye, can be seen. 
 
 See the picture : with fearful footsteps, with no 
 hope in man, with little knowledge of the "All- Father," 
 with no knowledge of Him who said, " Come unto me, 
 all ye that labor and are heavy laden," for twelve 
 cycling centuries an unceasing ghostly procession has 
 marched from birth to death. 
 
 Theckla, a Christian martyr of the first century, 
 standing in the arena at Antioch, bemoans in her 
 prayer the shame of all women in her unclothing. The 
 clothing of women in the veil of the false prophet is 
 a shame to all womanhood. " The whole life of a Mo- 
 hammedan woman is mirrored in that pathetic Arabic 
 proverb, ' The threshold weeps for forty days whenever 
 a girl is born.' " The spider's web which once saved 
 the life of Mohammed has, as by the hand of a Vulcan, 
 been forged into a chain which in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury in the name of religion dares hold woman, and 
 through her 200,000,000 of mankind, in a singularly 
 hopeless degradation. 
 
 Shintoism, the religion of Japan from time imme- 
 morial, and Buddhism, introduced in 552 of the Chris- 
 tian era, have wrought these many centuries in the 
 Mikado's Empire. While women in Japan are not so 
 pitiably degraded as in India or China, we read in their 
 
WOMAN UNDER THE ETHNIC RELIGIONS. 35 
 
 book of " Instruction for Women," " Woman is the 
 creature of man." " A woman's husband is her God." 
 Concubinage, " divorce, if the wife is not obedient to her 
 husband's parents " or is unkind to a concubine, and the 
 selling of young daughters for prostitution tell the story. 
 
 Among the Ainos, the aboriginal inhabitants of 
 the island of Yesso, the women do not worship the gods, 
 even separately. " The reason commonly given among 
 them is that the men fear the prayers of the women in 
 general, and of their wives in particular."* 
 
 The sacred books of Zoroaster give women a 
 higher place than any other Ethnic religion. Women 
 are given the same religious rites as men ; yet even here 
 " woman's first duty is obedience to her husband, and 
 disobedience is a crime so heinous as to receive punish- 
 ment after death."t 
 
 On the death of a chief in Central Africa hundreds 
 oi his wives are buried alive,J a sacrifice for his conve- 
 nience in the spirit land. 
 
 Miss Mary C. Collins, who has lived many years 
 among the North American Indians, says, " The Indian 
 is a religious man, and it is his religion that makes him 
 cruel." 
 
 The story becomes monotonous. All non-Chris- 
 tian religions degrade women, and as woman is so is 
 all society. To-day the all-sufficient Christian evi- 
 dence is the immeasurable contrast between heathen 
 and Christian society. 
 
 " The v^^orks that I do bear w^itness of Me, 
 
 THAT THE FATHER HATH SENT Me." John 5 : 36. 
 
 * Rev. John Bachelor, Church Missionary Society, 
 t The Vendidas. J Cameron. 
 
36 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 WOMAiV UNDER THE JEWISH AND 
 CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 
 
 ELIZABETH RUNDLE CHARLES. 
 (All rights reserved to the Author.) 
 
 It is with the deepest interest and the keenest 
 sympathy that I respond to the request of my sisters 
 across the sea to say a few words to the great Con- 
 vention of Women from both sides of the sea on the 
 subject of " Woman under the Jewish and Christian 
 Religions." 
 
 The subject naturally divides itself into the ideal 
 set before us in those religions, and the biography and 
 history in which that ideal is carried out. Our chief 
 sources of information must be those two great ancient 
 literatures (written in two languages that have never 
 been dead — still, in a sense, spoken by two living 
 nations) which we bind up together and call one book, 
 " The Book :" and not falsely, because the unity of the 
 divine manifestation is as evident throughout the whole 
 as the variety in the evolutions of human history 
 through which this divine manifestation shines. 
 
 And throughout these varied Hteratures — this one 
 Book — nothing seems more penetrating and lucid than 
 the connection between the relation of God to man and 
 the relation of man to woman. 
 
 We will begin at the beginning, going back be- 
 fore the differentiation of the human race into nations, 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 37 
 
 before the origin of the Jewish people, before the books 
 of the generations of Abraham or Noah. 
 
 Most significant it is that this ancient literature of 
 the most exclusive of nations begins not with Abraham 
 but with Adam : with man as man ; with the common 
 origin of the whole race. The " Gentile " — who, how- 
 ever great and good and wise and devout, was never, 
 on pain of death, to pass the barrier in the temple 
 which the humblest Jewish woman might penetrate — is 
 declared to have been originally created "in the image 
 and likeness of God ;" taken from the same dust, in- 
 spired with the same breath of life, as any Hebrew of 
 the Hebrews. Before all the variations, unity : " In the 
 beginning God created the heaven and the earth." In 
 the beginning " God created man in his own image. 
 In the image of God created he him ; male and female 
 (man and woman) created he them." 
 
 In these magnificent, simple words we have the 
 fullest natural theology, the clearest divine anthropol- 
 ogy. God and nature, God and man. The divine 
 personality of the Creator infinitely and eternally dis- 
 tinct from the creature ; no mere vague interfusion or 
 counteraction of spirit and matter. Not between 
 spirit and matter is the contrast, but between the su- 
 preme personality and things. And, very significandy, 
 the first creature mentioned is light; the light which 
 in her latest word science can as little define as she can 
 define spirit ; not long since written of as a substance, 
 now scarcely even as a force ; an emanation, a vibra- 
 tion, an undulation, a mode of motion, but an emana- 
 tion from what, an undulation of what, none can say ; 
 something which we cannot in itself see or perceive, yet 
 without which we can perceive nothing. 
 
38 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 " Thuslhe story of the material creation, the universe 
 of things, begins with mystery, as well as the story of 
 the spiritual universe, the world of persons. Light 
 dawns on us as indefinable, as undeniable, as life, as 
 the living soul, the personality created in the image of 
 God. 
 
 Next, as to the creation of man, this ancient record 
 states his composite nature : dust and life ; the body 
 and the living soul. And then, entangling itself in no 
 psychological theories, leaving the fact of the interfus- 
 ing of dust and life and soul as it leaves the fact of 
 light, it advances in the differentiation to the his- 
 tory : " Male and female (man and woman) created he 
 them." 
 
 With the existence of man, the creation of a human 
 personality in the image of God, a new significance 
 comes into nature. It becomes a "garden" in relation 
 with man, to " be dressed and kept." It has food to 
 nourish his earthly life ; things " good for food." It 
 has beauty to nourish his spirit, " pleasant to the eyes." 
 And now also moral life, right and wrong enter the 
 world : will and choice ; obedience, only conceivable 
 when disobedience is possible; "thou shalt, and thou 
 shalt not," the " tree of the knowledge of good and 
 evil." Beauty, goodness, truth, meaning, purpose, 
 come into everything. 
 
 The beasts and the birds are brought by God to 
 man (in the delightful grand old childlike story) " to 
 see what he will call them," and "whatever he calls 
 every living creature that is the name thereof." Com- 
 prehension, comparison, sympathy are in this new 
 creature in the likeness of God, for all the rest of the 
 creatures. And yet, amongst them all, he stands 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 39 
 
 alone : none of them, try as the kindest and the clever- 
 est of them might, could comprehend him. With all 
 their beauty and grace, the music of their songs, the 
 skill of their architecture, their delight in each other, 
 their serviceableness to him, there was none who could 
 respond to man. He could name them, but they 
 could not name him. " For Adam was no help meet 
 found." Then, out of man, God " builded " woman, 
 and brought her unto the man ; and human history 
 began. 
 
 The help meet is found. The chord of the true 
 relation between man and woman, man and wife, the 
 fountain of all other human relations, rings out clear 
 and full from the beginning. " Help :" the word is a 
 high word, continually used for the help of God ; no 
 mere echo or repetition, or feeble supplement : " help 
 over against him." She stands before him face to face, 
 side by side. 
 
 " Not undeveloped man, but diverse ; 
 Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 The woman's cause is man's. They rise and sink 
 Together, dwarfed or Godlike, bond or free." 
 
 True and full the perfect chord rings out from the 
 beginning. 
 
 The woman is brought to the man, and then, 
 too soon, the grand choral harmony breaks into dis- 
 cord. 
 
 The creature doubts the Creator. The fallen wo- 
 man, from the helper, becomes the tempter. The fallen 
 man becomes the accuser, excusing himself and re- 
 proaching the Giver with his gift : " The woman thou 
 gavest to be with me gave me of the tree." The 
 Paradise is exchanged for the wilderness, the joyful 
 
40 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 fellow-working- in the garden becomes the toiling in 
 the wilderness, the battling with thistles and thorns. 
 
 What is allegory and what prose in the grand old 
 story may be debated for ever. The fact remains, with 
 all the history and philosophy, theology and anthro- 
 pology folded up in it: man and woman rise and fall 
 together. The fact remains that out of his toil comes 
 the restoration of man ; out of her suffering comes the 
 redemption of the race. 
 
 In the wilderness begins the Family. By the 
 woman, ages after, the promised man, bruising the 
 enemy's head, is " gotten from the Lord ;" the perfect 
 ideal of humanity is at last realized. 
 
 In the infinite tenderness of the divine story, in 
 the infinite resources of divine redemption, it is a 
 woman's voice that breaks the echo of the long and 
 bitter cry of revolt and ruin. Mary's " Be it unto me 
 according to thy word " resolves at last the discord of 
 the serpent's " Hath God said ?" 
 
 And the perfect man, the " second man," the Lord 
 from heaven, amidst so many other redemptions and 
 renewals reasserts the original law of the creation. 
 " Have ye not read that He which made them at the 
 beginning made them male and female ?" man and 
 woman ; renewing also the sacred original law of 
 marriage in the words of welcome of the first man to 
 the first woman, the first husband to the first wife : 
 " For this cause shall a man leave his father and his 
 mother and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall 
 be one flesh." 
 
 " And so these twain, upon the skirts of time, 
 Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 4I 
 
 Self reverent each and reverencing each, 
 
 Distinct in individualities, 
 
 But like each other even as those who love. 
 
 Then comes the statelier Eden back to men ; 
 
 Then reign the world's great bridals chaste and calm ; 
 
 Then springs the crowning race of human kind."* 
 
 The early harmony is found again (chastened and 
 enriched by the discords that have intervened) through 
 the life of perfect service and the death of supreme 
 self-sacrifice, which in glorifying all service and in- 
 spiring all sacrifice have glorified and inspired as never 
 before her whose normal life is essentially service and 
 sacrifice ; and, through womanhood, all humanity. 
 
 But between Eve and Mary comes the great He- 
 brew literature, the story of the family of Abraham 
 and the nation of Israel ; and rarely indeed is the lost 
 chord of the first ideal struck again. 
 
 The women mentioned in the patriarchal story 
 are certainly far from ideal or exemplary. The great 
 original law of marriage, fidelity as absolute for man 
 as for woman, is lost in a tangle of temporary or 
 polygamous connections, with the inevitable result of 
 life lowered in all its relations ; strifes, wrongs, jealous- 
 ies, resentments. The equal help, the ennobling com- 
 panionship, the one sacred uniting love vanish in the 
 mere desire for the perpetuation in one way or other 
 of the family, the stock. And with the degradation of 
 marriage, sacred source and bond of all other relations, 
 all other relations are tangled and ruined. 
 
 When we come to the nation there are indeed 
 some names of women that shine out nobly. In all 
 histories, unfortunately, it is not usually the best wo- 
 men whose names have the widest echo. Andromache's 
 * Tennyson's Princess. 
 
42 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 tender story does not resound through the world like 
 that of Helen of Troy. 
 
 But in the Jewish history there are three names 
 that ring out with trumpet tones : Miriam, Deborah and 
 Esther ; and there are two others, Hannah and Ruth, 
 that penetrate the din of strife with sweet low music of 
 love and peace. 
 
 Miriam, Deborah, Esther ; great national heroines, 
 two of them also poets or prophetesses. The first 
 linked with the birthday of the nation after the tri- 
 umphant crossing of the Red Sea ; the second with the 
 fierce conflicts of the conquest ; the third with the op- 
 pressions and deliverances of the Captivity. 
 
 The first glimpse we have of Minam is as the 
 young sister, faithfully watching the baby brother in 
 the bulrush cradle by the river, with ready wit and 
 fine courage coming forward to the princess to fetch 
 her mother to nurse the child. 
 
 Through the youth of Moses at the court, and 
 the forty years in the wilderness, and the long struggle 
 with Pharaoh for the liberation of the people, we hear 
 nothing more of her. But when the Egyptian host 
 is overthrown, and the sea is passed, then on the 
 Arabian shore Miriam once more appears ; the long, 
 faithful waiting ends in the triumphant battle song as 
 she sounds the timbrel and leads the choral dance, and 
 strikes the exultant antiphon, " Sing ye to the Lord, 
 for he hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his 
 rider hath he thrown into the sea." 
 
 .Not that her faith was always above desponding 
 or murmuring in the weary repetitions of the trials of 
 the long wilderness journey ; but the echo of those 
 murmurs is drowned in the national memory by the 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 43 
 
 faithful watching of the young sister and the triumph- 
 ant song of the aged prophetess. To the last days of 
 the existence of her people in their own land an 
 annual festival was held in honor of Miriam, sister of 
 Moses and prophetess of Israel. 
 
 Deborah stands before us more detached and more 
 original. Not the courage of the men of her race, but 
 the failure of their courage, seems to have enkindled 
 the patriotism which made her a prophetess, a leader 
 and a judge. 
 
 The wife of Lapidoth, to her, under the palm tree, 
 the people came as their judge, acknowledging in her 
 the judicial office, in general opinion least adapted to 
 a woman. No hereditary princess or queen, but one 
 of the judges — the office in all history least official — by 
 divine right of capability and by the response of the 
 heart and judgment of the people. 
 
 Like Joan of Arc, Deborah's patriotism had its 
 roots in pity. . The highways, as we learn from her 
 song, were desolate for fear of the invader ; the cowed 
 and harassed people crept through hidden by-paths ; 
 the villages were deserted ; by the village wells, at the 
 drawing of water, the maidens were hunted down by 
 the marauders, and " not a shield or spear was found " 
 to defend them " among the forty thousand in Israel," 
 until Deborah arose, " a mother in Israel," strong in her 
 motherly pity to protect the weak, strong in her faith 
 in the God of her fathers, which for a time the men of 
 her race seemed to have lost; having chosen instead 
 " new gods," the gods of the conquerers, from whom 
 no inspiration and no organization could come. 
 
 Love was her inspiration, the pity of her motherly 
 heart; love to the Eternal and Almighty, infinite be- 
 
44 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 yond all thought, closer to his people than any of the 
 captains or judges he might send. Her faith and 
 indignant pity aroused the enfeebled wills and enkindled 
 the smouldering faith of her people. The " princes 
 offered themselves willingly." Once more the scattered 
 families, the divided tribes, rose to feel themselves a 
 nation. She found a leader in Barak ; but evidendy, to 
 the end, the inspiration and the organization of nation 
 and army were from her. Without her Barak could 
 not plan a campaign ; would not go forth to the battle. 
 She led them up to the heights, she sent them down at 
 the right moment to the plains to encounter the nine 
 hundred chariots of Sisera. The foe fled, were cut 
 down by the pursuers, swept away by the flooded 
 Kishon, till none was left save Sisera fleeing desperate- 
 ly to the Kenite tent to be slain there by the hand of 
 another woman. 
 
 Then arose from Deborah's Hps the song of vic- 
 tory ; not a mere response, as with Miriam, but a grand 
 choral patriotic battle-song, sung in responses from 
 men to maidens, from tribe to tribe ; a hymn of praise 
 for the families returning in peace to their homes, for 
 the nation returning to the eternal God of their fathers. 
 The last strophe of the song reveals the source of 
 Deborah's strength, beneath the motherly pity, beneath 
 the fiery patriotism : " They that love Him shall be as 
 the sun as he goeth forth in his strength." Loving 
 him, the Eternal, the God of her fathers, that brave 
 woman had shone forth on her people " as the sun in 
 his strength." The clouds and storms were scattered. 
 And the land had rest forty years. 
 
 Then comes an era of national splendor. The 
 judges under the oaks or the palm-tree are succeeded 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 45 
 
 by kings reigning in great cities, with palaces as mag- 
 nificent as those of the kings of the nations around. 
 Instead of the curtained tabernacle on the hillside arose 
 the temple, with its cloisters and courts crowning the 
 heights of Jerusalem. 
 
 And then division of the nation, degradation of the 
 worship, faithlessness in the family life, faithlessness of 
 the nation pledged to its God ; the temple destroyed, 
 the city ruined, the whole nation scattered hither and 
 thither ; exiled and captive, yet again and again by the 
 power inherent in the faith, by the buoyancy innate in 
 the race, rising to high places among their oppressors. 
 Recovering, and beaten back, successful, and hated, as 
 so often in that wonderful Jewish story, until another 
 great national peril called forth another great national 
 heroine : Esther, the queen, risking death for her people 
 in the palace of her husband, King Ahasuerus, the 
 Xerxes of the Greek war.* 
 
 From her lips no prophetic hymn, no victorious 
 battle-song comes down to us, but imperishable, simple 
 words of self-sacrifice far greater than these : " If I per- 
 ish, I perish." Not in the excitement of the battie-field, 
 yet brave as Leonidas at Marathon, in the home, in 
 the palace chamber she encountered the deadly peril 
 alone, and won the day, and saved her people from 
 destruction. And for thousands of years, through the 
 Captivity and Return, and the long Dispersion of the 
 ages since, her people have kept the festival of the 
 deliverance she had wrought. 
 
 Lofty and varied are the gifts recognized and the 
 services rendered by these three : prophecy, poetry, 
 faculty to rule, to judge and to organize, courage to 
 * Dean Stanley, "Jewish Church." 
 
46 WOMAN IN MISSIONS.. 
 
 sustain a nation that had lost its courage, faith to revive 
 the faith in which the nation had failed, heroism to 
 brave a despot alone, unaided. 
 
 What then is the moral ideal upheld in these three ? 
 An exalted faith in God, self-sacrifice for Israel — 
 for the nation ; pity, courage, constancy. Beyond the 
 nation, and the boundless devotion due to it, there were 
 enemies to whom no pity was due : horse and rider 
 were overwhelmed in the sea, or swept away by the 
 river Kishon, the fugitive was murdered sleeping in 
 the tent by the hostess who had welcomed him, the 
 Persian foes were massacred ruthlessly with the per- 
 mission of Ahasuerus (as they would doubtless have 
 ruthlessly massacred the Jews), a whole family was 
 hanged on the gallows sixty feet high prepared by 
 their father for the queen's uncle. 
 
 For Israel there was devotion without bounds ; 
 for those outside Israel, or hostile to Israel, no touch 
 of mercy. The way is far between this and Joan of 
 Arc pausing in pursuit of the enemy and dismounting 
 to rest the head of a dying foe on her knee. 
 
 With Ruth and Hannah we come to a different 
 strain. These pathetic stories give us glimpses into the 
 depths of the common human life flowing beneath the 
 conflicts of races and rehgions. 
 
 The story of Ruth the Moabitess blossoms like a 
 fragrant flower amid the stony desert of strife. It is 
 good to think of her name in the genealogy of Jesus, 
 Son of David, Son of Mary, Son of man. In all history 
 there is not a tenderer story than this of the young 
 widowed woman cleaving to her husband's widowed 
 mother, sharing her poverty and bereavement, embra- 
 cing her faith, and going back to sustain the desolate 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 47 
 
 heart in the old home among a race she had never 
 known. Ruth is not ranked among the sweet singers 
 of Israel, yet no sweeter music has come down to us 
 from the past than her tender words, " Entreat me not 
 to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee. 
 Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I 
 will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy 
 God my God." 
 
 And again, Hannah, poet and prophetess through 
 a mxjther's love and joy, sending her son's birthday 
 song through the ages till its notes blend as a tender 
 prelude with the Magnificat of Mary, the blessed mother 
 of Jesus. And so the Jewish story passes on through 
 storm and sunshine, day and night, to its fulfilment. 
 
 Throughout the centuries the ancient ritual had 
 borne witness to the holiness of God and to the separa- 
 ting, desecrating nature of sin. From age to age the 
 Jewish prophets had proclaimed the infinity and omni- 
 potence of God in comparison with man — " all the in- 
 habitants of the earth as grasshoppers before him ;" 
 and also, at the same time, the opposite truth, of the 
 close union of God with man, the marriage of the Eter- 
 nal to the chosen nation, which made idolatiy, with 
 them, as the infidelity of a wife. And between those 
 opposite poles of truth, gradually, clearer and clearer, 
 had arisen the vision of the Elect One — the Servant, the 
 Son : Son of God, Son of man ; King and Sufferer ; as 
 a Judge on his throne, as a Lamb dumb before his 
 shearers; redeeming, atoning, reigning— until at last 
 this Mediator appears, this Hnk between the Eternal 
 and Infinite and the children of a day ; this atonement 
 between the Holy and the sinful: Immanuel; " God 
 with us." And in words which must have had the 
 
48 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 deepest significance to the Jewish people, to those who 
 week by week listened to the appeals of the prophets, 
 the forerunner of the Christ, the " voice crying in the 
 wilderness," proclaims him to be not only Son of God 
 and Lamb of God, but " He that hath the Bride." 
 
 The morning of joy had dawned at last. We feel 
 it in every breath of the life-giving air, in every song of 
 the universal hopes, in the glow of its love, in the stir 
 of its new movement, in the expansion of its horizons. 
 Night, the ■ divider, has fled. The barriers are melting 
 away between man and God, between nation and na- 
 tion, between man and woman. 
 
 And in nothing is the newness of life of this new 
 day more manifest than in the women who are revealed 
 in its morning light. 
 
 The long wail of revolt is broken by Mary's " Be- 
 hold the handmaid of the Lord!" The great matin 
 hymn, the Magnificat, is sung by a woman's voice. 
 
 Glance for a moment at the beautiful familiar sto- 
 ries in the gospels. In the first group are the two aged 
 women, Elisabeth in the home and Anna in the temple ; 
 the sunset of human life and of the ancient world melt- 
 ing into the dawn of the new. But Mary, the virgin 
 mother, is altogether of the new day^ — no echo, but a 
 new voice ; mother of Him who is the life of all the Uv- 
 ing, crowned with the blessings of all the beatitudes : 
 " blessed among women ;" blessed as " she who be- 
 lieved ;" blessed as she who " heard the word of God 
 and kept it;" blessed in her faithfulness unto death. 
 She leads the glad company we know so well : Martha, 
 who ministered to the Master's earthly needs; Mary, 
 who sat at his feet and understood his words, and 
 brought the precious ointment for his burial ; Mary of 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 49 
 
 Magdala, last at the cross, first at the sepulchre, first 
 messenger of the resurrection ; the penitents whose 
 names, tenderly veiled firom history, we shall first hear 
 fi-om the book p{ life ; the cosdy gifts of the alabaster 
 boxes, both reproached by man, one for the stain of 
 too much sin, one for the waste of too much love, both 
 accepted by the Master. What a range, what heights 
 and depths, what varieties of condition and character 
 the brief story embraces ! 
 
 What is it, then, that makes this new life so new in 
 the world ? 
 
 Is it not, primarily, that their Christianity is Christ? 
 It is devotion, not to a cause merely, or a party, or a 
 nation, or a race, that is its inspiration, but to the living 
 Person, Son of God and Son of man, perfect Ideal of 
 man, perfect manifestation of God, Redeemer, Master 
 Friend. 
 
 Women are often reproached with regarding per- 
 sons rather than causes. In the lower sense this may 
 sometimes be true. The lowest gossip as well as high- 
 est history gathers around persons. But in the higher 
 sense we may trust, we may be sure, it will be always 
 true. History is, in one of its noblest aspects, the " es- 
 sence of biography," because " personality is the core 
 of reality ;" because without personality love is impos- 
 sible, and " living love is that good which is the begin- 
 ning and end of the whole universe;" because "the 
 true reality is not matter, and is still less idea, but is the 
 living, personal Spirit of God and the world of personal 
 spirits which he has created. They only are the place 
 in which good and good things exist."* 
 
 Woman's work must always be in great measure 
 * Lotz, " Microcosmos." 
 
 WomaQ in ^s^lona. /i 
 
50 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 to recall from abstractions to persons, from "causes" 
 or "societies" to human beings; to the men, women, 
 children, suffering, sinful, redeemed, restored, victori- 
 ous, of whom societies consist and whose "cause "is 
 the cause of God. 
 
 It is by the revelation of love as the deepest word. 
 the central truth of the universe, through the glorifica- 
 tion of service by Him who was among us as he that 
 serveth, that woman has been and is being redeemed, 
 liberated, understood, ennobled. The ideal of woman- 
 hood — not of poor, weak, crippled womanhood, but of 
 womanhood as God made it ; that is, a life that has no 
 meaning except in relation to God and to others — has 
 become the ideal of humanity, a life whose essence is 
 love sacrificing and serving ; renouncing when renun- 
 ciation is the way to serve ; ruling when ruling is the 
 way to serve; rebuking when rebuking is the way to 
 serve ; silentiy suffering when patience is the way to 
 serve ; fearlessly fighting when resisting is the way to 
 serve ; dying when death is the way to serve. 
 
 And after this group, gathered round the child 
 Jesus, the Healer, the Redeemer, the dying Saviour, 
 the risen Lord, what comes next ? 
 
 Is it a step downward from the last chapter of the 
 Gospels to the first of the Acts of the Apostles, from 
 the last visible steps of Jesus Chiist on earth to the 
 first visible steps of his church in the world ? Pic- 
 torially it may certainly seem a step downward into 
 prose and the commonplace ; from the mother and 
 the Magdalene at the cross, from the " Mary " and 
 " Rabboni " at the sepulchre, it may look like a de- 
 scent into very ordinary prose to Dorcas, sewing her 
 coats and garments for the poor widows. But we know 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. $1 
 
 it is really a step onward — from receiving to giving, 
 from being healed to healing, from the morning songs 
 of rapturous welcome to the toiling and battling for a 
 lost and suffering world through the burden and heat 
 of the day ; the glow of the morning, and the tones of 
 the " Mary " and the " Rabboni," the " Unto Me " and 
 " I am with you all the days," meanwhile, indeed, ma- 
 king melody in the heart for ever, transfiguring the 
 soberest prose into poetry : Dorcas, Lois and Eunice, 
 Priscilla, Lydia, being still in heart at the feet of Jesus, 
 listening to his words, adoring at his cross, at his empty 
 sepulchre hearing his voice, for not once only, but once 
 and for ever, the Christianity of the women of Chris- 
 tendom is Christ Through that one perfect Ideal of 
 humanity, through that one perpetual living Presence, 
 they are linked with all mankind. Not by the far-off 
 commission of a founder, but by the living voice of 
 their Lord they are sent forth day by day, hour by 
 hour, with the command, " Go to my brothers," and the 
 benediction, " In that ye did it unto the least of these 
 my brothers ye did it unto Me." 
 
 The stories of the women in the Acts of the Apos- 
 des are indeed typical : Dorcas leading the great army 
 of succor for the poor and needy who, through all ad- 
 vances in civilization and all forms of government, seem 
 to be " always with us ;" Priscilla, the wife, the efficient 
 "help over against" Aquila in the tent-making, and in 
 the instructing more perfecdy the eloquent Alexan- 
 drian ; Lois and Eunice with the home training — most 
 inalienable of all " the rights of women," most sacred 
 of all their dudes — the faith of the mother breathed 
 into the son, the Holy Scriptures wrought into the 
 child's mind and heart with the tenderest memories at 
 
52 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 a mother's knee ; Lydia, " seller of purple," taking her 
 honorable place in the world's work, generous hostess 
 of apostles, fearless succorer of martyrs ; Phoebe, Persis, 
 succoring many, bestowing much labor; the "elect 
 lady " with her children " walking in the truth," ad- 
 dressed with equal courtesy by the aged apostle: the 
 daughters of Philip, prophetesses, carrying on into the 
 new era the inspiring music of Miriam and Deborah, 
 the victorious batde-songs of the wider warfare and 
 the nobler conquests of the cross. All gifts of mind 
 and heart, all uses, administrative or educational, all 
 vocations are there, having their centre and roots in 
 the family and the home, yet expanding beyond it, 
 working through it, to the family of God, the lost 
 sheep throughout the world. The home always the 
 mightiest instrument and the truest model; with its 
 divine classifications, not of " like with like," but of 
 " like in difference," its inter-dependent inequalities of 
 age and sex and relationship ; and, nevertheless, the 
 world being broken and imperfect as it is even in its 
 homes, the imperfect homes ever supplemented, the 
 corrupt homes remedied, by " conventions," societies, 
 communities, sisterhoods, organizations of all kinds. 
 
 The germ of all true woman's work is indeed in 
 these histories of the women of the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles, the earliest church history. What are they but 
 the leaders in that great army of liberation, that great 
 company of healers ever needed on all the battle- 
 fields ? 
 
 The subsequent centuries work it out ; through 
 martyrdoms, in hospitals, through chivalry and monas- 
 tic orders, throughout the middle ages, sometimes 
 marred by Manichean misunderstandings of divme 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 53 
 
 natural laws but never losing the great Christian ideal 
 of service and sacrifice, until, at the era of the Refor- 
 mation, once more the home takes its true place as the 
 highest type of human life for those within ; for those 
 without, the fullest, sweetest fountain of life and succor 
 to the world around. Throughout Christendom, on 
 both sides of all ecclesiastical barriers, from St. Vincent 
 de Paul and the sisters of charity to Elizabeth Fry in 
 the prisons, the work of mercy flows ceaselessly on, 
 fuller and stronger. 
 
 Until now, at this day of fullest hope and widest 
 openings, not a field of fruitful work is closed to us, for 
 redressing wrongs or relieving misery, for redeeming 
 the worst, and for lifting up the best to their highest 
 development and fullest beauty. Still indeed we have 
 to remember that the world, in its quietest shelters as 
 in its widest spaces, is always a battle-field between 
 right and wrong, the better and the best: that we 
 never drift lazily into victory, that in the very homes 
 which are so sacred the batde against " family egoism " 
 is needed ; that unless the home is a fountain of living 
 waters for the world around, it soon becomes a stag- 
 nant pool, breeding malaria for its inmates. 
 
 All fields are indeed open to us : home missions, 
 foreign missions, city slums, village stagnations. The 
 rights are won if love inspires us to use them nobly, if 
 we never forget how much of woman's work consists 
 in raising " politics and economics " to their true place 
 as " branches of ethics," and so making them living ; in 
 recalling the world from idolatry of things to love of 
 the persons for whom things exist. For we are indeed 
 far from being liberated from the perils of idolatry. 
 We are always making and building ideals, theories, 
 
54 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 formulas, laws, and then letting them become endued 
 with a monstrous automatic, vampire life with which 
 they clutch and crush our own. We heap up money in 
 millions till the fertilizing rills which should irrigate the 
 land are chilled into icebergs which freeze and crush 
 our own souls; we make poor-laws to help the poor 
 and let them be entangled into bonds to degrade and 
 fetter the poor ; we make hospitals to relieve the 
 suffering and let them stiffen into mere medical 
 schools ; we build churches to lift hearts up to heaven 
 and let them become mere roofs to shut the heavens 
 out. Nothing is too low to be worshipped if it is 
 gilded by self-love ; nothing is too sacred to become 
 an idol if we turn from the living Presence of him who 
 lives and speaks through it, to the things, the society, 
 the dogma itself — to any " It " from him. 
 
 All fields are indeed now open to us, of science 
 and art, cf philanthropic and religious work. We may 
 speak as freely as Deborah and Miriam, where and 
 when we will, in any cause we embrace : women may 
 sing to touch the hearts of thousands ; they may write 
 books to move, to uplift and strengthen the hearts of 
 millions, with the advantage that people need not read 
 the books unless they like, and that the audience of a 
 book is spoken to one by one, in hours of loneliness or 
 need, pain or sorrow, when the heart is most ready to 
 be moved. 
 
 One woman's voice may bring hope into prisons 
 where all who entered seemed to leave hope behind ; 
 the hand of another may give a death-blow to slavery : 
 another may be inspired by such thoughtful compassion 
 for the sick and wounded as to inaugurate a new era 
 in the warfare with disease and the unhealthy con- 
 
UNDER JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. 55 
 
 editions leading to it, and to raise nursing from a casual 
 resource of any one who wants employment into a 
 fine art and skilled craft of healing ; another may be 
 possessed by such a passion of succor and salvation 
 for the lowest and most wretched as to give to thou- 
 sands of fellow-workers a new meaning and inspiration 
 to the old divine words, " The Son of man is come 
 to save that which was lost :" another may arrest a 
 nation on the fatal downward path of legalizing vice ; 
 another may take from a nation's hand the posion cup 
 of intemperance ; and all this not by neglecting simple 
 home duties but in fulfilling them, not apart from the 
 husbands and the brothers and the sons, but inspiring 
 them, and with their aid : the mother's heart stirred 
 by the loss of her own son to redress the wrongs of the 
 slave mothers ; the noble woman who dared to brave 
 reproach and scorn to rescue, her nation from the 
 shame of recognizing that there must be a class of out- 
 cast women, sustained throughout by the chivalrous 
 support of a husband as gende as any woman.* 
 
 If indeed the courage of the men of a race fail in 
 righting any wrong or battling with any iniquity, if 
 among the forty thousand of Israel not a shield or 
 spear is found to defend the right, doubtless to the end 
 some Deborah will arise, in love to God and the op- 
 pressed, to fight the battle as a mother in Israel. But 
 we intend to fight together, man and woman, husband 
 and wife, brother and sister, not in mean competition, 
 still less in insane antagonism, but in glorious co- 
 operation, side by side ; woman for ever the help-meet 
 " over against " man. 
 
 We have a glorious company to follow. Century 
 *Canon Butler and his wife, Josephine Butler. 
 
56 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 after century they come, the women of Christianity, 
 from every section of Christendom, through every age 
 of the church, fulfiUing the life of Christ, filling up the 
 sufferings of Christ; healing, saving, teaching, leading 
 onward and upward ; refusing to recognize that any 
 need be outcasts, to despair of rescuing from any 
 depths, or of lifting to any heights ; translating the 
 prose of the world through divine and human love into 
 poetry ; transfiguring the wildernesses of the world 
 by patience and much labor into paradises. All the 
 buildings look ugly while the scaffolding is still up. 
 All the battles look deadly prose while they are being 
 fought, largely by the rank and file ; fought through 
 failures and mistakes and irritating wounds, through 
 blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The palms and 
 the garlands come afterwards, and not always visibly, 
 or to those who have fought the hardest. For, extend 
 the glorious muster-roll as we will, we always end with 
 " time would fail me to tell " and " the great multitude 
 no man number." 
 
 Christianity is the ennobling and fulfilling of wo- 
 manhood because it is the manifestation of supreme 
 love and the glorification of service ; because the ideal 
 of redeemed humanity is revealed in "the Bride of the 
 Lamb " sharing for ever the fruitful service and victor- 
 ous rule of the self-sacrificing Love which is on the 
 throne of the universe. 
 
ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 5/ 
 
 HISTORICAL PAPERS ON WOMAN^S 
 MISSIONS. 
 
 ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 
 
 BY CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE. 
 
 In being asked to describe the work of English 
 women in foreign missions I have received a great 
 honor. I am. conscious of inabiUty to do justice to so 
 wide, and often so touching a subject, but I can only 
 beg for indulgence and hope that my incompetence 
 may be excused. 
 
 It is remarkable that the first female missionaries 
 on record were Englishwomen. I mean those who went 
 for the sake of the mission; for I do not reckon Nonna, 
 who was sold as a slave in Iberia and taught her own- 
 ers the gospel, nor even St. Bridget, who was a native 
 of Ireland, where she aided gready in the mission of 
 St. Patrick. 
 
 But it was the English St. Boniface who, while 
 endeavoring to convert the Germans, first felt the need 
 of the cooperation of good women who might instruct 
 their sisters in those homely arts and gentie habits 
 without which there was littie hope of Christianity 
 prevailing. He therefore wrote to the Abbess of Wim- 
 borne, in Dorsetshire, to send him some of her nuns, 
 of whom Walburga, the sister of one of his priests, was 
 to be the chief, and another whom he specially asked 
 
58 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 for was his own near kinswoman, Lioba, or love. Wal- 
 burga left a deep impression, and both are revered as 
 saints, but we know little of their individual work, and 
 full a thousand years had passed before the church 
 began again to lengthen her cords and strengthen her 
 stakes. 
 
 Spanish and French women had been at work as 
 nuns in South America and Canada, but it was not 
 till, as we may truly say, the spirit of love for the 
 heathen descended upon William Carey that much 
 systematic attempt was made to send out missions. 
 " If the Lord should make windows in heaven, could 
 this be?" expressed the first feelings of an aged minister 
 on hearing his bold proposal to endeavor to bring in 
 the heathen. It was just a century ago that this devoted 
 man set forth from England with his family and was 
 refused a resting-place by the East India Company, 
 who were scrupulous to a hurtful degree as to their 
 engagement not to interfere with the religion of the 
 natives. He could only make his headquarters at the 
 Danish factory of Serampore. Poor Mrs. Carey, an 
 uneducated woman, without enthusiasm, who had only 
 followed her husband from necessity, lost her senses 
 in the new and trying life, and never was anything but 
 a burden and a drag ; but Mrs. Marshman, the wife of 
 his colleague, was a true helper, both by precept and 
 the example of a true Christian life. Indeed it was in 
 that family that Havelock acquired his deeper serious 
 impressions. 
 
 Missionaries had begun from that time to be sent 
 forth. The great and ancient Society for the Propaga- 
 tion of the Gospel at first held its chief duty to be to 
 provide for the needs of the English colonists, which 
 
ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 59 
 
 did indeed rapidly outrun its powers, so that perhaps 
 it was impossible for the work among the heathen not 
 to come to the hands of the Church Missionary Society, 
 and of non-conformist societies. 
 
 The honor that is due to these long-suffering wo- 
 men of all denominations is unspeakable. There have 
 been heroines among them, such as the two wives who, 
 left for a time by their husbands on one of the Pacific 
 islands, heard that a cannibal feast was about to take 
 place, obtained a boat, and rushed upon the savages, 
 heedless of the danger of provoking them, and suc- 
 ceeded in saving one victim though they were too late 
 for the other. Mrs. Gordon, after patient years of 
 work with her husband in the Isle of Erromanga, found 
 the minds of the people turned against them, perhaps 
 because they had threatened the country with divine 
 wrath if the wicked and cruel customs were persisted 
 in, so that when a fatal attack of measles set in it was 
 supposed to be their work. A party of the heathens 
 came up to their huts. Some detained Mrs. Gordon 
 among the trees while her husband was cut down with 
 tomahawks, and, happily before she knew his fate, 
 another killed her with two blows on neck and back. 
 Bishop Patteson read the burial service over their 
 graves some weeks later. They were of the Scottish 
 Free Church and born in Nova Scotia, and their mar- 
 tyrdom was on May 20, 1861. 
 
 But these great events were only incidents in the 
 history of what many and many a missionary's wife 
 has had to endure day by day. Fresh from the com- 
 forts and cleanliness of an English home she has had 
 to go out with her husband among wild races, with 
 nothing of civilized life save the small supply they 
 
6o WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 could carry with them in boxes. Generally on arriving 
 they have had no shelter but a filthy hut full of curious 
 savages, until a rough abode could be put up with 
 their own hands, and there in some cases the least dis- 
 play of the most ordinary articles is a signal for rob- 
 bery by the natives, or significant hints, if not demands, 
 from their chiefs. The wife longs to teach and raise 
 the women around her, but she has to attend to her 
 husband's comfort, wash, cook, and do all for him with 
 far fewer conveniences than any cottager in a civihzed 
 country, feeling all the time that home comfort and 
 ease of mind are essential to his work and health, and 
 thus absolutely to his efficiency. Yet she does teach 
 and help with all her might, showing by her example 
 what it is to be a pure, self-devoted, faithful Christian 
 woman, and beginning to awaken the aspirations of 
 those around her. Often the birth of children adds to 
 her sufferings and difficulties, and unnumbered are 
 those innocent victims to climate and want of proper 
 food who lie in unnamed graves in Polynesia and 
 Africa, having truly, though unknowingly, died for the 
 spread of the Gospel. 
 
 Second only in number to these children are their 
 mothers. There is no roll on earth to reckon up the 
 young wives and mothers who sank under their toils ; 
 but we cannot take up a mission journal without find- 
 ing that either the leader or one of his companions had 
 to mourn for his young wife. She had gone out, devo- 
 ting herself and full of hope, to find the toil beyond her 
 strength and the climate fatal, and to die, happy if she 
 did not leave a babe to grieve its father's heart till it 
 was laid beside her. Noble women these were, with 
 hearts given to fulfil their Lord's command, and truly 
 
ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 6l 
 
 as much martyrs as though they had perished by sword 
 or steel. 
 
 Other tongues and other pens, however, speak of 
 the work of these persons, of various Christian com- 
 munions. The English Church herself has a far larger 
 and wider scope of mission work than is known or 
 guessed at except by experts. She has her emissaries 
 in no less than eighty or eighty-one dioceses, begin- 
 ning from 1720, and gradually extending the work 
 from the British colonies to the hitherto untrodden 
 fields. The primary work of the Society for the Prop- 
 agation of the Gospel was among the colonists, though 
 it began to gather in the natives and to extend its bor- 
 ders, while the Church Missionary Society began with 
 heathen lands, each establishing clergy and schools 
 wherever their emissaries went, the clergymen's wives 
 doing their share according to their powers and oppor- 
 tunities, and ladies joining them to assist in school- 
 keeping. 
 
 When George Augustus Selwyn set forth to New 
 Zealand he carried with him a very effective assistant 
 in his wife. Many of the Maoris were by this time 
 nominal Christians, and her work was to train the 
 women and girls so as to fit them to be wives to the 
 native catechists and clergy and to raise them above 
 being the bearers of all burdens — so that a chief was 
 seen riding across a river on t-he shoulders of his wife 
 to save his new patent-leather boots ! Sir William 
 Martyn, the judge, was the head for many years of 
 the theological college for native clergy, and his wife 
 was a most useful assistant. Her letters, as well as 
 Mrs. Selwyn 's, give most amusing descriptions of the 
 life of teaching. Hers are published as a narrative by 
 
62 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and 
 range from very early days to those of comparative civ- 
 ilization. In what was called Heki's rebellion, caused 
 by a quarrel about surveying for a road, the wives of 
 the clergy had to flee to Auckland and the adjacent 
 parts, and one, looking from the window as a wild 
 troop of Maoris went by, exclaimed, " There 's my best 
 Sunday bonnet"— on the head of one of the rebels. 
 
 But there never was personal danger at this time, 
 though in the rising of the Hau Haus, which was a 
 revolt against Christianity, two clergymen and their 
 wives were captured, and one priest was put to death 
 to fulfil the demands of some terrible old superstition. 
 The others were rescued by the personal interference 
 of the daundess bishop. 
 
 We pass on to the Cape of Good Hope and South 
 Africa, not without a tribute to Mrs. Gray, the wife of 
 the bishop of Cape Town. One who knew her well 
 says she was " the truest helpmeet that ever lived ; one 
 of those rare people who will point out the up-hill way, 
 if it is the right one, and encourage her husband to 
 take it instead of the easier path round. Her great love 
 never made her shrink from suffering for him, and she 
 would have encouraged him to go to the stake." No 
 doubt she gave her life for the work, for her illness was 
 brought on by accompanying him on his visitations and 
 acting as his secretary. She was the architect of most 
 of the churches in the colony. 
 
 Miss Katharine Barter went out under them, ho- 
 ping to do native work, and succeeded in isolated cases. 
 Her " Home-life in Africa" and "Adventures of a Plain 
 Woman " give a curious picture of the Kaffirs and her 
 doings among them. 
 
ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 63 
 
 The huge diocese was divided, and in 1853 Bishop 
 Colenso was chosen to the see of Natal in ignorance of 
 his heterodox opinions. That he, as well as his wife 
 and daughter, had a deep affection for the Kaffirs there 
 is, however, no doubt. He had a school for the young 
 chiefs in his own house, and such was the devotion of 
 Mrs. Colenso to the cause that she actually washed the 
 feet of these lads every night, finding it impossible to 
 trust any one else to do it ; and Kaffir human nature is 
 hardly tolerable to European noses in close quarters 
 without such precautions. 
 
 When the diocese of Natal was formed, a young 
 widow named Henrietta Woodrow offered herself for 
 the work at Durban. There her beginning was with a 
 little orphan home for English children; but while learn- 
 ing the Kaffir language she so managed to speak to 
 those who came to her that her interpreter said they 
 went away " with tears in their heart." After a time 
 she married a Scotsman, Robert Robertson, who had 
 been ordained by the bishop of Cape Town, and they 
 settled on a grant from Government upon the Umlazi 
 River, where they gathered Kaffirs about them — or- 
 phans, children given by their parents and older con- 
 verts — and did their best to Christianize and civilize 
 them, though in the case of girls the custom of buying 
 wives with cows was a terrible hindrance, for no man 
 could call his wife his own till her price in cattle had 
 been paid, and even then he was sorely tempted to ob- 
 tain more wives if his means increased. 
 
 Later Mr. and Mrs. Robertson moved farther into 
 the country, forming a considerable setdement, called 
 Kwamagwaza, or the preaching-place, where they had 
 a church, several Christian married couples, numbers 
 
64 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 of children trusted to them for education, and numerous 
 refugees from the free country who had been "smelt 
 out " as guilty of witchcraft, and would have been ruth- 
 lessly massacred at home. Indeed Mr. Robertson had 
 to extort permission to keep them from Cetewayo, or 
 they would have been murdered and his settlement 
 broken up. Mrs. Robertson, though in very feeble 
 health, was the life and soul of the mission, teaching, 
 influencing, winning souls, making the wild women and 
 girls gentle, helpful Christians. Her exceeding value 
 was only thoroughly known when in 1863 she was 
 taken away, being crushed by the upsetting of a wagon 
 on her way to Durban, protecting to the last breath a 
 tiny Kaffir boy who was in the wagon with her and 
 was unhurt. 
 
 Nearly at the same time that her venture began, 
 Charles Frederick Mackenzie, the youngest son of one 
 of Sir Walter Scott's friends, was chosen as archdeacon 
 of Natal, and took out with him his elder sister Anne. 
 She was soon most deeply interested in the mission, 
 and indeed the eldest, motherly sister, Mrs. Dundas. 
 had written to him before he went out that tlie tone of 
 the whole family would be raised by his undertaking 
 it. Alice, the younger sister, soon joined the two, and 
 they found a home on the Umlahli River, in the neigh- 
 borhood of numerous Kaffir kraals of beehive-shaped 
 huts as well as near an English camp and a good many 
 scattered English colonists. Their first abode was a 
 mud-built erection, with perpendicular sides and a 
 veranda, with two rooms, one the chapel, the other the 
 living room ; and their bedrooms were beehive huts. 
 The archdeacon's Sunday was spent in riding about to 
 perform five different services, and in the week he and 
 
ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 65 
 
 his sisters kept school, one for the colonists' children, 
 who used to arrive on ox-back, and one for the Kaffirs, 
 old and young; dealing with them on the pattern ot 
 the Robertsons, who often paid the Seaforth home a 
 visit bringing with them the whole family of converts 
 and adopted children, whom they durst not leave. 
 Anne Mackenzie had the frailest possible health, and at 
 hrst lived chiefly to teach the whites; but Alice, " the 
 black sister," was devoted to the Kaffirs, and when her 
 brother and sister went to England on ecclesiastical 
 business she remained to help in Bishop Colenso's 
 black college. 
 
 While in England Archdeacon Mackenzie was 
 chosen missionary bishop, to head the mission sent out 
 to the Zambesi by the universities in the zeal excited 
 by the appeals of Dr. Livingstone. The two sisters 
 were ready to cast in their lot with him, and when he 
 went forward to prepare the way Anne followed, to- 
 gether with Mrs. Burrup, the young wife of one of his 
 clergy. Alas ! when, almost dead with fever, they went 
 up the sluggish river in a boat it was only to find that 
 they actually had overshot the grave where Bishop 
 Mackenzie was lying at the confluence of the Ruo, and 
 that Mr. Burrup had only survived him a short time. 
 Anne returned to England, broken down with fever 
 and constandy suffering, yet she became in her quiet 
 chamber an absolute mother of missions, devoting her- 
 self above all to the foundation of a Zulu bishopric in 
 memory of her brother and to carry on his earlier work. 
 This was her primary object in pubUshing a little mag- 
 azine called the " Net Cast into Many Waters," but it 
 was the organ by which she made known, and obtained 
 means for supplying, the thousand and one needments 
 
 Woman in Uissiona. S 
 
^ WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 of missionaries, from church bells or altar-cloths doM-n 
 to pictures, wedding-rings and thimbles, giving patterns 
 for the varieties of clothes for converts, and collect- 
 ing them when made. The charm of her sweetness 
 and repressed enthusiasm had a great power of 
 keeping up interest in missions until 1877, when at 
 her death she left the work in a far more advanced 
 and organized condition than when she began the 
 work. 
 
 The Ladies' Association, in connection with the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, had been 
 formed with perhaps a wider scope than the " Net" had 
 covered. It reaches into all the dioceses in connection 
 with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and 
 the Church Missionary Society attends to the needs of 
 the missions connected with them. Almost every place 
 in England has a working party, generally in Lent, for 
 sending out clothes to the converts, and a great many 
 persons and schools or villages collectively subscribe 
 for the maintenance of a native scholar at one or other 
 of the orphanages or schools. Requests for special 
 needs are circulated in the magazines and often an- 
 swered. Funds for the maintenance of native teachers 
 are also supplied by this agency and are much needed. 
 
 The cause of sisterhoods has triumphed, and it 
 began to be felt that a more certain supply of female 
 assistants could through them be obtained than through 
 missionaries' families or volunteers. Some of the sis- 
 ters from Lydia Sellon's primary home at Plymouth 
 were the first to go out with Bishop Staley to Honolu- 
 lu, but Hawaii being already Christian they hardly 
 come under the head of missionaries, though they 
 found it important to teach litde girls to nurse dolls in 
 
ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 6-] 
 
 order to persuade them when they grew to woman's 
 estate that it was more desirable to fondle a baby than 
 a puppy or a little pig. Two little maidens whom they 
 sent to England were the great delight and amusement 
 of Dr. Pusey in his old age. 
 
 Dean Douglas, of Cape Town, with the sanction of 
 his bishop, decided to endeavor to form a sisterhood at 
 the Home of St. George for the many needs of Cape 
 Town, a terrible place, with all the evils of a harbor and 
 garrison town aggravated by those of an extraordina- 
 rily mixed population — Kaffir, Hottentot, Dutch, Eng- 
 lish and Malay. Orphans left by unsuccessful colonists 
 were numerous, and had only been provided for by be- 
 ing sent to prison, till a good lady, Mary Arthur, took 
 up their cause, and actually maintained those whom she 
 adopted by going out to give lessons as a music mis- 
 tress. 
 
 Dean Douglas was appointed to the bishopric of 
 Bombay and had left Africa before the arrival of the 
 sisters ; but they worked under Bishop Gray, at the 
 many kinds of missions needed, until his death, when it 
 was found difficult to keep up the number of sisters, 
 and it was therefore affiHated to the All Saints sister- 
 hood in London, by whom the supply of workers has 
 been filled up for the multifarious labors of Cape Town : 
 schools for the gentr}'-, and for the poorer English, also 
 for Kaffirs, and orphanages, hospital work, and homes 
 for penitents. There is a sisterhood of the Resurrec- 
 tion, numbering fifteen, at Grahamstown. 
 
 Africa also finds work for sisters of charity from 
 St. Raphael's, Bristol, and for deaconesses in KafTra- 
 ria. Miss Lawrence and, later. Miss Allen have kept a 
 missionary school and managed a hospital in Madagas- 
 
68 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 car with much effect and success, though with infinite 
 difficulty and suffering in that fatal climate. 
 
 India needed all this, and more than this, variety of 
 work, for its many kinds of needs, including not merely 
 its thousands of natives and their English masters but 
 Eurasians — namely, persons of British parentage but 
 acclimatized for one or more generations to India. 
 Schools had been set on foot, with vigorous, hard-work- 
 ing Englishwomen attending to them, ever since the 
 days of Bishop Daniel Wilson, and they bred up many 
 orphan girls who generally became the wives of Hindoo 
 catechists or schoolmasters, or of the boys bred in simi- 
 lar ^institutions ; but the girls of outside families were 
 almost unattainable if of high caste, as they could not 
 go to school, and were generally married as absolute 
 infants to some boy of the same age or a litde older. 
 If he died, though the horrible custom of burning the 
 widow was put a stop to by authority, the poor woman 
 remained for all her life in a wretched state, not allowed 
 to eat with the family, wear ornaments, or enjoy any of 
 the few pleasures of the Zenana, but treated like a slave 
 guilty of having brought ill-luck. The Zenana, un- 
 approachable to the missionary, was the stronghold 
 of heathenism, for the women were wrapped in super- 
 stition, and the men and boys, who could learn better 
 things, shrank from encountering the storm of re- 
 proaches and wailings which any infraction of caste 
 brought on them from their mothers and wives. 
 
 Sisterhoods did much : the Clewer and All Saints 
 sisterhoods at Calcutta, the East Grinstead at Colombo 
 in Ceylon, where the women are chiefly Buddhist and 
 less secluded. The Wantage sisterhood of St. Mary 
 have a large contingent at Paona, in the Bombay dio- 
 
ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. 69 
 
 cese, occupied in education, and other forms of work, 
 hospital and mission. They have come in contact with 
 some of the class, now growing up in India, of Hindoo 
 ladies, highly educated, and quite on a level in intellect 
 and attainments with their European sisters, so as to be 
 able to do their part for evil or for good. One young 
 widow with her little daughter came to the Home at 
 Wantage to study, and returned to India to become a 
 lecturer. 
 
 No means have been more effective than the 
 Zenana mission for carrying light and cultivation into 
 the homes and families. When it was commenced so 
 litde was known on the subject that I remember a 
 meeting in a provincial town where the clergyman 
 who distributed the leaflets was asked what tribe was 
 called Zenanas. Something like this inquirer was a 
 lady who insisted on sending illuminated texts to Miss 
 Mackensie for the Zulus in New Zealand ! 
 
 The ladies of the Zenana mission, of whom the 
 author, A. L. O. E., has been one, do not necessarily 
 begin with Christianity, but do what they can to open 
 the minds and enliven the m.elancholy lives of the high 
 caste women, whom they generally find secluded in the 
 most dreary part of the abode, with no outlook except 
 into a narrow, naked yard, and nothing to do, for 
 needlework is beneath their dignity ; but the English 
 ladies have prevailed gradually to introduce employ- 
 ments, such as fancy work, to teach reading, and to 
 bring in some idea of religion. Most of the ladies of 
 the Zenana mission have medical training, which is an 
 excellent introduction and has been of infinite value, 
 though their treatment has to contend with the oppo- 
 sition of the whole household and all the female rela- 
 
70 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 tions, whose ideas run counter to all science and too 
 often undo all that has been attempted by the Mem 
 Sahib. 
 
 Things are, however, rapidly advancing. The men 
 generally receive enough European education to make 
 them not unwilling that their wives should have some 
 culture, and in the five years during which the Earl of 
 Dufferin (now Marquis of Dufferin and Ava) was Gov- 
 ernor General his wife did wonders in the cause of fe- 
 male education, not only establishing schools but win- 
 ning the girls to attend them. These are not as a rule 
 definitely Christian, but they do much to prepare the 
 way. 
 
 The Church Missionary Society has a great number 
 of emissaries, both the wives of missionaries and ladies 
 who have devoted themselves, deaconesses, and native 
 women, mostly brought up in orphanages where many 
 babies were received after the Indian famine. The 
 population at Tinnevelly, the home of the great Dane, 
 Frederick Schwartz, is chiefly Chrisdan, and possesses 
 two bishops. 
 
 Rangoon, in the lately acquired Burmah, has sundry 
 efficient workers both among the intelligent Burmese 
 and the Karen mountaineers. Corea is a new field of 
 work, and the bishop has obtained the help of five 
 sisters from St. Peter's, Kilburn. 
 
 China has been chiefly the province of the Church 
 Missionary Society. Roman-catholic sisters, chiefly of 
 French and Irish birth, have, however, done much good 
 there, and have several houses. They have undergone 
 special dangers, and even martyrdoms, from the fanati- 
 cal Chinese, litde restrained by the mandarins. Girl 
 babies, being thought quite valueless, are often " put 
 
ENGLISH FEMALE MISSIONARIES. J I 
 
 away," that is, exposed or buried alive by their cruel 
 parents as soon as born, and the good sisters have en- 
 deavored to prevent this by offering a price for any 
 that are brought to them, and if they survive they 
 are bred up as Christians. The Chinese populace, 
 hating the " foreign devils " and enduring their intru- 
 sion with bitter dislike, have periodical frenzies of 
 supposing that the children are slaughtered and used 
 in some horrid ritual. The mob rises on the defence- 
 less ladies and several of them have died in these cruel 
 hands. Indeed only recently several of them had to 
 escape amid a storm of mud and stones to find shelter 
 in the American Consulate. 
 
 There is an English bishop at Hong Kong and 
 for the North West provinces, where the mission ladies 
 have been able to effect much. When once Chinese 
 indifference is overcome, and they cease to say, " What 
 is your sublime religion ?" they become excellent con- 
 verts, and it is said that one Chinese proselyte is worth 
 a dozen coolies. The ladies find one great difficulty, 
 in preventing the compression of the feet among the 
 women, and I have read a piteous account of the suf- 
 fering of a little girl whose Christian father died and 
 whose heathen relations chose to bind her feet when 
 she was past infancy, producing such fever and exhaus- 
 tion as at last to cause her death. 
 
 The brilliant intelligence of the Japanese has in 
 many cases accepted the faith so heartily as to recall 
 the memory of the martyrs of their church in the six- 
 teenth century. 
 
 I have not here attempted to tell the work of the 
 Scottish Presbyterians, the London mission, or that 
 of other denominations, simply that of the Church of 
 
72 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 England through her church women ; and I pass over 
 many isolated efforts of theirs, such as the brave and 
 noble life of Mrs. MacDougal, wife of the bishop of 
 Labuan, who Hved for many years among the Dyaks ot 
 Borneo, and of Miss Whately, the daughter of the 
 noted archbishop of Dublin, who devoted herself to 
 the education of Egyptian girls, and trained many out 
 of the crass ignorance of Mohammedan women, 
 though she durst not attempt to convert them. 
 
 The accounts I have been able to collect show the 
 Church of England at work in 3o dioceses, where she 
 employs 179 sisters and deaconesses, 263 English lay 
 women and 726 native women trained as teachers. It 
 is a record showing at least that something has been 
 attempted, though far more might be done. Al- 
 together 1,623 British female subjects from all denom- 
 inations can be counted as engaged in mission work ; 
 nor does this represent the whole number, as many are 
 nowhere enrolled. 
 
 There is an institution at Warminster where ladies 
 may obtain practical training for mission work, and at 
 Islington the Church Missionary Society has a home 
 where the children of missionaries are received for 
 education. 
 
 The Society lor the Propagation of the Gospel also 
 does something for the education of these children, but 
 prefers to take the cases individually. 
 
 I regret that there is really no history of the work, 
 and the means for forming one are wanting, but per- 
 haps you will kindly accept this as the best essay I 
 have been able to put together. 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 73 
 
 THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING FEMALE 
 EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 
 
 BY MISS E. JANE WHATELEY, ONE OF ITS VICE- 
 PRESIDENTS.* 
 
 Fifty-nine years ago, in the summer of 1834, a 
 little company of ladies were assembled in a private 
 drawing-room in London to listen to the exhortations 
 of an American missionary, the Rev. David Abeel, just 
 returned from China to recruit his broken health by a 
 visit to England. 
 
 Mr. Abeel had come from the scene of his labors 
 with a heart full of sorrow for the misery and degrada- 
 tions of the women of the country. He felt that his 
 efforts and those of his fellow-workers could not reach 
 their case. The gospel, even when preached in their 
 country, was virtually shut out from them. 
 
 When the Christian Church first awoke from its 
 long sleep of indifference to the call to " teach all na- 
 tions," the work of missionaries was, naturally enough 
 at first, purely general. In some countries this might 
 make no practical difference ; but in India, China, and 
 the East generally, domestic and social habits com- 
 pletely excluded women from the preaching and teach- 
 ing of men. The existing schools were usually only 
 for boys. The missionary had no means of addressing 
 
 * This paper was the last ever written by this gifted woman. 
 She was the daughter of the famous Archbishop Whateley, and 
 the sister of Miss Mary Whateley, the head and foundress of the 
 Cairo Mission Schools in Egypt. 
 
74 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 the wives and mothers of his hearers. This was pain- 
 fully impressed on Mr. Abeel's mind. He pictured to 
 his English friends the state of this vast mass of East- 
 ern women, oppressed, trampled on, secluded, and 
 utterly ignorant : unable to be a power for good, and 
 yet capable of being a mighty power for evil ; for the 
 despised heathen mother had her own means of influ- 
 encing her sons, and could often effectually prevent 
 them from listening to the gospel message. What was 
 to be done for this poor, down-trodden, benighted 
 multitude ? Only their own sex could reach them. 
 Would not some of the Christian women of England 
 stretch out a helping hand ? 
 
 This was the substance of Mr. Abeel's appeal. It 
 stirred up the hearts of his hearers, and the result was 
 that a small band of ladies of different denominations 
 formed themselves into a society for the purpose of 
 meeting the want so powerfully described. It was 
 entided the " Society for Promoting Female Education 
 in the East," India to be included in its sphere as well 
 as China. The title seems cumbrous, but it was the 
 only one which at the time appeared to apply to the 
 effort to be made; for the direct agencies of house-to- 
 house visiting, addresses to groups of women, medical 
 and zenana work, etc., were absolutely shut out. The 
 only way practicable was to endeavor to influence 
 women by means of education, and this could only be 
 done among the humblest classes, as no others would 
 attend. 
 
 Even this means was looked on by most mission- 
 ary workers as hopeless. One most eminent and 
 honored laborer among the heathen in India actual- 
 ly declared that to attempt female education there 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 75 
 
 was as hopeless as to try to scale a wall 500 yards 
 high. 
 
 Nevertheless, individual efforts had been made 
 some fourteen or fifteen years before this first gathering 
 of English ladies. Miss Bird had gone to Calcutta in 
 1819 on her own resources, and while living with a 
 brother there had endeavored to do all she could for 
 the neglected girls around her. Miss Cooke, after- 
 wards Mrs. Wilson, entered the mission field at the 
 same time, undaunted and undiscouraged even by her 
 best friends advising her to take her return passage in 
 the vessel she had just quitted. She went to visit a 
 boys' school, and there found a little girl who had been 
 repeatedly imploring to be taken in there and taught 
 to read. She was Miss Cooke's first pupil, and others 
 were added ; but the work went on slowly. A third 
 lady had gone to Malacca in 1827 at the suggestion of 
 a China missionary. 
 
 But these were only isolated efforts. The first sys- 
 tematic attempt to reach the women of heathen lands 
 in the only way in which they could be reached — 
 through their own sex — was made by our Society, which 
 is consequently the earliest and first in the field. 
 
 The difficulties they had to encounter, with so gen- 
 eral an impression that woman's work in the mission 
 field was a wild, romantic, and visionary idea, can hardly 
 be estimated at the present day. But in spite of all 
 they did find a lady willing to go forth to Malacca in 
 aid of the work already commenced by Miss Newell. 
 This was their first step. The next was to open a school 
 for Chinese girls at Singapore ; and this was perhaps 
 one of the most important outposts gained. For 
 through Singapore China could be reached, and to 
 
^6 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 this day the school commenced under Miss Grant in 
 1843, and continued under Miss Cooke, is an invaluable 
 help to Chinese missions by training up a body of effi- 
 cient Christian Chinese women, able to do good work 
 either as wives and mothers of Christian families or as 
 teachers and Bible women. Two years after Miss 
 Grant's school was commenced she had the joy of 
 seeing three of her pupils baptized into the Church of 
 Christ. 
 
 About the same time a lady of independent means, 
 Miss Aldersey, a member of the committee of the infant 
 Society, went to establish herself at Ningpo, and opened 
 a school there in the midst of great difficulties. The 
 fruits of that work have been evident at the end of long 
 years, and an Anglo- Indian pupil of hers was after- 
 wards the wife of one of the earliest missionary bishops 
 in China. 
 
 Schools in India had been helped by the Society 
 from the beginning : but the time was now come for 
 such a direct work in that country as had never been 
 looked on before as even possible. Not long after 
 the Society's commencem.ent four Hindoo gentlemen 
 actually consented to allow a lady to visit the secluded 
 women of their houses, and teach not only needlework 
 but reading from Christian school-books. 
 
 This was the inauguration of Zenana work. Till 
 then, the Zenanas, or apartments of Hindoo ladies, had 
 been as effectually barred as the gates of the strong- 
 est prison-house. Now the " wall five hundred yards 
 high " was to be scaled and the way opened for the 
 numerous "Zenana societies" which have since been 
 enabled to enter in. This humble and at this time 
 little known Society was the one to open the doors. 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 'J'J 
 
 In 1842 they sent out the first agent for direct Zenana 
 work on a larger scale : Miss Burton was appointed to 
 commence the work at Bombay. 
 
 It was a slow and gradual one. Many were the 
 difficulties : sometimes the door seemed closed by an 
 outburst of heathen bigotry ; often, in many places, 
 the Christian teacher's way would have been open if 
 she would have consented to lay aside her Bible : 
 but they were faithful to the charge laid on them, they 
 would not yield, and by patient, gentle perseverance 
 they won their way for themselves and the Book. 
 The work extended — to South India and Ceylon on 
 one side, to North India on another ; on the Western 
 side, Palestine and Syria were entered and schools 
 established ; as soon as Japan was open to missionary 
 eftort the Society's agents were ready to enter. The 
 fort had been stormed in every direction, and so, little 
 by litde, the sphere of action has extended, and the 
 labors of the Society became year by year more 
 abundant. 
 
 At present its field is wider than that of any one 
 other society of Female Missions, including India, 
 China, Japan, the Straits, Ceylon, Mauritius, West and 
 South Africa, the Levant, and Persia. 
 
 But the example set was speedily followed, and we 
 rejoice to be able to point to kindred associations in 
 England, Scodand, America and the Continent, with- 
 out counting the numerous private and individual ef- 
 forts made on the same lines. Truly the promise, " a 
 litde one shall become a thousand," has been carried 
 out to the letter : and the small group of praying wo- 
 men who assembled at Mr. Abeel's appeal in 1834 
 could hardly have anticipated that in half a century 
 
78 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 more the labors of Christian female missionaries should 
 be extended over nearly the whole world. 
 
 Meantime our Society, the first in the field, has 
 not relaxed its energies. After nearly sixty years' un- 
 remitting labor we may briefly sum up its present work 
 under the following heads : 
 
 1. Zenana work in India; which is carried on by 
 the Society at six principal stations in that country, 
 besides partially aiding six others in addition. 
 
 2. Medical missions, wherever openings can be 
 found, where lady practitioners can obtain access to 
 suffering women who can obtain no other efficient re- 
 lief in sickness. 
 
 3. Village missions, and work among the crowds 
 who attend native festivals. 
 
 4. Schools of various kinds — boarding, day, and 
 Sunday. In every country where the society works 
 these are established, and many others not directly 
 under their control are aided by them constantly. 
 
 5. House to house visitation, and Bible and sewing 
 classes. 
 
 6. The training of native agents for Zenana mis- 
 sionaries, Bible women, district visitors and school 
 teachers. This is one of the most important branches 
 of the work, and is diligendy carried on. There is 
 now a numerous body of well-trained Christian native 
 workers, in all the countries where the Society is em- 
 ployed, busily engaged in all these various departments 
 of labor among the women and girls whose tongue they 
 speak. 
 
 7. Mothers' meetings, and branches of the Young 
 Women's Christian Association, and of the Bible and 
 Frayer Union. 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 79 
 
 Of course these various branches are variously 
 carried out in their details according to the country 
 and station where they are working. But in all of 
 them the word of God is in the hands of the mission 
 teacher, and her first aim is to lead all those she instructs 
 to the knowledge of salvation through Christ and the 
 blessed truths of the gospel. Great pains are taken to 
 ensure good and practical education of all kinds, but 
 Christian training is the highest object and never lost 
 sight of 
 
 In the early days of the Society it was only, as has 
 been observed, among the humblest classes that these 
 educational efforts could be made : now all ranks and 
 all classes are open to influence, and wherever it has 
 been possible to enter the Society's agents have been 
 ready to do so. 
 
 Besides the stations and agents under the direct 
 control of the Society it has been from its earliest 
 foundation the medium of extending help to, and 
 friendly cooperation with, many independent workers 
 who had gone out on their own charges, but found 
 after a time that aid from home was needed. Miss 
 Aldersey and Miss Baxter in China, Mrs. Watson in 
 Syria, my own sister in Egypt, were among those who 
 have received this fraternal aid, and there are others 
 who still live to avail themselves of it and work hand 
 in hand with the Society." Many schools, either 
 privately established or connected with other missions, 
 are almost entirely supported by the sale of boxes of 
 work forwarded by the committee annually. 
 
 To detail all, or even a small part of the results of 
 this work of fifty-nine years, time and space far beyond 
 what is at our command would fail. A few instances 
 
80 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 may give some idea of the blessings which have fol- 
 lowed. Only within the last year, a Christian lady of 
 Madras, Mrs. Sattianadham, was called to her rest. 
 She was the daughter of a mother trained in the Soci- 
 ety's schools, as she herself also had been : and during 
 her life she was the centre and directress of an exten- 
 sive Zenana and school mission in which her daughters 
 are still employed. And this is only one case out of 
 many in which one generation after another of native 
 Christian women trained in these schools have been 
 carrying on active mission and educational work among 
 their own countrywomen, and giving at the same time 
 an example of Christian life in the family at home. 
 
 Some years ago, two ladies deeply interested in 
 the work were visiting the Asiatic Home in London, 
 in which many Hindoo ayahs are received while wait- 
 ing an opportunity of returning to their own country. 
 
 Among these groups their attention was directed 
 to one woman whose countenance and bearing had 
 something quite unlike the rest. There was a look of 
 intelligence and thought, a civiHzed air which con- 
 trasted with the faces around her. The thought struck 
 them both, "Surely this woman must.be a Christian." 
 
 They entered into conversation with her — she 
 spoke English sufficiently well — and they found she 
 was an old pupil of Miss Austen, one of the Society's 
 agents at Madras. She was a Christian from convic- 
 tion, and when asked if they could do anything for her 
 made it an especial request that she might have some 
 tracts and portions of Scripture in her own tongue for 
 distribution. 
 
 In China and the Straits the same experience is 
 met with. One native catechist, sent to a peculiarly 
 
FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE EAST. 8 1 
 
 difficult and arduous Chinese-speaking station, where 
 he met with continual opposition, said he could hardly 
 have stood his ground without the support and courage 
 and sympathy of his Christian wife, a pupil trained in 
 Miss Cooke's school at Singapore, the same which had 
 been commenced in the early years of our work. Many 
 such trained Christian women are now acting as 
 Bible women and teachers in China and Chinese-speak- 
 ing stations. 
 
 Those who have visited schools in Syria and Pales- 
 tine have been ready to bear witness to the excellence 
 of those established under the Society's auspices in the 
 Lebanon and the Holy Land. The boarding-schools 
 especially, at Nazareth and Bethlehem, have awakened 
 a lively interest in all who have seen them. 
 
 In Persia efficient work has been commenced ; 
 one most highly qualified and valued agent has been 
 arrested by death in the middle of her work, but 
 others will not be lacking to fill her place. 
 
 In South Africa, Kaffir and Zulu girls been have 
 rescued from what would have been a life of unspeak- 
 able degradation, as well as misery, by the excellent 
 boarding-schools established at several stations. 
 
 A good work has also long been carried on in 
 more than one locality in West Africa, and many 
 schools aided from the Society's funds and the sale of 
 work. 
 
 But we can only indicate thus briefly scenes of 
 Christian labor throughout all the Eastern Hemisphere, 
 which sufficiently show that the fortress once deemed 
 impregnable has been entered, and the barriers broken 
 down ; and in all parts women are now speaking to 
 women of the love of that Saviour whose tender com- 
 6 
 
82 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 passion to them awakens often the most touching sur- 
 prise as well as joy. I 
 
 " That he should have spoken so to a woman /" 
 has been again and again the exclamation of some 
 poor crushed soul sufficiendy awake to feel the misery 
 of her state. 
 
 We thankfully acknowledge that what we have 
 been saying of our Society's work and its present re- 
 sults can be said of many similar agencies engaged 
 in the same work and in the same spirit. We thank 
 God for them all, and know well there is room for 
 hundreds more of such. 
 
 But we venture to mention, in behalf of this 
 special one, two peculiar claims to general interest and 
 sympathy. 
 
 ist. Its being the earliest in the field, and the par- 
 ent, so to say, of more recent ones. 
 
 2nd. The extensive sphere covered by its agency, 
 including full half the globe. 
 
 To this we may add the very strict economy ob- 
 served in all its arrangements. 
 
 But our object is only to give a briel notice of 
 what this agency has accomplished, and we would 
 close by inviting all who are now doing the same work 
 to unite with us in fervent thanksgivings to Him whose 
 power has overcome such strongholds of evil, and to 
 exclaim from the heart, " What hath God wrought !" 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK 83 
 
 HISTORY OF WOMAN'S ORGANIZED 
 
 MISSIONARY WORK AS PROMOTED 
 
 BY AMERICAN WOMEN. 
 
 BY MISS ELLEN C. PARSONS. 
 
 When Columbus came to the Spanish court with 
 his reasonable eloquence it fell on many indifferent or 
 suspicious ears, but Isabella believed. " Amid the gen- 
 eral incredulity," he says, " the Almighty infused the 
 Queen, my Lady, with a spirit of intelligence and 
 energy, and while every one else expatiated on the 
 inconvenience and cost she gave all the support in 
 her power." That country, which she cheered on an 
 enthusiast to find, the women whose birthright it is 
 have determined shall be preserved. Isabella pled 
 with every fresh outgoing commander across the At- 
 lantic that he would be pitiful to the poor slaves in 
 the West Indies : in our time we have seen cultivated 
 women go down themselves to the degraded black 
 race, the abused red race, the scorned yellow race. 
 The devout queen of the fifteenth century yearned to 
 send the holy faith abroad and to save souls in India, 
 China and Japan. Yes, lovely Isabella, you took the 
 longest way round, but it was the shortest way home 
 to the consummation of your wish. American women, 
 rank upon rank, respond to your longing. They have 
 torn off the fifteenth century clasp from your Bible 
 and sent the Word of God to have free course in the 
 real China, India and Japan. If, after four hundred 
 
84 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 years of heavenly training, she has developed anything 
 in proportion to the goodness of her life on earth, it 
 would rejoice Isabella m jre to-day to know that than 
 to know the distinguished fact of a civilized world cele- 
 brating the discovery with which her name is Hnked. 
 
 The history of organized missionary work as pro- 
 moted by women in this country is a history of a dis- 
 ciplined army developed in place of volunteer pickets. 
 Early Local There was a short and wavering picket 
 Societies. jjj^g q^ women's societies which ap- 
 peared in advance of the main column, at Boston in 
 1800; at New Haven in 181 2; at New York city by 
 1 8 14; at Norwich, Conn., 18 16; af Tallmadge, Ohio, 
 18 16; at Derry, Pennsylvania, two years after ; at Phil- 
 adelphia, 1823; Bedford, New York, 1831 ; Newark, 
 New Jersey, 1835 ; Washington, Pennsylvania, the 
 same year; Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1838; Rock- 
 ford, Illinois, the same year; Sutton, Vermont, 1847; 
 Baltimore, Maryland, 1848. Some of these pioneers 
 never lowered their colors but lived to celebrate their 
 jubilee, and when the modern movement began they 
 were the first to come forward, with their old banners 
 flying, to constitute the nuclei of the more comprehen- 
 sive Woman's Boards. Early in the century, Cent 
 Societies (sometimes pathetically named " Female Cent 
 Societies ") were general in New England and sporadic 
 in the Middle States ; one such in Sewickly, Pennsyl- 
 vania, in 1S30, and another in New London, Pennsyl- 
 vania, as late as 1832 sent contributions to the Presby- 
 terian Board of Foreign Missions. The New Hamp- 
 shire Cent Institution, founded in 1804, is with us still. 
 During 86 years it has contributed $120,000 to home 
 missions, besides accumulating a fund of $12,000. 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 85 
 
 Nothing but the grit of the granite hills could have 
 kept alive a society so loosely organized, having mem- 
 bers in 105 churches, only one officer, and never hold- 
 ing a meeting for 76 years. After 1812," Ladies' Associ- 
 ations " multiplied, and by 1839, 680 such were collect- 
 ing funds for the American Board of Foreign Missions. 
 
 The history of this woman's miissionary movement 
 is a history of holy fellowship that was impossible to 
 the ancient world. It overlooks denominational bounda- 
 ries ; the active missionary spirits in different branches 
 of the church are those who are closest together in 
 Christian sympathy. No ocean can affect this tie. A 
 British sister has but to step into one of our Mission 
 Rooms and inquire for a leaflet, or bring a m.essage 
 into our meetings, and we recognize at once the bond 
 of fellowship in a sacred cause. What did the Aspasias, 
 the Alcinoes or Penelopes of old Greece, whose very 
 goddesses lived in envy and jealousy of one another, 
 know of such comradery and enthusiasm between 
 women? It could never have drawn the breath of 
 life except in the atmosphere of Christianity. 
 
 This histor)' is a record of women called forth from 
 the conservatism in which they were entrenched. Our 
 English and Scotch sisters were twenty years in ad- 
 vance of us in organized missionary work. (We have 
 caught up with them since.) There was a teirifying 
 word abroad, and every self-respecting woman shud- 
 dered at the thought of " comiC-outism." Then there 
 v.as the conservatism of the church, for the new version 
 of Psalm 68 : 1 1 was not yet revealed. The story is 
 given as authentic of a pastor in Michigan who insisted 
 on being always present in the women's meetings : " No 
 one knew what they would pray lor, if left alone." " I 
 
86 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 cannot recommend," said the venerable Dr. Anderson 
 of the American Board to his associate, Rev. N. G. 
 Clark, " I cannot recommend bringing the women into 
 this work; but you are a young man, go on and do it 
 if you can." It is safe to say that, without encourage- 
 ment from such secretaries as Dr. Clark and others of 
 like spirit, the history which this occasion calls for 
 would have been far other and briefer than it is. 
 
 Early Sacrifices for But did devOUt WOmCH of the 
 
 Missions. church wait for the advantages of gen- 
 eral organization before attempting missionary work ? 
 By no means. From the first they were offering per- 
 sonal service, gifts, prayers. The first ship that carried 
 American missionaries to the heathen world bore away 
 Harriet Newell and Ann Haseltine Judson. In 1817 
 two unmarried ladies were teaching among the North 
 American Indians, and by 18S0, 104 had been sent to 
 the different tribes by a single Board. For forty years 
 before the modern movement the silent partners in the 
 hardships of the missionary cabin on the frontier were 
 recognized, if unnamed, heroines of the church. This 
 was the era of the universal sewing - society and the 
 home-missionary box. Before railroads, in the days of 
 canal-boats, when postage was twenty-five cents and 
 purchasing by sample through the mail was yet unin- 
 vented ; in those days when Daniel Webster was in the 
 habit of referring to a trip to Pittsburgh, Pa., as " my 
 visit to the West" — oh, then, great was the Box! 
 Small need for the mothers in Israel to spend their time 
 in surmising what would be acceptable, as they gathered 
 round to pack it, for, after perhaps a decade of years 
 since she went out from the East with her bridal trous- 
 seau, at a distance of, it may be, 300 miles from the 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 87 
 
 nearest trading post, and the frontier cabin filling with 
 little heads all the while, what was there, that fingers 
 could make, which the missionary mother did not need ? 
 No small contribution of sympathy, constancy and sub- 
 stantial aid did a generation of women put into those 
 boxes. Occasionally a brother started for the frontier 
 clad in the suit of homespun which their hands had made 
 from the raw product of the flax field and sheep's back. 
 Beyond computation were the pairs of socks they knit 
 and sent after the boxes, or, when little money was in 
 circulation, turned into cash in the East. The early 
 pages of the treasurers' books of every missionary soci- 
 ety in this country record our grandmothers' tithes of 
 self-denial and plain toil. 
 
 On page 159 of the " Panoplist," published in Bos- 
 ton in 1813, appears the following letter, addressed to 
 the Treasurer of the American Board : 
 
 Bath, N. H., August 17, 1813. 
 Dear Sir: — Mr. M will deliver $177 into your hands. 
 
 The items are as follows: 
 
 From an obscure female who kept the money for many 
 years, waiting for a proper opportunity to bestow it 
 upon a religious object $100 00 
 
 From an aged woman in Barnet, Vt., being the avails 
 of a small dairy the past year 50 00 
 
 From the same being, the avails of two superfluous gar- 
 ments lo 00 
 
 From the Cent Society in this place, being half their 
 annual subscription 11 00 
 
 My own donation, being the sum hitherto expended in 
 ardent spirits in my family, but now totally discon- 
 tinued 5 00 
 
 From a woman in extreme indigence i 00 
 
 Total— - $177 00 
 
 The same Board in 18 13 also received its first 
 
88 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 legacy, $345 83, left by Sally Thomas, a domestic, 
 whose wages had never exceeded fifty cents a week ; 
 and, two years after, the largest legacy received for 
 many years, $30,000, from Mrs. Norris of Salem, Mass. 
 By faith, ladies of Brookline, Mass., made regular con- 
 tributions for the work of the gospel in Japan while as 
 yet that country was sealed against foreigners. The 
 $600 which they placed in the treasury had become, 
 with its accruing interest, $4,104.23 by the time the 
 American Board was ready to send its first missionaries 
 to Japan, and was used for that purpose. 
 
 Glancing down the columns of the " Missionary 
 Reporter," published in 1830, one discovers that pas- 
 tors were often made life members of the Board of Mis- 
 sions by ladies of their congregations. Interspersed 
 among gifts from the " Female Benevolent Society " (a 
 very common designation), the " Female Association," 
 
 " Young Ladies," from " Miss B 's scholars," " Two 
 
 little girls," " Widow Fulton," and (rare) " Female 
 Praying Society," one finds frequent gifts from individ- 
 ual women, their names for the most part being sup- 
 pressed, while that of the transmitting pastor is given 
 in full, as : " From a female friend of missions per 
 Rev." So-and-so ; " Donation from a lady ; ditto from 
 
 a poor woman, by Rev. ." There was another 
 
 species of gift essentially womanlike, and characteristic 
 of the past rather than the present : it was the gem 
 loosened from the finger, the heirloom, the souvenir, 
 the memorial of a child, the token found in the purse 
 of a dead friend, the piece of family plate, Hke a certain 
 memorable silver coflfee-pot, the offering of a Connec- 
 ticut parsonage. The latter went to one missionary 
 meeting and the mothers dropped in their silver 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 89 
 
 coins ;* after fifty years it went to another meeting, and 
 the daughters put in their bank bills ; j and now it has 
 come to the World's Fair to prompt a generous gift 
 once more. The money value of such relics was not 
 commensurate with the devotion which they illustra- 
 ted — perhaps the treasurer regarded them askance; 
 but, after all, these trinkets shine down the years, like 
 Isabella's jewels, with a glow of womanly sincerity, the 
 evidence of woman's resourcefulness. 
 
 But all these gifts were transmitted uneconomically. 
 Local societies were inadequate. Prayer for missions 
 more precious and availing was never breathed, but it 
 rose isolated. It lacked the social element and needed 
 quickening through knowledge. The time came when 
 a new order was demanded. The lamp of woman's 
 love would always have burned on within the church. 
 Always individual hearts would have been loyal to 
 missions. Local societies would have continued to 
 spring up and effect more than individuals, and, like 
 their predecessors, few would have survived an ephe- 
 meral life. But without a specific call and a new meth- 
 od the mass of women in the church would never have 
 been sufficiently informed upon missions nor sufficiently 
 in touch with them to make many sacrifices for them. 
 
 What was it that shook the Church, roused the 
 women to united, systematic, concentrated action, that 
 moved on and on, a compelling force, until we now 
 have in this country the spectacle of hundreds of thou- 
 sands of women, representing every branch of the 
 Christian Church, banded together in chartered socie- 
 ties and disbursing from one to one-and-a-half millions 
 of dollars every year? Only one other movement, 
 
 * Amounting to $300. f $500. 
 
90 WOMAN IN MISSIONS, 
 
 that of the Temperance Union, compares with it in 
 numbers and moral power. Whence came that power- 
 ful voice which evoked so much energy and action ? 
 It was not patriotism warning of the menace in an in- 
 coming tide of immigrants ; that came later. It was 
 not national remorse demanding reparation for the ex- 
 iled Indian. It was not even the last command of 
 Jesus, " Disciple all nations," like a clarion call to the 
 conscience. It was a human cry appealing expressly 
 to woman's tenderness, and it pierced her heart. It 
 sounded out from black heathenism, ages old, lost, vast, 
 awful — the heart-break of motherhood, the stifled cry 
 of distorted childhood ; this was what happy women 
 heard in their happy, protected homes. 
 
 "Are there ^ny female men among you to come 
 and teach us f asked a group of Chinese women 
 twenty-nine years ago of the American missionary. 
 " You must send us single women," wrote the wife of 
 the Methodist missionary at Bareilly, India, and she 
 painted the picture of zenana life. David Abeel came 
 home on purpose to make English-speaking women 
 understand in what bondage and despair their oriental 
 sisters were. Women, and only women, could meet 
 the need. Something less strenuous might have caught 
 the ear, but it required a call just so terrible, importu- 
 nate, so shut up to woman, to fasten irresistibly upon 
 her heart. 
 
 How societies have developed that sprang into 
 being from this motive, and with the aim to answer this 
 call, is matter of history, to be found in printed annual 
 reports (many of them thick pamphlets) of thirty-three 
 separate Boards or Societies, representing twenty dif- 
 ferent branches of the church, in our country. An 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 9 1 
 
 extended account may also be found in the " Encyclo- 
 pedia of Missions," published in 1891. 
 
 Organized missionary work, as promoted by Amer- 
 ican women, practically began in 1861 with the Union 
 Society in New York city. It was founded by Mrs. 
 Doremus. " While others expatiated on the inconve- 
 nience and cost, if not the fanaticism of such a project, 
 she, like Isabella, believed in things not seen, and 
 acted with an " intelligence and energy " inspired from 
 above. 
 
 Just at this time the Civil War broke out in the 
 Republic, and it seems hardly necessary to remind 
 ourselves how, for the five years that followed, the lei- 
 sure of patriotic women was absorbed in equipping 
 regiments, in administering soldiers' hospitals, or in 
 Sanitary Commission service. It was a training-school, 
 and the end of the war found many women who had 
 learned to cooperate with others in work, to bear re- 
 sponsibility, to value method, and whom the war had 
 left with more power than ever to bless others, and 
 at the same time with fewer personal claims upon them. 
 Much of this training was providentially turned into the 
 channel of missions. 
 
 The Union Society was independent of denomina- 
 tion and composed of members from six branches of 
 the church. It stood alone for seven years ; then Con- 
 gregational Church women organized boards at Boston 
 and Chicago to work on church lines and in cooperation 
 with the general Board already existing. This thought 
 communicated itself; the torch was quickly carried 
 from one church altar to another. Now began the 
 massing of forces which should be as much more effec- 
 tive than the old order as the onset of an army is supe- 
 
92 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 rior to the desultory firing of a picket guard. Distin- 
 guished authorities have expressed their estimate of 
 the value of this movement. 
 
 At a meeting of the Woman's Society of the Prot- 
 AJvanta-ef; of estant Episcopal Church, held in Chi- 
 organizttion. ^^^^ -^^ jg35 gishop Doane spoke as 
 
 follows : " The two principles of this whole work are 
 loving organization and organized love .... The 
 two things need to be together. Unloving organiza- 
 tion is dead machinery, a steamless engine, a windmill 
 in the dog-days, a water-wheel in a dried-up stream ; 
 and unorganized love is a spring freshet, a tidal wave. 
 The one is dry and stiff and hard, the other is gush- 
 ing and sentimental and short-lived. But organized 
 love and loving organization, which are the essential 
 and characteristic features of this Auxiliary, have in 
 them the power of an endless life. When you add 
 to this the value of associated and directed work, and 
 remember how these women have touched every class 
 and condition of men ; and add to this the value of 
 their Quiet Days and Conferences, you can perhaps 
 begin to estimate the value of what has been done." 
 
 Rev. F. F. EUinwood, D. D., Secretary of the 
 Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church 
 (North), is accustomed in his public addresses to di- 
 rectly connect the beginnings and progress of the 
 women's societies with the Student Volunteer Move- 
 ment. He points out that 25 years ago our Christian 
 women began to carry foreign missions into the home, 
 to the fireside, and that, unitedly in social meetings 
 and alone in the closet, they have all these years since 
 been pouring out prayer for this cause ; and now here 
 are the living answers : young men and maidens in 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 93 
 
 their teens and early twenties offering themselves for 
 foreign service. " If the women's societies had not 
 done another thing," says Dr. Ellinwood, " this is ten 
 thousand times worth all their efforts." And where 
 such seers on the watch-towers have discerned general 
 value the women themselves have a thousand times 
 testified to personal blessings : to deliverance from 
 frivolous occupations ; to enlargement in narrow cir- 
 cumstances ; to joy in use of talents shaken from the 
 napkin. A Canadian delegate to the London Confer- 
 ence in 1890 said, "It is sometimes claimed that we 
 (women) are much disposed to talk and not always to 
 talk wisely. We have not always had very great 
 things to talk about ; but now we have something wor- 
 thy our time and trouble." 
 
 The track of the societies is marked by intellectual 
 and spiritual growth of the members. There has been 
 a steady evolution from the timid objection to read a 
 letter in public, or hold an office, to the best utterances 
 of gifted and devout women. There has been a steady 
 development in the conception of the scope of mission- 
 ary work. For example: from (i) interest in "one 
 child" whose photograph we must own and whose 
 conversion must be assured in advance, to (2) a " schol- 
 arship"; (3) a "share in a school"; (4) (coming, if not 
 already attained), a " share in the educational work of 
 a mission." 
 
 Every one will admit that these results at home, 
 as well as all that has been accomplished on the field, 
 have been immeasurably greater with the stimulus and 
 momentum of concerted action than if every individual 
 had acted alone. Take the matter of contributions. 
 Though, as we have seen, there were always women 
 
94 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 givers to missions, is it not true that, in a former gen- 
 eration, the majority of the wives sat at one end of the 
 pew and beheld their husbands at the other end drop- 
 ping the family contribution into the passing box, com- 
 fortably free themselves from either responsibility or 
 motive for self-denial ? Through participating in the 
 direction of missionary work multitudes of women have 
 acquired the sense of responsibility, and give their 
 money with the feeling of a shareholder. Without the 
 Society and the appointed solicitor much would be lost 
 both to meetings and the treasury. The interested wo- 
 man goes to the uninterested woman and brings her 
 to the Auxiliary. She, comes and bears her part, be- 
 cause she is invited. Add to this that the Society has, 
 by precept and pledges, cultivated systematic and Bib- 
 lical giving, and we may reasonably claim that the 
 pronounced aim, " to secure funds which would not 
 otherwise be given," has been to a great extent fulfilled. 
 This is the opinion held by church boards and by lead- 
 ing business men connected with them. This training 
 of women to give and interesting them in something 
 worthy of their gifts came none too soon, for the last 
 quarter century has seen an enormous advance in this 
 country in the amount of property that has come un- 
 der the absolute control of Christian women. 
 
 Date of the The Organization of these societies 
 
 Societies. occurred, in the order of time, as follows: 
 
 1861. Woman's Union Missionary Society, New York. 
 1868. Woman's Board of Missions (Boston), Congregational 
 Church. 
 
 1868. Woman's Board of the Interior (Chicago), Congregational 
 
 Church. 
 
 1869. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society (Boston), Methodist 
 
 Episcopal Church, North. 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 95 
 
 1870. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society (Philadelphia), Pres- 
 
 byterian Church, North. 
 iSjo. Woman's Board of Missions of the Northwest (Chicago), 
 Presbyterian Church, North. 
 
 1570. Woman's Board of Foreign Missions (New York), Presby- 
 
 terian Church, North. 
 
 1871. Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions (New York), 
 
 Protestant Episcopal Church. 
 
 1571. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society (Boston), Baptist 
 
 Church, Northern Convention. 
 
 1871. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the West (Chi- 
 cago), Baptist Church, Northern Convention. 
 
 1S71. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of Northern New 
 York (Albany), Presbyterian Church, North. 
 
 1871. Woman's Board of Missions of the Pacific Islands (Hono- 
 lulu), Congregational Church. 
 
 1S73. Woman's Missionary Society, Free Baptist Church. 
 
 1873. Woman's Occidental Board of Foreign Missions (San 
 Francisco), Presbyterian Church, North. 
 
 1873. Woman's Board of the Pacific (San Francisco), Congrega- 
 
 tional Church. 
 
 1874. Woman's Mite Missionary Society, African Methodist Epis- 
 
 copal Church. 
 
 1875. Woman's Board of Foreign Missions (New York), Re- 
 
 formed (Dutch) Church in America. 
 
 1875. Woman's Board of Missions, Christian (Disciples) Church. 
 
 1S75. Woman's Missionary Association, United Brethren in 
 Christ. 
 
 1875. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of California, Bap- 
 tist Church, Northern Convention. 
 
 1S77. Woman's Board of Foreign Missions of the Southwest 
 (St. Louis), Presbyterian Church, North. 
 
 1878. Woman's Missionary Society (Nashville), Methodist Epis- 
 
 copal Church, South. 
 
 1879. Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the 
 
 General Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church. 
 
 1879. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, Methodist Protes- 
 tant Church. 
 
 iSSo. Wo.man's Board of Foreign Missions, Cumberland Presby- 
 terian Church. 
 
 i8Si. Woman's Foreign Missionary Union, of Friends. 
 
96 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 1883. Woman's General Missionary Society (Xenia, Ohio), Uni- 
 *ted Presbyterian Church. 
 
 1883. Woman's Missionary Society, Evangelical Association 
 
 (German Churches) of North America. 
 
 1884. Woman's Missionary Union, Southern Baptist Convention. 
 1884. Woman's Board of General Conference, Seventh-day Bap- 
 tist. 
 
 1888. Woman's Board of the North Pacific (Oregon), Presbyte- 
 rian Church, North. 
 
 1888. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of Oregon, Baptist 
 
 Church, Northern Convention. 
 
 1889. Woman's Foreign Missionary Society (Boston), Reformed 
 
 Episcopal Church. 
 
 A general Woman's Board is now found in nearly 
 every leading denomination of Christians, the chief 
 exception being that of the Presbyterian church in the 
 South. This has, however, the potentiality of a strong 
 organization in 729 societies existing in as many con- 
 gregations. They are direcdy auxiliary to the Board 
 of that church, and have been forming since 1874. 
 
 All these different organizations work with vary- 
 Variety in Method, i^g methods, each according to the 
 Unity of Aim. genius of the church it represents. 
 While the majority of them sustain missionaries ap- 
 pointed by the church board, or at most only " recom- 
 mended" from themselves, Methodist women, the 
 Friends, and of course the Union Society are account- 
 able to no Board above them. While the Methodist 
 Society (in the North) sends out only unmarried wo- 
 • men most societies adopt some wives as well, and the 
 Christian Woman's Board enrolls more men than wo- 
 men missionaries. In auxiliaries of the Methodist Prot- 
 estant Church in West Virginia men were appointed 
 officers because women could not be induced to serve. 
 But, with divergence in method, all the societies have 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 
 
 97 
 
 the same aim : looking abroad, to carry the gospel 
 where, without women, it cannot be efficiently carried ; 
 looking homeward, to give every woman in every par- 
 ish a chance to share in the evangelization of the world. 
 In nearly every society a membership fee is required, 
 and. in all, labor and responsibility are diffused down 
 from officers of the Board through smaller organiza- 
 tions called " Branches," " Presbyterial Societies," etc., 
 to the local " Parish " or " Auxiliary " society. All of 
 them hold meetings to transact business, for their own 
 spiritual good, to pray for missions, and to spread in- 
 formation upon the subject. All avail themselves of 
 the printing press and annually scatter broadcast 
 " Like leaves of the forest when summer is green," 
 millions of pages in reports, mission lessons, calendars 
 of prayer, leaflets, newspaper columns and magazines 
 for young and old. Of the latter, the three largest, 
 " Woman's Work for Woman," " The Heathen Wo- 
 man's Friend," and "The Helping Hand," have re- 
 spectively 18,000, 21,000, and 23,000 subscribers. All 
 these societies undertake to train the children to mis- 
 sionary service, and the talent and ingenuity expended 
 in providing programmes for their meetings, opening 
 channels for their self-denial and encouraging their 
 zeal, and the soHd results of this outiay, constitute an 
 important chapter in the history of missionary effort. 
 Through one children's paper $8,000 were raised last 
 year for a Chinese Home. The Treasuiy of one Board 
 receives about $40,000 annually from children and 
 young people. 
 
 Last year these 33 societies combined were rep- 
 resented by 1,051 missionaries. The 
 
 Summaries. \ r ^ i 
 
 greater number of them were teachers 
 
98 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 of schools, many were engaged in evangelistic work, 
 and 65 were physicians (this year the number is in- 
 creased to 70), graduated with full diplomas. Almost 
 every society sends out at least one woman physician 
 to the field. The Seventh Day Baptists have one; the 
 United Presbyterians have two; the United Brethren ia 
 Christ, with an auxiliary membership of only 7,cxx), 
 have three physicians ; the Congregational Church has 
 seven ; the Baptist Church (Northern Convention) has 
 twelve ; the Methodist Episcopal Society (North), the 
 noble pioneer in this direction, has fourteen ; and the 
 ■ Presbyterian Church (North) with her 21 skilled wo- 
 men, every one at her post (and two more with pas- 
 sage engaged for India), has at present outrun any 
 other single society in the world. In not less than 70 
 hospitals and dispensaries, nursing, medicine and sur- 
 gery are administered by these American women, with 
 a yearly result of from 5,000 to 25,000 patients in each, 
 and incalculable relief of suffering. 
 
 A total of more than 2,000 schools, of which about 
 175 are boarding, or high schools, or colleges for girls; 
 a total, so far as reported, of 76,000 pupils, of 1,500 
 native assistants employed, represent Christian agen- 
 cies created and sustained by the women's societies. 
 In addition to these larger items they have aided in 
 building and furnishing homes for missionary children, 
 missionary residences and sanitariums, orphanages, 
 training-schools for nurses, leper and other asylums ; 
 they have established scholarships, medical classes and 
 industrial plants in connection with schools ; have 
 translated the Bible, school-books, tracts and hymns 
 into foreign languages, and printed them ; have built 
 boats for African and Siamese rivers and South Pacific 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 99 
 
 seas ; have published Marathi, Hindustani, Tamil, Ja- 
 panese, Romanized Chinese, and Mexican newspapers ; 
 have met all expenses at home, and in many cases paid 
 a given per cent, of their receipts into the treasury of 
 the Church Board for contingent expenses connected 
 with their own work. The whole amount contributed 
 for these purposes for 1892-93 was $1,475,933- 
 
 Take a single illustration of how these contribu- 
 tions have been increasing. In 1870, as the treasurer 
 of a great Board said, " there rolled into the treasury a 
 little cake of barley bread labelled, ' Woman's Work 
 for Woman, $7,000." The speaker referred to the first 
 contribution under the new movement from Presbyte- 
 rian women of the North. This year that barley cake 
 has become a wheaten loaf of more than $300,000. 
 
 It has been estimated that the gift of American 
 women to non-evangelized countries since the Union 
 Society took up its first collection would not be repre- 
 sented by anything under thirteen and a half millions 
 of dollars. 
 
 Modem movement The gencsis of this womau's mis- 
 
 in Home Missions, sionary movement was foreign mis- 
 sions ; but everything that has been said relating to 
 expansion in that direction, the manner of growth, the 
 conduct of societies, the spirit called forth, applies 
 equally to home missions endeavor. For, when Chris- 
 tian women began to save their heathen sisters, was 
 there a general stampede fi-om the churches to Asia 
 and Africa ? Not at all. 
 
 " The lights that shine farthest 
 Shine brightest near home." 
 
 Just as might be expected, when that effectual cry from 
 out the darkness probed woman's selfishness and broke 
 
100 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 up the fountains of her heart, she was ready, as never 
 before, to acknowledge every claim. Now began more 
 intelligent and aggressive effort in Home Missions. 
 The old-fashioned sewing-society could not answer the 
 requirements of the nineteenth century. Now school- 
 houses must be built, and parsonages, and chapels. 
 Methodist women hold property in schools and Indus- 
 trial Homes in this country to the value of $225,000. 
 The Presbyterian Church (North) holds property in 
 buildings and real estate, from North Carolina to Alas- 
 ka, amounting to a half million dollars, all of which has 
 been created or acquired through the Women's Home 
 Missions Committee since 1878. 
 
 Now scholarships must be established and teachers 
 sent forth and maintained in flocks to the colored peo- 
 ple of the South, on an enlarged scale to the Indian, to 
 the congested centres of foreign immigrants, to the poor 
 whites and the Chinese. The Congregational Church 
 has sent three thousand women to teach the Freedmen 
 since the war. It has two hundred men in the United 
 States preaching the gospel in foreign languages, who 
 are mainly supported by the women's societies. While 
 the times demand statesmanship to handle " frontier 
 work," "Indian rights," "the foreign problem," "the 
 Southern problem," " the Mormon problem," the wo- 
 men are steadily helping to solve these problems. 
 With "Our land for Christ" as their watchword, and 
 " America must be saved by Americans " inscribed on 
 their banners, they have gone into Utah resolving that 
 " every foot of the 350,000 square miles covered by the 
 Mormon Church " shall be" "redeemed to Christ." In 
 about fifty separate towns in Utah they have planted 
 their common schools. The teacher, always a woman, 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. lOl 
 
 often the only Christian in the place, fills the office of 
 pastor, teacher and superintendent, if not doctor, un- 
 dertaker and dressmaker also. 
 
 Where is that banner not flying:? 
 
 Where and What. _, . . . . / & 
 
 The Itinerant missionary woman has 
 been introduced, a reclaiming force, among the deserted 
 farms of New Hampshire. The evening lamp of the 
 missionary's home shines across the Florida swamp, 
 and up on the farthest parallel towards the pole stands 
 the royal gift of a woman's hand, a school for Alaskan 
 children. Not only the ordinary field of former years 
 must be worked, but extraordinary situations must be 
 opened up to gospel light and atmosphere. Sunday- 
 schools must be planted in clefts of the mountains and 
 among the scattered sheep in the sage brush. Chris- 
 tian investments must follow the trail of booming towns. 
 The missionary must be on hand with his sermon the 
 first Sunday after Oklahoma is entered. His wife is 
 there too, and it is not long before she is leader of a 
 boys' dub who are put upon their honor to neither 
 swear nor use tobacco in her presence. The women 
 organize their " paper mission," and send millions of 
 newspapers and pictures where they cannot penetrate 
 themselves — to lighthouses, prisons, the military post, 
 the lumberman's camp, the dug-out, and the prairie 
 schooner. People in the far West have gone fourteen 
 miles this Columbian year to borrow old magazines. 
 And still, with all their greater undertakings, the wo- 
 men continue to fill up niches in mission needs. Their 
 boxes continue to supplement meagre salaries. Single 
 parishes send twenty-five and thirty in a season. The 
 auxiliaries of a single society forward 80, 100, or 135 
 annually. The Woman's Auxiliary of the Episcopal 
 
102 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Church reported 4,255 boxes sent to their missions in 
 1892. They represented $197,724 in cash. Every 
 year bells must be set ringing in new prairie churches, 
 and freight cars carry west and southward Sunday- 
 school libraries and chapel organs. Here goes a horse, 
 there a saddle or a tent. Women of the Reformed 
 (Dutch) Church sent seven communion sets to feeble 
 churches last year. Monuments to the dead are dis- 
 placed by memorials which bless the living. Indus- 
 trial departments are established at great outlay in 
 schools for boys and girls. Every facility which the 
 mind can devise, from a bath to a hundred-thousand- 
 dollar building, if it will promote true citizenship and 
 Christianity in our country, is laid claim to by Home 
 Missions. One of the mottoes of this patriotic army is, 
 " The foreigner must be Americanized," and that calls 
 for the Training-school, where workers are practised 
 both in the English tongue and in whatever speech is 
 native to the foreigner's transatlantic home. Such a 
 school is that of the Baptist Society in Chicago, where 
 young women of ten races are in training to teach, each 
 in her own tongue. In Springfield, Mass., is an insti- 
 tution, conducted in the French Ian- 
 How and Whom. , ,, 
 
 guage, where young women as well as 
 
 men are trained for gospel work among that great 
 deposit of French Canadians which has lately been pre- 
 cipitated into New England. Other training-schools, 
 on an English basis only, are well known. The Meth- 
 odist (Episcopal) women of the South opened one at a 
 cost of $75,000 in 1892. The Methodist women in the 
 North have erected eleven Deaconess' Homes in as 
 many cities, as centres of work. 
 
 Every class must be sought out and benefited. 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. IO3 
 
 The emigrant girl must be met on the wharf when she 
 lands. The good Samaritan must pour oil into the 
 wounds of the Alaskan girl fallen among thieves. The 
 Huguenot blood and the Covenanter blood in the 
 mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Caro- 
 lina must be searched out and put to school. There 
 must be Sunday-schools for the cowboys, with first- 
 class organ playing, and the Jews — even the Jews — 
 must not be overlooked any longer. One woman, 
 single-handed, carries on a struggling school of Spanish 
 children in New York city for years, till friends come 
 to its rescue, and now there is a church of fifty-six mem- 
 bers, the pastor reporting them as " fifty-six facts 
 among a community of Spaniards large enough for five 
 Madrids." Similar efforts are put forth for Italian la- 
 borers along the beds of great railway lines and for 
 Slovack miners in Pennsylvania, and if anybody is 
 generally left out he is specially gathered in under the 
 term " neglected populations," which is one of the very 
 shibboleths of Home Mission speech in our day. 
 
 Women undertook, at the outset, both Home and 
 Foreign Missions in several branches of the church ; 
 in others the old method of aiding Home Missions, al- 
 ready doing good service, was slower to give place to 
 the modern society. Organization in the interests of 
 Home Missions occurred as follows : 
 
 Baptist Church (North) in... 1876 
 
 Baptist Church (South) iS8S 
 
 Baptist Free Church 1873 
 
 Baptist Seventh-Day Church.. 1885 
 
 Date of Home Christian Church 1S90 
 
 Missions Societies Congregational Church State Unions. 1883 
 in the Churches. t^ • , ^1 , „ 
 
 Episcopal Church 1871 
 
 German Church (Evangelical Association) 1884 
 
104 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Lutheran Church 1879 
 
 Methodist Episcopal Church (North) 1680 
 
 Methodist (Episcopal) Church, South 1878 
 
 Methodist Protestant 1893 
 
 Presbyterian Church (Northl — ...1878 
 
 Presbyterian Church (Cumberland) i88o 
 
 Presbyterian (United) Church 1883 
 
 Reformed (Dutch) Church 1875 
 
 United Brethren in Christ. — 1875 
 
 These societies are working among forty tribes of 
 Indians, and in nearly twenty European languages. 
 The five largest of them are represented by 1,084 "mis- 
 sionaries and teachers, and the sum disbursed in 1892- 
 93 by all these societies, so far as reported, was $1,100,- 
 000 in money, outside of other gifts. 
 
 But, it is time to ask, with all this outside demand 
 upon Christian women did the local church die of neg- 
 lect ? Were Bible-classes vacated by teachers, bed- 
 sides deserted by nurses? Was family religion no 
 more cultivated ? Carried away with this enthusiasm 
 for the black race, the red race and the yellow, for mis- 
 sions in Colorado and missions in Japan, did Dorcas 
 and Tryphosa now cease to lodge strangers, to wash 
 the saints' feet, to relieve the afflicted ? 
 
 By no means. How much was heard of City 
 
 Missions before the foreign missionary wave touched 
 
 ^. , . . our shores? A priori, city missions 
 
 City Missions. -^ ' , , , 
 
 were first, for unless we love the broth- 
 er that we have seen how can we love him that we 
 have not seen ? But in the order of spiritual sequences 
 it was after God pressed home upon us the radical 
 truth that he had made all nations of one blood, and if 
 we love him we must love our brother to the ends of 
 the world, that the light of city missions blazed out from 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. 10$ 
 
 a more than a seven-branched candlestick. Now be- 
 gan the flower missions, fresh-air funds, girls' " Friend- 
 ly's," midnight missions, King's Daughters, boot-black 
 brigades, free kindergartens, Young Women's Chris- 
 tian Associations, day nurseries, night schools, socie- 
 ties for protection against cruelty to childi-en and 
 animals, and all those speciahzed forms of rescue work 
 which characterize our time, which women always aid, 
 and often both conduct and maintain. It is a matter 
 of frequent observation that the Bible was never so 
 thoroughly studied in our country as it is now, and to 
 this result every earnest woman in every auxiliary has 
 contributed her share, for that earnestness has been fed 
 on the Word of God and fanned by the Spirit of God. 
 Beautiful is the interplay between departments of this 
 work. It is all so informed by one aim and spirit that 
 it is perfectiy easy for the same woman to have place in 
 her heart for all missions in their different phases. 
 
 An historical survey like this may seem open to 
 the charge of boastfulness. God forbid that we should 
 in anywise boast. In all things we have come short. 
 Have any women on earth received so much from 
 God, do any owe so much to his dear Son, as we of 
 America ? But, listening to summaries, we are apt to be 
 Proportion of Wo deceived. Totals sound large. When 
 men Enlisted. ^^ come to placc facts in right propor- 
 tion we are disillusionized. In what proportion are the 
 women of our churches represented in these efforts ? 
 
 " One-fourth of our half a million women," say 
 Methodists of the north ; '"' eighteen per cent, of adult 
 women in yearly meetings," say the Friends ; " 460 
 auxiliaries out of 1,450 congregation — what of the 
 other 1,000 congregations ?" say tlie Lutherans ; " con- 
 
I06 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 tributions from a little more than half our parishes," 
 say Episcopalians; "foreign missionary auxiliaries in 
 two-thirds of our churches," say Presbyterians in Penn- 
 sylvania ; " not more than one-sixth of our church 
 members in any missionary work," say Presbyterians 
 of Oregon ; " one-eighth of our cHurch members in 
 twenty-two states enrolled in Home Missionary Socie- 
 ty," say Baptists of the North ; " one-sixth of our 
 church women in foreign missionary membership," say 
 Congregationalists on the Atlantic seaboard; "less 
 than one-sixth," they say about Chicago; "five hun- 
 dred dead societies," reports one Board. But just 
 because this muster of his handmaidens has been so 
 reluctant and incomplete the name of the Lord Is the 
 more magnified in results achieved. In view of so 
 much accomplished by such weak agencies we can 
 only look up, and wonder, and adore. What blessing 
 God could pour out, and what the victory would be, if 
 instead of this fraction from our churches every woman 
 in them would add the weight of her warmihearted de- 
 votion to missionary service, can scarcely be con- 
 ceived. 
 
 Thus far this history has restricted itself to a re- 
 view of Efforts ; but, in closing, we cannot restrain one 
 swift glance at Results. 
 
 In our own country they are apparent. The record 
 of them is not confined to missionary 
 
 RcsuHs 
 
 magazines • it is in all the newspapers. 
 The missionary woman labors under limitations in Ori- 
 ental countries, and, especially if unmarried, must often 
 endure to have her motives and conduct rest under the 
 suspicions of degraded minds. But her peculiar arena 
 is our dear land, where, even in rudest communities, the 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. I07 
 
 air breathes of chivalry towards motherhood and wo- 
 manhood. The sun in its course looks down on no 
 spot of earth where the opinions of good women and 
 the resolute actions of good women have so much in- 
 fluence on the public mind and public weal. Were all 
 their active and aggressive part in philanthropic work 
 to be suppressed to-day, not only would every Home 
 Missionary Society be in despair but protest would 
 arise from worldly men. It is more difficult to point 
 to what is distinctively the fruit of woman's work in 
 missions at home than abroad because the peculiar 
 barriers of the East are wanting here. Nowhere in our 
 country is the ordained man prohibited from carrying 
 the gospel into the home or pressing the claims of 
 religion upon any individual. And yet that young 
 colored woman at Augusta, Georgia, in charge of a 
 school having eight assistant teachers and four hundred 
 pupils ; the Omaha Indian girl regularly graduated as 
 Specimen Results ^ physiciau and practising among her 
 in the United States, people ; the Dakota women's mission- 
 ary societies and their notable offerings ; the rescued 
 Chinese slave-girl assisting, in the English language, at 
 a corner-stone laying in San Francisco last July ; twenty 
 churches of converted Mormons born out of women's 
 schools — these are specimen fruits of what is not likely 
 to be brought to perfection without a woman's hand. 
 
 But what of those farther shores ? Have the toils 
 of all these societies at home and the sacrifices of our 
 countrywomen been also blessed in the Turkish Em- 
 pire, in Persia, India, Siam, China, Japan, Korea, 
 Africa, and the islands of the sea ? There, results are 
 farther out of sight than results at home ; we must draw 
 nearer to them. Yes, God has answered us with his 
 
I08 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 seal of approval. It is imprinted on the personal trans- 
 formation from wild, unruly beings, such as met the 
 first missionaries in Persia, to those dignified ladies 
 who now conduct Quarterly Meetings on Oroomiah 
 Plain and furnish columns to the mission paper. Travel- 
 lers in Syria and Egypt tell us they are often able, by 
 their faces, to select, out of a casual company whom 
 they see, those women who have attended mission 
 schools. A visitor in Mexico could scarce believe that 
 the thoughtful-faced women in the mission congregation 
 were of the same class as those she met on the plaza. 
 Let a European light down upon any village in Asia 
 Minor, or the Chinese Empire, and the tidiest house 
 General Results there, with the cleanest tablecloth and 
 Abroad. the most inviting bed, is the home 
 of a mission-school graduate. The transformation 
 appears in the deaths they die ; like the old Siamese 
 woman, a few months ago, whispering " My Sa- 
 viour " with her last breath ; like the young wife 
 on the Ogowe River, Africa, when heart and flesh 
 failed, still resisting the witch doctor and charging 
 her husband to be " faithful to God." These women 
 are transformed by happiness. Christianity encourages 
 them, wakes their intellect, kindles aspiration, as well 
 as offers peace. Where for thousands of years they 
 have said, " We are donkeys," a corps of intelligent 
 teachers and evangelists are now raised up. 
 
 As women rise they bring the home up with them. 
 A missionary of long experience points to the " new 
 affection and respect shown by husband and children 
 towards Christian wives and mothers, because their 
 religion has made them worthy of respect and affection 
 which as heathen women they did not merit." 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. IO9 
 
 Without this woman's work for woman, touching 
 life at so many and such sensitive points, some missions 
 would have been a failure. The American mother and 
 her babe have bridged the chasm between the dreaded 
 foreigner and the Korean mother's heart. Church 
 membership, which formerly preponderated entirely 
 in favor of men, has in some older missions approached 
 nearly to equalization. Among their trophies are wo- 
 men who have borne persecution, made harder by their 
 traditions for them than for men ; and those who zeal- 
 ously prosecute home missions, as among Gilbert Island 
 women, and the Japanese who have been known to 
 sell their dresses for the cause. They have their for- 
 eign missionary heroines also, like Yona, the Harriet 
 Newell of Zululand. 
 
 Look at woman's work for woman in Japan: 
 prayer unions holding their annual meeting, attended 
 by delegates from different cities, whose traveling ex- 
 penses were paid by women of their respective church- 
 es ; a Japanese girl leaving a legacy of $65 to the 
 school where she became a Christian ; Bible women in 
 demand beyond the supply, and the Japanese churches 
 paying a part or all of their salary ; a boys' school 
 begging for an American woman to teach them. " Such 
 deep Christian experience that," as an Osaka mission- 
 ary writes, " it seems impossible that they grew to 
 womanhood in ignorance of Christ." 
 
 Look at woman's work for women in India. It 
 has found out the class resting under the heaviest 
 curse, the widow, and lifted her to a place of honor. 
 While Christian girls have been passing entrance ex- 
 aminations to the University for twenty years, the first 
 Mohammedan girl has matriculated this year. " Chris- 
 
no WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 tian women," Miss Thoburn says, " are much more 
 prominent and important than Christian men. If they 
 live in a village they are the only women there who can 
 read and write. No others go to a place of worship 
 with men. Their daughters go away to boarding- 
 school and return to be consulted by their own fathers. 
 When the Dufferin medical schools called for students 
 three-fourths of those who came forward were Chris- 
 tian girls." Even indirect results begin to show them- 
 selves on the far horizon. The purdah is drawn aside 
 for 2ifUe day at the Exposition in Calcutta. A class of 
 barbarous midwives study anatomy with a Philadelphia 
 graduate. An appeal against child-marriage is sent to 
 the English Parliament. Brahmo Somaj women gather 
 together into a prayer-meeting at Lahore. " It is your 
 women and doctors that we are afraid of," say the 
 men of India. 
 
 In Persia, the respectful term Kkanum (Lady) is 
 frequently applied to Christians by Persian men, but to 
 Mohammedan women never. A priest asked a mis- 
 sionary lady to offer prayer beside him at the burial of 
 a child. When the American Mission was opened 
 only two women in the whole country could read. At 
 their Jubilee in 1885 the question was put, " How many 
 present can read?" and six hundred women rose to 
 their feet. 
 
 Look at woman's work for women in China. A 
 Canton girl, imitating her college sisters in England 
 and America, takes the prize for Bible examination 
 over the heads of all the competing pastors. Up in 
 Shantung several women, without preacher, teacher or 
 sexton, have maintained a house of worship and Sun- 
 day service in their community for a period of years. 
 
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK. Ill 
 
 " Direct work for women," says a cautious missionary 
 in that province, " has contributed fully one-half to the 
 improved sentiment towards foreigners." " It conveys 
 the idea that they amount to something," says another, 
 " sadly needed for those so near the vanishing point in 
 social life. It is necessary to the stability of the family : 
 when men become Christians and women adhere to 
 heathenism husband and wife are at cross-purposes, 
 and after a year or two of contest the husband surren- 
 ders. The family can be won in no other way. There 
 is a kind of fascination about the missionary lady ; 
 these heathen women fairly run and troop around her, 
 and when they are won the family becomes a fixed in- 
 stitution in the church. I am of the opinion," continues 
 our missionary from North China, " that for permanent 
 hold of Christianity upon the people, work among wo- 
 men is more important than among men. The request 
 comes from all our stations, ' Send us more ladies.' " 
 
 Encouraged by such evidences as these, incited by 
 gratitude and the promise of God's Word, and sus- 
 tained by the Spirit of God, the woman's missionary 
 societies propose to tarry not nor falter, but to hand on 
 their work to children and children's children, enjoin- 
 ing upon them to save America, to save the world, and 
 to be found so doins: when our Lord shall come. 
 
112 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 ZEN A NA , BIBLE A ND MEDIC A L MISSIONS. 
 
 BY LORD KINNAIRD. 
 
 " When I am gone," said the late Lady Kinnaird, 
 " you will find ' India ' engraven on my heart." This 
 was no expression of merely sentimental interest in a 
 romantic enterprise. Lady Kinnaird worked and 
 prayed and pleaded for India as few other women 
 have done, and as the result of her interest in that 
 mighty empires he founded the Zenana, Bible and Med- 
 ical Mission, of which the good Earl of Shaftesbury 
 did not hesitate to say that it was " one of the best 
 missions calculated for th? purpose it has in view, ever 
 conceived." The Earl always felt that India had a 
 special claim on English Christians. We too often 
 forget that the women of India are not only our sisters 
 but our fellow-subjects, and that while the total popula- 
 tion of India is 287 millions, the number of Protestant 
 Christians does not exceed three-quarters of a million. 
 Is not this fact a trumpet-call to every true Christian 
 heart ? Is it not a reproach for duty left undone in 
 the past, and a call to earnest and definite effort in the 
 future ? 
 
 There are 139 millions of women an ! girls in 
 India. Forty millions of them are shut up in Zenanas ; 
 they are subjects of the Empress Queen whom we 
 loyally serve, and yet how often do we give a thought 
 to their moral welfare and spiritual enlightenment ? 
 " What is a Zenana?" said a gentleman one day. " I 
 
ZENANA AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. II 3 
 
 looked all over my atlas for such a place, and could n't 
 find it anywhere ; but this may be because my copy is 
 an old one." Another interested inquirer said he had 
 searched in vain for the Bishop of Zenana, but could 
 find no diocese bearing the name. 
 
 But what is a Zenana ? Briefly, it is that portion 
 of an Indian gentleman's house set apart for the wo- 
 men. The imagination is apt to invest such a place 
 with the gorgeous surroundings which are usually as- 
 sociated with Indian wealth and rank. But the reality 
 is in most cases dull and prosaic in the extreme. Instead 
 of a mansion, think of a mud building, bare and uninvit- 
 ing, probably the darkest and dirtiest part of the 
 establishment. Do not imagine that the inmates are 
 attired with oriental magnificence. They are poorly 
 and plainly clad ; they sit on the floor, and therefore 
 but little furniture is needed, and the whole place is 
 more suggestive of the hopeless seclusion of the prison 
 than the social sunshine of the home. And in these 
 dens forty millions of the women of India are kept ! 
 They have none of the joys of family life, for the wo- 
 men never gather with husband and children. They 
 are practically excluded from intercourse with the male 
 portion of the household, and never do they hear the 
 ringing laugh of happy childhood. " Doomed to an 
 enforced inferiority," says one writer, referring to wo- 
 man in the zenana, " her life is without an inspiring 
 purpose, and, as a consequence, it sinks to a drud- 
 gery worse than the treadmill." Woe betide the 
 women when they become sick ! Then, of all times, 
 we should expect a little kindly attention to be shown 
 them. But the sufferers are relegated to some damp 
 chamber, where they are left alone to die, often with- 
 S 
 
114 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 out any tender ministries of loving hands to soothe 
 and comfort their last hours. 
 
 Is not the dull and cheerless existence of such 
 women a living death ? First, they are severed from 
 all social life; then the intellectual life is cut off, for 
 books are almost unknown and the cultivation of any 
 talent is never attempted. " Education is good," says 
 the Hindoo, "just as milk is good ; but milk given to 
 a snake becomes venom : so education to a woman be- 
 comes poison." And this pernicious logic is relent- 
 lessly put into practice, with the result that the life of 
 an Indian woman, unless she becomes a wife and the 
 mother of a son — for a daughter is regarded as a 
 curse — is nothing but a sad and sunless pilgrimage 
 from an unhappy cradle to an unregretted grave. 
 
 As for the religious life, with sorrow it must be 
 admitted that our unhappy sisters sit in darkness and 
 in the shadow of death. In gloom and despair they 
 pray to their idols, and so terrible are some of their 
 deities that children scream when they see the awful 
 monsters. There is no sweet hour of family prayer, 
 no tender petition whispered to "Our Father" in 
 heaven, none of the cheering promises and inspiring 
 thoughts of the Christian rehgion. Surely the drean,- 
 picture is an irresistible plea for the sympathy and help 
 of Christian England ! 
 
 But there is a worse tale yet to be told — the sad 
 story of the Hindoo widow. We naturally have a deep 
 regard for the widow; her forlorn position, her sorrow 
 and loneliness, excite our tenderest emotions. In India 
 this is entirely reversed, and the poor widows are re- 
 garded as being cursed by God. How England would 
 ring out with a cry of righteous indignation if one 
 
ZENANA AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. II S 
 
 who had been a faithful wife were confined in a prison, 
 and exposed to every kind of abuse and indignity, 
 simply because she was a widow ! But in India, not 
 one widow, but millions are so treated; and it is no 
 exaggeration to say that in many cases their lot Is far 
 worse than that of a criminal in an English jail. Di- 
 rectly a woman becomes a widow she is degraded to 
 the lowest drudgery of the household ; she must eat 
 but one meal a day, and that only a dish of rice; twice 
 a month she must fast for twenty-four hours, and her 
 bed is on the floor. We must remember, also, that 
 these poor prisoners are frequentiy mere children ; that 
 is the most terrible part of it. An aged man may 
 have a child-wife. " I can never remember," said a 
 little girl, " the time when I was not a widow." Ac- 
 cording to the census of 1891, out of the vast number 
 of widows under fifteen years of age (51 to every 
 10,000 of the whole population), 33 per cent are 
 widows under five years of age ! 
 
 These facts are harrowing and unpleasant, but 
 they ought to be more widely known. The govern- 
 ment does but little to ameliorate the sufferings of our 
 sisters. A male missionary is never allowed to enter 
 a zenana. Consequently there is but one thing to be 
 done : godly, gifted women, filled with the spirit of 
 Christ and the "enthusiasm of humanity," must go 
 forth to minister to these sick and sorrowing ones, and 
 by the light of the gospel transform the black night 
 of oppression and suffering into the glad morning of 
 freedom and happiness. 
 
 Of the blessing which God has bestowed on the 
 work, and the way in which difficulties, once apparendy 
 insuperable, have been rolled away, I have not space 
 
Il6 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 to write. But this fact must be recorded — that the 
 work is limited not so much by lack of opportunities 
 as by lack of workers and means. Great good has 
 been done by the native Bible- woman. As a native 
 she can gain ready access to the family ; her books 
 and tracts are accepted ; presently the word of God is 
 introduced, read, and explained ; questions are asked, 
 interest is excited, and the hearts of many of India's 
 women open, like Lydia's, to receive the word. Then 
 the hospitals and jails are visited, and everywhere 
 eager listeners are found. 
 
 There is also the valuable influence "of the nor- 
 mal and day schools at work. The 1891 census returns 
 have tabulated the statistics as to I28i millions out of 
 the total number of 139 millions of women, and of these 
 (i28i millions) 99.4 are unable to read or write, and are 
 not even learning to do so. In our schools the teach- 
 ers are not content with imparting secular knowledge, 
 they strive to win their pupils to Christ. This is one of 
 the most hopeful features of the work ; for if India is to 
 become Christian it must be very largely through na- 
 tive agencies. And the young people who go forth 
 from these schools — their memories stored with gospel 
 truth — will naturally be missionaries among their own 
 people. 
 
 Many a zenana, however, would remain for ever 
 closed, even against the lady missionary, if it were not 
 for the medical mission. All honor to the Christian 
 lady doctors who take to the women of India not only 
 medicine for the body but good news of the Great 
 Physician who alone can cure the sin-sick soul. That 
 their work is supremely necessary is proved by the 
 fact that a medical man is seldom admitted to a zenana. 
 
ZENANA AND MEDICAL MISSIONS. 11/ 
 
 On one occasion when a doctor asked to feel the pulse 
 of a lady patient he was refused, but the suggestion 
 was made that he should feel the pulse of one of the 
 servants instead. In another instance the tongue of a 
 lady had to be examined through an opening in a cur- 
 tain. But when no one else can gain access the lady 
 missionaries are freely admitted, and much good work 
 is quietly and unostentatiously accomplished. 
 
 It is interesting to know that the queen herself is 
 deeply interested in the welfare of her Indian subjects. 
 " You are going to England," said the Maharanee of 
 Punnah to one of the lady agents of the Zenana Mis- 
 sion, " and I want you to tell our queen, and the men 
 and women in England, what we women in the zenanas 
 in India suffer when we are sick." This touching mes- 
 sage in due time reached the ears of our most gracious 
 sovereign, and she remarked to her lady-in-waiting, 
 " I had no idea it was as bad as this : something must 
 be done for these poor creatures ;" adding, " I wish it to 
 be generally known that I sympathize with every effort 
 made to relieve the suffering state of the women of 
 India." 
 
 " Something must be done." That is the verdict of 
 the queen, and it must also be the obvious conclusion 
 of every woman who has a heart to sympathize with 
 her oppressed and suffering sisters. Thank God, 
 something is being done. The Zenana, Bible and Med- 
 ical Mission has 73 European missionaries and assist- 
 ants, 54 Bible-women, and 149 native Christian teach- 
 ers and nurses. It sustains 67 schools with 2,554 P^- 
 pils, and three normal schools with 115 students train- 
 ing for mission work. Its hospitals and dispensaries at 
 Lucknow, Benares and Patna are fully appreciated ; in 
 
Il8 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 1892, for instance, there were 10,500 patients, with 32, 
 500 attendances. But think how utterly inadequate 
 this is among- 139 milHons of women and girls. Lon- 
 don, with a population of only four millions, has far 
 more Christian workers than the whole of India. The 
 situation is so serious and the need so urgent that it is 
 time some of us began to practise a little self-sacrifice 
 in order to render prompt and liberal help. Such an 
 effort may involve some trifling inconvenience, but it will 
 bring an unfailing reward of genuine pleasure. 
 
 The Queen of Sweden sold her diamonds to help 
 in building a hospital for the poor, and while visiting 
 the patients one day the tears of a poor woman fell 
 upon her hands ; as she looked at them she realized 
 that God had given her, in those tears of gratitude, 
 diamonds more precious than those she had parted 
 with. Thousands of people are longing for happiness, 
 and are busily engaged in pursuing the phantom of 
 pleasure. Let them now enjoy the unspeakable luxury 
 of doing good. No field of labor can be more suitable 
 for Christian ladies than the alleviation of the sufferings 
 of the women of India. The mothers of our land 
 would do well to make this their special care. They 
 know the blessings of home life in their own free, edu- 
 cated, happy country. Let them never rest until their 
 sisters, who pine and sigh, with stunted intellects and 
 crushed hearts, in the zenanas of India, are rejoicing in 
 the liberty and peace of Christianity. 
 
THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. II9 
 
 WOMAN'S WORK IN CONNECTION WITH 
 THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 
 
 BY CAROLINE WHYTE. 
 
 To give anything like a complete or satisfactory 
 sketch of Woman's Work in connection with the Lon- 
 don Missionary Society within the Hmits of time and 
 space allotted to us would be impossible. 
 
 In two years' time from this date our Society will 
 be celebrating its centenary, and it is hardly too much 
 to say that its work among women in heathen lands 
 stretches also as far back as the beginning of this cen- 
 tury — manifestly too long a history to be condensed 
 into ten minutes' time. It has been truly said, " Zena- 
 na missions were actually commenced and carried on 
 by the first missionary who had a wife of the right 
 sort," and the annals of our Society bear witness to the 
 fact that in the early half of this century, as in all the 
 days that have followed, our missionaries have for the 
 most part had at their sides as fellow-laborers and help- 
 meets " wives of the right sort " — women who by the 
 grace of God have not only proved living witnesses of 
 the elevating and sanctifying influences of Christianity 
 upon womanhood, but who through the establishment 
 of Christian homes in the midst of heathen surround- 
 ings have afforded the best and most powerful proof pos- 
 sible that the sweet fruits of joy, peace and love can only 
 be fostered and grow to perfection in homes where 
 Christ is acknowledged as supreme Lord and Master; 
 
120 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 where woman is enshrined in her true place as the 
 centre of family influence, a centre from which will be 
 radiated light, and self-sacrificing help to all within 
 reach. It will be sufficient to name only such women 
 as Mrs. Moffat, Mrs. Ellis, Mrs. Mullens, Mrs. Moult, 
 Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Wardlaw, as 
 types of the noble womanhood which has labored with 
 devotion and self-sacrifice for Christ among their 
 heathen sisters. These were all true pioneers of the 
 work which during the last thirty years of this century- 
 has been more thoroughly organized, and has so won- 
 derfully developed ! 
 
 Just in proportion to the zeal and energy put forth 
 by the wives of our earlier missionaries did the impor- 
 tance of the work among women in heathen homes be- 
 come widened ; and it soon became manifest that the 
 task of educating and elevating them, of making known 
 to them the knowledge of a Saviour's love and bringing 
 them out of the bondage of caste and superstition into 
 the glorious liberty of the children of God, was a task 
 utterly beyond the limited powers of time and strength 
 at the disposal of even the most able and willing among 
 missionaries' wives. A special band of helpers was 
 needed as their colleagues, who should be set apart ex- 
 pressly for this work. Accordingly, at the 8ist anniver- 
 sary meeting of our Society a resolution was passed ap- 
 pointing fifteen ladies " to cooperate with the directors in 
 promoting the education and conversion of women and 
 girls in heathen lands." Since the autumn of that year 
 (1875) this Ladies' Committee has been steadily at 
 work, and although at the close of the first ten years 
 (i. e., 1885) progress had been slow, and they could then 
 report only twenty-seven ladies as having been sent out 
 
THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 121 
 
 to the foreign mission field, yet substantial help had 
 been given in the starting and support of girls' schools 
 in India, China, and Madagascar, and the number of 
 native workers employed (z. e., Bible-women, zenana 
 teachers, school-teachers, etc.) was 226, while during 
 the ten years ^14,000 had been specially collected for 
 and expended entirely on work among women in the 
 foreign field. 
 
 During the last eight years the progress has been 
 much more rapid and marked. We have to-day sixty- 
 one ladies actually engaged in the work, and this num- 
 ber will be increased to seventy-five before the close of 
 this year, making in all more than 100 (103) who have 
 been sent out since 1875. Of the twenty-eight names 
 which no longer stand upon our roll, by far the larger 
 number have become the wives of missionaries ot our 
 own or other Societies and are still laboring zealously 
 in the cause to which they consecrated their lives, while 
 only three have exchanged the earthly for the heavenly 
 home during these eighteen years. 
 
 Our present actual band of workers is distributed 
 over the field, which is the world, in the following pro- 
 portions : 31 in India (15 in North India, 13 in South 
 India, and 3 in Travancore), 20 in China, 6 in Mada- 
 gascar, and 4 in the South Sea Islands. There has 
 been a proportionate increase in the number of our 
 native female agents during the past eight years ; but, 
 owing to imperfect returns, it is impossible to give the 
 exact number now employed. Our girls' school now 
 numbers 374, with some 53,740 scholars. While for 
 many years past we have had ladies who, as qualified 
 nurses, have taken an active share and help in the work 
 of the numerous medical missions of our Society, it was 
 
122 WOMAN IN iMlSSIONS. 
 
 only last year (1892) that we sent out our first fully 
 qualified lady doctor to take charge of a women's 
 hospital in Hankow, North China. This autumn she 
 will be followed by the first sent to India (Berhampore). 
 We are happy to say, however, that four more ladies 
 are now receiving training at the London School of 
 Medicine for Women, and will, in the course of a year 
 or two, we hope, enter upon active service abroad as 
 lady doctors. 
 
 We cannot lay claim to any originality in our 
 forms and methods of work, but we can safely say that 
 our agents have faithfully and efficiently carried on the 
 various branches of work among women now so famil- 
 iar to all who are interested in the subject : educational 
 work of all kinds, both in schools and in zenanas, 
 schools for the children of native Christians, orphan 
 schools and village and other day-schools for the chil- 
 dren of the heathen population, house-to-house visita- 
 tion, itinerary evangelistic work in country villages, 
 nursing work in the homes and in connection with the 
 missit>n hospitals, gospel addresses to both the out- 
 patients and the in-patients, the training and superin- 
 tending of Bible-women and native agents, the transla- 
 tion and preparation of text-books, magazines, and 
 other useful and suitable literature for converts and the 
 children who have been taught to read. These and 
 many other forms of Christian work afford ample scope 
 for the diversities of gifts and powers of our agents, 
 who again and again prove their willing consecration 
 to the Master and the work they love by adapting 
 themselves to fresh surroundings and new forms of ser- 
 vice; and every year and everywhere the work has 
 been growing upon their hands and extending on every 
 
THE LONDON xMISSIONARY SOCIETY. 1 23 
 
 side, SO that the cry from almost all parts of the field is 
 " We find it impossible to overtake it/' 
 
 At home the work of the Committee has also been 
 on similar lines to that of sister societies : endeavoring 
 to rouse a wider and more intelligent interest in the 
 work abroad by means of special literature (a quar- 
 terly record of the work and other pamphlets), by hold- 
 ing meetings to plead the cause and organizing auxilia- 
 ries throughout the country, and more especially in the 
 selection and training of those whose hearts have been 
 stirred up by God to consecrate their lives to his ser- 
 vice in the foreign field. 
 
 Two years ago a change was made in the home 
 organization by which the woman's work of the Soci- 
 ety was more closely identified with that of the general 
 work. Lady directors are now admitted on the gen- 
 eral board of direction, and, with the exception of the 
 work of the selection and training of lady candidates, 
 which is still in the hands of a ladies' committee, all 
 other details connected with the female mission work 
 are carried on on the same lines and* are under the 
 same control as the general work of the Society. Prob- 
 ably opinions will differ as to the wisdom or unwisdom 
 of this joint management, but it is certainly well to rec- 
 ognize the fact that " in Christ Jesus there is neither 
 male nor female," and that our aim and object is one — 
 to bring the glad tidings of a Saviour's love within the 
 reach of every weary, sin-laden soul, or, in the words 
 of Scripture, " to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal 
 the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the cap- 
 tives, the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at lib- 
 erty them that are bruised." 
 
 It must be remembered that women constitute the 
 
124 Woman in missions. 
 
 larger half of the population of the world ; also, that in 
 laboring for their elevation we are laboring, not for the 
 souls of the women themselves only, but for the whole 
 of mankind of woman born : since she sits at the foun- 
 tain-head of liie and moulds the minds of the rising 
 generation, implanting seeds of superstition or of faith, 
 of evil or of virtue, the roots of which pierce so deeply 
 into and intertwine so firmly with the groundwork of 
 character that it is, humanly speaking, impossible to 
 eradicate them in after life. Moreover, again and again 
 our missionaries report that the chief hindrance to the 
 harvest among the men is the influence exerted upon 
 them in their homes by their wives and mothers, and 
 that these also constitute the main force in upholding 
 all systems of idolatry and superstition. 
 
 Therefore, in the spirit of the old adage that " union 
 is strength," we would join hands with our fathers and 
 brothers and "strive together for the faith of the gos- 
 pel." 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 125 
 
 WOMAN AND TH3 AMERICAS NEQIIO. 
 
 WOMAN'S WORK FOR THE AMERICAN 
 NEGRO. 
 
 BY MISS MARY G. BURDETTE. 
 
 What shall we do with the American negro — 
 the American citizen of African ancestry ? Does the 
 question imply that his case requires special treatment, 
 differing from that of American citizens of other de- 
 scent ? If so, why so ? 
 
 " We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all 
 men are created equal ; that they are endowed with 
 certain inalienable rights ; that among them are life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So reads our 
 glorious Declaration of Independence ; and the Consti- 
 tution further affirms, " All persons born or naturalized 
 in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction 
 thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State 
 wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce 
 any law which shall abridge the privileges of citizens of 
 the United States." 
 
 Is the negro problem American ? 
 
 " Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto 
 you, do ye even so unto them " are the words of the 
 Christ. 
 
 Is the negro problem Christian ? 
 
 A finely educated and notably eloquent son of the 
 South is reported as saying that there was not a restau- 
 
126 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 rant between Washington and Florida where he could 
 get a meal without going around to the kitchen door 
 and taking it in his hands. What was his offence ? A 
 black skin. " Oh, yes," you say, " that is in the south. 
 The problem is a southern one, and the South must 
 settle it." 
 
 Not so fast, friend. In how many hotels and res- 
 taurants in the north would he fare better ? It is but 
 a few weeks since we saw a well - known Christian 
 household in a prominent northern city thrown into 
 a state of pitiable and ludicrous perplexity by the ar- 
 rival of a colored minister of acknowledged ability, un- 
 blemished character, and wide and honored Christian 
 influence. " What shall we do with him ?" The house 
 was large, there was plenty of unoccupied room, and 
 had he been white there would have been no question 
 concerning his entertainment. As it was, a whole 
 afternoon was consumed in finding a suitable boarding 
 place where he would come in contact with only per- 
 sons of his own race ! Was not the principle un- 
 derlying this proceeding the same in essence as that 
 which sometimes, among lawless classes in the south, 
 bears its fruit in tar and feathers, cross-bones and 
 skulls, mobs and lynchings ? The beam may be in our 
 brother's eye, but the mote in our own is not so minute 
 as to escape detection. The problem is also north- 
 ern. Without question it is national. Why should 
 trades unions shut the colored man out of the ranks 
 of skilled mechanics ? Why should public sentiment 
 forbid his employment as a clerk, personal repulsion 
 decline to enter into business partnership with him, 
 and prejudice even deny him the privilege of driving 
 the horse attached to a street car, in cases where he 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 12/ 
 
 has unquestioned ability "to fill these respective posi- 
 tions, and where the only bar is that of race ? Why 
 should social custom consign to kitchen, dining-room 
 or laundry young women of confessed graces of person 
 and mind and purity of life, who have struggled for 
 and obtained an education, simply because the blood 
 of Africa courses through their veins, even though it is 
 sometimes mingled with the so-called "best blood" 
 of America ? 
 
 But you say, "The educated, the refined and the 
 pure are the exceptions. As a race the people are 
 ignorant, superstitious, immoral, and often vicious." 
 Granted. But are not the exceptions marvelously 
 numerous in view of the obstacles they are compelled to 
 overcome ; of the facts that their ancestors came from 
 Africa and that but thirty years have elapsed since the 
 Emancipation Proclamation broke their shackles, after 
 two and a half centuries of bitter bondage, enforced 
 ignorance and helpless degradation ? 
 
 Again, why not encourage the fallen to rise by 
 recognizing what is worthy of recognition in those who 
 have struggled out from the low-down masses, and 
 fitted themselves for places of trust and emolument ? 
 
 What shall we do with the American negro? Just 
 what we should do with any other American : give 
 him the same opportunity, the same recognition. If 
 he has ability and worth let him have the position his 
 taste and merit demand. If he is ignorant, instruct 
 him; if imm.oral, by example, no less than by precept, 
 teach him purity, truth, honesty and honor ; if he is 
 superstitious, give him the light that shall put to flight 
 the phantoms of a darkened mind : in a word, if he is 
 down lift him up, and when he is up help him to 
 
I2S WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Stand. Educate him, Christianize him, teach him to 
 be " diligent in business, not slothful in spirit, serving 
 the Lord," and his elevation will be the glory of us 
 all, as his degradation is the dishonor of us all. 
 
 There is another side to the problem, in which 
 the responsibility rests with the negro. Granted that 
 opportunities are given, he himself must prove them. 
 If he does not, and will not, then he must not find 
 fault if he remains an outcast from the society of the 
 pure, the true, the noble, the cultured and the good. 
 
 So much in general. Our specific theme is 
 
 woman's work in helping to solve the 
 
 PROBLEM. 
 
 We may first be permitted to refer to the work of 
 women in the school-room. We concede that this 
 work is not distinctively that of women, and, were it 
 in the province of this paper, would bear testimony to 
 the grand educational work accomplished by men, 
 both white and colored. 
 
 Nevertheless, I need not do more than call atten- 
 tion to the peculiar influence of a true, pure, well-trained 
 woman in the school-room. Day by day, as she 
 teaches even secular branches, she impresses her own 
 spirit and personality upon her pupils ; they imbibe 
 correct views of morality, are led to imitate her in 
 right doing, to avoid what is wrong, and go out from 
 their school life truer, gentler, stronger men and wo- 
 men because of their contact with a soulful teacher, a 
 pure good woman. 
 
 But it is in the distinctively Christian schools, and 
 especially in boarding schools, where there are facilities 
 for making the school a model home and training pupils 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 1 29 
 
 tor domestic, industrial and religious as well as intel- 
 lectual excellence, that woman as a teacher is doing 
 her best and most far-reaching work. Thousands of 
 girls have left such schools to be home-makers, while 
 other thousands have become in turn teachers among 
 their own people, and others have engaged in such 
 various useful occupations as their specific talents and 
 circumstances have permitted. The value of these 
 schools can scarcely be overestimated nor the influence 
 of these teachers overrated. But they are few and the 
 people are many. The masses are still shut away from 
 their help. 
 
 The principal of a large boarding-school for 
 young men and women came in person to the execu- 
 tive board of a W"oman's missionary society to plead 
 for a training - teacher, and one argument was, " We 
 rake only the brightest and best ; we turn numbers of 
 others away every year." Now the brightest and 
 best furnish excellent material for such schools, but 
 what of the numbers turned away ? They represent 
 the neglected masses, among whom there is said to be 
 a million children and youth who ought to be in school 
 but are not. How are these to be reached ? 
 
 FIRST, IN THEIR HOMES. 
 
 A lamentable drawback to the progress] of the 
 colored race is found in their miserable homes. Not 
 but that there are many exceptions, for which we thank 
 God and take courage, but we speak of the rule. Wo- 
 men are the home-makers ; until the woman under- 
 stands her responsibihty and learns how to meet it 
 the so-called home can be but a huddling place for the 
 family. We have watched with much interest the work 
 
 Woman in Hissijus. Q 
 
130 \VOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 of certain women sent out as missionaries to the colored 
 people, whose commissions read, " yozcr work shall 
 have special reference to the Christianizatio7i and 
 elevation of the homes of the people" Christianization 
 means elevation. We call attention to some of the 
 methods employed. The first of these is 
 
 HOUSE-TO-HOUSE VISITATION. 
 
 " Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." 
 And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, saying, 
 " I will ; be thou clean," and immediately his leprosy 
 was cleansed. Not thousands, but millions of these 
 people are waiting for the outstretched hand of Chris- 
 tianity, the touch of Jesus, the contact of intelligent, 
 sympathetic helpfulness with their need ; where can this 
 touch be given, and where felt, as in the home ? How 
 may they be touched ? What do the missionaries 
 teach as they go from house to house ? Everything 
 the need demands and their opportunities and ability 
 render possible. In answer to the question, " What 
 are you doing?" one of these workers replied, "Caring 
 for immortal souls in ebony houses ;" yes, and they 
 are also caring for the houses of these souls, for multi- 
 tudes of these poor people sin grievously and suffer 
 much because they know so little about their bodies. 
 They are taught to glorify God in their bodies as well 
 as in their spirits ; they are also taught to care for their 
 homes. This teaching was characteristically empha- 
 sized by the woman who exclaimed, " I will, honey. I 
 will look up to God and clean up my house." She 
 had the right concepdon of the order — godliness, then 
 cleanliness — but as inseparable as faith and works. 
 
 The devices of the missionaries in Christianizing 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. I3I 
 
 these homes are many. One writes : " The influence 
 of a growingr plant helped to get one home in a better 
 condition, and the introduction of a pretty picture 
 wrought a change in another. In a third, the mother 
 asked me to look into the family sleeping- room, and 
 lo, what a transformation ! a clean floor, beds white 
 and clean, the wall covered with clean newspapers, and, 
 best of all, the wom.an clean and happy and a husband 
 proud of the tidy home and the wife who had wrought 
 the miracle." Another testifies, "Where we visit most 
 we have the best schools, the best meetings, the best 
 women, and the best homes." 
 
 We refer next in connection with this work to a 
 new feature, called by Joanna P. Moore, the saindy 
 woman in whose heart and brain it originated, 
 
 THE FIRESIDE SCHOOL. 
 
 Concerning the plan she thus writes to parents: 
 " The order of the day is a school around every fire- 
 side : a bright lamp burning on the table covered with 
 lovely books and papers and eager little faces around 
 it, with mother and father as teachers, although they 
 are also pupils, and are learning as they teach. Who 
 can look upon such a home-picture and not have his 
 heart swell with thanksgiving to God ? 
 
 " We hear much about the education of our chil- 
 dren. We are told to send them to school, to build 
 school-houses and employ teachers, etc. This is all 
 right as far as it goes, but it will not go far towards 
 making truly inteUigent and good men or women with- 
 out this fireside school. 
 
 " Home is the great school. Mother, make your 
 own home a school. Get interesting books for your 
 
132 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 children ; read with them and talk about what you read- 
 Do this when they are very young; awaksn in them 
 a love for books and train them in habits of study. 
 Father, when your day's work is done, do not go to 
 the saloon, nor to your neighbor's home to gossip, but 
 put a bright light on the table, get out a good paper 
 or some book with pictures, read with your children 
 if you can ; if not, let them read to you. Ask them to 
 tell you about the lessons they have learned at school. 
 Talk to them pleasantly. Parents and children are the 
 best company for each other, and my plan will keep 
 the little ones off the street and in the home. Be pa- 
 tient and kind. Do n't scold and whip. Keep your 
 children close to your heart. Tie them to their home 
 by cords of affection. Make your home such a school 
 and you will help to make an intelligent nation." 
 
 The Fireside School contemplates a regular course 
 of reading in the home, including a portion of the Bible. 
 Besides promising to read each day with her children, 
 the following 
 
 mother's pledge 
 is taken : 
 
 1. " I promise that by the help of God I will 
 pray with and for my children and expect their early 
 conversion. 
 
 2. " I will try to be a good pattern for my chil- 
 dren in my daily life, especially in temper, conversa- 
 tion and dress. 
 
 3. " I will recognize the fact that God expects me 
 to care for and train my children for him in soul and 
 mind as well as in body." 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. I33 
 
 It is only about a year since this plan was inaugu- 
 rated, but Miss Moore reports that, besides 300 Bibles, 
 Soo other good books have been placed in homes 
 where mothers have taken the pledge, and some fifty 
 of these mothers have received certificates testifying to 
 the faithful discharge of the requirements during the 
 first year. 
 
 As soon as these people learn to read Satan is on 
 hand with pernicious literature. This work in homes 
 gives a blessed opportunity to supplant these designs 
 with food instead of poison. 
 
 Time does not allow many details concerning the 
 multiplied phases of this work in homes, which we 
 believe is doing more, as far as it is prosecuted, than 
 any other one thing to stimulate these people physi- 
 cally, intellectually, morally and religiously. Being 
 fundamental work it contributes to the success of 
 every other line of effort. It includes instruction in 
 proper ventilation, selection and preparation of whole- 
 some food, economical uses of money, care of sick, 
 improvement of mind, refinement of manners, and the 
 cultivation of spiritual graces, all on a practical and 
 Christian foundation. Abundant opportunity is af- 
 forded for the inculcation of temperance principles, for 
 the promotion of social purity, for leading the people 
 to help themselves, and creating su'^h sentiment in favor 
 of education and religion as is annu?Jly sending thou- 
 sands of children and youth into schools, and even lead- 
 ing to the organization and support of schools and 
 churches and the building of school and meeting- 
 houses. Suffer a single illustration : 
 
 A Christian woman visited in the Indian Territory 
 a settlement of negroes appropriately named Sodom. 
 
134 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Ignorance, poverty and immorality held high carnival. 
 Quietly she began her work, and for weeks she con- 
 tinued to visit the loathsome cabins, intent on establish- 
 ing friendly relations between herself and the inmates. 
 By and by she had so won her way that she began to 
 ask, in one hut after another, " Do your children go to 
 school?" "No, honey." "Why not?" "Isn't no 
 school." "Why not?" " We 's too poor, honey." 
 "Do you use snuff?" "Yes, honey." "Do you use 
 tobacco?" "Yes, honey." "Do you drink beer?" 
 "Yes, honey." "What does your snuff cost? Your 
 tobacco ? your beer ? Do you not see that you pay a 
 great deal more for these harmful things than it would 
 cost you to pay your share of a teacher's salary and 
 educate your children ? Which do you love best : snuff, 
 tobacco and beer, or your little ones ? Can you give 
 up these harmful things for the sake of your children ?" 
 Well, they did — at least, some of them did — and the 
 town set apart an old cabin for a school-house, and 
 secured a colored teacher from a Christian board- 
 ing-school not far away. In less than a year the men 
 hauled lumber and erected a new board school-house 
 which served also as a meeting-house ; the women 
 began to clean up their cabins, and in some little 
 glass windows were put, and finally the people became 
 ashamed of the nam.e of their town and changed it, so 
 that now, if you should visit the place where old Sodom 
 grovelled, you would find the progressive little settle- 
 ment, Pleasant Grove, with its school, its church and its 
 greatly improved hom.es and people. Note how many 
 points there are in this single incident illustrating the 
 value of house-to-house work. Perhaps here, rather 
 than farther on, we may mention the importance of 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 1 35 
 
 special work for and with children in addition to that 
 accomplished in the home, and, not having time for all 
 that has been attempted, we make special mention of 
 
 INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 
 
 In so doing we now refer not so much to the well- 
 equipped schools, carried on in a few places on a large 
 scale, as to such schools as may be organized, without 
 expense for rent or building, in any place where there is 
 a properly qualified woman to take charge ; schools 
 in which the children may be gathered for two hours 
 each week in the church, school-house, or some home, 
 and taught the nobility of labor, and the importance of 
 doing conscientiously and thoroughly whatever task is 
 assigned. It is not so much what they do as how 
 and in what spirit they do it. Such work is given 
 them as is practicable and economical. The girls are 
 taught all kinds of sewing, from the overhanding of 
 patchwork through the successive grades of plain and 
 ornamental needlework, while the hands of the boys 
 are kept busy with any employment adapted to their 
 tastes and possible under the circumstances. For tiny 
 ones the kindergarten occupations furnish many sug- 
 gestions. The kitchen garden idea is also valuable. 
 The text enforced over and over again is " He that is 
 faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." 
 
 Is industry the only thing taught in these schools ? 
 Far from it. These weekly gatherings of children give 
 abundant opportunity for lessons in cleanliness of body, 
 neatness in dress, courtesy in conduct, purity in morals 
 and duty towards God and humanity. The children 
 cany many lessons into their homes. A prominent white 
 citizen in a southern city said to the leader of one of 
 
136 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 these schools, " I can always tell the children who go to 
 your Industrial school ; they have cleaner and brighter 
 faces, their clothing is neater, their tones gentler, their 
 conversation purer, and their conduct better than that 
 of children who have not been under such influence." 
 
 Already a number who, ten, twelve and fifteen 
 years ago were in these Industrial schools, have grown 
 to manhood and womanhood. Many have homes of 
 their own and many are ranking as excellent servants 
 and artizans. Out of these schools have also come 
 teachers, ministers and missionaries. One worker says, 
 " The best and most reliable teachers in my Industrial 
 schools are those who entered as pupils. '■ 
 
 One organization of Christian women has inaugu- 
 rated and made a very successful beginning in a system 
 of Industrial and model Homes which are established 
 generally in connection with the church schools, and 
 furnish instruction in all departments of housekeeping, 
 dressmaking, plain sewing, cooking, gardening, etc. 
 In these schools it is the rule that girls shall spend their 
 senior year in the Home. The spiritual side of the work 
 is reported as very encouraging. 
 
 Is it Judge Tourgee who makes the spelling-book 
 the prime factor in the elevation of the negro ? We 
 amend his motion by adding the Bible, and placing it 
 first. The old-time negro had no use for the Bible. 
 One woman said to a visitor, " No, I can't read and do n't 
 want to. I do n't need to read the Bible. I 's got the 
 sperit, and it teaches me not to put my light under a 
 bushel, nor under a peck neither. People as has head- 
 religion gets along well enough for a time, but when 
 they dies they gets left." 
 
 Nevertheless, " The entrance of God's word giveth 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 1 37 
 
 light ; it giveth understanding to the simple," and we 
 are glad to quote from a letter written recently by one 
 of these enlightened colored women, who lives in a 
 town where a Christian white missionary has for years 
 met a class of colored women every morning for Bible 
 study, instruction in personal duties, and prayers. She 
 says, "My people used to say ' De Bible no 'count. 
 We done got de sperit ; de letter killeth but de sperit 
 giveth light.' Now many of these same women love 
 the Bible, and would rather die than give up read- 
 ing it." 
 
 Recognizing the importance of this study, scores of 
 
 BIBLE BANDS, 
 
 whose members meet for special study, supplement the 
 work done in the homes, and are open to both sexes. 
 Many ministers attend, and testify to receiving much 
 help in interpreting and teaching the Word. " It is as- 
 tonishing," writes one missionary, " how preachers 
 pick up and assimilate truths taught, and often preach 
 them in our presence almost verbatim, with great im- 
 pressiveness and serene unconsciousness." 
 
 A prominent educated colored pastor and editor 
 in Memphis, referring to the effect of this work on that 
 city, says, " The quietude that now prevails, compared 
 with former times, is remarkable. Many minds that 
 had gone wild over Baal-worship have been settled, and 
 the people are thinking better and living better." An- 
 other pastor testifies, " There has been quite a revolu- 
 tion in my church since these sisters have been at work. 
 My people now bring their Bibles to church and know 
 how to find the text." It is from these Bible Bands 
 that the majority of workers in Industrial, Mission, 
 
138 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Sunday and Temperance schools are recruited, and 
 from them also come most of the selected ones who 
 form the local training-classes, of which we shall speak 
 later. At a recent quarterly meeting of Bible Bands in 
 one city two hundred colored women were in attend- 
 ance. These women are active in their own churches 
 and contribute also to home and foreign missions. 
 
 Remember, " Uke mother, like child ;" and the 
 children of to-day are the men and women of to-mor- 
 row. A people built upon a Bible foundation cannot 
 but be a good people. 
 
 Another effective means of helping the women, 
 and through them the race, is the 
 
 women's or mothers' meeting. 
 
 Here experiences are related, plans discussed, perplex- 
 ities stated and encouragements reported under intelli- 
 gent Christian leadership. Bible study and prayer are 
 notable features. Sometimes a mother walks several 
 miles with a baby in her arms to be present. One of 
 these women prayed, "Lord, when we measure our- 
 selves by thy Word we come short in every part. 
 What shall we do?" Was there not an answer in 
 the testimony of another woman, who said, " Before I 
 learned to live by my Bible my religion was Uke a fire 
 of shavings, all ablaze one day and all out the next ; 
 but now I 've settled down to a steady fire of solid, 
 live-oak coals " ? 
 
 TRAINING- CLASSES 
 
 for Christian workers next claim our attention. These 
 classes are composed of women who can give more or 
 less time to personal work outside of their own homes 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 1 39 
 
 in the neighborhoods in which they Hve. They are 
 carefully instructed in Bible truths and how to apply 
 them, and are then sent out to communicate what they 
 have received. One consecrated leader in such work 
 says, " Through my women's meetings during the past 
 eight weeks I have reached not less than one thousand 
 persons with a Bible lesson occupying weekly one 
 hour." In her training-class she imparted truth each 
 week to twenty earnest women who, with their Bibles, 
 visit as they have time the homes of their less favored 
 and more ignorant sisters. 
 
 In one city where there are twenty-two Industrial 
 Schools nineteen are conducted by women belonging 
 to one of these training-classes which enrolls thirty-five 
 members. These women, besides visiting in homes 
 and teaching in Industrial Schools, organize and teach 
 neighborhood Sunday-schools, held often in their own 
 little homes, for neglected children whom they gather 
 from the streets, visit hospitals, asylums, poorhouses 
 and jails, carrying papers and tracts and a gospel mes- 
 age of salvation. Many of these women work hard to 
 earn a living for their families, and yet so great is their 
 desire for the uplifting of the race that they find time 
 for this ministry of help and hope. 
 
 One sister, whose years number sixty-five and who 
 had learned to read the Bible after she had passed 
 sixty, said, " I depend upon the Bible for my soul as I 
 do upon food for my body, and I want to help a little. 
 I saw some children running wild, and I said, ' They 
 are little things ; I v/ill help them.' I visited the cab- 
 ins on the plantation and invited the people to send 
 their children to my home on Sunday. At first five 
 came, but now forty-five ; and I have them come also 
 
140 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 on Saturday, because I cannot teach them enough on 
 Sunday. Sisters, look around for the little things, and 
 keep doing them." 
 
 The idea of special training for native workers 
 originated with Joanna P. Moore, whose name has been 
 previously mentioned, and who for thirty years has 
 devoted herself heroically to the cause of the higher 
 emancipation of the colored race from the thralldom of 
 ignorance and error. The mustard -seed is already 
 growing into tree-Hke proportions, and besides her own 
 Training-school for Women at Little Rock and a 
 growing number of local classes in other places, the 
 women of the Baptist denomination are sustaining a 
 missionary training department in connection with 
 Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C, and another in con- 
 nection with Spelman Seminary, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 The local classes are designed for women who 
 cannot leave their homes, but who are capable of ren- 
 dering service in their own churches and communi- 
 ties. The departments at Shaw and Spelman are de- 
 signed for the training of specially qualified, educated 
 colored women for missionary work among their own 
 people in this land or in Africa. 
 
 IN CONCLUSION. 
 
 We have called attention to a few facts showing 
 some phases of work by means of which woman is try- 
 ing to assist in the physical, intellectual and spiritual 
 uplifting of the American negro, and as a consequence 
 in the Christian and republican solution of the race 
 problem as far as it concerns him. We quote some tes- 
 timony of workers showing encouragement. Says one : 
 
 " I see a steady progress all along the line. In 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. I4I 
 
 the country there is a wonderful uprising of women 
 awaking as out of sleep. A large number of them are 
 now engaged in more or less work in and near their 
 own homes ; but all feel the need of training." An- 
 other : " Among the older people we notice a much 
 deeper interest in children and youth, more desire that 
 good instruction be provided for them, and a willingness 
 to arrange the church services so as to give them a 
 time and place for their meetings and Bible readings. 
 It used to be common to hear the old folks grumble 
 about ' children getting in their way at church,' but now 
 they bring them. Quite a number who were children 
 when we came are now willing and able to be our 
 helpers." 
 
 One very successful worker in Tennessee, herself 
 an educated and refined negro, among other encour- 
 agements speaks of the growing recognition given to 
 the colored women by their white sisters, and refers to 
 their attendance at some of the meetings, their evident 
 interest, words of sympathy and acts of kindness, and 
 says, " I beHeve the key-note has been struck that will 
 eventually harmonize the terrible disturbance that 
 Satan and sin have made in our land. That key-note 
 is found in the effort now put forth to Christianize the 
 homes of ozir people, and lay tipon those who are helped 
 the responsibility to help others. As I go among my 
 people I teach, with application to the race question, 
 the 1 2th chapter of Romans, emphasizing the 14th 
 verse : ' Bless them w^hich persecute you, bless, and 
 curse not.' " 
 
 Had we time we would speak of some notable 
 meetings well attended and well conducted, conventions 
 composed of and presided over by colored women, 
 
142 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 who have been reached and trained in the way des- 
 cribed. We must crave a moment's indulgence to 
 refer to a Mothers' Conference recently held in the 
 city of Little Rock, Ark., in which were discussed 
 ably and effectively a number of topics relating to the 
 homes, especially the duties and responsibilities of 
 wives and mothers. The invitation was sent to wo- 
 men representing all denominations, stating that a 
 great battle was to be fought, not between Methodists 
 and Baptists, but between good homes and bad homes, 
 between the influences that degrade and destroy homes 
 and those that purify and elevate them. Among the 
 questions discussed we enumerate the following : 
 
 1. The necessity of the mother being a pattern to 
 her children in temper, conversation and dress. 
 
 2. The importance of mothers improving them- 
 selves physically, mentally and morally for the sake 
 of their children. 
 
 3. At what age should obedience be enforced ? 
 
 4. Can children be taught manners and morals 
 in their plays ? If so, should not parents give careful 
 attention to the plays in v/hich their children engage? 
 
 5. Discussion of right and wrong methods of pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 6. Temperance being self-control in the matter of 
 appetites and passions, how are children taught intem- 
 perance when very young ? 
 
 7. What is the proper dress, and food, and amount 
 of sleep for children at given ages ? 
 
 8. How can a Fireside School be maintained in 
 every home, and how can the necessary books be ob- 
 tained ? 
 
 9. How do some of our present plans for raising 
 
WORK FOR THE AMERICAN NEGRO. I43 
 
 money for the Lord's cause teach our children bold- 
 ness, vanity, pride, selfishness and self-gratification ? 
 
 ID. Discussion of methods by which money could 
 be raised so as to teach the children self-denial, modes- 
 ty, reverence for God and a love for the cause of Christ. 
 
 Last, but not least, in many parts of the south, 
 where such work as we have described has been wisely 
 carried on, we note a slow but hopeful breaking down 
 of foolish and wicked race prejudice, and in some places 
 white women in good standing in society and the 
 church are not only laying their hands to the work, 
 but in so doing are asking for the assistance of for- 
 merly ostracized missionaries. The breach is not wide, 
 but a crack is appearing in the wall. Words of com- 
 mendation are growing more frequent as the work 
 is becoming better understood. , Said one lady to a 
 missionary, " The more I see of your work the better I 
 like it." Another, " Can you not attend our W. C. T. 
 U. regularly? You came once last year, and ever 
 since I have been investigating your noble work. The 
 more I see of it the more I am convinced it is just 
 what our colored people need;" and still another, 
 "You do not know m.e, but I know of your work, and 
 wish that my own little girl could be under such in- 
 struction." 
 
 We have not theorized, but have stated facts. 
 What do you think of such work ? Is it not womanly ? 
 Is It not Christian ? Is it not appropriate ? Is it not 
 practical ? Is it not effective ? Why, then, not do 
 more of it ? As we sweep our eye over the nearly 
 eight millions of colored people in our land, the great 
 majority of whom are waiting for just such help, and 
 then look upon the few scattered helpers, we recall the 
 
144 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 announcement of the negro minister in Texas : " We 
 are celebrating the centennial of moderate viissionsy 
 A woman was observed laying a paper pattern, now 
 this way and now that way, on a piece of cloth, while 
 her face showed a distressed perplexity which she 
 thus explained : " I want to cut two garments but have 
 only cloth enough for one." Dear women of the 
 Christian church, a great work lies before you; will 
 you see to it that the material for its accomplishment is 
 commensurate to the need? Every boy saved be- 
 comes a saved man ; every girl saved becomes a saved 
 woman ; every woman taught becomes direcdy or in- 
 directly a teacher ; every home transformed becomes a 
 centre of light and beneficent influence. Lift up the 
 women and you lift up the race. Save the home and 
 you save the nation. Christianize and rightly educate 
 the people, white and black, and you settle the race 
 problem once for all as Jesus Christ would have it set- 
 tled. Can we better close this paper than with the 
 prayer of the Afro- American brother, " Lord, link and 
 tie us together by one bond of Christian qualification " ? 
 Then indeed shall we be the nation whom righteous- 
 ness exalteth, the happy people whose God is the 
 Lord. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. I45 
 
 WOMAN AKD MEDICAL MISSIONS. 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 
 
 BY ISABELLA BIRD BISHOP. 
 
 It is as a traveller that I am asked to address this 
 audience, and as one who has been converted from in- 
 differentism to the duty and importance of missionary- 
 effort by seeing in the Foreign Mission field the work 
 and influence of the consecrated lives of Christian men 
 and women, many of them citizens of your great repub- 
 lic. In four years and a half of Asiadc traveUing, 
 during most of which time I have lived among the 
 people with an interpreter, I have learned of the sore 
 needs of the unchristianized world, with its sorrows and 
 its sins. 
 
 Here and in Britain those who stay at home and 
 help missions naturally dwell more on the work done ; 
 to me it is the work undone which bulks appalUngly : 
 the ten hundred and thirty millions without Christ 
 nearly nineteen centuries after his birth, and the awful 
 fact that, in spite of the increased activity of the church, 
 heathenism has so gained upon our efforts that, while 
 something under four millions of persons have re- 
 ceived baptism on making a Christian profession within 
 this century, the natural increase of the world's non- 
 Christian population has been two hundred millions in 
 the same time. It may be said that " the times of this 
 ignorance God winked at," v/hen our knowledge was 
 
 Womi'.n In Missinus. lO 
 
146 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 but of the fringe of heathendom ; but in our age, when 
 travellers have scarcely left any region untouched, and 
 Geographical, Ethnographical and Anthropological so- 
 cieties bring the knowledge of " Dark Continents " and 
 the conditi'T- of their peoples to our very doors, apathy 
 or half-heartedness is without excuse, and our respon- 
 sibility is vastly increased by our enlightenment. 
 
 On no point is our modern information more 
 explicit than on the amount of suffering which is every- 
 where the result of native methods of medical treat- 
 ment, and in a little more than half a century the 
 church, waking up at last to see that in order to do her 
 Lord's work she must adopt her Lord's methods, has 
 increased the number of her medical missionaries from 
 ten to 359, seventy-four of whom are women, all pledged 
 to obedience to the Master's double command, " Heal 
 the sick and preach the gospel." But what are they 
 among so many ? 
 
 We are all painfully aware of what sickness means 
 among ourselves : the physical suffering, the torturing 
 anxieties, the upsetting of plans, the incapacity for bread- 
 winning, the day and night watching, the ups and downs 
 of hope, and ofttimes its slov/ and anguished abandon- 
 ment, and much besides. But we also know what it is 
 to have at command the skill, kindness and devoted 
 attention of the most generous of professions, with every 
 expedient for alleviating suffering which modern sci- 
 ence has devised. We know how everything which can 
 tempt the appetite or give even temporary ease is pro- 
 cured at any cost. We know the patient self-sacrifice 
 of friends and relations, the tender touch, the sympa- 
 thetic tones, the ransacking for our benefit of all the 
 sources of comfort and interest, and the skill and expe- 
 
IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. I47 
 
 dients of that modern blessing, the trained nurse. 
 Among us the sick person becomes temporarily royal 
 and the sick-room sacred ground. Every voice and 
 footfall is hushed, knockers and bells are muffled, ordi- 
 nary occupations are modified or suspended ; the patient 
 is the pivot on which for the time the household re- 
 volves, and all that is choice or beautiful finds its way 
 to the sick-room. With all the sorrow and sufifering 
 of illness among us it is often a time of singular revela- 
 tions of depths of tenderness previously undreamed of — 
 of beauties of self-denial in commonplace characters 
 hitherto unsuspected, and of abounding kind-hearted- 
 ness among many who were formerly strangers. And 
 to the credit of the Christianity which has enlightened 
 us it must be added that our noble medical charities are 
 open, like the Great Physician's compassion, " without 
 money and without price" to the lonely and outcast 
 poor, and that those who from various circumstances 
 cannot be cared for in their own homes receive in our 
 magnificently equipped hospitals every attention which 
 it is in the power of our best physicians and nurses to 
 bestow. 
 
 Above all, the pious ministrations of ministers 
 and Christian friends soothe and strengthen the spirit ; 
 a peace which passeth understanding possesses the be- 
 liever's soul, and when human help is vain the rod and 
 staff of the Good Shepherd are at hand amid the swell- 
 ings of Jordan, and the Saviour's voice, speaking of life 
 and resurrection, is heard above the footfall of the king 
 of terrors as the soul passes unharmed unto Him who 
 hath abolished death and brought life and immortality 
 to light through his gospel. 
 
 But what does illness usually mean in non-Chris- 
 
148 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 tian lands? We must remember that throughout the 
 greater part of the heathen world illness is believed to 
 be the work of demons, or, more correcdy, a form of 
 demoniacal possession, and a sick person is an object 
 of loathing as '.veil as of fear. The house is regarded 
 as polluted by his presence. In many lands he is 
 removed to an out-building, where he is supplied once 
 a day with food and water, and he is shunned by his 
 nearest relations. If his heahng is desired the doctors 
 and priests are summoned, gongs and drums are beat- 
 en, fires are lighted as the centres of diabolical dances 
 accompanied by frenzied chants, incantations and exor- 
 cisms are resorted to, the stomach of the patient is 
 beaten with clubs to drive out the supposed demon, he 
 is subjected to untellable tortures, and often, when the 
 malady becomes chronic or is severely infectious, he is 
 carried to a mountain top or river bank, supplied with 
 a little food and water, and left to die alone. 
 
 In the case of women, and especially of the seclu- 
 ded women, the barbarides inflicted by those who pro- 
 fess to attend them in sickness cannot be related in such 
 an audience. It is enough to say that native midwifery 
 abounds in ignorant and brutal customs which in thou- 
 sands of cases produce life-long suffering and, in many, 
 fatal results. It is net unusual in polygamous house- 
 holds for discarded or uncared-for wives to bribe the 
 midwife to inflict such an injury upon the favorite wife 
 as shall ren.hr her incapable for further child-bearing. 
 
 In Farther India, and even in India, it is usual for 
 midwives to jump upon the abdomen of the mother in 
 her agony, or to put a plank across it and jump on the 
 ends of the plank, in order to accelerate the processes 
 of nature ; and in one of your own mission hospitals in 
 
IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 1 49 
 
 Northern India which I visited I saw, among nine pa- 
 tients, five who were suffering from severe abscesses and 
 internal injuries produced by the fracture of one or 
 more of the false ribs under this barbarous treatment. 
 And thus, in aggravated agony, the curse of Eden is 
 fulfilled upon the child-mothers of the East. It is cus- 
 tomary in many parts to place a mother after child- 
 birth, without clothing, in front of a hot fire until the 
 skin of the abdomen is covered with severe blisters, 
 after which she is plunged into cold water. 
 
 In Africa, as is well known, the " witch doctor " 
 not only inflicts horrible barbarities upon the sick and 
 infinite wrongs upon the innocent, but it is less well 
 known that in comparatively civilized Asia the native 
 systems of medicine are usually mixed up with witch- 
 craft, astrology and demonology, and are compounds 
 of empiricism, superstition and ignorance, and nowhere 
 more so than in China. I by no means intend to say 
 that there are no efficacious remedies in the hands of 
 the native doctors, or that their methods are always in- 
 tentionally barbarous. Much of the barbarity is the 
 result of gross ignorance and superstition. I will 
 crive a few of some of the milder and simpler forms 
 of treatment which have come under my own observa- 
 tion : 
 
 In rheumatism, sewing a patient up in the skin of 
 a newly-killed sheep, and walking him about in the 
 hot sun till it stiffens upon him. 
 
 For deafness, drinking warm blood taken from a 
 vein at the back of a man's ear ; or placing the patient 
 on the ground at the feet of an operator raised consid- 
 erably above him, who lifts him up nine times by his 
 ears, which are frequently torn off during the process ; 
 
150 WOMAN IN iMISSIONS. 
 
 or piercing the drum of the ear, which usually produces 
 complete deafness. 
 
 Wounds are constantly stuffed with cayenne pep- 
 per, and the skin is drawn over it by stitches of twine. 
 
 Severe rheumatism in the ankles is often treated by 
 cutting open the back of the heel, scraping away the 
 flesh to the bone, filling the cavity with cayenne pep- 
 per, and stitching the skin over it ; gangrene and death 
 frequently resulting. 
 
 The supposition being that illness is the work of 
 demons, the doctors, for a large fee, will provide a lock 
 of the hair of the demon that has wrought the ill. They 
 slash the patient's skin, remove a piece of flesh, insert 
 the hair into the cavity, and stitch the skin over it. 
 Inflammation and suppuration occur, the flesh breaks 
 away from the stitches, and the process is repeated, till 
 in many cases the patient's strength and purse become 
 exhausted and he dies. 
 
 External tumors are strangled by tying round their 
 base human hairs of unusual length and strength, mor- 
 tification and death frequentiy resulting. 
 
 Fractures are placed in splints of rough, unpadded 
 bark, and are tied up with coarse string so tightly that 
 blisters, severe wounds, and mortification frequently 
 occur. 
 
 In delirium from fever, which is regarded as one of 
 the worst forms of demoniacal possession, the sufferer 
 is, in some regions, placed in an out-house and chained 
 hand and foot to a stone block. Would that this aud- 
 ience could realize something of the miseries endured 
 by the heathen from malarial fever alone, where the 
 patients are untended in their misery, which is fabu- 
 lously augmented by the ignorance and cruel remedies 
 
IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 151 
 
 (so-called) of native medicine ! From malarial fever 
 alone 437,000 natives died in 18S8 in the Punjab, a 
 mass of suitering terrible to think of. 
 
 In China it is customary to "let out" as they say, 
 pain in the head by piercing the eye-ball or drum of 
 the ear, treatment which often produces deafness or 
 blindness. For some maladies the eating and drinking 
 by parents of the excreta of their own offspring is pre- 
 scribed — in others those of a sacred animal ; and I can- 
 not horrify you by details of the nature of the poultices 
 and lotions which are applied in eye diseases. In one 
 of the most elaborately civilized of Eastern countries, 
 in many cases, when a father is seriously ill, the doctor, 
 using incantations, cuts a piece of flesh from the son's 
 arm, cooks it with magical ceremonies, and the patient 
 eats it as an efficacious cure for his malady. 
 
 In the same country the following is not an unusual 
 prescription for certain painful but slight ailments : 10 
 Spanish flies ; 3 centipeds ; 10 silk worms ; 10 scor- 
 pions. To be pounded together and taken at once. 
 This appalling dose brings on severe inflammation, 
 which in the cases which have come under the notice of 
 the medical missionary have always ended fatally. The 
 Hakims of the same nation profess to cure rheumatism, 
 which seems to be a world-wide affliction, by sticking 
 the body of the patient over with large needles having 
 tow dipped in oil round their heads. This is set fire 
 to and forms a sort of cautery, producing wounds 
 vv^hich are aggravated by the insertion of what are 
 called " medicinal nails," composed of corrosive subli- 
 mate, arsenic and salt cooked up with mucilage. The 
 resulting wounds are often very severe, and the profuse 
 discharge saps the strength and sometimes destroys the 
 
152 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 lives of patients. Such are among the remedies pre- 
 vailing not among savages, but among races whose civ- 
 ilization is much older and more elaborate than our own. 
 
 In all countries a belief in the efificacy of certain 
 idols, shrines, stones, trees or waters prevails, and no 
 Buddhist, Hindoo or Moslem would spend an hour of 
 the day or night without a charm, amulet, or talisman, 
 purchased from the priests, round his neck or arm, 
 with the object of warding off sickness. The shrines of 
 the medicine gods of all nations are sure of votaries and 
 offerings, and even in modern Japan the red lacquer 
 medicine-god Binzuru is universally resorted to by and 
 for the sick, the method of invocation consisting in rub- 
 bing with the finger that part of the idol's person which 
 corresponds to the affected part of the patient. 
 
 Of the sanitary and antiseptic precautions required 
 in sickness these people have no knowledge, and their 
 wounds, whether natural or artificial, are in the hot 
 weather alive with maggots. The alleviations which in 
 Christian countries mitigate the sufferings of the dying 
 are unknown to them, and they regard death as the 
 triumph of the supposed demon. Amidst beating of 
 gongs, drummings, shoutings and incantations, with 
 their dying thirst unassuaged, and with their nostrils 
 plugged with a mixture of aromatic herbs and clay, or 
 with the mud of sacred streams, our heathen brethren 
 and sisters are passing in an unending, ghastly, re- 
 proachful procession into Christless graves at the rate 
 of forty-three millions a year. Ghastliest and most 
 solemn thought, that for every minute in which v/e have 
 been assembled here eighty-three Christless souls from 
 death-beds such as these have passed into the presence 
 of their Judge — and ours 1 
 
IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. I 53 
 
 Their physical woes justly move us, but their 
 Christlessness and hopelessness have an infinity of 
 piteousness. Over their sick-beds no divine Comforter 
 broods; no revelation of the fatherhood of God or 
 the brotherhood of Christ has reached them, or one 
 gHmmer of that light which He who is the resurrection 
 and the life has shed on the future of the human spirit. 
 Where are our agonizing prayers, where is our heart- 
 brokenness, where our great personal self-denials for 
 the heathen? " Oh that my head were waters, and my 
 eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and 
 night for the slain," groans the prophet Jeremiah. 
 When St. Paul wrote of those " whose end is destruc- 
 tion " it was on a page blotted with his tears ; and when 
 He who alone knows what destruction is, beheld the 
 city which was to reject him, his tears flowed over its 
 self-chosen doom. 
 
 Nearly all doers are now open to the medical mis- 
 sionary. Who of you will enter in, my Christian sis- 
 ters ? The person of the Hakim is everywhere sacred. 
 It is the glorious work of the missionary physician to 
 overthrow those barbarous systems of medical treat- 
 ment to which I have briefly alluded, and to substitute 
 for them the scientific methods, the skill and the suavi- 
 ties of European medicine, as well as to inculcate ten- 
 derness for suffering and reverence for human Ufe. To 
 our medical sisters is the special honor given to enter 
 the domestic Bastiles of the East with healing and light, 
 and to make an end by their skilled and beneficent 
 methods of the barbarous practices of native midwifery, 
 and of the many remediable sufferings of their own sex. 
 
 But it is as the missionary' physician, " the Hakim 
 in Christ's likeness," " the Hakim with the Bible," that 
 
154 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 the medical missionary follows in his Master's footsteps. 
 He must subvert worse systems even than those of the 
 native treatment of diseases. In the dispensary, 'the 
 home, and especially in the hospital, he has opportuni- 
 ties which fall to the lot of no other of awaking a sense 
 of the disease of sin — of sin which cannot be atoned for 
 by penances, pilgrimages, or gifts, or washed away by 
 ceremonial ablutions, and gentiy opening the blind 
 eyes to the love and atonement of Him whose servant 
 he is. In Moslem and Buddhist lands the evangelistic 
 missionary is unsought, unwelcomed, shunned. He 
 must create his work by slow and persevering toil, and 
 at the best he rarely reaches the undercurrents of the 
 thought and life of the people among whom he dwells. 
 In the case of the medical missionary the work seeks 
 him, claims him, pursues him, absorbs him. Crowds 
 compelled by the grip of pain throng round him, and 
 as soon as his stammering tongue can speak of Jesus 
 his audience is ready to listen. Without effort he learns 
 the inner lives, the religious ideas, the superstitions, the 
 social difficulties, the criticisms on Christianity, the 
 pressure of circumstances, the ignorance and the crav- 
 ings of all classes, and some, at least, of those who have 
 learned to love and trust the servant are won to love 
 and trust the Master. 
 
 In a survey of many mission fields,, and of vast, 
 unevangelized regions, specially in Asia, where Chris- 
 tianity comes into contact with Islam and the higher 
 philosophical, non-Christian systems, I have come to 
 think that the multiplication of male and female medical 
 missionaries is the most important work in connection 
 with missions which lies before the church, as well as 
 the most blessed form of missionary effort to which 
 
IMPORTANCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS. 1 55 
 
 young men and women who are consecrated to foreign 
 service can aspire. 
 
 Bodily suffering and spiritual blindness are calling 
 with an exceedingly bitter cry for the healing life-work 
 of consecrated men and women, but the need can be 
 met by the consecrated alone. For the half-hearted, 
 the indolent, the selfish, the doubting, and the unloving 
 there is no call and no room. There must be " double 
 quaHfications " — intense love to Christ, and intense love 
 for those for whom he died. In conclusion, I desire to 
 emphasize my unqualified testimony to the value and 
 power of medical missions. To my thinking none 
 follow more closely in the Master's footprints than the 
 medical missionary, and in no work are the higher 
 teachings of Christianity more legible and easily recog- 
 nized. The true missionary-doctor witnesses by his 
 life-work to Christ the Healer, and is an epistle of 
 Christ, translating Christ's love and teaching into object- 
 lessons which all can understand. Once again the 
 lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see, to the poor the 
 gospel is preached, and if the lepers are not cleansed 
 the miseries of their condition are greatly mitigated. 
 In looking back upon medical missions in different 
 parts of the world I cannot recall one, where the phys- 
 ician was truly " a Hakim in Christ's likeness," which 
 was not healing, helping, blessing ; making an end of 
 much of the cruelty which proceeds from ignorance, 
 softening prejudices against Christianity, opening 
 closed doors for the Gospel, and while pointing to the 
 cross which is elevated for " the healing of the nations " 
 telling in every work of love and of consecrated skill of 
 the infinit compassion of him who came " not to de- 
 stroy men's Hves, but to save them." 
 
T56 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 T/OMAJSrS MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 
 
 BY MRS. J. T. GRACEY. 
 
 On the 3d of November, 1869, the first medical 
 missionary woman sailed from New York for the 
 continent of Asia. She was a native of the State of 
 New York and a graduate of the Woman's Medical 
 College of Philadelphia. She reached her field of 
 labor in North India, January, 1870. She enjoyed 
 the honorable distinction not only of being the pio- 
 neer woman physician in India, but the first woman 
 physician ever sent out by any missionary society into 
 any part of the non-Christian world. 
 
 Dr. Swain was the forerunner of a company of 
 women destined in a new manner to prepare the way 
 of the Lord, in opening the homes and hearts of 
 heathendom. She stepped out to inaugurate one of 
 the most important humane efforts of this century, aye, 
 of any century. In this, as in all great reforms, the 
 Christian Church led the way. The story of woman's 
 misery and suffering had been wafted across the sea, 
 and the heart of Christian womanhood in America 
 had been deeply touched as we were informed that 
 within the walls of palace and hut were women, 
 tided and untitled, some glistening with gems, others 
 without any of life's comforts, child-wife and child- 
 widow, pampered queen and hungry daughter, proud 
 mother and childless wife, who in hours of sickness 
 and suffering, and in time of maternitv. were without 
 
woman's medical work in missions. 157 
 
 proper medical care ; or, if any attention was given, it 
 was by ignorant practitioners who judged their symp- 
 toms from hearsay, and who knew little or nothing of 
 the anatomy or physiology of the human body. The 
 inexorable laws of caste and custom doomed their 
 miserable victims to death rather than admit a phy- 
 sician within the precincts of their guarded seclusion, 
 and thus hundreds, and even thousands, were left to 
 suffer, linger and die as the beast dieth. It became 
 apparent that only women could meet this great em- 
 ergency, and it was providential that the battle for the 
 medical education of women had been fought out, quite 
 apart from the special claims of missions, so that when 
 the claims came to be recognized a few were ready to 
 respond. 
 
 The American woman has had this and many 
 other battles to fight in the way of reforms'. In the 
 forefront of this great pioneer work stands the name 
 of that noble woman, Sarah J. Hale, of Philadelphia. 
 It was she who thought out and urged upon the 
 churches the pressing necessity for sending medical 
 wom.en to mission fields. She wrote editorials on 
 the subject of woman's medical work, for Godey's 
 Lady's Book, of which she was then editor, and also 
 communicated with eminent clergymen on the subject, 
 many of whom expressed their sympathy with the 
 movement. Two young women offered themselves for 
 the work, but the time had not yet come. Mrs. Hale 
 in her plans was in advance of the sentiment of the 
 time, and it was a sad disappointment to her to realize 
 this. But she lived to see her cherished plans executed 
 some twenty years afterwards, and well does the writer 
 remember spending a morning in her library and hear- 
 
158 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 ing this story from her own Hps, and her expressions 
 of delight that her purposes were about to be reaHzed 
 by the appointment of Dr. Swain to India. 
 
 Turning from this initiatory movement, let us take 
 a glance at the initiatory movement in the foreign field. 
 The first effort in the direction of training native women 
 in medicine was made by Dr. J. L. Humphrey, a med- 
 ical missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 stationed in Nainee Tal, India. In 1867 he began 
 delivering medical lectures to a class of young women 
 who had received some education in the Girls' Or- 
 phanage at Bareilly. A Uberal minded Hindoo, faraiUar 
 with the condition of his countrywomen, knowing 
 something of the suffering that ensued from malprac- 
 tice of the ignorant, superstitious native midwives and 
 the hopeless agony of women stricken down by disease, 
 proposecf to Dr. Humphrey to furnish half the necessary 
 funds, to develop what seemed to him a very necessary 
 work, if some help could be obtained from the Gov- 
 ernment. AppHcation was made but finally with- 
 drawn. The time had not fully come for that either : 
 the Government could not see the necessity. But the 
 missionary did, and so a class was formed, the first of 
 its kind in the East, in Nainee Tal, May, 1869, con- 
 sisting of nine women. Was it possible for Hindoo 
 women, so long oppressed and downtrodden, without 
 school, or college, or other educational advantage, to 
 comprehend the science of medicine? Let the facts 
 answer. At the close of a two years' course of study 
 four of these women, after examination before a board 
 of English physicians — one of them the Inspector 
 General of hospitals — were given certificates for the 
 treatment of all ordinary diseases. The victory was 
 
WOMAN'S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 1 59 
 
 won once for all. That certificate meant more for 
 India and for the world of heathen women than the 
 holders themselves thought or could comprehend. It 
 meant a revolution of ideas, plans and practices, a blow 
 at superstitions hoary with age, and to religious 
 systems long opposed to the benevolent spirit of 
 Christianity. 
 
 It was just at this period that Dr. Swain arrived 
 in India. Those who were watching the movement 
 at home wondered if the doors so long barred would 
 open to the touch of a stranger, and the prejudices of 
 ages give way to the ministrations of a woman of an- 
 other nationahty. She at once commenced her work 
 by establishing a dispensary and forming a medical 
 class, consisting of fourteen girls, and was called at 
 once to visit women and children of all classes of 
 society, treating in her first few weeks one hundred 
 and eight patients. 
 
 Next came the necessity for a hospital, which was 
 met by the generosity of a native Mohammedan prince, 
 by the gift of a property worth some $15,000. Repairs 
 were made on the house, and on January i, 1874, this 
 first hospital for the women of the Orient was open 
 and ready to receive patients. Auspicious day ! Like 
 doves to the windows the women flocked to the hos- 
 pital and dispensary, Hindoos, Mohammedans and 
 Christians. Cards were printed in three different 
 languages, bearing a verse of the blessed Bible, so 
 that every patient received with her prescription some 
 word about the great Healer of souls. The women 
 were captured. " May I not come here and stay 
 awhile every year even if I am not sick ?" said one of 
 the patients. " Let me stay," said another, " for I 
 
l6o WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 would like to walk out in this beautiful garden ; I 
 cannot walk out at home, for my friends say I am 
 very bad if I do." The work thus auspiciously in- 
 augurated commanded the attention of other missionary 
 societies, and the trained physician soon became a 
 necessity in every well-equipped mission in India. 
 
 The experience of missionaries in China was iden- 
 tical with that of their fellow-workers in India. The 
 importunate cry came for medical workers from that 
 old empire, and the women of Methodism, who had 
 inaugurated this movement in India, were able to do 
 the same for China. Dr. Combs, a resident of Phil- 
 adelphia, and graduate of the Woman's College in 
 that city, was selected, and reaching Peking, the cap- 
 ital, in the fall of 1873, opened the first hospital for 
 women in 1875. The story is familiar to all conver- 
 sant with missionary work, how Dr. Howard, a grad- 
 uate of Ann Arbor, who had joined Dr. Combs, was 
 called from Peking to Tientsin to attend Lady Li, 
 wife of China's prime minister, and how it resulted in 
 opening official doors to th.e missionary and physi- 
 cian. No restraint was put on Christian work, and 
 Lady Li contributed liberally toward the expenses of 
 establishing a woman's hospital. 
 
 It was a suggestive fact that one of the finest 
 heathen temples in the city was devoted to distinc- 
 tively Christian medical work. Dr. Howard was called 
 to attend the mother of Li Hung Chang, an aged wo- 
 man, who died and left $1,000 for Dr. Howard's work : 
 the first bequest of a Chinese woman to Christian 
 benevolence. We cannot trace the history of this 
 movement in China further than to say that it seemed 
 to meet a great need, and the woman physician is 
 
woman's medical work in missions. i6i 
 
 found to-day in many of the large cities of the empire,. 
 winning the hearts of Chinese women by the irresist- 
 ible arguments of personal kindness and skilful medi- 
 cal treatment. The dispensary and hospital, or its 
 equivalent, a woman's ward, became a necessity, and 
 these are found wherever the medical missionary is 
 found. Some of these have been endowed by a single 
 person : as the Isabella Fisher Hospital in Tientsin, 
 1 88 1, by a Baltimore woman, by the gift of $5,000; 
 the Woman's Pavilion in Peking, by an Albany wo- 
 man, by donating $3,000 ; the hospital of the Union 
 Missionary Society at Shanghai, where land, building, 
 furnishing, instruments, and the salary of a physician 
 and nurse for some years were provided for at an 
 expense of $35,000 by the munificence of Mrs. Mar- 
 garet Williamson of New York, for whom the hospital 
 is named. Others are supported by societies, such as 
 the one in Canton, and the Woolston Memorial in 
 Foochow. The United States may exclude the Chi- 
 nese from her borders, and the Chinese may send all 
 Americans out of their country, but above and beyond 
 all political complications these hospitals will stand as 
 monuments of the love and devotion of American 
 Christian women for Chinese women. 
 
 No more convincing proof of the divine origin 
 and truth of our religion can be given than these 
 benevolent institutions everywhere estabhshed through- 
 out the heathen world. 
 
 Medical work was the key that first opened Korea 
 to the entrance of the gospel. Koreans have said that 
 " even stone, wood and animals have had their feel- 
 ings aroused" by the benefits of medical missions in 
 their country. Koreans follow their own sweet will in 
 
 Woman In Mlssiona. J J 
 
l62 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 taking medicine, on the principle that if a little medi- 
 cine is good, taken three or four times a day, then how 
 much better to take the entire bottle-full in half the 
 allotted time, or all at once ! The Presbyterian Church 
 sent the first medical woman to Korea, who had the 
 post of physician to the queen. She reached Seoul in 
 1886. A representative of the Woman's Foreign Mis- 
 sionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 followed in 1887, and soon in that old hermit nation a 
 woman's hospital was erected. As soon as the king 
 heard that such a buiL'.ing had been opened for the 
 relief of the suffering women of his country he showed 
 his appreciation by sending through his foreign office 
 a name painted in royal colors to be hung on the gate, 
 so that all persons would know the institution had the 
 king's hearty approval. 
 
 As the women of Japan are not secluded, and are 
 accessible to the ordinary physician, there is not the 
 same need for the woman physician as in some other 
 nations. In Kyoto a hospital and training-school for 
 nurses constitute a branch of the Doshisha University. 
 An American woman is at the head of this training- 
 school. There are throughout the world 360 medical 
 missionaries, of whom 80 are wom.en. These medical 
 women are now to be found in Turkey, China, India, 
 Burmah, Ceylon, Korea, Persia, Egypt, Syria, Japan, 
 Micronesia, and Africa, representing the following mis- 
 sionary societies : Woman's Board, Presbyterian, Meth- 
 odist Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist Episcopal Church 
 South, Woman's Union, Protestant Episcopal, Lutheran, 
 Southern Presbyterian, Seventh Day Baptist, United 
 Brethren, Friends, Cumberland Presbyterian, Presby- 
 terian Church of Canada. Presbyterian Church of Ire- 
 
woman's medical work in missions. 163 
 
 land, Wesleyan, Church of England, Free Church of 
 Scotland, Zenana Bible and Medical Missionary So- 
 ciety of London, British Syrian Mission, and Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel. The Presbyterian 
 Church (North) has the largest number in the field : 
 10 in China, i in Japan, 2 in Korea, 3 in India, 4 in 
 Persia, and i in Syria — making 21. 
 
 Miss Eddy, of this Society, daughter of a Syrian 
 missionary, having graduated last spring at the New 
 York College, has spent several years in fitting herself 
 for medical work among the women of Syria. She is 
 the first woman to take the complete course of study 
 under Dr. Herman Knapp, the celebrated oculist, and 
 is the first medical woman in that field. 
 
 Dr. Mary Bradford, of Persia, also connected with 
 the Presbyterian Church, has had a remarkable record. 
 During the past year she stood heroically at her post 
 in the midst of cholera epidemic. All Europeans had 
 fled from the city; hotels, banks and telegraph-offices 
 were closed ; but the American lady doctor remained. 
 The Armenian Khalifa, or archbishop, who had been 
 an inveterate enemy of missionaries, opposing their 
 work and denouncing them everywhere, was taken 
 sick with the cholera and sent for the missionary doc- 
 tor. Miss Bradford did not hesitate for a moment. 
 She magnanimously forgot the man's previous animos- 
 ity and hastened to his bedside. She succeeded in 
 arresting the disease. Her skill and care are given 
 equally to the wife of the Shah and to the poorest 
 peasant woman. 
 
 The Woman's Board has eight physicians, located 
 as follows : 2 in Japan, i in India — Dr. Root, who 
 in one year treated over 19,000 cases — and another 
 
164 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 under appointment for India ; i in China and another 
 accepted for China, and 2 in Turkey. Two other 
 names not found in the list of missionaries deserve 
 mention : Dr. Caroline Hamilton, a graduate of the 
 New York Medical College, and afterwards an instruc- 
 tor in the institution, is a resident physician in Aintab 
 College, supported by the generosity of a woman in 
 this country. She cooperates in missionary work. 
 Dr. Gurubai Karmarkar, who came from Bombay, 
 graduated from the college in Philadelphia, and after a 
 year at hospital work has returned to India to practise 
 among her countrywomen, and is said to be a good 
 physician and devoted Christian woman. One of the 
 physicians of this Board is occupying a peculiarly iso- 
 lated outpost, in Kalgan, on the borders of Mongolia ; 
 and in addition to these the American Board has one 
 in North China and one in Ceylon. 
 
 The Baptist Board has nine medical missionaries : 
 two in India, two in China, five in Burmah. Four of 
 these are under the Western section and five under the 
 Eastern Board. 
 
 The Methodist Board has fourteen, located as fol- 
 lows : three in Tientsin, one in Tsunhwa, three in Foo- 
 chow and one in Chinkiang, China, five in India and 
 one in Seoul, Korea. 
 
 These physicians are ministering annually to about 
 half a million of native women. 
 
 In England a somewhat different course has been 
 pursued. In the early history of this work women were 
 sent out with only a partial medical training. This led 
 to considerable discussion and the request from mis- 
 sionary societies that only fully qualified physicians be 
 sent. Only in January last a Medical Missionary Con- 
 
woman's medical work in missions. 165 
 
 ference was held in Bombay at which resolutions were 
 passed emphasizing the fact that every medical mis- 
 sionary should be thoroughly equipped professionally, 
 and, as this work is only a means to an end, the spirit- 
 ual work should be kept always prominent. 
 
 Woman's medical movement in England owes its 
 origin to the efforts of Dr. William Elmslie, the first 
 medical missionary to Kashmir. After spending some 
 years in that country Dr. Elmslie returned to England 
 in 1870 greatly impressed with the importance of secu- 
 ring medical aid for women. He agitated the subject 
 in his public addresses and through the press. 
 
 The Indian Female Normal School Society printed 
 a statement, concerning the great needs, which fell into 
 the hands of Miss Fanny J. Butler, who had for some 
 time cherished a desire for medical work. She offered 
 herself and was accepted, and immediately entered the 
 London School of Medicine, just then transferred from 
 Edinburgh. She was the first enrolled student. The 
 second was Miss Jane Waterson, who is now laboring 
 in South Africa, sent out by the Church of Scodand. 
 To Miss Butler belongs the honor of being the first 
 fully qualified English medical woman sent to a foreign 
 field. She was sent to Bhagalpur, where she spent six 
 years, then was transferred to Kashmir, where she gave 
 her life for the women. Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop, who 
 visited her in her isolated home, says : " Just before 
 the death of Dr. Fanny Butler it was a terrible sight to 
 see the way in which the women pressed upon her at 
 the dispensary door, which was kept by two men out- 
 side and another inside. The crush was so great as 
 sometimes to overpower the men and precipitate the 
 women bodily into "the consulting room. The evil 
 
1 66 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 odors, the heat, the unsanitary conditions in which 
 Miss Buder did her noble work of healing and telling 
 of the Healer of souls were, I believe, the cause of the 
 sacrifice of her life." 
 
 In London, at present, there are twenty-six wo- 
 men, in Edinburgh twenty-two, and in Glasgow eigh- 
 teen, or sixty-six in all, who are studying medicine for 
 the foreign field ; and in the field now, holding full 
 British qualifications, are nineteen women, of whom 
 sixteen are in India, two in China, and one in Korea. 
 
 WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME RESULTS OF WOMAN'S 
 MEDICAL WORK? 
 
 A Hindoo recently stated one of the results clearly 
 in a conversation with a missionary when he said, 
 " What we dread is the presence of your Christian 
 women, for they are winning our homes, and of your 
 Christian physicians, for they are winning our hearts." 
 Through the humane and Christ-like spirit of this work 
 many are brought under the influence of Christianity. 
 
 On the mountains overlooking the Dead Sea is 
 the turbulent, half-rebellious, city of Kerak. A few 
 years ago Mr. Lethaby, an uneducated and poor lay- 
 man, was sent there. He was abused, threatened, 
 and would have been killed long ago but for his heroic 
 wife, who, although not having a medical education, 
 had knowledge enough to treat simple diseases, and so 
 ingratiated herself with the people that they protect 
 her and her husband where no foreigner, nor even an 
 official of the Turkish Government, would be safe. 
 And there she has labored for body and soul together, 
 cut off from the world, but in direct communication 
 with heaven. 
 
woman's medical work in missions. 167 
 
 Medical work has been a spur to the higher edu- 
 cation of women. It has given woman a higher ideal 
 of life, for every one treated in a hospital learns some- 
 thing of cleanliness and care of the sick, and carries 
 away a treasure of new ideas which cannot fail to 
 bring comfort and health to cheerless homes. This 
 work has also developed the medical and training- 
 school on native soil and given employment for native 
 Christian girls and women. 
 
 Admission for female students was asked for in 
 the Indian medical colleges. The universities, led by 
 that of Madras, opened their doors to medical students, 
 who were welcomed and treated with uniform respect 
 by students and professors, native as well as foreign — 
 "a fact," says Bishop Thoburn, "gratefully recorded 
 in view of the very different treatment women have 
 received from Western medical colleges." In the 
 medical school established in 1884 at Agra, an insti- 
 tution belonging to the Government of India but un- 
 der missionary direction, many women from mission 
 schools have taken a course of medicine and gradua- 
 ted with honor. Interest in this movement so developed 
 that scholarships were offered by missionary societies, 
 and non-Christian municipal boards made appropria- 
 tions ; native princes, also, have promised support, and 
 offered large salaries to women students on condition 
 they would give a number of years to practice in their 
 dominions. Seven-eighths of the students here are 
 Christian women. One of the first to graduate was a 
 Hindoo widow, who passed a fine examination and 
 stood first among the women of her class. 
 
 In the history of the Methodist Mission in India 
 a litde waif of a girl was picked up and taken to the 
 
l68 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Girls' Orphanage in Bareilly. The support of this 
 child was assumed by some friends in New York. 
 With proper care she developed physically, and was 
 put in school, became a bright student, and having 
 finished the prescribed course was selected as one to 
 enter the Agra school as a medical student. She 
 graduated at the head of her class, and was so pro- 
 ficient that her case was noticed by the India secular 
 papers. She was selected to take charge of the wo- 
 man's department of a Government hospital and has 
 now been in charge about two years, and the Eng- 
 lish surgeon inspecting her work acknowledged that 
 her hospital was one of the best conducted institu- 
 tions in Northern India. Could the most sanguine 
 have imagined that in twenty-five years there should 
 be such a revolution in sentiment that a native Chris- 
 tian woman should occupy such a position ! 
 
 Another result has been the awakening of a de- 
 sire on the part of women both in China and India to 
 come out from their surroundings, to see something 
 of the great world, that they might secure better ad- 
 vantages. Among this number, Mrs. Josee, a Brah- 
 min woman, broke away from all her associations, 
 social and religious, and came to America. She 
 graduated at the Philadelphia Medical College in i8S6, 
 the first Hindoo graduate of a medical college. She 
 returned home and was under appointment by the . 
 court of the native State of Kolapore as resident 
 physician in the women's ward of the Albert Edward 
 Hospital : but the rigorous climate of our country 
 had been too severe, and she died on the threshold of 
 what many hoped would be a brilliant career. 
 
 Another native of India, Miss Jaganadham, has 
 
WOMAN'S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 169 
 
 recently completed her studies in Scotland with dis- 
 tinguished honors and spent two years in a school 
 of surgery, and has been appointed by the Indian 
 Government as the head of the Woman's Hospital in 
 Bombay. 
 
 The first g^rl brought up by her own parents in 
 all Central and Western China with unbound feet, 
 daughter of a Bible woman, is now a medical student in 
 the University of Ann Arbor, Michigan ; and Miss Hu 
 King Eng, of Foochow, daughter of a native clergy- 
 man, is about completing her studies in the Phil- 
 adelphia College, expecting to return to her native 
 country to practise. 
 
 Medical work has awakened among wealthy 
 natives a desire to aid it by their contributions. A few 
 years ago a wealthy Parsee in Bombay gave $50,000 to 
 build a hospital for women and children. An Indian 
 woman placed at the disposal of the Government 
 $60,000 for carrying on women's medical work in the 
 Province of Bengal. Another has donated six thou- 
 sand dollars for the erection of a hospital for women at 
 Balermpore. Other cases might be mentioned. 
 
 One of the greatest results has been the develop- 
 ment of the National Association for Supplying Female 
 Medical Aid for the Women of India, popularly 
 known as the " Lady Dufferin " movement. There is 
 a touch of romance in the story of its beginnings. In 
 the year 1881 a medical woman from the city of Luck- 
 now was called to Poona to attend the wife of a native 
 prince. The physician remained with her royal patient 
 for several weeks, and through her skill and care the 
 princess recovered. When about to leave the princess 
 requested a private interview, and said, " You are in- 
 
I/O WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 tending to go to England, and I want you to tell the 
 Queen, the prince and princess of Wales and the 
 men and women of England what the women of 
 India suffer when they are sick. Will you promise 
 me?" She then requested the physician to write the 
 message, and write it small, "for" said she, " I want to 
 put it in a locket, and you are to wear it around your 
 neck until you see our great empress, and you are to 
 give it to her yourself; you are not to send it by an- 
 other." Having suffered herself, and carrying on her bur- 
 dened heart the suffering of her sisters, she was intensely 
 in earnest that her message should be heeded. Weeks 
 rolled on, and the missionary physician reached Eng- 
 land : she had the privilege of an interview with the 
 Queen, and delivered the locket with its precious mes- 
 sage. Her Majesty was profoundly impressed, and 
 promised that something should be done, exclaiming, 
 " We had no idea it was as bad as this !" This was 
 just at the time Lord Dufferin was appointed Governor 
 General of India. The Queen had an interview with 
 Lady Dufferin and impressed upon her the importance 
 of making an effort to give medical help to the wo- 
 men. As soon as she reached India she conferred 
 with prominent women as to the advisability of such 
 a scheme and drew up a prospectus, which was tran- 
 slated into several dialects and sent through the coun- 
 try. The appeal was favorably received, and in 
 time the Association was formed. Its object is to 
 provide tuition and medical relief by supplying med- 
 ical missionaries, trained nurses, and the establish- 
 ment, under female superintendence, of dispensaries 
 and cottage hospitals for the treatment of women and 
 children. The cause has been espoused with great 
 
WOMAN'S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 171 
 
 enthusiasm, and liberal contributions have been made 
 for its support. 
 
 The Association is philanthropic, not missionary, 
 as its employees are pledged not to interfere in any way 
 with the religious beliefs of the patients ; but, religiously 
 neutral as it is, it depends largely for its success on 
 Christian women, for only girls that had been educated 
 in the various mission schools were found prepared to 
 avail themselves of the opportunity offered. The funds 
 of this association now amount to nearly half a million 
 of dollars, by means of which one hundred and three 
 well-qualified physicians are kept at work, and about 
 two hundred and forty more are studying medicine in 
 India and England. About half a million women 
 receive help through this agency. Forty-eight hos- 
 pitals and dispensaries, nine of which are in native 
 states, are supported, and thirteen physicians are in 
 charge. 
 
 Another result has been the creation of a sentiment 
 by this work throughout India which has led to the 
 modification of the marriage laws. Such revelations of 
 inhumanity connected with child marriages were 
 brought to light that one of the physicians connected 
 with the Methodist Church drew up a petition, which 
 was signed by fifty-five women physicians and pre- 
 sented to the Government, pleading that the marriage- 
 able age of girls be raised to fourteen years. While 
 the Government was flooded with petitions and memo- 
 rials from native Christians, Hindoo women, and Mis- 
 sionaries, it is stated that nearly all the speakers in the 
 Legislative Council referred to the facts presented in 
 this memorial — which had great influence in bringing 
 about the change, and raising the age to twelve years ; 
 
172 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 time, not all that was asked was gained, but this was 
 undoubtedly the most important step taken in the do- 
 mestic and social life of the people since the abolish- 
 ment of suttee in 1829. 
 
 The influence of this work is permeating all lands. 
 Dr. Post, of Syria, says, " In Beirut a hospital for 
 certain diseases of women has been opened at the ex- 
 pense of the Government. In Bethlehem and Jerusa- 
 lem, around which cluster so many sacred associations, 
 the woman physician is found administering to hun- 
 dreds and thousands of patients. 
 
 " Not far from the reputed house of Simon the 
 Tanner is a stately stone building, one of the finest 
 in Jaffa. It is the hospital for which the late Miss 
 Mangan gave her energies while living. In her effort 
 to overcome the opposition of the authorities to 
 this most benevolent work she died, a martyr to her 
 zeal." 
 
 Within a few years the usefulness of nurses and 
 their peculiar access to the sick have attracted the at- 
 tention of a number of consecrated women of means. 
 Mrs. Merdith's far-reaching vision has looked across 
 the oceans, and she has met a long felt want by estab- 
 lishing a nurses' institution in Jerusalem from which 
 she proposes to supply attendants for the poor gratuit- 
 ously, and at moderate rates for those able to pay. 
 Miss Bouchart, of Damascus, a lady of fortune and 
 large-hearted benevolence, personally conducts a most 
 useful work of this kind in Damascus. She has under 
 her direction a native physician, a graduate of the Bei- 
 rut College, a thoroughly trained nurse, to attend to 
 this department of work." 
 
 Not only does medical work open the homes and 
 
WOMAN'S MEDICAL WORK IN MISSIONS. 1 73 
 
 hearts of the inmates to the preaching of Christ, it does 
 much in removing opposition on the part of male rela- 
 tives and friends, and so becomes a valuable adjunct to 
 other departments of mission work. It gives practical 
 demonstration of the difference between Christianity 
 and false religions. 
 
 An Indian paper, commenting on a successful op- 
 eration performed by a lady physician in the city of 
 Lucknow, said, " The age of miracles is not past, for 
 Jesus Christ is still working miracles through the lady 
 doctors." 
 
 No wonder that in our station at China they called 
 the one who had so wonderfully helped them " a living 
 Buddha ;" and in another place an engraving was made 
 of a surgical operation, and published in one of their 
 papers, as an illustrated account of the foreign lady's 
 amazing skill. In the city of Foochow it was with 
 difficulty the physician could prevent the people from 
 falling down and worshipping her as she passed through 
 the streets. These heroic women, who have gone from 
 homes of culture and Christian surroundings, have 
 braved many dangers, faced infection in all forms, been 
 exposed to all weathers, have come in contact with idol- 
 atrous rites, have had their sensibiHties shocked by the 
 inhumanity of humanity, have performed the duties not 
 only of physician, but of nurse and cook ; with loving 
 sympathy they have administered to all castes and con- 
 ditions, have given heathen women a loftier conception 
 of womanhood and motherhood, have comforted the 
 living, and spoken tender and loving words to the 
 dying. 
 
 In the city of Calcutta a native woman was ill in 
 one of the hospitals. Her mind wandered, and she was 
 
174 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 heard to say pathetically, " I am sitting on the sea- 
 shore, a storm is approaching, the tide is rising. My 
 mind is troubled. Alas ! I shall perish." She regained 
 consciousness to find beside her a " beloved physician," 
 who with loving words pointed her to a " refuge in the 
 time of storm." 
 
 Thus the Orient feels the touch of the Divine 
 Healer. 
 
ENGLISH METHODIST DEACONESSES. 1 75 
 
 THE WORK OF DSACOKBSSES. 
 
 METHODIST DEACONESSES IN ENG- 
 LAND. 
 
 BY " SISTER DORA " STEPHENSON. 
 
 Much is heard in the present day about woman's 
 sphere and woman's rights. In the olden days, when 
 the master hved among his men, when the lord of 
 the manor was the head of the clan and the father 
 of his people, there was ample employment for the 
 women in their homes. The flax had to be spun, the 
 linen woven, the tapestry hangings embroidered, the 
 bread baked, the household supplies repleted by the 
 women of the family ; with her own fair hand the lady — 
 the loaf-giver — distributed at her own gate the doles 
 which helped the poor and the sick on her estate. 
 
 But things have changed. The introduction of 
 machinery has brought about a new order. The capi- 
 talist Hves away from his workshop in his pleasant 
 suburban home ; the relationship between him and his 
 employee is purely a business one : the men are " hands." 
 The thought that his wealth and privilege imply a 
 duty to the bodies and souls of his workers, and that 
 he should be to them a friend and adviser, has almost 
 gone. 
 
 And the women of the household — the ladies of 
 the land— have Htde occupation for heart or hand, and 
 
176 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 SO spend their lives too often in a vain endeavor to 
 " kill time." 
 
 But there are many women who yearn after a 
 higher life — women whose hearts go out to the op- 
 pressed and miserable and who long to devote their 
 time to the amelioration of human wretchedness. Most 
 of all is this true of the Christian woman who feels it 
 the great debt she owes to her Saviour, who has re- 
 deemed her from the life of a slave and placed her by 
 the side of man as friend and co-worker. 
 
 To-day the women of all the churches are en- 
 tering different branches of service, and great re- 
 sults have already been obtained by those who give 
 their spare time to good works along different Unes. 
 The Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Societies 
 are sending light and healing to their unenlightened 
 sisters at home and abroad. Women are to the front 
 in the advancement of temperance and social purity, 
 and of preventive work of all sorts among the young. 
 
 But the need of consecrated helpers is so great that 
 it was felt in England that the time had come when 
 women should be asked to give not only some time, 
 but their whole time to this work ; and in response to 
 this call, developing slowly through twenty years, our 
 Methodist Deaconesses have answered. 
 
 WHAT IS A DEACONESS? 
 
 As her name implies, she is a servant — a servant 
 in a three-fold capacity. She is 
 
 1. The servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 2. The servant of the poor, the sick, the children 
 and the lost, for Christ's sake. 
 
 3. The servant each of the other. 
 
ENGLISH METHODIST DEACONESSES. 1 77 
 
 She is not a substitute. The ladies of the church- 
 es must not think that she is to take their place. They 
 will be needed as much as ever to carry on the 
 good work to which they have devoted themselves. 
 Rather they must rally around her, " hold up her 
 hands ;" and probably in turn they will find, with her, 
 fresh fields in which their energies may have scope, and 
 take fresh impetus from her enthusiasm and experi- 
 ence. 
 
 Neither is the deaconess a proxy. She is no paid 
 servant of the church, hired by some lady or ladies to 
 do the difficult work from which they shrink, and whose 
 hire serves as a salve to a troubled conscience. She is 
 a servant — a bond-servant — but a servant of the Christ 
 to whom she owes and gives her all. 
 
 There are certain things which distinguish the 
 deaconess from other workers : 
 
 First. She believes herself called of God to her 
 work, and believes she has a vocation, though no vow 
 is demanded or given. 
 
 Second. She is a trained worker. 
 
 Third. She serves a long probation. 
 
 Fourth. She is formally set apart to her work in a 
 solemn dedication service. 
 
 Fifth. She lives usually in a community, or Dea- 
 coness Home. 
 
 Sixth. She is an unsalaried worker. She is sup- 
 ported, if necessary, but is never paid for her services. 
 
 Generally she wears a simple uniform dress ; but 
 this is not deemed absolutely essential, though most 
 desirable. 
 
 If we were considering the question of deacon- 
 esses in general, in England, one would be glad to say 
 
 Woman In Missions. J 2 
 
178 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 much of the grand institution at Mildmay, which is 
 allied closely, though in no narrow, sectarian spirit, 
 with the Evangelical party in the Established Church 
 of England. And, again, mention should be made of 
 the good work done by the Deaconess Institute founded 
 by Dr. Lazeron at Tottenham, which is identified with 
 Evangelical Nonconformity. From both these institu- 
 tions streams of blessing have flowed which have surely 
 been " for the healing of the nation ;" and one would 
 like to linger on details of their work. But it is of the 
 Methodist Deaconesses we are now especially thinking, 
 and some little knowledge of the growtli of this order 
 may be interesting and profitable. 
 
 It was among the children that our Methodist 
 Deaconesses in England began their labors. Twenty- 
 four years ago the Children's Home, Orphanage and 
 Refuge was founded in London. It was a simple 
 attempt of a young Methodist minister to lift up some 
 few of the children who were ready to perish in the 
 misery and vice of our great metropolis. He gathered 
 a few poor lads into a humble cottage, and tried there, 
 by the influence of home, of work, and, most of all, of 
 the religion of Jesus, to win them for God. Soon the 
 movement won friends, financial help was given in- 
 creasingly, and at the end of twelve months it was 
 necessary to enlarge the Home. A second cottage 
 was taken, where a second group was housed — for it 
 was felt that at all costs the family idea must be main- 
 tained. But who was to take charge of these lads ? 
 Who could best "mother" the boys? Then the 
 thought came, given surely by the Good Spirit, " Why 
 not ask women of refinement and position to come 
 and, for Christ's sake, give themselves to this work of 
 
ENGLISH METHODIST DEACONESSES. 1 79 
 
 caring for humanity's orphans?" One such lady came, 
 and through the years, with the growth of the work, 
 others have followed, until now nearly sixty such wo- 
 men are engaged in the Children's Home. They are 
 all voluntary workers ; some few are women of private 
 means, who can support themselves ; others require to 
 be set free to work, and such are supported ; but no one 
 asks for a salary. They give their time and strength 
 and love to the children for the sake of the children's 
 Redeemer, and their constant aim is to win the souls 
 of the children for the Saviour so that their lives will 
 be given to him. 
 
 These " Sisters of the Children," as this branch of 
 the Methodist Deaconesses is called, spend two years in 
 probation and training. They attend lectures on Bible 
 Study, on the Christian Evidences, on Church History. 
 They also take two courses of lectures on nursing and 
 simple medicine, and they all follow a prescribed course 
 of reading which will help them in their work. Some 
 women have already given twenty years to the work, 
 while others have spent a longer or shorter time in the 
 field; and by God's blessing more than 3,000 children 
 have been uplifted and helped, of whom the large ma- 
 jority are now respectable citizens, while more than 
 fifty-six per cent, are faithful members of the church of 
 Christ and earnest workers in his vineyard. The Sis- 
 ters of the Children have also always found some time 
 for outside mission work, though their time is largely 
 taken up in the Homes of which they have charge. 
 
 To-day in different parts of England other branches 
 of the order of Deaconesses have grown up. In the 
 West London Methodist Mission the Sisters of the 
 People are laboring among the poor, the sick and the 
 
l8o WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 lost; and among the rich as well. Sometimes they 
 find that their hardest task is to reach the wealthy, who 
 are often far away from God. 
 
 They undertake all kind of work for the uplifting 
 of the people : they visit in the homes ; they nurse the 
 sick ; they try to befriend the lonely young men and 
 women of the city business houses, who too often are 
 driven into sin by the thought that no one cares what 
 they do,- that no one extends to them the right hand of 
 fellowship as they walk in slippery places. They con- 
 duct meetings for men, and meetings for women ; and 
 a day nursery is open, all the week round, for babies. 
 Indeed, no branch of service is there in which the 
 sisters are not active, and they find that, having left all 
 to follow Christ in his mission of mercy to the sin- 
 stricken world, he himself guides them and blesses 
 them in their labors. 
 
 At the East London Mission a similar band of 
 devoted women is at work, but they are not so fully 
 organized and do not call themselves Sisters or Dea- 
 conesses, though they fulfil to a great extent the same 
 ideal. In Manchester and elsewhere similar groups of 
 workers have been formed ; and altogether there are 
 now about one hundred and forty of these unsalaried, 
 trained women at work. 
 
 But it was felt that a time had come when a Train- 
 ing Home should be established where women could 
 have definite preparation and training, and whence they 
 could go at the end of twelve months to any field of 
 labor where a deaconess was required. By the gener- 
 osity of a wealthy Methodist gentleman a house was 
 taken and furnished near Victoria Park, and the Prin- 
 cipal of the Children's Home became the Warden of 
 
ENGLISH METHODIST DEACONESSES. l8l 
 
 the Wesley Deaconess Institute. The ladies who come 
 there spend twelve months in study and in gaining 
 practical experience of work ; they then spend a second 
 year in actual labor; and if at the end of that time 
 they seem suited to the work, and find God is blessing 
 them in it, they are formally consecrated or set apart in 
 a simple but solemn dedication service. The Wesley 
 Deaconesses are growing rapidly in number ; already 
 two branch Homes have been established, and it seems 
 as though this humble plant may grow into a great 
 tree whose leaves shall be for the healing of the nations. 
 Already about twenty have passed through the Train- 
 ing Home and are now at work in different parts of the 
 country, while about fifteen probationers are in resi- 
 dence. God's blessing has been upon us. He has 
 sent the right women. He is raising up friends and 
 sympathizers, and is giving us financial help. 
 
 We have not yet received any official recognition 
 by the Conference, though the ministers regard us gen- 
 erally with kindliness and welcome us in the field. 
 
 The fields are white unto the harvest. A little 
 band of workers have entered the field. Many more 
 are at the gates asking to be permitted to enter. We 
 need thousands insteads of scores ; there is work for 
 many hearts and hands, and the laborers are few. 
 
 We need your sympathy. Rally round us, cheer 
 us by your interest and help. 
 
 " Oh it is hard to work for God, 
 To rise and take our part 
 Upon this battlefield of earth, 
 And not sometimes lose heart." 
 
 Most of all we ask you to pray for us, that so the arms 
 of our hands may be made strong by the hands of the 
 
1 82 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 mighty God of Jacob. He is our Helper ; it is only as 
 he blesses us that our work can prosper. We believe 
 he has called us to minister to him in the person of 
 suffering and sinning humanity. In the tearful eyes of 
 a sorrowful, homeless bairn we see Jesus. Through 
 the sick and suffering body of one of his brethren we 
 wait on Him. And when we go to those who are per- 
 ishing in degradation and sin, and try to lend a hand to 
 lead them to the Helper and Healer, we hear the voice 
 of Jesus in our ears, saying, " Inasmuch as ye do it unto 
 one of the least of these my brethren ye do it unto 
 me." 
 
 DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 
 
 BY MRS. LUCY RYDER MEYER. 
 
 Deaconesses are trained, unsalaried and cos- 
 tumed women, providentially free — sometimes most 
 sadly free — from the responsibilities that occupy the 
 time of most women, banding themselves together to 
 aid and supplement other agencies in carrying the 
 gospel in all practical, helpful ways to those who have it 
 not. They differ from Bible women in that they must 
 be trained. Bible women, and indeed all other mission- 
 aries, may be trained, but deaconesses must be. They 
 are costumed, and unsalaried, and they usually live in 
 communities called Homes. In addition to this, the 
 deaconess in all denominations usually has formal 
 churchly recognition and authorization. She is, in a 
 special sense — as was Phoebe, whom Paul called a 
 ^* diakonos^' and whom our revisers have done the 
 
DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 1 83 
 
 tardy justice of calling a deaconess in the margin — a 
 servant of the church. 
 
 An illustration sometimes gives a better idea than 
 a definition. Let me tell you something of the work 
 deaconesses do. 
 
 Some little time ago, in answer to an urgent de- 
 mand, one of our Chicago deaconesses was taken by an 
 agent of the Humane Society to a German family where 
 eight people were living in one room. The father, mo- 
 ther and two oldest children were sick with typhoid 
 fever, and the sick and well together were occupying 
 two beds. Unless one has witnessed with his own eyes 
 similar suffering and degradation it is impossible to 
 get any conception of it. The deaconess, a trained 
 nurse, told me that until she could procure a third 
 bed she was obliged to reach over the sick mother and 
 one child in order to administer medicine to the eleven- 
 year-old girl, lying at the back of one of the beds in a 
 raging fever. For nine days and nights the nurse 
 stayed in that room, with only occasional snatches of 
 rest in the house of a compassionate neighbor who 
 cleared out a room for her transient occupancy. Du- 
 ring that time the father and daughter died, but the 
 others recovered. 
 
 Imagine this refined and sensitive woman, only 
 twenty-five years old, absolutely alone with that family. 
 The story of the last night of the litde girl's life, as 
 the nurse rehearsed it to me, is too harrowing to re- 
 peat. She says of it herself, " What I went through 
 it would be impossible to tell ; no amount of money 
 would have kept me at my post, but our motto, ' For 
 Jesus' sake,' gave me strength." 
 
 The deaconess, a single instance of whose life I 
 
1 84 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 have given, was a graduated nurse ; she had been twen- 
 ty months in the hospital learning the technicalities of 
 her profession. She could have practised as a private 
 nurse, earning her $20 to $25 per week. She did not 
 demand any pay for her services — you can well under- 
 stand how she could not — and if she had been paid at 
 the highest rate ever given a professional nurse not a 
 penny would have gone into her own pocket ; it would 
 all have been brought to the Deaconess Hon^e in 
 which she lives and out from which she goes to these 
 cases. For herself, she receives her support, a com- 
 fortable but simple living, her clothes from a common 
 store-room, and two dollars per month allowance for 
 pocket money. She wears a costume not very dif- 
 ferent from the dress of an ordinary woman. Her hair 
 is not cut, nor is her face shrouded in white bands, 
 but her dress is sufficiently marked for her recognition 
 and protection, and of an exceedingly economical kind. 
 She is a volunteer. If at any time she should desire to 
 leave the work, either to return to her home, to accept 
 a salaried position, or to marry, she is entirely free to 
 do so without even a day's warning ; no dishonor or 
 discredit will in any way attach to her for the act. 
 
 This is a typical case of deaconess work, yet there 
 are such variations as would naturally occur in a great 
 institution, since various Hues of work can be carried 
 on to better advantage than by concentraing every effort 
 on one point. 
 
 Not all deaconesses are nurses. Some are pastors' 
 assistants ; some canvass in districts, not only to dis- 
 cover physical need, but also to discover and relieve 
 social, moral and spiritual wants. Some are matrons 
 and teachers in the biblical and nursing schools that 
 
DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 1 85 
 
 feed the -Homes. All are alike, however, in their 
 essential characteristics : all are trained, all are cos- 
 tumed, all are volunteers, all, the highest as well as the 
 lowest, are entirely unsalaried, and nearly all live in 
 communities — our " Homes." 
 
 Deaconesses are trained, whether they go as gen- 
 eral workers or nurses. Much of the success of their 
 work is due to this fact. The recognition of the wis- 
 dom and economy of spending time and strength in 
 training, whatever be the activity towards which any 
 worker looks, is a characteristic of our times. The old 
 way of training school-teachers was to thrust them out 
 into the actual work of teaching and let them learn by 
 the hardest experiences, through their blunders and fail- 
 ures ; a painful process to the teacher, and an expensive 
 one to the unfortunate children upon whom she experi- 
 mented. But the normal schools that have sprung up 
 all over our land tell of a better way in secular teaching, 
 a way in which theory and practice and kindly criticism 
 go hand in hand. And, if the work of a teacher is too 
 responsible to be entrusted to novices, what shall we 
 say of those who have to meet confessedly the most 
 perplexing and difficult social and religious problems ? 
 
 But we have adopted the principle of sending out 
 only trained workers, not from theory only, but from 
 experience. When our organization first began its 
 work in this city, for it was in Chicago that the work 
 in the Methodist Church in this country orginated, the 
 demand for nurses, especially, was so great that our 
 judgment yielded to our sympathy and we sent women 
 that were not thoroughly trained to care for the sick. 
 A very short experience, however, convinced us that 
 such a course, while seemingly imperative, was neither 
 
1 86 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 kind nor economical. It was not kind to our patients, 
 it was not safe for the nurses themselves — remember, 
 a large proportion of the cases they dealt with were 
 actively or insidiously contagious, it did not reflect honor 
 upon or beget confidence in the institution that sent them 
 out. And we soon found that training in the know- 
 ledge of the Bible and in methods of work was quite 
 as necessary for those who went to the relief of moral 
 degradation and want. 
 
 The physical suffering and need of the poorer 
 classes is far more easily comprehended than their 
 mental and moral destitution, but the latter is quite as 
 real, quite as appalling in its results, and even more 
 difficult to deal with. It does not take much wisdom 
 to be good, fortunately, but it requires a good deal of 
 wisdom to do good. A worker among the poorer 
 classes of our city must be able to read character, to 
 take in the environment of a case, a volume at a 
 glance. We could not entrust the relieving of distress 
 to untrained women ; intuition will do a great deal, 
 but intuition will not take the place of training. Not 
 all cases are as transparent as that of the poor woman 
 we were trying to help a few weeks ago, who — sup- 
 posing it would make some difference, in which how- 
 ever she was mistaken — frankly admitted the first even- 
 ing that she was a Catholic. But the next morning, 
 learning that our institution was Protestant, with a 
 Methodist tint, she emphatically asserted that she was 
 not a Catholic at all, she was an Episcopalian, and her 
 husband was Lutheran, Besides, she was a Methodist 
 now! 
 
 Deaconesses wear a costume : for instant recogni- 
 tion, for economy, for accessibility to the poor. We 
 
DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 18^7 
 
 concede there is something of artificiality in our conven- 
 tional — not conventual — dress. We willingly admit 
 that in a natural and normal state of society each mem- 
 ber should have the privilege of individuality in dress, 
 the same as in her words. But the organic whole of 
 society — for social science has just discovered what 
 Christ taught 2,000 years ago, that society is a unit, 
 every member of which is bound to every other mem- 
 ber by a thousand indissoluble ties — is not, at present, 
 in a normal state. The segregation of classes, which is 
 so marked a characteristic of even American society, is 
 not normal. The outbreaking moral diseases of some, 
 of the poor, the effeminacy and self-seeking of some ol 
 the rich, are not normal conditions. A wise physician 
 charged with the care of a well person needs to do 
 nothing but advise a simple and natural life ; called to 
 the bedside of the sick, we find him pursuing a totally 
 different course : making use of artificial means — of the 
 plaster cast, or the penetrating knife. So, in dealing 
 with the open wounds and sores of the social body of a 
 great city, we are justified in adopting some peculiari- 
 ties in our work. The only criterion by which we can 
 be judged is. Do they help us in helping our patients ? 
 We do not deny that it does involve some little self- 
 denial to don our serge bonnets. We feel that we too, 
 as well as you, ladies, have a right to retain our indi- 
 viduality in dress, to array ourselves in bright colors 
 and soft textures ; but the most sacred right a human 
 being can have, after all, is the right to give up her 
 rights, if by so doing a greater good will come to hu- 
 manity. We wear our uniform for our work's sake. 
 We are not in ordinary family and social life ; we are 
 providentially free from the duties and responsibilities — 
 
1 88 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 blessed though they are — that bind most women to their 
 homes and their friends, so that we can devote our- 
 selves to this work as others cannot. And because of 
 certain manifest advantages we wear the costume, re- 
 linquishing the bright colors and bright textures to 
 those whose vocation in life is so different, and to the 
 oft-quoted flowers and birds and sunset clouds, in 
 whom, however, let me say in passing, there abides no 
 moral quality, and in whose gorgeous array there is not 
 involved the needless expenditure of money which in 
 the present abnormal state of our social body is so cer- 
 tainly and constantly convertible into terms of redeemed 
 souls. Moreover, we have a conviction, based on expe- 
 rience, that our women are safer wearing the costume. 
 You know very well there are sections of many large 
 cities where it is not safe for a well-dressed person to 
 be seen alone after nightfall. Our deaconesses, espe- 
 cially the nurses, are actually called into these localities, 
 not only by day, but by night. We have never yet 
 prohibited them from going alone into any part of the 
 city in any of the twenty-four hours of the day. They 
 are necessarily associated with all kinds of women, they 
 perform their labor of love in all kinds of houses ; they 
 would not be safe from physical harm or social suspi- 
 cion had they not some distinguishing characteristic in 
 their garb. This is, indeed, the one great, reason why 
 we wear the costume, but there are other excellent rea- 
 sons : it is economical ; it prevents hurts and griev- 
 ances in the Home, where some are and will be cloth- 
 ing themselves out of an income which renders them 
 independent while others are dependent upon gar- 
 ments furnished by the Home; it gives an esprit 
 de corps to our workers. What the blue coat of 
 
DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 1 89 
 
 the United States soldier is to him the white ties and 
 serge bonnets are to us. 
 
 But notice further. Deaconesses are volunteers, 
 and this simple fact at once places our work on a plane 
 which raises it above whole classes of motives appeal- 
 ing to ordinary workers. Our women come when they 
 will — provided they will submit themselves to the 
 requirements of training, etc. — they go when they 
 please. That is, theoretically they " go " — actually they 
 stay. The work has been established in our church 
 now more than six years, and it numbers more than 
 three hundred women, and one of the great surprises 
 in connection with it has been that, while some have 
 resigned on account of health, so few have left. Some 
 have gone home to care for dependent parents, four 
 have been married in our parlors or chapels, but most 
 of them stay by the work. We ask but one question 
 of importance, of women desiring to become deacon- 
 esses, and that is, " Do you believe God has called you 
 to the work ?" And if God calls them they will stay. 
 I used to fear that money inducements would affect our 
 workers, especially our nurses ; but, though offers of 
 salaried positions have frequently been made them, 
 very rarely has there been a response, even when the 
 position has been associated with other philanthropic 
 work. Our women use money mostly to give it away, 
 and the longer they remain with us the more fully does 
 the power of money as a motive seem to vanish from 
 their lives. 
 
 This brings me to the subject of unsalaried work. 
 As I have before stated, deaconesses are entirely and 
 comfortably supported in their work ; they have the 
 guarantee of support and all needed care in sickness or 
 
igo WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 old age ; they have their allowance for pin-money ; but 
 they are entirely unsalaried. Much might be said in 
 favor of our support coming as it does. It entirely 
 relieves us of all questions concerning dress — how our 
 garments are to be obtained and paid for, and how 
 they are to be made. We give the matter not a single 
 thought. Blessed reUef ! One might almost be tempt- 
 ed to become a deaconess from this motive alone. We 
 have that thing most necessary for our work, 
 
 " A heart at leisure from itself 
 To soothe and sympathize." 
 
 It gives us accessibility to the poor. We take no 
 vows of poverty — we take no vows of any kind — but 
 we must be simple and humble in our manner of life 
 if we would reach the poor and simple people around 
 us. It would require half our life to convince them of 
 our sincerity and sympathy if we were to go to them 
 in ordinary social ways. Benevolent work in great 
 cities has peculiar difficulties. We meet many who 
 have never felt one touch of brotherliness from Chris- 
 tians, and who have become embittered by the hard 
 experiences of life. As they learn our errand they inevi- 
 tably suspect us of mercenary motives. Professional 
 religious and benevolent workers have in the past so 
 uniformly worked wtfA money that these poor people 
 have the dreadful perversion firmly fixed in their minds 
 that they work /or money. Alas, alas, that Christian 
 workers have become so sadly associated in the minds 
 of the masses with money loving and money getting ! 
 " How much do you get a head," is their blunt ques- 
 tion, " for getting our children into the Sunday-school?" 
 " Who pays you for nursing our sick and cleaning our 
 houses?" And nothing so surprises them into con- 
 
DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. I9I 
 
 fidence and love as our simple answer, " No one 
 pays us, we come only because we love you and want 
 to help you if we may." It is recompense better than 
 any thing earth has to offer that we may disarm pre- 
 judice and succeed in our work by the insignificant 
 self-denial of working without a salary. We are un- 
 salaried that there may be more laborers in the field. 
 There is no such demand for philanthropic effort to- 
 day in civilized lands as exists in great cities, and 
 shame would be to us if in this great emergency we 
 women should stand back on our " rights " and refuse 
 to do what we can. 
 
 Then there is another consideration: there has 
 never been any money to pay salaries with. Every 
 missionary society is constantly working up to the full 
 measure of its financial ability in paying its regular mis- 
 sionaries. It has been from the first not a question of 
 salary or no salary, but no salary or no existence. 
 
 I must devote a few moments to the consideration 
 of our community life, for, while living in a commu- 
 nity is not a necessary condition of deaconess work, 
 the fact is that, since great cities are the principal scenes 
 of deaconess work, deaconesses usually live in a com- 
 munity. It is exceedingly economical, and is exceed- 
 ingly pleasant. It solves the problem of helpful and 
 congenial companionship. It is said that it will foster 
 a tendency to an introverted and unnatural life ; but we 
 cannot think so, so long as continued residence is 
 entirely voluntary, and so long as our workers are 
 constantly in healthful contact with the outside world 
 in their daily activities. Bear in mind also that there is 
 no secrecy or mystery in our Deaconess Homes. This 
 thing is not done in a corner. We do not even have 
 
192 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 " visiting days ;" all our days are visiting days. We 
 are modelled after the family. Absolute freedom in 
 correspondence, such social life as does not interfere 
 with our peculiar calling, and the privilege of leaving 
 the Home at any time — these guard against any possi- 
 ble tendency to danger. The happiest place on earth 
 is doubtless the family, where the father and mother 
 gather the little ones about their knees and each finds 
 his highest joy in living for others ; but the next happi- 
 est place ought to be our Homes, out from which con- 
 genial souls go, day by day, to the joy of working for 
 others, coming back at night to sympathetic converse 
 with each other, and, if need be, to wise and loving 
 counsel from their superintendent. One of the most 
 touching testimonies I have ever heard came from the 
 lips of a deaconess who had long lived in crowded but 
 lonely boarding-houses, but who was now rejoicing 
 that God had " set the solitary in a family." 
 
 The Hfe of a deaconess is a happy one. I am 
 talking to practical people, and one of the questions I 
 anticipate is, " Will women volunteer to such trying 
 and difficult service, and are they happy in it ?" To 
 the first question, let me say that, though the work of 
 deaconesses in the aggressive form in which I am pre- 
 senting it to you to-day is only a little more than six 
 years old in this country — and it began most humbly, 
 not attracting much attention for a year or two — there are 
 now three hundred women engaged in it in the Homes 
 established in the large cities of our land. And the num- 
 ber of applicants is constantly increasing. More letters 
 have reached me this past month from women who 
 are expecting to enter the work than in any preced- 
 ing month in m •• life. As to whether deaconesses are 
 
DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. I93 
 
 happy or not, the question is capable of almost mathe- 
 matical proof. They stay in the work. They might 
 go at any time. Large inducements have been offered 
 to some to go, and yet they stay. Over and over 
 again have I heard the testimony from their lips, " I 
 was never so happy in my Hfe." One of them wrote 
 to her brother, with no thought of my ever seeing the 
 letter, " I believe I am as happy as any one can be out 
 of heaven." Another one told me, with mingled smiles 
 and tears, " I sometimes think I am going to die soon, 
 I am so happy." I know you will accuse me in your 
 thoughts of overstating the case, but, dear friends, there 
 is no such exquisite happiness on earth as the joy of 
 helping others. To lift the desolate, helpless soul from 
 sin and suffering to a life of hope, this is a work angels 
 might covet, and it brings a joy that angels hardly 
 know. You will remember that our Lord Jesus Christ 
 himself, for the joy that was set before him, endured 
 the cross, despising the shame. The little discomforts 
 in a deaconess life, the weariness and watching, these 
 vanish into an infinite insignificance in the face of the 
 heavenly joy that our labors are, sometimes at least, 
 crowned with success. It cannot be explained on 
 natural grounds, I admit, but, dear friends, we possess a 
 supernatural religion; why should we wonder that 
 supernatural results should flow from it! 
 
 I have been describing a work that is formally 
 under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 but I wish to correct a false impression that may arise 
 as to the character of its denominationalism. We 
 actually have ladies of other evangelical denominations 
 working right with us, shoulder to shoulder, as deacon- 
 esses : the only difference being that these ladies do 
 
 Woman io Miasions. J •J 
 
194 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 not receive the special form of license given by the 
 Methodist church. Then, as to our outside work, much 
 of it is of such a character that it is necessarily unde- 
 nominational. Most of those we help are outside the 
 bounds of any church, and frequently that is just why 
 they need help. We go wherever we can do good, 
 making the one condition, " Is there a need for our 
 service here?" And, recognizing this fact, people of all 
 denominations are aiding in the voluntary contributions 
 that form the chief part of our support. In one very 
 large Home it is estimated that about one-third of the 
 support comes from non-Methodistic sources. 
 
 Let me say a word as to the admirable adaptation 
 of our work to the needs of our great cities. In the 
 first place, because it is religious. It is true that we do 
 a vast amount of relief and humanitarian work — we 
 have been forced to do it — but the great underlying 
 motive of all is the religious one. I do not believe that 
 any other motive would be strong enough to keep men 
 or women in the continued prosecution of a work like 
 ours, a work which frequently leads us into almost un- 
 endurable depths of degradation. I am sure that money 
 would not hire our women to do the work which fre- 
 quently falls to their lot. Over and over again have I 
 heard them say, " Nothing kept me at my post but our 
 motto, ' For Jesus' sake '." 
 
 And as the power of money over our women seems 
 broken so also the fear of disease seems to be entirely 
 removed. We used to have a rule that no nurse should 
 be detailed to a contagious disease unless she were 
 quite wiUing to go. The rule has fallen into disuse, 
 simply because I have never been able to find a nurse 
 who was not more than willing to go. 
 
DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. I95 
 
 Moreover, nothing but a message which has help 
 and hope for the moral and spiritual side of life would 
 be at all adequate to the needs of the people we 
 would help. Hunger of heart is just as real a pain, 
 and just as hard to bear, as hunger of body. Our poor 
 people need help for their souls quite as much as for 
 their bodies. Because comfort and hope cannot be 
 weighed in scales, or measured in quart cans, they are 
 none the less real. About a year ago I was myself 
 gready interested in a poor mother who was clinging to 
 a sick child, the last one of her litde family of three 
 children, with the hope born of despair, and yet with a 
 despair that left no room for hope. It was an infidel 
 family. The voice of prayer had never been heard in 
 that home, yet as the mother leaned over the crib 
 wherein lay her dying child, wringing her hands and 
 exclaiming, " What shall I do? What shall I do?" the 
 nurse could give but one word, " You must pray. God 
 can help you." " I do not know how to pray," she 
 answered almost fiercely. " I do not even know there is 
 a God." The baby died, and one March day, in the 
 pouring rain, the father called on us again to help him 
 make arrangements for the " burial." In so many in- 
 stances, in our semi-foreign cities, people have burials 
 instead of funerals. I called, myself, more than once at 
 that mother's door, but though I heard her moans I 
 could not get access to her. It was the nurse who 
 cared for her child who finally reached her, and was the 
 means of bringing comfort to her broken heart. It was 
 not long before she became interested in our work for 
 other children, helping as she could ; and only a little 
 while afterward, overtaken by sudden illness, she joined 
 her baby in the land where no one says, " I am sick." 
 
196 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Was it not as much our duty to minister comfort to 
 that broken heart as to give bread to a hungry body? 
 And what she needed all the world needs — comfort in 
 trouble and hope for the future. It may not know 
 what it wants. It may be like a child " crying in the 
 night ;" but as a child wants its mother so we know 
 the world wants God — that the soul is for ever dissatis- 
 fied till it finds rest in him. So our deaconess work, 
 with its double message of help for body and soul, is 
 perfectly adapted to the needs of great cities. 
 
 Again, the ease v/ith which we gain an entrance 
 into the homes and hearts of the poor is a remarkable 
 proof of our adaptation to the work. I have spoken of 
 this above, and need not dwell upon it here. It is very 
 rarely that homes do not open to us. And, once open, 
 the influence of our women is unbounded. These poc- 
 people look upon the cultured, skilled woman who 
 comes to help them in their distress-, making no condi- 
 tion except that there be a need for her, with little less 
 than reverence. She can talk to them about a thousand 
 things that could not otherwise be mentioned. The 
 care of the home, personal cleanliness, sanitary condi- 
 tions, the duty of the parent to the child — suggestions 
 along all these lines will be kindly received when once 
 we have gained the confidence of the people. 
 
 And, last of all, let me speak of the economy of our 
 work. We hope that, more and more, women will join 
 us who will not only be self-supporting, but who will 
 bring of their means for the support of others. This is 
 certain to take place. If Miss Drexel threw herself 
 with her millions into the arms of the Roman-catholic 
 church, may we not expect similar instances of devo- 
 tion in Protestantism ? Many of our women will doubt- 
 
DEACONESSES AND THEIR WORK. 1 97 
 
 less need support. The entire support of a deaconess 
 in one of our Homes amounts to but two hundred dol- 
 lars a year. You will question whether we can make 
 them comfortable at so little expense. Let me reply- 
 that their remaining with us demonstrates it; and we 
 have had very few deaconesses break down in the 
 work — usually temporarily, and women who were far 
 from well when they came to us. If you ask how we 
 can support our workers on so little, let me remind you 
 of our wholesale purchases, the fact that we receive 
 many gifts of provisions, and the inexpensiveness of 
 our costume. We pay next to nothing for admin- 
 istration, only the support of a deaconess manager 
 in case that person does not support herself. We 
 have no salaried solicitors, and no salaried examiners. 
 We do not criticize the bodies of benevolent workers 
 who are obliged to avail themselves of such help — we 
 are not so unreasonable as to suppose that all forms 
 of humanitarian work can be carried on as ours is ; 
 but we simply state the fact. And we call upon you 
 to rejoice with us that such work as ours is organ- 
 ized in most of our large towns ; that the groan of the 
 " populous city " has so entered into the hearts of three 
 or four hundred earnest-hearted women that they have 
 banded themselves together, making the supreme offer- 
 ing of their lives ; working wisely and well at this 
 great problem of helping the church to carry the gospel 
 to the poor. 
 
igS WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 WOMAN AND EDUCATION IN MISSIONS. 
 
 WORK OF WOMAIV'S SCHOOLS AND COL- 
 LEGES IN MISSIONS. 
 
 BY MRS. DARWIN R. JAMES. 
 
 The progress which the last half-century has 
 witnessed in the material world has not been more 
 evident than the advance in methods ofwork in mis- 
 sions. 
 
 Whereas, fifty years ago, man was the only one 
 commissioned to carry the gospel, woman being sim- 
 ply an adjunct in the form of a wife, to-day the women 
 who publish the tidings in mission schools and higher 
 institutions of learning are a great host. 
 
 As an illustration of the remarkable growth of 
 this branch of mission work allow me to cite facts in 
 the history of the organization which I have the honor 
 to represent : " The Woman's Executive Committee of 
 Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church." 
 
 Organized in 1878, with no teachers or schools, 
 the first year's receipts were but $3,138; to-day, after 
 but fifteen years, it numbers nearly 400 teachers, 150 
 schools, with an income of $373,000. Multiply this 
 society by the large number of women's societies en- 
 gaged in similar work in the fields of home and foreign 
 missions, and one can form some conception of the 
 magnitude of this agency. 
 
 The philosophy of this advance is apparent when 
 
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. I99 
 
 we consider the power of early education on after life, 
 and the part woman is designed of God to take in this 
 education. 
 
 To know God is eternal Hfe. This knowledge, 
 which leads to an understanding of our relations to 
 him and to our fellow men, which also quickens the 
 intellect in its grasp of all truth, can not be imparted 
 too early in life. 
 
 It has been stated as a scientific truth that thoughts 
 make courses in the brain, and after they are made 
 these courses control the thoughts. However this 
 may be, we have daily illustrations of the dominant 
 power of early training in its influences on later years. 
 
 In an eastern asylum is a man whose long years of 
 Christian activity attest the genuineness of his conver- 
 sion ; but his early education was neglected, and to- 
 day, in his insanity, the profane utterances of youth, 
 which in his lucid moments he abhors, come freely 
 to his lips. 
 
 Can one who for long years has been accustomed 
 to do evil, until habit has forged its chains, maintain 
 through after life the same steadfast character as an- 
 other who was trained in early life to do well ? Has 
 not the latter a superiority of character, a fixedness 
 of purpose, a consistency of life, impossible to the 
 former ? Recall the standard bearers in the church 
 of your youth, those who were faithful to its inter- 
 ests and the ordinances of God's house, in season 
 and out of season, and, with rare exceptions, you will 
 go back to Christian parents, or a Christian mother. 
 
 If, then, we would turn back the tide of generations 
 of ungodliness we must begin, patiently and lovingly, 
 with the children. Especially does this hold true 
 
200 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 when we consider thai in establishing a Christian 
 church in a heathen community we must carefully 
 train the leaders of the church, the pastors, elders, and 
 teachers, with their wives, to whom sooner or later the 
 maintenance of the church must be committed ; and 
 this work must begin early in life by careful training 
 of the children, which must be done mainly by women. 
 So gradual has been the change that has brought wo- 
 man into the field as the principal educator of youth 
 that we forget that the old-time illustration of ped- 
 agogy was always a man with a ferule in his hand. 
 
 How slow we have been to comprehend the 
 necessity of the line-upon-line and precept-upon-pre- 
 cept training of the Christian mother in the formation 
 of stalwart, unflinching Christian character. 
 
 The great need of the world to-day is the influ- 
 ence of consecrated womanhood — Christian mothers. 
 This need is supplied in a measure in our mission 
 fields by our Christian teachers. 
 
 The love for Christ and souls which leads a wo- 
 man to leave home and friends for this service has a 
 divine energy which, touching the dead soul of the 
 child, is vitalizing in its power. Against the passion 
 and instability of the heathen mother is off-set the 
 patient tenderness and unswerving principle of the 
 mission teacher. Six days in the week is this influence 
 felt, and the result is certain. There must be some- 
 thing wrong with the teacher in whose school there are 
 not many conversions. Let us then consider, first, the 
 influence of mission schools on individual lives, shap- 
 ing the character of the future leaders ; afterwards, that 
 of the schools in a community. I must draw my illus- 
 trations from schools established among the exceptional 
 
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 201 
 
 population of our own land, with which I am most famil- 
 iar, and I shall choose fronr a wealth of material but 
 a few, and those from a sex which our church rolls 
 show are the least easily influenced. 
 
 There drifted into a mission school under the care 
 of a consecrated, faithful teacher, a boy of Roman- 
 catholic parentage. Both parents were intemperate, the 
 father alternating between life in some penal institu- 
 tion and his wretched home. The boy's forlorn ap- 
 pearance and seemingly hopeless future appealed to 
 the teacher's sympathies, and she took him into her 
 own heart as her own child. The love manifested in 
 her patient forbearance with his faults, her words of 
 encouragement and her prayers prevailed. I cannot 
 take time to tell of parental opposition overcome in 
 getting him into a distant training-school and through 
 college, from which he graduated with high honor, 
 then into the Theological Seminary, in which he is 
 supporting himself by successful employment in mis- 
 sion work. Suffice it to say, the salvation of this boy, 
 through God's blessing upon the faithful labors of this 
 teacher, will, humanly speaking, in its results in in- 
 fluencing other lives be a mighty power for good in 
 the world, especially among those from whose ranks 
 his life was drawn. 
 
 A somewhat similar instance, in its lack of promise, 
 occurs to me in connection with a Mormon school. A 
 mission-school teacher in one of the villages in Utah 
 was greatly annoyed by a rabble of boys whose leader 
 seemed intent on driving her out of town. Stones 
 were thrown into her windows, and every means used 
 to frighten her into leaving, but she pluckily held the 
 fort. One morning even the stove-pipe seemed to 
 
202 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 partake of the spirit of her adversaries, and fell down, 
 resisting all attempts to put it in place. In despera- 
 tion she called to the first passer-by for help. He came 
 in, this same instigator of all her troubles, but he 
 helped her to put up the pipe and received her thanks, 
 with an invitation to come into the school. This invita- 
 tion he accepted, and the teacher and scholar who had 
 burned their fingers together became firm friends, the 
 result of that teacher's influence being that to-day one 
 of the most successful pastors in Utah, one in whose 
 church there is a constant revival, is he who was the 
 teacher's early tormentor. 
 
 In the Indian Territory, the son of a chief whose 
 tribe prided themselves upon their pure blood and their 
 separation from the white race was attracted to a mis- 
 sion school. The teacher of this school was an earnest 
 Christian, and after he had finished the course of study 
 at the day school her influence, with that of others, 
 prevailed in inducing him to seek a higher education. 
 The head men of the tribe held a council before he 
 went and strongly opposed his going, their great fear 
 being that he would espouse the white man's religion. 
 This he did, through the teacher's influence, strength- 
 ened by that of the training-school, and returned after 
 three years an earnest Christian. 
 
 The first few days they watched him closely, then 
 at one of their dances they insisted on his joining them. 
 He stoutly refused, and was called before their council, 
 where he was told that this dance, as indeed all their 
 dances, was in accordance with the religion of their 
 fathers and they could not allow him to neglect it. 
 He told them he had forsaken the religion of his 
 fathers and entered into the service of the true God. 
 
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 203 
 
 When they found they could not move him they 
 completely ostracized him. Still he held his faith, ob- 
 tained a position as Government teacher and remained 
 among them. This was ten years ago. During this 
 time he has steadily continued his course alone, so far 
 as the society of his people was concerned, though 
 they have closely watched his life. 
 
 Recently one of the tribe was asked what he 
 thought of Thomas. He replied, " Long time ago, 
 you know, we none of us speak to Thomas, but now 
 we see his way is a good way." He said all the In- 
 dians now favored his way of living. 
 
 These illustrations, gathered from so large a num- 
 ber equally interesting that choice has been difficult, 
 must suffice to show results in individual cases. Mul- 
 tiply these many fold and one may gain some concep- 
 tion of the power of personal influence in these mission 
 schools. 
 
 One teacher writes, " I have so many Christians 
 among my scholars that, had we but a few older people 
 for officers and a minister, a church could be organized 
 at once." 
 
 In order to gain the best results in these day 
 schools, and that the teacher's strength be not over- 
 taxed, but sufficient time be allowed for the personal 
 attention each child should have, the number of schol- 
 ars should be limited to an average of not over thirty ; 
 irregular students, as a rule, being dropped. 
 
 For other reasons also the teacher must be guarded 
 from exhausting her strength in the schoolroom. Her 
 influence in the community is great. She has come to 
 live among the people, and if her life is an incarnation 
 of Christ the light will shine. 
 
204 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Visiting the scholars in their homes, the parents' 
 hearts open to the loving interest shown in their wel- 
 fare, words ot truth take root, prejudice is overcome, 
 love takes its place. 
 
 Ofttimes the teacher is the only physician, and her 
 simple remedies and knowledge of hygiene are of great 
 value. If death occurs, she is frequently called upon 
 to prepare the body for the grave and conduct the 
 funeral services. 
 
 In a pueblo in New Mexico, where an autocratic 
 priest antagonized every effort of the teacher, a scourge 
 of small-pox and diphtheria appeared. The priest fled 
 but the teacher bravely held her post. Taking neces- 
 sary precautions, she went about with remedies and 
 advice, administering material and spiritual comfort, 
 until the pestilence abated. Doors are now open to 
 her that will never again be closed. Outside of school 
 her influence among the young people is felt through 
 the Bands of Hope, Christian Endeavor Societies and 
 Literary Associations organized to attract from saloons 
 and questionable amusements. She helps to turn the 
 tide of Sunday desecration by attractive religious exer- 
 cises. Besides the usual Sunday-school and Evening 
 Service of Song, when there is no minister she oft- 
 times conducts religious worship, reading a sermon or 
 giving a Bible exposition, and in one instance we 
 learned that the people enjoyed the teacher's services 
 better than the licensed minister's who followed. 
 
 As an illustration of the change possible in a com- 
 munity through the mission schools alone, accompany 
 me to a hamlet in New Mexico. Fourteen years ago, 
 indolence, superstition and vice reigned. Though in 
 a dairy country they knew nothing of the use of milk ; 
 
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 20$ 
 
 plowing the ground with a crooked stick, their other 
 methods of agriculture were in unison ; houses and 
 clothing were alike wretched. Go there to-day: the 
 farms are well tilled, American implements of agricul- 
 ture are used, houses are greatly improved, the people 
 are well clad, milk, butter and fruit are seen upon their 
 tables. But stay until Sunday comes. Who are those 
 respectable looking people on their way to church ? 
 Fathers and mothers with their children, undivided 
 families, going together to the house of God. What 
 has brought about this change ? The mission school ; 
 in this instance taught by a man and his wife who have 
 transformed a region twelve miles in diameter. They 
 have taught the men how to cultivate their land and care 
 for their cattle ; the women how to keep house, prepare 
 their food, make the clothing for the family and take 
 care of the children ; besides this they have trained 
 one colporter, six native evangelists, four elders, two 
 deacons, four Sabbath-school superintendents, ten Sab- 
 bath-school teachers, two public-school and four mis- 
 sion-school teachers, and the influence of the mission 
 has gone into all the country round about. 
 
 Down into Virginia a Pennsylvania woman went, 
 twenty-six years ago, and opened a school for negroes 
 under an oak tree. Go there to-day : that woman is 
 still in the field, but in that country you will find six 
 Presbyterian churches, six schools, and a boarding- 
 academy, with 172 scholars, in which three of the teach- 
 ers learned their letters under that tree. One litde fel- 
 low who began under the oak-tree graduated at How- 
 ard University with the highest honors of his class. 
 
 These instances will sufficiently illustrate the. influ- 
 ence of the mission day-school upon communities. 
 
206 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Higher institutions of learning, academies, indus- 
 trial training-schools and colleges, are also most valu- 
 able aids in missionary work. 
 
 The industrial trainings-school, in which secular, 
 religious, and industrial education are combined, is an 
 especially important adjunct, and the cottage system, 
 though more expensive than housing the children in 
 one or two large buildings, is gready preferable, as 
 being more homelike and bringing the children into 
 closer relations with the teachers. Here the children, 
 taken from heathen homes and early contact with vice, 
 are trained to become civilized Christian leaders. In 
 short, trained in Christian homes from which their own 
 homes are to be modeled, they go out to perpetuate 
 the influence of such homes among their people. 
 
 Into one of these homes, made attractive by a 
 young Indian wife who had been trained in an indus- 
 trial boarding-school, came one day recently an old 
 woman in her blanket. As she saw the young woman 
 take out of the oven her well -baked loaves of bread, 
 and noted the comfort and cleanliness of her home, she 
 poured forth her lamentations that, though she had 
 been taught in her youth to read, she had never been 
 taught to work, and consequently such a home was 
 impossible to her. 
 
 Though these schools are of comparatively recent 
 establishment the results are already apparent, in the 
 Christian homes which are taking the places of the 
 tepees of the Indian and the communal houses of the 
 Alaskan. 
 
 Moreover, the tide is turning ; the moral strength 
 and correct habits formed at school enable them not 
 only to forsake the heathen customs of their people, 
 
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 20/ 
 
 but to withstand the fearful temptations of the wretched 
 class of white men who, without family ties or the res- 
 traints of society, have made these simple folk their 
 easy victims. 
 
 In Alaska, young people from these schools are 
 banding together in a society called " The Home Build- 
 ers ;" its expressed object being, " to make for ourselves 
 such homes as will glorify God and Hft up our people." 
 Thus united, the weak are strengthened, social advan- 
 tages gained, and the meetings held take the place ot 
 the old-time dances and feasts. There are many inter- 
 esting incidents, which have come to our knowledge, 
 showing how the turning tide has also brought blessings 
 to the white man, but time will not permit me to give 
 them. 
 
 The industries learned at the schools prepare the 
 young people to meet the new conditions of life and 
 earn their living, the boys as farmers, carpenters, shoe- 
 makers, engineers, etc. ; the girls as seamstresses and 
 domestic servants. One of the best teachers in Alaska 
 is a native girl, and of another trained in one of these 
 schools the Governor of Alaska said, " I have never 
 found her equal as a servant East or West. She plans 
 and prepares our meals, does our marketing, bringing 
 me her bill of the amount of money expended when she 
 needs more. I have the utmost confidence in her 
 truthfulness and honesty, so much so that I rarely ex- 
 amine her accounts." 
 
 The daughter of the Governor added, " Yes, all this 
 is true; and she is an earnest Christian. I have found 
 her in her room, night after night, studying her Bible." 
 
 A marked instance in the fruit of these mission in- 
 dustrial boarding-schools has just been sent me by one 
 
208 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 of the teachers. She writes: "An Indian boy seven- 
 teen years old was brought to us by the agent, to whom 
 he had given so much trouble that he had been repeat- 
 edly locked up in the guard-house. The agent begged 
 us to take him and give him a trial but advised us to 
 keep a close watch over him, as he had run away from 
 the school where he had been previously placed. The 
 teacher into whose care he was given felt some hesita- 
 tion about taking him, fearing his contact with the others, 
 but knowing that no religious influence had been 
 brought to bear upon him she determined to make him 
 a subject of prayer and do her best. It was not long 
 before the sly, sulky look began to disappear from his 
 face, and instead of being a hindrance, as the teacher 
 had feared, he began to be a help. 
 
 " One day he came to the teacher with a friend, and 
 asked her if she would allow them to come to her room 
 one evening in the week to study the Bible, he felt so 
 ignorant of religious truths. He also sought an oppor- 
 tunity to talk with his cousin, who had been some time 
 in the school, and she came to me and told me he 
 wanted us all to pray for him, he found it so hard to do 
 right. From the first the boy improved steadily, and 
 when he went home to the reservation for the summer 
 he joined the church near by, and while the missionary 
 was away this boy, with his cousin, held prayer-meet- 
 ings among his people. 
 
 " He has returned to us this fall with his friend, and 
 the boys we were warned to watch are now assisting 
 us in every department of our work. The boy is pre- 
 paring to become an evangelist, that he may assist the 
 missionary with whose church he united, after he has 
 finished his studies." 
 
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 209 
 
 These schools on the Indian reservations are 
 great civilizers. Indians are especially devoted to their 
 children, having so little else to cling to, and the im- 
 provement in many of the dwellings of the Pima and 
 Papago Indians, through the influence of a school but 
 five years in operation on their reservation at Tucson, 
 Arizona, is a striking evidence of this truth. ♦They are 
 close observers, and, appreciating the improved sur- 
 roundings and appearance of their children when they 
 come to visit them, they strive to better their homes 
 when they return. During vacation they have their 
 children's help, and the good work goes on encourag- 
 ingly. Farming implements are bought, sewing-ma- 
 chines are indulged in, and in some instances the wo- 
 men bring the machines many miles to the schools to be 
 taught how to use them. One is deeply touched to see 
 how sincere efforts to help their children are apprecia- 
 ted by the parents, and what exertions they make to 
 struggle upward towards civilization. 
 
 A unique story, which carries its own moral, comes 
 from a training-school in the mountains of the south. 
 I give it in the teacher's own words . " Seven years 
 ago, one Sabbath, while our household was at church 
 service, a ragged, dirty, but pretty brown-eyed child of 
 twelve years was put down on the ground of this 
 school. The people who left her wanted to get rid of 
 her. 
 
 " Some years before this time her mother had de- 
 serted her, and as she had never known a father she 
 was quite alone in the world. No, she was not alone, 
 for the inherent vices of her ancestors were ever round 
 her to open every door which could possibly lead her 
 into temptation. Ker mother's family was of the low- 
 
 Womaa in Missions. J^ 
 
2IO WOMAN IN MISSIONb. 
 
 est and vilest character, and though the vicinity had 
 many of her kin she never claimed relationship with 
 any of them after coming into the school. In fact, of 
 her own free will she discarded her family name and 
 chose for herself the name of a woman whom the world 
 delights to honor, a large-hearted, benevolent woman 
 visiting tke school at the time she came into our house- 
 hold. She was very bright, and apt to learn, but the 
 first time she was sent to a neighbor's on an errand she 
 stole a diamond ring. Although she could not always 
 find diamond rings she for several years found other 
 things she thought worth appropriating. She was not 
 a faithful student or a good girl, but with all her naugh- 
 tiness it was a constant surprise to hear her intelligent 
 answers to Bible questions, and her insight into spirit- 
 ual things was most remarkable. After living here four 
 or five years school life seemed to become irksome to 
 her restless disposition, and we agreed that she had 
 better take a place to work in a family and earn her 
 own living. We were not surprised to learn after a few 
 months that she was engaged to be married, and we 
 knew the man to be a good, honest Christian. Some 
 one has said, ' A woman never finds her soul until she 
 is in love,* and this proved verily true in the case of 
 our wayward lassie. She wrote us lovely, apprecia- 
 tive letters ; her heart seemed filled with gratitude that 
 she had been kept pure, so that this great blessing 
 might come to her, and that she had been taught how 
 to work so that she might make a happy home for the 
 man of her choice. 
 
 " She was married about three years ago. A year 
 afterward a lovely little daughter came to bless their 
 home. She paid us a visit, bringing the child with her, 
 
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES IN MISSIONS. 211 
 
 just old enough to trot about. The young mother 
 showed such wisdom in the training of the child, such 
 deep mother -love, that our hearts rejoiced that the 
 Friend of litde children had called us to the blessed 
 work of training mothers. What would have been in 
 place of that Christian home in the quiet mountain 
 village, had not this school been estabhshed for the 
 training of young girls in the truths of God's word and 
 the path of industry and virtue, it is easy to .surmise." 
 
 Ofttimes just this isolation from early associations, 
 possible only in a boarding-school, is necessary until a 
 new life has had time to gain strength and overcome 
 the power of early influences. In these boarding- 
 schools, educational, missionary, and industrial training 
 are combined. The aim is to equip the graduate fully 
 for the battle of life. 
 
 From a school for colored girls in Texas comes 
 this statement of results of such efforts : " Were I able 
 to visit every church in the State I believe I could pick 
 out the seminary girls at once, by their modest, quiet, 
 dignified manner. So far as we have been able to 
 follow these girls after they leave school ihey have for 
 the most part been found faithful. They seemed to 
 have passed into a new world. Their religion, instead 
 of manifesting itself in noisy shouting, finds expression 
 in Christian activity." 
 
 Many instances are cited of successful work in 
 Sabbath and day schools maintained by these girls, of 
 good employment obtained through correct knowledge 
 of housekeeping and sewing gained here, and of model 
 homes, which are object-lessons of great value. 
 
 I have not time to illustrate the great advantage to 
 a selected number of collegiate education. It not only 
 
212 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 prepares the natives themselves for the maintenance of 
 Christian work among their own people, but raises up 
 object - lessons for their encouragement. In a large 
 training-school in Alaska one of the teachers is a na- 
 tive who has had the advantage of higher education, 
 which, with innate ability, has developed so noble a wo- 
 man that she compares favorably with the best teachers 
 in the school. The children look up to her as an ex- 
 ample of what is possible, and sometimes ask, when 
 making extra efforts, " Can I ever become like Yonkit- 
 ti Thlinkitti (our ThUnkit lady) ?" We rank among 
 our most successful teachers in the different fields of 
 Home Missions to-day many who through the aid of 
 higher education are our co-laborers for the elevation 
 of their own people. We should also lend a hand to 
 these untutored people, through higher education, that 
 they may stand upon a plane by our side and compel 
 respect from those who would otherwise oppress them. 
 God has made of one blood all nations to dwell 
 together upon the face of the whole earth, giving dif- 
 ferent endowments to different people, and the elevation 
 of any one race adds to the wealth of the whole. We 
 owe them this help upward by our own debt to those 
 who rescued our ancestors from savagery. Nay, more. 
 A higher obligation rests upon us. We are as much 
 bound to give these uncivilized people all we have 
 received of Christianity and education as we are to 
 pay any debt for " value received ;" for the " value re- 
 ceived" by us has been primarily from the Lord Jesus 
 Christ himself, and the utmost we can do for the most 
 degraded of our fellow beings will not compare with the 
 magnitude of grace which he has shown toward us. 
 
EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 213 
 
 PLACE OF WOMAN'S MISSIONARY WORK 
 
 AMONG THE EVANGELISTIC FORCES 
 
 OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 BY MRS. A. F. SCHAUFFLER. 
 
 In no department of church work in these United 
 States has there been seen a greater change during the 
 past twenty-five or thirty years than in the develop- 
 ment of woman's power in organized effort. Doubt- 
 less this change had its origin in the splendid service 
 accomplished by our women during the war, when 
 they first learned to use the strength which comes 
 from close affiliation for active service. Any one who 
 takes the pains to look through a file of newspapers 
 dating from i860 to 1865 will be struck with the fre- 
 quent mention of Ladies Aid Societies, and the Aux- 
 iliaries to the Christian and Sanitary commissions. 
 Here in these working bands, when husbands and 
 brothers were at the front, in want of comforts and 
 even necessities, our women learned how to cooperate in 
 united service, because they were stirred by the same 
 impulses and urged on by the same affectionate desire 
 to help loved ones in times of need. The red flannel 
 shirts, the knitted socks and mittens, the hospital 
 stores of all kinds, bore witness, in their wonderful ac- 
 cumulation, to the power of the women when hand 
 was joined to hand. Each woman alone felt she could 
 do but little, but with a force of like-minded sisters by 
 her side what was there that she could not do ? As 
 
214 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Florence Nightingale, in the hospital at Scutari, broke 
 forcibly the bands of red tape which had kept needful 
 supplies from her English soldiers, so our women rose 
 to protest against needless delays, and political jobs, 
 in our hospital service, and saved by prompt action 
 many a useful life. 
 
 Now what can be more easy to understand than 
 the fact that the women who had wielded this power 
 should realize its possession when the need for its 
 exercise in war times had happily passed away ? And 
 when the condition of their less fortunate sisters was 
 presented to them in forcible ways what is more nat- 
 ural than that they should again form themselves into 
 working bands to strive to ameliorate those con- 
 ditions ? Ah ! women are ready and anxious to work 
 as soon as they know the need and understand the 
 way in which it can be met. Lack of interest only 
 comes from lack of knowledge, and the wide spreading 
 of missionary facts brings as a corollary widespread 
 missionary efforts. 
 
 And now we face the question — What is the place 
 of Woman's Missionary Work among the Evangelistic 
 Forces of the Church? 
 
 We can say, in reply, that it is a power for good 
 in four ways. 
 
 First, in diffusing missionary information. The 
 power exerted by our women's societies in spreading 
 missionary intelligence cannot be over - estimated. 
 Oftentimes the men are too tired, or too absorbed in 
 business, to read for themselves the Missionary Mag- 
 azine, but they will listen with pleasure to the striking 
 fact, or the interesting story, as it is related to them 
 at the dinner table, or beside the evening fireside. 
 
EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 21$ 
 
 Women are natural hero-worshippers, and when the 
 heroes are such men as Carey, Livingston, or Patteson, 
 how easily they will speak of them, and their work, 
 and the progress made on the fields which they opened 
 up to the attention of the church. The study of mis- 
 sionary literature covers a broad ground, and no one 
 need be afraid of being narrow minded who pursues it 
 thoroughly. All political changes must be followed 
 in order to understand the difficulties, or the new privi- 
 leges, of our missionaries ; good books of travel must 
 be read, to know about the people among whom they 
 go ; the different religions of the world must be un- 
 derstood, that we may see where the darkest spots are 
 and the greatest need of light ; social problems must 
 be considered ; and have not the missionaries them- 
 selves made contributions to the ethnological, botanical, 
 meteorological and philological knowledge of the 
 world which it would be a liberal education to master ? 
 Our women are touching ail this mass of information 
 at many points, and no young girl prepares a paper 
 for a missionary meeting, on the stations, the medical 
 work or the evangelistic work of any given field, but 
 she becomes wiser in the very preparation, no matter 
 how simple her effort may be. A deacon in a New 
 England Church was once asked, in a prayer-meeting, 
 to pray for a certain mission. He excused himself on 
 the ground that he did not know enough of that mis- 
 sion to pray for it intelligently ! In fact he did not know 
 whether to ask for success on missionary effort there 
 or to give thanks that such success had been given. In 
 the women's societies such information is so constantly 
 disseminated that the members know the condition of 
 each mission field and can pray with intelligence. 
 
2l6 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 In some societies a few choice books are procured 
 from time to time and loaned to thie members for a 
 small fee, the money thus gained going towards the 
 purchase of new books. It would be a capital plan at 
 some auxiliary meetings if different ladies would give 
 brief reviews of such books, stimulating interest and 
 creating an appetite for a fuller acquaintance with the 
 books themselves. Then the maps which are displayed 
 at the women's meetings do their own part in promo- 
 ting intelligent interest in the progress of the kingdom. 
 Can you not think of many churches where a mission- 
 ary map is never shown except in the women's meet- 
 ings? The necessity for maps is illustrated by the 
 fact of an old lady lingering after a meeting to study a 
 map of China. When asked if any station could be 
 pointed out to her, she said, " No, I was only looking 
 for Yucatan." The foundation of all true interest is 
 knowledge, and is not the foundation well laid in 
 women's meetings, with missionary magazines, books 
 and maps ? 
 
 Besides diffusing information, women's societies are 
 of great value in forming a sympathetic link with the 
 workers on the field. There is in these days such an 
 increase of postal facilities that none of our missiona- 
 ries suffer from such isolation as was common a gene- 
 ration ago, but how much nearer is home brought to 
 the workers in China or Japan by the bright, warm- 
 hearted letters of the stayers at home. Kenneth Mc- 
 Kensie writes from North China to his friends in Eng- 
 land, " Let me tell you of six young Chinamen whom 
 you can pray for by name, and then you will feel you 
 are a part of the Chinese Mission." How many are 
 feeling just in that way ! Their knowledge of a field 
 
EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 217 
 
 and its needs being so perfect, their sympathy with the 
 workers there so entire, their prayers so earnest, that 
 they are, to all intents and purposes, a part of that 
 mission. And then the loving gifts which willing 
 hands send out in boxes ! How plainly they speak to 
 our sisters far away of the love for them and for our 
 common Saviour which influenced the giver. 
 
 Secondly. Woman's missionary zeal is a power 
 in planning and carrying on specific work for women 
 and children. It is not necessary for me to speak of 
 the Zenana work in India, the household visits in 
 China, the schools in Africa, or the mothers' meetings 
 in our own great cities. How clearly all these depart- 
 ments of woman's work for women stand out before us ! 
 Men could not do this work, and if women were not 
 doing it it would not be done. Think of the schools 
 organized and maintained, at home and abroad, through 
 the efforts of our missionary societies — and, remember, 
 school work is not the mere teaching of a book, it is a 
 moral and spiritual force ; a fragrance that gladdens; a 
 breath that gives help ; a touch that quickens into life ; 
 it is a divine atmosphere in which young souls thrive. 
 
 Listen to the testimony of Miss Fletcher, who has 
 recendy gone out to China. She writes from Hong 
 Kong : 
 
 " I have been a few times to a cottage meeting in 
 a poor street near us. I only go to look on, keep my 
 ears open, and learn what I can. Our Bible-woman 
 seems to talk very simply, and some of the women who 
 have listened to the gospel message for a long time are 
 gradually taking it in. They have souls to be saved 
 and hearts that can feel joy and sorrow, but the brains 
 of the poor Chinese women are not called forth by 
 
2l8 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 their every-day life and it is a slow process to set them 
 in motion, especially regarding the soul and eternity." 
 
 The devotion and perseverance of Mrs. Hemmings 
 of South America, who has met with such success in 
 her work among the women of Terra del Fuego, are 
 inspiring. The Yahgan Indians of this region are 
 genuine savages, but she set about teaching the women, 
 first of all, to be industrious and useful. A sort of 
 mothers' meeting was gathered in her kitchen and she 
 attempted to teach the women to knit. The counting 
 of stitches seemed an insuperable difficulty, for the 
 Yahgans are only able to count up to three, but Mrs. 
 Hemmings was ingenious in contriving ways to impart 
 the necessary knowledge, and these women now do 
 excellent knitting-work of all sorts. This is a decided 
 triumph, when it is remembered that Darwin declared 
 these people to be incapable of moral or intellectual 
 elevation. Mrs. Hemmings next determined to teach 
 them to spin their wool, and on returning to Eng- 
 land for a holiday learned the art of carding, dyeing, 
 spinning and weaving wool, in order to teach the poor 
 Indians this industry. She has mastered the art, and a 
 few weeks ago sailed from England with a loom for 
 Oooshooia. 
 
 At first sight it seems a waste of time for an edu- 
 cated woman, full of evangelistic zeal, to spend her 
 time in teaching poor women to knit, but if, as the 
 apostle says, if by any means she can win some to 
 Christ, how can the time be better spent than in open- 
 ing their darkened minds, first to human kindness, 
 then to practical usefulness, and lastly to the gospel 
 truth ? And the same is true in our " Mothers' 
 Unions," and " Helping Hands " in our own great 
 
EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 219 
 
 cities. If you win the women's hearts how much 
 easier it is for you to give, and for them to receive, 
 the offer of salvation. Let us not forget also that 
 in the women's meetings many a woman evangel- 
 ist is being trained, so that the missionary will multi- 
 ply her power for usefulness by sending out those who 
 can tell the gospel story where her own voice could 
 never reach. A personal invitation to come to Christ 
 carries with it the divine blessing and brings oftentimes 
 the hoped-for result. Christ might have given the 
 gospel message to angels to deliver, but you will re- 
 member he gave it into the keeping of Christians. 
 Even when there was an angel on the spot, at the 
 house of Cornelius, he was not to tell the story of the 
 cross, but Peter was to come on purpose. Let us be 
 true to our trust, and carry the gospel standard brave- 
 ly, even as it was carried by such women as Fidelia 
 Fiske, Mrs. Judson, Mrs. Moffat or Miss Rankin. Are 
 not our own missionaries on the field a constant remind- 
 er to put down selfishness and live for others ? 
 
 The field of usefulness is so wide that more work- 
 ers are needed as much at home as abroad. Women 
 have opened up a thousand forms of helpful effort, 
 such as day nurseries, industrial schools. Bands of 
 Hope and Helping Hands, and in all these the root is 
 to be found in the desire to show the love of Christ in 
 practical form. All this is good, very good, but what 
 an opening there is for volunteers to take up this exist- 
 ing, well-organized work, and release those of more 
 experience that they may have leisure to plan new 
 efforts in directions where they are much needed. 
 What a call there is for well-chosen ways to help the 
 blind girls of China, and the outcast women of Bom- 
 
220 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 bay ! Are we just to stand still, when we hear such 
 calls as these, and say " our hands are full," or are we 
 to press on to the greater heights of consecrated effort ? 
 Do we realize that the same Lord who has opened 
 closed doors in answer to our prayers is as able to 
 give us a victorious entrance ? God is as able to help 
 us do the work as to show us where it lies. 
 
 It is the old story : a few are doing the work that 
 many should be doing, and the burden is heavy. 
 Women's missionary societies will never have their 
 right place among evangelistic forces of the church 
 until every woman in the church recognizes that she 
 has a share in this great privilege of work, and if un- 
 able to give her personal service will give her sympa- 
 thy and her prayers. Let us ask you one question : 
 if you are not putting all the energy of which you are 
 capable into this work, what are you saving it for? 
 
 Thirdly. Women's missionary societies are a 
 power in promoting systematic giving. 
 
 How truly Dr. Pierson says that there are " regions 
 beyond, of consecrated giving." Our women's socie- 
 ties are a power in the way they have developed this 
 idea and have brought the small sums into the treasury 
 of the Boards which might otherwise have never been 
 gathered. When a woman once has her heart set on 
 giving to a cause she loves she will find a way. If 
 she cannot find a way she will make one. Listen to 
 this short item, which covers years of drudgery : 
 
 " Rebecca Cox, of Galway, N. Y., has left to the 
 Baptist Woman's Missionary Society a legacy of $800, 
 earned by weaving rag carpets." 
 
 I think that money so eartied and given goes far. 
 
 It is most touching to hear of the loving sacrifices 
 
EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 221 
 
 made on mission fields by those who have recently 
 come to the knowledge of the truth. Miss Gordon 
 Cummings tells of the " Lord's rice box," which the 
 native Christians of Ceylon fill from their scanty store. 
 Mrs. Hume of Bombay says that the native girls in 
 her school there earned five dollars by sewing, which, 
 after long discussion, they decided to send to help the 
 City Mission in New Haven ! I often think of what a 
 poor lad in one of our mission chapels in New York 
 wrote to me when sending ten dollars for missionary 
 work in India. It was simply this : " I think the 
 devil needs fighting with money as well as with pray- 
 ers ;" and it has been well said that we have no right 
 to pray until we have given. 
 
 You have doubtless heard Professor Drummond's 
 story of the Italian coast guard who reported to the 
 Government in regard to a shipwreck : " We saw the 
 wreck, and we attempted to give every assistance 
 possible through the speaking-trumpet ; notwithstand- 
 ing which, next morning twenty corpses were washed 
 ashore." I am afraid some are working in just such 
 ways as this — with words but no deeds. 
 
 But one most gratifying sign has been seen of 
 late years, and that is the desire of women of means to 
 go at their own charges into missionary work, or to 
 pay for a substitute. May God hasten the time when 
 it will be the rule for every well-to-do Christian wo- 
 man to pay the salary of a worker before she plans 
 elaborate toilettes for herself or lavish expenditure on 
 the appointments of her table. Women's missionary 
 societies promote the spread of knowledge : with 
 knowledge comes interest, with interest comes the de- 
 sire to give material aid, and when the heart is on fire 
 
222 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 with love and gratitude what bounds are there to the 
 interest and the desire to help ? 
 
 A little money goes far on the foreign field. Lis- 
 ten to this item, cut from a recent number of the 
 " Christian " : 
 
 " In illustration of what can be done with a small 
 amount of money, Rev. Mark WiUiams, of Kalgan, 
 China, explained at the recent Mission Conference in 
 CUfton Springs what loo dollars will do in a year, in 
 North China, i. It will maintain a boys' day-school 
 of twenty-five, as it will pay the rent of the room and 
 salary of the teacher. 2. It will maintain three boys 
 in a boarding school. 3. It will pay the salary of two 
 native preachers. 4. It will pay the wages of two 
 colporters, who not only sell but explain the Bible. 5. 
 It will support a station class of twenty men who 
 spend all their time for three months in Bible study." 
 
 Last, but not least, Woman's Missionary Work is 
 a power in the training of the young to an intelligent 
 interest in missions. 
 
 The training of the young in Mission Bands falls 
 upon the women who have themselves been trained in 
 the women's societies ; and what a field of usefulness 
 is opened here ! To train the boys and girls of the 
 present time in a wise interest in missions is to help to 
 evangelize the world, for in a few years they will be at 
 the front in all the great activities of life, and will have 
 the power and the will to influence largely their time 
 and generation. Only seven years of this century re- 
 main to us. Shall we make them the best years the 
 century has seen in concentrated efforts to advance the 
 coming of the Kingdom by wise planning and vigor- 
 ous acdon ? Shall we show to our young people, by 
 
EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 223 
 
 our lives, what are the things that we most surely be- 
 lieve: are they the promises of God, or the value of 
 literature and art in the uplifting of the world ? 
 
 It is impossible to say when a child is too young 
 to receive a permanent impression in regard to mis- 
 sionary work which may influence the whole life. Miss 
 Agnew, who worked so long and with such great suc- 
 cess in Ceylon, formed her intention to be a missionary 
 when she was only eight years of age, after hearing an 
 address on the foreign work. She was thirty before 
 her circumstances were such that she was free to go, 
 but her purpose never faltered. Let every woman who 
 works as a Band leader be full of a cheerful courage 
 as she prays to God that some such noble workers 
 may come from the young people whom she is training 
 in the best of all knowledge. Shall our young people 
 know well about those whom the world calls heroes 
 and be ignorant of the heroes of the Cross ? Shall 
 they have the life history of Charles of Sweden, or 
 Peter the Great, at command and know nothing of 
 Gilmour of Mongolia, or Mackay of Uganda? Is it 
 not time that in our Christian day-schools there should 
 be introduced a History of Missions? Is not the 
 progress of Christ's kingdom of more importance than 
 the " Rise and Fall " of ancient Rome ! What a sphere 
 is opened here for the influence of Christian women ! 
 
 We form the best idea of the value of anything in 
 this world by thinking of the void there would be if it 
 did not exist. Dwell for a moment on the loss there 
 would be to the Evangelistic Forces of the church if 
 all the women's work were blotted out. Think of the 
 schools which would close their doors, of the medical 
 work which would be forsaken, the lonely lives in the 
 
224 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 zenanas no longer brightened, the mothers' meet- 
 ings given up, the evangelistic tours abandoned, 
 and the piles of Bibles and tracts which would be 
 left undistributed. Think of the lepers left in hopeless 
 misery, the bUnd no longer taught to read, and, turn- 
 ing your thoughts homeward, look at the empty boxes 
 in the Treasury, which once the women filled with 
 loving zeal, and listen to the quiet which prevails 
 where earnest voices were once heard in prayer. Do 
 you like to study this picture ? Does not every fibre 
 in your nature call out in protest ? 
 
 But pause, before going as far as this, and im- 
 agine that you simply took away from any given 
 church the woman most filled with the missionary 
 spirit, putting in her place a worldly-minded Christian. 
 Would the church or the community notice the dif- 
 ference ? Perhaps not. But take away a dozen such 
 women, and fill their places with indifferent, careless or 
 fashionable women, and suddenly you would find 
 people saying, " What is wrong ? The life of the 
 church has disappeared." 
 
 Take away all the women who are interested in 
 Christian Temperance work and fill their places with 
 those who take a glass of wine daily and love to see it 
 on their tables. Would there not be a distinct loss in 
 the moral tone of the church ? 
 
 Remove all the wom.en full of zeal for City Mis- 
 sions, with their varied activities, and put in those 
 women who spend their summers in Europe and their 
 winters in Florida, in entire disregard of their duties not 
 only as Christians but as citizens, and would not the 
 city begin to notice something wrong ? 
 
 Then suppress all those who care with intensity 
 
EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARY WORK. 22$ 
 
 of purpose for home missions and who urge the for- 
 mation of the industrial schools which are to raise 
 the standard of education throughout our land, and 
 fill their places with silly women as devoid of patriot- 
 ism as of true religion. How long would it be before 
 the church and the country would cry out, " Where are 
 the workers ?" 
 
 Then take away those women who have the gift of 
 enlarged vision, and whose eyes are open to the need 
 in Japan or Korea, and whose ears are quick to hear 
 the call for help from their sisters far away, and put in 
 their stead a group of women whose lives begin and 
 end at home, in selfish devotion to their own families, 
 and is there not a distinct loss of spiritual uplifting 
 power in the church ? In such a way as this perhaps 
 we can best judge of the value of woman's missionary 
 work. The women who do the work are themselves a 
 power, and they could be ill-spared from our churches 
 and from our land. 
 
 Let the last words of the Women's Congress of 
 Missions be like a bugle call, to urge upon the women 
 of our churches to be more active in diffusing informa- 
 tion ; more zealous in carrying on the old work ; more 
 wise in planning for the new ; more careful in systematic 
 giving, and more devoted to the proper training of our 
 young people. So shall we hasten the coming of the 
 KINGDOM. 
 
 Woman tn Mlssloni. 
 
 15 
 
226 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 Written for the Woman's Congress of Missions, Chicago, 1893. 
 BY EDNA DEAN PROCTOR, 
 
 What was the song the angels sang, 
 
 At midnight over Bethlehem's plain — 
 The song that made the sad earth young 
 
 With the burst of its far, celestial strain ? 
 Glory to God in the highest, thrilled 
 
 The air with the bliss of heaven ; and then, 
 To a softer note the song was stilled : 
 
 And on earth peace, good will toward men. 
 O holy song, transcendent night, 
 
 When the boon of the waiting years was won ; 
 When faith was lost in rapturous sight, 
 
 And the Kingdom of God on earth begun ! 
 
 The Kingdom of God ! Was it lands and seas, 
 
 Temples, palaces, power and pride ? 
 Learning, and beauty, and lordly ease ? 
 
 Nay ! earth's glories were swept aside — 
 Pitiful, passing, phantom things — 
 
 Fading as stars when dusk is done 
 And morning soars on radiant wings 
 
 To herald the great, victorious sun ! 
 The Kingdom of God is love and peace ; 
 
 Brotherhood ; purity undefiled ; 
 Sacrifice ; service ; care's release ; 
 
 The simple trust of the little child ; 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 227 
 
 Bliss for the soul though joys depart ; 
 
 Thirst for righteousness ; high endeavor ; 
 The reign of the meek and lowly heart ; 
 
 Rest in the Lord for ever and ever. 
 
 And who were his court, and what his throne — 
 
 This Prince whose advent thrilled the air ? 
 Were trumpets of fame before him blown ? 
 
 Did carving and purple his couch prepare, 
 And rabbi and haughty Roman tread 
 
 With joy in his steps by mount and mart ? 
 Ah, no ! to the poor and outcast wed, 
 No place had he to pillow his head, 
 
 And his only throne was the loving heart. 
 
 * But oh, the freedom, and oh, the rest 
 
 He brought to the prisoned, burdened soul ! 
 
 Come unto me, was his sweet behest. 
 And leave for ever your care and dole ; 
 
 And Oh, his pity and tender cheer 
 For the weary women who thronged his way : 
 
 The living water, the lightened bier. 
 
 The full forgiveness, the silent tear. 
 For sister and mother and friend were they ; 
 And to hei who touched his robe, to glow 
 
 With the tide of life through her veins that stole. 
 Gracious he answered, Daughter, go 
 
 In peace, thy faith hath made thee whole. 
 And when to his glory entering in. 
 
 And hovering heaven and earth between. 
 The watcher his earliest word to win 
 
 Was Mary the loving, the Magdalene ! 
 
228 WOMAN IN MISSIONS. 
 
 We see him not. He walks no more 
 
 By Zion and Jordan and Galilee, 
 But, sweet as the song the night winds bore, 
 And rich with meaning unknown before, 
 His words ring out as they rang of yore, 
 
 Go FORTH, AND TELL THE WORLD OF ME ! 
 
 O Heart of Love ! we have heard thy call ; 
 
 And in peril and exile, grief and blame. 
 We have followed thy feet where the shadows fall 
 
 That the wave and the wild might praise thy name ! 
 Our dead are wrapped in the polar snows ; 
 
 They sleep by the palms of tropic seas ; 
 The wind of the desert above them blows ; 
 The coral island their slumber knows : 
 
 They who have drained thy cup to the lees 
 And counted it joy, yea, blessedness, 
 
 To be spent for thee and for thee to die ! 
 So they have gained, through toil and stress, 
 
 " Well done !" where the river of life goes by. 
 Their fields are ours ; and lo ! a song 
 
 From the countless reapers swells to thee. 
 As they bind the sheaves while the days are long, 
 
 And dream of the harvest yet to be : 
 
 " Through storm and sun the age draws on 
 
 When heaven and earth shall meet, 
 For the Lord has said that glorious 
 
 He will make the place of his feet ; 
 And the grass may die on the summer hills, 
 
 The flower fade by the river, 
 But our God is the same through endless years 
 
 And his word shall stand for ever. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 229 
 
 " ' What of the night, O watchman set 
 
 To mark the dawn of day ?* 
 ' The wind blows fair from the morning star, 
 
 And the shadows flee away. 
 Dark are the vales, but the mountains glow 
 
 As the light its splendor flings, 
 And the Sun of righteousness comes up 
 
 With healing in his wings.' 
 
 " Shine on, shine on, O blessed Sun, 
 
 Through all the round of heaven. 
 Till the darkest vale and the farthest isle 
 
 All to thy light are given ! 
 Till the desert and the wilderness 
 
 As Sharon's plain shall be, 
 And the love of the Lord shall fill the earth 
 
 As the waters fill the sea !" 
 
 The song is one with the angels' peace ; 
 
 The toil is the path the Master trod : 
 Hail to that day of blest release 
 When the woes of the weary world shall cease 
 
 In the light and joy of THE KINGDOM OF GoD ! 
 
"^^]\[ew JVIissioiiapy Bool^s.-§i-- 
 
 L American Hsrces on Mission Fields* 
 
 Edited by Rev. H. C. Haydn, D. D. i2mo. $i 25. 
 
 Brief biographies of eminent missionaries by competent 
 hands. The names of the missionaries are: Mrs. Clara Gray 
 Schauffler, Henry Sergeant West, M. D., Rev. David Tappan 
 Stoddard, Asahel Grant, M. D., Rev. William Goodell, D. D., 
 Rev. Titus Coan, Rev. Harrison Gray Otis Dwight, S. W. Wil- 
 liams, LL. D., Rev. E. C. Bridgman, D. D., Miss Julia A. Rap- 
 pleye, Rev. Adoniram Judson, Rev. W. G. Schauffler, D. D., 
 Rev. John Eliot. 
 
 Among the writers are Drs. Hamlin, Gilman, Haydn, 
 Bartlett, and others. 
 
 " A capital book to put into the hands of our young peo- 
 ple." NORTHW^ESTERN PRF.SBYTERIAN. 
 
 " Our monthly concerts would not be so devoid of inter- 
 est if every giver for missions should possess this volume." 
 
 .MISSION FIELD. 
 
 IL Social and Religious Life in the Orient 
 
 By Krikon Hagop Basmajian. With many illustrations by 
 native artists. 247 pp. i2mo. $1. 
 
 An attractive book by a native Armenian (now a Protes- 
 tant) on the country (Turkey), the missionaries, the Govern- 
 ment, the religion, social life, customs, and amusements. 
 Profusely illustrated. 
 
 IIL Seven. Years in Ceylon. 
 
 Stories of Mission Life. By Mary and Margaret W. Leitch. 
 With portraits and over one hundred illustrations. 170 pp. 
 Quarto. 75 cts. 
 
 A very pretty book, giving actual every-day experiences 
 in mission-life during the seven years spent in Ceylon by 
 these gifted ladies. 
 
 ^n]QriQB.t] Tract Society, 
 
Nrw Books. 
 
 FROM OLIVET TO PATMOS: The First Chris- 
 tian Century in Picture and Story. 
 
 By Mrs. L. S. Houghton. Quarto. Profusely 
 illustrated. $i 50. 
 
 This is a continuation of Mrs. Houghton's popular series of 
 Bible books, of which "The Bible in Picture and Story" and 
 " The Life of Christ in Picture and Story " have already been 
 published. It gives the story of the apostles and the interesting 
 history of tlie Christian Church in the first century, introducing 
 an account of the Epistles in the order of the history. 
 
 It forms a very entertaining narrative for either old or 
 young, which is rendered still more attractive by numerous and 
 excellent illustrations. 
 
 By the satne author, and tcniform. 
 
 THE BIBLE IN PICTURE AND STORY. 
 
 Quarto. 269 illustrations, many of them full-page. 
 240 pp. Cloth, $1 25 ; gilt extra, $1 75. 
 
 The same book in German, with the same illus- 
 trations and the same price. 
 
 " This volume is adapted to catch the attention and win the 
 interest of every child. There is a picture on every page of the 
 two hundred and forty which make up the handsome quarto." 
 
 CHRISTI.A.N INTELLIGENCER. 
 
 LIFE OF CHRIST IN PICTURE AND STORY. 
 
 Quarto. 296 pp. 190 illustrations. $1 50 ; gilt 
 edges, $2. 
 
 The same book in German, with the same illus- 
 trations and the same price. 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. NEW YORK. 
 
IN COMPLIANCE WITH CURRENT 
 
 COPYRIGHT LAW 
 
 OCKER & TRAPP, INC. 
 
 AND 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRODUCED THIS REPLACEMENT VOLUME 
 
 ON WEYERHAEUSER COUGAR OPAQUE NATURAL PAPER, 
 
 THAT MEETS ANSI/NISO STANDARDS Z39. 48-1992 
 
 TO REPLACE THE IRREPARABLY 
 
 DETERIORATED ORIGINAL. 1998 
 
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Pnncfton Thpoioq.cal Sfm.nir>-Spf«T Library 
 
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