ROBERT E, SPEER
 
 V
 
 Presbyterian 
 
 Foreign Missions 
 
 An Account of the Foreign 
 Missions of the Presbyterian 
 Church in the U. S. A. 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
 Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Pres- 
 byterian Church in the U. S. A. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION AND 
 
 SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 
 
 1901
 
 Copyright, 1901, by 
 
 THE TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLI- 
 CATION AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE Bishop of Durham, whose devotion of his 
 sons to the mission work in India has given evi- 
 dence of the depth of his own interest in missions, 
 recommended some time ago to the clergy of his 
 diocese the study of the present conquests of the 
 Cross. Scarcely any other study can be so fruit- 
 ful in quickening spiritual purpose and confirming 
 Christian faith. What the mission work is ac- 
 complishing is intelligible only in the light of the 
 presence in it of the living power of God. 
 
 The whole work of missions, however, is too 
 great for Christians any longer to comprehend. 
 Each one must make selection of those phases of 
 it which are of most interest and significance to 
 him. Whatever else may be included in such a 
 selection, we surely must not pass over the mis- 
 sion work of our own Church. Histories of the 
 missions of the various churches make this kind 
 of study possible, and they also give hopeful 
 proof of the power and extent of the missionary 
 enterprise. 
 
 This little volume is intended to meet the 
 needs of Presbyterians in this regard, and to pro- 
 vide for others who may wish it a brief account 
 of the foreign missionary work of the Presbyterian 
 Church. Those who wish to go further will 
 find a fuller treatment of the early years of the 
 work, in Greene's Presbyterian Missions (Lowrie's 
 notes) ; of details and dates in Historical Sketches 
 of Presbyterian Missions; of the lives of the mis- 
 sionaries in Rankin's Missionary Memoirs, and in 
 
 18244S1
 
 4 PREFACE 
 
 separate biographies; of historic incidents and 
 records in Rankin's Handbook and Incidents of 
 Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in 
 the U. S. A.; and of the principles on which 
 the work of the Church has been conducted in 
 Ellimvood's Questions and Phases of Modern 
 Missions. 
 
 It cannot but be helpful especially to the young 
 people of each church to consider what God has 
 wrought for their fathers, and to pray that they 
 may be quickened thereby to attempt greater 
 things for God.
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAP. P'AGE 
 
 I. THE MISSIONARY ORGANIZATION OF THE 
 
 CHURCH AT HOME . . 7 
 
 II. THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA . 19 
 
 III. THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 41 
 
 IV. THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 75 
 
 V. THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 99 
 
 VI. THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 137 
 
 VII. THE MISSION IN KOREA 161 
 
 VIII. THE MISSION IN SYRIA 181 
 
 IX. THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 209 
 
 X. THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA .... 239 
 XI. THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA .... 263 
 
 XII. THE MISSION IN THE PHILIPPINES 285 
 
 CONCLUSION 295
 
 THE MISSIONARY ORGANIZATION OF 
 THE CHURCH AT HOME
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE MISSIONARY ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH 
 AT HOME 
 
 THE missionary work of the Presbyterian 
 Church began in 1741, with the appointment of 
 Azariah Horton, a member of the Presbytery of 
 New York, to work among the Indians on Long 
 Island. He was to be supported by " The Society 
 in Scotland for propagating Christian knowledge," 
 which had been instituted in Edinburgh in 1709. 
 His salary was to be forty pounds sterling per 
 annum. The mission met with success. A 
 number were taught to read, and in two or three 
 years forty-five adults had been baptized. But 
 then, as now, the liquor traffic with its curse came 
 in on the heels of the missionary. The work 
 grew, however, and the successors of these 
 Indians, known as the Shinnecock Indians, still 
 constitute a Presbyterian church numbering now 
 thirty-one members out of the small remaining 
 community. 
 
 David Brainerd was the second missionary. 
 He had labored in connection with the Congrega- 
 tional churches at Kaunaumeek, an Indian settle- 
 ment about twenty miles from Albany, but with 
 little encouragement and great suffering. In 
 1744 he was ordained a missionary of the Pres- 
 bytery of New York m Newark, New Jersey, and 
 thenceforth as a member of this Presbytery he 
 carried on his great work for the Indians. The
 
 10 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 wonders he saw wrought by the Spirit of God 
 among the Indians at Crossweeksung have always 
 been counted among the greatest achievements of 
 missions. But Brainerd himself was a great 
 achievement. He poured out his life in utterly 
 unselfish service among the degraded and ignorant 
 savages. The man's influence, perpetuated 
 through his memoirs which Jonathan Edwards 
 published, has molded thousands and tens of 
 thousands of lives. Reading the life of Brainerd 
 determined Henry Martyn to "imitate his exam- 
 ple," and go as a missionary; and William Carey 
 was profoundly affected by it. Something of the 
 spirit of this devoted missionary is shown in such 
 an extract as this from his journal : " Oh how I 
 longed that God should be glorified on earth ! 
 Bodily pains I cared not for. Though I was then 
 in extremity, I never felt easier ; I felt willing to 
 glorify God in that state of bodily distress, so long 
 as he pleased I should continue in it. The grave 
 appeared really sweet, and I longed to lodge my 
 weary bones in it ; but oh that God might be 
 glorified ! this was the burden of all my cry. 
 Oh to love and praise God more, to please him 
 forever ! this my soul panted after, and even now 
 pants for while I write. Oh that God might be 
 glorified in the whole earth ! Lord let thy king- 
 dom come ! . . . Oh the blessedness of living to 
 God ! . . . Spent two hours in secret duties, and 
 was enabled to agonize for immortal souls, though 
 it was early in the morning and the sun scarcely 
 shone, yet my body was quite wet with 
 sweat. . . . With what reluctance did I feel my- 
 self obliged to consume time in sleep ! I longed 
 to be a flame of fire, continually glowing in the 
 divine service, and building up Christ's kingdom 
 to my latest, my dying moment." 
 
 It is not surprising that Jonathan Edwards
 
 THE CHURCH AT HOME II 
 
 should have closed his sermon at Brainerd's 
 funeral, with the appeal : " Oh that the things 
 which were seen and heard in this extraordinary 
 person his holiness, heavenliness, labor and self- 
 denial in life ; his so remarkably devoting him- 
 self and his all, in heart and practice, to the glory 
 of God ; and the wonderful frame of mind mani- 
 fested, in so steadfast a manner, under the ex- 
 pectation of death, and under the pains and 
 agonies which brought it on ; may excite in us 
 all, both ministers and people, a due sense of the 
 greatness of the work which we have to do in the 
 world, of the excellency and the amiableness of 
 thorough religion in experience and practice, of 
 the blessedness of the end of those whose death 
 finishes such a life, and of the infinite value of 
 their eternal reward, when 'absent from the body 
 and present with the Lord ' ; and effectually stir 
 us up to constant and effectual endeavors that, in 
 the way of such a holy life, we may at last come 
 to so blessed an end. Amen." 
 
 David Brainerd's brother John was supported 
 in his work among the Indians by funds raised in 
 America, and in 1763, the Synod of New York 
 ordered collections to be taken in all the churches 
 for the support of the Indian missions. Various 
 missions among the Indians were undertaken by 
 voluntary missionary societies in the Church, and 
 by the General Assembly, which took up the work 
 systematically in 1800, supporting missions to the 
 Cherokees, the Wyandots, the Six Nations and 
 the Indians at Lewistown, Ohio. In 1817 the 
 United Foreign Missionary Society was formed, 
 consisting " of the Presbyterian, Reformed Dutch 
 and Associate Reformed Churches, and all 
 others who may choose to join them." Its ob- 
 ject was to be " to spread the gospel among the 
 Indians of North America, the inhabitants of
 
 12 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Mexico and other portions of the heathen and 
 anti-Christian world." President Monroe and 
 Colonel McKenney, the superintendent of Indian 
 trade, befriended the Society at once. The latter, 
 it was said, " could scarcely have embarked in its 
 favor with more zeal and activity, if the whole 
 concern had been his own." The Society es- 
 tablished five missions among the Osages in 
 Arkansas and in Missouri ; the Cattaraugus 
 Mission in New York, the Mackinaw Mission in 
 Michigan, and a mission in Hayti; other missions 
 were transferred to it by the smaller organizations 
 which had grown up. 
 
 In 1826 all the work of this Society was trans- 
 ferred to the American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions, now the organization of the 
 Congregational churches, but then cherishing the 
 hope of being a national institution and the mis- 
 sionary society of -the Christians of many denomi- 
 nations. There were many in the Presbyterian 
 Church, however, who were averse to this con- 
 solidation, believing that the Church should have 
 its own distinctive missionary organization. Some 
 of the synods had conducted their own missions 
 since 1789, when the Synod of Virginia appointed 
 a Commission of Synod for this purpose. The 
 Synod of Pittsburg had organized itself at its first 
 meeting in 1802, as the Western Missionary 
 Society. When the United Foreign Missionary 
 Society was absorbed by the American Board, 
 the men who believed in the distinct association of 
 the Church as a Church with missions, began to 
 plan for some arrangement that would save their 
 principles. In 1831 the Synod of Pittsburg 
 formed a distinct foreign missionary society under 
 the name, The Western Foreign Missionary 
 Society, with the purpose of recognizing "the 
 Church in her very organization as a society for
 
 THE CHURCH AT HOME 13 
 
 missions to the heathen." The Rev. Elisha P. 
 Swift, D. D., was the first secretary of this Society, 
 and the first large gift was one thousand dollars, 
 given by the Hon. Walter Lowrie, then secretary 
 of the Senate of the United States. It was this 
 Society that began in 1833 the missions of our 
 Church to Africa and India, and later the Indian 
 missions among the Weas and lowas, and in 
 1837 the mission to China. The energy and 
 broad-mindedness of the Society were astonishing. 
 The scope of its projects as indicated in the chap- 
 ters on India and Africa in this volume, is sur- 
 passed even by the foresightedness of its treat- 
 ment of the subject of printing in Chinese from 
 metallic type. Though poor, the Committee joined 
 with the Royal Printing Establishment of France 
 and the British Museum in ordering three sets of 
 matrices for $6,600 each, three orders being re- 
 quired by the typographer before he could afford to 
 complete the work. Looking out over the immense 
 field, the Committee boldly declared that they 
 trusted " the time is nearly past when the Presby- 
 terian Church will continue to stand with her 
 arms folded, while the millions of China are per- 
 ishing in her sight." The Committee for a little 
 while supported the work of Mr. Brewer in 
 Smyrna, and it established The Foreign Mission- 
 ary Chronicle, which was merged into The Home 
 and Foreign Record in 1850. The Record was 
 succeeded by The Church at Home and Abroad 
 in 1886, and this in turn by The Assembly 
 Herald in 1898. 
 
 In 1837 the present Board of Foreign Missions 
 was established by the General Assembly, repre- 
 sentations having been made that the Church 
 owed "it as a sacred duty to her glorified Head, 
 to yield a far more exemplary obedience, and that 
 in her distinctive character as a Church, to the
 
 command which he gave at his ascension into 
 heaven : ' Go ye into all the world and preach 
 the gospel to every creature.' It is believed to be 
 among the causes of the frowns of the great Head 
 of the Church, which are now resting on our be- 
 loved Zion, in the declension of vital piety and 
 the disorders and divisions that distract us, that 
 we have done so little comparatively nothing in 
 our distinctive character as a Church of Christ, to 
 send the gospel to the heathen, the Jews, and the 
 Mohammedans." 1 The Western Foreign Mis- 
 sionary Society which had just changed its name 
 to the Presbyterian Foreign Missionary Society, 
 transferred all its work to the new Board, which 
 held its first meeting in Baltimore, on October 
 3ist, 1837. Samuel Miller was chosen president, 
 and the Hon. Walter Lowrie secretary. 
 
 Walter Lowrie was one of the great characters 
 of our Church. He was born in Edinburgh, 
 Scotland, December 10, 1784. He was brought 
 to America when eight years old, and settled 
 with his parents first in Huntingdon County, then 
 in Butler County, Pennsylvania. Intending to 
 enter the ministry, he was turned aside. In 1811, 
 he was elected to the Senate of Pennsylvania, and 
 then, after seven years' service, to the Senate of 
 the United States. At the expiration of his term, 
 in 1824, he became Secretary of the Senate, and 
 held the office for twelve years, and was urged to 
 remain, but turned from it in 1836, to become 
 secretary of the Western Foreign Missionary So- 
 ciety, and then of the Board. He held this office 
 until, disabled by the infirmities of old age, he 
 Maid it down in 1868. He was a man of calm, 
 judicious mind, trusted absolutely by all men, 
 and beloved. In the Senate, among such men as 
 Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and Randolph, he was 
 1 Green, Presbyterian Missions, Lowrie's notes, p. 190 f.
 
 THE CHURCH AT HOME 15 
 
 regarded as "an authority upon all questions of 
 political history and constitutional law." And 
 later, whenever he rose to speak in any assembly 
 of the Church, there was a silent and confident 
 attention. Every one knew that Walter Lowrie 
 was absolutely true and genuine. 'He taught 
 himself Chinese in order to help the press in 
 Shanghai, and he laid the foundations of that 
 great enterprise. No detail was too small for his 
 honest care, and no plans were so great as to 
 appall him. He was a man of missionary heart. 
 He abandoned a lucrative position for one that 
 never supported his family, and he gave three sons 
 to missions, one to India, and two to China, one 
 of them to a martyr's death. He was as simple 
 as he was great, loving Christ as a little child, 
 and pleading everywhere and always, often with 
 tears, for the work to which he had given up 
 everything himself, and for which his Master had 
 given up all before him. 
 
 Three other names which have been associated 
 with the mission work of the Church for many 
 years, are the Rev. John C. Lowrie, Walter 
 Lowrie's son, who went to India in 1833, but was 
 obliged to return on account of ill health in 1836, 
 and who then was secretary of the Board until 
 1891, when he became emeritus secretary, con- 
 tinuing so until his death in 1900; William Ran- 
 kin, Esquire, treasurer from 1850 to 1887 ; and 
 the Rev. F. F. Ellinwood, D. D., LL. D., secre- 
 tary from 1871, and now senior secretary, trusted 
 and honored throughout the Church. 
 
 From its institution in 1837, the Board was 
 composed of one hundred and twenty members, 
 one-fourth of this number being selected each 
 year by the General Assembly. An executive 
 committee of nine was appointed by the Board. 
 The year after the Board was established by the
 
 1 6 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Assembly, the Church was divided into the Old 
 School and New School, separated by divergent 
 views on both doctrine and policy. The New 
 School churches affiliated themselves with the 
 American Board, while the Old School churches 
 did their foreign mission work through the Board 
 established in 1837. When the Civil War broke 
 out, the Southern churches separated from the 
 Northern, and formed their own missionary or- 
 ganization. No changes were made in the con- 
 stitution of the Board, either in 1837 or in 1861, 
 but in 1870 the General Assembly reduced its 
 membership to fifteen, the Old and New School 
 churches having reunited at Pittsburg the pre- 
 ceding year. At the Reunion the missions of 
 the American Board in Syria, Persia, and on the 
 Gaboon, were transferred with the support of the 
 New School churches to the Presbyterian Board. 
 In 1890 the Board was enlarged to twenty-one 
 members, one- third to be elected annually by the 
 Assembly. It now holds the allegiance of all the 
 Northern Presbyterian churches, the New School 
 congregations having transferred their support to 
 it at the time of the Reunion. The Southern 
 Church is still distinct, but its Foreign Mission 
 Executive Committee and our Board work to- 
 gether in the closest harmony and confidence. 
 The American Board, the oldest American mis- 
 sionary organization now in existence, has be- 
 come the missionary agency of the Congregational 
 churches, and our Board's relations to it are also 
 wholly harmonious and cooperative. 
 
 The women of the Church have been from the 
 beginning among the best friends of missions. 
 "In those early days and in a new and sparsely 
 settled country, where ordinary business was 
 chiefly conducted by barter and but little money 
 was available, their missionary gifts were in many
 
 THE CHURCH AT HOME 1 7 
 
 cases the work of their own hands. By weaving, 
 knitting, and sewing, in the use of flax and wool ; 
 in preparing articles of food that admitted of 
 transportation in a rough way ; in readiness to go 
 as missionary teachers and helpers at Indian sta- 
 tions, when Providence permitted ; above all, in 
 the great, if not the greatest, agency of prayer for 
 the divine blessing on this evangelizing work in 
 all such ways their interest in its success was very 
 manifest." 1 There were, however, no general 
 organizations of all the women of the Church in 
 those early days. These began in 1870, and 
 there are now seven auxiliary Women's Boards, 
 which divide the territory of the Church, with 
 headquarters at Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, 
 St. Louis, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. 
 They have given since 1870, nearly seven million 
 dollars to the work. 
 
 The first offices of the Board were movable, 
 but in 1839, it found a home at 29 Centre Street, 
 New York City. In 1888 it moved to 53 Fifth 
 Avenue, to live with the Board of Home Missions 
 and the Board of Church Erection. Once again 
 it moved, in 1895 to its present home at 156 
 Fifth Avenue. 
 
 From time to time various mission projects 
 have been helped which are not recorded in the 
 following chapters. These chapters are devoted, 
 with the exception of the account of the missions 
 among the American Indians, to the more exten- 
 sive and enduring enterprises which are still under 
 the care of the Board. 
 
 It has been the noble feature of the mis- 
 sionary work of the Church that it has ever 
 claimed to be the work of the Church in her real 
 character, and has insisted that in attempting to 
 carry the gospel to the world the Church was 
 
 1 Green, Presbyterian Missions, Lowrie's notes, p. 77.
 
 1 8 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 most truly obeying Christ, discharging the real 
 functions of a Church, and fulfilling her own 
 nature. As was declared in the General As- 
 sembly of 1847 : " The Presbyterian Church is 
 a Missionary Society, the object of which is to 
 aid in the conversion of the world, and every 
 member of this Church is a member for life of 
 said Society, and bound to do all in his power for 
 the accomplishment of this object " ; while the 
 General Assembly of 1867 said, "This Assembly 
 regards the whole Church as a Missionary Society 
 whose main work is to spread the knowledge of 
 salvation." 
 
 The fathers laid the foundations wisely and 
 builded well. Their children must not lose their 
 fathers' spirit nor forget their fathers' faith.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA
 
 CHAPTER TI 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 
 
 THE first missionaries sent to foreign lands 
 from the American Presbyterian Church, sailed 
 in 1833 for Africa and India. Messrs. John B. 
 Pinney and Joseph W. Barr, from Princeton 
 Theological Seminary, were the first missionaries 
 designated to Africa. Mr. Barr died before he 
 could set out for his field, and Mr. Pinney waited 
 some time for a companion, but having delayed 
 nearly three months " without anyone offering to 
 accompany him, and all his arrangements for his 
 departure being made, his zeal in the cause in 
 which he had engaged determined him to em- 
 brace an opportunity which offered, and to sail 
 for Liberia, in hope that his unaided efforts might 
 prove an encouragement and prepare the way for 
 others to follow him." * 
 
 Liberia, which lies roughly between 5 and 7 
 north latitude, with a coast line northwest and 
 southeast of about 500 miles, had not yet been or- 
 ganized as a republic, and was barely ten years 
 old as a community of American negroes, when 
 Pinney landed. The first settlement on the coast 
 was on January 7, 1821, by eighty-nine free ne- 
 groes who had sailed from New York. The 
 American Colonization Society sent a colony of 
 freed slaves the next year, and for a quarter of a 
 century exercised supervision over the emigrants. 
 Mr. Pinney became the second governor under 
 
 1 Green, Presbyterian Missions, Lowrie's notes, p. 1 16. 
 21
 
 22 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 the Colonization Society. On July 26, 1847, tne 
 Liberian Republic was established on the model 
 of the United States. 
 
 The first missionary work had been done by a 
 slave, Lot Gary, who had bought his freedom and 
 been sent out by the Baptists in 1821 ; and while 
 missionaries from Switzerland had come in 1825, 
 but Pinney was the first white missionary from 
 America. After four months' stay he came home 
 during the rainy season, and then returned with 
 four new missionaries, one a wife, and one a 
 young American negro. The tragedy of African 
 missions at once appeared to the Church, when 
 within five months three of the new missionaries 
 had died "in the possession of a calm and cheer- 
 ful anticipation of immortal felicity," and the 
 young negro had withdrawn and returned. A 
 new man was sent, but soon both he and Mr. 
 Pinney exhausted by disease were forced to em- 
 bark for home. The Church was greatly cast 
 down, and as a Manual of Missions published in 
 1854 states: "The loss of several valuable lives 
 and the failure of the health of other brethren, 
 proved extremely discouraging to many persons. 
 Yet others were clear in their convictions that the 
 Church ought not to abandon this missionary 
 field." The voices of courage prevailed. The 
 question was naturally raised, however, whether 
 negro missionaries from America could not be 
 used more wisely as likely to endure the climate 
 better. The home Church learned that the forty- 
 four white men and thirty-five women sent to 
 Sierra Leone by the Church of England Mission- 
 ary Society, from 1812 to 1830, had lived in that 
 colony an aggregate of two hundred and eight 
 years, an average of two and one-half years each, 
 and more or less of that a time of severe sickness, 
 while forty-four had died the first year. This
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 23 
 
 confirmed it in its feeling, and, believing that 
 "the constitution of the colored men of the 
 Southern States has nothing to apprehend from 
 the climate of Africa," it resolved to send out 
 " pious, suitable men " from among them. With- 
 out discontinuing the appointment of white men, 
 this policy was pursued until, in 1866, Edward 
 Boeklen, a German member of the Presbytery of 
 New York, was sent out as the last white man. 
 He died in two years. Another motive besides 
 that of health inclined the Church to discontinue 
 sending white missionaries. It was felt that Li- 
 beria was a black man's country, and that jeal- 
 ousy and animosity would be avoided by sending 
 colored ministers. 
 
 The negroes from America have neither proved 
 immune from disease and fever, nor shown those 
 qualities of enterprise, stability and solidity of 
 work without which a mission cannot be counted 
 as satisfactory. Therefore, while there have been 
 not a few zealous and capable Christian men among 
 them, and the Republic has been far in advance 
 of the native African communities in intelligence, 
 morality, and order, the Colonization enterprise 
 died long ago, and the hope that the American 
 negro would evangelize the continent of his 
 fathers has been abandoned, at least until he 
 shall have been brought by education and long 
 discipline to a tenacity and directness of character 
 he does not yet possess. 
 
 The sending of white men to Liberia having 
 been discontinued thirty-four years ago, the ques- 
 tion of reconsidering such a course was taken up 
 in 1894, and it was decided not only to send no 
 more white men but also to bring the Liberian 
 churches to a self-supporting basis as soon as pos- 
 sible, and to concentrate the efforts of the Church 
 in Africa upon the field of what is now called the
 
 24 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Western Africa Mission but which was called for 
 years the Gaboon and Corisco Mission. This 
 has now been done, and the Presbyterian Church 
 in Liberia receives no subsidy from America, but 
 cares for its own congregations and schools. 1 
 
 The Gaboon and Corisco Mission derived its 
 name from Corisco Island and the Gaboon River, 
 both lying between the equator and one degree 
 north latitude. The Mission at the time of its 
 greatest extent north and south reached from the 
 Ogowe River in the French Congo, i south lati- 
 tude, to between 3 and 4 north latitude in the 
 German territory of Kamerun. No missions are 
 at work in the interior for thousands of miles, and 
 unnumbered peoples are to be reached by our 
 missionaries or not reached at all. Thus far the 
 work has not penetrated far from the coast, which 
 is low and covered with jungle, save where the 
 settlements have broken in. " The Benita, Muni, 
 Gaboon, and Ogowe, drain the country, and are 
 fed by many small affluents. The natives orig- 
 inally lived under a patriarchal form of govern- 
 ment, no tribe being governed by any one ruler, 
 but each village directed by a local chief or head- 
 man, mistakenly called ' king,' whose position 
 was due only to his being senior member of the 
 family, and who had authority only so far as his 
 age or force of character could command respect. 
 This form of government still holds in the inte- 
 rior, even where France and Germany claim 
 authority, but near the coast it is more form 
 than substance, the foreign governments insisting 
 on a measure of compliance with their methods 
 of colonial control." 2 
 
 1 According to the report of the West Africa Presbytery 
 (Liberia) of 1899, there were ten ordained ministers, and 
 twelve congregations. 
 
 * Historical Sketches of Presbyterian Jllissiotis, p. II.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 25 
 
 Miss Kingsley, the niece of Charles Kingsley, 
 gives a vivid picture in her Travels in West Af- 
 rica, of the forests and streams of this region. 
 "The day soon grew dull," she says, "after the 
 delusive manner of the dry season. The climbing 
 plants are finer here than I have ever seen them. 
 They form great veils and curtains between and 
 over the trees, often hanging so straight and flat, 
 in stretches of twenty to forty feet or so wide, and 
 thirty to sixty or seventy feet high, that it seems 
 incredible that no human hand has trained or 
 clipped them into their perfect forms. Sometimes 
 these curtains are decorated with large bell-shaped, 
 bright-colored flowers, sometimes with delicate 
 sprays of white blossoms. This forest is beyond 
 all my expectations of tropical luxuriance and 
 beauty, and it is a thing of another world to the 
 forest of the Upper Calabar, which, beautiful as it 
 is, is a sad dowdy to this. There you certainly 
 get a great sense of grimness and vastness ; here 
 you have an equal grimness and vastness with the 
 addition of superb color. This forest is a Cleo- 
 patra to which Calabar is but a Quaker. Not only 
 does this forest depend on flowers for its illumina- 
 tion, for there are many kinds of trees having their 
 young shoots, crimson, brown-pink, and creamy 
 yellow ; added to this there is also the relieving 
 aspect of the prevailing fashion among West Af- 
 rican trees, of wearing the trunk white, with here 
 and there upon it splashes of pale-pink lichen, 
 and vermilion-red fungus, which alone is sufficient 
 to prevent the great mass of vegetation from being 
 a monotony in green. All day long we steam 
 past ever-varying scenes of loveliness whose com- 
 ponent parts are ever the same, yet the effect ever 
 different. Doubtless it is wrong to call it a sym- 
 phony, yet I know no other word to describe the 
 scenery of the Ogowe. It is as full of life and
 
 26 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 beauty and passion as any symphony Beethoven 
 ever wrote, the parts changing, interweaving, and 
 returning. There are leit motifs here in it, too. See 
 the papyrus ahead ; and you know when you get 
 abreast of it you will find the great forest sweep- 
 ing away in a bay-like curve behind it against the 
 dull gray sky, the splendid columns of its cotton 
 and red woods looking like a facade of some lim- 
 itless inchoate temple. Then again there is that 
 stretch of sword grass, looking as if it grew firmly 
 on to the bottom, so steady does it stand ; but as the 
 "Move" goes by, her wash sets it undulating in 
 waves across its broad acres of extent, showing it 
 is only riding at anchor ; and you know after a 
 grass patch you will soon see a red dwarf clay 
 cliff, with a village perched on its top, and the in- 
 habitants thereof in their blue and red cloths 
 standing by to shout and wave to the "Move," 
 or legging it like lamplighters from the back 
 streets and the plantation to the river frontage, to 
 be in time to do so, and through all these chang- 
 ing phrases there is always the strain of the vast 
 wild forest, and the swift, deep, silent river." 
 
 There are no roads through these forests, but 
 only narrow trails traveled single file. Goods 
 must be carried into the interior by carriers, each 
 with his pack ; and when invalids are to be brought 
 down from the bush, it must be in hammocks 
 hung on men's shoulders. On the streams the 
 people travel to and fro in canoes, and the mis- 
 sionaries in sailboats or launches. In 1871, the 
 Mission was provided with a " handsome, rapid- 
 sailing sloop-rigged yacht, the 'Elfe,' " which af- 
 ter two years, was wrecked on the Corisco rocks. 
 The "Hudson," a schooner of twelve tons, suc- 
 ceeded it, but was slow and poorly built and un- 
 comfortable. In 1885, the children of the Sun- 
 
 1 Miss Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 129 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 27 
 
 day schools and mission bands gave the money 
 for the " Nassau," a small sloop built in Liver- 
 pool, which has sailed up and down the coast ever 
 since. The latest boat is the " Dorothy," a naph- 
 tha launch of four and one-half tons, which will 
 ply on the Gaboon river, and as far as possible 
 along the coast. Not only are there no roads, but 
 there is no money, either, and all payments must 
 be made and all trade carried on by barter, in 
 beads, cloth, knives, hardware, etc. 
 
 The people of the French Congo and Kamerun 
 are kindly, docile, hospitable, open-hearted and 
 respectful, nor wanting in many other good qual- 
 ities. Dr. J. Leighton Wilson, one of the earlier 
 missionaries, and for seven years one of the secre- 
 taries of the Board, writing from his experience 
 of nineteen years' residence in Africa, said: "I 
 have traveled many thousand miles among these 
 people, among tribes who had never before seen a 
 white man, in times of peace and in times of war, 
 at their homes and on the way to shed the blood 
 of their fellow-men, and yet I never thought it 
 necessary to furnish myself with a single imple- 
 ment of defense nor had just cause for using one. 
 I have passed through the largest villages alone in 
 the middle of the night with a feeling of as much 
 security as I could possibly have felt in traveling 
 the streets of any city of these United States. Dur- 
 ing the whole time of my residence in that country 
 I scarcely remember to have heard a single sylla- 
 ble from the lips of one of these people which 
 could in any sense be construed as an intentional 
 insult to myself; and yet they are heathen in the 
 full sense of the word,* and no missionary can live 
 among them without finding ample cause of per- 
 plexity and annoyance." 1 Forty years later, 
 
 1 Rankin, Incidents of Foreign Missions of the Presby- 
 terian Church, p. 79.
 
 28 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Miss Isabella Nassau, who has now spent 
 more than thirty-two years in Africa, wrote 
 from her home on the Ogovve : "In lonely 
 places, with only three or four trusted Christian 
 natives, surrounded by crowds of wild people, 
 neither by clay nor by night have I feared, though 
 doubtless there was at times reason for doing so. 
 What kind womanliness some of these women 
 have shown me ! What manly courtesy and hos- 
 pitality some of these uncultivated sons of the 
 wilderness ! No wonder that I feel at home in 
 this low, dark, not over-clean bamboo hut. But 
 I love their souls. I long to see their conversion. ' ' 
 Sometimes one fears in working with such people 
 that they are too ready to assent, they look up so 
 to the foreigners. " Each missionary on arrival 
 is addressed with the title of ' father ' or 
 'mother.'' There is no hostility as in China, 
 nor any use of opprobrious names. And in the 
 villages the missionaries are treated much the 
 same as the native chiefs. When Mr. Mackey 
 went to Corisco, that position was formally voted 
 to him and his successors by the council of Cor- 
 isco chiefs. Indeed the missionary has rather to 
 fear that the people will too completely depend 
 upon him and accept his will, instead of develop- 
 ing into robust and independent characters. 
 There are more savage tribes, like the Fang, 
 which are less docile. 
 
 On the unfavorable side it must be noted that 
 there is no common or effective government. 
 There are incessant village feuds. The people 
 are indolent. That is one foundation of polyg- 
 amy. A chief wants wives to do his work for 
 him. The wants of the people "being few in 
 food or clothing are easily supplied from the 
 rivers, their women's farms, and from the forests. 
 They have no trades, and but very limited arts of
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 29 
 
 rude house and boat-building, carpentering and 
 blacksmithing. . . . Unlike some of the tribes of 
 southern Africa, they are willing to change their 
 rude tools and utensils, readily accept ours, and 
 are glad to be taught carpentering." They are 
 not stupid or incapable of development. " It is 
 utter rubbish to say, ' You cannot teach an adult 
 African,' and that 'he grows backward'; for 
 even without white interference he gets more and 
 more cunning as the time goes on. Does anyone 
 who knows them feel inclined to tell me that those 
 old palm-oil chiefs have not learnt a thing or two 
 during their lives? or that a well-matured bush 
 trader has not? Go down to West Africa your- 
 self, if you doubt this, and carry on a series of ex- 
 periments with them in subjects they know of 
 trade subjects, and try to get the best of a whole 
 series of matured adults, male and female, and I 
 can promise you you will return a wiser and a 
 poorer man, but with a joyful heart regarding the 
 capacity of the African to grow up." l 
 
 The great need of the people is simple, practical 
 Christianity, of the hand as well as of the head 
 and heart. "Our own methods of instruction," 
 Miss Kingsley urges, " have not been of any real 
 help to the African, because what he wants teaching 
 is how to work." Mission schools like Lovedale, 
 of the Scotch Presbyterians, have accomplished 
 enduring results by teaching simple industries, 
 and holding their pupils down to the practical 
 needs of their homes and their people. 
 
 Slavery, intemperance, and polygamy, are three 
 evils which work against the ideals of missions. 
 Slaves are no longer exported from West Africa, 
 but slavery continues unrestrained as a native in- 
 stitution. The natives have their own liquors 
 made from plantains, bananas, and palms, but 
 
 1 Miss Kingsley, Travels in IVest Africa, p. 673.
 
 30 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 the foreign traders have poured in a flood of im- 
 ported rum, gin, and whiskey. As for polygamy, 
 it has influenced social ideals as it inevitably does 
 wherever it prevails; and however Dr. Blyden 
 and Miss Kingsley may apologize for it, it cannot 
 be regarded by Christians as essential or harm- 
 less. At present a man's wealth is usually ex- 
 pressed in wives, which are bought as other 
 merchandise. Mr. Mackey gave in one of the 
 earliest letters from the Mission, a list of the ar- 
 ticles paid for a Corisco girl : "20 small bars of 
 iron, i gun, i neptune, i brass kettle, i coat, i 
 shirt, i chair, i hat, 2 caps, i cutlass, 4 knives, 
 i umbrella, i chest, 4 wash basins, 6 plates, 4 
 empty bottles, i keg of powder, i iron pot, i 
 brass pan, 10 brass rods, 10 pieces of cloth, 5 
 mugs, i small looking-glass, i jug, 4 pins, 5 
 needles, 5 fish hooks, 2 razors, 2 pairs of scissors, 
 8 bunches of small beads, 3. pairs of earrings, i 
 pocket knife, 3 padlocks and keys, 4 pipes, 10 
 heads of tobacco, i piece of cloth for her mother, 
 i silk handkerchief, i small bell, i tumbler." 
 This must have been a valuable woman ! The 
 list, too, illustrates the ingenious but cumbersome 
 currency of the country. 
 
 This district of Africa is peopled by various 
 tribes, with different dialects. The Benga, 
 Mpongwe, Fang, Bule, and Dikele, were reduced 
 to written languages by the missionaries. The 
 New Testament and parts of the Old are printed 
 in Benga and Mpongwe, and the gospels in Bule. 
 Scores of other dialects exist, and also a perfect 
 tangle of tribes and social prejudices. The Fang 
 are the most warlike, and are slowly passing down 
 from the interior to the coast. That seems to be 
 the historic course. Once on the coast, the tribe 
 dwindles. This has been the history of the Di- 
 kele and the Mpongwe and of the Benga, per-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 3! 
 
 haps. There are not more than two thousand 
 left, on the testimony of Mr. Ibea, the native 
 minister at Corisco, " a splendidly built, square- 
 shouldered man, a pure Benga of the finest type, 
 full of energy and enthusiasm." l 
 
 Missionary work in the Gaboon district was be- 
 gun in 1842, by some missionaries of the Ameri- 
 can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
 with which many of the Presbyterian churches 
 were cooperating. These missionaries had gone 
 to Liberia seven years before, but after some 
 reverses decided to move south, with a view to 
 reaching the interior of the Congo region. The 
 new field expanded and the work met with such 
 success that, after seven years, opposition and 
 persecution fell upon the native converts. When 
 the Old and New School branches of the Presby- 
 terian Church were united, and the latter trans- 
 ferred their missionary activity from the American 
 Board to the Board of the united Church, the 
 work at Gaboon was handed over to the Presby- 
 terian Board, and was combined with the work of 
 the latter at Corisco. This Corisco work had been 
 established in 1850 on an island five miles long 
 and three miles wide and about fifteen miles from 
 the mainland. It was hoped that white missionaries 
 would find this island more healthful than the coast, 
 and be able to train native workers here for the 
 interior. Four stations were established on the 
 island. It was found, however, that the island 
 was no more free from fever than the coast, that 
 the work on the mainland suffered from the ab- 
 sence of the missionaries, and that the native 
 helpers were prevented by tribal wars from doing 
 the wide-reaching work anticipated. Accordingly, 
 the four stations were consolidated and the white 
 missionaries removed in time to the mainland. 
 
 1 Miss Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 399 f.
 
 32 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 The Rev. Ibea J'Ikenge, the first convert on the 
 island, continues in charge of the work, which in- 
 cludes two congregations that have built their 
 own chapels, and which has shaped the moral 
 tone of the whole island. This work at Corisco, 
 and so in a real sense the work which grew out 
 of it, was established by the Rev. James L. 
 Mackey, whose Presbytery would not sanction 
 his going to Africa, but who could not be pre- 
 vented. "One member asked me," he said, 
 " ' Have you determined to throw away your life? 
 Go to Africa and you will lay your bones on her 
 sands with the multitudes who have gone before 
 you, and who should be a warning to you.' An- 
 other said, 'Well, I admire your spirit, but I 
 foresee you are throwing away your life.' ' And 
 such was the almost unanimous expression of the 
 members. A great change has passed over the 
 Church since then. Before he reached Corisco, 
 Mrs. Mackey died. A few months later his as- 
 sociate and his wife were lost at sea in a typhoon, 
 but he took up his work undaunted and alone. 
 
 The first station occupied on the mainland was 
 at the mouth of the Benito River, at Mbade, one 
 hundred and ten miles north of the equator. 
 George Paull, who opened this station, died within 
 one year of reaching Africa. He was one of 
 those many heroes among the missionaries of the 
 Church who have not been made conspicuous be- 
 fore the world, but who with the finest courage 
 and devotion have done their work like men, and 
 paid for it in life laid down without a murmur 
 or complaint. One of his classmates wrote of 
 him : " I have read of the heavenly-mindedness 
 of Edwards and Payson and Martyn and Brain- 
 erd, and of the singleness of their devotion to the 
 cause of God ; but I never witnessed a living il- 
 lustration of such exalted attainments in the <li-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 33 
 
 vine life, until it was my privilege to be the 
 hourly companion and friend of George Paull." 
 One of his last intelligent utterances on his death- 
 bed was: "Oh, for more consecration to the 
 cause of Christ ! I wish only to cast myself at 
 his feet, and feel that he is my all." When he 
 died, his Presbytery in Pennsylvania (Redstone) 
 could say of him : "In the life and labors of our 
 departed brother we recognize a spirit akin to 
 that of, a Brainerd, an Eliot, a Schwartz, akin to 
 the spirit of Him who said, ' The zeal of thine 
 house hath eaten me up ' a zeal for the salva- 
 tion of bleeding Africa, which prematurely and 
 almost literally consumed the vessel in which 
 it burned ; a love for the souls of men and 
 the glory of God which many waters could not 
 quench, which quailed at no sacrifice, however 
 great, and which could say with the great apostle- 
 missionary to the Gentiles, ' Neither count I my 
 life dear unto myself so that I might finish my 
 course with joy and the ministry which I have re- 
 ceived of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of 
 the grace of God.'" 1 Crowned in Palm-Land, 
 by Dr. Nassau, is the story of another life that 
 was laid down in the early days in the Benito 
 district, and a picture of the trials and joys of 
 those days of loneliness ; and it was at Benito that 
 Cornelius DeHeer labored until his death in 1889, 
 after thirty-three years' work in Africa. 
 
 The Ogowe district was occupied in 1874, by 
 the Rev. R. H. Nassau, M. D., who established 
 a station at Belambila, one hundred and fifty 
 miles inland from the mouth of the Ogowe. The 
 station was removed, because of tribal jealousies, 
 to Kangwe, near the French Government Post at 
 Lembarene, and Miss Isabella A. Nassau, the 
 first white woman to enter the Ogowe, joined her 
 1 Rankin, Missionary Memorials, p. 269.
 
 34 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 brother here. "This location was chosen in the 
 consistent pursuance of what has been ever the 
 objective point of the mission, the interior. The 
 failure to find a path via either the Gaboon, the 
 Muni (at Corisco), or the Benito, led to the at- 
 tempt of the Ogowe, whose entrance had recently 
 been forced by trading steamers. This attempt 
 was stimulated by the very general feeling in the 
 home churches that our duty was unfulfilled un- 
 less an immediate advance was made interior- 
 ward." 1 From the beginning the eyes of the 
 Church at home had been toward the interior. 
 In 1833, the secretary of the Western Foreign 
 Missionary Society wrote: "To Western and 
 eventually Central Africa this Society has from 
 the beginning looked, as one of the principal 
 fields of its intended operations." It was hoped 
 that at last the mission might advance up the 
 Ogowe. De Brazza, the French explorer, had 
 shown that the sources of the Ogowe lay near 
 streams which flowed into the Congo. The plan 
 was conceived of forming a chain of stations 
 from Kangwe to the Congo basin. This was 
 abandoned, however, after it was discovered how 
 far the regulations of the French Government 
 were likely to impede the work. The require- 
 ment that education should be carried on not in 
 the vernacular but in French, indicated that the 
 work could be much better done by French so- 
 cieties ; and accordingly, all this field on the 
 Ogowe was transferred in 1892 and 1893, with 
 some temporary provisional aid to the Societe des 
 Missions Evangeliques of Paris, which has since 
 conducted it most successfully. It is in praise of 
 the home and work of M. and Mme. Jacot, two 
 missionaries transferred with the work, that Miss 
 Kingsley is speaking when she writes, "I daily 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 21.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 35 
 
 sa\v there what it is possible to do, even in the 
 wildest and most remote regions of West Africa, 
 and recognized that there is still one heroic form 
 of human being whose praise has never adequately 
 been sung, namely, the missionary's wife." l The 
 only stations in the French Congo now con- 
 nected with our Church are at Libreville, at the 
 mouth of the Gaboon, and at Angom on the 
 Como, the' northern branch of the Gaboon, from 
 which the great Fang tribe is easily accessible, 
 and where Mr. Marling died as he had lived, for 
 the Fang. 
 
 Hope of entering the interior through French 
 territory having been abandoned, the Mission be- 
 gan to plan to go in from Batanga through land 
 under the German flag, where the restrictions 
 were fewer and less irksome, the German Govern- 
 ment not forbidding teaching in the vernacular, 
 but only requiring that German also shall be 
 taught at the coast. Batanga had been an out- 
 station of Benito, but was occupied by the Rev. 
 B. B. Brier and his wife, in 1889. The Rev. 
 A. C. Good, Ph. D., who had been in Africa 
 since 1882, joined the station in 1892, and under- 
 took the work of interior exploration. Passing 
 entirely through the forest belt he selected the 
 first inland station, a hill about seventy miles 
 from Batanga, and one thousand eight hundred 
 feet above sea level, called Efulen. A second 
 station was located at Elat, about seventy-five 
 miles east of Efulen, but before it could be 
 opened, Dr. Good, while still planning further 
 journeys, was seized with fever and died, having 
 in the quaint words of the Wisdom of Solomon, 
 "in a short time fulfilled a long time." Besides 
 his direct and indefatigable missionary work, Dr. 
 Good was an untiring entomologist. Dr. Hol- 
 1 Travels in West Africa, p. 133.
 
 36 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 land, to whom he sent his collections, says that he 
 had discovered fully a thousand species new to 
 science, and adds : " This is better work than 
 has been done by any other explorer of African 
 territory, without exception. I am familiar with 
 everything that has been written upon the natural 
 history of Africa, and am certain that no one on 
 African soil has ever shown such power alike as 
 collector and investigator." 
 
 On one of his journeys, Dr. Good met with a 
 village of the Dwarfs, and wrote an account of 
 this odd people which was published in The 
 Church at Home and Abroad, January, 1894. 
 Miss Elizabeth MacLean, of Glasgow, read this, 
 and having long felt an interest in the Dwarfs, 
 she proposed to establish a station, and to send 
 out missionaries to attempt to reach the nomads. 
 The result was the location of missionaries at 
 Lolodorf in Kamerun, who are trying to find and 
 influence this migratory people, of whom Dr. 
 Good wrote in his article : 
 
 "They attach themselves to some town of the 
 Fang, Mabea, or any other tribe occupying the 
 country in which they wish to live and hunt. 
 They are very skillful hunters, and if there is 
 game to be had they will get it. When they are 
 hungry for vegetable food they take the game 
 they have killed to the town to which they have 
 attached themselves, and exchange it for the food 
 they want. This arrangement seems so satis- 
 factory to both parties, that often a family of 
 Dwarfs will maintain such an alliance with a town 
 of their stronger neighbors for generations. The 
 Dwarfs are themselves a timid and harmless peo- 
 ple; at least this is true of those found in this 
 section of Africa. They never pretend to fight 
 for their rights, so I am assured. When the peo- 
 ple to whom they have attached themselves do
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 37 
 
 them a wrong which they are disposed to resent, 
 they simply move away and seek an alliance with 
 some other town where they will receive better 
 treatment. But it is considered an advantage to 
 have them as neighbors, so I am assured that they 
 are generally well treated. Their towns are not 
 permanent, however, and their dwellings are only 
 sheds, covered with leaves, which they occupy 
 while the game in the neighborhood lasts. They 
 are so constantly moving from place to place that 
 even their friends hardly know sometimes where 
 to find them." 
 
 The story of the missions in Africa has been 
 full of sadness and tragedy, full also of triumph 
 and gladness. From the days of Albert Bush- 
 nell, gentle, refined, courteous, popular every- 
 where and respected highly among the French 
 naval officers on the coast, smiling genially to his 
 friends as he sailed last from New York, in 1880, 
 though he knew he would never come back, and 
 dying before he reached his field again, and of 
 George McQueen, who, as he died, said to his 
 schoolboys: "I came from America to tell you 
 these things of God. I have lived as a light 
 among you. You must tell your people these 
 things and live as lights among them," and then 
 sank under the fever, down to the last young 
 missionaries who have passed away within a few 
 months of reaching the field, the workers have 
 fallen too fast ; but without lamenting that they 
 had given their lives ''to heal the world's open 
 sore." It has been a deadly climate. Of the 
 one hundred and thirty-eight white missionaries 
 who have gone out from the beginning, twelve 
 have died and not a few others returned within 
 one year. The average service has been seven 
 years. On the other hand, there have been some 
 who have lived and toiled long, Dr. Nassau for
 
 38 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 thirty-nine years, Mrs. Ogden for twenty-one 
 years, Mrs. DeHeer for thirty-eight years, Miss 
 Nassau for thirty-two years, Mrs. Reutlinger for 
 thirty-four years, and all these are still living and 
 working actively for Africa, and have not fallen 
 yet before the fever that comes up in that "soft 
 white mist rolling low and rreeping and crawl- 
 ing out from the lagoons . . . stretching out 
 from under the bushes . . . now raising it- 
 self up into peaks, now crouching down . . . 
 and sending out long white arms and feelers 
 . . . and then drawing them back as if it 
 were some spirit-possessed thing, poisonous and 
 malignant." 
 
 And why do the missionaries run these risks ? 
 What religion are they endeavoring to displace 
 with Christ's? The lowest of all religions, simple 
 fetichism, the fear of evil spirits, the enslavement 
 of life by superstitious rules, bondage to charms, 
 witchcraft. The people have a great god, An- 
 zambi, who made all things, but who now takes 
 no interest in what he has made. Instead the 
 world is full of spirits who " take only too much 
 interest," and need to be kept away in some 
 fashion, so that religion is a desire to escape from 
 the influence of these spirits, and the perpetual 
 prayer is: "Go away; we do not want you. 
 Come not into this plantation, this village, this 
 house." To such people Christianity is a gospel, 
 a glad tidings, the message that Anzambi does 
 care and love, and that in his care and love no 
 evil thing can terrify or harm. Missionaries 
 have always been willing and will always be will- 
 ing to lay down life gladly to teach this gospel to 
 Africa, and to guide the simple children of Africa 
 into ways of sobriety, industry, righteousness, and 
 peace. As we think of their sufferings, may we 
 not say of them what Miss Kingsley says of the
 
 THE MISSIONS IN AFRICA 39 
 
 men who made the trade? " I trust that those at 
 home, in England, will give all honor to the men 
 still working in West Africa, or rotting in the 
 weed-grown, snake-infested cemeteries and the 
 forest swamps men whose battles have been 
 fought out on lonely beaches far away from home 
 and friends and often from another white man's 
 help, sometimes with savages, but more often 
 with a more deadly foe, with none of the anodyne 
 to death and danger given by the companionship 
 of hundreds of fellow- soldiers in a fight with a 
 foe you can see, but with a foe you can see only 
 incarnate in the dreams of your delirium, which 
 runs as a poison in burning veins and aching 
 brain the dread West Coast fever." l 
 
 1 Travels in West Africa, p. 691.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 
 
 THE first missionaries of the Church to India 
 sailed from Philadelphia on the " Star," on the 3oth 
 of May, 1833. The party consisted of the Rev. 
 John C. Lowrie and the Rev. William Reed and 
 their wives. " Never, it is believed," says the 
 Second Annual Report of the Western Foreign 
 Missionary Society, which sent them, "was the 
 mind of the Christian public in that city more 
 deeply interested in the foreign missionary enter- 
 prise." And Dr. Irengeus Prime has told of the 
 crowd of students at Princeton Theological Sem- 
 inary, whose shouts aroused him as he lay sick, 
 and whose meaning was explained to him, when 
 he arose to inquire, by the words, " Lowrie is off 
 for India.' 1 '' Lowrie and Reed were the first 
 missionaries who offered their services to go 
 abroad, and they were received under the care of 
 the Society, January 16, 1832, and the Presby- 
 teries to which they belonged, New Castle and 
 Huntingdon, undertook their support. Leaving 
 Philadelphia on May 30 th, of the following year, 
 they reached Calcutta on October i5th. Mrs. 
 Lowrie had been ill on embarking, and failed 
 rapidly on the voyage. She died and was buried 
 in Calcutta on November 2ist, "there to pro- 
 claim as she sleeps on India's distant shores," as 
 the Report of the Society undauntedly declares, 
 "the compassion of American Christians for its 
 millions of degraded idolaters; and to invite 
 others from her native land to come and prose- 
 
 43
 
 44 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 cute the noble undertaking in which she fell." 
 Shortly after, Mr. Reed's health began to fail, 
 and on July 23d, 1834, he and Mrs. Reed sailed 
 for America. He died at sea, however, and was 
 buried in the Bay of Bengal, near the Andaman 
 Islands. The solitary survivor of this little band 
 was not dismayed, and as soon as he could wisely 
 proceed he passed on alone into the far north- 
 west, where no missionary had ever gone, to lay 
 there the foundations of the great missions of his 
 Church. 
 
 Of course there had been Protestant mission- 
 aries in India for many years. The first ones 
 were two Pietist students from Halle, Zeigenbalg 
 and Pliitschau, sent to Tranquebar in 1706, by 
 Frederick IV. of Denmark. One of their great- 
 est successors was Schwartz, a man trusted and 
 beloved by all, foreigners and natives alike. 
 The first American missionaries were the fruit of 
 the work of the little band that under the shelter 
 of the haystack at Williamstown resolved in 
 prayer "to effect in their own persons a mission 
 to the heathen." Judson, Gordon, Hall, and 
 Nott, began the work in 1812, the former in 
 Burmah, arid Hall and Nott in Bombay. To the 
 northwest of Benares, however, in the regions to 
 and beyond which Mr. Lowrie desired to go, 
 there were only five missionaries, at Chunar, 
 Allahabad, Delhi, Meerut, and Agra. Carey, 
 Marshman, and Duff, were among the mission- 
 aries Mr. Lowrie met in Calcutta, and they sym- 
 pathized with his desire to press on into the un- 
 touched fields. The home Church, as in the 
 case of the Africa Mission, was not content with 
 small plans. Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Thibet, 
 were fields which it expected to enter, and even 
 Eastern Persia. There was a great optimism 
 about the beginnings of our missionary enter-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 45 
 
 prise : some of it not justified by subsequent ex- 
 perience, for example, the opinion that Islam 
 was peculiarly tolerant in the lands beyond India, 
 and that India was on " the eve of a great revo- 
 lution in its religious prospects." Two mission- 
 aries sailing in 1837 were actually designated for 
 Kashmir and Afghanistan. Yet it was not a 
 careless or small-hearted optimism. There was a 
 Christian large-mindedness about all their de- 
 signs. With the party of new missionaries which 
 went in 1834, the Hon. Walter Lowrie, whose 
 son had established the Mission, sent a valuable 
 set of philosophical apparatus for the use of a 
 high school, with the hope that " by the blessing 
 of Heaven it might prove the means of under- 
 mining the false systems of philosophy adopted by 
 the heathen, and consequently their false systems 
 of religion, with which their philosophy is inti- 
 mately if not inseparably connected." 
 
 With large-minded ambition, fashioned after 
 that of the great apostle who ma.de it his aim to 
 preach the gospel not where Christ had already 
 been named, but where no tidings of him had 
 come, the lonely missionary started from Calcutta, 
 for the far northwest. " There were few facilities 
 in those days for communication between one 
 part of the country and another. The Grand 
 Trunk Road, which began at Calcutta, and in af- 
 ter years extended all the way to Peshawur, 
 reached, at the time now referred to, only as far 
 as Barrackpore, a few miles from Calcutta. In 
 the absence of regular roads, such as wheeled car- 
 riages require for easy locomotion, the first mis- 
 sionaries had to make their way up the country in 
 palankeens, or by the more tedious process of 
 sailing up the Ganges in native boats, which, ex- 
 cept when there was a favorable wind, had to be 
 drawn by tow-ropes ; and woe to the vessel, when,
 
 46 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 through the force of a strong current, the rope hap- 
 pened to break ! The time required for such voy- 
 ages had sometimes to be counted by months. In 
 the rainy season the Ganges is navigable by na- 
 tive boats as far up as Garhmuktisar Ghat, some 
 thirty miles from Meerut. But this is often accom- 
 plished with difficulty. As an illustration of this 
 it may he mentioned, that the second party of our 
 missionaries, having arrived in India in the begin- 
 ning of 1835, sailed from Calcutta on the 23d of 
 June, reached Cawnpore about three months 
 later, were obliged then, on account of the usual 
 fall in the river at the end of the rains, to change 
 their boat for a smaller one, and finally to stop 
 at Fatehgarh. From this place the journey was 
 accomplished in a palankeen carriage drawn by 
 oxen. In some .places the road was fairly good, 
 but in others certainly bad enough, and inter- 
 sected every now and then by unbridged streams. 
 Lodiana, the place of destination, was reached on 
 the 8th of December; so that the whole journey 
 from Calcutta was accomplished in just five 
 months and a half ! " 1 Lodiana was the city Mr. 
 Lowrie selected as the first station. It was one "of 
 the two cities in this district under the East India 
 Company, whose officers here were very friendly, 
 and it was near the center of the Sikh people, a 
 people of fine physique, who were a sort of re- 
 formed Brahmanists, having discarded the old 
 idolatry and in some measure broken the bands of 
 caste, and who, it was hoped, would be open to 
 missionary influence. 2 Mr. Ix>\vrie arrived in No- 
 vember, 1834. The first reinforcement consisting 
 of the Rev. John Newton and the Rev. James 
 Wilson and their wives, arrived in December, 
 1835. Six weeks after their arrival, Mr. Lowrie, 
 
 1 Newton, Historical Sketch of the Lodiana Mission,^. I f. 
 * Ibid, p. 9.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 47 
 
 whose health had been failing, was obliged to 
 leave, never to return. 
 
 It was thus the Presbyterian Missions in India 
 were begun. The India of that day was very dif- 
 ferent from the India of this. The British Gov- 
 ernment had not formally taken over the country. 
 The East India Company still controlled it, though 
 much of the land now under British rule was in- 
 dependent. In the northwest, Oudh and Rohil- 
 cund were under independent native rule. -Run- 
 jeet Singh ruled the Punjab north of the Sutlej, 
 while Sindh was subject to Mohammedan Nawabs. 
 The Mogul Emperor was still treated deferentially 
 as a king, though stripped of power outside of his 
 own palace at Delhi ; but the old days of native 
 power were almost over. 
 
 There have been seven great divisions of Indian 
 history since the aboriginal times, (i) The Vedic 
 Period, from perhaps 1000 B. c. to 543 B. c. 
 The Vedas and the two great Epics, the Maha- 
 barata and the Ramayana tell of the life of this 
 period, during which the Aryans came down into 
 India from their home in Central Asia. (2) The 
 Buddhist Period, 543 B. c. to 900 A. D., when the 
 teaching of Gautama became the state religion 
 under Asoka, King of Magadha. (3) The Period 
 of the Greek, Bactrian, and Scythian Invasions, 
 328 B. c. to 500 A. D. (4) The Brahmanic and 
 Modern Hindu Period, 500-1000 A. D., during 
 which Brahmanism triumphed over Buddhism by 
 absorbing it. Sankara Acharja was the great 
 teacher whose influence "molded Brahman phi- 
 losophy into its final form and popularized it into 
 a national religion." (5) The Mohammedan 
 Period, 1001-1761 A. D., which ended in the 
 glorious reign of the Great Moguls. (6) The 
 Maratha Period, 1650-1818 A. D. The Maratha 
 dynasties were native, and constituted the corrupt
 
 48 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 power against which chiefly the European powers 
 advanced. (7) The Period of European Influence 
 and Supremacy, 1500-1900. The greatest power 
 at work during this period was the East India 
 Company, which was a trading company chartered 
 by Queen Elizabeth on the last day of 1600. In 
 1689 it began its policy of territorial conquest, 
 and it lasted until after the Sepoy Rebellion, when 
 in 1858, it was abolished, and its vast possessions 
 passed under the British Crown. 
 
 Although India is now a common political or- 
 ganization, so far as its actual government by 
 Great Britain is concerned, it is not a real unity. 
 There is no common Indian people. "The word 
 Hindu," as Dr. John Newton says, " never means 
 a native of India, irrespective of religion or 
 caste. . . . The word Hindoo is never comprehen- 
 sive enough to include Mohammedans and Chris- 
 tians. It is therefore a solecism to speak of a 
 Hindu Christian." The India Census Report 
 calls the people a " heterogeneous mass." Neither 
 is there one Indian language. The last Census 
 reports not less than one hundred languages. 
 Eleven of these were spoken by five million peo- 
 ple or more, Hindi by eighty-five million, in 
 round numbers, Bengali by forty-one million, 
 Telugu by twenty million, Marathi by nineteen 
 million, Punjabi by eighteen million, Tamil by 
 fifteen million. In addition to these there 
 is the Urdu or Hindustani, a kind of lingua 
 franca. It arose with the Moslem conquest, and 
 is spoken throughout the country by the Moham- 
 medans and many Hindus. It is estimated that 
 100,000,000 people in India understand Hindu- 
 stani. 
 
 Still less is a common religion known in India. 
 Of the population of 276,000,000, seventy-two 
 per cent were returned by the census as attached
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 49 
 
 to the Brahmanic system. The Mohammedans 
 numbered fifty-seven millions. These are the two 
 great religious bodies. 
 
 The absorptive power of Hinduism has been its 
 strength. It has also made it a vast curse. It 
 has spread " throughout India, not as a reforma- 
 tion, but as a conservation. It has taken ad- 
 vantage of all existing superstitions, however 
 gross, immoral, and criminal, and supplying all 
 with a philosophical basis has crystallized each 
 into a hardness and given to the whole a solidarity 
 which makes it now doubly difficult to attack any 
 one of them. It has recognized and vindicated 
 the distinctions of class and tribe, freezing all to- 
 gether instead of fusing all together ; making dif- 
 ferent classes of the same village live together 
 with fewer common sympathies and interests than 
 the French and Germans, making patriotism as 
 we understand it an unknown thing, nationality 
 an impossibility for the Hindus till Hinduism be 
 swept from India. The only thing to be said for 
 it is that it has conserved some good as well as 
 evil. The law of caste is more binding than the 
 law of conscience, and where the original custom 
 of a caste has been good it has been preserved. 
 Many who would not refuse to commit an evil be- 
 cause it is forbidden by God, would refuse be- 
 cause it was forbidden by their caste. Thus the 
 restraints of caste have checked the spread of 
 many vices through some classes of society, and 
 have enabled them to look on a vice indulged in by 
 others and excuse them for it as being tolerated 
 by their caste, without feeling tempted to indulge 
 in it for themselves. This has given certain 
 stamina to the Hindus which we do not find in 
 other idolaters. But the same thing that thus 
 checks change for evil forbids change for good. 
 Change is the one point on which Hinduism is in-
 
 50 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 tolerant. Let anyone ask a Hindu who has been 
 dilating on the intolerance of Christianity and the 
 tolerance of Hinduism, to tolerate one of his 
 caste-fellows' practically carrying out his change 
 of belief by change of conduct acknowledging 
 the one true God by giving up the worship of his 
 caste gods, acknowledging the brotherhood of 
 man by mingling and eating with those of other 
 castes, and he will find that he has roused an in- 
 tolerance as fierce and unbending as that of the 
 Spanish Inquisition." 1 
 
 The idea of transmigration Hinduism took up 
 from Buddhism, and has bound it as a millstone 
 of bondage and despair about the necks of the 
 people. A book called the Karmavipaka illustrates 
 this. " He who destroys a sacrifice," it declares, 
 " will be punished in hell, will be born again as a 
 fish, in which state he will continue for three 
 years, or, reassuming the human form, he will be 
 afflicted with disease. He who kills an enemy 
 conquered in war will be cast into the hell 
 Krakacha ; he will then successively appear on 
 earth as a bull, a deer, a tiger, a bitch, a fish, a 
 man ; in his human form he will die of palsy. 
 He who eats excellent food without giving any to 
 others will be punished in hell for 30,000 years, 
 and then be born as a muskrat, a deer, and then 
 as a man whose body emits an offensive smell, 
 and who prefers bad to good food," etc. 2 
 
 Hinduism as theoretically presented in America 
 is one thing. As actually seen in India it is an- 
 other thing. " When I went to the great cities of 
 India," says Moncure Conway, " the contrast be- 
 tween the real and the ideal was heartbreaking. 
 In all those teeming myriads of worshipers, not 
 
 1 Robson, Hinduism and its Relations to Christianity, 
 pp. 217-219. 
 
 5 Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, p. 486 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 51 
 
 one man, not even one woman, seemed to enter- 
 tain the shadow of a conception of anything ideal, 
 or spiritual, or religious, or even mythological, in 
 their ancient creed. . . . To all of them the 
 great false god which they worshiped a hulk of 
 roughly carved wood or stone appeared to be 
 the authentic presentment of some terrible demon 
 or invisible power, who would treat them cruelly 
 if they did not give him some melted butter. Of 
 religion in a spiritual sense there is none. If you 
 wish for religion you will not find it in Brahman- 
 ism." l 
 
 Mohammedanism was of course an importation 
 into India, and it came in supported by all the 
 force of triumphant and irresistible arms, and not 
 preached by true missionaries. " These military 
 adventurers," says Sir Alfred C. Lyall, "who 
 founded dynasties in North India and carved out for- 
 tunes in the Deccan, cared little for things spiritual ; 
 most of them had, indeed, no time for proselytiz- 
 ing, being continually engaged in conquest and 
 civil war." 2 There came in due time, however, 
 real missionaries, and to-day Mohammedanism is 
 spread, as it has always been, by the indefatigable 
 work of its adherents, not professional preachers 
 only. " In a list of Indian missionaries published 
 in the journal of a religious and philanthropic so- 
 ciety of Lahore, we find the names of schoolmas- 
 ters, government clerks in the Canal and Opium 
 Departments, traders including a dealer in camel 
 carts, an editor of a newspaper, a bookbinder, and 
 a workman in a printing establishment. These 
 men devote the hours of leisure left them after the 
 completion of the days' labor, to the preaching of 
 their religion in the streets and bazaars of Indian 
 
 1 Mitchell, Hinduism, Past and Present, p. 22O. 
 
 2 Asiatic Studies, p. 284, London, '82 ; Haines, Islam as 
 a Missionary Religion, p. 89.
 
 52 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 cities, seeking to win converts from among Chris- 
 tians and Hindus, whose religious belief they 
 controvert and attack." The essence of Moham- 
 medanism is in the Kalama, " There is one God 
 and Mohammed is his Prophet." The five ele- 
 ments of the faith are, the Kalama, prayer, alms, 
 pilgrimage, and fasting. And there .is undeniably 
 something bracing in its resolute uncompromising 
 spirit. As to its influence on its adherents as 
 compared with Hinduism, opinions differ. " If 
 proud and haughty," says Rees, "the Indian 
 Moslems are none the less temperate, brave, and 
 charitable, generally speaking, admirable in the 
 domestic relations of life, and for the most part 
 husbands of one wife, and innocent of the vices 
 characteristic of a corrupt civilization." * Others 
 hold that the moral state of the Mohammedans is 
 worse than that of the Hindus, that Islam is a 
 sort of sink, with a free brotherhood for all who 
 may have lost their position elsewhere, and that in 
 some parts of India, when women want to take up 
 evil lives, they place themselves under the shelter 
 of Mohammedan law. 
 
 Life is far enough from ideal under either Mo- 
 hammedanism or Hinduism. As to the influence 
 of the former upon the position of woman, Sir 
 Wm. Muir has said that it leaves her "an in- 
 ferior, dependent creature destined only for the 
 service of her master." She "possessed more 
 freedom and exercised a healthier and more legit- 
 imate influence under the pagan institutions of 
 Arabia before the time of Mohammed than under 
 the influence of Islam." And as for Hinduism, 
 making all qualifications for any exaggeration due 
 to excessive earnestness, no testimony can be 
 clearer or more authoritative than the words of 
 
 1 Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, p. 333. 
 
 2 The Alohammedans, p. 176.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 53 
 
 Keshub Chunder Sen, addressed to his country- 
 men : "Look at yourselves, enchained to cus- 
 toms, deprived of freedom, lorded over by an 
 ignorant and crafty priesthood, your better sense 
 and better feelings all smothered under the crush- 
 ing weight of custom. Look at your homes, 
 scenes of indescribable misery ; your wives and 
 sisters, your mothers and daughters, immured 
 within the dungeon of the zenana ; ignorant of 
 the outside world, little better than slaves, whose 
 charter of liberty of thought and action has been 
 ignored. Look at your social constitution and 
 customs, the mass of enervating, demoralizing and 
 degrading curses they are working. There can 
 be no doubt that the root of all evils which afflict 
 Hindu society, that which constitutes the chief 
 cause of its degradation, is idolatry. Idolatry 
 is the curse of Hinduism, the deadly canker that 
 has eaten into the vitals of native society." Or 
 the declaration of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, C. 
 I. E. : " An adequate idea of the intolerable hard- 
 ships of early widowhood can be formed by those 
 only whose daughters, sisters, daughters-in-law, 
 and other female relations, have been deprived of 
 their husbands during infancy. When men are 
 void of pity and compassion, of a perception 
 of right and wrong, of good and evil, and 
 consider the observance of mere forms as the 
 highest of duties and the greatest of virtues, in 
 such a country would that women were never 
 born ! Woman ! in India thy lot is cast in 
 misery." It is well to add the testimony of Raj 
 Ram Mohun Roy, founder of the Brahmo Somaj, 
 in answer to the contention that the Hindus do 
 not really worship their idols, but only the one 
 omnipresent Deity symbolized in the idol. " I 
 have observed," he said, " that both in their writ- 
 ings and in their conversation, many Europeans
 
 54 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 feel a wish to palliate and soften the features of 
 Hindu idolatry, and are inclined to indicate that 
 all objects of worship are considered by their vo- 
 taries as emblematical representations of the su- 
 preme Deity. If this were indeed the case, I 
 might perhaps be led into some examination of 
 the subject; but the truth is, the Hindus of the 
 present day have no such views of the subject, 
 but firmly believe in the real existence of the in- 
 numerable gods and goddesses, who possess, in 
 their own departments, full and independent 
 power ; and to propitiate them, and not the true 
 God, are temples erected and ceremonies per- 
 formed." 
 
 Though superstitious and bigoted, the people 
 of India are a kindly people, "respectful toward 
 their superiors, patient and even-tempered, re- 
 signed, peaceable, simple and temperate in their 
 habits, possessed of great fortitude under disaster, 
 and industrious. On the other hand, they lack 
 truthfulness, are wanting in frankness and are 
 avaricious, ultra -conservative, lacking in fore- 
 sight, and superstitious. Some of these charac- 
 teristics are not strictly moral in our view, but 
 they are to the Hindu, of whom it is said, ' They 
 eat religiously, drink religiously, bathe religiously, 
 dress religiously, and sin religiously.' ' About 
 sixty per cent of the people are farmers. Ninety 
 per cent of the population is a rural population. 
 According to the last census less than five per 
 cent of the people lived in two hundred and 
 twenty-seven towns of more than 20,000 popula- 
 tion. In Great Britain fifty-three per cent live 
 in one hundred and eighty-two cities of more than 
 20,000 population. There were at the same 
 census 715,514 villages in India. The dense pop- 
 ulation, the too frequent droughts, the primitive 
 superficial methods of agriculture, the want of
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 55 
 
 fertilizer through the consumption of manure as 
 fuel, all affect the harvests and leave the people 
 with a margin of supply so narrow that the failure 
 of one crop means famine to many in a land 
 where, according to Sir Wm. Hunter, 40,000,000 
 live on one meal a day, and unnumbered multi- 
 tudes lie down to sleep hungry every night. 
 
 Two religious bodies smaller than the Hindus 
 and Mohammedans should be mentioned : the 
 Jains who conform to the letter of the edicts of 
 King Asoka, " Meritorious is obedience toward 
 father and mother, toward friends and acquaint- 
 ances, meritorious is liberality, meritorious is ab- 
 stention from reviling the heterodox, and merito- 
 rious the abstention from killing live creatures," 
 and, as usual with literalists and formalists, exalt- 
 ing some detail into the chief place, they wear res- 
 pirators lest in breathing they suck down some 
 insect, and carefully brush the ground where 
 they sit down, lest some be killed ; and the Sikhs, 
 whose creed is pure deism, blended with both 
 Moslem and Hindu beliefs. Nanak Shah was 
 their leader, and his hope was to reconcile Hin- 
 duism and Islam. It was a Sikh fanatic who 
 murdered the Rev. Levi Janvier, D. D., in 1864, 
 at Lodiana, just after he had celebrated, with 
 some of his associates, the Lord's Supper. Dr. 
 Janvier was a fine linguist, and had, with his 
 cousin, Dr. Newton, prepared a dictionary of the 
 Punjabi language which was published in 1854. 
 
 Among these Sikhs at Lodiana, but also among 
 Hindus and Mohammedans, the work was solidly 
 established in 1835, by the coming of Mr. New- 
 ton and Mr. Wilson. The following year a larger 
 reinforcement was sent, including three laymen 
 sent out with the hope that "these brethren by 
 spending a few of the first years of their mission- 
 ary labors as teachers in the higher departments
 
 56 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 of education in India, might promote the great 
 object of its evangelization as effectually as any 
 other." Two printing presses and fonts of type 
 were sent, also, and a practical printer was sent out 
 in 1838, who, in six years, trained native men who 
 carried on the press work after he had withdrawn. 
 In 1836, a station was opened at Saharanpur, 
 one hundred and eleven miles southeast of Lodi- 
 ana, on the invitation of the British Collector and 
 Magistrate, who arranged for the purchase of a 
 large house for Rs. 400. The large purposes of 
 the Church in the work are illustrated by the Re- 
 port of the Society for 1835, describing the 
 reasons for occupying this field : "Saharanpur, 
 distant 1 30 miles southeast from Lodiana, 100 miles 
 north of Delhi, is situated within twenty miles of 
 Hurdwar, that great rendezvous of pilgrims from 
 all the surrounding nations. The annual fair at 
 Hurdwar is attended by hundreds of thousands of 
 all classes ; and hitherto, with the exception of a 
 few transient visits of a single missionary from 
 Delhi, Satan has had the undisputed possession of 
 this great field to himself. No place affords more 
 advantages for the dissemination of the sacred 
 Scriptures and religious publications than the fair 
 at Hurdwar. From this point they will be carried 
 into the surrounding countries, and to all parts of 
 Northern India, and even to the tribes beyond 
 Kashmir, inhabitating the high table-lands of 
 Central Asia." 1 
 
 The next station was Sabathu, no miles east 
 of Lodiana, and 4,000 feet above the sea, 
 where the temperature seldom rises above 90 
 Fah. and rarely falls low enough for snow. It 
 was deemed desirable to have one such station so 
 healthfully located, even though the surrounding 
 population was not as dense as on the plains, and 
 1 Green, Presbyterian Missions, Lowrie's notes, p. 160.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 57 
 
 hopes were entertained, subsequently disappointed, 
 that the Hill tribes would prove simple-minded 
 and teachable, and yield readily to the gospel. 
 
 1111836 work was begun in Allahabad, in 1838 
 in Fatehgarh, and in 1843 in Mainpurie and Fur- 
 rukhabad ; but these will be spoken of more con- 
 veniently in connection with the Furrukhabad 
 Mission, which embraces the stations in the North- 
 west Provinces, save Dehra and Saharanpur, 
 which, with all the stations in the Punjab, com- 
 pose the Lodiana Mission. The next station oc- 
 cupied was Jullunder, in 1847. The work was be- 
 gun by Mr. Goloknath, the first convert and min- 
 ister of our Church in India. He was a Brahman, 
 and son of a tea merchant in Calcutta. He had 
 been a pupil in the school of Dr. Duff, who had 
 come to India in 1830, and he had become so inter- 
 ested in Christianity that he could not stay at 
 home happily, and wandered off to the North- 
 west. He was then nineteen, and he appeared in 
 Lodiana at the door of the Mission house, well 
 dressed, very respectable in appearance, and with 
 a small English Bible in his hand. He and his 
 wife are still living, after more than sixty years of 
 noble service. Jullunder was the first station oc- 
 cupied beyond the river Sutlej in the Punjab 
 proper, which the missionaries had from the be- 
 ginning desired to enter. The Punjab includes 
 now the whole northwestern corner of India be- 
 yond the Northwest Provinces up to Afghanistan. 
 The Northwest Provinces received their name be- 
 fore British rule was extended beyond the Sutlej. 
 The Punjab is a great plain intersected by five 
 large rivers, the Sutlej, the Beeas, the Ravee, the 
 Chenab, and the Jhelum, these rivers giving its 
 name to the country, The Punjab, that is The 
 Five Waters. The population of the Punjab is 
 now about twenty-one millions. It is made up of
 
 58 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Mohammedans and Hindus about equally, in- 
 cluding, among the latter, the Sikhs, someof whom, 
 however, scorn to be called Hindus, and the Out- 
 castes, who have scarcely any religion, and are 
 called "some of them Ramdassies (followers of 
 Ramdass) and some Muzkubies (people having a 
 religion), according to the grade of outcastes to 
 which they originally belonged." " The Hindus, 
 on account perhaps of their long intercourse with 
 Mohammedans (most of whose ancestors were 
 themselves Hindus) and on account of their sub- 
 jection, successively, for many centuries, to Mo- 
 hammedan and Sikh rule, are less bigoted than 
 their brethren in some other parts of India, and 
 they have not so strong a caste feeling." * 
 
 The Punjab had been divided among a num- 
 ber of independent princes, but Runjeet Singh, 
 "The Lion of the Punjab," at the time the 
 Mission was founded, ruled the whole from 
 Lahore. Mr. Lowrie had not been long in Lo- 
 diana when Runjeet Singh invited him to visit 
 him. Mr. Lowrie accepted the invitation and 
 was the Maharajah's guest for several weeks, 
 treated with every courtesy. The Maharajah's 
 object was to have a school established in Lahore 
 for the English education of the sons of the 
 nobles. Mr. Lowrie insisted, however, that he 
 could not undertake it without including the 
 teaching of Christianity, and the plan failed, * 
 though the Maharajah sent the missionary away 
 in splendor, and was greatly astonished when he 
 learned that the splendid present he gave, consist- 
 
 1 Newton, Historical Sketch of the Lodiana Mission, p. 6. 
 
 2 It is interesting to know that Duleep Singh, the son 
 of Runjeet Singh, became a Christian, and was a generous 
 contributor through the Mission to the poor in Lahore, 
 and gave a large sum toward the erection of the church 
 at Rakha.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 59 
 
 ing of a horse, pieces of silk and cotton goods, 
 jewelry and money, in all more than $1,100, 
 would all be transferred to the Mission treasury, 
 and not kept for Mr. Lowrie's personal use. 
 
 This negotiation having failed, the missionaries 
 were obliged to wait, no European being allowed in 
 those days to cross the Sutlej without permission 
 from the Lahore Durbar (court of the chief). In 
 1839, however, the Maharajah died, and the 
 country fell into a state of anarchy. When at- 
 tacks were made on British territory south of the 
 Sutlej, the wars were begun which ended in the 
 annexation of the Punjab. The government of 
 the new province was in the hands of a Board of 
 Administration, of which the two most prominent 
 men were Henry and John Lawrence, the latter 
 afterwards Viceroy, and both splendid Christian 
 men. Lahore was taken possession of in 1849, 
 and before the end of the year, at the urgent re- 
 quest of some of the British officials, the Rev. 
 John Newton and his wife and the Rev. C. W. 
 Forman arrived to establish work in the new field. 
 These two men have left an indelible impress on 
 the Punjab. Dr. Newton spent fifty-six years in In- 
 dia, and Dr. Forman forty-six, and each of them 
 spent more than a generation and a half in Lahore. 
 Dr. Newton was a powerful preacher, both in Eng- 
 lish and in the vernacular, and he had a patience 
 and tact which melted opposition and indifference, 
 and won for him and his Master the admiration 
 and love of thousands. Both he and Dr. Forman 
 were men of exceptionally powerful and spiritual 
 personality. A missionary of the Church of Eng- 
 land, recalling the effect produced upon his mind 
 by Dr. Newton's reading a part of the first chap- 
 ter of Acts at the Lahore Conference in 1865, 
 said, "The impression made by his merely read- 
 ing a few verses has not been effaced by almost
 
 6o 
 
 thirty years." He was a man of deep piety, 
 blameless and most winning character, and rare 
 catholicity. He invited the Church of England 
 Mission to the Punjab in 1850, and it was largely 
 due to his influence that such warm fraternal re- 
 lations were maintained for forty years between 
 the American missionaries and those of the Church 
 of England ; and one of the latter said of him that 
 he was " one of the holiest and best-beloved men 
 the Punjab has ever seen." All of his children, 
 four sons and two daughters, came back to labor 
 with him in India. He said once that it was his 
 mother's prayers that took him to India. Little 
 did that one woman know of the immense work 
 she was doing for the Punjab. 
 
 Of the other stations of the Lodiana Mission 
 Ambala was occupied in 1849. It is a walled 
 city, doubled by the cantonments, or quarter 
 which has grown up round the soldiers, and 
 about seventy miles southwest of Lodiana. In 
 1853 work was begun at Dehra, like Saharanpur 
 in the Northwest Provinces, and situated in a beau- 
 tiful valley or doon, between the Himalayas and 
 the Sewaliks. It is the seat of a famous Sikh 
 shrine, the mausoleum of one of their gooroos or 
 religious guides, visited by many pilgrims. 
 Roorkee and Rawal Pindee were occupied in 
 1856, the former eighteen miles south of Saharan- 
 pur, and the latter one hundred and seventy miles 
 northwest of Lahore, and on the main road to 
 Kashmir. The Mission pressed on even farther, 
 and stationed at Peshawur, on the border of the 
 Afghan country, the Rev. Isidor Lowenthal, a 
 Polish Jew born in Posen, who had had a most 
 romantic history and had been obliged to flee 
 from Poland because of his liberal political views. 
 He was converted by the example and conduct 
 of a minister in Wilmington, Del., who took him
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 6 1 
 
 in on a cold, wet night, and secured for him a 
 position as tutor at Lafayette College. He was a 
 man of iron will and unresting intellectual power, 
 and although he was shot by mistake by his own 
 watchman at Peshawur, when he was but thirty- 
 eight, and had been only seven years in India, he 
 had already translated and published the whole 
 New Testament in Pushto, and had nearly com- 
 pleted a dictionary of that language, and could 
 preach with facility in Pushto, Persian, Kashmiri, 
 Hindustani, and Arabic, besides being an accom- 
 plished musician and mathematician. If he had 
 lived he might have carried the gospel to Kabul 
 and on to Persia. The money for this attempt 
 to reach the Afghans (rupees 15,000) had been 
 given by Major Conran, an earnest Christian offi- 
 cer. With Mr. Lowenthal's death the attempt 
 was given up. The Church Missionary Society 
 of England, however, which then had a station at 
 Peshawur, continues the work, though it has been 
 unable as yet to get beyond the Peshawur valley. 
 Roorkee and Rawal Pindee have since been trans- 
 ferred to other missionary societies, the former to 
 the Reformed, and the latter to the United Pres- 
 byterian Church. 
 
 Hoshyarpore, the chief town between the 
 Sutlej and the Beeas, save Jullunder, was oc- 
 cupied in 1867. That station has for years 
 been under the charge of a converted high- 
 caste Brahman, the Rev. Kali Charron Chatter- 
 jee, a man of fine culture and devotion, whose 
 daughter has taken a medical course in the United 
 States. The Rev. Isa Charron, whose name 
 means " One who is at the feet of Jesus," was put 
 in charge of Ferozepore in 1870, but twelve years 
 later it was made a regular station under the Rev. 
 F. J. Newton, M. D. The population of the dis- 
 trict is about fifty per cent. Mohammedan, and
 
 62 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 twenty-five per cent, each of Sikhs and 
 Hindus. In 1899 the Rev. Robert Morrison oc- 
 cupied the city of Kasur, forty miles from Feroze- 
 pore, while resident missionaries had already 
 settled at Jagraon and Khanna, both parts of the 
 Lodiana station. An interesting attempt to 
 establish self-supporting agricultural settlements 
 was made by the Rev. M. M. Carleton and Mrs. 
 Carleton at Ani, Santokh Majara, in the hill dis- 
 trict, but Mr. Carleton died in 1898, and the 
 future of this enterprise is uncertain. Other sta- 
 tions have been occupied from time to time, but 
 are not now the residences of missionaries. There 
 are eleven regular stations, and connected with 
 them thirty-nine out-stations, with 241 native 
 workers. 
 
 In the field of what is now the Furrukhabad 
 Mission, the first station occupied was Allahabad 
 in 1836. The Rev. James McEwen of the party 
 who arrived in India that year was left there on 
 the way to Lodiana, to get for the press some 
 parts which had been lost by the upsetting of a 
 boat in a storm, ascending the Ganges. The op- 
 portunity for work was so bright that it was de- 
 cided that Mr. McEwen should return to settle 
 there. When the Rev. Joseph Warren came in 
 1839, a press was established in a bath room of 
 his bungalow, and he instructed a native boy, 
 who with a sister had been left destitute and 
 brought up by the Mission. This boy became 
 later one of the proprietors of the press, and an 
 elder in one of the Mission churches. One of the 
 most useful men of the Presbyterian Church, 
 Professor Archibald Alexander Hodge, of Prince- 
 ton Theological Seminary, was for two years, 
 and until his wife's health required his return to 
 America, a member of the Allahabad station. 
 John H. Morrison was at first a member of this
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 63 
 
 station, but after his wife's death and a fur- 
 lough in America, he joined the Lodiana Mission. 
 His missionary life covered forty-three years. On 
 account of his fearlessness in preaching, he was 
 called by Runjeet Singh's title "The Lion of the 
 Punjab." It was he who led the Lodiana Mis- 
 sion after the Mutiny, to issue the call to Chris- 
 tendom to the annual week of prayer. His last 
 words as he lay dying were, "It is perfect peace 
 I know whom I have believed." 
 
 In 1838 work was commenced at Fatehgarh, 
 where seventy orphans previously supported by 
 two devoted Christians among the British officials, 
 fifty of them at Fatehpur and twenty at Fateh- 
 garh, were gathered and taken charge of by the 
 Rev. Henry R. Wilson. These children were 
 the nucleus of the useful Christian community 
 now to be found at Fatehgarh. In 1843 work 
 was begun in Mainpurie, forty miles west of 
 Fatehgarh, and at Furrukhabad, the native city of 
 which Fatehgarh is the cantonment, in the same 
 year. Ten years later Fatehpur was opened. In 
 1844 the seat of government was transferred from 
 Allahabad to Agra. This led to the removal of 
 many English friends who urged the Mission to 
 open work in Agra. It led also to the govern- 
 ment's offer to the Mission of leave to use the 
 government school building in Allahabad, with 
 the furniture and library. A good school was 
 also built up at Agra, with the aid of generous 
 donations from British friends, but after some 
 years the seat of government was removed back 
 to Allahabad, and the work in Agra was trans- 
 ferred to other Societies. 
 
 In the year 1845 the first meeting of the Synod 
 of India was held at Fatehgarh, in the chapel of 
 the orphanage, and the senior missionary, James 
 Wilson, preached from the text i Timothy 4 : 14.
 
 64 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 There are now five presbyteries of our Church in 
 India, Lodiana, Lahore, Allahabad, Furrukha- 
 bad and Kolhapur. 
 
 In 1857 the foundations of the missionary 
 work and of British rule also in North India were 
 shaken by the Indian Mutiny, when the native 
 troops, roused by the belief that the cartridges 
 supplied to them were greased with animal fat, 
 which was repugnant to their religious scruples, 
 revolted and massacred their officers and all the 
 foreigners in their power. Fifteen hundred were 
 butchered, including thirty-seven missionaries. 
 All of our missionaries escaped save those at 
 Fatehpur, Freeman, Johnson, McMullen, Camp- 
 bell and their wives, and the two little children 
 of the Campbells, who were captured with British 
 refugees as they tried to escape down the Ganges 
 in boats, taken to Cawnpore, and at Nana Sahib's 
 order, at seven in the morning, were all taken to 
 the parade ground and shot, Mr. Campbell hold- 
 ing one little child in his arms, and an English 
 friend the other. How calmly they met their 
 fate, their last words show. Mrs. Freeman 
 wrote : 
 
 " We are in God's hands, and we know that 
 he reigns. We have no place to flee for shelter 
 but under the covert of his wings, and there we 
 are safe. Not but that he may suffer our bodies 
 to be slain. If he does, we know that he has 
 wise reasons for it. I sometimes think that our 
 deaths would do more good than we would do in 
 all our lives ; if so, his will be done. Should I 
 be called to lay down my life, most joyfully will I 
 die for Him who laid down his life for me." 
 
 Nana Sahib was Prince of Bithoor, an educated 
 gentleman, polished and refined, trained in a 
 government college, and he shot down the Euro- 
 pean women and little children like dogs. His
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 65 
 
 external culture had left him at heart the same 
 cruel and dastardly man he was before. Many 
 of the mission stations had been wrecked by the 
 mutineers, and had to be built up again, but soon 
 the work had recovered all that had been lost, and 
 grew out into new fields, Etawah, thirty-two 
 miles southwest of Mainpurie in 1863, Morar, in 
 the native state of Gwalior, in 1876, Jhansi, two 
 hundred and fifty miles west of Allahabad, in 1886. 
 One other Mission in India was undertaken 
 by the Church in 1870. It is located many 
 miles to the south of the northern missions, in 
 the Bombay Presidency, in the Kolhapur native 
 state, with a population of 800,000, with a popu- 
 lation of 1,700,000 in adjoining districts, and 
 about 1,500,000 in the Konkan, the region be- 
 tween the Ghats, or hills, which lie along the 
 western coast, and the sea. Of Kolhapur city it 
 is said: "As seen from a distance the city is 
 beautiful for situation. The most commanding 
 object, next to the king's palace, is the towering 
 white dome of a very large temple. Few cities 
 or places in India have so high a reputation for 
 sanctity. The favorite legend among the people 
 is that the gods in council once pronounced it the 
 most sacred spot of all the earth." ' The work 
 in Kolhapur was begun by the Rev. R. G. 
 Wilder in 1852. His wife still labors with his 
 daughter, in the field to which Mr. Wilder gave 
 his life. When the Board undertook the Mission 
 in 1870, there were twenty-one communicants. 
 The number has grown but slowly, though the 
 work has enlarged, and now embraces stations at 
 Ratnigiri, in the Konkan, Panhala, fourteen miles 
 north of Kolhapur, Sangli, with a Boys' Boarding 
 and Industrial School, and Miraj, occupied in 
 1892, and the site of a large and efficient hospital 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 101.
 
 66 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 to which patients come from towns and villages 
 hundreds of miles away. 
 
 In these three missions there are now nearly one 
 hundred and fifty missionaries, including nearly a 
 score of medical missionaries. Every missionary 
 method for bringing the gospel to bear on the lives 
 and wills of the people is used. The gospel is 
 preached to the people in bazaars, on the street, in 
 chapels, from house to house, to men and women 
 one by one, in cities and in villages. But how 
 slow must the work be ! " The number of villages 
 and towns is so great," said old Dr. Newton, 
 "that even though the time given to each were 
 but a day or two, many years must elapse before 
 the present force of missionaries could reach them 
 all ; and as a matter of fact, there are hundreds 
 of villages within the limits of our Mission, that 
 have never yet seen the face of a missionary." 
 Multitudes are reached at melas or fairs, where 
 thousands of people gather, generally with a reli- 
 gious aim, such as to wash away their sins by 
 bathing in the Ganges. Schools have been car- 
 ried on from the beginning. There are boys' 
 high schools now at Lodiana, Ambala, Jullun- 
 der, Allahabad, Furrukhabad, Mainpurie, and 
 other boarding schools for boys at Saharanpur 
 and Sangli, while there are day schools for boys 
 and girls at all stations. Girls' boarding schools 
 are conducted at Allahabad, Kolhapur, and Dehra. 
 Two interesting schools are located at Lahore, the 
 Rang Mahal School and the Forman Christian 
 College. Dr. Forman was the founder of these 
 schools, though the latter was called by his name 
 only after his death in 1894. The former is a 
 great boys' school of 863 pupils, held in what 
 was once a palace. By these schools Dr. Forman 
 profoundly influenced the whole Punjab. He was 
 a simple man, but indefatigable and resolute, of
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 67 
 
 broad views and sympathies, and filled with love 
 for the people. His funeral was a great demon- 
 stration of his hold upon the city, and when a 
 rumor of his death went abroad, a notoriously 
 antichristian paper in Lahore, in an editorial of 
 commendation of his life and work, declared : 
 "No foreigner has ever entered the Punjab who 
 had done so much for the Punjab as Padre For- 
 man Sahib." That was saying a great deal in a 
 province that had been ruled by John Lawrence. 
 The Woodstock school for children of mission- 
 aries and Eurasians and European children, was 
 established at Landour, in the Himalayas, in 1874. 
 At Saharanpur is a theological seminary, and an 
 efficient industrial school, where hats, shoes, etc., 
 are made ; and there are orphanages at Hoshyar- 
 pore and Fatehgarh ; while elsewhere, as the re- 
 sult of the awful famines which ravaged the 
 Northwest Provinces in 1897, and the Bombay 
 Presidency and Gujerat in 1899-1900, many'mis- 
 sionaries have been forced to take charge of 
 groups of children to save them from death. 
 From among the orphans trained in the past, 
 have come many of the most efficient native 
 Christians and workers; and their blessed in- 
 fluences have gone on to the second and third 
 generations. Another class of destitute people 
 from whom the missionaries have not been able 
 to withhold sympathy, has been the lepers. At 
 Sabathu, Ambala, and Saharanpur, there are in- 
 stitutions for them. The asylum at Sabathu was 
 established by the Rev. John Newton, Jr., M. D., 
 of whom a missionary associate said, " No love 
 in this dark world has ever seemed to me so much 
 like the Saviour's as that of Dr. Newton for his 
 lepers." And when he died, an Indian news- 
 paper said : " He preached the true gospel of 
 faith and works, which the ' poor Indian whose
 
 68 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 untrained mind' cannot always take things in, 
 found very intelligible. Like Chaucer's Parson, 
 
 1 Criste's love and his apostles twelve 
 He taught, and first he followed it himselve.' " 
 
 There are hospitals for men and women at Miraj 
 and for women only at Allahabad, Ambala, and 
 Ferozepore. The former is named the Saia 
 Seward Hospital, after the first medical mission- 
 ary there, a niece of Secretary of State, Wm. H. 
 Seward. Since the Mutiny, woman's work lias 
 grown many fold. In 1890, zenana teaching was 
 carried on in 32,000 homes in India, and theie 
 were 3,278 Bible women and 711 missionary 
 women engaged in the woman's work, our own 
 Mission having a foremost place in this work. 
 
 Many of the difficulties with which the mis- 
 sions^re contending have already been indicated. 
 One of the chief is caste. It has not been with- 
 out- its advantages, but the disadvantages have 
 been greater. As a native pundit, Shiva Nath 
 Sastri, has declared: "It has produced division 
 and discord ; it has made manual labor con- 
 temptible; it has checked internal and external 
 commerce; by confining marriage within narrow 
 circles, it has produced physical degeneracy; it 
 has fostered an injurious conservatism ; it has 
 checked the development of individuality and in- 
 dependence of character; it has encouraged 
 harmful customs such as early marriages, heavy 
 wedding fees, etc. ; it has prevented the growth 
 of national worth by confining to a limited num- 
 ber the benefits of culture ; by imposing on the 
 people the most abject spiritual slavery, it has 
 prepared the country for foreign slavery." It is 
 hard for Christians to break with their old social 
 relations and be cast out. The climate is trying. 
 
 1 Beach, The Cross in the Land of the Trident, p. 39 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 69 
 
 Some of the missionaries have spent unusually 
 long lives in India, but many more have been 
 obliged to return home through failing health. 
 The winter months are delightful, but in the hot 
 season the thermometer ranges from 110 to 120 
 in the shade, and from 150 to 170 in the sun, 
 without abatement, and with no cool rest at night. 
 Poverty, also, is a real difficulty. Multitudes of 
 the people are barely able to earn sustenance. 
 Bishop Thoburn thinks the average earnings of a 
 man and his family are five cents a day. How 
 difficult the self-support of the native Church is 
 on such a basis is apparent. Moreover, when a 
 man becomes a Christian it is difficult for him to 
 keep at his former occupation. His employers 
 will not retain him, and his customers abandon 
 him. Even if he can continue to work, the ob- 
 servance of the Sabbath at once cuts off one- 
 seventh of his income. But above all, and back 
 of all, superstition and sin or indifference and 
 selfishness are the great hindrances, the idols of 
 men's hands or appetites or hearts. 
 
 Yet in spite of obstacles the work of missions 
 in India has grown. According to the census of 
 1890, there were 182,722 Protestant communi- 
 cants in India, more than three times as many as 
 in 1871 ; and 559,661 adherents, as compared 
 with 224,161 in 1871. Among the converts in 
 our own missions, have been Hindus, Moham- 
 medans, Sikhs, Jews, Zoroastrians, Jains, Lai Ba- 
 gies. Among the Hindus have been converts from 
 all castes, Brahmans, Khattries, Bunyas, Jats, 
 Synds, Rajpoots, Fakirs, Chamars, Mehturs, etc. 
 There have been pundits, princes, schoolmasters, 
 munshis, soldiers, farmers, shopkeepers, etc. 
 Of course there are in many of these Christians 
 the frailties which must be expected ; but there are 
 also men and women of splendid Christian char-
 
 70 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 acter and usefulness, martyrs who escape from 
 their trials by death, and martyrs who endure in 
 life their trials with quiet hearts and brave loyalty 
 to Christ. 
 
 In many indirect ways the missionaries have 
 profoundly impressed India. They have set 
 higher standards of morality and social life, so 
 that public opinion is now often against what once 
 it approved. They have stimulated reform move- 
 ments in the native religions, the Somajes, or 
 "halfway houses" between Hinduism and Chris- 
 tianity, containing many men who reject the grosser 
 elements of Hinduism and occupy a theistic 
 position, or even approximate the views of the 
 Unitarians in Christendom. They have inspired 
 the work of reformers in Islam, like Sayid Ahmed 
 Khan, or Sayid Amir Ali, the former of whom 
 tried to prove that the Reformation was due to 
 the influence of Islam, while the latter condemns 
 polygamy and slavery. These various movements 
 resort to the use of the very methods of Chris- 
 tian missions in their attempts to stay their prog- 
 ress and hinder their work. Allowance must be 
 made for excess in their appeals, but surely such 
 a declaration as the following from a leaflet of one 
 of the Hindu Societies is an interesting testimony 
 to the power of missions : 
 
 " They have cast their net over our children by 
 teaching them in our schools, and they have al- 
 ready made thousands of Christians, and are 
 continuing to do so. They have penetrated the 
 most out-of-the-way villages and built churches 
 there. If we continue to sleep as we have done 
 in the past, not one will be found worshiping in 
 the temples in a very short time ; nay, the 
 temples themselves will be converted into Chris- 
 tian churches. Do you not know that the num- 
 ber of Christians is increasing, and the number
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 71 
 
 of Hindu religionists is decreasing every day? 
 Patriots of India ! Be warned in time ! Do 
 your duty ! The Christian belief is slowly mak- 
 ing way. It has in Europe a strong and power- 
 ful organization. Hinduism is daily being robbed 
 of its votaries. We have slept long enough ; 
 shall we now at last, with a great and grave 
 danger looming before us in all its huge and 
 hideous proportions, shake off our lethargy?" 
 
 There are many things which the British Gov- 
 ernment does for the enlightenment and progress 
 of the land. Something of what India was be- 
 fore a Christian power entered and of what that 
 power has done is indicated by a list of the evils 
 which have been abated by Great Britain ; in- 
 cluding suttee, infanticide, torments voluntary 
 and involuntary, slavery, etc. 1 The educational 
 system of the government has broken down 
 superstition, and the railroad system is destroying 
 some of the exclusiveness of the caste separation 
 by forcing into close contact as fellow-travelers 
 men of different castes. But all this will be 
 simply casting out one devil and making room 
 for seven new ones, so that the last state will be 
 worse than the first, if Christian missions do not 
 supply that element of moral character and rea- 
 sonable religious faith which the government 
 educational system with its professed neutrality 
 ignores. As Sir Monier Williams says : " We 
 teach a native to believe in himself. We depre- 
 cate his not desiring to be better than his 
 fathers. , . . We puff him up with an over- 
 weening opinion of his own sufficiency. We in- 
 flate him with a sublime sense of his own im- 
 portance as a distinct unit in the body politic. 
 We reveal to him the meaning of ' I am,' ' I can,' 
 'I will,' 'I shall,' 'I know,' without inculcating 
 
 1 Pierson, The New Acts of the Apostles, pp. 263, 264.
 
 72 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 any lesson of 'I ought,' and 'I ought not,' 
 without implanting any sense of responsibility to 
 and dependence on an Eternal, Almighty and 
 All-wise Being for life, for strength, for knowl- 
 edge without, in short, imparting real self-knowl- 
 edge, or teaching true self-mastery, or instilling 
 high principles and high motives. Such a system 
 carries with it its own Nemesis." l But even 
 such education does not always cast out super- 
 stitions or change motives. It has produced 
 much of what the Allahabad Pioneer calls 
 " fetichism in patent leather books," university 
 graduates even who when they came to die have 
 had a sacred cow brought in that they might 
 breathe out their spirits through its tail ! It has 
 produced Nana Sahib. 
 
 Other missions than ours have come into North- 
 ern India and accomplished much in recent 
 years ; but twenty years ago, Dr. John Murdock, 
 who knows all of India thoroughly, could write 
 of our own, " Perhaps no Mission in North India 
 has done more in the way of direct preaching to 
 the heathen," and could commend the care taken 
 to preserve the evangelistic character of the 
 schools, and the work done through the press as 
 equal to that done in North India and the Punjab 
 by " all the other missionaries taken together for 
 the diffusion of Christian truth through this 
 agency." 
 
 One great service rendered by the Presbyterian 
 Missions in India was the call to the Christian 
 Church to the annual week of prayer. This call 
 was issued by the Lodiana Mission in 1858. 
 Though the Mission felt that it was a humble body 
 to call the whole Christian world to such prayer, 
 it yet adopted in faith this resolution : 
 
 " WHEREAS, our spirits have been greatly re- 
 1 Monier Williams, Modern India, p. 304.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN INDIA 73 
 
 freshed by what we have heard of the Lord's deal- 
 ings with his people in America, and further, be- 
 ing convinced from the signs of the times that 
 God has still larger blessings for his people and 
 for our ruined world, and that he now seems 
 ready and waiting to bestow them as soon as 
 asked ; therefore, 
 
 " Resolved, That we appoint the second week 
 in January, 1859, beginning with Monday the 
 8th, as a time of special prayer, and that all 
 God's people, of every name and nation, of every 
 continent and island, be cordially and earnestly 
 invited to unite with us in the petition that God 
 would now pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, so 
 that all the ends of the earth might see his salva- 
 tion." * This was the beginning of the Week of 
 Prayer. 
 
 Why shall we not believe and work toward the 
 fulfillment of this prayer, that at last it may be 
 answered for India and that the long work of 
 preparation that has now been done, may issue in 
 the result prophesied by Sir Charles Trevelyan, 
 who was not a visionary or careless man, who was 
 the Governor General's Secretary when Dr. Lowrie 
 reached Calcutta, and who helped him in his 
 plans, and advised him as to his location at 
 Lodiana : 
 
 " Many persons mistake the way in which the 
 conversion of India will be brought about. I be- 
 lieve it will take place at last wholesale, just as 
 our own ancestors were converted. The country 
 will have Christian instruction infused into it in 
 every way by direct missionary education, and in- 
 directly by books of various sorts, through the 
 public papers, through conversation with Euro- 
 peans, and in all the conceivable ways in which 
 knowledge is communicated. Then at last when 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 109.
 
 74 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 society is completely saturated with Christian 
 knowledge, and public opinion has taken a de- 
 cided turn that way, they will come over by 
 thousands."
 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 
 
 75
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 
 
 THE first Protestant mission work in Siam was 
 established for the sake of the Chinese by Gutzlaff 
 and Tomlin, who landed at Bangkok in 1828. 
 The Jesuits antagonized them unsuccessfully, but 
 their stay was short. The American Baptists be- 
 gan work in 1833, for both Siamese and Chinese, 
 but have discontinued the former. Other mis- 
 sionary bodies which entered the field have with- 
 drawn, so that now the only Protestant agencies 
 at work for the Siamese are' the Presbyterian 
 Church and the American Bible Society. 
 
 The Mission of the Presbyterian Church was 
 established in 1840 by the Rev. William Buell, the 
 Rev. R. W. Orr, who was sent to Bangkok in 
 1838 to report on its eligibility as a mission sta- 
 tion for work among Chinese, having advised its 
 occupancy as a mission field for the sake of the 
 Siamese as well as for its value in reaching the 
 Chinese with the gospel. Mr. Buell spent four 
 years in Siam, and then came home on account 
 of the paralysis of Mrs. Buell ; and it was 1847 
 when the next missionaries, the Rev. Stephen 
 Mattoon, and the Rev. S. R. House, M. D., who 
 died in the State of New York in 1899, and their 
 wives arrived. The hostility of the King greatly 
 impeded the missionaries. His subjects did -not 
 dare to rent property to them and at last they 
 were about to leave the country. But when 
 things were at their worst, when the teachers of 
 
 77
 
 78 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 the missionaries had been arrested and thrown 
 into prison, when their servants had left them or 
 been driven off and no one dared to speak with 
 them on religion, and when Sir James Brooke, a 
 British ambassador, insulted by the King, was 
 about to leave to secure assistance to open the 
 country by force, the King. died, and the new 
 King chosen was a prince who had been taught 
 English and science by one of the American mis- 
 sionaries. He shortly invited the missionaries to 
 the palace, and they wrote home, "The prince 
 and nobles now coveted our society, our teachers 
 and servants returned to their places, throngs 
 came to our houses to receive books, to talk with 
 us respecting their contents, and we were per- 
 mitted to go where we chose, and to speak in the 
 name of Jesus with the confidence that we should 
 not be avoided, but obtain a respectful hearing." 
 How great the change was under the new King 
 is shown by this statement prepared by the au- 
 thorities with his sanction : " Many years ago 
 the American missionaries came here. They 
 came before any other Europeans, and they taught 
 the Siamese to speak and read the English lan- 
 guage. The American missionaries have always 
 been just and upright men. They have never 
 meddled in the affairs of government, nor created 
 any difficulty with the Siamese. They have lived 
 with the Siamese just as if they belonged to the 
 nation. The Government of Siam has great love 
 and respect for them and has no fear whatever 
 concerning them. When there has been a diffi- 
 culty of any kind, the missionaries have many 
 times rendered valuable assistance. For this rea- 
 son the Siamese have loved and respected them 
 for a long time. The Americans have also taught 
 the Siamese many things." 
 
 In 1856 a treaty was negotiated between Siam and
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 79 
 
 the United States by Townsend Harris. Dr. 
 William M. Wood, later Surgeon General of the 
 United States Navy, who accompanied the Em- 
 bassy, wrote that "the unselfish kindness of the 
 American missionaries, their patience, sincerity and 
 truthfulness, have won the confidence and esteem 
 of the natives, and in some degree transferred those 
 sentiments to the nation represented by the mis- 
 sions, and prepared the way for the free and 
 national intercourse now commencing. It was 
 very evident that much of the apprehension they 
 felt in taking upon themselves the responsibilities 
 of a treaty with us would be diminished if they 
 could have the Rev. Mr. Mattoon as the first 
 United States consul to set the treaty in mo- 
 tion." 1 Mr. Mattoon was willing to take the 
 office only temporarily, because desired to do so by 
 the Embassy and the Siamese Government alike, 
 and only until a successor should be appointed at 
 Washington. 
 
 Thus Siam was peaceably opened by mission- 
 aries. The Regent in 1871 frankly stated this to 
 the Hon. George F. Seward, then United States 
 Consul General at Shanghai, " Siam has not been 
 disciplined by English and French guns as China 
 has, but the country has been opened by mis- 
 sionaries." And this friendliness of the Siamese 
 Government has never been interrupted since. 
 The King and Prince have contributed generously 
 to the work of the mission, giving land, and time 
 and again assisting in erecting buildings. When 
 the present King celebrated, in 1894, the twenty- 
 fifth anniversary of his accession to the throne, 
 the Board of Foreign Missions sent an address 
 of congratulation, and the Minister for Foreign 
 
 1 Siam and Laos, as Seen by our American Missionaries, 
 P- 378.
 
 8o PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Affairs replied, gracefully dating his reply Feb- 
 ruary 22d, that " His Majesty felt much pleased 
 and gratified to see that the feelings of good will 
 which have always animated his government to- 
 ward the work carried on in Siam by Presbyterian 
 missionaries were appreciated by the Board, and 
 expressed the hope that the mutual trust and con- 
 fidence which have been the distinguishing mark 
 in the past, would be as successfully preserved in 
 the relations of the future." 
 
 Influenced at the beginning by the missionaries, 
 and appreciating them ever since, the Government 
 of Siam has ever been one of the most progressive 
 and liberal governments of Asia, though none of 
 its kings has ever embraced Christianity. The 
 King who came to the throne in 1873, died with 
 Buddha's last words on his lips, "All that ex- 
 ists is unreliable," and he said to the mission- 
 aries, "The sciences I receive, astronomy, geol- 
 ogy, chemistry these I receive; the Christian 
 religion I do not receive ; many of your country- 
 men do not receive it." When the present King 
 took the "reins of government into his own 
 hands, prompted by his own noble instincts, his 
 inherited love of progress and sincere desire for 
 the good of his people, he boldly ventured upon 
 reforms that were startling to his courtiers, and 
 indeed to all who had known Old Siam. His 
 coronation day was marked by the abolition of 
 the degrading custom practiced for centuries of 
 requiring those of inferior rank to crouch and 
 crawl on all fours like spaniels in the presence of 
 their superiors. A still more remarkable change 
 he sought to introduce was the giving up of some 
 of his absolute power as sovereign, by creating a 
 council of state and also a privy council, before 
 whom all public measures were to be brought and 
 discussed and approved before they could be de-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 8 1 
 
 creed by the King as laws." ] And the spirit of 
 his government ever since has been generous and 
 enlightened. It would seem that this method of 
 opening and elevating Eastern lands by the 
 peaceful influence of missions, is better than the 
 method of war and conquest. 
 
 The first convert of the Siam Mission was a 
 Chinese teacher, Qua-Kieng, who was baptized 
 in 1844, and died in the faith in 1859. "It is 
 interesting to learn that three of his children be- 
 came Christians after his death and one of his 
 grandsons, educated in the United States, has re- 
 turned to his own country as a Christian minister, 
 and is now engaged in earnest work for his peo- 
 ple." 2 In 1851 a young Hainan Chinese was bap- 
 tized, " the first of that people to become a Chris- 
 tian." It was not till 1859 that the first Siamese 
 convert was baptized, Nai Chune. "With tears 
 of joy," wrote Dr. House, "they gathered in at 
 last, after more than twelve years of toil, unblest, 
 the first-fruits of their labor among the Siamese." 
 This Nai Chune "though frequently offered posi- 
 tions of honor, lucrative offices, and employment 
 by the government, refused all and chose to sup- 
 port himself by the practice of medicine, that 
 thus he might the more readily carry the gospel 
 message." 3 
 
 One result of the cordial attitude of the new 
 King in 1851, was an invitation to the wives of 
 the missionaries to visit the palace, as the King 
 "desires several ladies who live with him to ac- 
 quire knowledge in English." That desire was 
 in itself a sign of progress. " When we first 
 came to Siam," said Mrs. House, "not one 
 
 1 Siam and Laos as Seen by our American Mission- 
 aries, p. 404. 
 
 2 Historical Sketches, p. 286. 
 s Ibid., p. 286 f.
 
 82 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 woman or little girl in one hundred could read, 
 although all the boys are taught by the priests in 
 the temple to read and write. One day a very 
 bright interesting little girl, twelve years old per- 
 haps, came to our boat to see the strangers, and 
 when asked if she could read, she did not an- 
 swer yes or no, but with surprise exclaimed, 
 ' Why, I'm a girl / ' as if we ought to have known 
 better than to ask a girl such a question." l For 
 three years the class in the palace was kept up. 
 It was composed of twenty-one of the thirty young 
 wives of the King and several of his royal sisters, 
 and Mrs. House held that it was "the first 
 zenana teaching ever attempted in the East," 
 preceding the first zenana work in India by six 
 or seven years. The work ceased suddenly at 
 the evident wish of the King, who, it was 
 thought, feared that some of his household were 
 becoming too much interested in Christianity. 
 The way it ceased, as below described, was char- 
 acteristically Eastern. 
 
 " I proceeded to the gate where we had so often 
 passed in and out," said Mrs. House. " As I 
 drew near there was a rustle and a rush to hide 
 from my presence. I called out pleasantly in 
 Siamese, asking if they would not open the gate 
 for me, but no answer came excepting the sup- 
 pressed laughter of some young girls hiding be- 
 hind the screens. We quietly accepted the evi- 
 dent intention of the King, and our teaching in 
 the palace ceased." '' 
 
 There has never been any persecution of Chris- 
 tians in lower Siam, however, since 1850, and 
 any subject of the King is at liberty to change his 
 faith. In 1870 the King issued the following 
 
 1 Siam and Laos as Seen by our American Mission- 
 aries, p. 99. 
 * Ibid., p. 333.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 83 
 
 proclamation which contrasts vividly with the con- 
 ditions in China and Mohammedan lands : 
 
 ' ' In regard to the concern of seeking and hold- 
 ing a religion that shall be a refuge to yourself in 
 this life, it is a good concern and exceedingly ap- 
 propriate that you all every individual of you 
 should investigate and judge for yourself accord- 
 ing to his own wisdom. And when you see any 
 religion whatever, or any company of religionists 
 whatever, likely to be of advantage to yourself, a 
 refuge in accord with your own wisdom, hold to 
 that religion with all your heart. Hold it not 
 with a shallow mind, with mere guesswork, or 
 because of its general popularity, or from mere 
 traditional saying that it is the custom held from 
 time immemorial ; and do not hold a religion 
 that you have not good evidence is true, and then 
 frighten men's fears, and flatter their hopes by it. 
 Uo not be frightened and astonished at diverse 
 events, fictitious wonders, and hold to and follow 
 them. When you shall have obtained a refuge, 
 a religious faith that is beautiful, and good, and 
 suitable, hold to it with great joy, and follow its 
 teachings, and it will be a cause of prosperity to 
 each one of you." l 
 
 Under such liberal influences the work has 
 grown quietly and peacefully. There are now 
 three churches in Bangkok, the last one having 
 been established in 1897, the fiftieth year since 
 the establishment of the Mission. The present 
 boys' school was opened in 1852, and has trained 
 hundreds of boys for positions of influence and 
 usefulness in Siam. New buildings are soon to 
 be erected on land purchased by funds given by 
 the king, princes, and the merchants, of Bangkok, 
 both Siamese and Chinese and foreign. The 
 girls' boarding school, now called the Harriet 
 
 1 Cort, Siam, p. 292.
 
 84 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 House School, was opened by Mrs. House in 
 1873. It is hard to keep Siamese girls for a 
 careful education. The Siamese do not value it 
 for their girls. The Mission does its best with 
 them, and with good success. At the Exhibition 
 in Siam, in 1882, the King purchased the exhibit 
 the school presented of fancy articles, and subse- 
 quently gave the school a silver medal. 
 
 The missionaries have helped to shape the 
 educational work of the kingdom. In 1878 the 
 King appointed Dr. McFarland, one of the mis- 
 sionaries, to be Principal of the Royal College at 
 Bangkok, and Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
 tion. The work of the medical missionaries was 
 so thoroughly done that now in Bangkok the gov- 
 ernment itself carries on such work so fully as to 
 make missionary hospitals unnecessary; and the 
 government's three hospitals, insane asylum, or- 
 phanage, and dispensary, in Bangkok have been 
 put under the care of Dr. Hayes, formerly one of 
 the missionaries, "with no restriction placed upon 
 teaching Christianity." Outside of Bangkok and 
 in the Laos country there is as great need of 
 medical missions as anywhere. How great that 
 need is, is shown in a paper on the "Siamese 
 Theory and Practice of Medicine," by Dr. E. A. 
 Sturge, once a medical missionary at Petchaburee. 
 The Siamese view, he says, is that "the body is 
 composed of twenty kinds of earth, twelve kinds 
 of water, six kinds of wind and four kinds of fire. 
 The varieties of wind are as follows : The first 
 kind passes from the head to the feet, and the 
 second variety from the feet to the head; the 
 third variety resides above the diaphragm, and 
 the fourth circulates in the arteries, forming the 
 pulse; the fifth enters the lungs, and the sixth 
 resides in the intestines. The four kinds of fire 
 are: First, that which gives the body its natural
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 85 
 
 temperature; the second, that which causes a 
 higher temperature, as after exercise or in fevers ; 
 the third variety causes digestion, and the fourth 
 causes old age. The Siamese divide the body 
 into thirty-two parts, as the skin, heart, lungs, 
 etc. The body is subject to ninety-six diseases, 
 due to the disarrangement of the earth, wind, fire, 
 and water. Thus, if there is an undue propor- 
 tion of fire we have one of the fevers. Dropsies 
 are caused by too great a proportion of water, and 
 wind causes all manner of complaints. Nine out 
 of ten of the natives, when asked what is the 
 matter with them, answer ' Pen Lorn ' (wind). 
 . . . Spirits are supposed to have great power 
 over our bodies, deranging the elements and pro- 
 ducing all manner of diseases. The minds of 
 the natives are thus held in continual bondage 
 for fear of the spirits, for no one knows what 
 great sins he may have committed in a previous 
 state of existence for which he may be called upon 
 to suffer at any moment. Thus the people are 
 constantly endeavoring to propitiate the spirits by 
 presents, incantations, etc." 1 
 
 The first Mission Press in Siam was established 
 in 1836, by Dr. Bradley of the American Board 
 Mission. The Presbyterian Press was set up in 
 1 86 1, and has printed besides the Bible, which 
 formerly would have made a book larger than 
 Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, but which can 
 now be bought in four volumes of convenient 
 size, Pilgrim's Progress, and scores of other 
 books and tracts, among them, The Light of 
 Europe, a book by a native Christian layman, in 
 answer to Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia. 
 
 Outside of Bangkok there are stations at Petch- 
 aburee, Ratburee and Nakawn in lower Siam, 
 
 1 Siam and Laos as Seen by our American Missionaries, 
 p. 236 f.
 
 86 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 with work at Ayuthia and Pitsanuloke also. Mr. 
 Buell visited Petchaburee in 1843, "when the 
 governor treated him and his companion with 
 indignity. The books and tracts they distributed 
 were either returned by the people, or were seized 
 and destroyed ; and several who received them 
 were arrested and would have been whipped by 
 the governor of the province had not a Buddhist 
 high priest (the prince who was afterwards king) 
 been present at the time and interceded for their 
 release." 1 In 1861, however, a new governor 
 requested the establishment of a station, and Dr. 
 and Mrs. McGilvary and Mr. McFarland re- 
 moved to Petchaburee from Bangkok. The sons 
 of the governor and lieutenant-governor attended 
 the mission school. In 1888 the King donated 
 $2,400 to enlarge the hospital buildings, and in 
 1895 the Queen gave the funds for a woman's 
 ward. The girls' school of Petchaburee also re- 
 ceived $1,000 from the King toward the cost of 
 its erection, and princes and nobles added $1,260 
 more. Ratburee was occupied in 1889, and the 
 station occupies now buildings and land put at its 
 disposal by the government. 
 
 The Nakawn station has a singularly interest- 
 ing history. " Fourteen years ago a native of 
 Nakawn, having heard of the fame of an English 
 physician in Bangkok, left Nakawn in a little sail- 
 boat in search of the physician for healing. His 
 wife accompanied him to nurse him by the way. 
 Seemingly adverse winds drove their little craft 
 into the Petchaburee river. At the mouth of the 
 river they met a disciple of Jesus who said : ' Why 
 go to Bangkok ? There is a good missionary phy- 
 sician at Petchaburee who will gladly care for 
 you.' The sick man was welcomed to the hos- 
 pital and there found more than he had expected ; 
 
 1 Cort, Sia/n, p. 295.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 87 
 
 for he was not only healed of his disease, but he 
 also accepted Jesus as his Saviour. His wife 
 also was converted. They resolved to return to 
 their native province and there proclaim the glad 
 tidings. They were given earnest instruction in 
 the Word, and in less than one year from the 
 time that they reached the Petchaburee hospital, 
 ignorant even of the precious name Jesus, they 
 were earnestly proclaiming the Great Salvation 
 not only in the city of Nakawn, but even to the 
 northwest border of the province. God approved 
 their labors. For it was not long before several 
 persons, instructed by them, journeyed to Bang- 
 kok and Petchaburee and united with the churches 
 of those places." In 1895 a church of thirty-one 
 members was organized at Nakawn, and has 
 grown steadily since, and the new station there 
 will be provided with ground and buildings, al- 
 most wholly supplied without money from Amer- 
 ica. In 1898, touring in Nakawn, Dr. Dunlap 
 met the King of Siam, who was visiting this 
 province and made many inquiries about the 
 mission work, and said, " I am glad you are here 
 working for my people, and I wish you success." 
 Buddhism has been a very tolerant religion, 
 and the civilization of the King which has loos- 
 ened his faith in much Buddhist teaching, has but 
 strengthened his tolerant spirit. But why should 
 not a Buddhist be tolerant ? His religion is a 
 religion not of affirmation, but of denial, not of 
 responsibility, but of carelessness, listless, le- 
 thargic, not strenuous and active. Its sleepy 
 spirit is set forth in Mrs. Judson's verses : 
 
 On the pagoda spire 
 
 The bells are swinging, 
 With their little golden circlets in a flutter 
 With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter,
 
 88 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Till all are ringing 
 
 As if a choir 
 Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing ; 
 
 And with a lulling sound 
 
 The music floats around, 
 And drops like balm into the drowsy ear. 
 
 And the temples and worship of Buddhism 
 reveal its character : the voluptuousness of the 
 rounded pagodas, the cross-legged, silent, ex- 
 pressionless images of Buddha, the monotonous 
 liturgies, and common, uninspiring offerings, the 
 careless demeanor of the worshipers, the air of 
 listlessness and torpor over all, men and women 
 smoking, priests droning, and children wandering 
 about, or sleeping, or playing gently at their 
 games. The institution of the Buddhist priest- 
 hood in Siam is a huge incubus of indolence. 
 Almost every man spends part of his life in the 
 priesthood, and of course during that portion 
 does no work, but lives by begging. " A Bud- 
 dhist monk possesses in his own right eight articles, 
 viz., three robes, a girdle, an alms bowl, a razor, 
 a needle, and a water strainer, this last that he 
 may not unwittingly in drinking destroy animal 
 life. All other articles accepted in charity are 
 supposed to be received on behalf of the chapter. 
 The Siamese monk must observe strict celibacy, 
 refrain from all secular avocations and eat no 
 solid food after the sun has passed the meridian. 
 Priests are easily recognized by their yellow robes 
 and shaven heads. In going about they usually 
 feign indifference to all temporal concerns by 
 walking with measured pace, apparently noticing 
 nothing. There is no hereditary priesthood. 
 Any male enters a wat at his pleasure, and leaves 
 it without reproach to return to secular life ; if 
 married, however, he must be divorced before 
 entering. Every man is expected to spend more
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 89 
 
 or less time in the priesthood, and according to 
 law no one can serve the government until he has 
 done so. Little boys are put into the wats as 
 pupils at a very early age (for each wat is more or 
 less of a public school), and when they have 
 learned to read and write they are ready to put 
 on the yellow robes ; so they grow up to man- 
 hood, and often to middle age, amid surround- 
 ings only calculated to make them idle, and 
 frequently vicious, men." l 
 
 From the beginning Buddhism has been a 
 selfish religion, of pure individualism. It has 
 always taught doctrines which can only result in 
 the destruction of all social joy and progress. 
 Buddha's four sublime verities were : "(i) There 
 is pain or sorrow because of existence; (2) This 
 comes from desire ; (3) Pain and sorrow may be 
 made to cease by conquest over desire, and that 
 conquest is equivalent to the attaining of Nirvana ; 
 (4) There is a way that leads thither." And the 
 way to Nirvana lay along the middle path, the 
 eightfold path of right belief, that is, in Buddha's 
 doctrine ; right resolve, that is, to abandon all 
 ties that interfere with becoming a monk ; right 
 language, or the recitation of the law ; right be- 
 havior, as that of a monk ; right mode of liveli- 
 hood, or living by alms ; right exertion, or sup- 
 pression of self; right mindfulness, that is, of the 
 transitoriness of the body, and right meditation, 
 or composure of the mind into trance-like 
 quietude. Buddhists do by instinct now what 
 Buddha taught men to do by a method. They 
 forfeit their likeness to the God of whom his Son 
 said, " My Father worketh, and I work." 
 
 Eitel did not pronounce too severe a condemna- 
 tion when he wrote that Buddhism " arose from a 
 
 1 Siam and Laos as Seen by our American Missionaries, 
 p. 292 f.
 
 90 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 feeling of spiritual bankruptcy and never after re- 
 covered its mental equilibrium. It is therefore 
 essentially a religion of sullen despair, based on 
 the total obliteration of a healthy faith in the 
 actual constitution of things, penetrated by a 
 spirit of morose abandon, mental and moral, and 
 resulting in a barren sophistic nihilism which fails 
 to recognize in nature, in history, in human 
 affairs, the will of God, and never thought of in- 
 terpreting that will by the dictates of human con- 
 science. Buddhism is in fact a system of religion 
 without hope and strictly speaking even without 
 God, a system of morality without a conscience, 
 a system of philosophy which wears either the 
 mask of transcendental mysticism or of nihilistic 
 cynicism." l 
 
 One of the worst influences of Buddhism has 
 grown out of the doctrine of transmigration. No 
 woman may hope for blessedness or salvation as 
 a woman. She can only look forward to being 
 born in some fresh turn of the wheel of life as a 
 man. Her social status is accordingly fixed. 
 This symbol of the wheel is the proper symbol of 
 Buddhism, as the symbol of Christianity is a 
 cross : the one a religion of indefinite, eternal, 
 unaccomplishing monotony, the other, a living, 
 active, direct, transforming power ; the one a 
 sensuous dream, the other a ministry of sacri- 
 fice. 
 
 In southern Siam Buddhism is especially placid, 
 hopeless, unimpressionable. In the northern 
 Laos states, a simpler, more natural people have 
 opened their hearts to a message that speaks of 
 deliverance from evil spirits and the terror of 
 sin. 
 
 These Laos states are 500 miles north of 
 Bangkok, and the traveler must have patience for 
 1 Eitel, Buddhism, p. 95 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 9! 
 
 a long, tedious river journey over rapids and 
 through passes, sometimes with hardship and 
 peril. In 1881 Miss Mary M. Campbell, one of 
 the missionaries, was drowned in the Meinam 
 river on her way up to Chieng Mai, and often on 
 the Laos rivers the boats capsize when the boat- 
 men are polling them over rapids or falls. "I 
 shall never forget my sensations," wrote Mrs. 
 Docld, of one of these catastrophes, "during the 
 five minutes that elapsed, from the time they be- 
 gan to pull the boat up over the falls, until I saw 
 it fill, sink, reappear riding the waves upside down, 
 race down the stream and disappear around a bend 
 a quarter of a mile below. Nor later, as I stood 
 bewildered and saw the men rush past me as fast as 
 they could over the hot bowlders and jagged rocks, 
 Mr. Dodd with a white face, only stopping long 
 enough to say a few words, when I was left alone, 
 watching the big waves churn themselves into 
 soap suds, as I had done before." Across coun- 
 try the travel is on elephants. 
 
 There are about 5,000,000 Laos people, most 
 of them being in the boundaries of Siam, and it is 
 among these that the Laos Mission is located. 
 They have proved a very receptive people, free 
 from caste and natural pride, with no child mar- 
 riage, and almost no polygamy, peaceable and 
 kindly, simple in habits and " for heathen, com- 
 paratively pure in their lives." While Buddhists 
 in a sense, they are more really simple demon wor- 
 shipers, as the Koreans are, with the innumerable 
 silly superstitions such a religion always breeds. 
 Among these superstitions, however, are legends 
 that prepare the way for the missionaries. Five 
 thousand years after the foundation "of Buddhism, 
 they believe, a reign of demons will come for one 
 thousand years, and then the true religion is to 
 appear and bring the salvation which Buddhism
 
 92 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 cannot give. " Its advent," says Mr. Dodd, "is 
 to be heralded by a forerunner, Punyah Turn, 
 who will prepare the way . . . the rough places 
 shall be made 'as smooth as a temple ground.' 
 Then the elder brother of Buddha is to become 
 incarnate as a saviour. His name is Alen-yah 
 Mettai. Only the good shall be able to see him, 
 but all who do see him shall be saved. The 
 proclamation to the Laos people of this fullness of 
 time and the completed salvation is predicted to 
 be by a foreigner from the south. He is to be a 
 man with white hair and a long beard, who will 
 not fly in the air like a bird, neither will he walk 
 on the earth like a beast, but who will come 
 bringing in his hands the true ten commandments. 
 All this has been remarkably fulfilled. Not quite 
 thirty years ago, the Rev. D. McGilvary and the 
 Rev. J. Wilson came to Cheungmai from the 
 south. They came by boat, and personally they 
 very well answered the description of the heralds 
 of the true religion. Nearly every year, in the sixth 
 month, there is an excitement somewhere in the 
 Laos country over the reputed ' appearing ' of the 
 Messiah or his forerunner. Frequently we are told 
 when urging people to accept Christ at once, 
 ' Wait this year ; if Punyah Turn does not appear 
 in the sixth month, then Jesus must be the One 
 for whom we are looking." 
 
 It was in 1868 that Messrs. McGilvary and 
 Wilson came to Chieng Mai to settle. The Laos 
 King, who was tributary to the King of Siam, at 
 first received them kindly, but his friendship 
 cooled through the influence of a mongrel Portu- 
 guese in his employ, who disliked the missionaries. 
 After he left, the King became more friendly, but 
 his wrath broke out when some of the people were 
 baptized. Two of them were at once arrested 
 and confessed before the authorities that they had
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 93 
 
 abandoned Buddhism. " The death yoke was 
 then put around their necks, and a small rope 
 was passed through the holes in their ears (used 
 for earrings by all natives), and carried tightly 
 over the beam of the house. After being thus 
 tortured all night they were again examined in the 
 morning, but steadfastly refused to deny their 
 Lord and Saviour even in the face of death. 
 They prepared for execution by praying unto 
 him, closing with the words ' Lord Jesus, receive 
 my spirit.' Being then taken off to the jungle, 
 they were clubbed to death by the executioner, 
 and one of them, not dying quickly enough, was 
 thrust through the heart by a spear." The 
 regent of Siam interfered to protect the mission- 
 aries, and then, as in the early days, the blood of 
 the martyrs was the seed of the Church. Chris- 
 tianity always has more to fear from patronizing 
 compromise than from persecuting antagonism. 
 Some forces are strongest against resistance. " I 
 am happy," wrote Neesima, " in a meditation on 
 the marvelous growth of Christianity in the 
 world, and believe that if it finds any obstacles it 
 will advance still faster and swifter, as the stream 
 does run faster when it does find any hindrances 
 on the course." 
 
 The King of Laos was bent on expelling the 
 missionaries as well as on killing the native 
 Christians. He attributed some famine in his 
 country to their presence, and was not satisfied 
 with the reply of the United States Consul Gen- 
 eral in Bangkok, to his request for " the pulling 
 up of the missionary McGilvary," when the Con- 
 sul said, "Orders will be given to McGilvary so 
 to comport himself that no famine can be attrib- 
 uted to him hereafter." When the missionaries 
 called on the King, and expostulated with him 
 for the murder of the two Christians, Noi Soonya
 
 94 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 and Nan Chai, he said, " he had executed them 
 because they had embraced the Christian religion, 
 and he would continue to kill all who did the 
 same." At the time he was about to visit Bang- 
 kok, and prepared to expel the missionaries when 
 he returned, but he never again entered his capi- 
 tal. He died on the way home, and according 
 to the Laos custom, his corpse was not allowed to 
 enter the city. 
 
 The only other especially critical time in the 
 missionary history was in 1878, when two native 
 Christians came to be married, and of course no 
 provision was made for the usual feast to the 
 demons. Fresh antagonism sprung from this, 
 which was settled by an intervention once more 
 of the King of Siam, who issued a " Proclamation 
 of Religious Liberty to the Laos," granting full 
 toleration and rendering possible to the Christians 
 a conscientious observance of the Sabbath. 
 
 One of the two Christians involved in this 
 marriage was Nan Kip, the daughter of Nan Intah, 
 the first convert among the Laos. The latter was 
 a Buddhist scholar who had become interested in 
 Christianity, and who was profoundly impressed 
 by an eclipse which the missionaries had foretold. 
 He was a noble and useful Christian until his 
 death in 1882, when "faithful and true, with a 
 beautiful trust in his Saviour, he bade his children 
 and grandchildren a cheerful farewell, and went 
 to be with Christ." To his youngest son, he 
 said : "I am walking on the way you all must go, 
 only be ready for our Lord. Oh, my son, do not 
 fall from the right path. Trust in the Lord now, 
 and do his work, as I have tried to do. You 
 will surfer many trials, but they will be forgotten 
 when the day of reward comes. You plant the 
 rice fields in the water and in the rain, but in 
 three months from now you will gather the har-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 95 
 
 vest. Learn from the yearly lesson of life, and 
 strengthen yourself in Jesus." 
 
 For seventeen years Chieng Mai was the only 
 station at which missionaries resided, although 
 the gospel had been carried far and wide and is 
 now spread over the whole land by the Mission 
 Press, the only Laos printing press. In 1885 Dr. 
 and Mrs. Peoples occupied Lakawn, the capital of 
 one of the six Laos states, Lakawn, Lampoon, 
 Chieng Mai, Muang Nan, Hluang Prabang and 
 Muang Pra. All of these states " are independent 
 of each other, but there are smaller provinces trib- 
 utary to these larger states, yet the rulers even of 
 the minor provinces are autocratic in rule within 
 their own territories. Each of the six larger states 
 has a first and second chief, the offices being filled 
 by appointment of the King of Siam, to whom 
 there is a right of appeal on the part of the people, 
 who send notice to Bangkok on the decease of a 
 chief, with a private intimation of their views as 
 to a successor. Tribute is paid triennially to Siam 
 in the form of gold and silver boxes, vases, and 
 jeweled necklaces, together with curious gold and 
 silver trees valued at from ^15 to ^135 each." l 
 The capitals of five of the six states have been oc- 
 cupied as stations, but Lampoon, occupied in 1891, 
 is now a sub-station of Chieng Mai. Muang Pra 
 was settled by Dr. and Mrs. Briggs in 1893, and 
 Muang Nan in 1894 by Dr. and Mrs. Peoples ; 
 and a station was established in 1897 at Chieng 
 Hai, 150 miles north of Chieng Mai, by Mr. Dodd 
 and Dr. Denman and their wives. A fearful 
 famine swept over the Laos states in 1893. A re- 
 lief fund was at once sent from America, which 
 gave the missionaries opportunity to supply the 
 needs of the people and deepen their friendship 
 
 1 Siam and Laos as Seen by our American Missionaries, 
 p. 421 f.
 
 96 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 into love. Medical work is carried on in each of 
 the stations, and the whole population of the Siam- 
 ese and Laos states is open and accessible. No- 
 where else in our missions have there been so few 
 obstacles. The reports of the missionaries are 
 full every year of accounts of warm welcome and 
 unnumbered opportunities. 
 
 The missionaries have acquired great influence 
 in the country. An English traveler, Mr. Hallett, 
 studying the country in the interest of railroads, 
 writes, in A Thousand Miles on an Elephant : 
 "Nothing struck me more during my journeys, 
 than the high estimation in which the American 
 missionaries were held by the chiefs. Not only 
 were they on a friendly and kindly footing with 
 them, but by their bold strictures upon acts of in- 
 justice, and by exposing and expostulating against 
 the wickedness and senselessness of certain of the 
 reigning superstitions, they had become a benefi- 
 cent power in the country." 
 
 And this field so open, so hopeful, is our field. 
 In 1893 the Mission sent an appeal to the home 
 Church, in which it reminded the Church of this : 
 " Tell the Church that the hand of God is in this 
 matter. The Presbyterian Church has a free field 
 and full responsibility in this Laos land. With a 
 meager force, and working on a small scale, we 
 have been signally blessed in the past. We now 
 appeal to the Church to seize the opportune mo- 
 ment, obey the voice of Christ, and evangelize 
 the whole land. Our appeal is sanctioned by the 
 judgment of every missionary on the field, by un- 
 usual providential openings, and by the most ur- 
 gent necessities. It is backed by the prayers of 
 all the missionaries, and, since the first day of the 
 Week of Prayer, by the daily supplications of 
 hundreds of Laos Christians." 
 
 Shall we not answer the appeal of such a mis-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SIAM AND LAOS 97 
 
 sion in behalf of such a work, a work already so 
 successful that Mr. Hallett places its commenda- 
 tion in the forefront of his book : 
 
 "To 
 
 The American Missionaries in Burmah, 
 
 Siam, and the Shan States, 
 
 I dedicate this book, 
 
 As a mark of the 
 
 High esteem in which I hold the noble work 
 The American Baptist Mission and 
 The American Presbyterian Mission 
 
 Are accomplishing 
 
 In civilizing and Christianizing 
 
 The people of Indo-China."
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 
 
 99
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 
 
 CHINA is the only nation which is bound by un- 
 ruptured history to its mythological childhood. 
 Every other nation has been detached from the 
 ideas of its infancy by great convulsions, by emi- 
 gration from the scenes of its early life, by the 
 conquest or influence of other peoples, or by the 
 submergence of its distinct individuality in 
 superior races. But China reaches back into the 
 legendary past, and preserves the fables and the 
 childish conceptions of national infancy. It is 
 told of Laotse, the founder of Taoism, that he was 
 eighty-one years old when he was born, and that 
 his hair was white from age. He was called, ac- 
 cordingly, as his name implies, "The Old Boy." 
 As an old man he was found once gamboling on 
 the floor as a child to amuse his aged parents. In 
 his antiquated childishness Laotse is a good 
 symbol of China, the most ancient and the most 
 infantile nation. 
 
 No nation could have endured with a continu- 
 ous life for so many centuries without excellent 
 qualities. And it is significant that no mission- 
 aries so respect the people for whom they are 
 working, and have such confidence as to their 
 worthy character and hopeful future, even though 
 the most aged of all peoples, as the missionaries 
 in China. They have surpassed all other nations 
 in their care for pure, moral instruction. As Mr. 
 T. T. Meadows says: " No people whether of 
 ancient or modern times, has possessed a sacred 
 101
 
 102 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 literature so completely exempt as the Chinese 
 from licentious descriptions, and from every of- 
 fensive expression. There is not a single sentence 
 in the whole of their sacred books and their an- 
 notations that may not, when translated word for 
 word, be read aloud in any family in England." 1 
 And Dr. Nevius, who knew and loved and re- 
 spected the Chinese, while pointing out the prev- 
 alence of vice and immorality, yet contrasts 
 them not unfavorably with our own people, and 
 adds: "I believe that, taking into view our re- 
 ligious and spiritual privileges and training, we 
 are more to be blamed as individuals and as a na- 
 tion for not having reached a higher standard of 
 morality than the Chinese are." 
 
 The Chinese are a patriarchal people, with the 
 social ideas and organization natural to a village 
 people, such as the Chinese are. Even their 
 cities preserve the forms and habits of the village 
 life in which the great mass of the people live. A 
 Chinese "village is a collection of low, one-story 
 adobe, wooden, or brick houses closely adjoining, 
 surrounded it may be, with a brick or mud wall 
 for defense against brigands, and overshadowed 
 by trees. Centrally located is the village well, 
 and often near by is seen the little temple, with its 
 shabby array of local deities. Unless large, there 
 is scarcely a shop to be found, as frequently re- 
 curring fairs at a larger adjacent town supply the 
 simple outside wants of the villagers. From their 
 homes issue at an early hour the men and boys en 
 route for the fields, where man power rather than 
 that of beast is mainly employed. Thence they 
 return to get the first meal of the day at eleven 
 o'clock, after which they again go to work, not 
 coming back until six or seven for supper. The 
 women, meanwhile, if they have not gone to the 
 1 Nevius, China and the Chinese, p. 289.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 103 
 
 fields, have been busy with their children and 
 with cooking, spinning, weaving, caring for the 
 family wardrobe, and gossiping or quarreling. 
 And so the life goes on, without any knowledge of 
 a Sabbath, and alleviated by only a few holidays, 
 chief among which is the New Year." x 
 
 There is much to darken the picture of China 
 which even those bent on seeing the good cannot 
 suppress. "I once saw two or three thousand 
 women," says Dr. Martin, " reciting prayers to 
 Buddha, on the occasion of a festival. ' Why aie 
 all the worshipers women, and what are they 
 praying for ? ' I inquired. ' They are praying 
 that they may be born into the world as men,' was 
 the answer so unhappy, as well as inferior, are 
 they taught to consider their present condition. 
 Morally, however, they are China's better half 
 modest, graceful, and attractive. Intellectually, 
 they are not stupid, but ignorant, left to grow up 
 in a kind of twilight, without the benefit of 
 schools. What they are capable of may be in- 
 ferred from the fact that, in spite of disad- 
 vantages, many of them are found on the roll of 
 honor as poets, historians, and rulers. Some of 
 the brightest minds I ever met in China were 
 those of girls in our mission schools. Woman 
 ignorant has made China Buddhist ; will not 
 woman educated make her Christian ? The 
 national literature needs women to purify it ; for 
 while the sacred books are pure, novels and jest 
 books are unspeakably filthy, which would not be 
 the case if they were expected to pass under the 
 eyes of women . " 2 
 
 The word China is not a Chinese word. The Chi- 
 nese call their own country " Middle Kingdom," 
 or "Middle Flowery Kingdom," or "Heavenly 
 
 1 Beach, Dawn on the Hills of T'aug, p. 40. 
 
 2 A Cycle of Cathay, p. 82 f.
 
 104 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Flowery Kingdom." China proper is about one- 
 half the size of the United States, but when the 
 dependencies are included, it is a territory as large 
 as Europe and one-third more. The population 
 is supposed to be between 300,000,000 and 400,- 
 000,000. About one-half of the population is 
 estimated to live on the Great Plain, lying be- 
 tween and beyond the Hoang Ho and Yangtse 
 Rivers. It is sometimes said that an average of 
 850 people live on each square mile of this plain, 
 while in Bengal the average per square mile is 
 471, and in Belgium, the most thickly populated 
 land in Europe, 571. Yet, comparing the entire 
 Chinese Empire with the German Empire, Dr. 
 Faber points out that the average population of 
 Germany is three times denser than the average 
 population of China ; and that " China ought to 
 be able comfortably to support at least five times 
 the number of its present inhabitants ; for not 
 only are its physical and climatic conditions more 
 favorable than those of Germany, but the Chinese 
 are on the whole, more frugal than the Ger- 
 mans." 1 
 
 The Chinese are both a materialistic and a 
 superstitious people. The ethical code of the na- 
 tion is Confucianism, which is the political code 
 also. "The five relations underlying the Con- 
 fucian state those existing between prince and 
 minister, father and son, husband and wife, elder 
 and younger brothers, and between friends are 
 thus described in a primer that has been com- 
 mitted to memory by more boys than any other in 
 existence : ' Affection between father and son ; con- 
 cord between husband and wife; kindness on the 
 part of the elder brother, and deference on the 
 part of the younger; order between juniors and 
 seniors; sincerity between friends and associates; 
 
 1 China in the Light of History, p. 2.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 105 
 
 respect on the part of the ruler, and loyalty on 
 that of -the minister these are the ten righteous 
 courses equally binding on all men.' 'The five 
 regular constituents of our moral nature,' known 
 as the wu ch'ang, are benevolence, righteousness, 
 propriety, knowledge, and truth, or faithfulness, 
 while the five blessings, or happiness, as named in 
 the Shu Ching, are long life, wealth, tranquillity, 
 desire for virtue, and a natural death. A study of 
 these relations, virtues and blessings, together 
 with that of the chun-tzu-jen, or princely man, 
 and of the individual as related to the stars, will 
 acquaint one with the prevalent Confucian 
 ideas." J 
 
 Confucianism has shown itself a powerful pre- 
 servative force. It has worked as well as any 
 political and moral system ever devised for pro- 
 ducing order. It has, however, supported an 
 absolute despotism which has been tempered in 
 fact by the patriarchal institutions of village life, 
 but has utterly precluded progress. Under it 
 " the system of social life is tyranny. Women 
 are slaves. Children have no rights in relation 
 to their parents, whilst subjects are placed in the 
 position of children with regard to their superiors. 
 . . . The history of China shows that Con- 
 fucianism is incapable of effecting for the people 
 a new birth to a higher life and nobler efforts ; 
 and Confucianism is now in practical life quite 
 alloyed with Shamanistic and Buddhistic ideas 
 and practices." 2 
 
 That is a significant testimony to the necessi- 
 ties of the human heart. Confucianism refuses 
 to say anything about the future, or about the 
 human soul. And the Chinese, while accepting 
 
 1 Beach, Dawn on the Hills of T'ang, p. 65 f. 
 
 2 Faber, Systematical Digest of the Doctrines of Con- 
 fucius, p. 126 f.
 
 106 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 it, have accordingly added to it those ideas from 
 Buddhism and Taoism which the spirit of man 
 must have. 
 
 Two great things which Confucianism has done 
 have made mission work in China difficult. It 
 has exaggerated filial piety into deification of par- 
 ents, and made ancestral worship with its idola- 
 try and the evils it produces, concubinage, re- 
 venge, superstition, congestion of population, 
 destruction of individual liberty, such an obstacle 
 to the acceptance of Christianity that as Ball says, 
 "Every other form of worship and religion they 
 are willing to give up, but this is so interwoven 
 into the texture and fabric of their everyday life, 
 and has such a firm hold on them, that scarcely 
 anything, short of the miraculous, forces them to 
 give it up, with such tenacity of purpose do they 
 cling>to it." 1 The other difficulty Confucianism 
 has helped to create, is the conservatism, the 
 self-satisfaction, the conceit of the Chinese. 
 What they do not know is not valuable. All 
 foreigners are inferior. China wishes to have 
 nothing to do with them. As the Emperor Yung 
 Ching once said to a deputation of foreigners : 
 "China will want for nothing when you cease to 
 live in it, and your absence will not cause it any 
 loss." 
 
 The first missionaries to China, after the legen- 
 dary mission of Thomas, were the Nestorians, 
 who came in the seventh century, and for at least 
 two hundred years met with real success; but 
 they never preached a pure gospel. Jesus was 
 not to them a divine Christ. And they com- 
 promised too much with the superstitions of the 
 land, and relied on the Emperor and great men, 
 boasting of imperial favor, instead of planting the 
 gospel solidly in the common life of the people. 
 1 Things Chinese, p. 16.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 1 07 
 
 The next missionaries were the Roman Catholics, 
 who came in the sixteenth century and exerted a 
 great influence, especially when Kanghsi "prob- 
 ably the ablest and most enlightened sovereign 
 who ever sat on the Chinese throne" came into 
 power. But disputes arose among the mission- 
 aries, which were referred both to the Pope and 
 the Emperor, and they gave different decisions. 
 " The missionaries of course, were bound to obey 
 the Pope, and this setting up of an outside au- 
 thority over that of their own Emperor, incensed 
 the Chinese, and the storm which was gathering, 
 burst in the next reign, when, in A. D. 1724, an 
 edict was issued against them prohibiting the 
 propagation of Roman Catholicism, and only re- 
 taining the few missionaries required for scientific 
 purposes in Peking ; all the others were required 
 to leave the country." l 
 
 When the first Protestant missionary, Robert 
 Morrison, came in 1807, Christianity was a for- 
 bidden religion, and all foreigners were bitterly 
 despised. As Dr. Morrison wrote: "The law 
 views them as rivals and enemies, to be distrusted 
 and guarded against. Hence it is that all inter- 
 course with them, except under the immediate 
 eyes of government, is constructive treason. 
 A foreigner must not buy Chinese books ; he 
 must not see their gazettes ; no scholar or gentle- 
 man or official person must visit him. He must 
 remain in his warehouse or factory, and be 
 guarded by hong merchants, compradores or 
 coolies." One of Dr. Morrison's teachers always 
 carried poison so as to be able to escape from the 
 torture he would have to face should he be ap- 
 prehended for the crime of helping Dr. Morrison 
 to learn the written Chinese language. Canton 
 was the only place where foreign merchants were 
 1 Ball, Things Chinese, p. 254.
 
 I08 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 allowed, and they could remain only a short 
 time each year, and never enter the gates of the 
 city. 
 
 As no foreigners were allowed in China save 
 within the limits of the few warehouses on the 
 river at Canton, the first Presbyterian mission- 
 aries were sent in 1838 to work among the 
 Chinese emigrants at Singapore. The first mis- 
 sionaries were the Rev. Robert W. Orr and his 
 wife, and the Rev. John A. Mitchell. In less 
 than a year, Mr. Mitchell died, and in two years 
 Mr. Orr's health failed, and he was compelled to 
 return. But missions are not dependent upon the 
 immortality of men, and reinforcements had al- 
 ready come in the Rev. Thomas L. McBryde and 
 his wife, increased by the arrival in 1841 of James 
 C. Hepburn, M. D., and Mrs. Hepburn, who, 
 after a long service in China and Japan, still sur- 
 vive, loved and honored by the whole Church. 
 The Rev. Walter M. Lowrie arrived in 1842. On 
 the voyage from Macao to Singapore he was 
 shipwrecked, but sailed in an open boat four hun- 
 dred miles to Luban, a small island near Manila, 
 and then returned to Macao. 
 
 The Opium War was just ending, and the 
 Treaty of Nanking, which terminated it, made 
 Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai 
 open ports for trade and the residence of foreign- 
 ers. Canton, Amoy and Ningpo were at once 
 selected for stations, and the coming of new mis- 
 sionaries, among them D. B. McCartee, M. D., who 
 died in the summer of 1900 at the age of eighty-one, 
 and the Rev. Andrew P. Happer, M. D., who died 
 in 1894 at the age of seventy-six, enabled the Board 
 to send five men to Ningpo, three to Amoy and 
 three to Canton. These three stations have now 
 grown to six missions: Canton, Hainan, Central 
 China, East Shantung, West Shantung, and Pe-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 109 
 
 king, with the nucleus of a seventh mission at 
 Siang-tau in the province of Hunan. 
 
 Dr. Happer and Mr. French living for a while 
 in the Portuguese settlement of Macao, secured a 
 residence in Canton in 1847. They were shut up 
 at first in their own houses, and could only visit 
 the neighboring streets by stealth. It was two 
 years before Mr. French could rent a chapel " in 
 a long dark alley," and three before Dr. Happer 
 secured another " near a public street." In this 
 chapel the Mission began that daily preaching to 
 heathen which has never ceased to this day, save 
 during the Arrow War, when the dwelling houses 
 of the missionaries were destroyed, the schools 
 broken up, and evangelistic work was suspended. 
 " Not only residents of the city, but traders and 
 travelers even from the remote boundaries of the 
 province and beyond, were curious, often eager, 
 listeners. They could be numbered by the hun- 
 dred thousand, for in the best days of this work 
 sometimes a thousand persons in the same day 
 heard the gospel preached in the chapels." The 
 most famous of the chapel preachers was Mr. 
 Preston, who died in 1877, after twenty-three 
 years' service. With the exception of the time 
 given to one visit to America, he had a daily serv- 
 ice for years. He was perhaps the best speaker 
 of Chinese in Southern China, and though not an 
 impassioned speaker in English, he took fire when 
 he began to preach in Chinese. His chapel would 
 be crowded, and men from the country would 
 come again and again, filled with wonder, to hear 
 the marvelous speech of the winsome, cordial, 
 gentle man, who knew their hearts and could 
 speak to them, so that they understood the Word 
 of Life. 
 
 But the gospel has been preached in Canton in 
 other ways than in the street chapels. On a large
 
 110 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 sign over one of the landings along the river, are 
 the three Chinese characters, " Broad Benevo- 
 lence Hospital." It is the missionary hospital be- 
 longing to the Medical Missionary Society organ- 
 ized in 1838, the first society of the sort in the 
 world. It was composed of foreigners who took 
 an interest in the people. John C. Green was one 
 of its first trustees and auditors. Thomas R. 
 Colledge, of the East India Company, was for 
 fifty years its president, and in dying said of it, 
 " It is the one good work of my life." Two men 
 have seen the whole history of the hospital Dr. 
 Peter Parker and Dr. John G. Kerr, who is still 
 living, and who became connected with the hos- 
 pital, for which the Presbyterian Mission provides 
 the doctors, in 1854. In the years since, nearly 
 a million and a quarter patients have been treated. 
 These patients have come from all parts of the 
 Quang-tung province, and missionaries and native 
 preachers are constantly gathering in men and 
 women who heard of Christ and believed in the 
 hospital. All the patients who can are expected 
 to attend morning and evening prayers. I shall 
 never forget the sight of that audience as Dr. 
 Henry preached to it old men and women 
 bowed down with disease ; young men and women, 
 bandaged, limping, halt ; little children running 
 about over the tiled floors, and when they fell 
 down bringing their dirty little hands to be healed 
 with a mother's kiss, just as children in happier 
 lands do; some leaning forward intently, others 
 with bowed heads, while the pleading, vibrant 
 voice of the preacher athrill with his message, 
 declared to them the word of God. The doctors 
 of the hospital have for years multiplied them- 
 selves by training men and sending them out to 
 deal intelligently and honestly with the diseases 
 of their people, not dosing them with powdered
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA III 
 
 tiger bones, or with compounds of the eyes, skins 
 and bladders of frogs, such as the quacks may be 
 seen making in the medicine shops. 
 
 The schools, both boys' and girls', have for 
 years preached the gospel, too. From the True 
 Light Seminary, with which Miss Noyes has been 
 connected for twenty-five years, five hundred 
 women and one thousand girls have gone out, 
 scores of them to give all their time to Christian 
 service and hundreds of others to proclaim the 
 gospel through the activities of common life. The 
 wife of Li Hung Chang's doctor was one of these 
 girls. Others are in Vancouver, San Francisco, 
 Portland, Chicago and Washington, in Honolulu, 
 Singapore, Penang and Maulmain, and in cities 
 and villages from Hong Kong to Kwang-si, or the 
 mountains of Hunan. Wherever they go a 
 knowledge of the gospel goes. The graduates 
 know the whole New Testament by heart, and 
 many add to this, Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, 
 Proverbs, and Isaiah. The aim of the school is 
 Christ in the life, rather than a little knowledge 
 in the mind, though its work in every department 
 is the most thorough education given to women 
 anywhere in South China. When we came away 
 from Canton, the pupils sent the following letter : 
 
 " To the Brethren and Sisters of the Church in 
 
 America : 
 
 " We the (Chinese) teachers and pupils in the 
 ' True Light Seminary ' send respectful greetings. 
 We have already heard of the greatness of your 
 country, and the love of Christians embracing all 
 countries, and sending the true doctrine also to 
 China. We have not yet attained to such virtue 
 but desire that we may. . . . Our country is 
 now as one awaking from a dream, like a sinking 
 ship which received succor. It seems almost in-
 
 112 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 credible to us women of China that we may have 
 the happiness, first of receiving this new doctrine, 
 and second, the opportunity of studying and ob- 
 taining an education. Although the younger pu- 
 pils are but ten years of age and the elder ones 
 are more than fifty, all may study, and we know 
 the heavenly Father will reject neither the old 
 nor the young. . . . We have among our pupils 
 some women who formerly trusted in fasting and 
 their works of merit for salvation ; now they have 
 become Christians. Some of us have endured 
 much persecution from our friends and relatives 
 but we count it joy to suffer for Christ's sake. 
 . . . There are twenty-six of the pupils who were 
 baptized in infancy and so have never bowed be- 
 fore the idols. Thinking of all this, we write to 
 express our heartfelt gratitude for what you have 
 done for us. ... Truly your hearts are like the 
 heart of Jesus. We have in China the saying, 
 ' Gifts which are received are remembered for a 
 thousand years.' We shall never forget your 
 kindness. . . . ' Finally brethren, pray for us 
 that the word of the Lord may have free 
 course and be glorified even as it is with you.' 
 W T e have written this letter to send to you our 
 greetings. ' ' 
 
 The Christian College which has been estab- 
 lished in Canton is the result of the work of Dr. 
 Happer, who raised the endowment of $ 100,000 
 for it. 
 
 The first missionaries had all they could do in 
 Canton, but in late years the work has grown out 
 along the river courses north and south, east and 
 west. How this work is done, and what it means, 
 I can best illustrate by describing a visit to the 
 populous region south of Canton, known as The 
 Four Districts.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 113 
 
 A network of yellow streams, narrowing and 
 broadening, winding in every direction over the 
 wide plain ; low fields bounded by them, some 
 flooded, some half covered with the water, but 
 green with the tender freshness of the young rice 
 plants, some barely raised above the water's 
 reach, and verdant with the low-cropped mul- 
 berry bushes which feed the silkworms of one of 
 the finest silk districts in China ; boats of all 
 sorts passing to and fro, large two-story passage 
 boats like two sets of pigeonholes, one above the 
 other, and each hole full of Chinese passengers, 
 packed in like chickens in a crate, and all dressed 
 in monotonous blue ; small house boats with roofs 
 of bamboo or palmetto leaf, with the family babies 
 leaning over the side, the family pig wiggling his 
 curly tail on the prow, and the family poultry in 
 a cage at the stern ; farmers' boats bound to and 
 from the rice fields with the young plants ready 
 for transplanting, or with loads of dead grass for 
 fuel ; and now a light skiff drawn by a buffalo 
 wading or swimming in the stream, with only his 
 homely face above water, a small boy driving him 
 with a rope ; guard boats full of the sort of sol- 
 diers who were of use some centuries ago, but 
 whose pikes are children's weapons now, with an 
 old cannon mounted in a conspicuous place to 
 give the impression that its custodians think it 
 could go off; men and women in the wet fields, 
 preparing the ground for the rice with great hoes, 
 or plowing or harrowing with buffaloes, or setting 
 the rice plants, knee deep often in the loam, chil- 
 dren scraping the river bottoms for shellfish, or 
 gathering greens ; the whole country so flat that 
 the sails of the boats in the myriad streams seem 
 to spring from the ground, while great mountains 
 yet loom up misty and blue in the distance, 
 these were a few of the many and fascinating
 
 114 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 sights which we glided past as we sat on the roof 
 of a hotau boat, a clumsy sort of house boat, 
 and were towed by one of the pigeonholed 
 passage boats, which in turn was towed by a little 
 Chinese steam tug, southward into this section of 
 the field of the Canton Mission. 
 
 The Four Districts constitute one of the most 
 populous and prosperous sections of the Kwang 
 Tung Province, which in its turn is one of the 
 most prosperous provinces of the Empire. Vil- 
 lages are as close together as are the separate 
 farmhouses even of a thickly settled Pennsylvania 
 county, and large cities lie abundantly in the 
 midst of the villages. Here and there the pawn 
 houses stand out conspicuously, testifying to the 
 Chinaman's anticipation of the latest civilization 
 and to the density of the population. For the 
 pawn house is in the nature of a storage ware- 
 house, in which winter clothes are stored for the 
 summer, and summer clothes for the winter, in- 
 dividual houses being open and without means of 
 protecting or preserving things of value. And 
 each pawn house represents at least ten thousand 
 people. They are the highest and best built 
 buildings in the landscape, with solid walls, win- 
 dows too small for entrance, iron prongs protrud- 
 ing from the roof, and heaps of stones ready there 
 to be cast on the heads of assailants. 
 
 The villages in The Four Districts are well 
 constructed, of a fine quality of bricks of a drab 
 color, and of tile roofing. A Chinese village 
 here is the embodiment of the Chinese character. 
 Its superstition is seen in the selection of the vil- 
 lage site, which must be such as to secure for the 
 village immunity from the influences of evil 
 spirits, whose coming must be impeded by a 
 proper surrounding configuration of the country, 
 which also must be such as to secure and retain
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 11$ 
 
 the good influences that geomancy finds in the 
 right relation of hills, supporting the village be- 
 hind and in slopes of the land, and winding 
 streams in front. Its stolidity and solidity are 
 expressed in the dull and sturdy styles of archi- 
 tecture, while its clannishness and exclusiveness 
 are adequately represented in the inhospitable 
 and uninviting aspect of the village exterior. If 
 two rivers join near the village, a pagoda will 
 probably be found at their junction to prevent the 
 outflow of the good influences which are asso- 
 ciated with streams. Usually the pagoda takes 
 the form of a scholar's pencil and may contain an 
 image of the god of letters, so that literary bless- 
 ings may be brought to the place, and some of 
 the village scholars win scholars' degrees. Where 
 such degrees have been won, poles are erected in 
 honor of the winner before the village ancestral 
 temple, and his glory falls upon his house and his 
 clan. 
 
 Almost all of the Chinese who emigrate to 
 other countries go from The Four Districts. 
 The Chinese who go to other countries come 
 back and invest their money here. Many of the 
 new, well-built villages represent their earnings, 
 and as we walked from one to another we often met 
 their cheerful greetings. "Hello, missionaries! 
 where you go?" asked one old man, who was 
 leading a little girl along a narrow path but all 
 the roads in this region are paths, and the paths are 
 narrow. To our answer and return inquiry he 
 said, in his curious English, " I go walk with my 
 little girl. I been two, three times to Californy. 
 I go again soon. No, I not take little girl. Too 
 rough, seasick ; and then bad people. How you 
 feel? Good-by." 
 
 Some of these men come back with an evil 
 report of Christianity. Can we blame them?
 
 Il6 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 What did they see? Others come back with the 
 new life in their hearts, and build chapels, support 
 preachers, establish schools, and preach Christ. 
 One of these told me of his opening a school in 
 his village. There was great opposition, and the 
 men came to him, and said, as he expressed it 
 quaintly, " You open school, we hit it with 
 stones. Yes, we put the rock on it." 
 
 In this great field the English Wesleyans, the 
 Southern Baptists, and the American Board, have 
 a few chapels, but most of the work has been es- 
 tablished and is carried on by the American 
 Presbyterians. 
 
 In company with the Rev. A. A. Fulton who 
 is in charge of the field I climbed up the two 
 highest mountains in the field, and looked over 
 the land. It was the season for worshiping the 
 graves. The familiar Chinese idea is that there 
 are three souls, or that the one soul becomes 
 triple at death, and that when a man dies, one 
 soul goes into the other world, one goes into the 
 ancestral tablet, and one into the grave. There 
 must accordingly be a triple worship, of the 
 spirits of the other world who have control over 
 the soul that has gone to them, and of the soul in 
 the tablet, and of the soul in the grave. The 
 popular notions of geomancy make the selection 
 of sites for burial a matter of vital importance. 
 A wrong site may doom the posterity to barren- 
 ness of literary and military honors, and to misery 
 and poverty. The proper sites are in the hills. 
 On these two mountains, accordingly, the hun- 
 dreds of graves showed the marks of filial 
 worship. 
 
 As we climbed one of the hills, the sons of the 
 dead were engaged in their act of devotion. The 
 little amphitheater cut in the hillside, in the 
 middle of which was the grave, had been cleaned
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 1 17 
 
 and put in order. A fresh sod had been cut and 
 laid reversed upon the grave, which was decorated 
 also with some little tinseled figures of red paper. 
 Before the grave, which looked off across the 
 wide plain, the men stood, and spread the food 
 of their offering, a bowl of boiled pork, a bowl 
 of rice, and some vermicelli. In front of these 
 they put five little cups and five sets of chop- 
 sticks. The odor of the viands was supposed to 
 rise to the spirit in the grave, and refresh it. The 
 real viands were then eaten with great relish by 
 the worshipers. This makes the worship of the 
 tombs a sort of picnic. Beside the grave the 
 worshipers were burning a bundle of paper, sup- 
 posed to represent money. How would a spirit 
 know the difference? The fire turned this to 
 spirit money, and so gave the deceased a supply 
 for the coming year. 
 
 It was a relief to turn away from this and to 
 breathe the clear, unsuperstitious air which blew 
 over the mountain tops. But what a vision it 
 was from them ! From A sai shan, or West 
 Mountain, we looked down on range after range 
 of hills, covered with graves, made conspicuous 
 by their paper adornments, and out over reach 
 after reach of level plain, dotted with villages and 
 cities. San Ning with fifty thousand people lay 
 just below us. There was a beautiful chapel 
 there, built largely by money given by Chinese 
 Christians in California, and there were half *a 
 dozen- or more chapels of our own and other mis- 
 sions in other places within sight. But they were 
 as nothing. I tried to count the villages. To 
 the south there were four hundred and seventy- 
 five, and to the north three hundred and fourteen ; 
 and the mists hung about the distant hills, hiding 
 other towns from sight. Hundreds of thousands 
 of souls, possibly millions, were in sight from that
 
 Il8 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 hill ; and there was at work for them a smaller 
 evangelistic agency than can be found in scores 
 of towns of less than two thousand population that 
 could be named, in Pennsylvania. 
 
 On the very summit of A sai shan was a grave, 
 and on the grave lay a dead man. We stood be- 
 side him and looked down. He had not been 
 there many days. His pipe and flint box lay by his 
 hand, and his face was turned up to the sky. 
 Perhaps he had gone there to worship, and, as he 
 worshiped the spirits of his fathers, his own spirit 
 had gone to join theirs. Very still and quiet he 
 lay. He was beyond speech, beyond the sense 
 of earthly need. What he knew, we knew not. 
 And I lifted my eyes, and looked out over the 
 seven hundred and eighty-nine villages of the 
 plain. Very still and quiet they lay. They 
 were beyond speech, beyond the sense of spiritual 
 need. What they knew not, we knew. The 
 dead man lay on the lonely grave on the hill. 
 And the shadow of the death of a Christless life 
 hung over the villages of the plain. The man on 
 the hill was beyond help. The men on the plain 
 wait for it. How long will they wait ? " How 
 long, O Lord ! How long?" cries the Church. 
 "How long, O Church! How long?" answers 
 the Lord. 
 
 In addition to the work in this field, which is 
 carried on from Canton, the Mission has estab- 
 lished country stations at Lien Chow (Sam Kong) 
 on the border of Hunan, many days' journey 
 from Canton, where Dr. Machle was able to settle 
 in 1890, at Yeung Kong, 150 miles southwest of 
 Canton, whence a mob drove away the Rev. 
 Andrew Beattie and Dr. D. A. Beattie and their 
 wives, and destroyed the chapel in 1895, but 
 where the missionaries are now living in peace, 
 and at Kang Hau, 200 miles northwest of Can-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 119 
 
 ton, and just south of Lien Chow. In 1896, the 
 first church in the province of Hunan was organ- 
 ized by Mr. Lingle, from the Lien Chow station. 
 
 The Hainan Mission also is an outgrowth of the 
 Canton work. Hainan is an island about twice 
 the size of New Jersey, and about 250 miles 
 southeast of Hong Kong. It is the southernmost 
 prefecture of the Empire, and the population of 
 1,500,000 is made up of the Loi, the original in- 
 habitants whom some have supposed to be related 
 to the Laos people, and of Chinese emigrants 
 from about Amoy. The first Protestant work 
 was done in 1881, by a Dane, Mr. C. C. Jere- 
 miassen, who had been in the Chinese Customs 
 Service, but took up independent missionary 
 work. Mr. Jeremiassen joined the Canton Mis- 
 sion, and other missionaries were sent to reinforce 
 him in 1885, and work is now carried on at 
 Hoihovv, the port, and Kiung Chow, the capital, 
 and at Nodoa, in the interior on the border of the 
 Loi country. 
 
 The Central China Mission was established in 
 1844 when the missionaries came to Ningpo from 
 Macao, and Dr. McCartee opened a dispensary 
 in a large Taoist temple. He was soon joined by 
 Way, Culbertson, a brilliant graduate of West 
 Point, Loomis, and Walter M. Lowrie. The 
 first convert was baptized in 1845. There was 
 heroic material in these missionaries, and the 
 others who soon came. Of Mr. Quarterman, a 
 native of Georgia, it was said that "though 
 preyed upon for years by disease, he could not be 
 induced to leave his chosen field, even tempora- 
 rily, and finally he was struck down by smallpox." 
 A great shadow fell upon the young Mission in 
 1847, when Mr. Lowrie, returning to Ningpo 
 from Shanghai, where he had been engaged on 
 revising the translation of the New Testament,
 
 120 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 was murdered by pirates, who threw him over- 
 board and watched him with long pikes to prevent 
 his clinging to the boat. As he was carried to 
 the boat's side, he threw back his Bible among 
 his Chinese fellow-passengers. The first native 
 ordained minister was Ziu ying-tong. He was 
 persecuted by his mother and other relatives, but 
 stood firm. He wished to support himself in 
 business, and not to "eat the foreign rice," but 
 when the need of workers became great, he gave 
 up his prejudice and became a helper. When he 
 died in Ningpo, in 1895, beloved by all, his 
 heathen neighbors said, "If such is the Christian 
 life and death, so peaceful, so blest in family and 
 in all things, so fearless of death, we would like 
 to be Christians." 
 
 A strong church soon grew up in Ningpo, and in 
 the district connected with the station there are now 
 ten churches. There are more than one thousand 
 communicants. I attended once a union meeting 
 in the First Church, which was crowded with 
 Chinese, as earnest and devout and joyous 
 Christians as could be found anywhere. It is of 
 this church that Dr. W. A. P. Martin, for ten 
 years a member of the station, tells a story illus- 
 trating the simple superstitions of the people. 
 " Early one Sunday morning a mob came 
 thundering at our gate, demanding admission to 
 the church. This time they were actuated by 
 motives more serious than curiosity. A weeping 
 mother led the way ; and when I inquired what 
 she wanted, she replied that her little boy 'had 
 lost his soul in the church the day before, and 
 she wished access to the interior to look for it.' 
 The child, who had been playing there,' had, on 
 going home, been taken with a sudden fever (from 
 exposure to the sun, perhaps), and was then 
 delirious. In delirium the rational soul is sup-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 121 
 
 posed to be absent, and in this case its absence 
 was ascribed to a fright by looking up to the 
 height of the edifice, or down from some eleva- 
 tion to which the boy had climbed. The soul, 
 according to the poor woman's belief, was still 
 hovering in the hall like a bewildered bird. 
 Entering the church with a bundle of the boy's 
 garments, they prayed the animula vagula to 
 perch on the bundle and return to its resting place. 
 This done, they departed, firmly persuaded that 
 they had captured the fugitive soul." 1 
 
 In 1850 Mr. and Mrs. Culbertson and the 
 Rev. J. K. Wight and his wife were transferred 
 from Ningpo to occupy Shanghai. It was nine 
 years before they baptized the first convert. That 
 is not much less than the age of the Korea Mis- 
 sion, where there are already many thousands of 
 converts. The next station to be occupied was 
 Hangchow, 156 miles northwest of Ningpo, in 
 1859, by Dr. Nevius and Mrs. Nevius, who had 
 joined the Ningpo station in 1854. The Chinese 
 regard Hangchow with unbounded admiration. 
 They have a saying, "Above is heaven, below 
 are Soochow and Hangchow." Dr. and Mrs. 
 Nevius were not able to remain in Hangchow. 
 The people were disturbed over the Arrow War, 
 and though they had won many friends, it 
 seemed wise to withdraw temporarily. In 1865 
 the work was resumed by the Rev. D. D. Green. 
 Since then it has not been interrupted save by 
 occasional disturbances such as the troubles of 
 1900, and the curious unrest of 1876. The latter 
 year "was one of great excitement, owing to 
 what was known as the 'Paper men craze,' the 
 origin of which was never fully explained. 
 Sprites in the form of paper men, said to have 
 been sent out by foreigners, followed people after 
 
 1 A Cycle of Cathay, p. 66.
 
 122 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 dark and clipped off the ends of their queues, and 
 those who lo^t their queues in this way were sure 
 to die within three months. The sprites also 
 entered peoples' houses and concealed themselves 
 in the rafters, and when the household was asleep, 
 descended and perched upon the breast of the un- 
 conscious sleeper and gradually smothered him to 
 death. Charms were devised by the Taoist 
 priests which, when braided into the queue, were 
 considered a good protection against the^e mys- 
 terious emissaries. The traffic in charms became 
 a very lucrative one to the Taoists, and some 
 suspected that the craze had been started by them 
 for this mercenary purpose. Christians were 
 thought to be exempt from these uncanny as- 
 saults, because they carried crosses about their 
 persons, or kept images of the crucifix in their 
 houses. So the cross was widely used by the 
 heathen as a charm. The sign of the cross was 
 painted in white on the doors and on the pave- 
 ments along the streets. In some places gongs 
 were beaten all night long, to keep the people on 
 their guard and to drive away the sprites. So in- 
 tense was the antichristian feeling that in many 
 places chapels were looted and native preachers 
 beaten. Our chapel at Sin-z was partially torn 
 down and the furniture smashed. On repre- 
 sentation being made to the local mandarin, how- 
 ever, the damage was repaired and the chapel re- 
 opened by a deputy from the Chehien's office, 
 and very satisfactory proclamations were issued to 
 quiet the people." l 
 
 The Soochow station was established in 1871, 
 by the Rev. George F. Fitch and Mrs. Fitch, 
 and Nanking in 1876 by Mr. Whiting and Mr. 
 Leaman. The officials opposed at first at Nan- 
 king but the work has won its way, and five years 
 1 Jubilee Papers, Central China Mission, p. 87 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 123 
 
 ago the Prefect, after entertaining the men mis- 
 sionaries at dinner, issued a proclamation in 
 which he said: '-Now having examined the 
 doctrine halls in every place pertaining to the 
 prefecture, we find that there have been established 
 free schools where the poor children of China 
 may receive instruction ; hospitals where China- 
 men may freely receive healing ; that the mis- 
 sionaries are all really good ; not only do they 
 not take the people's possessions, but they do. not 
 seem to desire men's praise. Although China- 
 men are pleased to do good, there are none who 
 equal the missionaries." Mr. Whiting was one 
 of the missionaries who distributed relief in the 
 province of Shansi during the great famine in 
 1878. There he fell a victim to famine fever, 
 and died at Tai-yuen-fu, the capital. The gov- 
 ernor offered to send the body to America, but it 
 seemed best to bury him where he died. At the 
 funeral twelve Chinese carried the coffin to the 
 grave dug in land purchased by the provincial 
 treasury, and at the close of a short service one 
 of the Chinese stepped forward and said to the 
 foreign missionaries present, " Since you have 
 shown your respect to Mr. Whiting, who has lost 
 his life in seeking our good, let us also pay our 
 respect ; ' ' and before he could be stopped he 
 was down on his knees before the grave. 
 
 Each of the stations of the Central China Mis- 
 sion uses a different dialect, and there are, accord- 
 ingly, boarding schools for both boys and girls in 
 all the stations, save Soochow, where there is no 
 girls' school. The only hospital is the Tooker 
 Memorial Hospital for Women, in Soochow. In 
 Shanghai is the great Mission Press. The Hon. 
 Walter Lowrie, secretary of the Board, took a 
 profound interest in the Press, and rose two hours 
 earlier than usual for some years in order to study
 
 124 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Chinese. What he and his son, the Rev. John C. 
 Lovvrie, D. D., did for the Press showed them to 
 be men of far-sighted judgment, and laid the 
 foundations of one of the most useful enterprises in 
 China. The Press was set up first in Macao, in 
 1844, by Mr. Richard Cole, sent out for the pur- 
 pose, with a young Chinese who had learned 
 printing in America. The first work done was 
 an edition of the Epistle to the Ephesians. In 
 1845 the Press was removed to Ningpo, and in 
 1860 to Shanghai. " The use of separate char- 
 acters instead of cut blocks was begun in 1856. 
 A Frenchman had conceived the idea of separat- 
 ing the complex Chinese characters into their sim- 
 ple elements, so that a few elemental types might 
 be variously combined to form many different 
 characters. When the sum of $15,000 was 
 needed to secure the manufacture of matrices for 
 the type, King Louis Philippe and the British 
 Museum gave $5,000 each, and the remaining 
 $5,000 (later increased by some additional ex- 
 pense) was contributed by the Presbyterian Board 
 of Foreign Missions. After this step in advance 
 was taken, a type foundry and electrotyping de- 
 partment were added to the institution." l The 
 genius who most advanced the work of print- 
 ing in China was William Gamble, who was sent 
 out to the Mission in 1858 and remained until 
 1869. The Press now embraces printing offices, 
 type foundry, electrotyping, stereotyping and book- 
 binding, and will soon add photo-engraving. It 
 has furnished fonts of type for the missions in 
 Korea, Peking, and Foochow, and all parts of 
 China, as well as for the German Imperial Print- 
 ing House in Berlin. Bibles, books of general in- 
 formation, Chinese and Japanese dictionaries, 
 educational, medical and scientific books, 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 58.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 125 
 
 pamphlets and periodicals, pour out from the Press 
 in both Chinese and English. For the five years 
 ending with the Jubilee of the Mission in 1895, the 
 'total output was over two hundred million pages. 
 In 1899 it was 67,625,660. The Reform Move- 
 ment of 1898 was in a true sense the product of 
 the Press, which had been filling China with 
 books of light and progress. " In 1895 a superb 
 copy of the New Testament was printed, beauti- 
 fully bound, and inclosed in a silver casket, for 
 presentation to the Dowager Empress on her 
 sixtieth birthday, by the Christian women of 
 China. The entire cost was $1,200, and the 
 givers numbered nearly 11,000." l 
 
 The mission work in China, with the exception 
 of the Hainan Mission, has been a growth north- 
 ward. In 1 86 1 another forward step was taken, 
 and Mr. Gayley and Mr. Danforth and their 
 wives were sent to occupy Tungchow, in the 
 northeast corner of the province of Shantung ; 
 and Dr. and Mrs. Nevius soon joined them. 
 " When the missionaries first arrived at Tung- 
 chow, they were kindly received by both officers 
 and people. During the first year the preaching 
 of the gospel was blessed to the conversion of 
 several persons, some of them teachers. No 
 sooner were they received into the church than a 
 great change among the people was manifested. 
 They could not understand why any of the 
 Chinese could be induced to give up their religion 
 and embrace Christianity. The most probable 
 solution seemed to be that the missionaries pos- 
 sessed the power of witchcraft, and used it to gain 
 influence over men. Intense excitement followed ; 
 inflammatory papers were written and posted in 
 public places. Terror seemed to seize almost 
 every one. Many feared lest they might fall under 
 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 59.
 
 126 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 the power of the missionary, and become unable 
 to resist entering the Christian Church. Reports 
 were circulated that a peculiar powder was put 
 into the medicine so freely given by the foreigners, 
 and also put into the tea given to guests who 
 called. It was also said that little bags of pow- 
 der were found in wells, which caused all who 
 drank of the water to come under the spell. The 
 cleaning of wells was entered upon on a large 
 scale. The men so employed were said to pro- 
 duce little bags of powder which they claimed 
 were found in the wells, and this was urged as 
 proof postive against foreigners. It became ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to find anyone willing to listen 
 to the gospel, or even to come near the mission- 
 aries." 1 Again in 1870 there was a strange anti- 
 foreign agitation. " The most incendiary placards 
 and books and pamphlets were in circulation, and 
 rumors were rife that foreigners were to be driven 
 from the country. It is a fact," adds Mrs. 
 Nevius, " that we heard of the contemplated 
 ' Tientsin Massacre ' many days before that hor- 
 rible event took place." The missionaries with- 
 drew for awhile from Tungchow, but soon re- 
 turned. 
 
 The Tungchow station has become best known 
 through the College which was started in 1866 as 
 a small school by Dr. and Mrs. Calvin Mateer. 
 No institution in China can surpass it in the 
 solidity and power of its work. It has sent out 
 more than one hundred graduates from its com- 
 plete eight years' course, and all were members of 
 the Church. They have not been educated for 
 clerkships, where a little English is required, but 
 have been given a thorough education in their 
 own language, in Western science and mathemat- 
 ics, and under the most penetrating Christian in- 
 
 1 Armstrong, Shantung, p. 94 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 127 
 
 fluence. Until Mrs. Mateer died, in 1898, she 
 was mother to the boys. On her sixtieth birth- 
 day, there were presented to her a red robe by 
 her old boys, and, by the people who had seen her 
 work, a great blue tablet, on which was inscribed 
 in Chinese characters, " The Venerable Nourish- 
 ing Mother of Heroes." When the old boys came 
 back, they would go first to her to talk of all that 
 they had done; and when at last she laid her 
 frail body down, having suffered more or less dur- 
 ing all her years in China, she could think of the 
 thousands of men and women all over the Empire, 
 who had been blessed through her, and the lives 
 in which she had sunk her own. Scores of 
 Christian congregations can sing richly, in China, 
 because Mrs. Mateer and Mrs. Nevius sang their 
 voices away in teaching the young men to use 
 theirs. 
 
 Dr. and Mrs. McCartee came up from Ningpo 
 to Chefoo in 1862, and in 1864 Dr. Corbett be- 
 gan his great work. It was not until 1877 that 
 Dr. Nevius removed to Chefoo, and thenceforth 
 made that his station. Thousands have been 
 added to the churches in the Chefoo field, and 
 the schools have helped to secure the results of 
 which Dr. Corbett speaks : " The happy Chris- 
 tian homes which have sprung up in many cen- 
 ters ; the strict observance of the Sabbath ; the 
 self-denying efforts of the Christians to erect 
 churches and school buildings, and secure a Chris- 
 tian education for their children ; the patience in 
 times of trial and persecution, and not a few tri- 
 umphant and peaceful deaths, all show the gospel 
 to be ' the power of God unto salvation to every 
 one that believeth.' " l The notable thing about 
 the Chefoo work is its extent and the unresting 
 itinerating of Dr. Nevius and Dr. Corbett. The 
 1 Armstrong, Shantung, p. 100.
 
 128 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 former had a unique mode of conveyance. " I 
 am in the country so much, and traveling with a 
 mule litter is so expensive," he wrote, "that I 
 have taken a wheelbarrow to carry my baggage, 
 and a horse to ride. I have engaged two steady 
 wheelbarrow men by the month, and, if they suit 
 me, shall probably keep them the year round. 
 My barrow is a platform about six feet long and 
 four wide, with a wheel in the middle and handles 
 at both ends. I have in it now four large bundles 
 of books for distribution, a few foreign stores, and 
 my little portable kitchen, which weighs, with its 
 kettles, dishes, etc., about fifty-five pounds. Alto- 
 gether, myself, my clothes and bedding, etc., weigh 
 about five hundred pounds." ' 
 
 The great famine which smote Shantung in 1 876- 
 1877, left desolation behind it; but also it was a 
 great blessing. As Dr. Corbett said in an address 
 at home some years ago: " During this dreadful 
 visitation many died of starvation. Not a few 
 fled to other parts of the Empire ; but a still greater 
 number, in order to save life, were compelled to 
 part with their land and other property at a great 
 sacrifice. Since then, many who survived the 
 famine have had to struggle with a poverty un- 
 known in Christian lands. The foreign residents 
 in China nobly contributed large sums of money 
 for the perishing. Much was also sent from Eng- 
 land and other Western lands. This money was 
 largely intrusted to the missionaries for distribu- 
 tion, and was the means of saving many lives and 
 alleviating vast suffering. Many children left to 
 die were rescued and subsequently returned to 
 their surviving kindred. This presented the for- 
 eigners in a new light to the Chinese. Many who 
 had formerly kept aloof and could only speak evil 
 of us, now began to change their views and think 
 1 Life of jfo/itt Livingstone Nevius, p. 335.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 129 
 
 of us as true men. The risking of life to save life, 
 and the death of a number of the missionaries 
 from over-exertion and famine fever, spoke with 
 an irresistible power to many hearts. They be- 
 came friendly, and little by little consented to 
 listen to the gospel. Christian books were studied, 
 and soon numbers were enrolled as desirous of 
 uniting with the Christian Church. Frequently 
 entire families accepted the truth. In many in- 
 stances both men and women visited their kindred 
 and friends to tell them of the Saviour, and thus 
 the truth spread from village to village. After 
 this, when the missionary or native preacher vis- 
 ited a new district, frequently groups of inquirers 
 or people anxious to hear the gospel gave a hearty 
 welcome." 
 
 From these two stations, Tungchow and Chefoo, 
 the work spread into the interior. Chinanfu, the 
 capital, was first visited in 1871 by Mr. Mcllvaine, 
 who lived alone in a small Chinese house for eight 
 months, and then returned in 1873, and worked 
 on until joined in 1875 by Mr. and Mrs. Crosette. 
 Mr. Mcllvaine died of pneumonia in 1881, and 
 was buried near the city. "He was a devoted 
 missionary, of scholarly tastes, and refined dispo- 
 sition, yet shrinking from nothing." The station 
 of Ichowfu was opened in 1890, and the station of 
 Chining Chow in 1890. In each of these stations 
 great opposition has been encountered and lived 
 down. Mobs have attacked the mission premises, 
 and natives having dealings with the missionaries 
 "have been cruelly treated in the yamen and by 
 the mob, one man, who was guilty of nothing but 
 selling a piece of his land, having died in the 
 yamen from exhaustion caused by starvation and 
 beating." The Shantung Missions have passed 
 safely through all these trials, however, and also 
 through the unrest caused by the Taiping Re-
 
 130 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 bellion and the Japanese War and the anti-foreign 
 uprising of 1900. 
 
 In the Boxer uprising, however, the station of 
 Wei Hien, established in 1883 by the Rev. R. M. 
 Mateer and the Rev. J. H. Laughlin and their 
 wives, and Dr. H. R. Smith, was destroyed. 
 Schools, residences and hospital were burned, na- 
 tive Christians persecuted, and the work of 
 the great field, with one hundred and twenty 
 four out-stations and three thousand Chris- 
 tians, was paralyzed. Fortunately, all the mis- 
 sionaries escaped. The Rev. F. H. Chalfant, 
 Miss Hawes, and Miss Boughton, were the only 
 ones left at the station at the time, and fled under 
 the shelter of the night, only a few rioters seeing 
 them, and shouting after them, " The devils are 
 escaping. Kill ; " while the blaze of the burning 
 buildings lighted the sky. 
 
 The last of the China Missions to be described 
 comprises the stations at Peking and Paotingfu, 
 the former occupied in 1863, and the latter in 
 1893. At the close of the Arrow War Peking 
 was opened to foreigners, and Dr. Martin was 
 transferred from Ningpo to open a mission there. 
 " In the autumn," says Dr. Martin," I succeeded 
 in securing eligible premises, with space for school 
 and chapel, near the Tsungli Yamen, in the 
 southeastern angle of the Tartar city. The pre- 
 vious occupant was a mandarin with four wives. 
 We got the place cheap because one of them had 
 hanged herself there. A mandarin of my ac- 
 quaintance had six wives ; I never heard that any 
 of them committed suicide, but they did tear each 
 other's hair. In such cases, he said, he always 
 turned on them the hose of a force pump. The 
 floors of our house were paved with tiles, wooden 
 floors being a luxury unknown to northern Chi- 
 nese who, sensibly enough, carry a small floor
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 13! 
 
 attached to their feet in the shape of thick soles 
 of compressed cloth." 1 In 1869 Dr. Martin re- 
 signed in order to accept the presidency of the 
 Tungwen College, an institution under the Chi- 
 nese Government, designed to train young Chinese 
 for diplomatic service. 
 
 In the thirty years since the Peking Mission was 
 established, it has grown into a great plant 
 girls' and boys' schools, hospitals, dispensaries, 
 churches, and residences. But the last great anti- 
 foreign uprising in 1900 swept the mission almost 
 out of existence. All the buildings in Peking 
 were razed to the ground, and the very founda- 
 tion stones were torn up. All but ten of the girls 
 in Miss Newton's school were slain, and Mrs. 
 Teng, the Chinese matron, a noble woman, with 
 her husband, the pastor of the church, and her 
 children, one of whom, a finely educated young 
 man, was a teacher in the Peking University, 
 were murdered, with a majority of the members of 
 our churches in Peking. The missionaries shared 
 the horrors of the long siege with the other for- 
 eigners, and were rescued with a few of the Chris- 
 tians, on August 1 7th, by the Allied Armies. 
 
 On the following day the United States Minis- 
 ter sent them the following letter : 
 
 Legation of the United States of America. 
 
 Peking, China, Aug. i8th, 1900. 
 To the Besieged American Missionaries : 
 
 To one and all of you, so providentially saved 
 from threatened massacre, I beg in this hour of 
 our deliverance, to express what I know to be the 
 universal sentiments of the Diplomatic Corps, the 
 sincere appreciation of, and professed profound 
 gratitude for, the inestimable help which you and 
 
 1 A Cycle of Cathay, p. 230 f.
 
 132 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 the native Christians under your charge have 
 rendered toward our preservation. 
 
 Without your intelligent and successful plan- 
 ning and the uncomplaining execution of the 
 Chinese, I believe our salvation would have been 
 impossible. 
 
 By your courteous consideration of me and 
 your continued patience under most trying occa- 
 sions I have been deeply touched, and for it all I 
 thank you most heartily. 
 
 I hope and believe somehow, in God's unerring 
 plan, your sacrifices and dangers will bear rich 
 fruit in the material and spiritual welfare of the 
 people to whom you have so nobly devoted your 
 lives and work. 
 
 Assuring you of my personal respect and grati- 
 tude, believe me, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 E. H. CONGER. 
 
 At Paotingfu the buildings were totally de- 
 stroyed, and Dr. George Yardley Taylor, the 
 Rev. F. E. Simcox and Mrs. Simcox and their 
 three little children, and Dr. Cortlandt Van 
 Rensselaer Hodge and Mrs. Hodge, met a mar- 
 tyr's death in the flames of their burning dwellings 
 outside the north gate of the city. Dr. Taylor 
 and Dr. Hodge had grown up in the same church 
 at Burlington, New Jersey, and were both grad- 
 uates of Princeton. When the house was burn- 
 ing little Paul and Francis Simcox ran out 
 of it nearly suffocated with smoke and were 
 killed by the sword and thrown into the well. 
 Dr. Taylor, holding a rifle in his hand, told the 
 assailants what havoc it would do among them, 
 but refusing to use it he threw it into the flames 
 and beating his breast perished. His Quaker 
 ancestry had made him faithful in life and held
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 133 
 
 him true to its instincts in death. Nowhere in 
 our missions was there a finer company of young 
 missionaries, and it is only possible to explain 
 their martyrdom, as Jesus explained his, when he 
 prayed, "Father, forgive them; for they know 
 not what they do." 
 
 But the bitter experiences of the great crisis 
 have taught two good lessons : one, the impossi- 
 bility of the world's continued endurance of the 
 reactionary, exclusive spirit of the Chinese Gov- 
 ernment ; and the other, the .power of the mission 
 movement in raising up true Christians. Thus 
 Dr. Corbett wrote of the hardships of the native 
 Christians, who were driven from their homes by 
 the persecutions which fell upon them : 
 
 " I found suffering every place many trying 
 to live on corncobs, the dried vine of the sweet 
 potato, bark and leaves of trees, roots, etc. . . . 
 I found the Christians hopeful. They feel that 
 God has not forsaken them, but has heard and 
 answered prayer. . . . Wonderful grace has 
 been given to our persecuted people. They have 
 stood firm and are not giving up the Christian 
 life." 
 
 And the Rev. J. C. Garritt, wrote from Shang- 
 hai : 
 
 " How sad all this is ! yet its bright side is the 
 firmness of the Christians, and their joy (some of 
 them in being counted worthy to suffer for the 
 name of Christ). The secular dailies here have 
 printed one or two statements of the firmness of 
 converts even to death that sounds the knell of 
 all talk of rice-Christians." 
 
 And Miss Lattimore wrote from Soochow : 
 
 "There is much fear among the Christians 
 generally, but so far the little flock here have 
 shown a faith in God that makes me realize once 
 more the power of the religion of Christ over the
 
 134 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 minds of men. When an old woman, but a little 
 over a year ago a heathen, tells me that it is not 
 needful to fear but only to believe in the Father 
 in heaven, and then goes on with her everyday 
 life, although bad men have stood in her door- 
 way and threatened to burn and kill, I know she 
 has something in her heart which keeps her quiet 
 and at peace." 
 
 And even in the very pains of suffering and 
 death, thousands of native Christians, Protestant 
 and Roman Catholic, were true. Ting Li Mai, pas- 
 tor of the Presbyterian churches near Laichowfu 
 in Shantung, and Dr. Lio, a Christian physician 
 in the same city, both noble young men and 
 graduates of the Tungchow College, were ar- 
 rested, and in open court asked by the magis- 
 trate, "Are you - Christians?" "Yes," they 
 replied ; " we are." The magistrate then ordered 
 them beaten, and again demanded, "Are you 
 Christians?" "Yes," they replied ; "we are." 
 Again they were beaten, struck with over two 
 hundred blows with bamboo rods on the naked 
 thigh until the flesh was pounded to a jelly. 
 Then still faithful, they were flung into a filthy 
 jail. 
 
 Many have faced a quick death as reso- 
 lutely as these men endured lingering suffering. 
 The simple, uneducated cook of Dr. Lewis, at 
 Chinanfu, was seized and asked to recant. On 
 his refusal his ears were cut off. Still he refused, 
 and his hands were struck off. Still proclaiming 
 that he was a Christian, he was beheaded, mourn- 
 ing only for his wife and three little children left 
 helpless ; and his head was suspended from a tree 
 and his body thrown without the wall. In one 
 Roman Catholic village, two little children were 
 summoned before the Boxers, and asked whether 
 they believed in God. They replied that they
 
 THE MISSIONS IN CHINA 1 35 
 
 did. On being threatened they still declared 
 that they believed, and were cut down. Between 
 one and two hundred missionaries and thousands 
 of native Christians joyfully met scourging, burn- 
 ing, anguish, and death, for the love and faithful- 
 ness of Jesus. 
 
 The great Empire has passed through many 
 convulsions. Let us pray that this may be the 
 last one of violence, and that henceforth the 
 gospel may have opportunity to do quietly in the 
 hearts and homes of this mighty people, the work 
 of regeneration which is necessary to make it 
 truly great, and to fit it for its mission in the 
 world. 
 
 In an article in the Fortnightly Review for 
 November, 1900, Sir Robert Hart, who has been 
 for a generation more intimately connected than 
 any other foreigner with the Chinese Government, 
 after darkly picturing the future declares : " Noth- 
 ing but partition a difficult and unlikely inter- 
 national settlement or a miraculous spread of 
 Christianity in its best form, will defer, will 
 avert, this result." But why is such a triumph of 
 Christianity so unlikely ? Is "God reluctant to 
 grant his blessing ? Are the difficulties too great 
 for his power? Or, are our hearts too cold, is our 
 faith too weak, are our wills too slow ? It is possible 
 if we will, to make even the unlikely actual. Each 
 Christian must bear his share of this great respon- 
 sibility. Each Christian may have his share of 
 this glorious triumph.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 
 
 THE first missionaries of the Presbyterian 
 Church to Japan are still living, beloved by all 
 who know them in America, where their present 
 home is, and in Japan, where their memory is 
 sweet among foreigners and Japanese alike. Dr. 
 and Mrs. Hepburn are the sole survivors of the 
 earliest company of our missionaries to China, 
 where they worked at Amoy from 1841 to 1846, 
 and they have seen the whole development of 
 mission work in Japan, Dr. Hepburn having ar- 
 rived in Japan in 1859, only a few months after 
 the coming of the first Protestant missionaries, 
 the Rev. J. Liggins and the Rev. C. M. Williams 
 of the American Protestant Episcopal Church. 
 
 The missionaries who sought to lay the founda- 
 tion in Japan in these early years found a hard 
 task before them. At the street corners, in the 
 cities, on country roads, and in mountain passes, 
 were large bulletin boards proclaiming belief in 
 Christ a crime punishable by death. Even in 
 
 68 an edict appeared, declaring: "The wicked 
 sect called Christian is strictly prohibited. Sus- 
 pected persons are to be reported to the respective 
 officials and rewards will be given." Dr. Ver- 
 beck, a remarkable man, who had left Holland 
 when a boy, lived for a while in America, and 
 then came to Japan in 1859 to make Japan his 
 country, wrote of these earliest years : " We found 
 the natives not at all accessible touching religious 
 
 139
 
 140 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 matters. When such a subject was mooted in 
 the presence of a Japanese, his hand would, al- 
 
 Amost involuntarily, be applied to his throat, to 
 indicate the extreme perilousness of such a topic. 
 If on such an occasion more than one happened 
 to be present, the natural shyness of these people 
 became, if possible, more apparent ; for you will 
 remember that there was then little confidence 
 between man and man, chiefly owing to the 
 abominable system of secret espionage, which we 
 found in full swing when we first arrived, and, 
 indeed, for several years after. It was evident 
 that before we could hope to do anything in our 
 appropriate work, two things had to be accom- 
 plished : we had to gain the general confidence 
 of the people, and we had to master the native 
 tongue. As to the first, by the most knowing 
 and suspicious we were regarded as persons who 
 had come to seduce the masses of the people from 
 their loyalty to the ' God-country ' and corrupt 
 their morals generally. These gross misconcep- 
 tions it was our duty to endeavor to dispel from 
 their minds by invariable kindness and generos- 
 ity, by showing them that we had come to do 
 them good only and on all ^occasions of our inter- 
 course with them, whether we met in friendship, 
 on business, on duty, or otherwise. A very simple 
 Christian duty indeed ! As to the other essential 
 prerequisite to a successful work, the acquisition 
 of the language, we were in many respects not fa- 
 vorably situated and our progress was correspond- 
 ingly slow." 1 No language teacher could be 
 , obtained until March, 1860, and then only a spy 
 A engaged by the government who withdrew when 
 it was proposed to translate the Scriptures. 
 
 What had created this fear and hatred of Chris- 
 tianity ? It is to be traced back to the misfor- 
 1 Osaka Conference Report, p. 31.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 141 
 
 tunes of the Jesuit missions of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. In 1549 Francis Xavier came to Kago- 
 shima in the southern island of Kiushiu, from Goa 
 in India, where he had become interested in the 
 Japanese through a young man named Anjiro, 
 who had come there on a Portuguese vessel. 
 Xavier remained only two years, but his enthusi- 
 astic letters to Europe brought other missionaries, 
 and at the end of thirty years, their converts 
 were said to number 150,000. The new religion 
 was much like Japanese Buddhism, with some 
 differences distinctly superior, and the people had 
 little difficulty in changing from the old sect to 
 the new. Political considerations also aided the 
 Church at first, but ultimately proved its ruin. 
 Some jealousies among the various orders of 
 priests arose, and a Portuguese sea captain either 
 boastfully or maliciously remarked, "The King, 
 my Master, begins by sending priests who win 
 over the people ; and when this is done, he dis- 
 patches his troops to join the native Christians, 
 and the conquest is easy and complete." Distrust 
 fostered hostility. In consequence, a decree of 
 expulsion was issued in 1589. It was not success- 
 fully carried out, however, until 1614, when ter- 
 rible persecutions fell on the Church. Victims 
 were tortured, burned alive, torn limb from limb, 
 burned to death, crucified, yet multitudes stood 
 faithful and firm. Thousands of priests and con- 
 verts were destroyed, and when the survivors for- 
 tified an old castle in Shimabara and decided to 
 fight for their lives, and lost, the government vic- 
 tory was celebrated in the massacre of 37,000, 
 and over the ruins of the castle an inscribed stone 
 was placed, so it is said, declaring, " So long as 
 the sun shall warm the earth let no Christian be 
 so bold as to come to Japan ; and let us know 
 that the King of Spain himself, or the Christians'
 
 142 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 God, or the great God of all, if he violate this 
 command, shall pay for it with his head." * 
 
 When Protestant missionaries came they felt 
 the influence of this deep dislike of Christianity 
 as it was understood by the people, who remem- 
 bered only the traditions and had been trained to 
 abhor or fear the foreign faith. Later, the Japa- 
 nese perceived the difference between Protestant- 
 ism and Romanism, but not at first, and a Bud- 
 dhist pamphlet published in 1868, declared : 
 "Compared with the Roman Catholic religion, 
 this (Protestantism) is a very cunning doctrine 
 indeed ; although they try to make out that there 
 is nothing abominable in it, they are really foxes 
 of the same hole, and it is really more injurious 
 than the Roman Catholic Doctrine. . . . The 
 Jesus Doctrine and the Doctrine of the Lord of 
 Heaven (Protestantism and Catholicism) are the 
 same in origin and merely branches of one tree. 
 . . . The Roman Catholic religion proselytizes 
 from the middle down to the lowest classes of the 
 inhabitants. The Protestant religion chiefly pros- 
 elytizes those of higher position rather than those 
 of the middle class." 2 Now and then there were 
 assaults on foreigners, missionaries and others. 
 Mrs. Hepburn was once struck a severe blow on 
 the shoulder, aimed at her head, by a ruffian with 
 a club, who came behind her in the dark. 
 
 How then was it possible for the missionaries 
 to reside and work in Japan ? The answer to 
 that question unfolds another of the wonderful 
 stories of romance in missions. After the mas- 
 sacre of Shimabara, the doors of Japan were 
 K closed to all foreigners except Dutch traders, who 
 were tolerated on humiliating conditions. They 
 were confined to a small island in Nagasaki har- 
 
 1 Gary, Japan and Its Regeneration, p. 56. 
 * Osaka Conference Report, p. 34 f.
 
 x 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 143 
 
 bor, one ship each six months was allowed to 
 come, and the traders are said even to have 
 abjured their religion, trampling on the cross, 
 and one of them declaring, "No, I am not a 
 Christian ; I am a Dutchman." For more than 
 two centuries the country remained a hermit land. 
 In 1854, Commodore Perry opened its gates to 
 the world. In July, 1853, he appeared with four 
 American men-of-war in the bay of Yeddo, 
 to present a letter from the President of the 
 United States to the Mikado. He declined to 
 go to Nagasaki to be subjected to the humiliations 
 accepted by the Dutch, and he refused to deliver 
 his letter to any but a noble of proper rank. 
 Then he sailed away, saying he would return the 
 next year for his answer. In February, 1854, he 
 came back with a double number of ships, and 
 on March 3ist, he negotiated a treaty, opening 
 two ports to American trade. " Perry owed his 
 bloodless victory, not only to the display of ex- 
 ternal force, but also to the deep, moral impres- 
 sion made by his whole conduct. Katsu Awa, 
 afterwards Minister of the Japanese Navy, who 
 witnessed the negotiations, most appropriately de- 
 scribed this impression by saying that a man, 
 who, though supported by ships and cannon, 
 acted with such gentleness, kindness, patience, 
 and yet firmness, having force, yet not using it, 
 could not be a barbarian, or if he were, it were 
 better for the Japanese to become barbarians 
 themselves." 1 The work which Perry began was 
 carried forward by Townsend Harris, who had 
 been instructed by the Secretary of State, Mr. 
 Marcy, " to do his best by all judicious measures 
 and kind influence to obtain full toleration of the 
 Christian religion and protection of all mission- 
 
 1 Ritter, A History of Protestant Missions in Japan, 
 p. 6f.
 
 144 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 aries who should go there to propagate it." No 
 formal action by the Japanese Government to this 
 effect could be obtained, but the presence of the 
 missionaries was tolerated in the open ports. 
 
 The great change which made way for Chris- 
 tianity came in an overturning of the whole course 
 of the Japanese Government and history. The 
 old feudal system was overthrown, the Mikado 
 resumed the power which had been exercised by 
 the Shoganate, and the government proceeded to 
 remodel itself on the pattern of European states. 
 All this came about through the revolution of 
 1868, by which Japan turned her face on the 
 past, on the supremacy of Chinese methods and 
 influence, and decided to embrace the ways of 
 the West, which had been so nobly and im- 
 pressively commended by Commodore Perry. 
 Foreigners were invited to Japan to aid in the re- 
 organization of the government, and the intro- 
 duction of Western ideas. One of the first of 
 these was Dr. D. B. McCartee, of the Mission in 
 China, who for five years was professor of law 
 and natural science in what became afterwards 
 the Imperial University at Tokyo. Of the spirit 
 of the students in those days, Dr. McCartee 
 wrote in his reminiscences : "I was usually so 
 fortunate as to get on well with the students, 
 some of whom, owing to the sneers of other for- 
 eigners, were at first disposed to speak disparag- 
 ingly of Christianity, and especially of the 
 doctrine of a personal God ; but the evidence of 
 design, as shown in my lectures on biology, etc., 
 was so convincing to them all, that finally a stu- 
 dent of one of the higher classes told me that all 
 of his class believed in a personal God." In ad- 
 dition to inviting foreigners to Japan, an embassy 
 was sent to the West, the old Japanese law pro- 
 hibiting Japanese from leaving their country
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 145 
 
 having gone the way of the other restrictions of 
 the past. The return of this embassy in 1873, 
 having considered while abroad, among other 
 questions, the expediency of making Christianity 
 the state religion, was accompanied by two other 
 changes which mark the close of this period, 
 1859-1873, and the opening of a new era for 
 missions. On January i, 1873, the Gregorian 
 calendar was adopted, and the Japanese began to 
 date all things Anno Domini, and on February 
 24, 1873, the edicts against Christianity were re- 
 moved from the public notice boards throughout 
 the Empire. 
 
 During the fourteen long years which preceded 
 these happy changes, the missionaries had been 
 quietly and faithfully carrying on their work. Dr. 
 and Mrs. Hepburn had been winning the hearts 
 of all. Mrs. Hepburn was called jocularly by 
 several officers, " The mother of the United States \, 
 Navy." Dr. Hepburn was carrying on his med- ^ 
 ical work, preparing his great dictionary, the first 
 Japanese and English dictionary, which was 
 printed at the Mission Press in Shanghai, and 
 issued in 1867, and translating the Bible. When 
 they first settled at Kanagawa, a few miles from 
 Tokyo, called Yeddo then, they resided in a Bud- 
 dhist temple from which the idols were removed, 
 and where all were welcomed to talk with the 
 missionaries. Mr. William Rankin, for many 
 years treasurer of the Board of Foreign Missions, 
 recalls the circumstances of the first preaching. 
 "On one occasion after his rented temple had 
 been cleansed of its idols and rooms fitted for 
 occupancy, while unpacking and arranging his 
 goods, he received a visit from the officials, who 
 made a demand for his Chinese books, which he 
 refused to deliver up, and would have appealed to 
 the United States Consul, but the demand was
 
 146 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 not pressed. While making their inspection, a 
 picture of the crucifixion was found, which some 
 friend in New York had sent Mrs. Hepburn. 
 This discovery was thought at first a mishap, but 
 instead of confiscating the contraband picture, 
 to the surprise of its owners the men were curi- 
 ous to know the significance of the two thieves, 
 who they were, etc., which led to an explanation 
 of the whole transaction why Jesus was cru- 
 cified, what brought him into the world, and 
 why Christians worshiped him. This was the 
 first Christian sermon ever preached by an 
 American missionary to a Japanese audience. ' ' : 
 Dr. and Mrs. Nevius of China were at first 
 associated with Dr. and Mrs. Hepburn, in open- 
 ing the work in Japan, but after nine months 
 they returned to China, the treaties which closed 
 the Arrow War having opened North China, and 
 the prospect of any speedy improvement of the 
 conditions in Japan being unfavorable. In 1862, 
 Dr. Hepburn removed to Yokohama, and the 
 following year was joined by the Rev. David 
 Thompson, still working in the Mission at Tokyo. 
 In 1868, the Rev. and Mrs. Edward Comes were 
 added to the Mission, but both were instanta- 
 neously killed by the explosion of a steamer in 
 the Bay of Yeddo. Six other missionaries joined 
 the Mission before the end of 1873, and the work 
 was expanded by the occupation of Tokyo as a 
 station, in 1869, by Dr. Thompson. 
 
 The first fruit of the work of the Protestant 
 missionaries in Japan was the baptism of Yano 
 Riu, the teacher of the Rev. J. H. Ballagh of the 
 Dutch Reformed Mission, in October, 1864. 
 The next baptisms were of three men, the leading 
 one an official of high rank named Wakasa 
 
 1 Rankin, Hand Hook and Incidents of Foreign Mis- 
 sions, p. 71.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 147 
 
 Murata, who was the Commander of the Japa- 
 nese troops patroling the harbor of Nagasaki in 
 1854, keeping watch over some English and 
 French men-of-war there. One day he found a 
 . small book floating on the water, which proved 
 to be a Dutch Testament. His curiosity was so 
 aroused when he learned what it was, that he sent 
 a man to Shanghai for a Chinese version which 
 he learned was printed there. He and his 
 brother and some friends at once began to study 
 this, became acquainted soon with Dr. Verbeck, 
 to whom they applied for instruction, and in 1866 
 for baptism, Mr. VVakasa saying to Dr. Verbeck : 
 " Sir, I cannot tell you my feelings when for the 
 first time I read the account of the character and 
 work of Jesus Christ. I had never seen, heard 
 of, or imagined, such a person. I was filled with 
 admiration, overwhelmed with emotion, and taken 
 captive by the record of his nature and life." 
 The first converts of the Presbyterian missionaries 
 were baptized by Dr. Thompson in 1869, two 
 men of good education and talent, and an old 
 woman. 
 
 The first church was organized on March 10, 
 1872, in Dr. Hepburn's dispensary, by Dr. \ 
 Brown of the Dutch Reformed Church. It was 
 called the Church of Christ in Japan, and con- 
 sisted of nine young men and two older, all Japa- 
 nese. They had been baptized by missionaries of 
 the Church of England, the Presbyterian, and the 
 Dutch Reformed Churches, but all united in one 
 organization, and the first article of their rules of 
 government read : " Our Church does not belong 
 to any sect whatever; it believes only in the 
 name of Christ, in whom all are one ; it believes 
 that all who take the Bible as their guide and who 
 diligently study it are the servants of Christ and 
 our brethren. For this reason all believers on
 
 148 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 earth belong to the family of Christ in the bonds 
 of brotherly love." l 
 
 This church was a result of the meetings of the 
 Week of Prayer, January, 1872, which led to a 
 real revival. " After a week or two the Japanese, 
 for the first time in the history of the nation, 
 were on their knees in a Christian prayer meeting, 
 entreating God with great emotion, with the 
 tears streaming down their faces, that he would 
 give his Spirit to Japan as to the early Church 
 and to the people around the apostles. These 
 prayers were characterized by intense earnest- 
 ness. Captains of men-of-war, English and 
 American, who witnessed the scene, wrote to us, 
 ' The prayers of these Japanese take the heart out 
 of us." A missionary wrote that the intensity of 
 feeling was such that he feared often that he 
 would faint away in the meetings. Half a dozen, 
 perhaps, of the Japanese thus publicly engaged in 
 prayer ; but the number present was much larger. 
 This is the record of the first Japanese prayer 
 meeting." 2 
 
 In 1873 the new missionaries who came to 
 Japan doubled the Protestant missionary force, 
 and the work began to expand and advance. 
 The attitude of the influential classes became in- 
 creasingly kindly. There were many who began 
 to regard Christianity with great favor. The 
 Japanese Minister at Washington advised the 
 establishment of complete religious liberty, and 
 wrote home of what he had seen of Protestant 
 Christianity, saying : "The growing influence of 
 the Bible is remarkable and makes itself felt 
 everywhere. The Bible contains an overpower- 
 ing force of liberty and justice, guided by the 
 united strength of wisdom and goodness." 
 
 1 Gary, Japan and Its Regeneration, p. 90. 
 8 Osaka Conference Report ', p. 52 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 149 
 
 Among the Japanese Christians the name that 
 stands out most distinctly is Neesima, a member 
 of the Kumiai, or Congregational churches, and 
 the man who more than any other contributed to 
 the success of the Congregational work, and in 
 his measure to the success of Christianity in gen- 
 eral in Japan. He was born in Tokyo in 1842, 
 the son of a Samurai, or feudal retainer of the 
 lord or daimio of Annaka, a city about seventy- 
 five miles northwest of Tokyo. As a lad he 
 read a history of the United States prepared in 
 Chinese by an American missionary in China, 
 Dr. Bridgman, and at once began to long " to 
 learn American knowledge," as he said. He 
 learned the Dutch language, found a Chinese 
 Bible, and continued to hunger to see the world, 
 and resolved to run away in spite of the penalty 
 of death that hung over every Japanese who left 
 his country. He succeeded in getting away to 
 Hakodate, and from there to Shanghai, where one 
 of Alpheus Hardy's ships, the "Wild Rover," took 
 him on board, and brought him to Boston. Mr. 
 Hardy educated him at Phillips Academy, An- 
 dover, Amherst College, and Andover Seminary. 
 When Neesima heard that the great Christian 
 merchant intended to befriend him, he wrote him 
 the following letter : "I am very thankful to you. 
 You relief me, but I can't show to you my thank- 
 fulness with my words. But I at all times bless 
 to God for you with this prayer : O God ! if 
 thou hast eyes, look upon me. O God ! if thou 
 hast ears, hear my prayer. Let me be civilized 
 with Bible. O Lord ! Thou send thy Spirit 
 upon my Hardy, and let him relief me from sad 
 condition. O Lord ! please ! set thy eyes upon my 
 Hardy, and keep out him from illness and tempta- 
 tion. Your obedient servant, Joseph Neesima." V 
 1 Hardy, Life of Neesima, p. 12.
 
 150 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 When Iwakura's embassy came to America in 
 1871, Mori, the Japanese Minister in Washington, 
 summoned Neesima to be the interpreter of Mr. 
 Tanaka, the Commissioner of Education. He 
 agreed to act only on terms that preserved his 
 independence and condoned his leaving Japan 
 when it was criminal to do so, and he bore him- 
 self during his connection with the embassy as a 
 thorough Christian man, exerting a powerful in- 
 fluence on the minds of its members. He left its 
 service as soon as he could. " I would rather 
 preach truth which is in Christ Jesus with the 
 bread of affliction, than to do any other things 
 with the earthly luxuries, pleasures and honors." 
 In 1874 he returned to Japan, his heart and mind 
 full of the project of a Christian College, which he 
 finally realized in the Doshisha, of which he was 
 president until his death in 1890. A modest man 
 of moderate ability, neither learned, eloquent nor 
 masterful, he accomplished his work and exerted 
 his mighty influence because of his true, Christ- 
 like heart, his utter unselfishness and overflowing 
 love. " On one occasion, when a rebellious 
 spirit calling for severe discipline was manifested 
 among the students, he acquiesced in the inflic- 
 tion of the penalties voted by the Faculty, but, 
 in the presence of the school assembled in the 
 chapel, declared with deep emotion that the ex- 
 istence of this spirit was proof of a defective gov- 
 ernment, for which he was responsible and for 
 which, therefore, he also deserved punishment; 
 and taking a cane proceeded to strike his own 
 hand with a force that brought tears and indignant 
 protests from the entire school." l Neesima was 
 proof that Japanese Christianity was not merely 
 ethical or intellectual or political, but as genuine 
 and real as the Christianity of any people or any 
 1 Hardy, Life of Neesima, p. 346 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 151 
 
 age. He commanded the respect of everyone, and 
 when he died, his students bore his body through 
 a heavy rain to the grave, and a procession a mile 
 and a half long followed it. While it still lay in 
 his house, "the chief judge of the Kyoto court 
 came in, a pleasant gentleman, always ready to 
 say something amusing," related a Japanese 
 friend. "He entered the house very softly, and 
 before passing into the room where the casket 
 was, took off his outer garment, so that I saw he 
 wore his ceremonial dress. He came in very 
 gently and made a most profound bow ; then, as 
 if speaking to a live person, he said : ' Mr. 
 Neesima, while you were living I was much in- 
 debted to you. I am sorry I have not accom- 
 plished more. In the future I will try to do 
 better : ' and, shedding tears like a child, he left 
 the room." l 
 
 In the Presbyterian Missions the work grew 
 steadily. Dr. Thompson had been conducting 
 Bible and other classes in his home, and in 1874, 
 organized a church in Tokyo, which from the be- 
 ginning was full of life and activity. Little groups 
 of Christians went out from this church and the 
 church at Yokohama, and the gospel spread 
 through city and country. The girls' school, 
 Graham Seminary, was enlarged, and a number 
 of young men applied for preparation for the min- 
 istry. In 1877, a great step was taken in the or- 
 ganization of a United Church of Christ in 
 Japan, which embraces now all the churches 
 established by the Missions of the Presbyterian 
 Churches, North and South, of the United 
 States, and of the United Presbyterian Church of 
 Scotland, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 
 the Dutch and German Reformed Churches. It 
 is now the strongest Protestant Church in Japan. 
 
 1 Hardy, Life of Neesima, p. 328 f.
 
 152 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 It was hoped for a time that other Churches 
 would join in the movement, but the effort to 
 secure their cooperation failed. At the same 
 time, a Union Theological School was formed, 
 and in 1883 a Union College. In June, 1886, 
 these were combined, and called the Meiji 
 Gakuin, or " College of the Era of Enlightened 
 Peace." 
 
 In 1876 the constant advance of enlightened 
 sentiment was well illustrated by the institu- 
 tion of the Christian Sunday, which made the 
 observance of the day far easier for the converts. 
 There were, of course, great obstacles to be over- 
 come, among them the innate skepticism of the 
 people. One missionary tells of a baptized 
 Japanese who confessed to him that he and a 
 friend had often wondered at the missionary's 
 cleverness in making it appear in his preaching 
 that he believed what he said. Then when his 
 friend was converted and became an evangelist, 
 he could not help laughing aloud when he 
 noticed, as he thought, the same thing in him. But 
 Christianity had triumphed over his skeptical sus- 
 picion, and now he believed, and believed that men 
 believed. 
 
 So Christianity spread quietly, until about 1883, 
 when a great movement set in. An intemperate 
 zeal for foreign things arose, many of the people, 
 men and women, adopting foreign dress, dancing, 
 amusements, etc., and the current of thought, in 
 politics and religion, turning in the same direc- 
 tion more violently. Christian literature was in 
 immense demand, missionary meetings were 
 crowded, great revivals broke out, the missionaries 
 were thronged. Great churches grew up, as in 
 Kochi, where the people hung on the missionary, 
 and expected Dr. Knox to know everything, from 
 theology to the methods of steel manufacture. It
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 153 
 
 was not an unreal movement, however. In some 
 meetings the sense of sin was so keen that the 
 people cried out with tears, so that the non- 
 Christians said, "The Christians chastise their 
 church members cruelly." The converts grew 
 by thousands. The mission schools were over- 
 run. Political influence cooperated with the 
 genuine religious impulse. Mr. Fukazavva, one 
 of the leading men of the country, said, in 1885 : 
 "Like most of my countrymen I am personally 
 indifferent to religious affairs. In fact I do not 
 possess, as we are accustomed to say, the proper 
 sense for religion ; and because 1 do not possess 
 it, I have never engaged in any discussion with 
 regard to the comparative excellence of this or of 
 that faith. I have never recommended any kind 
 of religion, but from a political point of view I 
 admit that the religion of the West is at the pres- 
 ent moment of great importance to Japan. . . . 
 That which regulates the conscience of man and, 
 therefore, prevents unlawful acts is undoubtedly 
 religion, and I look upon it as the law and the 
 authority of the soul. I once said that if no mis- 
 sionaries had ever come to our country, the dis- 
 soluteness and wantonness of foreigners would 
 have come to be much greater, and our relations 
 to foreigners would not be what they now are. . . . 
 I think from this may be seen that the influence of 
 the religion of the West is great and good." He 
 wrote in his paper, they//'/ Shimpo, the same year : 
 " Would it not then be of great immediate advan- 
 tage if we should give Christianity a place among 
 the religions which we profess ? We cannot per- 
 suade Shintoists to change their views, but we can 
 tell them that they should look at the ascendency 
 of Christianity in our land as an event lying in 
 the natural course of things, and that for the sake 
 of their country, they ought to refrain from mak-
 
 154 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 ing any disturbance whatever. We do not pro- 
 pose that the majority of our people should be- 
 come Christians ; a small percentage would suf- 
 fice. All that is necessary is to accept the name 
 of a Christian country." 1 The Christian move- 
 ment spread so rapidly that the missionaries be- 
 gan to cherish the hope of winning the whole 
 country. The Presbyterian and Reformed Mis- 
 sions issued an appeal for reinforcements, and 
 said that the course of sending at once sufficient 
 help " will go far toward ending our work in the 
 Empire. By this it is not meant that the close of 
 the century will see all knowing the Lord, from 
 the least to the greatest. But it does mean that 
 there is good reason to hope that a vigorous aggres- 
 sive church may then be planted in all parts of 
 the land. It means that foreign missions may 
 then give way to home missions. It means that so 
 far as we are concerned, the gospel of the King- 
 dom will have been preached as a witness in 
 Japan. And when that is done the Church at 
 home will be free to go elsewhere." And Pro- 
 fessor Basil Chamberlain, of the Imperial Uni- 
 versity, said in 1890: "To those who can look 
 back thirty years, or even only twenty years, 
 the change in the position of Christianity in, 
 Japan is most striking, indeed well-nigh incred- 
 ible. Then it was perilous for a Japanese to 
 confess Jesus. Now such confession is rather 
 fashionable than otherwise. Then it was hard 
 work for a missionary to obtain a native teacher. 
 Now there are hundreds of ordained and unor- 
 dained native preachers and teachers of Chris- 
 tianity. The old proclamation, which since A. D. 
 1638, had prohibited the religion of Jesus as 
 'a corrupt sect,' was still posted on the notice 
 boards of the public thoroughfares as late as 1873. 
 1 Ritter, History of Protestant Missions, pp. 128-130.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 155 
 
 The government now openly tolerates the build- 
 ing of churches and the performance of Christian 
 funeral rites, though we are not aware of the old 
 antichristian laws having been formally repealed. 
 The danger is now, not from persecution, but 
 from worldly-minded favor. Some of the leaders 
 of Japanese thought, while professing themselves 
 personally indifferent to all religions, have cold- 
 bloodedly advocated the adoption of Christianity 
 as a school of morals and music, and as likely to 
 be advantageous in political negotiations with the 
 powers of the West. To make all Japan Chris- 
 tian by edict some fine morning, is not on the 
 programme of the Japanese statesmen of the hour. 
 But that something of the kind should happen 
 within the next twenty years, is not nearly so un- 
 likely as many things that have actually happened 
 in this land of realized improbabilities." l 
 
 These hopes, however, were not realized. Our 
 missionaries pressed out earnestly in their work. 
 The two girls' schools in Tokyo were combined 
 in 1890 under the name of Joshi Gakuin. The 
 work spread to the Hokkaido, the northern island. 
 Mr. Winn occupied Kanazawa on the West Coast 
 in 1879. Osaka, the great manufacturing city, 
 was entered in 1881. Hiroshima in 1887, Kyoto 
 in 1890, Yamaguchi and Fukui in 1891, and the 
 Mission became two missions, one embracing 
 Tokyo, Yokohama, the districts dependent on 
 them, and the Hokkaido, and the other, the 
 west and south of Honda, the main island, and 
 the north shore of Kiushiu, the southern island. 
 Girls' schools, primary schools, preaching places, 
 grew up through the missions, but about 1890 
 the great wave of popular interest began to sub- 
 side. The people came to feel that they had 
 been absorbing Western ways with an immoder- 
 1 Things Japanese, p. 240 f.
 
 156 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 ate zeal. Irritation was caused by the unwilling- 
 ness of Western powers to revise their treaties and 
 yield their rights of extra-territoriality. The na- 
 tionalist spirit, fostered by the conservative ele- 
 ments, Buddhist and Shintoist, became dominant. 
 The Church felt the influence of it. Relations 
 between native preachers and missionaries became 
 less cordial. Doctrinal carelessness, or the in- 
 clination to patch up some system that would 
 satisfy the demands of the nationalist, anti-foreign 
 spirit crept into the churches. Rationalism and 
 secularism were included among other Western 
 imports. Buddhism improved the opportunity to 
 absorb as much as possible of Christian methods 
 and forms, and to adapt itself to the demands of 
 agnostics or mere moralists, and also to exalt it- 
 self as the national religion. In consequence, a 
 great reaction set in at the very time that Japan 
 passed under a parliamentary government and a 
 constitution which declared at last: "Japanese 
 subjects shall within limits not prejudicial to 
 peace and order, and not antagonistic to their 
 duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious be- 
 lief." The nationalist spirit that had arisen pre- 
 vented some of the beneficial results which would 
 otherwise have flowed from this formal declara- 
 tion of religious, liberty. Many small ways have 
 been found for hindering the progress of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 After the China and Japan War this anti- 
 foreign feeling began to subside. In 1899 re- 
 vised treaties went into effect giving Japan full 
 recognition as a state on equality with Western 
 nations, so that the irritating influences of the 
 sense of humiliation were removed, and the praise 
 awarded Japan for her part in the expedition for 
 the relief of Peking, combined with the steady 
 good sense of her leading statesmen to restore a
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 157 
 
 fairer and more kindly spirit toward the West. 
 There are still many alternations of public feeling 
 in Japan as a whole, and there are many local- 
 ities where Christianity meets with implacable 
 opposition ; but the era of steady, quiet work has 
 begun, in which it is hoped that there will be no 
 eddying tide of great hostility or opposition. The 
 chief foe now in Japan is the secular, commercial, 
 materialistic spirit. The government educational 
 system, as in India, is turning out men who have 
 lost their old faith, and have no new faith in its 
 stead. In Tokyo I asked some of the leading 
 men of the Church of Christ, several years ago, 
 what the present spirit of the Japanese was, and 
 all said : " Industrialism is the predominant trait 
 of the day. The aristocracy of money is the 
 and highest aristocracy. And national pride, a 
 false sense of honor as individuals and as a nation. 
 This has been greatly enlarged by the war with 
 China, but its real source was in Confucianism, 
 and it was fostered under the feudal system for-' 
 centuries. Commercialism and secularism on out 
 hand, nationalism and patriotism on the other- 
 these are the springs of Japan's present life." 
 
 What is best in Japan has been the product of 
 Christianity, and no missionaries have done more 
 in bringing this good to Japan than those coop- 
 erating with the Church of Christ. Many mem- 
 bers of this Church have served in public office, 
 besides being faithful in Christian work. The 
 president of the Diet, Kataoka Kenkichi, is an el- 
 der in a Presbyterian church, and when he took 
 office, gathered his friends for a prayer meeting in 
 his behalf, that he might be faithful in all his 
 work as a Christian man. Rear Admiral Serata 
 who has just died was a devoted member of the 
 Church of Christ. The recent bill prohibiting the 
 smoking of tobacco by persons under the age of
 
 158 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 eighteen, was introduced and passed through the 
 Diet by the Hon . Sho Nemoto, a member of the 
 Methodist Church. 
 
 In the matter of the position of woman, the 
 missions have been exerting great influence. The 
 ideas regarding woman's position that have pre- 
 vailed in Japan, are shown in the fact that one 
 out of three marriages issues in a divorce, and in 
 these quotations from The Great Learning for 
 Woman, a Japanese moral treatise: "The 
 only qualities that befit a woman are gentle 
 obedience, charity, mercy and quietness. . . . 
 A woman has no particular end. She must look 
 to her husband as her lord and master, serve him 
 with all worship and reverence, not despising or 
 thinking lightly of him. The great lifelong duty 
 of woman is obedience. . . . Such is the stu- 
 pidity of her character that it is incumbent on 
 her, in every particular, to distrust herself and to 
 obey her husband. We are told that it was the 
 custom of the ancients, on the birth of a female 
 child to let it lie on the floor for the space of three 
 days. Even in this may be seen the likening of 
 the man to heaven and of the woman to earth ; 
 and the custom should teach a woman how nec- 
 essary it is for her in everything to yield to her 
 husband the first, and to be herself content with 
 the second, place ; to avoid pride, even if there be 
 in her actions aught deserving praise; and, on the 
 other hand, if she transgress in aught and incur 
 blame, to wend her way through the difficulty and 
 amend the fault, and so conduct herself as not 
 again to lay herself open to censure ; to endure 
 without anger and indignation the jeers of others, 
 suffering such things with patience and humility." 
 Christianity has given woman a new place, and 
 introduced into Japan the Christian idea of the 
 
 1 Chamberlain, Things Japanese, p. 375.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN 159 
 
 home. The women's and girls' schools are send- 
 ing out annually scores of women to set up such 
 homes and the work for women is bringing them 
 new life and mental quickening. 
 
 In 1888, the translation of the Bible into Jap- 
 anese was completed. It had been begun in 
 1872, and under the chairmanship of Dr. Hep- 
 burn missionaries of various churches, including 
 the Church of England, had worked harmoniously 
 and with great success. In celebrating the com- 
 pletion of the task and his own devoted work on 
 it of nearly sixteen years, Dr. Hepburn took the 
 Old Testament in one hand and the New Testa- 
 ment, which had been completed in 1880, in the 
 other, and placing them reverently together laid 
 them down, " a complete Bible," adding, "What 
 more precious gift more precious than moun- 
 tains of silver and gold could the Christian na- 
 tions of the West offer to this nation ? May this 
 sacred book become to the Japanese what it has 
 come to be for the people of the West, a source of 
 life, a messenger of joy and peace, the foundation 
 of a true civilization and of social and political 
 prosperity and greatness." l 
 
 The missionaries have not completed their task 
 in Japan before the twentieth century, as some at 
 one time almost believed they would do. But 
 they have done much. As a professor in the 
 Imperial University remarked not long ago, to one 
 of his colleagues: "In sentiment we are all 
 Christians." That is not true, but the fact that 
 it was said marks the great work missions have 
 helped to do. A great deal more remains to be 
 done. Nine-tenths of the 40,000,000 of Japan 
 are still ignorant of Christianity, millions of them 
 as ignorant as the Chinese. And they must learn. 
 They are "a nation of hero worshipers, un- 
 1 Ritter, A History of Protestant Missions, p. 227.
 
 l6o PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 discriminating, perhaps, at times in the objects of 
 their worship, but always accessible to the high- 
 est forms of emotion." Our Lord Jesus Christ 
 must be made the object of that worship, and 
 King in reality over the sentiments, the wills, the 
 minds, and all the life of the one non-Christian 
 people who have been accorded a place among 
 the nations which call themselves Christian. 
 Would that the name were deserved, so mani- 
 festly deserved that the Japanese could no longer 
 say what one of their moralists recently said, 
 " The practice of the uncivilized, who have no re- 
 spect for foreign property and foreign lives, and 
 that of the highly civilized, who feel at liberty to 
 violate all the maxims of home morality in deal- 
 ing with alien races, occupy the same position," 
 and that their papers would not lament that, " there 
 is no such thing as a Christian country anywhere. 
 When we come to politics and to national stand- 
 ards of morals the distinction between Christians 
 and non-Christians is lost. Christian families there 
 are and perhaps a few Christian villages here and 
 there, but Christian countries and Christian gov- 
 ernments do not exist anywhere." l 
 
 1 Tokyo Maishu Shinshi, quoted in Japan Weekly 
 Mail, Oct. 13, 1900.
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 
 
 161
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 
 
 THE Korea Mission is one of the youngest mis- 
 sions of the Board. Several missions have been 
 organized since its institution, but with the ex- 
 ception of the Philippines they were in fields 
 previously occupied. Yet in none of the mis- 
 sions old or young, is the work meeting with more 
 marked success, or are the prospects for the future 
 more bright. 
 
 Our first missionary, H. N. Allen, M. D., now 
 the Minister of the United States to Korea, en- 
 tered the field in 1884, and so began resident 
 Protestant mission work. The Rev. John Ross, 
 of Manchuria, had visited the Korean frontier in 
 1873, and had subsequently translated portions 
 of the Gospel of Luke, and then the whole New 
 Testament, into Korean, and had even visited the 
 valleys of the extreme north of the country, where 
 many were found ready to confess Christ and to 
 receive baptism. 
 
 Long before these efforts, however, the Roman 
 Catholic missionaries had toiled and striven, re- 
 joiced in success and gladly met persecution, 
 among the Koreans. And the way in which 
 thousands of Catholic Koreans met death rather 
 than surrender their faith so many of them fall- 
 ing on the banks of the river Han in the great 
 martyrdom of 1866 that it ran red to the sea, is 
 proof enough of the worthy character of the 
 people. 
 
 163
 
 164 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 In every incident of its history the Korea Mis- 
 sion has been one of the most interesting missions 
 of our Church. It was so in its establishment. 
 A Korean of high rank, named Rijutei, was sent 
 to Japan about 1880, to represent his government. 
 He proved a good deal of a failure as a Christian, 
 later, but in Japan was deeply interested in Chris- 
 tianity, and served as a "Man of Macedon " to 
 awaken American Christians to an interest in 
 Korea. In consequence, Dr. H. N. Allen, then 
 a member of the Central China Mission, was 
 transferred to Korea. Christianity was still a 
 forbidden religion, but when Dr. Allen arrived 
 in September, 1884, General Foote, the United 
 States Minister, appointed him physician to the 
 Legation, which assured his position. In Decem- 
 ber, 1884, an insurrection broke out in Seoul. 
 Six Koreans were murdered at an official dinner 
 party, and the King's nephew, Prince Min Yong 
 Ik, who had been Korean Minister to the United 
 States, was wounded. The native doctors wished 
 to treat the wounds by pouring wax into them, 
 and were astonished at Dr. Allen's skill in wash- 
 ing them out and sewing them up. The Prince 
 recovered, and Dr. Allen's influence was un- 
 bounded. The King made him court physician, 
 and fitted up a government hospital which was 
 placed under his care. Dr. Herron and Dr. Un- 
 derwood soon joined Dr. Allen, and thanks to 
 their tactful work and the work of their later as- 
 sociates, the mission work has spread throughout 
 the country with small impediment. 
 
 For some years the work grew slowly. But it 
 was a new field, and compared with the growth 
 in China, where Morrison waited seven years for 
 the first convert, the progress was extraordinary 
 even before the China-Japan war. Since then, 
 the work has advanced by leaps and bounds. In
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 165 
 
 1894 there were 141 communicants, fourteen 
 only having been added during the preceding 
 year. Then came the furrowing, renovating in- 
 fluence of the war, and now, with only a few 
 years' work there are more than 300 congregations 
 and 3,000 communicants with scores of church 
 buildings, the great majority of which are pro- 
 vided by the people with no aid from the Mission. 
 It would give an incorrect idea to say that there 
 are a hundred native teachers, for almost all the 
 Christians have been trained to regard each dis- 
 ciple of Christ as of necessity a worker for Christ 
 and for men. Christianity has laid powerful 
 hold upon the country. Instead of calling 
 missionaries and all foreigners "devils," as in 
 interior China, the Koreans use to the missionaries 
 words of the highest respect, and their bearing in 
 the country leaves nothing to be asked in the way 
 of kindness and courtesy. Christians are viewed 
 with remarkable confidence and regard, instead 
 of with distrust and hate. Even in the south, 
 where the direct results have been scanty, this 
 change has been marked. "Six years ago," one 
 of the native Christians at Fusan told us, "I 
 came down through this province of Kiung Sang 
 with Dr. Hardie. We could not get meals at the 
 inns, and when we preached we met a perfect 
 storm of derision. Now, we can get into the inns 
 anywhere, and derision has almost wholly disap- 
 peared." In the north the Church has spread 
 and penetrated far and wide. We visited one 
 day a large and well-furnished temple of the 
 Chinese god of war, in the city of Pyeng Yang. 
 The gates were closed and locked, and the pave- 
 ments were overgrown with grass. At last a 
 keeper who said he was there only because it was 
 a cheap place to lodge, let us in and showed us 
 the forsaken shrines and the unworshiped gods.
 
 1 66 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 "Why is this?" we inquired. "Where are the 
 worshipers?" "Oh," said the man, "there 
 are so many people who believe in this Jesus 
 doctrine that no one comes here any more." 
 
 There are now four stations, Seoul, Pyeng 
 Yang, Fusan, and Taiku. Gensan was occupied 
 but has been transferred to the Canadian Presby- 
 terians. Thus far the two most fruitful stations 
 have been Seoul and Pyeng Yang. Seoul is the 
 capital, a city of 300,000 population, situated on 
 the Han River, about twenty-five miles from 
 Chemulpo on the sea. A railroad now connects 
 the two places. It would be hard to find a more 
 picturesque city than Seoul, with its broad streets 
 and "narrow alleys, its rice-thatched and tile-roofed 
 houses, half a dozen royal palaces, and the great 
 city walls running straight up the red mountains 
 which encircle the city. There are three churches, 
 besides the hospital, schools, dispensaries, book- 
 rooms, and all the evangelistic work. 
 
 Mr. Gifford tells, in Every Day Life in Korea, 
 how the first church was built. " Deacon Hong, 
 being gifted with mechanical ability, was put in 
 charge of the construction ; while Deacon Ye and 
 I undertook to raise the subscriptions. We can- 
 vassed every member of the church, then the 
 members of two or three little churches that had 
 recently swarmed into other parts of the city, then 
 a couple of Christian officials whom we knew. 
 The same was done among the women of the 
 church. But to carry the plan through it was 
 absolutely necessary that the Korean men in the 
 church should contribute work. But this was 
 hard for many of them, as they considered them- 
 selves to belong to the gentleman class, and 
 thought they would lower themselves should they 
 labor with their hands. So, by way of example, 
 I put on my old clothes and worked three after-
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 167 
 
 noons at various forms of coolie work. One day 
 it was shoveling dirt in grading the church site. 
 A Korean shovel, you know, consists of an iron- 
 shod wooden spade, with a handle six feet long. 
 Into its wooden sides are bored holes, and two 
 long straw ropes are inserted. Then three or 
 more men take hold of the two ropes and the 
 shovel handle, and while the man at the handle 
 guides the operations, they vigorously heave the 
 dirt. Another day the work was the braiding 
 of the straw ropes. The third day we pounded 
 broken tiles and stones into the holes into which 
 the foundation stones to support the wooden .pil- 
 lars were to be inserted. This was done with a 
 bowlder to which were attached a dozen straw 
 ropes. Men and boys took hold of the ropes and 
 straightened out as in tossing with a blanket ; at 
 a signal they relaxed, and the stone fell like a 
 trip hammer. Koreans turn this work into a 
 frolic, by heaving the stone in time to the chant- 
 ing of a chorus that is sung responsively to the 
 solo singing, usually improvised, of one of their 
 number. The men of the church took hold of 
 the work in a very gratifying manner, as did the 
 small boys in the school, who, after school hours, 
 helped in all ways possible to them, for instance, 
 scouring the streets of the city for broken tiles 
 and stones. When skilled labor was required, 
 Mr. Hong called in a carpenter and the men 
 worked under his instructions." Apart from the 
 first lesson of the gospel about sin, that church 
 teaches the Koreans a scarcely less important 
 lesson about work. 
 
 In 1895 cholera appeared in Seoul and played 
 fearful havoc among the people. Special hos- 
 pitals were opened, and the missionaries instead 
 of fleeing, gave themselves to the work of caring 
 for the victims. The people were very favorably
 
 1 68 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 impressed. The King sent $300 to the hospital, 
 and the Minister of Foreign Affairs a testimonial 
 of thanks. Meanwhile the women doctors had 
 done many services to the Queen, and Mrs. Un- 
 derwood, M. D., had acted as physician for the 
 ladies of the court. No foreigners have been so 
 trusted and respected by the King or loved by 
 the people. 
 
 The work at Pyeng Yang which Mrs. Bishop, 
 the traveler, said was the most impressive mission 
 work she had seen in any part of the world, has 
 developed since the war between China and 
 Japan. For several years before that mission- 
 aries had visited the place, and in 1893 had suc- 
 ceeded in buying a house, but when they at- 
 tempted to occupy it, the authorities drove them 
 out and threw some of the native Christians into 
 prison. Although tortured and threatened with 
 death unless they renounced Christ, they stood 
 firm, witnessing most impressively to the power 
 of the gospel. Their release was secured, how- 
 ever, and Mr. Moffett's presence helped to 
 strengthen their faith. When the war broke out 
 the Chinese army poured into Pyeng Yang, and 
 after staying as long as he could accomplish any 
 good Mr. Moffett returned to Seoul at the en- 
 treaty of the native Christians themselves. The 
 battle between the Japanese and Chinese armies 
 nearly ruined Pyeng Yang. The wrecks of 
 houses and frequent bare spaces testify still to 
 the destruction that was wrought; but on the 
 other hand, the exclusive conceit and bigotry of 
 the people, which made Pyeng Yang one of the 
 hardest fields in Korea, was broken, too. 
 
 In 1900 a new church was built at Pyeng Yang 
 which will seat 1,200 or more, and which on com- 
 munion Sundays is crowded to the doors. The 
 people themselves gave a great part of the money
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 169 
 
 and surrounding congregations contributed their 
 labor with great joy. 
 
 The examination of one of the candidates for 
 admission, not to the Church but to the cate- 
 chumenate, a probationary stage, which was held 
 on the afternoon preceding this communion, will 
 show both the care of the workers to admit only 
 really converted men, and also the spirit of the 
 inquirers. Many of the questions were put to 
 the catechumen, whose name was Yen, by the 
 native leaders themselves: "Why have you a 
 mind to be baptized?" The candidate, who 
 was evidently under some feeling, replied, 
 "Formerly I did not know Christ; now I be- 
 lieve in him." "Why?" "On account of 
 my many sins. I have sinned much." "What 
 kind of sins? " "I know scarcely any sins that 
 I have not committed." "What ones?" asked 
 Ye, a native leader of great capacity and penetra- 
 tion. "I have worshiped spirits. I did not 
 know that I was sinning before I heard of Jesus. 
 I heard his words that the people of the world 
 are sinners, and that he had come to stand in 
 sinners' stead. I learned this from a man named 
 Chu." "Who is Jesus?" "The Son of God. 
 The Bible taught me this, and that he had come 
 and died and lived again." " Has Christ borne 
 your old sins?" "Yes, he has." "If you 
 died before baptism would you go to heaven ?" 
 1 ' Yes. " "Is baptism not useless, then ? " "It 
 is a sign of union with Christ, showing that I am 
 a part of the body of Christ." " Do you observe 
 the Sabbath ? " "I have done so since I became 
 a catechumen." "Why?" "Because it is a 
 holy day." " What is your business? " " I am 
 a go-between or middleman." " Fair-days come 
 on each fifth day. When they fall on Sunday do 
 you still observe the day ? " " Yes ; I have done
 
 1 70 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 so for seven months." "Do you love Jesus ?" 
 "Yes; he saved me and will give me new life." 
 " Do you love your wife and children ? " " Yes. 
 We used to fight. I got drunk in those days. 
 Now I love her and I love Jesus more than all." 
 "Do you understand the Lord's Supper? " "I 
 think so. It is kept so as not to forget Jesus. 
 The eating and drinking are marks of our being 
 joined to Christ." "Do you still sin?" "I 
 cannot help doing wrong daily, but I pray to God 
 when I do." " Does God hear you for the good- 
 ness of your praying ? Have you any merit ? ' ' 
 " No. He does it for Christ's sake. As for 
 merit, I have not the slightest little bit." " How 
 do you know you are forgiven?" "The Bible 
 says that if we confess, we are forgiven. I be- 
 lieve it." "Why do you believe the Bible?" 
 "It is the word of God." "How do you 
 know?" "The story of the shepherds and the 
 coming of the wise men make me think that it is 
 true." "Have you ever had a concubine?" 
 "No." "Do you drink?" "I was a hard 
 drinker, but not now. This body is not mine. 
 If I abuse it, I shall receive eternal punishment." 
 " Do you speak the truth ? " "I have lied even 
 while I was a catechumen, about the price of 
 goods so as to make a ' squeeze,' but I have quit. 
 It is hard in my business ; but I cannot lie and be 
 Christ's disciple." "Tell of your experience as 
 a catechumen." "Well, other middlemen will 
 not have anything to do with me, now that I have 
 become a Christian. I am able to read the Bible 
 in both Chinese and Korean, and since becoming 
 a catechumen I have been going to the church 
 every night, where a number of us meet and read. 
 I have preached to my wife and children, but 
 only my wife and one son have come yet to be- 
 lieve and to do." " What is your idea of God ? "
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 171 
 
 "I know that he is the very high Spirit." 
 "Where is he?" "There is not one place 
 where he is not." " Has God power? " " Yes. 
 He has power to deliver us from wicked devils." 
 " Do these tempt you much ? " " Yes ; if I don't 
 keep reading the Bible I am constantly tempted 
 to gamble, to commit adultery, etc." "Have 
 you given up sacrifices?" asked Ye. "Yes." 
 " What do you do on the day of ancestral wor- 
 ship?" "I go to the church on that day." 
 "Can Christ keep you from sin?" "Yes, if I 
 trust him with all my strength." " But will he 
 continue to do what he has done?" "Can I 
 think otherwise of him?" was the rejoinder. 
 " You can't see the Lord," said Kim ; " how do 
 you know all this?" "I believe, therefore I 
 know." "I fear," said Mr. Lee, "that in 
 about six months you will quit this business." 
 The man looked up, sharply. " Not so," he said. 
 " Do you know," the questioner resumed, " that 
 Jesus loves you?" "If he had not loved me, 
 he would not have died for me. From the time 
 he died until now I know that his love was be- 
 stowed on me." "But how do you know," I 
 asked, "that Jesus died for Koreans ? was it not 
 for Europeans only?" "No," he said, keenly; 
 " he died for the whole world," as though I had 
 suggested depriving him of his own. " We have 
 asked a great many questions now," said Ye, as 
 though satisfied. I told the man, then, that we 
 were glad to welcome him into the great society 
 of our Saviour, made up of millions from every 
 land, and that though we should never see him 
 again here we should meet him above at the re- 
 union eternal. "That is a thankful word," he 
 replied as with glowing face he passed out, and 
 Chung, one of the leaders, added : "I never 
 thought before of that not meeting, and then
 
 172 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 meeting above. That was a good word. I am 
 glad." Then the meeting closed with Ye's call- 
 ing the attention of the others to a passage he 
 had found in the thirty-first chapter of Exodus 
 that was stronger on the Sabbath, he thought, 
 than anything in the New Testament. And we 
 went out thinking of the session meeting in Drum- 
 tochty and its parallel in Pyeng Yang. 
 
 The native name of Korea is Chosen, the Land 
 of Morning Calm. And it is a placid, ancient 
 country. Its history runs back nearly as far as 
 China's, and it has as many curious ways. There 
 is an odd poem by Captain Bostvvick of the United 
 States Steamship "Palos," who was stationed off 
 Chemulpo too long, and whose memories accord- 
 ingly are not of the pleasantest, which describes 
 many of the curious features of the country and 
 people : 
 
 " There's a singular country far over the seas, 
 
 Which is known to the world as Korea, 
 Where there's nothing to charm and nothing to please, 
 
 And of cleanliness not an idea. 
 Where a lucid description of persons and things 
 
 Quite baffles the readiest pen, 
 And stirs up strange qualms in the poet who sings 
 
 Of that far away land of Chosen. 
 
 " Where the houses they live in are mostly of dirt, 
 
 With a tumble-down roof made of thatch ; 
 Where soap is unknown, it is safe to assert, 
 
 And where vermin in myriads hatch ; 
 Where the streets are all reeking with odors more rife 
 
 Than the smells from a hyena's den : 
 One visit is surely enough for one life, 
 
 In that far away land of Chosen. 
 
 " Where the garments are made on a very queer plan, 
 
 And are something quite out of the common ; 
 Where women wear pantaloons just like a man, 
 And men braid their hair like a woman.
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 173 
 
 The married man gathers his hair at the top 
 
 In a knot much resembling a wen, 
 The female coift'ure is a huge ugly mop, 
 
 In that far away land of Chosen. 
 
 " Where the hats have a crown much too small for the 
 
 head, 
 
 While the brim measures several feet round, 
 Where the principal fire is under the bed, 
 And the chimney a hole in the ground. 
 Where the coolies can't work without singing a song, 
 
 And must stop for a rest now and then, 
 While they snatch a few whiffs from a pipe three feet 
 
 long, 
 In that far away land of Chosen. 
 
 " Where men of war fresh from some pleasanter clime 
 
 Look in for a few days or so, 
 Where the ' Palos ' alas ! spends the most of her time 
 
 In the harbor about Chemulpo. 
 Where those who escape never care to return 
 
 To that ' Morning Calm ' country again, 
 Where there's nothing on earth that can cause one to 
 
 yearn 
 For that far away land of Chosen." 
 
 It is a very sleepy, un progressive land. The 
 government is an absolute monarchy, and such a 
 thing as official honesty is almost as rare as in 
 Persia. Indeed, the governments of the two 
 lands are not unlike, save that there is no tyran- 
 nical priesthood in Korea, and that the nature of 
 the people is milder than the nature of the people 
 nourished under Islam. And yet, there is vigor 
 in the Koreans, too. "I saw a young man," 
 says Mr. GifTord, "with a stone in his hand, chase 
 another man all over a village one night, because 
 the latter, belonging to a lower social grade than 
 he, had dared to smoke a pipe in his presence." 
 And he speaks also of the native stone fights : 
 "At a certain time each spring the Koreans in-
 
 174 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 dulge in stone fights, a rather rough kind of 
 sport. Two sides face each other with leaders 
 wearing padded hats and carrying clubs. These 
 skirmish awhile with an occasional interchange of 
 blows, and then the two sides rain stones at each 
 other, much like a snowball fight. Presently, 
 with a mighty roar, one side begins to drive the 
 other back. Spectators catch the enthusiasm and 
 join the attacking force. The fun waxes fast and 
 furious so furious that not infrequently some one 
 is maimed or killed. Nothing that I have 
 seen in Korea has given rne such an impression 
 of the latent force and fire in the usually apathetic 
 Korean as this somewhat brutal sport." 1 
 
 And Christianity has touched the people and 
 wakened them from their sloth, and turned these 
 elements of real vigor in them into useful, earnest 
 energy. It is seen in the whole-souled patriotism 
 of the Christians. 
 
 The reasons for this are manifold. One is that 
 Christianity has quickened and vivified the minds 
 of the people and given them boldness of speech, 
 so that they now see the abuses of the past and 
 the glory of independence, and are able to reason 
 dauntlessly about such things. Another is that 
 Christianity is essentially an emancipating reli- 
 gion, and leads inevitably to the desire for free 
 government and pure and popular institutions. 
 Yet another is that the Catholics have always 
 erred in the want of patriotism, and, indeed, in 
 being guilty of downright treason to Korea. 
 Coming out into Protestant enlightenment just at 
 the time that Korea was being roughly hustled by 
 Japan into the paths of civilization quite a little 
 against its will, and then seeing Japan's grasp 
 failing, and the country standing without true 
 heart or strong mind, the Christians have been 
 1 Gifford, Every Day Life in Korea, p. 58.
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 175 
 
 roused to speak out boldly for their King, to be 
 sure, but also for righteous government and just 
 laws. A further reason is to be found in the in- 
 fluence of some leading men who recognize that 
 the one hope of the country lies in the power of 
 Christianity and Christian education. One of 
 these said to me : ' ' The only hope of the country 
 is in the churches. There is no moral charac- 
 ter in Korea. It is being created in the churches. 
 There is no cohesion, or unity, or confidence, 
 among men. There is no company of men, how- 
 ever small, capable of acting together. The 
 churches are raising up bands of men who know 
 how to combine for a common object, who are 
 quickened intellectually, and are full of character, 
 courage, and hope. To convert and educate the 
 common people is the only hope of the land." 
 
 What deliverance the gospel has wrought in 
 Korea from the perpetual fear of evil spirits, what 
 peace it brings, and how capable the Koreans are 
 of receiving it, are shown by the life of An, the 
 blind preacher in Pyeng Yang. The first time I 
 saw him he was coming up the path from the gate 
 to Mr. Lee's house. He did not carry a cane, 
 but felt his way along with his great wooden 
 shoes with turned-up toes. There was no light in 
 his eyes, but on his face was the peace of God, 
 and he brought an air of quietness and rest into 
 the room, where he sat down and clasped his 
 hands, and lifted his sightless eyes to the two vis- 
 itors from a far country, who had come " several 
 ten thousands of miles" to see his people, and 
 bring to them the greetings of their fellow-Chris- 
 tians in a strange land. 
 
 " Shepherd," said he to the missionary, " it is 
 good that these visitors have come. They have 
 come through many troubles. Our hearts are 
 encouraged by them." And this was An's story :
 
 176 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 " I am twenty-four years old, and lost my sight 
 when I was three years old. For two and a half 
 years I have been a Christian. When I first heard 
 the gospel I said, ' This is Catholic doctrine. 
 If I believe it, I shall die.' But as I heard it over 
 and over, I lost my fear that I would be crazed 
 by it, and soon I wakened to the sense of my sins. 
 YVhat were they ? I served and worshiped the 
 devils. I was a sorcerer, like most blind men in 
 Korea. I made paper devils, and I did really 
 believe in these, which I put up in houses and 
 prayed to. I thought the devil came into them. 
 I was in earnest in this, though at times I knew 
 I was deceiving people. But one day the change 
 came into my heart, and then I knew that I was 
 doing wrong, and that devils were not to be wor- 
 shiped, but Jesus only. 
 
 "Our people are very superstitious," he went 
 on. " Ten days ago I met a crowd of blind sor- 
 cerers making devils and worshiping them. And 
 I said, ' These paper devils don't answer. Look, 
 I will pray to them.' The religion of our people 
 is the worship of spirits and of ancestors. Six 
 times a year they worship before the ancestral 
 tablets, bringing offerings, and kneeling with di- 
 sheveled hair, weeping or silent for hours. On 
 the first day of our year, and on certain holidays, 
 and on the fifteenth day of the fifth and eighth 
 months, they go out to the graves to worship the 
 dead. It is very sad. 
 
 " Life is very different now to me. The words 
 of Jesus are very sweet. What ones do I like 
 best ? ' Ye cannot serve two masters,' and ' Thou 
 shall love the Lord thy God with all thine heart.' 
 And of all the incidents of Jesus' life, I love most 
 the story of the healing of the man who was born 
 blind. It is in the ninth chapter of John." 
 
 " Are you sure that this is a true religion ? " I
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 1)7 
 
 asked. "Some day, perhaps, other foreigners 
 will come and will tell you that our religion is not 
 true, that it is only one of the many religions of 
 men. What will you say then? " 
 
 "Then," said An, "we will answer in the 
 words of the nineteenth verse of the fourth chap- 
 ter of Acts, ' Whether it be right in the sight of 
 God to hearken unto you rather than unto God, 
 judge ye.' ' 
 
 "Do you know all your Bible so well?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "I know it well," answered An. 
 
 " Do you know what is in the fifteenth chapter 
 of Luke?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," he replied; " the parables of the 
 Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal Son. ' ' 
 
 "And do you know in which chapter in Mat- 
 thew is the story of the feeding of the five thou- 
 sand ?" 
 
 "Yes; in the fourteenth," was his instant 
 reply. 
 
 " You see," he said, " I think of the gospels all 
 the time. In my little room at the gate others 
 read them to me. Is it possible that anything 
 else could be so sweet to me ? " 
 
 "And do you have in your mind a picture of 
 Jesus? " we inquired. 
 
 "Yes," he answered; "I think of him as a 
 man, but full of color, of brightness and glory." 
 
 " Does Jesus help you ? " 
 
 " If Jesus did not help me I could not live ! " 
 
 Blind An was the preacher to the women at 
 Pyeng Yang. It would not be proper for them 
 to have a pastor who could see them, and so in 
 their meetings and in their church, the women's 
 church, which had been crowded out of the other 
 church because there was not room enough for men 
 and women together, he told forth with his loving
 
 178 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 gentleness and his lovely smile the story of his Mas- 
 ter's kindness. Very clean and winning he looked 
 in his fresh white clothes, as he stood before his 
 flock, seeing nothing save Him whom, not having 
 seen, he loves, and in whom he rejoices with joy 
 unspeakable and full of glory. 
 
 The evening before we left Pyeng Yang, An 
 came to say good-by. We should never meet 
 again here, he said, but we would above. He 
 had been turned out of his home when he became 
 a Christian, but there was a home of many man- 
 sions there. He could not remember the sight of 
 us when we were gone, but he wanted something 
 by which to recall us. So I gave him my card, 
 that he might feel that. If he should write to us 
 in America, would we be able to get anyone to 
 read it to us? Soon, he went on, he would be 
 laying aside his poor body, and in heaven he 
 would see. 
 
 What would he wish to see first? we asked. 
 "First Jesus," he answered, "then God, then all 
 the believers. I must see Jesus first, for he has 
 been the Mediator between my soul and God. 
 He knows all my life here, and he will take my 
 hands and tell me to come. I fear I could not 
 see the Father if I did not see Jesus first. He 
 will show him to me. I think of Jesus even now 
 as a man, for he took our human form with him, 
 and I do think of him constantly so my own." 
 
 I see dear An still, as early in the morning of 
 the next day he stood in the path that led down 
 to his little room by the gate, gently waving his 
 hand to us as we walked off southward toward 
 Seoul, and smiling after us with that quiet, patient 
 smile which I hope to see again some day, beam- 
 ing with new joy, in the land where the eyes of 
 the blind are opened and the Lamb is their ever- 
 lasting light.
 
 THE MISSION IN KOREA 179 
 
 It is not surprising that Mrs. Bishop wrote so 
 strongly after visiting Korea. It is only wonder- 
 ful that the Church does not hear the call : 
 
 " Now a door is opened wide in Korea, how 
 wide only those can know who are on the spot. 
 Very many are prepared to renounce devil worship 
 and to worship the true God if only they are 
 taught how, and large numbers more who have 
 heard and received the gospel, are earnestly crav- 
 ing to be instructed in its rules of holy living. 
 I dread indescribably that unless many men and 
 women experienced in winning souls are sent 
 speedily, the door which the Church declines to 
 enter will close again."
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 
 
 181
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 
 
 " THE province of Syria, according to the 
 Turkish official maps, extends from the Taurus 
 Mountains on the north, to the river Arish on the 
 borders of Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to 
 the Euphrates. But the territory actually occu- 
 pied by the American Mission in Syria, extends 
 from Mount Carmel and Acre on the south, to 
 the Island of Arvad to the north, and from the 
 Sea to the Jordan valley, Mount Hermon, Baal- 
 bee and Harnath in the east. The area of official 
 Syria is about 60,000 English miles," 1 or about 
 one and one-quarter times the size of Pennsyl- 
 vania. It is a land of hills and valleys, of trop- 
 ical heat in the Jordan valley in the summer, and 
 perpetual snow on Lebanon. As in Bible times, 
 where the springs or water brooks afford means of 
 irrigation to the husbandman the soil is fertile 
 and productive, and yields the fruits and grains 
 mentioned in the Bible, and supports the domes- 
 tic animals which for centuries have been the re- 
 liance of Israel. 
 
 " The population to-day is not far from two 
 
 1 The passages in quotation marks in this chapter and not 
 otherwise credited are from an admirable unpublished 
 paper on the Syria Mission in the archives of the Presby- 
 terian Historical Society in Philadelphia, by the Rev. H. 
 H. Jessup, D. D., whose intellectual power and devoted 
 spirit have made him a blessing to Syria for forty-five 
 years. The quotations are made with Dr. Jessup's consent.
 
 184 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 millions, of whom about one-half, or 940,000 are 
 Mohammedans of the orthodox or Sunnee faith. 
 They regard the Sultan as their political and re- 
 ligious head. There are also about 60,000 Met- 
 awaleh or Sheah Mohammedans, followers of the 
 Persian sect, who accept the Caliphate of Ali in- 
 stead of Abu Bekr. The Orthodox Mohamme- 
 dans are in the majority in all the secondary cit- 
 ies, in Damascus and Aleppo, and in the villages 
 of Palestine and Northern Syria. The Druzes in 
 Southern Lebanon and the Hauran number about 
 75,000; they are a secret sect, neither Moslem 
 nor Christian, having an initiated class, the Ock- 
 als, who are taught the higher doctrines, while 
 the mass have virtually no religion. The sect is 
 more of a political than a religious society, and 
 the national spirit is intense. The Druze nation 
 can neither increase nor decrease. It is lawful 
 to pretend to believe the religion of any sect 
 among whom they dwell. They profess one God, 
 infinite, indefinable, incomprehensible and pas- 
 sionless, who has become incarnate in a succes- 
 sion of ten men, and the last of whom was the 
 mad Egyptian Caliph, Hakim Bamr Illah, who 
 was assassinated A. D., 1044. As a race they are 
 courteous, hospitable, industrious and brave. 
 They regard the English as their friends, and 
 those in Lebanon are anxious to have their chil- 
 dren educated." In the early days the mission- 
 aries had hopes of reaching the Druzes success- 
 fully, inasmuch as though the Druze superstition 
 sprang originally from Islam in the eleventh cen- 
 tury, it had departed wholly from the original 
 faith of Mohammed. As one of their leaders said 
 to Mr. Bird, in 1831, regarding the liberty of 
 polygamy allowed by the Koran, " I tell my 
 Moslem friends the Angel Gabriel never brought 
 such a precept down to the prophet ; he brought
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 185 
 
 that down himself." l The Druzes at this time 
 said to Mr. Bird that they believed in the gospel. 
 
 "The Nusairiyeh in the mountains between 
 Tripoli and Antioch and on the plains of Cilicia, 
 number about 250,000. They are a mystic sect, 
 with features borrowed from Islam and the old 
 star worshipers ; but at their secret rites of initi- 
 ation use a sacrament of bread and wine. Women 
 are not taught their religion, and are despised. 
 They are a strange, wild race, but some of their 
 youth, educated and taught the gospel, have been 
 sincere and exemplary Christians. The Nusai- 
 riyeh are said to be remnants of the Canaanites 
 driven out by Joshua. 
 
 "The Ismailiyeh, 20,000, are not unlike their 
 neighbors, the Nusairiyeh, and live west and 
 northwest of Hamath. They are a fanatical off- 
 shoot of Islam, inhospitable, suspicious, and virtu- 
 ally inaccessible. They are supposed to be de- 
 scendants of the assassins of crusading times. 
 
 "The Yezidees are devil worshipers and live 
 near Aleppo and Mosul, but have been nearly 
 exterminated. Ten thousand gypsies are scat- 
 tered in every part of the land, speaking Arabic 
 and their own gypsy language. The Jews in 
 Syria and Palestine number not less than 60,000, 
 in Palestine, 30,000, Damascus, 6,000, Aleppo, 
 15,000, and Beirut, 3,000, and in other places, 
 6,000. Those in Aleppo and Damascus, of the 
 ancient native Jewish stock, speak Arabic, those in 
 Palestine and the coast cities speak German, Span- 
 ish, Polish, Russian, and Hebrew. They are all 
 under the influence of their Rabbis, those in Pales- 
 tine being largely dependent for their bread on the 
 Rabbis' fund are almost beyond reach of Christian 
 missionary labor. Those in Syria are industrious, 
 and their merchants are prosperous. The Zion- 
 1 Bird, Bible Work in Bible Lands, p. 281.
 
 1 86 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 ist Colonization Movement, for founding Jewish 
 Colonies in Palestine, is thus far strenuously op- 
 posed by the Turkish Government. Some of the 
 existing colonies are well established, and at least 
 holding their own. 
 
 "The Christian sects or oriental churches 
 speaking the Arabic language, are the Maronites 
 of Lebanon, 250,000, the orthodox Greeks, 233, 
 ooo, the Papal Greeks or Greek and Armenian 
 Catholics, 80,000, the Jacobites, 15,000, and in 
 Kessah, Antioch, and Aleppo, some 10,000 Ar- 
 menians. The Maronites, 250,000, represent the 
 ancient Syrian Church, and get their name from 
 John Maron, monk, priest, and patriarch, who 
 died A. D. 707. Since the twelfth century they 
 have been in communion with the Latin Church, 
 although adhering to the oriental rite. Their 
 service is conducted in the Syriac, a language not 
 understood by the people. The only sin un- 
 pardonable by the priests, is reading the Bible. 
 Their head is the Patriarch of Antioch. Their 
 inferior parish priests are allowed to marry." 
 Many of the early trials of the missionaries came 
 from the Maronites. One of the earliest blasts 
 of opposition came from the Patriarch in 1827, in 
 a warning to his people. " After speaking of the 
 ' infernal hardihood which the unhappy and 
 wretched Lattoof el Ash-shi and his sons had 
 reached in having dared to associate themselves 
 with the family of a Bible man,' and that too, in 
 spite of many warnings, he proceeds : ' We, 
 therefore, make known to all that those sons of 
 wickedness, Lattoof el Ash-shi and his sons, 
 together with all the rest of the family, male and 
 female, have fallen under the heavier excommuni- 
 cation, and now we, by the word of the Lord, 
 which is almighty, do confirm this curse upon 
 them. They are therefore accursed, cut off from
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 187 
 
 all Christian communion; and let the curse en- 
 velop them as a robe and spread through all their 
 members like oil, break them in pieces like a 
 potter's vessel and wither them like the fig tree 
 cursed by the mouth of the Lord himself; let the 
 evil angel rule over them by day and by night, 
 asleep and awake, and in whatever circumstances 
 they may be found. We permit no one to visit 
 them, or employ them, or do them a favor, or 
 give them a salutation, or converse with them in 
 any form or manner, but let them be avoided as 
 a putrid member and as hellish dragons. ' ' 1 
 
 "The orthodox Greeks, 233,000, Arab in race, 
 Greek in religion, are under the Patriarch of 
 Antioch, resident in Damascus. They are more 
 liberal than any other Christian sect, and allow 
 the people to read the Scriptures. Thousands of 
 their boys and girls have been trained in Prot- 
 estant schools, and in 1896, the Prince Gargarin, 
 superintendent of the 130 Russian schools, re- 
 cently established in Syria and Palestine, directed 
 the Arabic Bible, printed at the American Press, 
 to be used in all their schools. The Greek parish 
 priests'are married men. A strong patriotic feel- 
 ing is growing among the Arab Greeks in favor 
 of having all their bishops selected from the Arab 
 race. But the Hellenic Brotherhood, of the Holy 
 Sepulcher in Jerusalem, generally succeed by 
 lavish bribes in electing a foreign Greek as 
 Patriarch of Antioch." In the early days many 
 of the missionaries' best friends were found 
 among the members of the Orthodox Greek 
 Church, beginning with Professor Bombas of 
 the Island of Scio who entered most heartily 
 into the evangelical views and plans of the 
 mission. 
 
 " The Jacobites, 15,000 in number, are a small 
 1 Bird, Bible Work in Bible Lands, p. 233.
 
 1 88 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 body of dissenters from the Greek Church, 
 monophysites, holding to one nature in Christ, 
 and were named from Jacob Baradai, Bishop of 
 Edessa, who died A. D. 587. They number some 
 15,000 in Hums, Hamath, Suddud and vicinity. 
 The Greek Catholics are converts from the Greek 
 Church to Romanism, retaining the Arabic lan- 
 guage in their service, and their priests are al- 
 lowed to marry. They number about 50,000, 
 and are among the most wealthy and enterprising 
 of the native Christians of Syria. The other 
 Latin sects number some 30,000. The Greeks 
 look for protection to Russia, the Maronites to 
 France, the Greek Catholics to Austria, the 
 Druzes to England, the Protestants to England 
 and Germany, the little sect called Latins to 
 Italy, and the foreign Jews to the countries from 
 which they emigrated. Politics and religion are 
 thus hopelessly entangled. The Empire being 
 an absolute despotism there can be no discussion 
 of national politics, and the natural passion for 
 political discussion expends itself in discussing 
 European politics. 
 
 " The difficulties which met the first missionaries 
 were various and great : 
 
 I. The illiteracy of the people. Few could 
 read. With the exception of the Moslem schools 
 for teaching the Koran, there were no schools in 
 the land. 
 
 II. The mediaeval tyranny of the ecclesiastics 
 of the oriental churches, who had the power to 
 imprison and torture heretics, and who terrorized 
 their adherents. 
 
 III. Religious liberty was unknown. The 
 Turkish Government allowed all to remain un- 
 molested in their own sect, or if they changed 
 from one to another, it must be from one sect of 
 infidelity to another. One of their Muftis de-
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 189 
 
 clared that infidelity is but one sect, but apostasy 
 from Islam was death. In 1843 a young man was 
 publicly beheaded in Constantinople on this ac- 
 count. 
 
 IV. The intense conservatism of the Syrians 
 and their hostility to any innovations secular or 
 religious. 
 
 V. The nonexistence of educational and re- 
 ligious books, especially a correct Arabic version 
 of the Bible. 
 
 VI. The religious and political hostility of the 
 various sects, the unsettled political state of the 
 country, resulting civil wars and commotions, 
 the intrigues of papal emissaries among the orien- 
 tal churches, and the lavish use of money to bribe 
 them over to accept the supremacy of Rome. 
 
 VII. The jealousy of the Ottoman Government 
 of all foreign influence educational and religious. 
 
 VIII. The pride and overbearing arrogance 
 of the Mohammedans as the ruling class, and 
 their regarding all Christians as creature worship- 
 ers. In consequence of the saint worship, picture 
 worship, and virgin worship, of the oriental 
 churches, Protestantism was looked on as merely 
 another sect of the creature worshipers. 
 
 IX. Add to these the difficult Arabic language 
 and the climate unknown, and a country largely 
 unexplored in modern times, and it will be seen 
 that the first missionaries met with obstacles which 
 could only be surmounted by strong faith, heroic 
 courage, and patient perseverance." 
 
 Some of these difficulties arise from oriental 
 character. Many of them lie wholly within the 
 so-called Christian bodies, but others spring from 
 the fact that these bodies are and have been for 
 centuries under the rule of a Mohammedan gov- 
 ernment. On this account and to the extent that 
 the missionaries have hope of influencing Islam
 
 1 90 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 itself, we must give heed to the real character of 
 that faith and the sort of political government 
 which it produces. On the unfavorable side it is 
 true that Islam practically divorces morality and 
 religion, that it is fanatically intolerant, that it de- 
 stroys the family through polygamy and con- 
 cubinage, that it degrades woman, that it 
 has not checked immorality of the bas- 
 est kind, or falsehood, and that it is not 
 represented by one clean, respected government. 
 So far as Turkey is concerned, Syria suffers with 
 the rest from the condition which Freeman has de- 
 scribed : " The rule of the Turk is not govern- 
 ment ; it is not even mis-government. It is the 
 mere domination of a gang of robbers." ' And a 
 Turkish officer writes in The Contemporary Re- 
 view, April, 1899, "Simultaneously with the ab- 
 sorption of power by the Sultan, the administra- 
 tion of the country grew worse and worse, until it 
 is what it is to-day, a sickening and shameful par- 
 ody of government. ' ' 
 
 Both as religion and as government Mohammed- 
 anism presses bitterly on the Christians of Tur- 
 key. As government there is incessant oppression. 
 The Turk seems to be mad in his atrocious taxa- 
 tion, which destroys energy and paralyzes ^prog- 
 ress. The spirit of his religion is illustrated by 
 the prayers used throughout Turkey and daily re- 
 peated in the great Mohammedan University in 
 Cairo: " I seek refuge with Allah from Satan 
 the accursed. In the name of Allah the Com- 
 passionate, the Merciful ! O Lord of all Crea- 
 tures ! O Allah ! Destroy the infidels and poly- 
 theists, thine enemies, the enemies of the reli- 
 gion ! O Allah ! Make their children orphans, 
 and defile their abodes ! Cause their feet to slip ; 
 
 1 Freeman, History and Conquest of the Saracens, pref- 
 ace to second edition, p. xii.
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA IQI 
 
 give them and their families, their households and 
 their women, their children and their relations by 
 marriage, their brothers and their friends, their 
 possessions and their race, their wealth and their 
 lands, as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all 
 Creatures ! " l And the union of Church and 
 State in Islam makes this religious hatred effective 
 in legal enforcement. Thus even after the public 
 execution in 1853, in Adrianople, of a young Mo- 
 hammedan, who was judicially condemned to 
 death for no other crime than having " declared 
 that Christ was the true prophet, and that having 
 him we had no need of Mohammed, who there- 
 fore was a false prophet," and who exclaimed with 
 his last breath, "I profess Jesus Christ and for 
 him I die," when the British Government pro- 
 tested against the law by which he was con- 
 demned, and declared, "The Christian Powers 
 will not endure that the Porte should in- 
 sult and trample on their faith by treating 
 as a criminal any person who embraces 
 it," a memorandum was agreed upon, con- 
 taining these words: "As all forms of religion 
 are and shall be freely professed in the Ottoman 
 Dominion, no subject of his Majesty the Sultan, 
 shall be hindered in the free exercise of the re- 
 ligion that he professes, nor shall be in any way 
 annoyed on that account. None shall be com- 
 pelled to change their religion;" but the other 
 and objectionable law of the Koran protested 
 against was not abolished, because, " being re- 
 garded as invested with divine character, it could 
 not be annulled or abrogated by any human au- 
 thority whatsoever." It was merely held in abey- 
 ance. 2 And the story of Kamil 3 and many 
 
 1 Green, The Armenian Crisis in Tttrkey, p. 75. 
 
 2 Koelle, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, -p. 474 f. 
 
 3 Jessup, Kamil.
 
 IQ2 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 other stories which have never been written of suf- 
 fering and oppression tell only too well the tale of 
 constant and cruel opposition by Church and State 
 alike. 
 
 The position of members of the Christian 
 churches in Turkey has been only one degree bet- 
 ter than the position of the apostate from Islam. 
 From the beginning, " the subjugated Christians 
 in the Mussulman State were placed under the 
 most humiliating and irksome disabilities. They 
 had to submit to Mohammedan courts of law, 
 where their testimony was not received against a 
 Moslem, and the judge considered it a religious 
 duty to favor the party belonging to his own faith. 
 In social life they had to defer to the meanest 
 Mussulman as their superior in rank. In their 
 mode of traveling, in their dress, in their dwell- 
 ings, and even in their graves, they were to be 
 marked by a badge of inferiority. For the main- 
 tenance of their religious institutions, and the in- 
 struction of their children, they received no help 
 whatever from a Government whose revenues they 
 had to swell. Many of their churches were de- 
 molished or converted into mosques, and those 
 permitted them were not allowed to be increased 
 in number by the building of new ones. The ex- 
 ercise of their religion was deprived of its public- 
 ity, and of everything which might have appeared 
 as a recognition or sanction of Christianity by 
 Government. Hence all religious processions had 
 to be discontinued, the church bells were to be 
 destroyed or silenced, and all the crosses removed 
 from the tops of ecclesiastical edifices, or any other 
 places, where they might have offended the Moslem 
 eye. In short, the Christian communities could 
 not become organic parts of a Mohammedan 
 State, and were not even counted worthy to bear 
 arms and to defend the common country on an
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 193 
 
 equal footing with the Moslems. The Christians 
 were treated as if they formed a mere colony of 
 helots within the State, tolerated and protected 
 by the ruling class and for their benefit, on about 
 the same principle pn which domestic animals are 
 kept and fostered by their masters. Accordingly, 
 the poll tax, collected from every male adult of the 
 Christians, was designated by a word (jizyeh) 
 properly signifying 'ransom, satisfaction,' because 
 it was, as it were, generously accepted in lieu of 
 their lives, which in the eyes of Islam had legally 
 been forfeited. The land tax they had to pay 
 was called by a word (kharaj^) which had origi- 
 nally been employed as a designation of that por- 
 tion of a slave's earning which he had to pay to 
 his master for being allowed to exercise a trade on 
 his own account. So, likewise, the term Raya, 
 ordinarily applied to the Christian section of the 
 population under a Mohammedan Government, 
 has its meaning thus rendered in Lane's well- 
 known Arabic-English Lexicon, ' Cattle pasturing, 
 cattle kept, tended or pastured ; especially cattle 
 kept or pastured for the Sultan, and upon which 
 are his brands and marks.' " l And yet even cat- 
 tle are better cared for in a Christian land than 
 the Christian peoples of Turkey have been cared 
 for by their Sultan. 
 
 The history of the Syria Mission, which until 
 1870, was one of the missions of the American 
 Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
 may be divided into four periods. 
 
 First Period, 1819-1840. The first mission- 
 aries were Levi Parsons and Pliny Fisk. They 
 sailed from Boston in the autumn of 1819. They 
 wished to lead the Christians of Western Asia to 
 lay aside their superstitions which were a stum- 
 bling-block to Moslems, and to make them co- 
 
 1 Koelle, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 474 f.
 
 194 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 workers in reaching the followers of Mohammed. 
 Parsons and Fisk went first to Smyrna, where 
 they found friends from England and America 
 and some English missionaries. One of their first 
 movements after learning ttye language was to 
 visit the places where once stood and flotn i^hed 
 the Seven Churches of Asia. After this it was 
 decided that Mr. Fisk should remain at Smyrna 
 and Mr. Parsons go to Jerusalem. The two 
 brethren went on board the vessel which was to 
 separate them, and "there," the story quaintly 
 says, "they sang 'Guide me, O thou great Je- 
 hovah,' united in prayer, commended each other 
 to the Divine protection, and gave the parting 
 hand." Mr. Parsons met with great kindness at 
 Joppa, and he was cordially welcomed in Jerusa- 
 lem by Bishop Procopius, who was a sort of vice- 
 patriarch and president of all the Greek convents 
 or monasteries and also one of the foreign agents 
 of the British and Foreign Bible Society. On 
 his way to rejoin Mr. Fisk, Mr. Parsons learned 
 of the terrible massacre at Scio or Chios where 
 the Turks deliberately butchered 20,000 men and 
 women and little children, many of them priests 
 and nuns of the Greek Church. From Smyrna 
 Parsons and Fisk went to Egypt, where it was 
 hoped the former would be able to throw off a 
 threatening cough; but the hope was disap- 
 pointed, and the first American missionary to 
 Western Asia or to the Mohammedan world 
 passed away in Alexandria on February loth, 
 1822. Shortly before he passed away, he wrote 
 in one of his letters: "It seems that this shat- 
 tered frame will not long endure so great weak- 
 ness. With brother Fisk I talk freely of finishing 
 my work and of meeting my final Judge, the 
 Lord of missions. Heaven looks desirable to 
 obtain the perfect image of God, to know more
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 195 
 
 of the existence of God as Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, to see without a glass the exceeding love 
 displayed on the cross, to observe the stations, 
 orders, and employments, of angels, to know how 
 saints are employed in relation to this and to other 
 worlds, to see how God overrules sin, and why it 
 is through great tribulation that he brings his 
 children to glory, in a word, to see God in all 
 his attributes and his angels and saints in all their 
 glory." > 
 
 Before leaving Egypt Mr. Bird made a tour of 
 the Nile with Jonas King and Joseph Wolff, dis- 
 tributing 800 copies of the Scriptures in twelve 
 languages, and 2,000 tracts. The next year, 
 1823, Mr. Fisk went to Jerusalem, and in the 
 following year was joined by Jonas King and 
 Isaac Bird. In 1824 Fisk and Bird were arrested 
 at the instigation of the Latins for distributing the 
 Scriptures, which the accusers declared to be books 
 neither Mohammedan, Jewish, nor Christian, 
 "which contain," said the judge, "fabulous 
 stories that are profitable for nobody, and which 
 nobody of sense will read; " and flung the book, 
 which he was holding, contemptuously upon the 
 floor. In 1825 Mr. Fisk reported having distrib- 
 uted in the preceding three years, 4,000 copies 
 of the Scriptures, and 20,000 tracts. That 
 year the Pasha of Damascus came to collect his 
 tribute, and the city and country were thrown 
 into utter confusion, so that the missionaries 
 withdrew. Jonas King went to Greece soon 
 after, to work there. Mr. Bird remained in 
 Beirut, where Mr. Fisk died on October 25th, 
 1825. 
 
 The station at Jerusalem was suspended for 
 nearly nine years. Later efforts to reestablish it 
 were not successful, and it was finally abandoned 
 1 Bird, Bible Work in Bible Lands, p. 48.
 
 196 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 in 1844. Beirut had become the headquarters of 
 the Mission. Mr. Goodell who had come out 
 in 1823 had been there alone during the 
 winter of 1824 and 1825, and was reinforced by 
 the return of the Mission from Jerusalem. Mr. 
 Goodell removed to Constantinople in 1828. 
 He was every way a remarkable man, scholar, 
 preacher, counselor. "Dr. Hamlin says of him 
 that he had substantially Puritan theology, Puri- 
 tan saintliness, and Puritan patriotism, and his 
 saintliness was adorned by the most sparkling 
 cheerfulness. His wit and mirthfulness were a 
 perpetual sunshine. When his friend and col- 
 league, Father Temple, reproved him, saying, 
 ' Brother Goodell, do you expect to enter heaven 
 laughing ? ' 'I don't expect to go there crying,' 
 was the quick reply. His sagacity and judgment 
 were remarkable, and it was owing largely to 
 his good judgment with that of his associates, 
 Riggs, Schauffler, and Dwight, that the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury said in 1869, ' I do not believe that 
 in the whole history of missions, I do not believe 
 in the history of diplomacy, or in the history 
 of any negotiations carried on between man 
 and man, we can find anything equal to the 
 wisdom, the soundness and the pure evangelical 
 truth of the body of men who constitute this 
 mission.' ' 
 
 From 1825 to 1828 the Mission worked on at 
 Beirut. During these years Protestantism was 
 unrecognized by the Turkish Government, and 
 "all inquirers after the truth and adherents of 
 the new faith were persecuted, imprisoned, and in 
 some cases put to death. And this was almost 
 invariably done by the ecclesiastics of the ori- 
 ental churches, who, aided by the diplomatic 
 agents of the Greek and Latin governments, 
 combined to incite the otherwise apathetic Turk-
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 197 
 
 ish rulers against the defenseless converts." The 
 first day of January, 1827, says Mr. Bird, "was 
 a solemn and joyful day. It was the day of the 
 general concert of prayer for the spread of the 
 gospel. It was the day of our communion season 
 at Beirut, and, what was more, it was the day of 
 the ingathering of the first fruits of our Syrian 
 labors. One of these converts, Asaad esh 
 Shidiak, received the martyr's crown. He was 
 an educated young Maronite teacher of theology 
 and science in a Lebanon convent, and after- 
 wards in a boys' school in Beirut. Converted to 
 Protestant Christianity, he was arrested, impris- 
 oned and enchained in the Patriarch's monastery 
 of Kannobin (Greek, Koinon Bion), and after- 
 wards walled in and starved to death, his body 
 thrown down the mountain side among the jagged 
 rocks in 1829 or early in 1830." l 
 
 On account of the disturbed political condition 
 of the Levant, it seemed best for the missionaries 
 to retire temporarily, and from 1828 to 1830 they 
 worked in Malta. In 1833, after returning to 
 Beirut, they removed from Malta the press which 
 had been established there in 1822, and which at 
 once began under the direction of Eli Smith, who 
 had joined the mission in 1827, its great career. 
 Eli Smith spent thirty years in the work in Beirut. 
 " He was familiar with the ancient Classics, and 
 with French, Italian, German, Turkish, and 
 Arabic. He superintended the cutting and cast- 
 ing of the beautiful fonts of Arabic type from the 
 most perfect models of Arabic calligraphy, col- 
 lected the philological library for use in Bible 
 translation, and prosecuted the work of transla- 
 tion from 1849 until his death in June, 1857. 
 He had put into Arabic the entire New Testa- 
 ment, the Pentateuch, the historical books of the 
 1 Bird, Bible Work in Bible Lands, p. 211.
 
 198 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Old Testament, and the books of Isaiah, Jere- 
 miah, Lamentations, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, 
 Jonah, Micah, and Nahum." His ideal of per- 
 fection was so high that it was difficult for him 
 ever to be satisfied with his work. Of the many 
 other great names associated with the Mission 
 during this period, is that of Dr. Wm. M. Thom- 
 son, who wrote The Land and The Book, and 
 who loved to itinerate through the country, 
 preaching to the people. 
 
 From 1830 to 1840 Syria was held by Moham- 
 med Ali, Pasha of Egypt, and governed by his 
 son Ibrahim Pasha. They proclaimed religious 
 liberty, and there was 'remarkable security 
 throughout the country. " Village schools mul- 
 tiplied, comprising several hundred pupils. Two 
 hundred and thirty-three Greek churches in 
 Cyprus were supplied with Bibles. The Beirut 
 Seminary for boys opened with six pupils in 1833. 
 In 1834, Mrs. Eli Smith opened a school for girls 
 in Beirut. In 1836 a chapel was opened in Bei- 
 rut for Arabic preaching. 
 
 Second Period, 1840-1860. This period be- 
 gan with the expulsion of Ibrahim Pasha from 
 Syria by the allied forces of Turkey and Great 
 Britain and Austria and the restoration of the 
 country to Turkey. Civil wars between the 
 Druzes and the Maronites in 1841 and 1845 made 
 the work difficult, but it continued to grow. The 
 Protestant body which had never had official rec- 
 ognition in Turkey before, and had accordingly 
 been harassed on both sides, by Moslems and by 
 the authorities of the recognized oriental 
 churches, now received, on November i5th, 
 1847, a charter of rights "guaranteeing protec- 
 tion to the Protestant sect, and forbidding all in- 
 terference in their temporal or spiritual concerns 
 on the part of the Patriarch, monks, or priests, of
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 199 
 
 other sects. This charter, being simply minis- 
 terial in its character and authority, and not hav- 
 ing the authority of the Sultan, was liable to re- 
 peal. Accordingly, a new charter was granted 
 to the Protestants by the Sultan Abdul Majid, in 
 November, 1850, appointing a Wakil or agent to 
 represent them at the Sublime Porte, and pledg- 
 ing them full protection and security in the exer- 
 cises of the usages of their faith. Prior to the 
 granting of these rights in 1843, there was a Prot- 
 estant movement in Hasbeiya, on the north side 
 of Mount Hermon, when 152 men left the Greek 
 Church. Severe persecutions followed, headed 
 by the Russian Consul of Damascus, but the truth 
 triumphed, and in 1851 an Evangelical Church 
 was organized, which continues to this day." 
 The sort of Christians of which this little, sorely 
 tried church was composed is shown in Dr. 
 Thomson's account of a visit to one of them, a 
 vine dresser, who lived on the side of Mount Her- 
 mon. On his table lay the Arabic Bible, Thomas 
 a Kempis, and a little book of prayer and one on 
 the Holy Spirit, all well worn. "It was good to 
 be there," said Dr. Thomson, "on that moun- 
 tain side, in that lodge beneath that olive, among 
 those clustering vines, with that old man of hum- 
 ble mien and tearful eye, the voice of prayer as- 
 cending from full hearts to the canopy of heaven 
 above our heads. Yes, it was good to be there. 
 I crept forth from this humble lodge with eyes 
 bedimmed with tears. In the afternoon," con- 
 tinued Dr. Thomson, " as the old man was com- 
 ing to our preparatory lecture, I met him upon 
 the stairs. Seizing my hand, he said, ' Ever 
 since you left me this morning I have been look- 
 ing up into heaven, and I see nothing there but 
 Christ,' and gazing up into the clear blue sky, 
 with a voice so earnest that it almost frightened
 
 200 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 me, he repeated, ' / see nothing in heaven but 
 Christ, I see nothing in heaven but Christ ! ' ' 
 
 "The first Evangelical Church of Syria was 
 organized in Beirut, March 3151, 1848, with nine- 
 teen members, four of them women. In 1859 
 there were four churches with about 100 mem- 
 bers, and an aggregate attendance of 550. There 
 were thirty-two schools and 967 pupils, 176 of 
 them girls. The number of pages printed at the 
 press in 1859 was 3,638,000. Protestant com- 
 munities had been organized in sixteen different 
 centers, from Tyre on the south to Hums on the 
 north." 
 
 "In this period occurred one of the epochal 
 events in the history of Syria, the translation of 
 the Bible into the Arabic language. The version 
 hitherto printed and circulated by the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society was a reprint of the Roman 
 Propaganda edition of 1671, which again was an 
 ancient translation revised by a Maronite bishop 
 of Damascus during the pontificate of Pope Ur- 
 ban the eighth. It is a servile imitation of the 
 Vulgate, and neither classical nor grammatical. 
 A new version was imperatively needed." Dr. 
 Eli Smith began the work and it was completed 
 by Dr. C. V. A. Van Dyck, and issued in 1865. 
 Dr. Van Dyck had opened a boys' school in 
 Abeih in 1846, of which Simeon H. Calhoun 
 took charge in 1849, and which the latter con- 
 ducted until he left Syria in 1875. " Its pupils 
 were for years the most noted and useful teachers 
 and preachers in Syria, Palestine, and even in 
 Egypt, and the impulse it gave to intellectual life 
 was the inciting cause of all the schools of the 
 various sects and societies established in Syria. 
 The Syrian Protestant College is the child of 
 Abeih Seminary." Of the missionaries who 
 1 Bird, Bible Work in Bible Lands, p. 378.
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 2OI 
 
 joined the Mission during this period, Van Dyck 
 and Calhoun are the best known. " The former 
 was a remarkable man, a linguist and philologist, 
 an astronomer, a chemist, an eminent physician, 
 a fascinating teacher and an acceptable preacher 
 he was beloved and admired by Syrians of all 
 sects and classes, and on his jubilee year, testi- 
 monials were presented to him by the Syrians one 
 of which was a purse of two thousand dollars. 
 He received the honorary degree of LL. D. from 
 the University of Edinburgh. His Arabic works 
 were about twenty-five in number, including the 
 crown of them all the Arabic Bible," in which 
 he had been assisted by a learned Moslem Mufti, 
 a graduate of the Azhar University in Cairo, and 
 the proof sheets of which had been submitted to 
 Arabic scholars throughout the East and in Ger- 
 many. Simeon Calhoun was the " Saint of Leb- 
 anon." The Druze sheiks hung on his lips 
 with rapt admiration, and had he died in Syria 
 his grave would have become a sacred shrine of 
 those who almost worshiped his holy character, 
 his political sagacity and his Christlike simplicity. 
 He was the counselor of diplomats and governors ; 
 he was the gentle servant of Christ, and his dying 
 words were, " If the Church of Christ were what 
 she ought to be, twenty years would not pass away 
 before the story of the Cross were uttered in the 
 ears of every creature." Another worker, whose 
 godly life and Christian enthusiasm wrought won- 
 ders in Zahleh and the Bukaa, was Gerald F. 
 Dale, whom Dr. Hodge called, "the model 
 scholar, the model Christian, and the model gen- 
 tleman, of Princeton." 
 
 Third Period, 1860-1880. This period began 
 with a frightful massacre of Maronites and Chris- 
 tians. It was accomplished through a civil war 
 between the Druzes and the Maronites in the
 
 202 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 spring of 1860, "fomented by the Turkish Gov- 
 ernment. The war soon degenerated into a mas- 
 sacre, the Turks disarming the Christians, and 
 then handing them over to the Druzes to be mas- 
 sacred. Fifteen thousand Christians, Greeks, 
 Maronites, and Protestants, were killed. Nearly 
 20,000 refugees crowded the gardens of Beirut, 
 and were fed and clothed largely by the Anglo- 
 American and German Relief Committee, chiefly 
 through the labors of the American missionaries. 
 For a time darkness rested on the land, the labor 
 of years seemed lost, the minds of the oriental 
 Christians were filled with despair and revenge, 
 politics excluded all thought of religion. But 
 order soon emerged from the confusion. A fleet 
 of twenty-five British ships occupied Beirut har- 
 bor, and 6,000 French troops encamped in Beirut 
 and Lebanon, on behalf of the European powers ; 
 and with the consent of the Sultan, Mohammedan 
 fanaticism in Damascus received a permanent 
 check. Swift punishment fell on the Pasha and 
 civil and military officers implicated in the massa- 
 cres, and 1 60 of them were publicly shot. Hun- 
 dreds were exiled. The military conscription 
 was enforced for the first time on the Moslems of 
 Damascus. A new Christian government was 
 organized in Lebanon, with a Latin Christian 
 Pasha under the protection of the European 
 powers. Under this new regime, feudal and ec- 
 clesiastical power was broken. There was a 
 great increase of foreign Christian interest in 
 Syria, especially in America, England and Ger- 
 many. In 1862, the American Female Seminary 
 was reopened in Beirut. In 1860 and 1861 the 
 British Syrian Schools and Mission were founded 
 by Mrs. Bowen Thompson, and during this period 
 up to 1898, they had not less than 4,000 girls 
 under instruction in Beirut, Damascus, Lebanon,
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 203 
 
 and the Bukaa, in fifty-one schools. At the same 
 time the Kaiserswerth Institution sent deaconesses 
 to Beirut, to found an orphanage and boarding 
 school, and to furnish nurses for the new hospital 
 of the Knights of St. John. In 1865 the college 
 was formally opened in Beirut with sixteen pupils, 
 and December 7th, 1871, the corner stone of the 
 new building at Ras Beirut was laid by the Hon. 
 Win. E. Dodge, of New York. In 1880 the 
 number of pupils had risen to 121, sixty-four 
 having taken the degree of B. A., and fifty that 
 of M. D. The St. John's Hospital of the Knights 
 of St. John of Berlin, was founded in 1860, and 
 the professors in the American Medical College 
 are its physicians. A boarding school for Mo- 
 hammedan and Druze girls was founded by Miss 
 Jessie Tailor in 1865, and also a boarding school 
 for girls in Shemlan, Mount Lebanon, by Mrs. 
 E. H. Watson. In 1862 the American Girls' 
 Boarding School in Suk El Ghurb was transferred 
 to Sidon. In 1875 a boarding school for girls 
 was opened in Tripoli, Syria, under the care of 
 the Mission. In 1877, the Mohammedan So- 
 ciety of Benevolent Intentions opened schools 
 for girls in Beirut, Damascus, Tripoli, and other 
 places. This was a new and radical departure 
 forced upon the sheiks and Ulema, by the mul- 
 tiplication of Christian girls' schools, and the de- 
 termination of Moslem parents to have their girls 
 educated. It began a new era in the history of 
 Islam in Syria." 
 
 As already stated it was in 1865 that the Arabic 
 Bible, so long in translation, was issued from the 
 press. " Its completion makes this period, from 
 1860 to 1880, an epoch in the religious history of 
 Asia and northern Africa. It is the loving gift 
 of the one hundred and forty millions of Protes- 
 tant Christians to the two hundred millions of
 
 204 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Mohammedans, of whom sixty millions speak the 
 Arabic language, while the rest use the Arabic 
 Koran as their sacred book, and are scattered all 
 the way from the Canary Islands, through north 
 Africa and southern Asia to Peking in China. 
 Since then the printing and sale of the Arabic 
 Scriptures has steadily increased, the largest sales 
 being in the Valley of the Nile, from Alexander 
 to Khartum. The word of God is on sale in 
 Arabic, in Jerusalem and Damascus, in Alexan- 
 dria and in Cairo, in Constantinople and Aleppo, 
 in Mosul and Bagdad, in Busrah and Muscat, 
 in Teheran and Tabriz, in Delhi and Agra, in 
 Calcutta and Bombay, in Shanghai and Canton, 
 in Batavia and Singapore and Peking, in Zanzibar 
 and Khartum, in Algiers and Tunis, in Liberia 
 and Sierra Leone, and among the Syrian colonies 
 in South America and Australia." 
 
 In 1870, on the reunion of the Old School and 
 New School Churches, and the withdrawal of the 
 latter from association with the A. B. C. F. M., 
 the Syria Mission was transferred by the A. B. 
 C. F. M. to the Presbyterian Board, the majority 
 of the members of the Syria Mission being Pres- 
 byterians. The churches of Syria have been or- 
 ganized into three presbyteries, without organic 
 connection with any synod or assembly in the 
 United States, the missionaries retaining their 
 connection with their presbyteries in America. 
 The only work which the Presbyterian Church 
 had done distinctively in Turkey, had been in 
 Smyrna in 1836, and had not been satisfactory. 
 
 " In 1869 the Ottoman Imperial Press and 
 School laws were promulgated. By these laws all 
 schools must have a legal permit, and the manu- 
 scripts of all books to be printed must be sub- 
 mitted in duplicate for approval to the Mejlis el 
 Maarif in Constantinople. In May, 1869, a regu-
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 205 
 
 lar Theological Seminary was opened in Abeih, 
 and Rev. S. H. Calhoun, D. D., Rev. W. W. 
 Eddy, D. D., and Rev. H. H. Jessup, D. D., 
 were appointed instructors. In November, 1873, 
 the seminary was removed to Beirut, and owing 
 to the resignation of Dr. Calhoun, in view of his 
 expected departure to the United States, Rev. 
 James S. Dennis, D. D., was appointed in his 
 place. In May, 1875, the water of the Dog 
 River was introduced into Beirut by a London 
 Company, and has proved an unspeakable bless- 
 ing to its thousands of people. In April, 1877, 
 Russia declared war against Turkey, owing to 
 the Bulgarian massacres. One result of the war 
 was the emigration of tens of thousands of Cir- 
 cassians (who had fled into Bulgaria from the 
 Caucasus) into Syria and southern Asia Minor, 
 thus adding another fanatical tribe to the already 
 numerous and discordant factions of Syria. They 
 are a brave, hardy and industrious race of Indo- 
 European stock, using European methods in their 
 farming, but the most intense and fanatical of 
 men in their devotion to Mohammed and the 
 Koran." 
 
 Fourth Period, 1880-1901. This period was 
 introduced by the dedication in Beirut of a beau- 
 tiful Sunday-school hall, given as a memorial of a 
 little American boy, namesake of the missionary, 
 Gerald F. Dale. It has been a center of activity 
 and the most attractive public hall in Syria. 
 
 "In 1888 there were 15,000 children in 
 Protestant schools in Syria, of whom 7,000 were 
 girls ; the number cannot now be less than 18,000, 
 and the whole number of Protestants enrolled as 
 a civil sect is about 6,000, and in the whole 
 empire it cannot be less than 75,000. In 1887, 
 in the enforcement of the Press Laws, no book 
 was allowed to be sold or transported by sea or
 
 206 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 land without the Imperial Stamp of approval. 
 As great difficulties were raised by the Constanti- 
 nople authorities with regard to affixing this 
 stamp, and they even demanded that the words 
 ' for Protestants only ' should be printed on the 
 title page of every book, the Protestant ambas- 
 sadors intervened, and finally the objections were 
 withdrawn. As a result, the Mejlis El Maarif, or 
 Board of Public Instruction, of His Imperial 
 Majesty the Sultan, the Caliph of Mohammed, 
 placed the seal of authorization upon thirty-three 
 different editions of the Arabic Scriptures and 
 parts of Scriptures. The local board in Damas- 
 cus also approved 330 different Arabic publica- 
 tions of the Press in Beirut. The number of 
 publications on the Press Catalogue is now 677, 
 all of which bear the Imperial seal, and can be 
 sold and distributed throughout the Turkish 
 Empire. The American Arabic Press established 
 in Malta in 1822, and transferred to Beirut in 
 1834, has in these seventy-seven years, set in 
 motion forces that have awakened the popular 
 mind throughout the East. Presses have multi- 
 plied, newspapers have been established, a genera- 
 tion of readers has been trained, and the East will 
 not again lapse into intellectual slumber. " 
 
 At a meeting of the Mission in 1862, it was 
 voted to establish a college in Beirut. This col- 
 lege was organized under a separate Board of 
 Trustees, in order to enlist special support, though 
 it has always worked in closest cooperation with 
 the Board of Missions. The college has now 
 nearly five hundred students, with a faculty (in 
 1889) of twenty-seven, of whom sixteen were 
 Americans. The Rev. Daniel Bliss, D. D., has 
 been the president from the beginning. The 
 college property is valued at $350,000. It has 
 graduated 309 students from the Preparatory De-
 
 THE MISSION IN SYRIA 207 
 
 partment, 167 from the Collegiate, 163 from the 
 Medical, and fifty-three in Pharmacy. The major- 
 ity of these are in Syria, but others are scattered in 
 the United States, Brazil, Argentine, Australia, 
 Johannesburg, Berlin, London, Manchester, 
 Cyprus, Constantinople, Smyrna, and the Soudan. 
 Dr. Wm. Thomson was the one who thought out 
 the scheme of the college, and nominated Dr. 
 Bliss for its president.' 
 
 Since 1840 the medical work of the Mission has 
 been prominent. In 1893 Dr. Mary Pierson 
 Eddy, daughter of Dr. Eddy, returned to Syria, 
 and was the first woman to receive the sanction 
 of the Turkish Government to practice medicine 
 within the Empire. 
 
 There are now two boys' boarding schools, 
 one in Sidon, where about 100 boys are in train- 
 ing as carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, and stone 
 masons, and where twenty orphans are taught prac- 
 tical farming on the school farm of 100 acres. 
 The other school is in Suk el Ghurb, and is favor- 
 ably located for reaching the Druzes. Three 
 girls' boarding schools are located at Beirut, 
 Sidon, and Tripoli. The Beirut pupils come from 
 all the sects of the land, including Moslems. 
 The Sidon Seminary is for Christian girls and is 
 conducted on the Mt. Holyoke plan. 
 
 "Twenty-eight evangelical churches have been 
 organized by our own Mission, and not less than 
 twenty by other missions in Syria and Palestine. 
 The number of communicants in the twenty-eight 
 churches is about 2,400 and in these missions about 
 2,000. Great as are the defects of these churches in 
 the matter of self-support, they are centers of evan- 
 gelical truth preached in its gospel simplicity, and 
 have demonstrated to the Moslems that Bible 
 Christianity is neither idolatrous nor immoral. 
 There are four ordained native pastors, thirty-eight
 
 208 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 licensed preachers, 136 teachers, 5 stations, no 
 out-stations, 28 churches, and 2,400 members, 
 about equally divided between men and women." 
 All this has been a great work done by splendid 
 men and women. But its ultimate issues are not 
 yet understood. They reach far out into the 
 future, and affect Islam. The Press and the 
 School have always deeply impressed the Moslem 
 world. The preaching of the gospel is to do the 
 same. Dr. H. H. Jessup, who has been for years 
 one of the pillars of the Mission, tells of having 
 taken into the Mission church at Beirut an Arab 
 sheik, Mohammed Smair, who looked about the 
 plain, unadorned room, and then at the Bible on 
 the desk, and said solemnly: "Truly, this is the 
 house of God. There is no image or idol here, 
 only the house of God and the Book of God. " 
 It was to make the Moslems feel this that Fisk 
 and Parsons left America to found the Mission 
 eighty years ago.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 
 
 209
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 
 
 THERE are many mission fields in which the 
 Presbyterian Church works side by side with 
 other churches. There are others where her 
 missionaries occupy the ground practically alone. 
 Northern Persia is one of these. In the extreme 
 southern part of the country the British mission- 
 aries of the Church Missionary Society work at 
 Ispahan, Kerman, Yezd, and other points. But 
 north of the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude the 
 field is ours, and practically no other evangelical 
 mission is at work in it. There are a few Roman 
 Catholic missionaries. There is some work for 
 Jews in Teheran. A ritualistic Anglican mission 
 works among the Nestorians, and there are two 
 German orphanages, one at Urumia and one at 
 Khoi. Perhaps 5,000,000 people live in the ter- 
 ritory for which we are thus responsible. 
 
 And the religion of the vast majority of the 
 people is the hardest religion to conquer which 
 Christianity confronts. Yet the Mohammedans 
 of Persia are in many ways more accessible than 
 the Mohammedans of Turkey. In the first place, 
 the Church and the State are not identified as 
 they are in Turkey. The Shah and his officials 
 are intimidated by the Moslem ecclesiastics and 
 fear to offend them, but there is sufficient separa- 
 tion of Church and State to make the latter more 
 tolerant and the former less capable of political 
 persecution than in Turkey. In the second place, 
 
 211
 
 212 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 the Persian Mohammedans are regarded by other 
 Moslems as heretics. They are Sheahs, while 
 the Turks are Sunnees, the Sheahs holding that 
 Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of Mohammed 
 should have been his heir and successor, and 
 that his descendants should have retained the 
 Caliphate. The month of Moharrem every year 
 is given up to lamentation at his fate and the fate 
 of his sons, and to keeping alive in Sheah breasts 
 their traditional hatred of the orthodox wing of 
 Islam. In Persia also, the Moslem system is 
 broken up by various schisms. Sufism, a mys- 
 tical pantheism, has existed for centuries, and 
 affects the ideas even of Moslems who would not 
 confess that they were tinged by it. Omar 
 Khayyam's poetry shows how fully it has per- 
 meated Persian feeling : 
 
 "There was a Door to which I found no Key ; 
 There was a Veil past which I could not see; 
 Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE 
 There seem'd and then no more of THEE and ME." 
 
 The great Bab heresy, which has grown up within 
 the last forty years and which has led off thou- 
 sands of the faithful, is another of the many evi- 
 dences of the disintegration of Persian Moham- 
 medanism. 
 
 The people of Persia are polite and courteous, 
 full of oriental grace ; and though often bigoted 
 and fanatical, are as a rule kindly and hospitable, 
 save where religious consistency obliges them to 
 despise and humiliate Christians. They are in- 
 tellectually bright and imaginative, fond of con- 
 versation and social intercourse. Poetry is one 
 of their passions. Minstrels wander about the 
 country, and in the villages or on the caravan 
 trail the weird music of the people is constantly 
 heard. " Modern Persia is in that state of cul-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 213 
 
 ture in which minstrel poetry is the passion of all 
 classes, and quotations from the classic authors 
 are common upon the lips of even the modest 
 peasantry and shepherds." But the people can 
 be cruel and unjust ; otherwise their government 
 would have wholly to change its character. And 
 priest and people are full of superstition and ig- 
 norance. Mr. Bassett tells a story of a Mollah's 
 reverence for the Koran which is illustrative of 
 the spirit of the whole people. " One day," the 
 Mollah told Mr. Bassett, " my knife was stolen. 
 I did not know who had taken it, but I determined 
 to try and find out the thief. I wrote a verse of 
 the Koran on three strips of paper, and on the 
 back of each strip I wrote the name of a sus- 
 pected person. Then I made three little balls of 
 clay, and put one strip of paper on each ball. I 
 then put the balls in a basin of water. They all 
 sank at once, but the clay of one soon parted and 
 dissolved, and the paper which I had put in it 
 rose to the top of the water. I read on it the 
 name of the suspected person. I went to him and 
 accused him of the theft. He immediately con- 
 fessed, and gave up my knife. Such is the power 
 of the Koran." 1 
 
 If more tolerant than Turkey, the government 
 is still very weak and wretched. During the 
 reign of Nasr i din it was stronger, and made 
 headway against the power of the ecclesiastics, 
 but the present Shah has a feeble hand, although 
 recently he has seemed to display greater strength, 
 as in the introduction of Belgians to take charge 
 of the Customs. The government is an absolute 
 despotism, and the common people are only serfs, 
 taxed beyond endurance, though not so dishonestly 
 as in Turkey. The government is marked often by 
 that cruelty which accompanies absolutism. There 
 1 Bassett, Persia, Eastern Mission, p. 40.
 
 214 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 are still punishments as dreadful as the one re- 
 corded by Dr. Perkins, when two men were be- 
 headed, their bodies split in two, and the halves 
 hung over the gates of the city. The village peo- 
 ple who make up the great body of the population, 
 live in little mud houses with earth roofs, with 
 an oven in the center of the earth floor where all 
 the baking is done with dried manure as fuel. 
 Little grows without irrigation, and when the 
 waters fail famine ensues, and the poor who have 
 laid nothing by, die, while the rich who hold the 
 grain sell at high prices and increase their hold 
 upon the poor. Of one of the frequent famines 
 in Urumia, Mr. Wilson says that, "the majority 
 of the population were without food, without work 
 and without anything to sell. They lived on 
 from week to week on a mere handful of grain, 
 with a little meat, herbs, milk, blood, entrails of 
 animals, anything they could obtain by selling 
 their very houses, or household furniture and 
 clothes, or by begging and stealing. The digging 
 of roots and herbs in the field was the occupation 
 of thousands of women. One thousand people 
 died in a day within sight of the mission station. 
 To an appeal of a band of women, begging at 
 his door, a nobleman was reported to have said, 
 ' You have not yet eaten your own children.' " l 
 Where the water is abundant, on the other hand, 
 the country is green and fruitful, and the gardens 
 of almond and fruit trees, the rows of willows and 
 poplars, the vineyards and melon yards, are fair 
 and beautiful. 
 
 Modern missionary work was begun in Persia 
 by the Roman Catholic monks in the sixteenth 
 century, among the Armenians. The earliest 
 Protestant work was done by the Moravians, who 
 came in 1747 to evangelize the fire worshipers, 
 1 Persia, Western Mission, p. 292.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 215 
 
 of whom there are now about 5,000 left in Persia, 
 though fire worshiping was once.the established re- 
 ligion of the land. In 181 1, Henry Martyn passed 
 through Persia and spent about eleven months in 
 Shiraz, where he preached Christ boldly. Though 
 in Persia so short a time, and already enfeebled by 
 disease, Martyn completed his translation of the 
 New Testament, and he stamped his influence in- 
 delibly on some hearts. "Just as I was leaving 
 Persia," said Dr. Perkins, forty years ago, " I fell 
 in with a Chaldean bishop about seventy years 
 old, in the district of Salmas, with whom Martyn 
 had stopped as a guest for a week, forty-seven 
 years before. This aged man is the only Persian 
 I have met who personally recollected Martyn. 
 He was charmed with the missionary, pronounc- 
 ing him the finest Englishman he ever saw ; and 
 his remembrance of him was very vivid so long 
 afterwards. He spoke of him as social, active and 
 inquisitive, writing from morning till night, yet 
 always ready to engage in conversation with all 
 who called as very temperate, eating ( as the 
 bishop figuratively said) an egg for breakfast, 
 and dining on a chicken wing. When riding out 
 to visit antiquities in the region, he was accus- 
 tomed to propose a topic for discussion ; for in- 
 stance, when they mounted their horses one day, 
 Martyn said to the bishop, ' Let us discuss the 
 question, Was darkness created ? You take one 
 side, and I will take the other, and see what we 
 make of it ; ' showing Martyn's taste for meta- 
 physics, and his knowledge of the Persian tastes 
 and mind. The bishop represented him as small 
 in stature and frail in appearance. There must 
 have been wonderful power, as well as singular 
 fascination, in Martyn to have left so enduring 
 and grateful an impression on that Persian." 1 
 1 Perkins, Missionary Life in Persia, p. 187.
 
 2l6 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Dr. Perkins himself was the first American 
 missionary to settle in Persia. In 1829 the 
 American Board had sent Messrs. Smith and 
 Dvvight of the Mission in Turkey to explore 
 northwestern Persia. Their welcome in Moslem 
 villages was very different from the welcome mis- 
 sionaries receive now that the people know and 
 respect them, and have been made grateful for 
 the medical help and treatment which have done 
 more than anything else to break down Moham- 
 medan hatred. "It was a Moslem village," 
 writes Mr. Smith, of one of the last stopping 
 places as they neared Tabriz, "at the entrance 
 of a pass in the mountains, which conducts to the 
 Lake of Urumia. A corner of a miserable stable 
 was the first lodging place that offered, and the 
 best that the villagers could be persuaded to give 
 us. Dirty as it was, I was never so glad to reach 
 the best American inn ; nor did ever a fire seem 
 more cheerful than the burning cow-dung which 
 was blazing here when we entered. I remember 
 no more, for a stupor, which had been gradually 
 increasing during the morning's ride, now com- 
 pletely overcame me. I sank upon the ground, 
 and remained unconscious of what passed for 
 two days. My companion could not obtain from 
 me an answer to the simplest questions, nor had I 
 the strength to turn in bed, if that name may be 
 given to what was under me. It was a cloak and 
 a carpet laid upon the ground, and made, at 
 length, somewhat softer by the addition of some 
 coarse weeds, procured with difficulty from our 
 Moslem host. The stench of the cattle, which 
 filled our stable at night, polluted the air, and the 
 lowing of the calves disturbed us. No motives 
 my companion could use were sufficient to pro- 
 cure another room, or even to cause the cattle to 
 be removed from this. And such was the dread
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 217 
 
 of ceremonial pollution from Christian contact, 
 that the slightest conveniences or attentions were 
 denied us, or given with the greatest reluctance. 
 Our food even had to be cooked in our own 
 dishes, by our own servant." l Among the Nes- 
 torians their reception was quite different. 
 "Hardly had we dismounted," wrote Mr. Smith 
 of their reception at Ada, which was repeated 
 elsewhere, " before nearly the whole village 
 crowded around us. They followed us to 
 our room, and filled it almost to suffocation. 
 Pleased as we were to see such an interest excited 
 by our arrival, we feared it would seem to their 
 rulers like a tumultuous rising, and would gladly 
 have persuaded many of them to retire. But our 
 remonstrances were in vain, and the bishop, when 
 urged to exert his authority, assured us that the 
 whole was but the overflowing of pure love to us, 
 and we must bear with them. They listened to 
 our conversation until late at night, and were 
 finally persuaded to retire only by our declaring 
 that we were going to bed." 2 When Messrs. 
 Smith and Dvvight had examined the situation, 
 they reported advising the establishment of a 
 mission to the Nestorians. Mr. Smith said, 
 " For myself, I felt a stronger desire to settle 
 among them at once as a missionary, than among 
 any people I have seen," and though he pointed 
 out that it would be a lonely position with no 
 Europeans near, and Constantinople eleven hun- 
 dred miles away by land, and Trebizond, on the 
 Black sea, five hundred, and very dangerous, yet 
 he added, "We must not calculate too closely 
 the chances of life," and he was sure that the 
 
 1 Researches of Smith and Dwight in Armenia, Vol. II., 
 p. 140. 
 
 2 Ibid, p. 234 f.
 
 2l8 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 missionary who should come here would "feel 
 the advantage of his position ; that he has found 
 a prop upon which to rest the lever that will over- 
 turn the whole system of Mohammedan delusion, 
 in the center of which he has fixed himself; that 
 he is lighting a fire which will shine out upon the 
 corruptions of the Persian on the one side, and 
 upon the barbarities of the Kurd on the other, 
 until all shall come to be enlightened by its 
 brightness ; and the triumph of faith will crown 
 his labor of love." l 
 
 On the basis of this report the Rev. Justin 
 Perkins, a tutor in Amherst College, with his 
 wife, was sent out in 1833, and in 1835 Dr. and 
 Mrs. Grant joined them in Tabriz, and the party 
 removed to Urumia to reside among the Nes- 
 torians. "Our arrival to reside among them," 
 says Dr. Perkins, "was welcomed with the 
 strongest demonstrations of joy by all classes of 
 that people, and with at least a high degree of 
 satisfaction by the Mohammedan population. 
 The Nestorians, in some villages, marched out in 
 masses to meet us, with their rude trumpets and 
 drums, to express their gladness on the occasion, 
 and would not be dissuaded from doing so by our 
 earnest remonstrances. ' ' 2 
 
 The missionaries were instructed to have as their 
 object in establishing this Mission : " (i) To con- 
 vince the people that they came among them with 
 no design to take away their religious privileges 
 nor to subject them to any foreign ecclesiastical 
 power; (2) To enable the Nestorian Church, 
 through the grace of God, to exert a commanding 
 influence in the spiritual regeneration of Asia." 3 
 
 1 Researches of Smith and Dwight in Armenia, Vol. II., 
 p. 264 f. 
 
 8 Missionary Life in Persia, p. 42. 
 3 Historical Sketches, p. 250.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 219 
 
 What was the Nestorian Church ? It was the 
 branch of the Christian Church which followed 
 Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, who was de- 
 posed and excommunicated by the Council of 
 Ephesus, in 431. One of the prominent charges 
 against him was that he refused to apply to the 
 Virgin Mary the title "Mother of God." The 
 people do not call themselves Nestorians, but 
 Syrians, and their language is Syriac. Their 
 chief bishop, who resides at Kochannes, in the 
 Kurdish Mountains, in Turkey, styles himself 
 "Patriarch of the East." They were once a 
 great missionary Church carrying the gospel far 
 into China, but for twelve centuries they have 
 been subject to Mohammedan rulers, and their 
 missionary spirit has been broken, though not 
 their loyalty to the Christian name. In the six- 
 teenth century a schism divided the Church, one 
 section submitting to a Patriarch residing at Mosul. 
 This section is known as Chaldeans, and a large 
 portion of it has conformed to the Roman Catholic 
 Church. Our Mission has worked almost wholly 
 among the Nestorians subject to the Patriarch at 
 Kochannes, of whom there are perhaps 100,000, 
 a third of them in Persia and the rest in Turkey, 
 in the mountains just west of the Urumia plain. 
 
 Though Christians in name, clinging with te- 
 nacity to the forms of their religion and reveren- 
 cing the Bible, tolerating no images, and keeping 
 at least some of the commandments, the masses 
 of the people were "very ignorant, degraded and 
 superstitious, leaving the care of their souls for the 
 most part to the priests, and having no just con- 
 ception of the character and work of Jesus Christ. 
 They look upon his ministry simply as that of a 
 teacher, and see in his tragic death only a mar- 
 tyr's end." l The missionaries began their work 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 246.
 
 220 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 quietly and tactfully. They established village 
 schools and seminaries for training young men 
 and women as preachers and teachers ; but they 
 " had not expected to enter their churches as 
 clergymen and formally preach the gospel," said 
 Dr. Perkins, " for we apprehended that the native 
 ecclesiastics, much as they rejoiced in our more 
 general labors, would be likely to regard them- 
 selves in danger of being undervalued by their 
 people in their clerical capacity, by a comparison 
 with the missionaries, and so take offense at the 
 measure, were we to assume the attitude of regular 
 preachers in their churches." * But in 1840 they 
 began to be urged by the most influential eccle- 
 siastics to go into the churches every Sunday and 
 preach. " The scene was more interesting," said 
 Dr. Perkins, " than can possibly be conceived, as 
 we took our places in those venerable churches, a 
 Nestorian bishop standing usually on one hand 
 and a priest on the other, and a congregation of 
 both sexes and all ages seated on their mats, on 
 the simple earth floor, crowded shoulder to shoul- 
 der, and listening to the words of life as they fell 
 from the speaker's lips, with an eagerness of 
 countenance that would almost loose the tongues 
 of those of our number who had not yet learned 
 the language, and inspire them with the power of 
 utterance. It is always an unspeakable privilege 
 to preach the gospel of salvation, but especially 
 under such circumstances." 2 
 
 In these years, 18401850, came the first great 
 revivals among the Nestorians, revivals of which 
 Dr. Perkins could say, "They have reminded me 
 more of the revivals associated with the labors of 
 Nettleton, in the days of my youth, than any 
 
 1 Missionary Life in Persia, p. 76. 
 9 Ibid, p. 77.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 221 
 
 others I have witnessed." 1 It was in one of 
 these revivals that Deacon Gewergis, the moun- 
 tain evangelist, was converted. He was a noted 
 thief and robber, of notorious reputation for cour- 
 age and crime. He had brought his two daugh- 
 ters down to Miss Fiske's seminary, and came 
 over to visit them during a revival. He and his 
 companions bristled with deadly weapons, and at 
 first he was angry at the sight of the deep convic- 
 tion of the pupils; but some words from Miss 
 Fiske went like an arrow to his heart, and a con- 
 version like Paul's wrought a like transformation 
 in his character, and he spent his life going up 
 and down the Assyrian Mountains, with which 
 the name of Samuel A. Rhea will always be con- 
 nected, 2 suffering reviling, abuse, and beating, 
 dying at last in a delirium, crying, "Free grace ! 
 free grace ! free grace ! " Of one of these re- 
 vivals in the young men's seminary, Deacon 
 Gewergis wrote to a friend: "Glory to God, 
 there has been such an awakening among the 
 boys as I have never seen a lamentation, a 
 mourning for sins, that is wonderful. Many of 
 the boys prostrated themselves on the floor to 
 pray; others left the room; and there rose such 
 a sound of weeping in the yard, prayer closets, 
 and elsewhere, as to melt our hearts ; and this 
 continued until midnight." 3 
 
 As years went on, and the spirit of a warm 
 evangelical Christianity spread through the Nes- 
 torian Church, it became increasingly difficult to 
 maintain the integrity of the Old Church. The 
 missionaries had hoped to reform the spirit of the 
 Church without interfering with its organization ; 
 but at length a separation came, and the evangel - 
 
 1 Missionary Life in Persia, p. 119 f. 
 8 See his life, A '1'ennesseean in Persia. 
 3 Perkins, Missionary Life in Persia, p. 156.
 
 222 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 ical element broke off from the Old Church, and 
 formed an evangelical knooshya or synod, with 
 five presbyteries, three in Persia and two in 
 Turkey. The separation was unavoidable. The 
 Patriarch became hostile, and tried to destroy the 
 evangelical work in the Church. In 1844 his 
 brothers issued this order against the girls of Miss 
 Fiske's seminary: "Be it known to you all, ye 
 readers at Seir, that if ye do not come to us to- 
 morrow, we will excommunicate you from our 
 most holy Church ; your finger nails shall be torn 
 out ; we will hunt you from village to village, and 
 kill you if we can." The converts became rest- 
 less under the abuses and unscriptural practices 
 of the Church which they could not reform. They 
 demanded also better pastoral care and instruction 
 than the dead language in use in the churches 
 and the old rituals allowed. So the disruption 
 came quietly and naturally, through the converts 
 and the missionaries uniting in the Lord's Supper. 
 In time those interested in the reform met, and, 
 in 1862, held the first conference or knooshya. 
 Though a large section of the Church broke off 
 in this way, it was not the occasion of the cessa- 
 tion of the reform within the Old Church. That 
 has continued to this day, and the missionaries 
 still preach and work in and for the Old Church 
 as well. 
 
 There are some who disapprove of our Ameri- 
 can missions to the oriental Christian churches 
 because they have in this way established separate 
 reformed organizations. But they never did this 
 until forced to it, and until in some cases the 
 evangelical element was practically excommuni- 
 cated. It may be suggested, however, that there 
 is adequate reason for the organization of these 
 powerful churches, in the fact that only thus can 
 we hope to commend Christianity to the Mo-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 223 
 
 hammedans, who have despised the unreformed 
 churches for their impotence, their superstitions, 
 their gross idolatrous ritualism and practices. As 
 Sir William Muir says : " It is no wonder that 
 Christianity in the East has made little way, but 
 has remained, all these twelve centuries, passive 
 and helpless under its oppressive yoke. And so 
 it will remain with any effort of the churches 
 themselves, and not less of those who would work 
 in conjunction with them. In establishing an 
 Eastern propaganda, for which the path is now 
 being thrown so marvelously open, it would be a 
 fatal mistake to attempt the work hand in hand 
 with the unreformed churches. The contempt of 
 centuries would attach to it. The attempt, so far 
 as concerns its influence on the Moslem world, is 
 doomed to failure. Far otherwise is it with such 
 efforts as are now being made by the churches 
 which distinctively call themselves 'evangelical,' 
 planted in Syria and adjoining lands, and rapidly 
 extending there in numbers and in influence. 
 They come into the field as a young and vigorous 
 force, which at once socially, politically, and spir- 
 itually, command from the Mohammedan races 
 surrounding them, inquiry and respect. ' ' 1 
 
 Besides the direct preaching of the gospel and 
 the medical work, the school and the press have 
 cooperated to secure the great results which have 
 been accomplished among the Nestorians. The 
 College has sent out scores of young men to lift 
 up their nation; and Fiske Seminary, named 
 after Fidelia Fiske, one of the most remarkable 
 missionaries ever sent out from America, has 
 been a fountain of light to Persia and Turkey, 
 sending out women who have renovated their 
 villages and churches and homes. The press 
 was established in 1840. Among the first pub- 
 1 Sweet First- Fruits, p. 17 f.
 
 224 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 lications was a part of the Bible. "Some of 
 the ablest of the Nestorian clergy had aided in 
 the translation, and the contents of their rare an- 
 cient manuscripts were now given back to them 
 in a language which all could understand. They 
 stood in mute astonishment and rapture to see 
 their language in print ; and as soon as they could 
 speak, the exclamation was, ' It is time to give 
 glory to God, since printing is begun among our 
 people.' " * In thousands of homes there have 
 been light and truth because of these schools and 
 this press. 
 
 When the missionary first went to the Nestori- 
 ans, the people, as Dr. Perkins said, " were in a 
 night of deep darkness. Ground down to the 
 dust by their Mohammedan rulers and masters, 
 toward whom, in that relation, they naturally 
 cherished a bitter hostility, as sore oppressors, 
 luxuriating in idleness and voluptuousness on 
 the fruits of their own severe and ill-requited toil, 
 they still contracted many of the prevalent vices 
 of those hated oppressors. Falsehood, among 
 those nominal Christians, also, was nearly univer- 
 sal. The Sabbath was a day of business, trade, 
 and recreation, and almost every command of the 
 Decalogue was habitually violated with little com- 
 punction or even shame. Indeed, in their morals, 
 the Nestorians were nearly on a level with the 
 corrupt Mohammedans around them. . . . The 
 Nestorians were very ignorant, as well as immoral, 
 their ignorance doubtless being a fruitful cause 
 of their immorality. Not a female among them 
 could read, except the sister of the patriarch, who 
 being regarded as belonging to a higher order it 
 was deemed befitting that she should possess that 
 peerless accomplishment. And but very few of the 
 men could read, hardly any except their eccle- 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 257.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 225 
 
 siastics, and most of them being merely able 
 to chant their devotions in an ancient and un- 
 known tongue the Syriac. They had no printed 
 books, and but very few in manuscript." 1 In 
 the seventy years which have passed since, a com- 
 plete change has come over the people. Thou- 
 sands have been'converted to a living faith. Ed- 
 ucated priests have taken the place of ignorant 
 priests. Native doctors have been trained in mod- 
 ern medical science. Hundreds of village schools 
 taught by the graduates of the College and Fiske 
 Seminary have spread enlightenment through the 
 whole nation. Every home is supplied with books 
 and the Bible in modern Syriac. The people 
 have a secure position before the Moslems, and 
 all the Nestorians, whether Evangelical, Old 
 Church or Romanist, perceive and acknowledge 
 their unmeasured obligation to the " Mission to 
 the Nestorians." 
 
 From the beginning, the relation of the Mis- 
 sion to the Mohammedans and other peoples of 
 Persia had been kept in view, and in 1869, its 
 name was changed to "The Mission to Persia." 
 In 1871, at the time of the Reunion of the Old 
 and New Schools, the Persia Mission was trans- 
 ferred by the American Board to the Presbyterian 
 Church, with the Syria Mission, and at once 
 plans for enlargement were made. " It was 
 felt to be a duty to embrace within their work 
 the Armenians and Moslems of Central Persia. 
 Accordingly Rev. James Bassett, who had reached 
 Urumia in 1871, made an extended tour the fol- 
 lowing year, visiting Tabriz, Hamadan, and Te- 
 heran, the result of which was that in Novem- 
 ber, 1872, he was sent to occupy the capital city 
 of Teheran, where he was warmly welcomed by 
 both Mussulmans and Armenians. Here is a 
 1 Missionary Life in Persia, pp. 104-106.
 
 226 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 population of 200,000, most of whom are Mos- 
 lems ; but there are 1,000 Armenians, 5,000 Jews 
 and several hundred Europeans." 1 " We occupy," 
 wrote Mr. Bassett, "the only tenable ground for 
 labor designed to reach either Eastern Persia or 
 the Tartar tribes of Turkestan. The Turkish 
 language spoken here enables a person to pass 
 quite through Turkestan to the birthplace of 
 Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, into Chinese 
 Tartary and far to the north ward, -while the Per- 
 sian makes accessible all central and southern 
 Persia, through Khorassan, to Afghanistan, and 
 even large populations of India. Central Asia 
 has in nearly all the past been neglected by the 
 Church of Christ ; the result has been that it is 
 the great source whence have proceeded the 
 scourges of mankind ; and the Tartar and Iran- 
 ian hordes have, age after age, as in great tidal 
 waves, quite overflowed Christendom, overthrow- 
 ing its civilization and nearly extinguishing its 
 light." 2 
 
 The Rev. J. L. Potter, D. D., soon joined Mr. 
 Bassett, and in 1876 the Evangelical Church of 
 Teheran was organized, of eleven Armenians and 
 one converted Moslem. In 1879 and 1880 great 
 interest was manifested by Mohammedans. "So 
 numerous and prolonged were the calls upon the 
 missionary," says Dr. Potter, " that it was some- 
 times difficult for him to find time for his meals." 
 The Persian Government was alarmed and notified 
 the missionaries through the British minister that 
 they would not be allowed to remain if they con- 
 tinued such work. In consequence, the Mission 
 discontinued meetings for Moslems, but they soon 
 began to come to the public services of the Mis- 
 sion, so that these services in the Mission chapel 
 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 263. 
 * Ibid.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 227 
 
 had to be discontinued until 1882, when the Shah 
 so far relented as to consent practically to the at- 
 tendance of Moslems at the chapel, while he 
 warned them against apostasy. At the Friday 
 meetings now, groups of white-turbaned Moham- 
 medan priests are often seen, and they come to 
 the missionaries for personal conversation. Tehe- 
 ran is so large a city that men are under less sur- 
 veillance than in the villages, and are less cau- 
 tious about manifesting interest in Christianity. 
 The government has grown much more friendly 
 as years have passed. At times the majority of 
 boys in the Teheran Boys' School are Moslems, 
 many of them sons of officials ; and in 1890, the 
 Shah himself visited the Mission premises, and 
 so gave a sort of imperial sanction to the work. 
 Dr. Potter describes this event : "One morn- 
 ing word reached us of the intention of His Im- 
 perial Majesty. Immediately all was excite- 
 ment, and we began to put the place in readiness 
 for so great an honor. His Majesty was met 
 at the outer gate by the male missionaries. The 
 pupils of the boys' school were drawn up in line 
 on either side of the avenue leading in from the 
 gate, and as the august visitor advanced they 
 strewed flowers in his pathway. He first pro- 
 ceeded to the residence nearest the gate, 
 where refreshments were served, and a little ex- 
 perimental telephone, which had been set up be- 
 tween two residences, was shown him, one of the 
 missionaries running over to the other house to 
 speak with him over the wire. Next he ad- 
 vanced to the court of the boys' school, where 
 the boys were again drawn up in line. Here an 
 address of welcome prepared by the Persian 
 teacher in flowing language was read by one of 
 the boys. His Majesty, however, did not enter 
 this building, but went over to the girls' school,
 
 228 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 and with a number of his ministers he entered 
 the beautiful schoolroom. After saluting his 
 picture hanging on the wall, he sat down. He 
 desired one of the girls to write on the black- 
 board, but she being very much embarrassed, the 
 Shah himself proceeded to the board, and taking 
 the chalk in hand wrote, both in Persian and in 
 French, ' Hake em-al- Mamalek,' The Physi- 
 cian of the Kingdom. This has since been 
 framed with a glass over it, and there the ' blessed 
 handwriting ' remains until this day. A hymn in 
 Persian was sung by the school, and his Majesty 
 proceeded through the hallway to the dining 
 room, where he seemed greatly impressed with 
 the scrupulous neatness of the place, for he ex- 
 claimed : ' Timeey, timeey ' clean, clean. Next 
 he proceeded to the corner of the property where 
 the work of drilling the artesian well was in oper- 
 ation, and the various processes were explained to 
 him. He was here served with coffee in his own 
 golden cups, and then took his leave without en- 
 tering the Mission chapel, which stands conspic- 
 uously in the center of the grounds, and around 
 which he had made a complete circuit." 
 
 The third station to be established in Persia 
 was Tabriz, about 140 miles from Urumia, and 
 northeast of Urumia Lake. The city had been 
 often visited by missionaries, but the first to take 
 up permanent residence were Mr. and Mrs. 
 Easton and Miss Jewett. The foundations of the 
 work, as in Teheran, were laid among the Ar- 
 menians. Perhaps for this purpose these little 
 bodies of Christians have been preserved in this 
 Moslem land, where without them for a base of 
 work Christian missions would find their position 
 almost impossible. The Armenians in Persia 
 number less than seventy thousand. Their race 
 is one of the oldest in Western Asia, and was one
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 229 
 
 of the first to embrace Christianity. The people 
 are quiet, with bright minds, skillful in trades, 
 and they are the shrewdest merchants in the 
 country. They have progressed greatly during 
 the century, having favored education, and spent 
 their money very generously on schools. But 
 they are a conceited people and the religious ones 
 are superstitious, and the irreligious tinctured 
 with French infidelity. Their racial patriotism 
 binds them to the Gregorian Church and has 
 filled them with nationalistic dreams which are 
 not likely ever to be realized and which have 
 taken the place of religion with the young men. 
 They have shown themselves in some of their 
 relations to the missions almost devoid of the 
 grace of gratitude. In Hamadan, the Armenians 
 have been less touched by the nationalistic move- 
 ment and the quasi-civilization of Tabriz and 
 Teheran, and are more like the simple and in- 
 genuous Nestorians. The Patriarch of the Gre- 
 gorian Church lives at Echmiadzen in the Cau- 
 casus. The Church holds to the seven sacraments 
 of the Roman Church, and believes in the media- 
 tion of saints, the adoration of images, and tran- 
 substantiation. 
 
 Apart from the difficulties both in educational 
 and evangelistic work which the Tabriz station 
 has encountered among the Armenians, there has 
 been more opposition here from Mohammedans 
 than at any other point. In 1874, the Armenian 
 priests stirred up the Moslem mujtahids, or 
 ecclesiastics, and a number of Moslems attending 
 the services on Sunday were seized and beaten, 
 one of them to death. In consequence, more 
 Moslems than ever came to hear the missionaries, 
 and to learn what it was that so offended the 
 priests. In 1885 again fanaticism broke out, and 
 the city was in an uproar against a Moslem,
 
 230 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Mirza All, who proclaimed belief in Christianity, 
 and who had to flee from the country. In 1892 
 the government without any notification locked 
 up the doors of the church and school, and put 
 red sealing wax over the keyholes. When at 
 last an explanation could be obtained, the reasons 
 assigned for sealing up the buildings were, "lack 
 of proper permission to build the church, having 
 the Ten Commandments written in the interior of 
 the church in a Mohammedan language and in 
 the sacred blue color, having a water tank under 
 the church in which to baptize converts, having a 
 tower in which we intended to put a bell, baptis- 
 ing Mussulmans, of whom Mirza Ibrahim was 
 now in prison, receiving Mussulman boys into 
 our school and women to the church, having 
 Dr. Bradford's dispensary near the church." 1 
 After explanations and a long delay, the seals 
 were removed, the government issuing the follow- 
 ing order to the missionaries: "That we must 
 not receive Mussulman women and children to 
 our schools or church, that we must not take 
 photographs of Mussulman women, that we must 
 not conduct ourselves contrary to custom." 
 Since then the work has not been stopped, and 
 the boarding schools for boys and girls, the 
 church, the medical work, and the itinerating 
 work which the Tabriz station has done far and 
 wide, have scattered the gospel through thou- 
 sands of homes and scores of villages. 
 
 The fourth station in Persia was established at 
 Hamadan in 1881, by the removal thither of the 
 Rev. James W. Hawkes. Hamadan is identified 
 as Ecbatana (Ezra 4 : 2), the place where Darius 
 found the roll with the decree of Cyrus for re- 
 building the temple. An old domed brick build- 
 
 1 Wilson, Persia : Western Mission, p. 189. 
 * Ibid., p. 191.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 231 
 
 ing is said to be the tomb of Mordecai and 
 Esther. There are about 4,000 Jews in Hamadan 
 now, and one of the two churches established 
 there is composed of Jewish and Moslem converts. 
 The poor Jews have suffered as even the Chris- 
 tians have not under Islam, and frequent riots 
 in Hamadan have the Jews for their victims. Mr. 
 Wilson describes one of these in 1892, when the 
 Mussulmans charged the Jews with being the 
 cause of the cholera. Some were seized and 
 beaten, and the Mollahs, who led the people, " in 
 order to disgrace them and restrict their liberty 
 commanded that the Jew should wear a cloak of 
 two colors, should have a badge of red on his 
 coat to indicate his race, should not come out on 
 a rainy day ; if while riding he met a Mussulman, 
 he should dismount until the latter passed ; that 
 the Jewish women should wear black veils; that 
 the houses of the Jews should not be higher than 
 those of their Mussulman neighbors ; that Mus- 
 sulmans should not barter with Jews nor call their 
 doctors." 1 This is the spirit of their treatment 
 throughout Persia. " Despised and persecuted," 
 as Mr. Cohen, of Bagdad, wrote of his own race, 
 "they are unable to command respect or to 
 arouse feelings of humanity in the breasts of 
 their oppressors. They passively submit to the 
 vilest insults, while petty acts of persecution 
 gradually become habitual. A Mussulman 
 child may with impunity pull a Jew's beard and 
 spit in his face. The word ' Jew ' is considered a 
 term of disgrace and is never used by the Persian 
 without an apology for giving it utterance." : 
 
 The Mohammedans of the Hamadan field are 
 much more accessible than those of the province 
 of Azerbijan, in which Urumia and Tabriz are 
 
 1 Persia : Western Mission, p. 239 f. 
 8 Ibid., p. 242.
 
 232 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 situated, and their children are sent both to the 
 Faith Hubbard School for girls, and to the boys' 
 school. And there are multitudes of them to be 
 reached. In the Hamadan field are eight cities 
 with populations from 10,000 to 60,000, and 
 scores of plains dotted with villages. In one 
 small plain in which we thought there would be 
 about fifteen villages, we found when we had 
 ridden through it that there were fifty-one. How 
 can the little company at Hamadan give the 
 gospel to so large a multitude ? 
 
 Two other stations at one time occupied by 
 missionaries have been given up. Salmas, estab- 
 lished in 1884, is now absorbed in the Tabriz 
 field, and the work carried on by itineration ; and 
 Mos^il in Turkey, occupied by the American 
 Board in 1841, and transferred in 1892 to the 
 Presbyterian Board, is now transferred to the 
 Church Missionary Society of Great Britain, 
 while the work among the mountain Nestorians, 
 which was in part connected with it and in part 
 with Urumia, is now carried on exclusively from 
 the latter. 
 
 One of the most powerful agencies of the work 
 in Persia is medical missions. No one can know 
 the full power of a consecrated medical mission- 
 ary until he has seen what it has accomplished in 
 a Mohammedan land. A volume could be writ- 
 ten of the work of each of the medical mission- 
 aries, and of the hospitals in Urumia, Teheran, 
 and Tabriz. Dr. Cochran saved Urumia in 1880 
 from capture by Sheik Abidullah and his Kurds, 
 through the influence he had acquired over them 
 by his kindness and skill. In Tabriz, Dr. Holmes 
 so commended the religion of Jesus that even an 
 infidel was heard to remark, " If there is a heaven, 
 Dr. Holmes will go to it." When the late Shah 
 was shot, Dr. Wishard was called to see him. Dr.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 233 
 
 Vanneman was the only man the new Shah could 
 trust to bring his family to Teheran, and Dr. 
 Holmes was at once summoned to become his 
 personal physician, and could only with difficulty 
 avoid obeying. Such instances as this, told of 
 the Urumia hospital, could be multiplied a hun- 
 dredfold : " The Mohammedan ruler of a farming 
 village had been bitterly opposed to having any 
 Christian work done among his tenants, even 
 among his nominally Christian subjects. The 
 missionaries sent a preacher to his village. The 
 ruler ordered him away ; that not availing, he 
 ordered the preacher's goods and furniture to be 
 put out of the house into the street. Later the 
 ruler's son was sick. He needed to have an op- 
 eration performed, for which he must be taken to 
 the hospital. The father accompanied him and 
 afterwards kept visiting the hospital, occasionally 
 spending a night, thus keeping well acquainted 
 with all that was done for his son. He watched 
 the workings of the establishment. When well ' 
 enough the son was sent home, and later the 
 father called for a Christian preacher in his vil- 
 lage, and attended service himself, carrying his 
 own Persian Bible, a translation made by Henry 
 Martyn, often comparing passages and asking 
 questions and discussing the Christian faith. 
 This course excited comment. Mohammedans 
 asked, ' What does this mean ? Recently you 
 drove the preacher from your village, and now 
 you are attending services and reading the Bible.' 
 'Well,' replied the ruler, 'I will tell you. I 
 did not know these people. My son was sick, 
 and I sent him to their hospital, and I got ac- 
 quainted with the missionaries, and I know they 
 are good people, and I wish their teachers, and I 
 am going to have them.' " 1 
 
 1 Wilson, Persia : Western Mission, p. 280 f.
 
 234 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 The Mohammedan is always surprised also at 
 the Christian view and treatment of women. A 
 Tabriz Mollah declared in a discourse in a 
 mosque : " They tell us there are dragons and 
 scorpions in hell. My two wives, with their 
 jealousies, quarrelings, their demands for dress, 
 etc., give me no peace. I could well leave them 
 for other torments." l And Miss Jewett says : "I 
 have had women, after hearing that wife-beating 
 is not allowed in my country, ask in surprise, 
 ' Why, how do your men make their wives mind 
 them ? ' The mother-in-law, too, may beat and 
 abuse her daughter-in-law. Ordinarily there is 
 little love in the family. A woman said to me 
 once : ' Oh, yes, I love my husband, I love him 
 as much as a sieve holds water.' " '* The Persian 
 proverb is, "A man's worst enemy is his wife." 
 It is not strange that a Persian woman watching 
 a missionary and his wife together, and noticing 
 their loving ways, should say: " Your Prophet did 
 well for your women ; ours did not. I shall have 
 words with our prophet when I meet him in the 
 next world." 
 
 But Islam is cruel to others than women. It is 
 murderous toward apostates. How hard the 
 work of the missionaries in Persia is, and how 
 hard the lot of any Moslem who turns to the true 
 Prophet, is shown by the story of Mirza Ibrahim. 
 He was a Mohammedan of Khoi who found 
 peace' in Christ for his troubled heart, and was 
 publicly baptized, in 1890. The Mollahs reasoned 
 with him, and tried to bribe him. His wife and 
 children left him, and took all his property ac- 
 cording to Moslem law. While he was going 
 about the village preaching, he was arrested and 
 taken before the governor in Urumia. When 
 
 1 Wilson, Persian Life and Customs, p. 266. 
 
 2 Jewett, Twenty-Jive Years in Persia, p. 20.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 235 
 
 he spoke for Christ, saying, " He is my Saviour," 
 they cried, " Beat him." He was beaten and 
 reviled, but he only replied, as his face shone, 
 " So was my Saviour beaten." After a short im- 
 prisonment he was removed to Tabriz. As he 
 was led away from the prison, he solemnly called 
 his fellow-prisoners to witness that he was free 
 from their blood if they should reject the way of 
 life, and " they all rose with heavy chains on 
 their necks and bade him go in peace, while they 
 prayed that his God and the Saviour whom he 
 trusted would protect him." One of the Mo- 
 hammedan officers who had watched him, said to 
 the Mohammedan crowd in the yard : " This is a 
 wonderful man. He is as brave as a lion. A 
 Mollah has just been trying to convince him of 
 his error, but he replies to everything, and the 
 Mollah has gone away with his head hanging 
 down. He says that Mohammed is not a prophet, 
 and that unless they can prove that he is, from 
 the Holy Books, he will not give up his faith in 
 Christ, even if they cut off his head." l His last 
 request as he set out for the capital of the province 
 was : " Pray for me that I may be a witness for 
 Christ before the great of my people. I have no 
 fear though I know that I shall die. Good-by." * 
 Some of the officials in Tabriz and Urumia 
 seemed to be in real sympathy with the prisoner, 
 but he was cast into the dark dungeon at Tabriz, 
 chained to vile criminals, beaten, stunned and de- 
 prived of his clothes and bedding. One night 
 when he witnessed for Christ to his fellow-prison- 
 ers, they fell upon him, kicked him, and took 
 turns in choking him. His throat swelled so 
 that he could scarcely swallow or speak, and on 
 Sunday, May 14, 1843, he died from his injuries. 
 
 1 Wilson, Persia .- Western Mission, p. 33 f. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 34.
 
 236 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 When the Crown Prince was informed of his 
 death, he asked, " How did he die? " And the 
 jailor answered, " He died like a Christian." 
 
 " He through fiery trials trod, 
 
 And from great affliction came ; 
 Now before the throne of God, 
 
 Sealed with his almighty name, 
 Clad in raiment pure and white, 
 
 Victor palms within his hands, 
 Through his dear Redeemer's might 
 
 More than conqueror he stands." 
 
 He was buried by night in the grave of a rich 
 Moslem, whose body had been removed. Like 
 his Master, he made his grave with the wicked 
 and with the rich in his death. His martyrdom 
 sent a thrill through Persia, and brought many a 
 weak and secret Christian face to face with the 
 possible consequences of an open confession of 
 his faith. l 
 
 Our Church has undertaken the most difficult 
 task ever set for men in these missions in Persia 
 and Syria. But some day the chains will be taken 
 from the people, and they will be free to turn to 
 Him whose truth has been so long obscured and 
 his name so long profaned by Mohammed. That 
 that day may be hastened in Persia, all who wish 
 to see Christ in his rightful place in Moslem 
 lands must pray, as the missionaries in Teheran 
 pray each Sunday afternoon in the little service 
 held for English Christians : 
 
 "Almighty and everlasting God, we are taught 
 by thy holy Word that the hearts of kings are in 
 thy rule and governance, and that thou dost dis- 
 pose and turn them as it seemeth best to thy 
 godly wisdom. We beseech thee to bless thy 
 servant Muzaffar-ed din, Shah of Persia, and all 
 
 1 Wilson, Persia: Western Mission, pp. 31-39.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN PERSIA 237 
 
 who hold authority under him, and especially 
 those upon whom new responsibilities may come, 
 and so overrule and direct their actions that thy 
 name may be glorified and thy kingdom ad- 
 vanced. We beseech thee to open a great and 
 effectual door for thy truth, and to establish re- 
 ligious liberty in this land and throughout all the 
 earth. Grant this, O most merciful Father, for 
 thy dear Son's sake, Jesus Christ, our Lord. 
 Amen."
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 
 
 2 39
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 
 
 THE earlier missions of the Presbyterian Church 
 to the Indians have been referred to in the chap- 
 ter on the development of the missionary work of 
 the Church at home. After the organization of 
 the Western Foreign Missionary Society in 1831, 
 the first mission to the Indians that was under- 
 taken was among the Weas, in what is now the 
 state of Kansas, and the ambitious spirit which 
 animated the Church in its plans was shown in 
 the resolution of the Synod of Pittsburg in 1833, 
 to sustain the Society "in attempting the im- 
 mediate supply of every unsupplied and accessible 
 tribe of the Western Indian Reservation, with the 
 means of grace." In 1835 the Iowa and Sac 
 Mission was formed, and as the Weas numbered 
 only a few hundred, the workers among the Weas 
 were transferred to the new mission. The atro- 
 cious whiskey trade played havoc with these poor 
 Indians. 
 
 The Chippewa Mission was started in 1838, in 
 the north of Michigan, and the great missionary 
 among the Chippewas was Peter Dougherty, who 
 opened a school, taught the people how to build 
 log houses, stirred them up to become total ab- 
 stainers from liquor, taught them to be good farm- 
 ers, published a Chippewa spelling book, and es- 
 tablished a true Christian village. When, in 
 1852, the new Constitution of Michigan per- 
 mitted them to become citizens, they removed to 
 the west side of Grand Traverse Bay, and pleaded 
 241
 
 242 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 with Mr. Dougherty to accompany them. This 
 mission was discontinued in 1871. 
 
 In 1842 a mission was commenced among the 
 Creeks, who had been forcibly removed in 1837 
 from their homes in Georgia and Alabama to the 
 Indian Territory. The Indians were sullen and 
 angry at their removal, and even before the re- 
 moval had been opposed to missionaries. The 
 Rev. R. M. Loughridge soon won their regard, 
 however, and in six years they were giving $50 
 yearly per scholar in two schools, for whose erec- 
 tion they gave $6,000. The Civil War broke up 
 this mission, most of the Indians joining the 
 South, but it was resumed in 1866, and the 
 Creeks, now numbering nearly 14,000, largely 
 on account of missionary influences are counted 
 among the civilized tribes. 
 
 One of the best of the Indian missions was es- 
 tablished among the Choctaws in 1845. Spencer 
 Academy, which had from the Choctaw nation 
 an annual endowment of $6,000, and $2,000 from 
 the Indian Department, was under the Mission's 
 care, and for years turned out men who were a 
 power for good throughout the nation. There 
 were many revivals too, but the war brought this 
 Mission also to an end, and it was not resumed 
 until 1882. 
 
 The Omaha and Ottoe Mission was commenced 
 in 1846. Together these tribes numbered about 
 two thousand. They were very poor, " both men 
 and women being clothed in skins, and their chil- 
 dren, even in winter, nearly naked." The Sioux, 
 moreover, had driven them out of their old vil- 
 lages above Council Bluffs. It was hard and dis- 
 couraging work among all these tribes. An ac- 
 count which Mr. Rankin, then Treasurer of the 
 Board, wrote of his visit with the Hon. Walter 
 Lowrie, to the Ottoes, in 1858, gives an interest-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 243 
 
 ing picture : " Our arrival awakened little inter- 
 est in the camp ; a few came around us, but most 
 of them took no notice of the strangers. Groups 
 of men and boys were playing marbles, others 
 were stretched full length on the grass; some 
 were grotesquely ornamented. One young Indian 
 was passing by on a pony, with his head shaved 
 and his nude body painted throughout. Not a 
 man or boy was at work. Their cornfield was a 
 little distance off, but it was tilled by the Govern- 
 ment farmer, and for all other work, when not on 
 their hunt, the women are hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water and bearers of burdens. A 
 number were shifting tents, and one woman was 
 bent under a load of tent poles that would have 
 borne down a strong laboring man, while another 
 had upon her back all the utensils of her lodge 
 and its canvas covering. One squaw standing 
 near turned up to me her infant's face, as it lay 
 in its blanket-bed on her shoulders, and said, 
 with a pleasant smile, 'Pappoose.' One cannot 
 but admire these Indian children, with their 
 bright, intelligent faces and athletic forms. I do 
 not wonder that our missionary teachers among 
 other tribes become so much attached to them. 
 I looked into some of the tents ; nothing was to be 
 seen but a little fire in the center and a few cook- 
 ing and eating utensils. Men, women and chil- 
 dren, with yelping dogs, were sitting or lying 
 down on deer or buffalo skins. All wore blankets, 
 save some of the younger children, who were 
 naked. We were disappointed in finding most 
 of the chiefs away on a friendly visit to the 
 Pawnees and Kaws, and that no general council 
 could be held. But one of them was at home, 
 Big Soldier, who came up and saluted us. He 
 was a fine specimen of the red man, with an ex- 
 pression of intelligence and energy. He held
 
 244 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 together with one hand his blanket thrown loosely 
 over his shoulders, while in speaking he gesticu- 
 lated with the other. Several times, when spe- 
 cially animated, his blanket fell partly aside and 
 disclosed a manly form, entirely naked, save a 
 bandage of dressed skin bound round his loins, 
 with rings and beads pendant from three openings 
 slit in his ears. ... It was a sad sight, next to 
 being in an insane retreat, to see such childish- 
 ness on the part of full-grown men and women." ; 
 
 The Mission among the Seminoles was formed 
 in 1848. They, like the Creeks, had been forci- 
 bly removed to the Indian Territory from Florida, 
 and were embittered by it ; but the Mission won 
 its way, breaking down their hostility, and abat- 
 ing the drunkenness and idleness. In 1854 a 
 revival came, and proved the turning point in 
 the history of this poor tribe, turning their course 
 at last upward to thrift and righteousness. 
 
 The Chickasaw Mission began in 1852, on the 
 Chickasavv reservation in the territory on the Texas 
 line, and prospered until the Civil War, when 
 the Southern Presbyterian Church assumed it. 
 
 In 1856 a school was started among the Kicka- 
 poos, about 227 in number, in northeastern Kan- 
 sas, about twenty miles south of the Mission 
 among the lowas. It had a troubled history, and 
 closed in 1860. 
 
 No new Indian missions were established be- 
 tween 1856 and 1868, when work was undertaken 
 among the Navajoes and Pueblos of New Mexico, 
 each about 6,000 in number. This work was 
 transferred to the Home Mission Board in 1877. 
 In 1868, also, a missionary was sent to the Win- 
 nebagoes, who had been driven from their homes 
 in Minnesota by the Sioux, and who were living 
 on the Omaha Reservation. 
 
 1 Rankin, Hand Book, pp. 89, 90.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN. NORTH AMERICA 245 
 
 The work among the Senecas, the remnants of 
 the "Six Nations," about 3,000 in number, and 
 living in Western New York on seven reserva- 
 tions of about 87,677 acres of land, was begun in 
 1811, by the New York Missionary Society, and 
 after passing under the care of two other Boards, 
 came to our Board in 1870. The Rev. Asher 
 Wright, who died in his 72d year in 1875, was 
 "the only white man who ever acquired a satis- 
 factory knowledge of the Seneca language. ' ' He 
 constructed for them a written language, and 
 translated the four gospels. A man of great 
 ability and of great loveliness of character, he 
 bore himself with such good will as to win the 
 love of all, and when he died he was buried 
 among the graves of his Indian brethren. He 
 had "emptied himself" to live with the Senecas, 
 and he made his grave with them in his death. 
 
 The noble Mission among the Dakotas or 
 Sioux, was begun in 1835, by the American 
 Board. These Indians constitute one of the 
 largest and most warlike tribes. In 1835 they 
 numbered 50,000, now about 30,000. They 
 spread out over the whole northwest, east of the 
 Rocky Mountains, removing to their reservation 
 in 1853. After the terrible massacre of white 
 settlers in 1862, and the swift punishment they 
 received, hundreds of them were converted and 
 baptized. In 1871 a portion of the Mission with 
 its' churches was transferred to the Presbyterian 
 Board, with two of the noblest missionaries who 
 ever worked for the Indians, the Rev. Thomas A. 
 Williamson, M. D., who founded the mission, 
 and his son, the Rev. John P. Williamson, D. D., 
 who is still at work among the Dakotas. There 
 are now more than 1,400 members of the Presby- 
 terian Church among the Dakotas, and some 
 years ago Dr. Williamson wrote that the people
 
 246 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 were so closely attached to the church at Flan- 
 dreau, that they could "only be kept away on 
 Sabbath by the severest necessity. One of the 
 stormy days last winter," added Dr. Williamson, 
 "Paksikan, a man so deformed in his legs that I 
 had imagined he could scarcely walk forty rods, 
 walked eight miles to church. His clothes were 
 so thin he was afraid to ride lest he should freeze 
 to death." In 1892 every adult member of the 
 Flandreau community was a member of some 
 church, and there were many faithful ordained 
 Dakota preachers. The work spread to the Pine 
 Ridge agency, and into Montana; and in 1900 
 there were twenty-five churches, all with Indian 
 pastors, which had been organized into a Dakota 
 Presbytery. Dr. Thomas Williamson died in 
 1879, at tne a g e f e 'ghty, having just completed 
 the translation of the Bible into the Dakota lan- 
 guage, after a life of narrow escapes from death 
 and many perils, and of endurance and devotion 
 that won the confidence of all men and the abid- 
 ing love of the Indians. After the massacre he 
 went on to Washington in behalf of the Dakotas, 
 in whom he believed unswervingly, and secured 
 a commutation of their sentence to a removal to 
 the upper waters of the Missouri. When the In- 
 dians learned of the expense to which he had 
 gone for them, they desired to refund it, and 
 earned by making bows and arrows and other 
 trifles enough to pay back more than half of 
 what he had spent. With all his work he was a 
 scholar of no mean quality, in French, Dakota, 
 Hebrew, and Greek. The spirit which he im- 
 pressed on the Dakota Christians abides in them 
 to this day. 
 
 In the year 1871, the Board took up work 
 among the Nez Perces in Idaho, appointing to 
 the Mission the Rev. H. H. Spaulding, who had
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 247 
 
 been with Dr. Whitman at the massacre in 1847, 
 when Whitman and others were murdered, and 
 whose wife and Mrs. Whitman were the first 
 white women to cross the continent. On return- 
 ing to the Nez Perces in 1871, his work was at 
 once greatly blessed. He baptized in the three 
 years preceding his death, in 1874, more than nine 
 hundred Nez Perces and Spokans, translated the 
 Gospel of Matthew for them, and a collection of 
 hymns. The other best known names of mis- 
 sionaries to the Nez Perces are Miss Kate and 
 Miss Sue McBeth, women of apostolic zeal, who 
 have trained preachers, taught and preached and 
 established homes. 
 
 The only other Indian Mission was among the 
 Sac and Fox tribes, begun at Tama City in 1883. 
 
 "The record of the Board from its organiza- 
 tion to 1886, shows a list of 453 missionaries of 
 all classes who were engaged in these missions, 
 and an expenditure for the Indians of $525,000, 
 the free gift of our churches, besides $520,000, 
 intrusted to it by the government for educational 
 work. Over 3,000 persons were brought, during 
 that time, from heathenism into the Christian 
 Church (exclusive of nearly 2,000 transferred 
 from the American Board, converts among the 
 Choctaws, the Senecas, and the Dakotas), besides 
 many thousands more who were elevated in char- 
 acter and morals by the Bible light and influence 
 around them, but who never united with the 
 Church. At least 6,000 children were taught in 
 the mission schools, besides great numbers more 
 who received instruction in the government 
 schools, and were thus prepared for useful lives. 
 These missions were certainly the chief agencies 
 in the civilization, or semi-civilization, of many 
 tribes, the Senecas, some of the Chippewa and 
 Dakota bands, the Omahas, lowas, Creeks, Semi-
 
 248 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 noles, Choctaws and others." l One by one the 
 missions that have not been discontinued have 
 been transferred to other Boards, a few at the 
 time of the Civil War being taken up by the 
 Southern Presbyterian Church ; but the majority 
 have passed under the care of the Board of 
 Home Missions, the last, those among the Dako- 
 tas, Nez Perces and Senecas, having been taken 
 over in 1893. 
 
 The first mission work undertaken in North 
 America apart from the Indians, was among the 
 Chinese, who began in 1848 to pour into Cali- 
 fornia from Canton, at the tidings of the discovery 
 of gold. The wealth of America was grossly 
 exaggerated to the Chinese by the shipmasters and 
 others, and in 1856, 43,000 had come, 11,000 in 
 June and July, 1852. That year the Board sent 
 the Rev. William Speer, who had been a mission- 
 ary in Canton, to open work among these Chin- 
 ese. "The immediate urgent need," writes Dr. 
 Speer, "was medical relief. The greedy and 
 merciless ship people at Hongkong had packed 
 hundreds together under the hatches, as had been 
 done with Africans in the old slave trade, often 
 in small vessels or abandoned hulks. The prom- 
 ised voyage of a few days was prolonged to weeks 
 or months. This, and bad and insufficient pro- 
 visions, brought on scurvy, beri-beri, dysentery, 
 and the death in some cases of a quarter to a third 
 of those on board, who were cast into the 
 sea. Many of the survivors, broken down, 
 feeble, dropsical, lay long in the Companies' 
 houses, or among their own people. . . . The 
 anxiety of all, especially the younger and more 
 enterprising men, t learn English filled an even- 
 ing school, and gave opportunities to enlighten 
 them upon geography, astronomy, and the true 
 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 227.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 249 
 
 teachings of nature, Providence and Divine reve- 
 lation. Shocks of electricity that made them 
 jump and their eyes to start out, experiments in 
 galvanism and magnetism, showed them the false- 
 hood of their old idolatrous superstitions and 
 fears. A microscope, a globe, a telescope, and 
 other apparatus, opened new worlds beneath, 
 around and above them. . . . Some undertook 
 manufactures by American methods and ma- 
 chinery. Others became intelligent and trusted 
 employees in American financial and commercial 
 establishments. One remarkable man was helped, 
 through a noble Christian friend, to perfect him- 
 self in engine and steamer building. He con- 
 structed at San Francisco a beautiful and com- 
 plete steamboat a few feet long, and a railroad 
 track which his friends claimed was the first 
 passenger railroad on the Pacific Coast. After 
 returning to China, he became connected with 
 the Imperial Arsenal at Shanghai." Much of 
 the persecution of these early days was modified 
 by the influence of the Mission. After Dr. Speer 
 was obliged by ill-health to leave in 1857, the 
 work was taken up in 1859 by the Rev. A. W. 
 Loomis, who had been a missionary at Ningpo, 
 and he was joined in 1870, by the Rev. I. W. 
 Condit, who is still in charge of the work. 
 
 These Chinese come from one small section of 
 the province of Kwangtung in China. They are 
 mostly young men, who come to make money, and 
 who then return to China. The Companies that 
 bring them contract to carry their bodies back 
 to China for burial in their own soil if they die 
 here. From the beginning their distinct national 
 superstitions, their frugality and industry, their 
 irresistible competition, have aroused hostility, and 
 the Restriction Laws of 1882 and 1884 became 
 the "Exclusion Act" of 1888. The Chinese
 
 250 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 have steadily decreased ever since, and while 
 they are not excluded wholly, the law is as little 
 evaded as most laws. 
 
 Schools, Young Men's Christian Associations, 
 and churches, have been the means of reaching 
 the Chinese men. The women's work has been 
 specially important. There is only about one 
 Chinese woman here to each thirty men, and 
 many of those who have come have been brought 
 for immoral purposes. Over five hundred of 
 these have been rescued, often at great risk and 
 peril, from such a wretched fate, through the 
 "Chinese Rescue Home" in San Francisco. 
 
 The work among the Chinese is supported now 
 in most of the cities where the Chinese have 
 spread, by local churches ; but in San Francisco, 
 Portland, Los Angeles, and New York, it is still 
 helped by the Board. Far more than is now ex- 
 pended upon it comes back in the reflex influence 
 of this work upon China. Hundreds of these 
 Chinese have gone back as earnest Christians, 
 and the district in South China, from which 
 they come, is full of beautiful chapels which have 
 been built with money sent from America. The 
 Chinese here have regularly organized missionary 
 societies for the support of the work in South 
 China. It is a great thing to send back such men 
 to China to counteract the influence of those who 
 have seen only the vile and vicious side of civili- 
 zation. I met in his home village in Kwangtung, 
 one happy-faced young man, converted in Port- 
 land, who was supporting himself by photography 
 and carrying on work in his town. He had just 
 built a Christian school. Some people, he said, 
 had threatened to "put the rock on it, but," he 
 added, "they cannot, for it is put upon the 
 Rock." No one could measure the good that 
 would be accomplished if the Christian Church
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 251 
 
 should set herself to reach each of these Chinese 
 who have come to the Church's very doors. 
 
 In 1885, to this work among the Chinese was 
 added a Mission to the Japanese on the Pacific 
 Coast, under the charge of Dr. and Mrs. E. A. 
 Sturge, formerly in Siam. Many of the Japa- 
 nese were Christians, and in the main they were 
 of a much better social grade than the Chinese, 
 although the students who came at first have been 
 largely succeeded by artisans, farm laborers, etc. 
 A strong Japanese church of over two hundred 
 members exists in San Francisco, and the young 
 Japanese men bear the expense of the work of the 
 church, the two homes where many of them live, 
 and the Young Men's Christian Association. 
 
 The greatest mission field on this continent now 
 under the care of the Board is Mexico. Some are 
 disposed to question whether a country like 
 Mexico, so progressive and enlightened and with 
 a form of Christianity, should be made a Prot- 
 estant mission field. But Christ's Christianity 
 was not brought to Mexico when the pious soldiers 
 of Cortez subdued the land in " the holy war " 
 of 1521, and his priests baptized four million 
 people in a few years, one man baptizing about 
 five thousand in one day, and not desisting until 
 he was unable longer to lift his hands. The 
 effect was inevitable. "The introduction of the 
 Roman religion," declared Humboldt, "had no 
 other effect upon the Mexicans than to substitute 
 new ceremonies and symbols for the rites of a 
 sanguinary worship. Dogma has not succeeded 
 dogma, but only ceremony to ceremony." On 
 such a Church feasted a corrupt and crafty 
 priesthood, the support and product of the 
 tyrannical political system which lasted from 
 Cortez's conquest for three centuries. In 
 the struggle for freedom from the eccle-
 
 252 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 siastical bondage which lasted even after the 
 yoke of Spanish authority had been thrown off, 
 Senor Lerdo compiled, in 1850, as Minister of 
 Public Works, a statement of the wealth of the 
 Mexican hierarchy, showing that it owned 86 1 
 estates of the value of $71,000,000, and 
 22,000 city lots valued at $113,000,000. This 
 was but a partial revelation. The yearly income 
 of the priests was estimated at $25,000,000, 
 while the whole banking business, loans and 
 mortgages, was in their hands, and a bankrupt 
 government was helpless before them. Of nearly 
 half the property in the City of Mexico the arch- 
 bishop was the virtual owner. The Church pos- 
 sessed wealth in other forms. Three bejewelled 
 petticoats of the Virgin of Remedies, a figure of 
 the Virgin Mary, in the Cathedral of Puebla, 
 were believed to be worth $3,000,000. The prof- 
 ligacy and corruption consequent upon this 
 wealth were fearful. Twelve bishops in 1793 had 
 an income of $539,000. 
 
 In this luxury and wealth Mexicans had but 
 little share. The priesthood was a Spanish in- 
 cubus, working ever toward the subjection of the 
 native peoples and the maintenance of European 
 control. From the beginning the Aztec had no 
 part in it, and at the end of its supremacy it was 
 alien to the people whom it had oppressed. It 
 was a heavy oppression. There were at one time 
 more than fifty monasteries and convents in Mex- 
 ico City alone. Robertson says : " In the year 
 1644 the City of Mexico presented a petition to 
 the King of Spain, praying that no new monas- 
 tery be founded, and that the revenue of those 
 already established might be circumscribed, other- 
 wise the religious houses would soon acquire the 
 property of the whole country." In Mexico 
 City the monastery of San Francisco covered four
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 253 
 
 large blocks, while at San Luis Potosi was another 
 nearly as large, many of its walls, still standing, 
 being six or eight feet thick. On one corner of the 
 property is now a Presbyterian church, while in 
 Mexico City the Methodist church and printing 
 establishment occupy a part of the great monas- 
 tery the greatest in the New World, and peopled 
 at the time of its confiscation by fourteen monks ! 
 The heavy walls of many of these old monas- 
 teries furnished safe and secret sepulcher for the 
 victims of the Inquisition. Corruption was the 
 fruit of this evil supremacy. 
 
 The Church controlled marriage, and fixed the 
 fee so high as to force the mass of the people into 
 concubinage. Formal marriage was beyond their 
 means. She controlled education, and was happy 
 to insure the permanent ignorance of the people. 
 She controlled baptism and burial ; held the keys 
 of life and of death, and by all the curses of the 
 life that now is and of the world to come drove 
 into darkness those whom she should have led 
 into light. At the outset she substituted for the 
 living Christ an image of the Virgin, a wooden 
 figure, "Virgin de los Remedies, " brought over 
 from Spain by the army of Cortez. 
 
 Mary and the saints constitute the Mexican 
 pantheon. The living God is not known, and 
 the Christ is afar off. If there was a true faith in 
 the past, only its corpse or its ashes remain. If 
 we lift the covering to-day, as Hopkinson Smith 
 says, the dead body can be seen. Liberalism is 
 the religion of the men who rule Mexico, while 
 the Indians worship their Christian idols and 
 the women the Virgin. The roulette wheel 
 spins at the church fair, and tawdry bullfights and 
 cockfights afford Sunday delight. Apparitions 
 of the Virgin are still discovered on the leaves of 
 the maguey plant and worshiped. Idolatry is not
 
 254 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 forbidden by the Ten Commandments as given to 
 the people by the Church. In the Mexican deca- 
 logue the second commandment is, " Thou shalt 
 not take the name of God in vain; " the third, 
 "Thou shalt keep the feasts;" and the tenth 
 commandment is divided into two to make out 
 the number, the second command as given to 
 Moses being wholly omitted, and the fourth dis- 
 torted into the injunction to observe the feasts. 
 
 The marvel is that after three hundred years 
 of this, the oppression of the Spanish tyrants and 
 the deadening paralysis of the Church of Rome, 
 unchecked by the atmosphere of freedom, any 
 manliness, or strength, or spirit was left in the 
 Mexican nation. The conquest had been most 
 cruel and repressive. Even Clavigero, the Jesuit 
 historian of Mexico, confessed that the Spaniards 
 " in one year of merciless massacre sacrificed 
 more human victims to avarice and ambition than 
 the Indians, during the existence of their empire, 
 devoted in chaste worship to their gods." The 
 soldiers of Cortez destroyed the records of the 
 Aztecs records of untold value. A system of 
 peonage was introduced that was slavery. One 
 good priest, Las Casas, is remembered now, al- 
 most a solitary exception to the great mass, as 
 the protector of the Indians. From Cortez until 
 1821 sixty-one viceroys in succession governed 
 Mexico, enforcing legislation devised in Spain, 
 destroying all industries which might compete in 
 Spanish markets or shut Spanish goods out of 
 home markets, ruining the land under forms of 
 law, or robbing it without law, pillaging its mines 
 of silver and the hearts of its people of the joys of 
 life and the peace of death. It is a testimony to 
 the strength and worth of the nation that all this 
 did not destroy the spirit of liberty, did not crush 
 from them that passion after right which makes
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 255 
 
 true children of a living God everywhere readier 
 to fight and die for truth and justice than to live 
 in the tame bondage of a lying peace. Mexico 
 won her freedom against odds, and in a contest 
 compared with which our struggle for independ- 
 ence was child's play. Hidalgo, Morelos, and 
 Nicolas Bravo, are names to be set beside any of 
 ours. They show that there were some, at least, 
 even among the priesthood, who loved liberty, 
 and counted the far-off vision of it sweeter even 
 than the breath of life. If they failed, yet over 
 their dead bodies the cause of Mexican independ- 
 ence moved steadily on, and at the last they 
 failed not. 
 
 " They never fail who die in a great cause." 
 
 Benito Juarez, a pure Indian, in 1855-57 es- 
 tablished free institutions, a free constitution, re- 
 ligious liberty, free speech, free schools, the secu- 
 larization of the ill-gotten wealth of the Church, 
 and, in advance of the Emancipation Proclama- 
 tion, freedom and protection to all slaves who en- 
 tered the national territory. The Maximilian 
 fiasco was only a sad episode. Mexico had a 
 better destiny. 
 
 Before his death, Juarez, whom Mexicans rev- 
 erently and rightly regard as their Washington, 
 declared: "Upon the development of Protes- 
 tantism largely depends the future happiness of our 
 country." Protestantism had entered Mexico in 
 1847 between the covers of the Bibles carried in 
 the knapsacks of American soldiers. It entered to 
 remain and to increase. Melinda Rankin, from 
 her seminary at Brownsville, Tex., sent Bibles 
 and Christian pupils into Mexico, and in 1864, 
 after ten years' work, herself crossed over to 
 Monterey. In 1865, in Mexico City, Francisco 
 Aguilas, who had withdrawn from the Roman
 
 256 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 priesthood, gathered those who were seeking to 
 follow a pure religion, and on the coming of the 
 Rev. Henry C. Riley, in 1869, sent by the 
 American and Foreign Christian Union, this 
 company formed the first Protestant church in 
 Mexico City, which was soon mightily reinforced 
 by the conversion of Manuel Aguas, a Dominican 
 friar, who had been chosen as the antagonist of 
 Mr. Riley. This church in Mexico City was not 
 the first Protestant church in the country. In 
 1867, as the result of Miss Rankin's colporteurs' 
 work, an independent evangelical congregation 
 was formed in the house of Juan Amador, at 
 Villa de Cos, a village fifty miles northeast of 
 Zacatecas. The field was ripe to the harvest, 
 and in 1872 the Presbyterian missionaries entered, 
 the Methodists in 1873, the Congregationalists in 
 1880, and the Baptists the next year. The Spirit 
 of God had gone before the missionaries. Inde- 
 pendent congregations had sprung up in many 
 places, the fruit of scattered Bibles. In 1871 a 
 Mexican opened a bookstore in Zitacauro, and 
 offered for sale four hundred Bibles and tracts. 
 The State of Michoacan, in which Zitacauro is 
 situated, has always been peopled with bold and 
 independent men. The liberators were born 
 there. Its people were most stubborn in their re- 
 sistance to Spanish oppression, and most fearless 
 of Romish superstition. In the war for independ- 
 ence they took the images out of the churches and 
 piled them up for bonfires, saying, " If these are 
 gods they won't burn, and if they are not gods 
 they might better burn." The Bibles spoke the 
 needed message to them, and congregations 
 sprang up in a score of places. Sr. Rodriguez, 
 an aged and blind preacher, able and refined, 
 living at Zitacauro, said he could remember the 
 early days, when the Bible was wrapped up with
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 257 
 
 the lunch to be taken to the day's work, the noon- 
 day prayer meetings, when laborers gathered for 
 their meals, and the moving lights nightly on the 
 hillsides, marking the course of the people gather- 
 ing for worship and praise. These were days of 
 apostolic fervor, when those who had learned of 
 Christ went everywhere preaching him. 
 
 The fervor and devotion of these early days, 
 yet to be revived, were met by fierce hostilities 
 and persecution. In the excitement aroused by 
 the preaching of Manuel Aguas, forty Protestants 
 were killed. In 1873 the Rev. J. A. Stephens, a 
 Congregational missionary, was shot at Ahualulco 
 by soldiers while appealing to them for protec- 
 tion, and his body was barbarously abused. 
 Preachers or members of Presbyterian churches 
 suffered martyrdom at Acapulco, where six were 
 killed ; at Almoloya, at Ahuacualtitlan, where 
 Abraham Gomez, the newly ordained preacher, 
 was beaten to death with his own large Bible, 
 which was then put under his head in mockery 
 for a pillow, and at El Carro, a hacienda near 
 Zacatecas, where Gregoria Monreal was stoned 
 to death and then decapitated. One of the mis- 
 sionaries declared five years ago that the martyr 
 roll of the Protestant Church in Mexico included 
 sixty-five names. The days of martyrdom have 
 perhaps passed away, but it requires courage still 
 to be a Christian in Mexico. 
 
 The work of our own Mission in Mexico began 
 when the first missionaries, Messrs. Thomson, 
 Phillips and Pitkin, with their wives, reached 
 Mexico City. One of the first Protestant Chris- 
 tians to join them, the Rev. Arcadio Morales, is 
 still living, and pastor of the leading church in 
 Mexico, a man of great power and devotion, and 
 unusually beloved. From Mexico City the work 
 has spread through the Federal District and the
 
 258 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 States of Mexico, Guerrero, Michoacan, Vera 
 Cruz, and down to the extreme south in Yucatan 
 and Tabasco. In the north it has spread from 
 Monterey and Saltillo and Zacatecas and San 
 Louis Potosi. There are two good normal 
 schools for girls at Saltillo and Mexico City, a 
 seminary for boys at Coyoacan, a suburb of the 
 capital, and a printing press which issues nearly 
 3,000,000 pages a year, of tracts, books, Sunday- 
 school lesson leaves and religious papers. The 
 Rev. T. F. Wallace, D. D., is " Father Wallace " 
 to the mission, having joined it in 1878, six years 
 before Mr. Brown and Mr. Boyce, the next in 
 seniority of service. 
 
 " When I cast my eye over into that priest- 
 bound country, my heart yearned for its emanci- 
 pation from the dreadful tyranny of papal laws. 
 But upon my distressing thoughts a light suddenly 
 arose by ascertaining that Bibles were being carried 
 over into that dark land by the Mexicans on the 
 American side of the river. Although I knew 
 the transfer of Bibles into Mexico to be a direct 
 violation of the laws of the country, yet I felt no 
 conscientious scruples in lending them my aid ; 
 for I felt God's word to be above all human law, 
 and no earthly power had the right of withholding 
 it from any of God's accountable creatures." 
 This is what Matilda Rankin wrote in her Twenty 
 Years Among the Mexicans. Those laws have 
 been completely changed since. Shall we not 
 feel as eager to carry the pure gospel to the 
 Mexicans now when the door is open, as Miss 
 Rankin was when the door was closed ? 
 
 The last foreign mission of our Church in 
 North America is in Guatemala. The oppor- 
 tunity for its establishment was opened by 
 President Barrios. He had become President 
 in 1872, and broke the power of the
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 259 
 
 Jesuits, declaring the order extinct, crushing the 
 monasteries, confiscating their property, and ban- 
 ishing or killing many nuns and priests. In 1873 
 he proclaimed religious liberty. A correspond- 
 ent of the New York Sun, who visited Guatemala 
 several years ago, wrote with reference to its pres- 
 ent freedom from church control : 
 
 " In Guatemala City the situation was remark- 
 able. The government has confiscated church 
 property right and left church buildings as well 
 as convents and has turned them into public 
 schools. The National Military Academy oc- 
 cupied one of the finest church properties in the 
 city, including a whole block. It had once 
 housed great colonies of cowled monks and nuns, 
 and it needed very little alteration to make it a 
 comfortable West Point for the nation. In an- 
 other block that had been taken from the priests, 
 I saw a pretty well managed trades school. 
 Weaving with a hand loom was taught by a man 
 who knew how to produce artistic effects. Shoe- 
 making by hand was thoroughly well done. 
 Cabinet work of a plain substantial character was 
 turned out. The blacksmithing was first-rate in 
 ordinary work, but when the teacher got ambi- 
 tious and turned out a brass breach-loading can- 
 non mounted on a carriage of his own design, he 
 got too high above his anvil." 
 
 In 1882 Barrios visited the United States, and 
 while here urged the Board to send a rgissionary 
 to Guatemala, even agreeing to pay his expenses 
 out from America. The first missionary was sent 
 the same year. The force has never been large, 
 and there have been some serious disappointments 
 in the work. 
 
 The population of Guatemala is "about a 
 million and a quarter. Of these about 180,000 
 are whites, largely Spaniards, 300,000 are
 
 260 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Ladinos, or of mixed blood, and the remainder 
 are indigenous races, the so-called Indians. 
 Many of these are descendants of the ancient 
 Toltecs, who were driven by the Aztecs from 
 Mexico, and whose civilization has left many in- 
 teresting monuments in Guatemala. These 
 Indies of the present day are described as a 
 peaceable, docile, honest and cleanly race ; not 
 warlike but an agricultural people ; not nomadic, 
 but living in villages ; not savage, but semi-civi- 
 lized ; tilling the soil, weaving cloth, making pot- 
 tery and building houses. They are so honest 
 and peaceable that Central America is the safest 
 place in the world in which to travel, and alto- 
 gether, to an American, with our idea of the 
 Indian as a painted savage, they are quite an at- 
 tractive people. But they, poor things, are the 
 ' beasts of burden ' of the country, pack mules 
 being so rare that almost everything is transported 
 on Indian backs, and the amount they carry is 
 wonderful. The burden is placed in a wooden 
 cage or basket, to which a strap is attached and 
 passed around the head, so that the weight comes 
 upon the forehead. In this manner, with a 
 weight of over a hundred pounds, they trot off 
 at a queer but rapid pace, making twenty or 
 twenty-five miles a day, and for this arduous 
 work they are never paid more than a real 
 (twelve and a half cents) a day. The upper 
 classes, o more or less pure Spanish blood, are 
 characteristically Spanish in customs and ideas. 
 The evil effects of three centuries of tyranny and 
 absolute rule are nowhere more evident than in 
 the character of the dominant race. With all 
 the charm of Spanish courtesy and hospitality, 
 the most charitable critics cannot deny that the 
 moral tone of society is very lax, and vice ram- 
 pant and respectable. Gambling prevails to an
 
 THE MISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA 26 1 
 
 alarming extent ; men and women are inveterate 
 smokers, boys sometimes beginning this habit at 
 three or four years of age. ' The family relation,' 
 writes Mr. Haymaker, ' is a mere form for those 
 who wish to keep it up. Flagrant violations of 
 the seventh commandment in one form or another 
 are more than common among the lower classes 
 they are general. Equal to this evil, if not worse, 
 is the crime of drunkenness, which among the 
 poor is all but universal, including among its 
 victims not men only, but also women and grow- 
 ing boys.' A startling degree of ignorance pre- 
 vails throughout the country. A few years ago 
 the percentage of illiteracy was estimated at 
 ninety per cent, but this has been much dimin- 
 ished of late through the system of public and 
 compulsory education." 1 
 
 Guatemala has been peculiarly the exclusive 
 field of our own Church. If any are to be 
 held responsible for the people's ignorance of 
 the gospel, we shall be. There are only two 
 ordained men of our Church in the country. 
 Within a radius of seventy-five miles are fifteen 
 towns, with populations of from 5,000 to 25,000, 
 with no missionary resident in them, and the pure 
 gospel seldom mentioned by them. Is it enough 
 that we should think of those of our own house- 
 hold and of the stranger of distant continents, 
 and overlook the need of the poor lands lying 
 before our door ? 
 
 1 Church at Home and Abroad, March '93, p. 193 f.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 
 
 263
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 
 
 WHILE the world is the field for all Christians 
 and Christian nations, there are special fields for 
 each. In a peculiar degree Great Britain is re- 
 sponsible for the evangelization of India, France 
 for the evangelization of the Niger Valley, while 
 we have confessed our responsibility for the na- 
 tions to the south of us by the famous declaration 
 of President Monroe in his annual message to the 
 Eighteenth Congress, on December 2d, 1823 : 
 " With the governments which have declared 
 their independence and maintained it, and whose 
 independence we have on great consideration 
 and just principles acknowledged, we could not 
 view an interposition for oppressing them or con- 
 trolling in any other manner their destiny by any 
 European power in any other light than as a 
 manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward 
 the United States." This assumption of political 
 responsibility, as the tutelary power of this hemis- 
 phere, we have at no small pains maintained. 
 But by it we have made ourselves responsible for 
 much more than the independence of the Ameri- 
 can republics from European invasion. We 
 have charged ourselves publicly with the obliga- 
 tion of giving to these neighbors the only secret 
 of stability and strength for free nations. This 
 at least the Christian man dare not refrain from 
 reading into the Monroe doctrine, as, in its highest 
 sense, a missionary declaration. If there are any 
 265
 
 266 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 special duties in this world, our duty to evangelize 
 South America is one of them. 
 
 But does South America need to be evangel- 
 ized? Is not Christianity known there? In a 
 sense, yes ; in a larger sense, no. It is not known 
 as a spiritual religion. "Romanism," writes 
 Mr. Blackford, "after 300 years of undisputed, 
 uninfluenced power over the education and re- 
 ligion of the Indians, negroes, and amalgamated 
 masses, of South America, has left them little'bet- 
 ter than pagans, with an admixture of papal 
 forms based in Christianity." 1 It is not known 
 as a moral power, although no church has ever 
 had so long and unchallenged influence in any land 
 as the Roman Catholic Church has had in South 
 America. The Plenary Council of Latin America, 
 held in Rome in 1899, in its decrees regarding 
 South America, declared, "Greatly to be de- 
 plored and condemned is that infection of forni- 
 cation far and wide diffused, but especially the 
 most infamous pest of concubinage which, spread- 
 ing publicly and privately, whether in great states 
 or in humble villages, brings not a few people of 
 all conditions to eternal destruction." It is not 
 known as a force of social progress and political 
 righteousness. " The whole apparatus of republi- 
 canism in these countries is a farce," says Mr. 
 Theodore Child in The Spanish American Re- 
 publics (p. 329), "and in spite of the sonorous 
 speeches of after-dinner orators, they have 
 not yet begun to enjoy even the most elementary 
 political liberty. A brief glance at the past his- 
 tory of the South American republics will explain 
 why this is so. For convenience' sake we will 
 take the Argentine as an example, the history of 
 the others being in all essential points analogous 
 and parallel. After the separation from Spain in 
 1 The Neglected Continent, p. 79.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 267 
 
 1810, the Argentines, prepared by three centuries 
 of Spanish domination to look to their rulers for 
 everything, and to dispense with initiative of all 
 kinds in the organization and administration of 
 their national and economical life, were at a loss 
 what use to make of their newly-acquired liberty. 
 They were free citizens, but they did not know 
 what citizenship means. They had vague ideas 
 of their rights, but no idea of their duties a 
 condition, by the way, in which they have re- 
 mained to the present day, therein resembling 
 very closely the French, who have spent a whole 
 century in learning that citizens of a republic 
 have duties as well as rights, and that the citizen 
 who values his rights and desires to retain them 
 intact must give himself the pains to be continu- 
 ously and zealously an active voting citizen. 
 However, from 1800 onward the Argentines 
 passed through a long period of revolutions until 
 1852, when the nation seemed at length to have 
 achieved pacific possession of its destinies ; but 
 being still without the practical and self-reliant 
 spirit of democracy, it sought support as an ex- 
 ample for a future history in the past experience 
 of the United States. Thus the text of the 
 American Constitution and its federative doc- 
 trines were adopted, and the political heroes and 
 jurisconsults of the United States acquired new 
 admirers and new disciples south of the equator. 
 The modern Argentine Republic found its salva- 
 tion in imitation, but the salvation has not been 
 complete, because the imitation of North Ameri- 
 can institutions has been in the letter rather than 
 in the spirit. . . . The Argentines have elimi- 
 nated virtue from their democracy; they have 
 forgotten that they ever had souls ; and yet they 
 talk of their greatness and revel in prodigious 
 statistics. But in what does a nation's greatness
 
 268 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 consist ? To quote the words of James Anthony 
 Froude, in his Oceana : ' Whether [a nation] be 
 great or little depends entirely on the sort of men 
 and women that it is producing. A sound nation 
 is a nation that is composed of sound human be- 
 ings, healthy in body, strong of limb, true in 
 word and deed brave, sober, temperate, chaste, 
 to whom morals are of more importance than 
 wealth or knowledge where duty is first and the 
 rights of man are second where, in short, men 
 grow up and live and work, having in them 
 what our ancestors called 'the fear of God.' 1 
 And that fear of God Romanism has not supplied 
 in all these centuries of domination. It has given 
 South America neither the religion, the ethics, nor 
 the politics, of the Bible. 
 
 Sometimes it is said that South America is 
 backward and politically dilapidated because of 
 the character of the people, not because of their 
 religion. Dr. Lane, of the Brazil Mission, has 
 answered this view: "Much has been written 
 about the decline of the Latin races, as if certain 
 races were doomed because of their ancestors. 
 It would be a monstrous thing, from a Christian 
 standpoint, if a nation or an individual must 
 fall behind in the race of life under the fatal in- 
 fluence of the blood in their veins. We do not 
 believe it, but agree with Emil de Lavelye, who 
 wrote on the subject some twenty-five years ago, 
 that it is rather a question of religion than of race. 
 Centuries of wrong thinking acting from wrong 
 motives, the effects of vicious education or no 
 education, will make the people of any race weak ; 
 but there is in an education based upon the princi- 
 ple of &pure Christianity that which will make the 
 people of any race strong ; the power of Truth in 
 God's word, on the intellects and hearts of men, 
 will regenerate a nation as surely as it will an
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 269 
 
 individual, purify its politics and straighten out 
 its finances." l 
 
 The history of the Roman Catholic Church in 
 South America fully justifies the stern judgment 
 of Dr. Blackford, who, for nearly twenty years, 
 worked under her shadow in Brazil. "It is not 
 necessary to speak of Romanism as a system of 
 ecclesiasticism, except to say that wherever it has 
 become the faith of a people it has in some way 
 deprived the gospel of its transforming and sanc- 
 tifying power, it has interfered with liberty of 
 conscience, it has trampled under foot the rights 
 of men, it has subsidized everything it could 
 grasp for its own aggrandizement, and has seized 
 upon the control of education and the reins of 
 political influence. As a religion it has ignored 
 the simplicity of the gospel, corrupted and de- 
 graded many of the doctrines of the cross, and 
 adapted itself to the human heart by pandering to 
 its pride and self-seeking by means of penances 
 and meritorious deeds. As a Church it is bitter, 
 relentless and persecuting toward others, and in 
 itself it is the monopoly of pride and arrogance, 
 worldliness and error, idolatry and superstition." '* 
 
 What Mr. Child says about the Argentine Re- 
 public, one of the most progressive of the South 
 American states, is of special interest, because the 
 first missionary work of our Church in South 
 America was undertaken in Buenos Ayres, in 
 1827. The disturbed state of opinion in the 
 Argentine, ill health and the inability of the 
 Board to find suitable men to send out led to 
 the discontinuance of the Mission, awaiting the 
 changes of time and " the improvement of an 
 ignorant and deeply depraved population." From 
 1853 to 1859, a missionary, who was a French- 
 
 1 The Brazilian Bulletin, Vol. L, No. I, p. 4. 
 '* Historical Sketches, old edition, p. 288.
 
 270 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 man by birth, was supported at Buenos Ayres, but 
 when he accepted a position in a college, no one 
 was sent to take his place. 
 
 The first permanent mission in South America 
 was commenced in 1856 at Bogota, in what was 
 then New Granada, by the Rev. H. B. Pratt, 
 who is still living and working actively near New 
 York City. While in some respects Colombia 
 has advanced, in others what the Rev. M. W. 
 Graham, of Bogota, describes as the condition of 
 the country now was its condition then : 
 
 "The Church has almost destroyed the public 
 school system, and the government suppresses 
 private schools in which Liberal sentiments pre- 
 vail. Charities, whether administered by the 
 State or by private organizations, are inadequate 
 and inefficient. Begging is a fine art, and pau- 
 perism a profession. Leprosy abounds. The 
 number of lepers is estimated at 27,000. 
 
 "An outward conformity to religious observances 
 and an inward depravity of heart are compatible 
 in human nature, and are very real facts here. 
 Gambling is an amusement universally popular, a 
 fashionable vice, and in the form of lotteries a 
 business, to which even the Church lends itself. 
 Intemperance is a crying evil. The wayside 
 saloon and the corner liquor store are as ubiqui- 
 tous here as in any other part of the world. The 
 social evil flourishes. Concubinage is widely 
 practiced, and has some legal recognition. In 
 Bogota the illegitimate births usually outnumber 
 the legitimate, and in Barranquilla for several 
 years past they have been three-fourths of the 
 whole number. Marriage is made difficult, and 
 outside of the Catholic Church is almost impossi- 
 ble. A licentious priesthood, heedless of moral 
 restraints but jealous for ecclesiastical authority, 
 set the standard for the people. Their opposi-
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 271 
 
 tion to evangelical truth is strong. The Arch- 
 bishop of Bogota, who by his pastoral letter 
 placed under condemnation of mortal sin all 
 who should attend Protestant services or funerals, 
 go to the Protestant schools or read their books 
 or papers, is the same one who tried to secure 
 the insertion in the last postal treaty with 
 the United States of a clause forbidding the 
 transmission of Protestant Bibles and religious 
 books. Popular ignorance of the way of salva- 
 tion through Christ, deep-seated superstitions, and 
 undisguised idolatry in the worship of the Virgin 
 and the saints, are characteristic features of the 
 religious life of Colombia." 
 
 The work of the Mission was confined for more 
 than thirty years to Bogota. In 1888 Barran- 
 quilla was occupied, at the mouth of the Magda- 
 lena River, and in 1899, Medellin. In 1897 
 Mr. and Mrs. Pond were located at Caracas, in 
 Venezuela, though without the intention of per- 
 manently establishing a mission in Venezuela. 
 Schools in all the stations in Colombia, and 
 preaching in the churches, and general visitation, 
 have been the chief agencies in the work. There 
 have been great difficulties. " The bitter opposi- 
 tion of the priests is less harmful than the apathy 
 and irreligion of the people. The intelligent 
 classes are largely indifferent or skeptical ; the 
 poorer people appallingly ignorant. It is not un- 
 usual for men to come asking the missionary to 
 buy their souls for money, which the priests tell 
 them he is commissioned by the devil to do. 
 The unsettled political condition of the country, 
 with the frequent revolutionary disturbances, is 
 also a great drawback." 1 Mrs. Pond has set 
 forth some of the discouraging aspects of the work 
 in Barranquilla : 
 
 1 Historical Sketches, p. 336.
 
 272 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 " In Barranquilla the people are not bigoted as 
 in Bogota and other interior towns, but atheism, 
 indifference, and superstition, are harder to over- 
 come. I have been asked, ' Is not the Catholic 
 religion good enough for those people ? ' The 
 truth is, they are not acknowledged as Catholics 
 by those Catholics who come from Europe and the 
 States. They say, ' These people are not Catho- 
 lics they are heathen.' 1 I have no words with 
 which to picture the degradation, the horror, of 
 these lives, and it is none the less sad that many 
 of them are content to live in sin and misery. 
 The priests are vile men, and known to be so. 
 One who died in Barranquilla, some years ago, 
 left bequests to fifty children whom he acknowl- 
 edged as his own. Grown men and women, 
 now, they go by his name. I have heard of 
 churches in the country being used as places for 
 cockfights, in which priests, as well as people, 
 delight. The religion of priests and people con- 
 sists in shows and ceremonies, and those who 
 take part in the processions of Good Friday and 
 Easter are assured of forgiveness for all the sins 
 committed during the year, and lay up for them- 
 selves merit, especially if they can bear some 
 weight of the heavy platform on which is carried 
 the image of Christ." 
 
 Colombia is not as completely under the do- 
 minion of the Roman Church as Ecuador. The 
 Roman Catholic religion is established by law, 
 but other religions are permitted so long as their 
 exercise "is not contrary to Christian morals or 
 the law." But in many ways the missionaries 
 can be hampered. They are hampered most by 
 the fact that they are so few, seven ordained men 
 and twelve women to reach 4,000,000 people, 
 another parish committed almost wholly to the 
 Presbyterian Church.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 273 
 
 The next mission planted in South America 
 was opened in 1859 in Brazil, by the appoint- 
 ment of the Rev. A. G. Simonton. Three hun- 
 dred years before, the first effort of the Reformed 
 Church to engage in foreign missions was made 
 in behalf of Brazil. Park man tells the story of it 
 in The Pioneers of France in the New World. 
 After the ruin of the colony, some of the colo- 
 nists who did not return to Europe, fled to the In- 
 dians and the Portuguese. One of the latter was 
 a Huguenot preacher named Boles, who pro- 
 claimed his faith with great eloquence and suc- 
 cess, and who, after lying in prison in Bahia for 
 eight years, was put to death on the site of the 
 present city of Rio de Janeiro. "The blood of 
 John Boles," wrote Mr. Blackford, '-and his 
 faithful fellow-servants, who were there slain for 
 the testimony of Jesus, has been crying to God 
 from those shores for over three hundred years ; 
 crying, not for vengeance on their persecutors, 
 but for mercy to their descendants; that cry 
 comes still to-day to the descendants of the Hu- 
 guenots in this land, and to all who, by the grace 
 of God, have obtained a like precious faith, be- 
 seeching them to carry the light of the gospel to 
 that beautiful land, over which the darkness of 
 Romanism has hung like the shadow of death for 
 three centuries." l 
 
 From 1531 to 1822 Brazil was a dependency 
 of Portugal. In that year the son of the King of 
 Portugal proclaimed the independence of the 
 country, and became the first Emperor. His son 
 succeeded him, and after a visit to the United 
 States in 1876, went home to plan liberal and 
 progressive measures for his country. After a 
 fairly progressive reign, a revolution, without 
 bloodshed, in 1889, made him an exile, and Bra- 
 1 Blackford, Sketch of the Brazil Missions, p. 7.
 
 274 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 zil a republic, with a constitution which substi- 
 tuted for the old clause tolerating the worship in 
 private houses of other than the Roman Catholic 
 churches, guarantees of complete religious lib- 
 erty, allowing to all liberty of worship public and 
 private, and forbidding all alliance between 
 Church and State. 
 
 Even under Dom Pedro II, however, the mis- 
 sion work had become widely extended. Mr. 
 Simonton was one man among ten thousand to 
 establish such a work. The condition in which 
 he found religion in Brazil is indicated in one of 
 his earliest statements. "To my mind the most 
 astonishing feature of the religious condition of 
 Brazil is its almost total lack of all religion. Un- 
 less I am mistaken, Brazil is singular in this re- 
 spect, even among the most thoroughly Roman 
 Catholic nations. Not only has religion degen- 
 erated from being a thing of conviction to a mere 
 habit, but it has become a habit to pay no atten- 
 tion to its outward forms. The number of church- 
 goers is very small. Confession is falling into 
 disuse. Priests are dissolute, and not unfre- 
 quently scoffers. A pure and universal indiffer- 
 ence seems to reign. The extremity of the Pope 
 has produced no public prayers, and Garibaldi 
 and Cavour are heroes. It is said that no people 
 can be without a religion ; if so, nations cannot 
 be much more destitute than Brazil. There are 
 special occasions, however, which show that he 
 would be greatly deceived who imagined that 
 their religion is like that which is found in Prot- 
 estant countries. At times they become religious. 
 One of these times is the hour of death. Then 
 the priest is sure of employment and pay. Con- 
 fession, absolution, the sacrament, and extreme 
 unction, are the sources of trust in that hour when 
 all men would be religious if they could."
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 275 
 
 After acquiring the language Mr. Simonton 
 opened a place for preaching in Portuguese in 
 Rio de Janeiro, in May, 1861. "It was a small 
 room in the third story of a house in one of the 
 narrow central streets of that great city. His 
 first audience consisted of two men to whom he 
 had been giving instruction in English. They 
 attended as an act of courtesy to their teacher. 
 They were interested, and at the next meeting 
 brought a companion with them. At a third meet- 
 ing half a dozen were present ; and thus for some 
 time the number gradually increased ; in fine, the 
 work has gone steadily on from that day to this." l 
 
 In 1863 the city of Sao Paulo was occupied by 
 Mr. Blackford, but for nearly twenty-five years 
 the field was under the care of the Rev. -G. W. 
 Chamberlain, D. D., who has preached the gos- 
 pel far and wide in Brazil, with a zeal and a 
 fidelity which have not abated with the years. 
 The State of Sao Paulo is the wealthiest and most 
 enterprising State in Brazil, and its coffee trade 
 has been enormous. Here great mission schools 
 have been built up, with an attendance of 500 
 pupils covering all grades from kindergarten to 
 college department, all organized now under a 
 separate Board of Trustees, as in the case of the 
 Beirut College. Many self-supporting churches 
 have been built up in the Synod, and the churches 
 have given liberally besides to home mission work 
 and to the equipment of a theological seminary. 
 The coffee trade has not been so prosperous lately, 
 but in 1889 the British Consul at Santos, the port 
 of Sao Paulo, said in his report to his Foreign 
 Office : " Taken conjointly with the export trade, 
 the monetary value of the over-sea traffic of the 
 Province the past year shows a grand total of 
 about 1 2,000,000 ; or, approximately, thirty per 
 1 Blackford, Brazil Mission, p. 8.
 
 276 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 cent of the value of the trade of the whole Em- 
 pire of Brazil. No other country in the world, 
 with a population of barely 1,500,000 inhabitants 
 has ever attained a like degree of prosperity." 
 
 The mission work of our Church extends over 
 the States of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Santa 
 Catharina and Parana in the south, and over the 
 State of Sergipe, and the great State of Bahia in 
 Central Brazil. The Southern Presbyterians are 
 working in other States, and with our own mis- 
 sionaries have joined in establishing one united 
 Presbyterian Church in Brazil, which is inde- 
 pendent of the churches in America. 
 
 The gospel spread of its own power in many 
 parts of the land. In Brotas, a town about 170 
 miles northwest from Sao Paulo, was a priest who, 
 before he was excommunicated from the Roman 
 Catholic Church, had been teaching evangelical 
 truth in his church. The Mission sent him books 
 and Scriptures, which he distributed, and in 1865, 
 after repeated calls, some of the missionaries 
 went to visit him. " It was a tedious and labor- 
 ious journey," one of them wrote, "on horseback 
 or muleback, over rough roads and sometimes 
 through mere bridle paths. The mode of work 
 was to go from neighborhood to neighborhood and 
 from house to house, preaching, reading, and 
 expounding the Bible. The Spirit of God had 
 been there preparing the way, and was present to 
 seal his word on the hearts of men. The truth 
 took deep hold on those rustic but intelligent 
 minds. Desperadoes who had been the terror 
 of their neighborhoods sat meekly at the feet of 
 Jesus ; men and families who had sunk very low 
 in ignorance and corruption were saved and lifted 
 up. In November of the same year, 1865, a 
 church was organized there, consisting of eleven 
 converts from Rome who were baptized into the
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 277 
 
 name of Christ. The meeting at which that 
 church was organized was held in a rude hut, 
 made by planting poles or rails in the ground and 
 covering it over with grass." Nine churches 
 grew out of that little church at Brotas, and more* 
 than a thousand were received into these various 
 churches as a result. 
 
 At Botucatu, not far from Brotas, one of the 
 early converts built at his own expense a chapel 
 and residence for a missionary, and furnished a 
 large school building, and at his death bequeathed 
 additional property and considerable endowment 
 for the school. Curityba, 300 miles southwest of 
 Sao Paulo, has been the center of wide-reaching 
 work through Parana and Santa Catharina, and 
 the same spirit of self-help has characterized it. 
 Miss Dascomb and Miss Kuhl, who have worked 
 with great tact and efficiency in the mission for 
 nearly thirty years, have had charge of the suc- 
 cessful girls' school in Curityba since 1892. No 
 women have done more to help the women of 
 Brazil. Both had been successful teachers in 
 America, Miss Dascomb having taught at Vassar 
 and Wellesley. 
 
 Of the women of Brazil, Mrs. Agassiz wrote : 
 "Among my own sex I have never seen such sad 
 lives lives deprived of healthy, invigorating 
 happiness, intolerably monotonous, inactive, stag- 
 nant." The women of Brazil, however, seem to 
 have maintained higher, more wholesome tone 
 than the women of any other South American 
 State, yet, as Dr. Lane says, " Brazil inherited 
 from Portugal a social system which regarded 
 woman as a mere incident in man's affairs ; an 
 appendix, a pleasant device for his gratification 
 and use, a necessary and perhaps wise enough 
 provision for perpetuating the race, but always 
 subordinate and inferior. Man, under the old
 
 278 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 regime, was lord and master, disposing of his 
 daughters in marriage as business interest or con- 
 venience dictated. The wife was in complete 
 subjection, and the females of the family were 
 guarded with Turkish jealousy. If any degree 
 of deference or respect was shown woman, it did 
 not grow out of a recognition of her rights or an 
 elevated conception of her character, but rather 
 a regard for the rights of some man to her and 
 her services. In old colonial times she can hardly 
 be said to have had separate existence. After 
 separation from Portugal, the condition of woman 
 began to improve. Still, less than three decades 
 ago, it was a common thing for men to lock their 
 wives and daughters securely in the upper story 
 of the house when they went to business, or if 
 they were to be absent any length of time to de- 
 liver them to a convent for safe-keeping. . . . All 
 this has been changed in New Brazil and the 
 'woman question' has come to the front ; already 
 we have several women's journals; she has in- 
 vaded literature, business and professional life, 
 and has entered many of the walks of life sup- 
 posed to belong exclusively to men." l 
 
 The Sao Paulo schools are coeducational. 
 The plan has been wholly satisfactory, and one 
 of the most promising and powerful agencies at 
 work in Brazil is the Brazilian woman, whose 
 life has been broadened by the gospel and her 
 mind quickened by its truth, and who has felt 
 the transforming influence of the mission work. 
 
 The most difficult field in the Brazil Mission 
 is the State of Bahia, which with Sergipe and Per- 
 nambuco constitute the Central Brazil Mission as 
 distinguished from the Southern Brazil Mission. 
 After John Boles, no Protestant preached the 
 gospel in Bahia until in 1805. Henry Martyn, on 
 1 The Brazilian Bulletin, Vol. I., No. 2, p. 60.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 279 
 
 his way to India, touched here. " The ardent 
 young soldier of the cross landed and ascended 
 to the battery that overlooks the beautiful Bay of 
 All Saints. Amidst that charming scenery his 
 heart was burdened, and he sought relief in 
 prayer. There, .riding at anchor, was the ship 
 that was to carry him to his distant field of 
 service; there, close beside him, lay out-spread 
 the city of Bahia, or San Salvador, teeming with 
 churches, swarming with priests, but with tokens 
 of unbelief or blind superstition on every side. 
 As he gazed upon the scene he repeated the 
 hymn 
 
 ' O'er the gloomy hills of darkness 
 Look, my soul, be still and gaze.' 
 
 Before resuming his voyage, he found opportu- 
 nities to enter the monasteries, Vulgate in hand, 
 and reason with the priests out of the Scriptures. 
 Fascinated by the tropical glories of coast and 
 interior, and keenly interested in the Portuguese 
 dons, the Franciscan friars, and the negro slaves 
 'What happy missionary,' he exclaimed, 'shall 
 be sent to bear the name of Christ to these west- 
 ern regions ? When shall this beautiful country 
 be delivered from idolatry and spurious Christian- 
 ity ? Crosses there are in abundance, but when 
 shall the doctrine of the Cross be held up?' " l 
 
 Bahia is the oldest city of Brazil. It was 
 founded in 1549. The State has great resources, 
 and the harbor is one of the best in South Amer- 
 ica ; but the people are unenterprising, dissolute, 
 ignorant and indolent. Bahia was' once head- 
 quarters of the African slave trade, and still feels 
 its accursed influence. The principal part of the 
 population is the blacks and their descendants. 
 
 1 The Neglected Continent, p. 88 f.
 
 280 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 Above all, this is the seat of the Archbishopric of 
 Brazil and full of bigotry and fanaticism. Here 
 for twenty-six years the missionaries have strug- 
 gled to lay the foundation of a pure faith, but 
 how poorly has the Church fulfilled Martyn's long- 
 ing in sending three men to possess this vast State, 
 larger than the State of Montana. 
 
 It is estimated that there are 1,000,000 Indians 
 in the interior of Brazil, occupying about four- 
 fifths of the country ; but as yet it has been pos- 
 sible to undertake little for their evangelization. 
 
 Here is a noble field for the Church. " All 
 this vast country," as one of the missionaries 
 writes, " is open to the Christian missionary. In 
 one important particular, at least, the mission prob- 
 lem in Brazil, and we believe throughout South 
 America, is very different from that in pagan 
 lands. The missionary has not to wean men 
 from gross pagan beliefs, setting up against them 
 the pure gospel of Christ, and win men to a new 
 faith, but rather to re-Christianize an intelligent 
 and highly civilized people whose Christianity has 
 been perverted, and who have lost sight of the 
 standards of life found in their own belief 
 whose mental processes and moral natures have 
 been v/arped by centuries of wrong teaching, 
 which has robbed society of its ethical basis and 
 Christianity of its spiritual significance." No- 
 where else in South America is there such a hope- 
 ful field. Can conscience rest easy under the 
 sense of its neglect ? 
 
 The last of the Presbyterian Missions in South 
 America, the Mission in Chili, was transferred to 
 the Board by the American and Foreign Chris- 
 tian Union in 1873. 1 ne Union was an inter- 
 denominational organization, established to carry 
 on mission work on the Western Hemisphere. 
 As the missionary organizations of the various
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 281 
 
 churches grew there was ever less and less inter- 
 est taken in such a general society, and its work 
 has been slowly transferred to other agencies. 
 
 The great character in the establishment of 
 Protestant Missions in Chili was the Rev. David 
 Trumbull, D. D., who landed in Valparaiso on 
 Christmas Day, 1845, at the age of twenty-six. 
 He had responded to an appeal of the Foreign 
 Evangelical Society in behalf of the West Coast 
 of South America, then without one evangelical 
 missionary. Yet he went out without fear. One 
 of his prayers on the voyage, as he thought of his 
 home, fast receding, was, " May God assist me 
 to a pure purpose of being his, and of sincerely 
 asking where I can do the most good, and of go- 
 ing freely." God heard and answered that prayer. 
 If ever a man came to his work in the appoint- 
 ment and strength of God, David Trumbull did, 
 in Chili. He was a man of radiant personality, 
 genial and cordial, and a man of great ability 
 and power. He at once won confidence and 
 friendships in Valparaiso, and built up a strong 
 Union Church of foreign merchants and other 
 residents, while he reached out constantly toward 
 the evangelization of the Chilians. Dr. Trum- 
 bull died in 1889, at the age of sixty-nine. 
 
 Two other eminently useful lives spent in the 
 Chili Mission were those of the Rev. J. M. 
 Allis, D. D., a man of the same genial and hearty 
 spirit as Dr. Trumbull, who died in Santiago in 
 1899, and of the Rev. Edson A. Lowe, who died 
 in Santiago in 1900. 
 
 The work which was begun in Valparaiso, has 
 extended to Santiago, Copiapo, Chilian, Talca, 
 and Concepcion. The only boarding school in 
 the Mission is the Institute Ingles in Santiago, 
 which enrolls now more than one hundred pupils, 
 and is exerting a widening influence. It has its
 
 282 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 difficulties, however. Dr. Browning, who is in 
 charge of the school, suggested some of these in 
 a recent report on the school work : 
 
 "One lady brought her grandson, and re- 
 quested that he be given a certain brand of wine 
 at his meals, saying that he had always been ac- 
 customed to it. Upon being told that he could 
 have no brand whatever while in the school, she 
 was very much amazed, but agreed to let him 
 have beer instead. Upon learning that not even 
 beer was allowed in the house, she declared that 
 her boy could not possibly enter such a place. It 
 was suggested to her, more as a joke, that the 
 boy might bring cod liver oil, if she wished, and, 
 strange to say, she took up the suggestion, and 
 sent the boy well provided with ' La Emulsion de 
 Scott.' The school has to deal with difficult prob- 
 lems in the moral lives of the boys, and the atmos- 
 phere of the homes from which they come. 
 The vice in the homes of some is almost beyond be- 
 lief, and they are taught to scoff at anything that 
 savors of purity of life and thought. Language 
 that would in our country mark a man as anything 
 but a gentleman is here used by so-called Christian 
 mothers, with a lightness and freedom that would 
 appall a stranger to the country. In the office of 
 the Director, when boys are brought for matricula- 
 tion, family skeletons are brought out and paraded 
 in all their hideousness. Fathers tell in the pres- 
 ence of their sons of the impurity of mothers, 
 and mothers tell of the unfaithfulness of fathers. 
 With such teaching it is not strange that one of 
 the boys boasted of having three sisters, all of 
 whom were leading low lives. Such may be ex- 
 treme cases, but they show the tendency." l 
 
 Charges against the character of religion in 
 Chili do not emanate only from missionaries. 
 
 1 Annual Report, iqoo, p. 250.
 
 THE MISSIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA 283 
 
 Several years ago, Cardinal Rompolla, in behalf 
 of the Pope, addressed an Encyclical to the 
 clergy in Chili, charging them with extravagance 
 and other misdemeanors. The Cardinal Arch- 
 bishop of Santiago replied : 
 
 "Our method of life is not different from that 
 of other dignitaries of the Church. Nearly all 
 cardinals live in greater pomp, splendor, and 
 grandeur, than we do. The Archbishops of 
 Paris, Madrid, Berlin, and Ireland, live in mag- 
 nificent palaces and the greatest comfort that 
 modern inventive skill has been able to devise. ^ 
 Their fine carriages are drawn by full-blooded 
 horses. And then, the magnificence of the Vati- 
 can by far surpasses that of any European royal 
 palace. When, several years ago, we had the 
 honor of visiting the fesidence of the successor 
 of St. Peter, we were completely overwhelmed by 
 the oriental luxury that prevailed there every- 
 where ; and the Cardinal Treasurer impressed it 
 most forcibly on our mind and memory that we 
 should send large contributions to the Holy 
 Father. In confidence he informed us that the 
 yearly outlay of the Papal Court reached the 
 enormous amount of 800,000,000 francs. . . . 
 Then too, we must take into consideration our 
 surroundings. In Chili nobody is respected un- 
 less he is rich. Rank signifies nothing without 
 money. Therefore it is necessary that the highest 
 representative of the Church should expend large 
 sums of money, so that our religion may appear 
 in greatest grandeur and be honored by the people 
 accordingly. And yet, incredible as this may 
 seem, in spite of all our efforts in this direction, 
 the evil spirit is making rapid progress, and the 
 present times can be called the age of Satan, but 
 not the age of order or fear. Our method of liv- 
 ing is not more magnificent than that of church
 
 284 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 dignitaries elsewhere ; and we have the purpose 
 of continuing this splendor as heretofore, for the 
 purpose of unfolding the glories of the Church 
 and our religion and for the greater glory of 
 God." 
 
 It is fortunate that these ecclesiastics do not 
 have it in their power to seek the glory of God 
 by political oppression of Protestantism, as well as 
 by splendor and magnificence. There is a real re- 
 ligious liberty, and the Mission has a charter which 
 provides that "those who profess the Reformed 
 Church religion according to the doctrines of 
 Holy Scripture, may promote primary and su- 
 perior instruction, according to modern methods 
 and practice, and propagate the worship of their 
 belief obedient to the laws of the land." 
 
 Chili is an alert and progressive land, as South 
 American States go, and it is an attractive coun- 
 try. "I had no idea," writes Mr. Child, "that 
 Chili was such a pleasant country so far as con- 
 cerns physical features, climate, and landscape. 
 As for the Chilians, naturally I had met some in 
 various parts of the world. I am convinced, too, 
 that there are agreeable people to be found in all 
 lands ; but still I had not, in the slightest degree, 
 anticipated the comparative completeness of the 
 material organization of civilized life in Chili, the 
 general comfort and conveniency of existence in 
 the principal towns, the many facilities for living 
 without friction and without immoderate effort." 
 But this is all that can be said. Chili is no nearer 
 a sound nation than the Argentine, and will never 
 be so until that power of the gospel, which alone 
 can create character in a man or a nation, does 
 its necessary work in the Chilian and in Chili. 
 
 1 South American Republics, p. 71.
 
 THE MISSION IN THE PHILIPPINES 
 
 285
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE MISSION IN THE PHILIPPINES 
 
 WHEN the naval battle in Manila Bay, on May 
 ist, 1899, and the Paris Treaty transferred the 
 Philippines to the United States, the Church felt 
 at once that she was called to go in and take pos- 
 session. It had not been possible before. A 
 navy chaplain was not even allowed ashore in 
 clerical dress, and the bodies of dead sailors 
 could only be carried to a burial place in a com- 
 mon carriage. The government was the mere 
 tool of the Romish Church. But the hatred of 
 the Filipinos against the Spaniards was in some 
 measure also a hatred of the Spanish representa- 
 tives of Rome, and the Filipino's desire for lib- 
 erty was in some measure a desire for the freedom 
 of thought and life which only Protestantism 
 could bring. Accordingly, the Board decided at 
 once, under the urgent pressure of the Church 
 and of many friends who were eager to give 
 money for the establishment of work in the Philip- 
 pines, to send a mission there. In April, 1899, 
 the Rev. J. B. Rodgers was requested to remove 
 from Brazil, where he had worked for ten years, 
 to Manila. He has since been joined by other 
 missionaries, and stations have been established at 
 Manila, Iloilo, and Dumaguete, on the islands re- 
 spectively of Luzon, Panay, and Negros. 
 
 The work has succeeded beyond expectation. 
 Within a year Mr. Davidson was able to write : 
 
 "All Presbyterians will rejoice to know that 
 our Church is in the forefront here. At the pres- 
 287
 
 288 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 ent time Rev. James B. Rogers, our pioneer mis 
 sionary, is the only missionary who is preaching 
 to the natives. He has five or six services in 
 Spanish every week in various parts of the city, 
 and the results of these services, though not 
 great, are most encouraging. We have already a 
 church organized with fifteen members, and 
 others are seeking admission. Amongst -this 
 company of fifteen members are two or three 
 whom we hope to train for preachers. Already 
 one of those first baptized by us has gone out to 
 preach, having been ordained deacon in the 
 Methodist Church. We have another who wants 
 to go out and preach for us, but we fear to send 
 him until he has had a little more instruction. 
 He was formerly a sacristan in the Catholic 
 Church. He has already done some preaching. 
 Another young man, upon whom we are count- 
 ing a great deal, has come to us from Caesar's 
 household, having formerly been in the employ 
 of the Archbishop. The first Sunday of the 
 month we had a Communion service in our mis- 
 sion rooms on Calle Sacristia, and, as I told my 
 colleague, Mr. Rodgers, it was worth coming all 
 the way from America to see that body of Filip- 
 ino Christians seated around the Lord's Table, 
 and to look upon the dusky faces and earnest 
 black eyes of the four who stood up and boldly 
 confessed Christ." 
 
 Of the resources and natural characteristics of 
 the islands a recent visitor writes: "The Philip- 
 pines are among the richest islands in the world. 
 Their mineral resources are practically untouched. 
 The soil is rich as a garden, and even on the land 
 longest under cultivation fertilizers are not re- 
 quired. Not more than one-third of the arable 
 land in the valleys of Luzon has been brought 
 under cultivation. The mountains are rich in
 
 THE MISSION IN THE PHILIPPINES 289 
 
 the most valuable timber to be found anywhere in 
 the world. While some of the' valleys have been 
 denuded of the forests, Spanish official obstruc- 
 tion has effectually spared the valuable trees in 
 the interior. It is not a bad thing that it required 
 about two years' effort and a large fee in order to 
 get a license to fell a single tree, and a heavy 
 duty before it could be exported. 
 
 " The climate is a continual summer, and it is 
 not unhealthful for Europeans. The cold or dry 
 season is from November to February, inclusive ; 
 the hot season from March to June, and the wet 
 season from July to October. Or, as an old 
 resident said : ' We have four months of rain, 
 four months of dry, and four months of anything.' 
 The average temperature for the year is about 
 eighty-one degrees Fahrenheit. The most com- 
 mon diseases among Europeans are malarial fever, 
 diarrhea, and dysentery." x 
 
 " Before the war there were 60,000 Spanish 
 officials, friars, and soldiers, in the islands. The 
 Chinese population is 85,000, besides over 200,- 
 ooo Chinese Mestizos or half-breeds. Most of 
 the Chinese immigrants come from the city of 
 Amoy, in the 'Fuhkien province; a very small 
 proportion, only about five per cent coming from 
 Canton. There are scarcely any Chinese women 
 in the islands. In 1886 out of a population of 
 67,000 Chinese, only 194 were women. The 
 Chinese men almost without exception marry 
 Philippine women, a fact which accounts for the 
 large number of Chinese half-breeds. In Manila 
 they form about one-sixth of the population. As 
 a class they are more cunning and treacherous 
 than the pure natives. The Spanish half-breeds 
 and Creoles form a distinct class, as well as an in- 
 fluential one. Formerly the Spanish Government 
 
 1 Hible Work in the Philippines, p. 5.
 
 2QO PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 encouraged marriages between Spaniards and na- 
 tive women, and such alliances are quite com- 
 mon. The Spanish Mestizos, like all Eurasians, 
 are more shrewd and intellectual than the pure 
 Asiatic, but they are more suspicious and vacillat- 
 ing, and seem to have inherited the worst traits of 
 both , races. Among the native population the 
 Tagals are the principal tribe in Luzon, and the 
 Visayas of the southern islands. 
 
 " In the mountains of nearly every one of the 
 inhabited islands, native races are to be met with 
 which are supposed to be the aboriginal inhabi- 
 tants. They have not been subdued by the 
 Spanish conquerors of the islands, and even in 
 Luzon there are some of these tribes which have 
 never so much as heard of the Spaniards. The 
 Negritos are to be found in most of the islands. 
 They are a very low type, both intellectually and 
 physically, and will probably disappear before the 
 advance of civilization. The Igorrotes are the 
 chief mountain tribe in Luzon. They are per- 
 haps the best of the aboriginal races. They are 
 very tenacious of their beliefs, and after repeated 
 efforts the Spaniards abandoned the idea of sub- 
 duing them as an impossibility. There are a 
 number of Igorrote Chinese, who are supposed to 
 be the descendants of Chinese soldiers abandoned 
 by their chief, the renowned Corsair, Li Ma 
 Hong, in his unsuccessful attempt to effect the 
 conquest of the Philippines in 1574. The sol- 
 diers fled to the hills on the departure of their 
 chief, and their intermarriage with the Igorrote 
 women has produced this peculiar race, still dis- 
 tinguishable by their oblique eyes and Chinese 
 features. There are not less than thirty different 
 languages officially recognized. There are four 
 or five of these spoken in Luzon. The Tagalo, 
 the principal dialect spoken in Luzon, is used by
 
 THE MISSION IN THE PHILIPPINES 291 
 
 one and a half millions ; the Visaya by over two 
 millions. Spanish is the language of Manila and 
 of the principal ports of the islands." l 
 
 The Philippines were discovered by the Spanish 
 Navigator Magellan, on March i2th, 1521, and 
 about fifty years later, were occupied by Miguel 
 de Legaspi. And the islands were then named 
 in honor of Philip II, the King of Spain. After 
 four centuries of Spanish occupation, the Military 
 Notes published by the United States Govern- 
 ment, in 1898, declared, " Education is much neg-i 
 lected, and both the institutions for higher and 
 primary instruction are antiquated in their methods 
 and far behind the times." And the report of the 
 Philippine Commission in 1900, asserts : 
 
 "In the old days it was not altogether safe for 
 a native to avail himself fully of the educational 
 facilities theoretically afforded him at the institu- 
 tions within the archipelago, and if he went abroad 
 to pursue his studies he was a marked man after 
 his return. This fact was strikingly illustrated in 
 the case of Dr. Rizal, who was eventually executed 
 without just cause. His fate has been shared by 
 many other prominent Filipinos in the past." 
 
 It is not surprising that there was rebellion, 
 both against the State and the Church. Indeed 
 Aguinaldo "stated that the primary causes of the 
 Philippine revolution were the ecclesiastical cor- 
 porations, which, taking advantage of the corrupt 
 Spanish Government, robbed the country, pre- 
 venting progress and liberty ; he claimed for the 
 Filipino priests the right to appointment to the 
 duties of bishops and parochial priests ; he de- 
 nounced as dangerous to the interests of the 
 Philippines the allowance to the regular Spanish 
 clergy to continue their rule in the islands, be- 
 
 1 Bible Work in the Philippines, pp. 4, 5.
 
 2Q2 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 lieving that they would incite a counter revolution 
 in the interests of Spain." l 
 
 All this is past now, and the missionary out- 
 look is bright and hopeful, among a people ready 
 for the work of missions which bring a pure 
 Christianity and able to appreciate it. "During 
 my stay in the Philippines," said President 
 Schurman, a member of the Commission, " nothing 
 surprised rne more than the appearance, in- 
 telligence, and deportment, of the educated na- 
 tives. Their characteristics are often pleasing to 
 the foreigners. For one thing they are very tem- 
 perate and cleanly/) I regret that the Americans 
 allowed the saloon to get a foothold on the islands. 
 That has hurt the Americans more than anything 
 else, and the spectacle of Americans drunk 
 awakens disgust in the Filipinos. We sup- 
 pressed the cockfight there, and permitted the 
 taverns to flourish. One emphasized the Filip- 
 ino frailty and the other the American vice. I 
 suppose wherever there are 65.000 Anglo-Saxons 
 there will always be some drunkards, and it seems 
 difficult to prevent it. But it was unfortunate 
 that we introduced and established the saloon 
 there to corrupt the natives and to exhibit to 
 them the vice of our race. I have never seen a 
 Filipino drunkard. They will take a small 
 wineglass of liquor, and be content with that, 
 and this temperance in drink is characteristic of 
 their moderation in many other things. Probably 
 no one thing has damaged the American people in 
 the eyes of the natives more than this great vice of 
 ours of indulging too freely in drink. In Manila, 
 which is really a cosmopolitan city, in Iloilo, and 
 other cities of the islands, you will find educated 
 Filipinos, who are bright and pleasing to meet 
 socially, fit is a good thing that we have such a 
 1 Report of the Philippine Commission, Vol. I., p. 130.
 
 THE MISSION IN THE PHILIPPINES 293 
 
 nucleus of education to begin with. Many of 
 them know French and German, as well as Span- 
 ish and their native tongue. The great masses 
 of course are ignorant, but one good thing in 
 their favor is that they thirst for knowledge. 
 They recognize their ignorance, and regret it. 
 They have been in contact with Europeans long 
 enough to know that education will help them to 
 become more powerful. This is why the fortu- 
 nate few have obtained their education, and they 
 exercise a power over their own people that they 
 could not otherwise have secured. It is promis- 
 ing for the future that we have examples of the 
 educated few to show us what can be accomplished. 
 With good American schools on the islands the 
 leaven of general education will produce results 
 for the masses that will develop the race rapidly. 
 I hope the missionaries who go there will provide 
 American schools, and they will find a hearty 
 welcome. The people are ready for good, honest 
 education, and knowing the value of it they will 
 be very tractable pupils in the hands of their 
 teachers. The Filipinos have many other good 
 characteristics. They are honest by nature, and 
 show it in their dealings, although suspicious of 
 the white men. I do not say they have the 
 straightforward, sturdy honesty of the Anglo- 
 Saxon. For centuries they have been deceived 
 by the Spaniards until they have learned to prac- 
 tice some of their subterfuge. But we have sub- 
 stantial ground for hope that when we establish a 1 
 government there we will succeed." 
 
 And we will succeed in establishing a living 
 Church, too. As the missionaries write: 
 
 "For the mission there is an open door that 
 should appeal to every American Christian. 
 Never in the history of the American Church has 
 such an opportunity been offered or such respon-
 
 294 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 sibility been placed on the American public. 
 Conditions in the Philippines are similar to those 
 in Germany when Luther arose : A renegade 
 priesthood, a dead Church, a people that has been 
 starved, earnestly pleading for the water and 
 bread of life. The conditions are ripe for a 
 wholesale revolt from Rome." 
 
 And until Rome changes and deals honestly 
 with the hearts of the people their only spiritual 
 hope is in revolt from her dominion.
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 THE missions of our Church thus girdle the 
 world. There is never an hour when our mis- 
 sionaries are not telling to some hearts the glad 
 tidings of the Saviour. On every continent, save 
 Europe, and among the adherents of every re- 
 ligion our representatives are at work ; in North 
 America, South America, Asia, Africa, and the 
 Islands of the Sea ; among Hindus, Mohammed- 
 ans, Buddhists, Confucianists, Shintoists, Sha- 
 manists, Fetich worshipers, and degraded forms 
 of Christianity. It has been estimated that 
 nearly one hundred and fifty million people in the 
 countries occupied by our missionaries have be- 
 come the charge of our Church, and will hear the 
 gospel from us or from no one. Shall we give it 
 to them ? 
 
 What right to the gospel have we which is not 
 also a right of theirs ? If the gospel is not for 
 them, it is not for us. If it is worth anything to 
 us, it is worth as much to them. Is not our 
 Saviour the Saviour of the world ? That is his 
 desire and his prayer. And his will for us is that 
 we should carry him to the world, should lift him 
 up before the world, that, being lifted up, he may 
 draw all men unto himself. 
 
 It is for this that the Church exists. In read- 
 ing about her missions, we are not reading of any 
 incidental or secondary enterprise. This is her 
 chief business. If we are ignorant of what the 
 Church is doing to evangelize the world, we are 
 faithless to her. Those are her true children who 
 
 2 95
 
 296 PRESBYTERIAN FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 know and love the story of her triumphs, who 
 with eyes upon the uttermost parts of the earth,, 
 and hearts embracing all the peoples, pray ever 
 sincerely, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done 
 on earth," and who toil for the fulfillment of their 
 prayer.
 
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