tlM&vIa,:^V'V^ YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY J935 FRIENDS' FOREIGN MISSIONS. DARLINGTON CONFERENCE. How is the Money Spent? ¦ ? i The Expenditure in the different Mission Fields of the FRIENDS' FOREIGN MISSION ASSOCIATION and FRIENDS' SYRIAN MISSION for the year 1895-6, was distributed as follows : — Cost, 189S— 6. Proportion to each £1 spent. s. d. 4 3£ MADAGASCAR 21-4 per cent. 1 5 MADAGASCAR MEDICAL MISSION. .7 per cent. 5 llf INDIA 29-9 per cent. 3 8 SYRIA 18-3 per cent. 1 6i CHINA 7'2 per cent. 1 2| HOME EXPENSES . . 6-2 per cent. 1 8i DEFICIENCY in 1894 . . 8-4 per cent. 0 33 . life Assurance— Missionaries •• 16 per cent. 20 shillings. £3560 £1165 £4980 £3056£1193 £1030 £12il = F.F.M.A. \£163 =F.S.M. £262 HOME EXPENSES include — Secretaries' Salaries; Rent of Offices; Printing and Stationery, including Annual Reports; Travelling Expenses on Deputation Work; Publishing ' Our Missions ' ; Bankers' Interest ; <&c. Progress 1865— 1895. » ¦» 1 FRIENDS' FOREIGN MISSION ASSOCIATION AND FRIENDS' SYRIAN MISSION. NUMBER of MISSIONARIES 1865 TOTAL of CONTRIBUTIONS n ot iH clu d ing Legacies andf Interest on Investments £664-1 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 MEMBERSHIP SOCI ETY OF FRI EN DS. LONDON AND DUBLIN Y.Ms f6222 16.924 17.186 17.900 18.215 18.641 19.086 1865 ¦ 870 1875 1880 ? — 1885 1890 1895 This leaflet is issued separately, and copies may be had from Watson Geace. The Society of Friends. report OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE AT DARLINGTON ON FOREIGN MISSIONS HELD, BY DIRECTION OF LONDON YEARLY MEETING, 1896. LONDON : WEST, NEWMAN AND CO., 54, HATTON GARDEN. MDCCCXCVII. vAkf4£> PREFACE. IN presenting the Report of the proceedings of the recent Foreign Mission Conference at Darlington, reference must be made to the spirit of harmony and friendship which prevailed during the occasion. It was a marked feature of the gathering, and one which no printed record can supply. The thoughtful and cordial hospitality of Darlington Friends was manifested in many ways. They invited the representatives and others in attendance to a Reception Tea at the Mechanics' Hall on the opening evening. The complete arrangements made for the accommodation and comfort of the members of the Conference were efficiently maintained and gratefully appreciated in all particulars. The Missionary Exhibition was a centre of much interest. Here, again, the work of Darlington Friends in careful arrangement was apparent. Besides numerous curiosities from many lands, there were specimens of the furniture, and models of the bullock-carts in which our missionaries travel from place to place, manufactured in the workshops of the Industrial Mission at Hoshangabad, India. Cloth was shown, made by the Christian weavers at Itarsi, as supplied to the Orphanages at Hoshangabad. The large and instructive diagrams and maps which were hung round the walls of the meeting-house, showing the progress, and at the same time the comparative smallness, of missionary effort, helped to stimulate our zeal. Thanks are due to many workers for the production of these. Mention should also be made of the Book Room, under the management of the Friends' Tract Association and vi Preface. Headley Brothers, of London. The large assortment of missionary and Quaker literature, attractively displayed, found many willing purchasers. The sittings of the Conference were well attended, from 450 to 600 persons being usually present, and a much larger number at the public meetings held at the Central Hall. The object of the Conference was to deepen and widen the interest of the Society of Friends in the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom in foreign lands. It is believed that this result has been largely attained. But that interest should continue and increase if it is healthy, and it is hoped that the publication of this volume may contribute to that end. It is sent forth with thankfulness for many evidences in our Society of the blessing of our Father in heaven, and the earnest prayer that we " may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth know ledge." On behalf of the Conference Committee, WATSON GRACE, Secretary. 12, Bishopsgale Without, London, E.C., Twelfth Month 21st, 1896. CONTENTS. PAGE Second-day Evening, 2ist of Ninth Month, 1896. Opening Sitting , The Object of the Conference ...... 6 Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World . 9 Third-day Morning, 22ND of Ninth Month. The World for Christ r6 The Witness in the Heart ....... 22 The Work of the Society of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field 2r Chronological Memoranda 43 Our Attitude to other Religions ... 51 Third-day Afternoon, 22nd of Ninth Month. Meeting for Parents 70 Foreign Mission Work by Friends : Advantages and Difficulties yn Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work ... 95 Third-day Evening, 22ND of Ninth Month. (Public Meeting.) The Heathen's Knowledge of God 108 Friends' Mission Work in India . ..in Friends' Mission Work in Syria ... . 1 17 Missionary Enterprise and Commerce .... 120 Fourth-day Morning,. 23RD of Ninth Month. Christ for the World 124 Methods of Evangelistic Work 132 Education the Handmaiden of Christianity . . . 137 Educational Mission Work in India 143 Industrial Work 147 The Printing Press as a Missionary Agency . . 157 Elbert and Emma Clarke's Mission in Natal . . . 162 Fourth-day Afternoon, 23RD of Ninth Month. Meeting on Armenia 164 The Society of Friends and the British and Foreign Bible Society 166 Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions . . 171 Women's Work in Syria 180 Women's Work in India 184 The Development and Organisation of the Native Church with its Relation to the Home Church .... 187 Memorial to Lord Salisbury (Armenia) .... 202 vii viii Contents. PAGE Fourth-day Evening, 23RD Ninth Month, (Public Meeting.) " Lord, What wouldst Thou have me to do ? " . • 203 Friends' Mission Work in Madagascar .... 205 Friends' Mission Work in China ... .212 "Are ye able?" 217 Fifth-day Morning, 24TH of Ninth Month. The Call to Foreign Missions 220 The Claim of Foreign Missions on the Society of Friends 226 The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church 231,237 Home Organisation : The Missionary Helpers' Union . 246 Home Organisation ........ 249 Fifth-day Afternoon, 24TH of Ninth Month. Expressions of Thanks ..... . 262 Introduction of Missionaries 264 A Few Thoughts in Relation to Foreign Missions and Mission Workers ........ 268 Some Lessons of the Conference . . . . .271 The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint 275 The Heart's Service . . 284 Fifth-day Evening, 24TH of Ninth Month. Meeting for Worship 290 Appendix. London Yearly Meeting and Foreign Missions : A Chapter of History, 1830-35 291 Missionaries at the Conference 296 Index to Subjects and Speakers 297 ILLUSTRATIONS. Progress of Friends' Foreign Missions, 1865-95 . Frontispiece Map of Friends' District in India . . To face page 112 Map of Friends' District in Syria . . ,, „ 118 Industrial Works, Hoshangabad, India . „ ,, 150 Antananarivo Hospital ,. „ 176 Map of Friends' District in Madagascar . „ 208 DARLINGTON CONFERENCE ON ffrienbe' foreign fllMssiona Second-day Evening, 21st of Ninth Month, 1896. OPENING SITTING. Sir Theodore Fry, Bart., in the Chair. About 600 Friends assembled upon the occasion of the opening meeting of the Conference. Watson Grace and William Baker acted as Clerk and Assistant Clerk respectively. The Chairman opened the Conference by reading the 24th Psalm. A period of devotion followed, in which vocal prayer was offered. The Clerk read the opening Minute of the Conference as follows : — At a Conference of the Society of Friends held at Darlington from the 21st of Ninth Month to the 24th of the same, inclusive, 1896, the following Minute of London Yearly Meeting, 1896, appointing the present meeting, has now been read : — " A Report has been read of the Friends' Foreign Mission Association, and also the follow ing Minute of its Committee : — " ' The subject of deepening and widening the interest of the Society of Friends in the spread of 2 Opening Sitting. the Redeemer's kingdom in foreign lands has rested with concern upon our Committee. " ' With this end in view it has been proposed to hold a Conference during the autumn, when various aspects of the subject should be considered ; the time being thought peculiarly suitable in view of the number of our missionaries who will then be at home on furlough. An invitation has been received from Darlington Preparative Meeting to hold the Conference in that town, the time sug gested being from the 21st to the 24th of Ninth Month next. " 'After careful thought as to our duty we have felt it right to lay the whole matter before the Yearly Meeting, asking it to take the proposal into consideration, and, if it sees fit, to act upon its own initiative in appointing a representative Conference which should be open to all Friends to attend. "'The Committee are prepared to place their services at the disposal of the Yearly Meeting, should it see fit to entrust them with the whole or any part of the arrangements.' " This meeting welcomes the proposal for the holding of a Conference as suggested. Quarterly Meetings are encouraged to appoint Representa tives, both men and women, to attend the Con ference at Darlington, in about the number of Friends appointed as Representatives to the Yearly Meeting. The arrangements are left with the Com mittee of the Friends' Foreign Mission Association. " Our Friends in Ireland are invited to send Representatives appointed by the Quarterly Meet ings. Opening Sitting. 3 " The Conference is to be open to the attend ance of all members of our Society. "We have received a note from the Women's Yearly Meeting approving of this course." The Clerk : In pursuance of the Minute, I have to submit various proposals from the Committee having charge of the arrangements of this Conference. The proposal embodied in the following Minute was then accepted : — The Committee having charge of the arrange ments for the Conference propose that Watson Grace be appointed as Clerk, and William Baker as Assistant Clerk. These names being approved they are appointed accordingly. The Clerk : I have now to call over the names of the Representatives to constitute the Conference, appointed by the different Quarterly Meetings. The names of the Representatives,* appointed by Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, were then called over, and the following Minute was read : — The names of the Representatives appointed by the Quarterly Meetings comprising London Yearly Meeting, and those appointed by Quarterly Meetings in Ireland agreeably with the invitation contained in the Minute of London Yearly Meeting, have now been called over. A large number of other Friends from all parts of the United Kingdom are also present on this occasion, including many who are engaged in Foreign Missionary service, now at home for needed rest, or who are shortly proceeding to their appointed fields of service. We * One hundred and sixty-six Friends represented the constituent meetings of London Yearly Meeting, and twenty-one Representatives were appointed by Irish Quarterly and Monthly Meetings. 4 Opening Sitting. c6me together in the fellowship of the gospel of Christ, and desire His blessing upon our delibera tions. The Clerk : There are one or two Minutes which I should submit at this time, with regard to the business of the Conference. I have no doubt Friends will accept some of the recommendations contained in them. The first is with regard to the Committee having charge of the arrangements of the Conference. I should explain, before reading their names, how this Committee is constituted. There is, firstly, the Sub-Committee of the F.F.M.A., which had charge of the arrangements for the Conference ; secondly, the Local Committee appointed by Darlington Preparative Meeting ; and thirdly, after the practice that was found helpful at Manchester, the Chairmen of the different sessions of the Conference are added to the Committee, so far as they may be able to attend. The Clerk then read the Minute as follows : — The following Friends are appointed to have charge of the arrangements of the Conference. They are requested to meet during the intervals of its sessions, as may be found necessary, and to bring such proposals as they may think desirable before the Conference at the commencement of an,y of its sittings. They are further requested to submit a Report of the proceedings of this Conference to its last sitting, for presentation to the ensuing Yearly Meeting. William C. Allen. Herbert H. Catford. James Allison. William John Cudworth. William Baker. John Dixon, M.B. Ellen Barclay. R. Hingston Fox, M.D. Catherine L. Braithwaite. Joseph Storrs Fry. Sarah J. Burtt. Sir Theodore Fry, Bart. Opening Sitting. 5 Joseph W. Glaister. Howard Nicholson. Watson Grace. Arthur Pease, M.P. George Grubb. Mary H. Pease. Alice M. Hodgkin. Reginald Pease. Jonathan B. Hodgkin. Caroline W. Pumphrey. Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. J. Fyfe Stewart. Caleb R. Kemp. Walter W. Willmott. Rachel A. Mounsey. John Edward Wilson. Henry Stanley Newman. The Clerk : There is one other matter to submit to the Conference, with regard to the admission of non-members. I have the names of some, and I believe Darlington Friends wish to submit the names of others. The latter are the regular attenders of Skinnergate and Hopetown Hall meetings at Darlington. The Clerk then read out the names, and said : I take it the Conference will see its way to admit these friends to attend the Conference. A Friend : May any further names be added ? The Clerk : If they are attenders of Friends' Meetings they can be admitted. That is the principle that Friends have gone upon. John Edward Wilson : I notice in the list that has been read the names of some of the most valued workers, who are going out to the Mission Field. They certainly should be welcomed to the Conference, and I wish it could have been done without their having to ask leave. The Chairman : I am sure we shall all be of one opinion as regards the names that have been read. I should like to suggest that any regular attenders of Stockton or Newcastle and the adjacent meetings should be allowed to come here at the discretion of the Friends of those meetings. The Clerk read a Minute as follows : — A cordial welcome is extended to some who are not in membership with us, whose names have now been submitted to the Conference, to attend its sessions. 6 The Object of the Conference. The Chairman : On behalf of Dar- aodress by lington Friends it is my pleasing sir theodorb fry, bart. duty this evening to extend to all those who have come to this Con ference a sincere and hearty welcome, only regretting that we have not been able to extend a greater hospitality. We welcome you for your own sakes, and we welcome you for the work's sake. We welcome you, I may truly say, in the name of the Lord. A gathering of this kind shows, more clearly than anything that has yet occurred, what a strong hold foreign mission work has taken of late years on our Society, for though our gathering is not nearly so large as the one evening meeting held annually in London, those who have come have done so for one purpose only and remain for a much longer time, so that the state of all the centres abroad may be brought more clearly before us. Never have we had at one time the company of so many missionaries who have been already workers in the great harvest-field, or who are soon sailing for the first time to assist in sowing the seed of the kingdom in the dark places of the earth. To all of these we give the most cordial greeting, and wish them in their labours the greatest blessing, commending them to the preserving care of the Good Shepherd, who when He putteth forth His own goeth before them, and leadeth them in the right way. It was only about thirty years ago that we commenced to take our part with others in the evangelisation of the heathen as a sustained effort in our religious body. Before then all service abroad — highly appreciated as it was by us — was the result of individual faithfulness to what was felt by the persons going to be a special call to special work, and when completed was not followed up ; and in most cases the visits were to those already Christian in name, for the purpose of building them up and strengthening them in the faith, and not in opening up new and untrodden ground in heathen lands. Our founder, George Fox, visited America in 1672-3, spending twenty-two months from home, and we find that he preached to the Indians as well as to the settlers in the new country. Several of our early preachers also went to that Chairman's Address. 7 continent, making many adherents to Quakerism ; travelling widely, as they said, " in the service of the truth." Ever since that time this practice has continued amongst us, and the names of Daniel Wheeler, James Backhouse, Isaac Sharp, and others too numerous to mention (some of them for years at a time) were drawn in the love of Christ to Australia, the South Sea Islands, China, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. We probably left too much to this individual call, though we still believe it is only the great Master who can rightly qualify His servants for any kind of work. We did not sufficiently recognise that this call to prolonged service was as truly a right call as the other, but it required more help, organisation, and pecuniary support than our arrange ments for the shorter visits allowed. Hence came the need of a separate committee, which should have the special care of foreign missions. We are glad to see amongst us some of its founders, and I am sure their hearts will rejoice in the progress made since 1866, when Rachel Metcalfe sailed for Benares, followed the next year by our dear friend Joseph S. Sewell, who offered himself as our first missionary going to Madagascar, whither Helen Gilpin followed soon after, her services being ever since devoted to that island. The state of things in Madagascar is one full of anxiety, and at the present moment one which calls for earnest faith and prayer. Were it not for the assurance that " the Lord reigneth " our faith would sometimes fail. It is not the first time that Christianity has had its terrible persecution, and that lives have been given up for the gospel's sake, but in the loss of our dear friends, William and Lucy Johnson, we have been brought face to face as a Society, as was never the case before, with the truth that those who devote themselves to heathen lands must not count their lives dear unto them selves ; whilst we also believe that these two martyrs finished their course with joy, " Soon to awake where saints and angels sing The endless song to Heaven's eternal King." Our hearts, too, are full of sadness at the terrible state of things in Armenia and the dangers surrounding all mission work both there and in Constantinople. There we have a 8 The Object of the Conference. very small number of workers, but with them in the awful scenes and dangers by which they are encompassed we most fully sympathise, and pray that God may Himself keep and preserve them in this hour of need. India, our own terri tory, on the other hand, is free from these trials ; but the immensity of the country, and the fewness of the workers, must make the hearts of the missionaries long for further help. These remarks apply to the population of China, where fanaticism is, however, a dangerous element. Of this mission we shall hear, as also of Syria, which has always had a special interest for Friends since its formation, and the proposed opening for service in Ceylon. I must not now dwell on the history of the Association, but it may just be stated that we have 77 missionaries under our care, equal to 1 in 130 of our whole membership (including children), with an income of about ^12,000 a year ; and that in Madagascar alone, before the last terrible war, Friends had, besides the work in the capital, 157 congregations and about 10,000 children in the schools. I should like also to have alluded to some who took a prominent part in the formation of our Society, who have passed away ; among whom this year the first treasurer, James Hack Tuke, has been a great loss ; but God's work does not stand still because one labourer after another is called from works to reward. The harvest-field is great, and though the labourers be few comparatively both at home and abroad, there will be in the future, as in the past, devoted men and women who are willing to give up all at the Master's call. The object of this Conference is to encourage Friends everywhere in whatever way they may think right, by personal service or by pecuniary assistance, to take a still deeper interest in the cause ; and if that object be in some small measure attained through the Divine blessing, we may indeed thank God and take courage. Nor is it our earnest prayer only that the Foreign Mission Association may be blessed, but that each one of us may know a quickening of that spiritual life of which we have all received, and reaching forth unto those things which are beyond our present attainment, we may press toward the mark for the prize of our high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World. 9 May the prayer of each heart be, in the words of Mont gomery — " Lord God, the Holy Ghost, In this accepted hour, As on the Day of Pentecost, Descend in all Thy power ! We meet with one accord, In our appointed place, And wait the promise of our Lord, The Spirit of all grace." Henry Stanley Newman : I feel very thankful to our Father in heaven for this large gathering of a foreign missionary conference — a conference certainly unique in the history of the Society of Friends. I think that all of us here to-night, if we will study the chart in the corner of the hpuse, will find it an inspiration to us with regard to the history of this movement and the progress that it has made since 1866 and 1868. The Committee has requested me to give a short Bible lesson on Christ's Teaching with regard to the Evangelisation of the World. Henry Stanley Newman then gave the following Bible- reading on CHRIST'S TEACHING ON THE EVANGELISATION OF THE WORLD. To understand the mind and teaching bible-reading by of Christ we need to study the aim henry Stanley newman. and direction of His whole life rather than isolated texts. His work, and the work of His disciples, began at home, but from the initiation of His kingdom it ran on the lines of infinite ex pansion. As the babe of Bethlehem He received the homage of the wise men of the East, representatives of the Oriental nations', who laid their treasures at His feet. At the presenta tion in the temple the devout Simeon exclaimed, " Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples ; a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel " (Luke ii. 31, 32). Christ went forth as the master sower with the seed of the gospel, not to be sown in one soil only, but suited for all 10 Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World. climes. Jehovah is not a God of the hills or of the valleys only : the sea is His also. This attitude of Christ towards the world marked the dividing line of offence between Him self and the people of Nazareth. While longing to win His fellow-townsmen, He did not flinch from the beginning in announcing the broad policy of an international purpose. " There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet ; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian " (Luke iv. 25, 26, 27). This breadth of scope found emphasis at the beginning of Christ's miracles. The Roman centurion won Christ's earliest commendation with the cosmopolitan outlook, " I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall recline with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven " (Matt. viii. 11). To the Jew first came the blessing that the Jew might bless others. Christ's face shone first upon Israel, that His saving health might be known among all nations. The patriarchs were en dowed that they might endow others. Abraham was to become the father of many nations : "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Insular prejudices, pro vincial limitations, had no foothold in the teaching of Christ. He said, " The field is the world" (Matt. xiii. 38). His messengers received no instructions to tarry at Jerusalem until Jerusalem was converted. But the broad lines on which the city of God is founded in no way countervail the orderliness with which every stone in the temple is laid. In this perfect order, timeliness, and mutual relationship, we have the preparation, the rest, and the individual call of each disciple. Christ teaches a world wide evangelisation, but He never contradicts His own law, " To every man his work." I am not to step out of my place to become a foreign missionary unless called of God. Christ never encourages restlessness. He insists on the true Sabbath. The soul at rest is the soul to work. He teaches sobriety. Until Christ enlarges our commission, " let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called " (1 Cor. vii. Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World, n 20). The " Go ye " of Matt, xxviii. 19 is the withdrawal to the disciples of the restriction in Matt. x. 5, " Go not " ; just as the restriction of Luke x. 4, to " Carry no purse," is rescinded in Luke xxii. 36, " But now he that hath a purse, let him take it." Divine direction is needed for the appointed place to work in, the character of the work to be done, and the time to enter on it. The prevailing thought throughout Christ's ministry is " compassion." When He would illustrate this doctrine of compassion as a motive power, He selects a foreigner, a Samaritan, as the embodiment of compassion, and says, " Go and do thou likewise." The further Christ's work develops the more promi nently He unfolds the enterprise of foreign missions. What incident can be more beautiful than the introduction by Andrew and Philip of certain Greeks ! They take the repre sentative position of enquirers : " We would see Jesus." The wall of partition was breaking down. The spirit of Jesus rises to the occasion as He answers, " The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified." With prophetic eye He welcomes with joy these searchers after truth. His heart goes forth to meet them, but along with the joy mingles a vein of sorrow. The purest joy and the deepest sorrow often lie close together in human experience. With fresh emphasis He dwells on the means by which the world-wide result must be attained. It can only be reached by a baptism of fire. The path to conquest lies through the furnace of affliction. Thus He proceeds to unfold the programme of missions as from death unto life, from the cross to the crown, from apparent defeat and failure to success. We may not minimise the full force of Christ's own teaching as He stands directly face to face with these representatives from the foreign mission-field. The grain of wheat propagates itself by dying. He puts this truth in the strongest form : "Ex cept a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone ; but if it die it beareth much fruit." We know that the disciples at an earlier date utterly repelled such teaching. But Christ taught them as fast as they were able to bear it. " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself." This He said, signifying 12 Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World. by what manner of death He should die. This is the line along which the coming "glory" travels. To win the harvest, to thrust in the sickle, to garner the golden clusters of ripening grain among all nations, He must die. There is a missionary counterpart to this great lesson. It is enough for the disciple if he be as his Master. " Follow thou Me." Christ shadows forth, the suffering and travail of soul, the self-sacrifice and abnegation of home joys in volved in Foreign Missions, and He counts the cost which must be the prelude of missionary success. He is establish ing the universal missionary principle of death unto life. Unless the old self is buried a missionary can never rise into the new life. Yet He is not speaking of Himself only, or of foreign missionaries only, but of the line of spiritual success for " any man." " He that loveth his life loseth it ; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve Me, let him follow Me ; and where I am, there shall also My servant be : if any man serve Me, him will the Father honour." Our Lord's prayer in the 17th of John is another remark able illustration of Christ's teaching on the evangelisation of the world, the more so because the main theme of that prayer does not appear to be foreign missions. It is essen tially a prayer for His prepared workers. There never was such a prayer offered before or since for those who were so soon to set sail on foreign mission service. It is loaded down to the water-line with blessings for God's messengers — blessings of fellowship with Christ, blessings of unity with one another, blessings of deliverance from the powers of the evil one, blessings of world-wide success. Strangely enough, Christ begins with His authority "over all flesh" (ver. 2). There is no mention of Jew or of Jerusalem, or of an Israelitish community. There is no distinction whatever in this prayer between home and foreign missions. The little local distinc tions of home and foreign are swept away and melted into one under the fusion of Christ's love. Henceforth Jews and Gentiles alike are " fellow-heirs," " fellow-members," " fellow- partakers " (Eph. iii. 6). Christ makes of twain " one new man." Eighteen times over in that one prayer Jesus speaks of " the world," " the world." Spurgeon said he could tell Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World. 13 where the heart of Hudson Taylor was by the way in which he pronounced the word " China." Christ's prayer is not for the world, but it is for the missionaries He is sending out into the world. He speaks of the world as in direct opposition to Himself and to His work and to His messengers. The equipment of unity for the disciples is " that the world may believe" (ver. 21). Their perfection is "that the world may know" (ver. 23), thus showing that the inner thought of the prayer is that missionaries may so illustrate Christ in their lives and in their spirit that the world may " know " and " believe " in Him also. The paradoxes that bewilder Pontius Pilate in his inter course with Christ are so great that a blind man overhearing the conversation might query, " Which is the prisoner, and which is the judge ? " Thrice Jesus repeats " My kingdom," " My kingdom." Not, indeed, any such kingdom as Pilate conceived, but the kingdom Daniel foresaw, "which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty thereof be left to another people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever " (Dan. ii. 44). As if Pilate had some vague glimmering of world-wide empire, he wrote the superscription over the cross in three lan guages. It was an unwitting acknowledgment of the world wide significance of that death, and of the supreme kingliness of Him who suffered. Thus, in the Gospels, the corn of wheat falls into the ground and dies, while in the unending " Acts " of the risen Saviour, it springs up and brings forth fruit a thousandfold. The final charge given by the crucified and risen Christ to His Church immediately before His ascension is an abiding charge to us to-day. His final words show a wonderful expansion of thought and breadth of purpose. The language He uses is as to beloved and familiar senior scholars who have learned many lessons, and are now about to be rewarded with a fuller revelation. There is no halting-place in Christian development or in the possibility of God to teach and to lead. We press onward. In the first chapter of Acts Christ charged His disciples to wait for the baptism of the Spirit ; He told them there were things they were not to know ; He promised them the 14 Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World. enduement of spiritual power ; He said that their function as missionaries was to be " His witnesses " ; He mapped out the extent of their mission-field. i. Christ charged His messengers to wait for the promise of the Father (ver. 4). This baptism is something that takes place at a definite time. It is not something we gradually grow into. It implies initiation into a higher plane of privi lege, a closer relationship to God and to the leading of His Spirit. 2. It is well for a missionary, and well for us all, to recognise the limitations of our knowledge. Many things it is better not to know. The knowledge of the future is hid from us. The question itself appears thrust in as an interlude. The true missionary exclaims, " This one thing I do." 3. The equipment of the Spirit — the helmet, the sword, the breastplate, the shield — made these missionaries bold and courageous. It delivered them from the fear of man. It made them wise and discerning in reading the conditions of men. Thus George Fox prayed that he might be " baptized into a sense of all conditions, that so he might enter into the needs and sorrows of all." This gift of the Spirit made the early missionaries sing songs in prison, it gave them single ness of heart, it made them holy. 4. Their message was to witness to Christ, to tell the story of His life, His death, His resurrection. " That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the word of life, declare we unto you " (1 John i. 1, 3). Christ's ideal of missionary labour does not consist of elaborate organisations, but in messengers themselves filled with the dynamic force of a new life that begets life in others. Committee-men need the same grace at home. 5. The missionary map is concentric. Its length and breadth are equal. It is a globe. Thus far Christianity had been localised. The ascension permanently spiritualised it. It no longer depended on headquarters at Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, London, or Canterbury. Christianity knows no Mecca. Henceforth, not in Jerusalem, or on Gerizim, but in all lands the Father seeks worshippers in spirit and in Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World. 15 truth, among all kindreds, peoples, and tongues. His hands are stretched out in blessing as He gently floats upward to heaven, His last words echoing and re-echoing in the dis ciples' hearts, " Ye shall be My witnesses — unto the uttermost part of the earth." Another period of silent worship, interspersed with vocal pfayer, followed, and the Clerk then read the following Minute : — The Chairman (Sir Theodore Fry, Bart.) of this opening sitting extended, on behalf of Dar lington Friends, a cordial welcome to the Friends attending the Conference. Henry Stanley Newman followed with a Bible Lesson entitled, " Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisation of the World." Third-day Morning, 22nd of Ninth Month, 1896. Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L, presiding. The meeting opened with a period of devotion and vocal prayer. The Clerk : The Committee in considering the arrange ments for the deliberations of the Conference, have thought that it would help the discussions if a time limit were imposed. A limit of five minutes is thought to be sufficient for Friends to express their views upon the various subjects which come before us. A bell is placed upon the table, and if Friends exceed this limit it will remind them of the arrangement. The Chairman : In the absence of our friend, Ellwood Brockbank, Charles D. Terrell will give a Bible-reading upon " The World for Christ." Probably most Friends here know that Charles D. Terrell has been one of our missionaries in India. 16 The World for Christ. Charles D. Terrell then gave the following Bible- reading on THE WORLD FOR CHRIST. When the Committee on Arrangements bible-reading by first wrote asking me to take this Bible- charles o. terrell. reading, I replied to the Secretary that I hoped they would select some one else, because I felt unworthy and unable to undertake it. Although the Secretary wrote back and said that it was still the wish of the Committee that I should do so, it was not until last night that I felt perfectly free in my own mind about it. But last night in the meeting, as our Friend Henry Stanley Newman was speaking to us, a passage was brought home to me which seemed to set my mind perfectly at rest. In John iv. 35 : " Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest ? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields ; for they are white already to harvest." As that word came to me, I lifted up my eyes and looked round the room ; I looked at all these charts and pictures that we have before us, upon the needs of the world. I have asked the Lord to enable each one of us this morning to look away from the speaker right up to Himself, that the word may come not only to me, but to each one of us gathered here. " Lift up your eyes, and look." Oh, Friends, that is what we need to do ! We need to have our eyes anointed of the Lord that we may see. We need to lift up our eyes and look, each of us, beyond the small sphere of his own work into the fields beyond, white for harvest. I think that was the Lord's meaning to His disciples, and through them to us, and I pray God that each one of us may do it, saying, " Oh, Lord, help me to see the need of the world — the need of the world for Christ." When I was looking up the subject I was much struck with the many passages, especially in Isaiah, where God speaks through His prophet, bidding the people to look beyond themselves ; bidding the Jews to look beyond the borders of Judaism out into all the world. I have thought with what a revelation this must have come home to the Jews. They were of all people the most conservative, and yet God The World for Christ. 17 bids them again and again to realise that the gospel was not only to be sent for them, but for all the world. I have put down a few passages that may help us to see this. Isaiah xiii. 6 : "I, the Lord . . . will . . . give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles " ; chap. xlix. 6 : " I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be My salvation unto the end of the earth." And in chap. ix. 2 : " The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light ; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." It is as if God was speaking through Isaiah to the Jewish people, and telling them that hitherto they had only been concerned with their own small circle of Jerusalem, and had forgotten the great world lying beyond them ; and then He opened a door or drew aside a curtain and bid them look forth. And what did they see ? The land lying in darkness. I think it is a wonderfully significant thing that in all these pictures of the missionary field and of the state of the world, we see heathen ism painted black. That is the colour that it should be painted. As we look at these charts we shall realise the awful darkness the world is in now. But only we who have been actually in contact with it, who have been out in the heathen world and seen what it is like, can realise the awful density of it — a darkness that may be felt. That is the darkness to which Jesus Christ was going to be sent as a light — a light shining in darkness. We know the beautiful words of Simeon, " Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word : for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people ; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel " (Luke ii. 29-32). I think that we all need to realise what this darkness is. People very often talk about it, saying, " We know the heathen world is very dark," and they read books about the work of the missionaries in heathen lands. But it would repay us over and over again to look and see more of what the Bible says about it. I find over twenty places in Isaiah where God speaks through His pro phet, telling the people of the awful state of darkness in which the world was. As we begin to look up in our Bibles what God says 3 1 8 The World for Christ. about the heathen world, we shall better realise the darkness to which Christ has been sent. In Isaiah Iii. 10 we read : " The Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations ; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salva tion of our God." And in Isaiah xlix. 20-23, we see the wonderful promise given about the extending of the Redeemer's kingdom : " The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me : give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro ? and who hath brought up these ? Behold, I was left alone ; these, where had they been ? Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up Mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up My standard to the people : and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers ; they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet ; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord : for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me." We find another pas sage where this is wonderfully fulfilled, in Acts xiii. 46, 47 : "Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you : but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldst be for salva tion unto the ends of the earth." And again in Isaiah liv. 1-3 : " Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear ; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child : for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations : spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes ; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited." Then in Isaiah xi. 9, and in Habakkuk ii. 14, we have exactly the same thing The World for Christ. 19 recorded : " For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." These are only a few passages I have selected out of Isaiah and other books of the Bible, out of many more that God gives us in His word as to His purposes for the world. Sometimes the thought comes before me as I take these passages and read them, how can we be satisfied to sit in the silence of our own meeting-houses, or to remain in the small circle of our own work and town, and forget to lift up our eyes and look away into distant lands. We forget that the gospel is to be preached to all nations. We are told in Matt. xxiv. 14 : " And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations." There are several other passages in Matthew and Mark where we find the same words — Christ plainly commanding His disciples to go out and preach the gospel to all nations. When we take hold of the fact that the world is in darkness, that Jesus Christ is the one Light of the world, the only light that can lighten men, we ask again, " How are the people dwelling in darkness to have the light brought to them ? " And then we see very clearly that the Lord is bringing it home as a personal responsibility to each one of us. When the Lord first spoke about this He said, " The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into His harvest" (Matt. ix. 37, 38). That seems to me the very first injunction given to us this morning. We realise the need, we see the darkness, we know that these people in darkness must have the light brought to them. And what are we told to do ? To pray — to pray. It seems to me that if that is the only outcome of this Conference it will be a grand result ; if it sends every one of us down on our knees to pray the Lord of the harvest. Many of us are praying and believing that it may lead to men and women offering themselves for the work, but let every one pray the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth more labourers into His harvest-field. In Matt. xxviii. 19 it comes still more nearly home : " Go YE, there fore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And then the Lord goes on to say, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 20 The World for Christ. the end of the world." Some of us are very fond of sup posing that the responsibility is only on our neighbours. May we take this word home to us, " Go ye into all the world," and realise that there is some corner in India or in China or Mada gascar, or at home, where God wants you and me to carry this gospel. Mark xvi. 15 : " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." Not just to the people in the mass is our message, but to every individual man, woman, and child. Acts i. 8 : " Ye shall be witnesses unto Me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judsea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." Now after that I do not see how people can say that it is not our business to spread the gospel in heathen lands : I cannot see how any one can say that it is not our duty. It seems to me to be as plain as we can have it, in the words of the Lord Himself, that we are to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth. John xx. 21 : " As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you," and then He breathed on the disciples and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost." These are the thoughts I have had before me : firstly, the need of the world ; secondly, that the Lord would have US go to win the world for Christ ; and thirdly, the manner of men that are called to the work. Some say, "I have not had a college course." I am speaking specially to the young men and women here. The one desire of those of us who have been in the field ourselves is to see others coming out and sharing the privilege. And yet since I have come home again I have felt clearly that it was not any one's duty to go to any one person particularly and say, "God is calling thee to the work." I feel that for every man and woman it must be a personal matter between their own soul and God, and not of our saying to others, " God is calling you." It must be settled between ourselves and God, and the way to settle it is to be sure God has not called us. If we make it clear that God is not calling us to the foreign field, then we can rest satisfied in the work at home. But if He has called us, we must go forth. In 1 Cor. i. 26-29, we see what the Apostle Paul says about the kind of people that are called : " For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many The World for Christ. 21 noble are called : but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are : that no flesh should glory in His presence." If we are weak we may be the very ones whom God has called from the world to go to the world. If we are foolish, we may be just those whom God is calling forth to confound those who are wise. The call of Christ may come to you and me just because we are weak and foolish, to go and win the world for Himself. John xv. 16 : " Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit " — the Lord Himself calling u& and ordaining us. In Acts i. 8 we have the well-known verse : " Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." Many, many times as I have been working at Sehore, at our own station there, I have looked out at the thousands of men and women around me, Mohammedans and Hindus, and I have thought, " What can one man or woman do in the face of such overwhelming odds ? " But the Lord says, " Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." As we look around this meeting, as we shall hear day by day the awful need of the world, and as we realise how small is our Society and how powerless we are, humanly speaking, to bring light into darkness, oh, that we may hear God's voice, " Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." God is waiting to pour Himself out upon our Society and upon the individuals who are here this morning. He is waiting to take our small Society, and to use it to bring light to the uttermost ends of the earth, into the awful darkness. " After that the Holy Ghost is come upon you ye shall be witnesses unto Me." In Acts xiii. 2 we see how the Holy Ghost separated men to the work. " Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." In the fourth verse we read how they were sent forth by the Holy Ghost, and in the ninth how they were filled with the Holy Ghost. I want to conclude with 1 Cor. ix. 20-22 : " And unto 22 Chairman's Address. the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews ; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law ; to them that are without law, as without law (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak : I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." Now this was a man who not very many years before had gone about breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples. When God made a new man of him, and he had the old man turned out, he became filled with the Holy Ghost, and said, "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." It seems to me that that is the preparation we must have to-day, if we are, going to make this Conference a success. We must be willing to be made all things to all men. If God clearly points out a certain path to us, and says, " This is the path by which these countries are to be evangelised, this is the way the gospel is to be preached to all the world, this is the line you must go on," we must have that holy recklessness, if I may call it so, not caring what man may say or think, but willing to go straight on God's line for God's purpose, if by any means we may save; some. We must realise, firstly, that Christ is the Light of the world ; secondly, that we are to bring the light into the darkness ; and thirdly, that He is putting His hand upon us and saying, " Go thou." May we be willing to go at all costs and to go all lengths, that by all means1 we may save some. In this way the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. THE WITNESS IN THE HEART. The Chairman : I feel very unworthy address by to occupy any position in this Con- thomas hodgkin, d.c.l. ference, for though a sympathiser from the first with the F.F.M.A., I have never been a Member of the Committee or an active worker in connection with it. Still it is perhaps well that we should be all gathered in, and have the opportunity of expressing The Witness in the Heart. 23 our sympathy with work which we may not seem to be actively aiding. It seems to me that the Society of Friends has a special work in connection with foreign missions. I remember how in the very early days of the Society a characteristic of the preaching of George Fox and the early Friends was this — that they sought1 to reach the witness in the hearts of men ; that they held the conviction that in every human soul with which they came in contact there was a witness for God, if they could only reach it. And it does seem to me that in going forth into heathen lands the members of our Society have a special responsibility and privilege in this connection, which has been handed down to them through two centuries, and which I think the Christian Church is more and more coming to see the truth of : that what the Christian missionary has to do is, while bringing the out ward knowledge of the great truth of that salvation which God has wrought for us in Christ, to appeal to the wit ness of God in the heart of men — to that which has been well said to be " the testimony of the soul naturally Christian" as to the truth of these things. We know how some of the missionaries of other denominations, the Catholic and the Calvinist, have in their zeal too often had their eyes fastened rather on the work of the devil than on the work of God in the heart of man. The Catholic priest going forth to baptize the pagans in North and South America could only see in them the children of the devil. It is a well-known fact, that the Roman Catholic priests destroyed whole quantities of the literature and works of art of the Aztec nations because they thought that being the works of the children of the devil they must be altogether swept away. Here I hold that the true Quaker missionary would have been seeking to find what he could of the voice of God which had spoken to those darkened heathens. The work of the Christian missionary, and pre-eminently the work of the Quaker missionary is to read the palimpsest of the human heart. He is persuaded there are in it characters written and traced by the hand of God on every soul. Cruelty and avarice and lust, the sins of the flesh and of the spirit, have scrawled their terrible characters over that which God has written, over what the apostle calls the law of God written on the heart of 24 Chairman's Address. man. But the true Christian — and I will venture to say the true Quaker — missionary despairs not. He is satisfied that there is in every heart some witness to the word of God. If I may venture to allude to the very interesting address we have just heard from a brother working in India, I would say one word, not at all of criticism, but of cheer. I would venture to suggest that when he is looking forth on the multitudes of Sehore he need not feel — and I am sure he will agree with me — that he is merely as one man against these thousands. I know that in a certain sense he is against them, because they have not yet come to the knowledge of the Truth. But in every one of those hearts there is some remembrance of the hand of God ; and how many — and I am sure he often feels it — how many belong to the class of those weary and heavy laden ones for whom Christ has come, and unto whom He is now calling, " Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Therefore the true missionary who apprehends the spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom, feels that though in a certain sense he is going forth to fight a great battle, yet he is going forth with a message of peace, and a message which he feels sure does awaken an echo in some hearts, perhaps even of the persecutors, and of those who cannot yet accept it. He believes in something of God in the heart and soul of man, and on this he founds his hope of success. I would just say one word more before I take my seat, upon the very peculiar relations the missionary cause bears at the present time to the political aspect of the world and to the political controversies now raging. Upon questions of boun daries and so forth we continually hear that the English missionaries were in this place or the French in that. There is perhaps a little danger here lest some other motive should mix with the only true ground and true motive for missionary operations, the spread of the kingdom of Christ. I know quite well that there is no danger of any of our missionaries being led away by any double motive of this kind. But it is to be feared that there is in the breasts of missionaries in some parts of the world the desire not only to do good and to spread the knowledge of Christ's kingdom, but to make political capital for their nation. That, as we all know, is not Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 25 the true attitude of the Christian worker. He goes forth, feeling, as was beautifully said by one of the oldest Christian writers, that "To the Christian every foreign land is a fatherland, and every fatherland is strange." He is willing to work under the Union Jack of England, the Tricolour of France, or whatever the flag may be: if he can only spread Christ's kingdom he is satisfied. It is doubtless with pain that we have seen an island like Tahiti, which English missionaries had civilised and raised from barbarism, carried away from English influence and given over in great measure to the Romish Church. It cannot be without a pang of natural regret that we have seen that great island of Madagascar, in which English missionaries have laboured so long, now reduced to anarchy by what we cannot but consider the unwise operations of a foreign nation. But all this is to a certain extent outside the question of the extension of the kingdom of Christ. I believe our mission aries will agree with me that we have to cultivate the habit of mind which is indicated in the words of the apostle : " Not withstanding, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached." They do not go forth to extend the kingdom of Victoria, but the kingdom of Christ. Therefore with all these political complications, with these double motives which are often most unfairly attributed to missionaries of different nations, we have nothing to do. Much as we love our own country, we have in this connection to divest ourselves of patriotism, and to think of the only goal of the Christian missionary. In this connection he has but one desire and aim — to spread the kingdom of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. John Stephenson Rowntree read the following paper on THE WORK OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS IN THE FOREIGN MISSION FIELD. In reviewing the work of Friends paper by in the Foreign Mission Field, the john stephenson rowntree. historian cannot but note how very large a part of that work was wrought in two periods, each of some thirty or forty 26 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. years' duration, whilst separated by an interval extending over the life-time of six generations. The first period reaches from the death of Charles I. to the accession of William and Mary ; the second comprises the latter half of the reign of Queen Victoria. 1650-90. FIRST MISSIONARY PERIOD. The magnitude of the missionary work in the time of the Protectorate may be roughly gauged by reference to this minute of a General Meeting at Skipton in 1660. " We have received," say the writers, " certain information from some Friends in London of the great work and service of the Lord beyond the seas, in several parts and regions, as Germany, America, Virginia, and many other places, as Florence, Mantua, Palatine, Tuscany, Italy, Rome, Turkey, Jerusalem, France, Geneva, Norway, Barbadoes, Bermuda, Antigua, Jamaica, Surinam, Newfoundland, through all which Friends have passed in the service of the Lord, and divers other places, countries, islands, and nations, and over and among many nations of the Indians, in which they have had service for the Lord, who through great travails have published His name, and declared the everlasting gospel of peace unto them that have been afar off, that they might be brought nigh unto God." * The General Meeting then urges a third subscription to " be sent as formerly to London for the service and use aforesaid." A statement of the receipts and disbursements of one of these early subscriptions has been preserved.! The amount expended was nearly .£500, representing three times that sum in the coin of the present day. The localities mentioned in this statement confirm the minute just quoted, as to the wide geographical area over which the visits of Friends then extended. The first item is diet of travellers returning from New England : Ann Austin's return from Barbadoes cost £8 6s., that of Mary Fisher, £2 4s. 6d. An outward voyage to Jamaica cost £6. There are half-a-dozen entries connected with voyages to Holland several with France, Italy, and Turkey. In fact, quite a * Quoted Friends' Quarterly Examiner, 1867, p. 209. t It is printed in the Historical Introduction to the Epistles of London Yearly Meeting, vol. i. pp. ix, x. Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 27 number of missionaries went out, charged, as they believed, with messages to the Sultan. Daniel Baker, John Stubbs, Henry Fell, and Richard Costrop in 1661 sailed for but did not, reach " China and Prester John's country."* Costrop died at sea. We hear of a George Robinson at Leghorn, Joppa, Ramoth, and Jerusalem in 1657 ; and somewhat later of John Kelsey at Constantinople. John Buckly and five other Friends being unsuccessful in their intercourse with the Sultan, turned their missionary efforts towards the Jews in Venice. Perhaps the most romantic visit of the period was that of Mary Fisher to the Sultan Mahomet at Adrianople.t Catharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers were cruelly detained three years in the Inquisition prison at Malta. John Perrot and John Love fell into the power of the same terrible body at Rome. Love ended his days in prison : Perrot's efforts to convert the Pope were not attended with success, but he managed to escape to England, where he lived to be a grievous troubler of Friends, and subsequently in America their active persecutor. Throughout the whole of his career, George Fox — by example, word, and letter — enforced the claims of Foreign Missions. His own incessant labours in Great Britain, only interrupted by imprisonments and their consequent sick nesses, afforded him no opportunity for foreign travel before 167 1, when he sailed for the Western hemisphere. In this journey of nearly two years' duration, he not only preached to the European settlers in the West Indies and the American plantations, and organised the church meetings of the Friends in those parts, but he also held meetings with the Negroes and Red Indians, and exhorted the colonists to treat them humanely, and instruct them in the truths of the Christian religion. In 1677, and again seven years later, he visited * Prester John, or Prester Joas, " the Priest John," was the name given in the Middle Ages to a supposed Christian sovereign who was said to live somewhere in the interior of Asia. John Carpini, a Franciscan Friar who was sent by Pope Innocent IV. in 1246 to the son of Gengis Khan to induce him to restrain the Mongols from their incursions into Russia and Poland, appears to have thought that Prester John lived somewhere farther to the eastward, an idea which was finally dissipated by the progress of geographical knowledge. Penny Encyclopedia, vol. 18, p. 503. t Sewel, i. p. 332. 28 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. Holland and parts of Germany on gospel service. In his printed epistles it will be found how he pressed upon his friends their responsibilities towards the heathen and the Mahometans, as well as towards nominal Christians under the sway of superstition or of ignorance. The captives in Algiers, 1683, he advised to learn the Turks' and Moors' language, that they " might be the more enabled to direct them to the grace and Spirit of God in them, which they have from God in their hearts ; and then getting their language, you would be able to write and translate any papers to them, which may be serviceable to the spreading of the truth." Writing in the spring of 1685, he chides the Friend ministers of Pennsylvania for not holding more meetings with the Indian kings, for restricting their visits too much to their fellow professors, and not sharing them with the colonists generally. " My desires are, that you may all be diligent, serving the Lord and minding His glory, and the prosperity of His Truth, this little time you have to live ; and be not like Adam, in the earth, but use this world as though you did not use it." Again, in 1687, he writes to the Friends in West Jersey and Pennsylvania, " You should have some meetings with the Indian kings and their councils, to let them know the principles of Truth ; so that they may know the way of salvation, and the nature of true Christianity, and how that Christ hath died for them, who ' tasted death for every man ' (and so the gospel of salvation must be preached to every creature under heaven) ; and how that Christ hath enlightened them, who enlightens all that come into the world. And God hath poured out His Spirit upon all flesh ; and so the Indians must receive God's Spirit ; for ' the grace of God which brings salvation hath appeared to all men.' And so let them know that they have a day of salvation, grace, and favour of God offered unto them ; if they will receive it, it will be their blessing." * In its zeal for the raising up of many more missionaries, the General Meeting at Skipton, whose minute has been already quoted, wrote : — " Every one to the ministry your selves — for England is as a family of prophets, which must * Epistles, Tuke's Edition, p. 452. Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 29 spread over all nations, as a garden of plants, and the place where the pearl is found which must enrich all nations with the heavenly treasure." But the zeal here manifested died out. Even William Penn's " holy experiment " — the founda tion of Pennsylvania — did not result in much evangelistic labour on behalf of the Red Indians or the Negro slaves. I do not remember that any Friend learnt the languages of the native races, and devoted himself to Christian labour amongst them, including the translation of the Bible, like John Eliot, of whom Baxter wrote — " There was no man on earth whom I honoured above him." 169I-1860. ABSENCE OF DIRECT MISSIONARY WORK. It would be incorrect to imply that in the 175 years which intervened between the death of George Fox and the foundation of the Friends' Foreign Mission Association, no missionary effort was put forth by the Society of Friends. The journals of Thomas Chalkley and John Woolman record Christian labour with the North American Indians and the Negro slaves during the eighteenth century. Fifty or sixty years ago the fathers of the present generation were following with deep interest the travels of Daniel Wheeler (1834-38) as he visited the London Missionary stations in the islands of the Southern Pacific, and those of James Backhouse and George W. Walker in South Africa, Australia, and Van Dieman's Land (1831-41). The memoir of Hannah Kilham attests her solici tude for the inhabitants of the Western Coast of Africa, amongst whom she laid down her life. The travels of Joseph J. Gurney in the West Indies embraced visits and the exten sion of counsel to the Baptist missionaries there, as well as religious meetings with the coloured population. At an earlier period in the present century the evangelistic journeys of Stephen Grellet, in the course of which he had religious intercourse with men of every station, from the Pope to the Negro slave and the Russian serf, constitute some of the most remarkable pages in Church history. INDIRECT MISSIONARY WORK. Nor must it be overlooked that there are other methods 30 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. for promoting the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom amongst non-Christian races, besides those adopted by Missionary Societies, either of modern or ancient times. The liberation of the slaves in the British Colonies and India, by putting vast numbers of men under conditions in which Christian lives became possible to them, was really a greater furtherance to the reign of the Messiah than a great deal of direct missionary labour. It is not needful for me to enlarge on the part borne by Friends in the long anti-slavery struggle which led up to this result. A kindred work has been their endeavour — largely through the agency of the Aborigines' Protection Society — to obtain the recognition of the rights of uncivilised races from professedly Christian nations. It has often been sorrowfully said — it was pointedly repeated at the recent meeting of the General Presbyterian Alliance at Glasgow — that the unchristian acts of professedly Christian people and governments are amongst the greatest hindrances to the acceptance of Christian truth by heathen nations. Hence it has been felt by many Friends, both of the present and the preceding generation, that in protesting against the cultivation, manufacture, and sale of opium by the Anglo-Indian Government, and the forcing of it upon the Chinese, they are contending against a system which works a volume of evil, apparently outweighing the good wrought by the labours of hundreds of self-denying missionaries. The evangelical revival which marked the close of the eighteenth and the earlier years of the nineteenth century left its impress on the Society of i Friends. It did not, however, amongst them, lead at first to the establishment of a society for missionary objects like the Baptist, Church, London, and Methodist organisations ; but indirectly many of its members became helpers of missionary work by their support of the British and Foreign Bible and the Religious Tract Societies, Another way in which practical interest in the same cause was exhibited, in the forties and fifties of the present century, was the raising of a fund by London Yearly Meeting for pro moting schools and Christian education, chiefly amongst the freed people in the West Indies. This was for many years administered by the Meeting for Sufferings. Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 31 1860-96. REVIVAL OF MISSIONARY ZEAL AND EFFORT. It was not till the nineteenth century had entered on its seventh decade that the Society of Friends began to take direct and definite steps to send out missionaries who should reside amongst non-Christian populations. The subject of Foreign Missions was brought before London Yearly Meeting in 1830, and though favourably entertained, it did not result in the adoption of any practical measures for its furtherance.* In 1859 George Richardson, of Newcastle, then in his 86th year, wrote with his own hand sixty lengthy letters to persons in different localities, strongly urging upon them the claims of Foreign Mission work. The effect of this effort, undertaken under a strong sense of duty, showed itself in an address " on what may be due from Friends, towards communicating the knowledge of the gospel to the heathen in foreign lands," issued by the Yearly Meeting of 1861, and bearing the signa ture of its clerk, Joseph Thorp. This document, notable for its recognition that other work besides the preaching of the gospel is required in Foreign Missionary service, states : — " On considering how far we can, as a Society, aid the work by giving additional facilities to those who, under the preparing hand and constrain ing love of Christ, may be called to labour in foreign lands, some external arrangements appear to be desirable. This service is not, we believe, by any means confined to ministers of the gospel. Preaching the Word is but one part of what we are to understand by missionary labour. School masters and Scripture-readers, combining with their more specified duties, religious teaching and conversation, as well as instruction in the arts of civilised life, would also find an important place." t Thus the mind of the Society awoke from its negative attitude towards Foreign Missionary work, and began to regard it as constituting one of the fundamental objects for which a * The Yearly Meeting in 1833, after again considering the question, earnestly recommends their benighted condition {i.e., the heathen] to the Christian sympathy and frequent remembrance of all our members.'' See the interesting Minute printed in full at the end of this volume. t The intimate relationship between Home and Foreign Mission work s illustrated by a minute of the Yearly Meeting of 1862 :— " Our minute of last year, on the spreading of the knowledge of the gospel among the unenlightened at home and abroad, has been read at this time with especial reference to what may be due from our members towards the ignorant and depraved in our own land." 32 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. Christian Church exists. A provisional committee formed in 1865 to deal with offers of service in foreign lands, which the usual Society machinery did not provide for, developed in 1868 into the Friends' Foreign Mission Association. There were many links in the chain which led up to this event. The ground prepared by George Richardson's letters was cultivated by Henry S. Newman's pamphlet, by articles in the first volume of the Quarterly Examiner, and by missionary meetings at the time of the Ackworth summer anniversaries. These had an unlooked-for effect in extending the knowledge of geography, for it was somewhat difficult in those days to induce chairmen to speak of Antananarivo otherwise than as "the capital of Madagascar." An appeal to Friends from William Ellis in 1864 to help in supplying the educational requirements of Madagascar, had brought that island promi nently under their notice. Subsequently, Joseph S. Sewell obtained the sanction of his Monthly and Quarterly Meetings for resident gospel service in Madagascar, but a difficulty in the arrangements for his departure occurring at the last moment, the responsibility which the Meeting for Sufferings abdicated, was assumed by the new Association. It had in 1866, whilst only provisionally organised, helped Rachel Metcalfe to carry out a prospect of service amongst her sisters in India, religious in its character, although expressed in very humble terms. Elkanah and Irena S. Beard from the United States were also accepted as missionaries, joining Rachel Metcalfe at Benares. Louis and Sarah Street, offering for service in Madagascar, became the colleagues of Joseph S. Sewell. On reference to the annual report for 1870, 1 observe the Friends' Foreign Mission Association was spending ^1,600 per annum, and was being liberally supported by both English and Irish subscribers. Ten years later the disbursements had grown to ^6,000. In 1890 the expenditure had reached .£8,500, there being thirty-six missionaries in the field. At the present time the expenditure may be taken at ^13,000. If to this we add the expenditure upon the Syrian Mission, and on evangelistic labours in France and other parts of Europe, and that of labourers, like our venerable friend Isaac Sharp, who find with John Wesley that the whole world is their parish, it will be seen that the annual contributions of Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 33 British and Irish Friends for Foreign Missions are not small ; perhaps £16,000 or £17,000. EXTENT OF FRIENDS' MISSIONARY WORK, 1 896. If the magnitude of the Society's missionary work, in the time of Oliver Cromwell, surprises us, so may its magnitude at the present time surprise those who have not familiarised themselves with its details. In India the Foreign Mission Association is supporting evangelistic work at five stations, carried on by twenty-three European missionaries, assisted by an equal number of native helpers. A thousand scholars — children and adults — are attending their Sunday Schools and Bible Classes. Five hundred boys and girls are receiving instruction in their Day Schools. Very large numbers of sick people, including lepers, are treated in the medical dis pensaries, or visited in the government leper hospitals. Two Friends expect to begin mission work at Matale in Ceylon during the present autumn. At Chung-king, in the far west of China, another group of missionaries are caring for the sick in their dispensary, teaching children, and by visitation and the preaching of the gospel seeking to extend its know ledge in the " middle kingdom." The Madagascar Mission, where evangelistic work has been going on for nearly thirty years, has been visited with sore trials. The martyrdom of William and Lucy Johnson, following the French occupation of the island, makes it difficult to summarise the present condition of the work there. Before these troubles there were nearly twenty British missionaries employed, including those in the medical mission, jointly carried on by the London and the Friends' Foreign Mission Association,* which recorded more than 16,000 visits paid to the sick in one year, whilst about 900 persons were treated in the hospital. The figures of attendances at chapel, of the numbers of native preachers, of schools, and of scholars are all large. The visits of Eli and Sybil Jones to Syria in 1867-8-9, with companions from this country, led up to the foundation of mission work in the Holy Land, promoted jointly by the members of London, Dublin, and New England Yearly Meetings. It has been controlled by an executive, distinct 4 34 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. from that of the Foreign Mission Association. The annual reports have familiarised their readers with the varied religious and philanthropic ministries of Theophilus Wald- meier and his colleagues at Brumana on the Lebanon, as well as with those at Ramallah, eight miles north of Jerusalem.* The comparative proximity of Syria to England, the number of visits paid by British travellers, and the associations of the country with sacred story, have secured for this mission the warm personal sympathy and interest of its supporters. I need only further mention missionary labour in pro gress in Japan, Mexico, Natal, the West Indies, France, Bulgaria, and Constantinople, to show how wide is the field in which Friends are working. It is only the exigency of time that induces me to pass so quickly over these less known missions. I believe that some of those best qualified to judge, from intimate acquaintance with their details, regard these as doing excellent work with small pecuniary resources, and showing encouraging results which attest the fidelity and self-sacrificing devotion of the labourers. DIFFERENCES IN METHODS. The differences as well as the resemblances in the methods employed in the first, the seventeenth, and the nineteenth centuries are very interesting to note. Physical healing as a miraculous gift may have passed away, but it has been replaced by one not less beneficent, in the skilled labour of the Christian doctor and the trained nurse. The carrying of handkerchiefs to the sick from the person of Paul must, one would think, have been attended with a grave liability to abuse, not attaching to the hospital work of the Friends' missions at Antananarivo or Brumana. It can hardly be a matter of regret that the gift of tongues, as known on the day of Pentecost, has ceased, when the printing press has placed in the hands of the missionary an instrument wherewith his teaching can be cogently enforced, without the liability to the mischief of personal display which the gift of tongues appears to have introduced into church-life in Corinth. Everywhere, * In 1888 Friends of New England Yearly Meeting assumed charge of the work at Ramallah ; the work on the Lebanon being undertaken by the English Committee alone. Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 35 so far as I have observed, the Friends' missions now seek to get hold of the children. 1896. REASONS FOR CONFERENCE. The contrast between the existing missionary activity, and the repose which reigned amongst Friends even so lately as i860, may suggest the query whether a gathering like the present is required for "deepening and widening the interest of the Society of Friends in the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom in foreign lands." In a recently published address on the " Relation of Creed to Character," J. Rendel Harris says : — " We all of us believe in Foreign Missions nowadays ; but to believe in claiming the world for Jesus has been a progressive educa tion in the Church from the beginning. It has been carried out by contention often, and by entreaty ever. Peter only grasped it slowly, James perhaps never ; Antioch divided over it, and Paul that went to the work went under what was often very like anathema. But it is easy to-day to say that the earth is the Lord's ; and we hardly consider any one a good Christian who has not some share in missionary enter prise, some touch of missionary fervour." * It will have been observed that this experience of the whole Christian Church has been largely reproduced in that of the Society of Friends, as sketched in the present review. In view of this chequered picture, it cannot but be pertinent to consider such questions as these : — Why did the missionary fervour which characterised the rise of the Society evaporate, leaving such scanty results ? Why was the first missionary epoch succeeded by so long an interval of abstinence from direct Foreign evangelistic work ? What have been the results of Friends' recent missionary efforts ? What promise do they give of permanence and growth ? What light is shed by the history of the past on our present-day duties towards heathen and unenlightened populations ? LESSONS OF FIRST MISSIONARY PERIOD. In the missionary efforts of the Cromwellian epoch there * " Union with God," p. 95. 36 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. is very much to excite admiration. Think for a moment of the self-denial involved in long sea voyages in badly equipped sailing vessels, strangely removed from the comparative comfort of even second-class accommodation in the ocean steamers of to-day. Nor should the reception awaiting the messengers on disembarking ever be forgotten. In almost every place bonds and afflictions were their portion. There must surely have been some flaw in this devoted service, or it would have been followed by larger results. The work was not followed up ; the seed sown was not watered. The prophetic order — line upon line, precept upon precept — was to a large extent disregarded. The place of continuous edification — building up — was insufficiently recognised. Nor must it be concealed that several of the messengers to distant lands were more conspicuous for zeal than for knowledge and stability. * These reasons account for a paucity of fruit as the result of so much seed sowing ; whilst the general decline of missionary work in the Society is explained by the terrible persecution at home, by the absorption of thought and effort in the establishment of its internal Church government, and above all by the growing wealth of the body. LESSONS OF NON-MISSIONARY PERIOD. The same influences which arrested Foreign Missionary work in the latter part of the seventeenth century, more slowly arrested Home Mission work also ; although so late as the reign of Queen Anne the Society is described as the most active Home Mission organisation in England ; and they operated during the long subsequent period in preventing a resurrection of evangelising zeal. Before the death of Oliver Cromwell, George Fox had noted the paralysing power of growing wealth upon evangelistic work ; those who once had been fervent, says he, " can hardly do anything to the service of God, crying, my business ! my business ! " t And again, * John Perrot can hardly have been altogether sane. He became a persecutor of his former friends. George Keith, one of George Fox's colleagues in Germany, left the Society, and became an embittered opponent. Daniel Baker " lost his own condition." John Kelsey " was probably demented." — Bickley. t Epistles, p. 82 (1656). Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 37 ten years later, " you that grow rich in the world in earthly things, who have had a stirring in you formerly in the service of God, take heed lest your minds run into your outward business, about outward things, and therein be lifted up, . . . and so you leave the service of the Lord and His business, in minding your own." * Speaking to Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting six generations later, Daniel Wheeler said, " It is awfully impressed upon my mind— I might almost say it is given me awfully to believe — that if the world, and the things of the world, which are not of the Father, had not stolen away our hearts from His love, the glad tidings of that gospel, which is indeed ' the power of God unto salvation,' would, ere this, have been proclaimed in remote, in heathen portions of the habitable globe, by instruments raised up amongst us duly prepared and clothed with the true baptizing authority of the Lord Jesus, whose inheritance is the heathen, and the uttermost parts of the earth His possession. Mark, then, the awful consequences of our shortcomings as a people, and let us tremble lest God should visit our iniquity upon us." The Yearly Meeting of 1861 writes in the same strain : — " May we not urge the inquiry — Does the love of the world, or the love of ease, or indifference to the salvation of our fellow-men, benumb our zeal in the service of Christ, for the conversion of sinners and the evangelising of the heathen ? " t The most conspicuous warning afforded by this chapter in the Society's history is the supreme danger incident to the possession of wealth. Yet this is hardly the whole ex planation of the facts before us. The doctrine of a spiritual illumination, universal as the family of man, can easily be construed by the ease-loving as a reason for declining to be troubled with evangelistic effort. In reality, as Dr. Westcott says, " It offered to the preacher of the good tidings of the kingdom an assurance sufficient to support his largest hope ; for he knew that he could not approach any hearer without having God as his fellow-worker, and the secret voice of the soul for his witness." X A further lesson impressed on us by the non- missionary * G. F. Epistles, p. 144. t Address on Heathen Abroad, Minutes 1861, pp. 11, 12. { " Social Christianity," p. 128. 38 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. epoch is the signal value even in the interests of Foreign Missions of the philanthropic work then accomplished, e.g., the overthrow of slavery in the British possessions, the protest against the Anglo-Indian Opium traffic, and against the robbery and slaughter of aboriginal races. It would be deplorable if, as an accompaniment of our zeal in sending out missionaries to China or to Africa, there were a relaxa tion of that moral fibre which has enabled Friends in the past to stand by unpopular causes, without inquiring, " Hath any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed " in them ? It has been stated, that after the seizure of Rhodesia, valuable lands were apportioned to certain missionary stations. " I hate robbery for burnt- offering " is a prophetic teaching, the necessity for which is far from obsolete.* A further reason for not undervaluing the work of the non-missionary period is the preparation which in various ways was then in progress for the resumption of evangelistic efforts abroad as well as at home. The majority of the missionaries sent out in the last twenty-five years, and the majority of the home committees, have had more or less training in our First-day schools. When Joseph Sturge promoted the foundation of the Birmingham Adult Classes, it was not foreseen that he was also promoting the Friends' * In a paper read last week at the Budapest Peace Congress, H. R. Fox Bourne says, " The old plan of taking possession of native territory without any other pretext than the desire of those seizing it, and of straight way shooting down all who object to the seizure, has to some extent gone out of vogue. But it is being replaced by other and more treacherous plans. Nowadays, if white men covet black men's property, they gene rally either coax or bully the black men into signing so-called treaties or concessions which the latter do not understand, and, as soon as the docu ments have been ignorantly signed, preposterous claims are based thereon which, if resisted, are enforced by breech-loading rifles and machine guns ; or else the aggressors pick quarrels on frivolous grounds with natives who have signed no treaties and incurred no liabilities of any sort to them, and pursue those quarrels until the luckless victims are sufficiently cowed. The history of our British South Africa Company's treatment of the Matabele, with fraudulent concessions for its only warrant, and with trumped-up wars to complete the iniquity, is a conspicuous and scandalous example of the way in which, on occasions without number, white men, calling themselves civilised and Christian, assert their superiority to the black men whom they denounce as savages and barbarians." Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 39 Foreign Missionary work by establishing a training-ground for its ambassadors. LESSONS OF MODERN MISSIONARY PERIOD. In approaching the final division of our subject, I am reminded that we are looking at it from the standpoint of the Society of Friends. Catholic as is our outlook, our con ception of Christianity is so essentially spiritual as widely to differentiate it from that which has often passed current in the world. In the Middle Ages whole nations professed to embrace the faith of Jesus simultaneously. At the word of their chiefs they descended a river bank, the baptismal waters passed over them, and, barring some mitigation of physical uncleanness, they re-ascended identically the same blood thirsty men that they were before. The Friend believes such a ceremony to be worse than useless. A Christian is one who is like Christ, whether the likeness be in its earlier or maturer stages of development. This far-reaching view of the nature of real Christianity has to be remembered in attempting to estimate the results of the labour and the expenditure of the last thirty years. It appears to me that it is one of the grounds of confidence in our missionaries, and in the home Committee, that the temptation to aim after showy but superficial results has been resisted. The progressive, expanding character of the work, and the elasticity of the methods employed, betoken health. They increasingly address themselves to the whole of human nature. The missionary finds that he must be the preacher, teacher, healer, and civiliser — in every sense the friend of those amongst whom he labours — if he is to do them any good. He cannot live apart from their industrial conditions. He must care for the orphan, the insane, for those who are suffering in body or estate by reason of their faith in Jesus. The work of the missionary abroad has close affinities with that of the teacher at home. The standard of literary and moral education which obtains in our schools to-day is the outcome of a slow advance, progressive through several generations of teachers ; and no intelligent person supposes that finality has been attained. How much more is the intellectual, moral, and spiritual education of the heathen a 40 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. work capable of constant improvement as regards the methods employed. It becomes increasingly manifest — -and this I take to be one of the lessons to be insisted on — that the work of a Friend missionary calls for the consecration of the choicest talents of mind and spirit. Where the change from heathendom to Christianity is regarded as effected in some sort through material agencies, and transactions more or less mechanical, the necessity for spiritual excellence in the instrument is less apparent. Our missionaries, then, should be persons trained in spirit, mind, and body ; in Scripture language, having " their senses exercised by reason of use." And if the qualifications of the missionary are varied, hardly less so are those of the superintending Committee at home. If we contrast the questions which come up for decision, say, at the Ackworth School Committee, with those that occupy the time of the Friends' Foreign Mission Committee, we get some idea of the magnitude of these, and of the wisdom required in handling them. How to civilise, educate, and Christianise a heathen community, raises social, ethical, and religious questions which have engrossed the attention of the Church through its whole history. Many of these questions possessed merely academic interest for Friends so long as they were concerned only in the affairs of their own little denomination. But when they began to face the heathendom of Madagascar, India, and China, and invited the peoples of those lands to receive a new and purer faith, the relations of the converts to slavery, to caste, to polygamy, immediately presented themselves. Considering the imperfect success which has attended the efforts of Friends to build up and consolidate a religious society in Great Britain, Ireland, and the United States, it was an enterprise of singular boldness to attempt it in heathen lands. The experience of the first missionary period, however, clearly indicates that unless this is done the effects of gospel labour are likely to be ephe meral. That the Foreign Mission Association has accom plished so much, and secured the confidence of the Society in the way it has done, attests the general wisdom which has marked its proceedings. A correspondent, competent to give an opinion, tells me that he believes the whole history of Friends does not afford more striking evidence of Divine Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 41 guidance than does the proceedings of this Committee. To those who have long worked in connection with it, such a retrospect must be confirmatory of faith. Nor can we pass from it without recalling the honoured names of Henry Hipsley, Robert Charleton, Isaac Brown, James Hack Tuke, and others, to whose sagacious counsels the missionary cause owes so much. Have there, then, been no disappointments ? Have no standard-bearers fainted ? Have no workers fallen out, even as Barnabas and Paul did over Mark ? Have no mistakes been made at home or abroad ? That we are dealing with men, not with angels, supplies the answer to these questions. But that the causes of uneasiness have been so few is an occasion for much surprise and for more gratitude. Again, how much incidental good has arisen from the revival of missionary interest in directions not foreseen thirty years ago ? It has enlarged and widened the spiritual sympathies of Friends. This may be remarked in the procedure of their public worship, where congregational prayer on behalf of the " missionaries at home and abroad " has become frequent. Such petitions were very seldom heard before i860. The pupils in the First-day schools have become interested. The illustrated almanacs hanging in the schoolrooms are outward and visible links with the aggressive work of the Church. The little children share in the interest. The missionary helpers' unions have supplied a bond of union with the Society which was greatly wanted. The children's gathering at the time of the Yearly Meeting has become the most picturesque episode in the proceedings of that ecclesiastical parliament. Thus we see how interest in Foreign Mission work widens. Comparatively few are called to residence in heathen lands ; to the great majority the counsel is apposite, " Abide in the calling wherein ye were called." The word missionary signifies one sent ; it implies a Sender and a sending. Whilst only to a few comes the charge, " Depart, for I will send thee far hence to the Gentiles," all are taught to pray, " Thy kingdom come." This comprehensive view of missionary service should deepen the sense of personal responsibility towards its claims. Money is far from being its chief want, though money comes within the scope of the 42 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. appeal, " Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." Far the greatest need, both in the Home and Foreign Mission field, is that of qualified and consecrated labourers, both male and female. When such are called will they go ? and will parents help them to do so, willing that their children shall forego the opportunities for acquiring wealth and station at home ? It was by men who forsook earthly possessions that the gospel was first spread in the world — the inference is that similar men are wanted now. And it is obvious that men and women of widely differing qualifications are wanted — not only those whose characteristic gift is that of prophecy, speaking for and from God, but the mission stations want teachers, doctors, nurses, farmers, men of business, architects — all imbued with the true missionary spirit. And behind the seventy or eighty British Friend missionaries in foreign lands is wanted the whole Society, sustaining them by spiritual exercise, and prayer, and sympathy, as well as by supplying their material needs. Some Home Mission labourers are at times tempted to be jealous of their brethren across the seas, from the appre hension that a glamour attaches to their service, and an immunity from criticism, not shared by prophets, who in common with their Master may find but little honour in their own country. It is, however, but distance that " lends enchantment to the view." The conditions of Christian service are substantially the same in every latitude, and the whole history of missions attests the inseparable connec tion and mutual interdependence of evangelistic effort in the home and foreign field. Some of those interested in education say that Friends are giving so much money to missionary work they are starving their schools. I do not think this likely to be the case to any large extent. A good school will not only train some boys and girls for the duties of the active missionary, but it also trains the men and women who will serve as the secretaries, treasurers, or members of the home committees. Hence the supporter of a good school, through it, supports the cause of missions. All the Friends' schools should be centres of zeal for missionary work at home and abroad. Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 43 Many of their pupils emigrate shortly after leaving. How desirable it is that these should have been indoctrinated with a sense of their responsibility as Christians towards non-Christian races ! It is a deplorable fact that in some missionary stations the native converts have to be kept as much as possible separate from the example and influence of the professedly Christian community of Europeans in the district. How utterly foreign is this state of things from the apostolic ideal, measurably realised at Corinth, that the members of the Church should all be "living epistles," to be " known and read of all men ! " In our own country holy lives are still " The dear Lord's best interpreters," and we can hardly anticipate any great ingathering of the heathen to the fold of Christ in India or China until the teaching of the missionary is backed up and commended to their acceptance by the example of Christian men moving in the ordinary spheres of civil and commercial life. The story of the Friends' Foreign missionary work is eloquent with many another lesson besides these I have endeavoured to draw from it ; but the time allotted for its consideration is exhausted. The more that this story is known, the more will it be found to sustain the object of this Conference in "' deepening and widening the interest of the Society of Friends in the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom in foreign lands." FRIENDS' FOREIGN MISSIONS. CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA. [Chiefly compiled from materials supplied by Charles Linney.] Bible, English, Authorised Version of 161 1 Pilgrim Fathers colonise New England 1620 George Fox born , ^624 George Fox enters on his ministry I647_9 George Fqx. and his friends called Quakers ... 1650 44 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. William Caton in Holland 1656 William Ames at Amsterdam 1657 Christopher Birkhead travels in France and Holland 1657 George Baily dies in prison in France 1657 George Robinson visits Jerusalem 1657 John Perrot and John Love in Italy ... ... 1660 Mary Fisher has interview with Sultan Mahomet at Adrianople 1660 Catharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers jn Inquisition prison at Malta 3 years ... ... ... ... 1660 John Stubbs and Henry Fell at Alexandria, en route for China, &c 1661 George Fox's visit to West Indies and North American Colonies 1671-3 George Fox's visit to Holland 1677 Philadelphia founded* ... ... ... ... ... 1 682 George Fox's second visit to Holland ... ... 1684 Death of George Fox 1691 Rise of Methodism ... ... ... ... ... 174° John Woolman visits Indians, labours against slavery ... ... ... ... ... ... 1762 John Woolman (born 1720) died at York 1772 Stephen Grellet born ... 1773 William Carey, departure for India 1792 London Missionary Society founded 1795 Stephen Grellet's first European visit 1807 James Backhouse and G. Washington Walker in South Africa, Australia, &c ... 1831-41 Death of Hannah Kilham in Liberia ... ... 1832 Daniel Wheeler in South Pacific Islands ... ... 1834-38 London Yearly Meeting considers the claims of the Heathen ... ... ... ... ... ... 1830 J. J. Gurney in West Indies ... ... ... ... 1840 George Richardson's letters 1859 London Yearly Meeting issues an address 1861 Visit of Henry Hipsley, Russell Jeffrey, and Wil liam Brewin to India 1863-4 H. S. Newman's pamphlet, proposing foundation of Friends' Missionary Association 1864 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 45 Provisional Committee formed .. 1865 Rachel Metcalfe sent out to India 1866 Joseph S. Sewell and Louis Street's offer of service 1866 Syrian Mission founded ,. 1867 Work begun in Madagascar by J. S. Sewell ... 1868 Arrival of Helen Gilpin in Madagascar 1869 Founding of Friends' Mission in India at Benares 1869 Removal to Jabalpur 1870 Schools opened in Madagascar ... ... ... 1870 Madagascar Mission reinforced by Henry E. and Rachel M. Clark and William Johnson ... 1871 Printing Office begun at Antananarivo 1872 India Mission settled in Nerbudda Valley 1874 Friends' evangelistic work begun in France ... 1877 Rock Fountain Mission, Natal, founded 1879 Medical Mission in Madagascar re-opened by J. Tregelles Fox 1880 Armenian Mission in Constantinople founded ... 1881 Arrival of R. J. and M. J. Davidson in China ... 1886 Chung-king Mission begun 1890 High School and Industrial Mission begun at Hoshangabad 1892 E. B. Tonjoroff's Hospital built at Philippopolis 1888 Committee appointed for Philippopolis Mission ... 1894 Murder of William and Lucy Johnson 1895 Darlington Conference 1896 The Chairman : We shall now be very glad to have any remarks that may be made upon the really admirable paper we have just listened to. Frederick Andrews, B.A. : It would be exceedingly interesting to me if, in a sentence or two, we might have a confirmation from some of the Friends who have laboured in the foreign field, of the view that the Quaker missionary stands on a different platform from others, i.e., as George Fox said, that there is in the minds of these darkened heathen a witness to God's Spirit ; and to hear that our Friends have been able to get below the writing on the palimpsest, and that in certain definite cases they .have induced the response 46 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. that has been so beautifully referred to by John Stephenson Rowntree and Dr. Hodgkin. Thomson Sharp : Like Frederick Andrews, I have listened with deep interest, and with great unity of feeling, both to the paper that has been read by John Stephenson Rowntree, an eloquent and comprehensive paper, and also to the admirable address given by Dr. Hodgkin. How our hearts must have gone out as he rallied us to the standard put forth by George Fox, the standard that there is in every breast without exception a witness for God. And then how it has been enforced by John Stephenson Rowntree, that that witness for God is the very ground upon which Quaker and other missionaries must go forth, not sitting in idle in difference but knowing that this witness for God is able to be reached by speakers setting forth Divine truth in Christ. I believe it would be very helpful to some of us if Dr. Hodgkin would explain, in a very few words, the meaning of "palimpsest." Edward Pearson : I feel that a most interesting con trast has been made between the mission work of the seven teenth century and the mission work that we have seen in our own days. I was struck by the allegation made by the essayist, that the accretion of wealth had probably much to do with the falling off of our early zeal. But it occurred to me that there was yet another reason — a reason that might have been quite venial in the case of our forefathers, but which to-day would apply to us only to our everlasting disgrace. I mean that the church was not at that time at the back of those early missionaries. There were, no newspapers then, no ready means of gathering the news from where these men were labouring, in silence as regards the Church at home. To-day we have the whole throbbing world alive with messages coming home from the workers. What wonder is it that in those days the heart of the Church did not go up in prayer to support the workers ? But, dear Friends, do not let it fail to go up for them to-day. Henry E. Clark : As a missionary from Madagascar, I have no hesitation in saying,, in answer to the query of Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 47 Frederick Andrews, that I have frequently put the question to the people in the course of my preaching, both in meetings for worship and in the public markets, Do they not hear a voice in their hearts speaking to them and telling them, this is right and that is wrong ? And I have nearly always found that the answer is that they do. But I should not like it to be thought that this is confined to those of our own mission ; I know that it is practised by those of others as well. Jane Miller : I went upon one occasion to hear Bishop Callaway, who had been a Friend, when he lectured in Edinburgh many years ago. I was very much interested with the way in which he put the question to the heathen, " When one of you steals anything from his neighbour, what does he do with that thing ? He hides it. Why does he hide it ? Because he knows that it is not right to steal it." I thought it showed his edu cation as a Friend, how he was able from this to raise their thoughts above it to the one atonement for our sins, and the necessity for that atonement. Then I remember in reading Dr. Moffat's life, how he said, in regard to this subject, that he had only met with one tribe who seemed really to have no knowledge of that inward conviction, and that they were exceedingly degraded. Robert J. Davidson : As regards China, I may say that one of the most common expressions the Chinese themselves use, when another has done anything wrong and they wish to upbraid him, is to say that such and such an one " has no heavenly goodness." I think that there is no place where we can speak to the hearts of the people and they do not respond to what we say to them. They call that within their own hearts the " heavenly light," or the "heavenly goodness." At the same time we cannot but feel that while they say that, the majority of them do not know that the light comes from God, and therefore they have not obeyed it for themselves. John H. Williams : It would be impossible in five minutes to give a full reply to the question of Frederick 48 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. Andrews. But I am glad to say that over and over again I have met with instances of the very kind he speaks of. At Sohagpur there is a man now who was led to the Saviour's love by an appeal to his own heart, put to him by myself. We find again and again with whole communities that the appeal to that which is in them meets at once with a response. I have, while standing in the bazaar at Sohagpur, preaching to Hindus and Mohammedans, spoken on that very question, appealing to something in themselves up braiding them of wrong ; and I have never seen them more keenly attentive, fixing their eyes on mine, than when I have made such an appeal as that, in love. Rachel M. Clark : The Malagasy are very rich in expressive proverbs. One of these is " Sin not in the silent valley, for God is there." I do not know how one can fail to see that in Madagascar they have a knowledge that God is above all. That proverb was of their own making ; they had it before any missionary was sent out to them. Mary Robinson : The Druses in Syria are quite willing to send their children to our schools, but they tell them that they must only learn secular knowledge, and must not listen to the Bible teaching. The brother of one of the girls said, " I hope you remember what I said about not listening to the teaching of the gospel ?" " Yes," she replied, " I remembered it, and I tried to do it, but I cannot help but listen, and I am quite sure it is God who is making me." Joseph S. Sewell : I have listened with extreme r in terest to the papers we have heard read, and I feel some hesitation in saying something in reply to Frederick Andrews' question, which may seem not altogether to coincide with what has been said by some others. But there is ex treme difficulty in knowing exactly how some things have been laid hold of in the hearts of those to whom we have spoken. I cannot say that I have had as much experience as some others seem to have had in regard to this matter. My first labours were so much more with those who had received some knowledge of the gospel, than in going to those parts of the land where there was no knowledge whatever. Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. 49 But there is one thing I wish to say. The missionaries have often thought and often spoken together of the way in which there seems so little sense of conscience on the part of the natives. How can we account for this ? Partly, I think, by the way in which the parents so seldom follow up the teaching given to the children. I remember my uncle, William Ellis, speaking of it with regard to India, that one of the great faults, even of those who had made some sign of conversion, was untruthfulness — that they seemed to have no idea of a sense of wrong in untruthfulness. And certainly that same failing has been common enough in Madagascar. And more than that, the parents have seemed to teach the children that if they were found out, that was a very bad thing ; but if they could conceal the thing, then even in stealing there was not very much fault. There is a great deal of that sort of thing in the teaching of the parents. The education of the conscience has been one of the things that many of our missionaries, I feel sure, have laboured hard to bring about. We need it here in England — we very much need it — but they need it still more there, where there is no help, till after several generations of Christianity, on the part of the parents. It takes some time before natives, who have been entirely separated from the teaching of Christians, understand much about the conscience. A great many of the beautiful proverbs which are common amongst the Malagasy, I have often felt must be attributed to previous Mohammedan teaching. But it is not all that. I believe with my whole heart that there is something that we can appeal to ; but it is pressed down and covered up, and it takes a long time sometimes to bring it to the front. Anna F. Fox : May I say, with regard to this subject, that it greatly aids our view if we see with tolerable clearness the distinction which the Apostle Paul draws between the conscience, which he alludes to as implanted by God, and the Holy Spirit enlightening that conscience. If many mis sionaries have found some response to the precious gospel teaching in the hearts of those whom they addressed, on the other hand it has been the testimony of missionaries not a few that there appeared to be complete darkness in the 5 50 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field. soul and the mind of those they spoke to. Probably the effect of generations of degradation, and of the quenching of any light of the Holy Spirit, may have ground down the conscience. Howard Nicholson : I do not want us to drift in any way into a theological discussion, but I think there is a great danger of our falling into the mistake of confusing the questions of an enlightened conscience, and of' the indwell ing of God's Holy Spirit in the hearts of the unsaved, though I do not think that any of the answers of the missionaries who are here this morning have at all contributed to that. I believe that there is in the hearts of all the heathen some knowledge of the truth, which has descended traditionally by common descent from our first parents, not by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the dark, unregenerate heart. I was conversing with R. J. Davidson about Home and Foreign Mission work, a few days ago, and I was struck with the absolute likeness of the two. All the conditions were precisely the same ; it was only in the details of the work that there was aught of difference. I would ask home missionaries — I don't ask them to answer it now, but in their own hearts — if we ever find that the Quaker view of the presentation of the doctrine of the inward light gives us precedence in results over other missionaries, and appeals to the heart of the unsaved in heathen England ? I do not ; and I would go a step further and say that the time when foreign mis sions ceased in our Society was caused by a perverted view of this very doctrine ; that it leads to lethargy and indif ference. I think those dark pictures on the other side of the meeting-house ought, if the doctrine be true, to be speckled all over with red spots, if there is anything which, without the preaching of the gospel, is going to bring the heathen to the knowledge of the truth. The Chairman : In reply to the question of Thomson Sharp, I may say that in the early part of the Middle Ages, when for some reason or other the papyrus which came from Egypt had grown scarce, and parchment also would seem to have been scarce, the monks generally took one of Our Attitude to Other Religions. 51 the old parchments, on which there might be written some books of Virgil's " ALneid," or some other classical author, and because they wanted to write, perhaps, the rules of their monastery, they took a piece of pumice-stone, scrubbed it down, and got out, as far as they could, the earlier characters, and then they wrote on it a theological treatise, or the rules of the order of St. Benedict. Later on scholars came into possession of these MSS., and, perceiving faint traces of the earlier characters below the later, by applying certain acids, they succeeded in bringing up the earlier characters below the monkish records written over them. In that way we have recovered some valuable documents of Christian and of heathen antiquity. Because such a record has been scrubbed and twice written on it is called a "palimpsest." Anne W. Richardson, B.A., before reading a paper on " Our Attitude to Other Religions," said : If earlier speakers have had to apologise for not speaking as experts, I have incomparably greater reason to do so. This paper has been written under rather difficult circumstances, and I must apologise, therefore, for its heaviness — which is quite different from weight. Anne Wakefield Richardson, B.A., then read the following paper on OUR ATTITUDE TO OTHER RELIGIONS. Fresh truth in science, in philo- paper by sophy, and still more in the sphere anne w. richardson, b.a. of religion, can only be discovered or rediscovered for the race by the sincere and honest search of the individual into principles and facts apart from the deflectingjinfluences of ordinary contemporary opinions. For such opinions ofteii owe their existence to that subtle indolence which must always obscure truth. It belongs to the dignity of the human spirit to be able to arrive at some truth, at least, independently of the " climate " by which it is surrounded. And all great advances, 52 Our Attitude to Other Religions. as I say, in the region of thought, knowledge, and spiritual truth have come in this way. Modern philosophy began to be when the barren slumber of the mediaeval schools was broken by Descartes' inquiry into the meaning of human consciousness and personality. His watchword was " Back to Man." Modern science was born when, from the fruitless logic of centuries, in whose meshes the best minds had been entangled without result on life or knowledge, Bacon shook himself free with a protest on behalf of observation and experiment. " Back to Nature," he said. A new era in religion opened when a great tra ditional falsehood, which had gradually taken form in the Church of Rome, and spread its blight over the Christian world, was unveiled by the spiritual sincerity of, one man, whose personal religious experience broke through the limitations of his age, with the cry, " Back to the Bible." On the same principle, only carried to a further and truer conclusion, George Fox and the early Friends made their watchword " Back to the Sources," inner as well as outer, back to first principles — back to Christ. And so the chief characteristic of early Quakerism was its endeavour to learn and to reproduce the thoughts of the Most High, to discover the Divine values, and to estimate the facts of life in the Divine light shed on every willing heart, as the revelation of God in Christ and through His apostles was " opened " to it. Every such attempt will have two results. It will bring the authors of it to a point beyond the high-water mark of the usual contemporary belief, and it will combine elements of truth which seem not only paradoxical, but inconsistent to the ordinary mind. And we see these two effects plainly enough in the history of early Quakerism in regard to many questions, and not least in their attitude to the non- Christian world. From their fundamental principle that all true religion must be first of inner significance to the spiritual nature of man, and that all outer modes of religion are secondary, and hence that no structure of external ordinances or system of theology can be essential to the salvation of any human soul, their minds were prepared to embrace all the world in a Our Attitude to Other Religions. 53 religious fellowship of love and sympathy, and to meet on a common ground those who had never heard of Christ. Long before the modern study of comparative religion had opened the eyes of thinking Christians to see how God can speak " by divers portions and in divers ways " to those outside the limit of the revelation recorded in the Scriptures, George Fox and his friends had drunk deeply enough of the spirit of the highest utterances of the Hebrew prophets, and of the ultimate revelation in our Lord and His apostles, to realise this fact. That close acquaintance with the consciousness of their Divine Master which they enjoyed in common with all the apostolic succession of the saints of God, as well as their personal devotion to Him as their Redeemer, could not but give them wider views of God's salvation than were held by many around them, and at the same time turned each of their lives into a missionary history in itself. To them the Most High was indeed " no respecter of persons," and their message of redemption was one which affected every human soul. His love constrained them, and His commands became their watchword. And though not many of their foreign journeys were, I think, undertaken primarily to preach Christ to the heathen, yet in a day of exclusive and narrow sympathies, such as we can scarcely realise, it was their special distinction constantly to urge on all Christians settled in foreign lands that they ought to share the gift of the gospel with their less favoured brothers. It is not difficult to understand the state of opinion about non-Christian peoples in the England of the Middle Ages. In the first place, with the exception of the Turk, whose destruction rather than his conversion was the object of the Crusades, little was known or thought of the world without. It is true that where the Spirit of Christ shines most vividly, as in Francis of Assisi— so like George Fox amid so much unlikeness— we see a longing to reach the outcasts in other lands. And a man like Tauler, who, with his fellows, the Friends of God, in the thirteenth century, saw more deeply into Truth than others in the hard, ignorant, ecclesiastical world around him, incurred the odium of heresy from 54 Our Attitude to Other Religions. his own Dominican order for recognising that God's Word and power could reach the hearts of such heathen as " sought after Him if haply they might find Him." But these cases were very rare, and when the Reformation disturbed the sleep of centuries all Christendom was so busy with settling its own disputes that we find but little thought given to the heathen. Still it was a subject that entered into polemics, if not into practical consideration. To Christian theology of the time one cannot but admit that the Most High seemed a " respecter of persons." The apparently, nay, really, unequal distribution of privileges, religious or other, in this world, is a problem which reason has not solved, and of which only faith in God's love and wisdom, and a heart to help, can abate the pressure. And in a measure it exercised religious thinkers then, though to us with our Quaker education, some of their conclusions are scarcely credible. The Calvinists had their doctrine of election and reproba tion which they applied to the whole world, while even the " Remonstrants " against this theory held that salvation was impossible without an outward knowledge of the Scriptures or of the Christian history. One would have thought that such a doctrine must have led to an inevitable outburst of missionary zeal, as the world widened before the imagination, and the fact that it did not (except in extremely rare in stances, as among the Jesuits), bore natural fruit in that very cruelty and supineness shown by colonists in America and elsewhere towards Indians and negroes, against which the early Friends strove so lovingly and manfully. It was in opposition to this limited view of God's love and power that we find Friends expressing themselves with no uncertain sound. To them it seemed once more the voice of the Old Dispensation in its narrowest Jewish rendering, the subtle and irreligious selfishness which grows upon the favoured child as he regards the contrast between himself and his unhappier brother. And so, strong in the spirit of their Master and of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, they saw that a universal temple had been opened, and in spite of those who would practically have made Christianity a favoured and exclusive sect, they proclaimed it as the religion of humanity. Our Attitude to Other Religions. 55 Says Barclay, in words that every early Friend echoes, "God, who out of His infinite love sent His Son into the world, who tasted death for every man, hath given to every man, whether Jew or Gentile, Turk or Scythian, Indian or barbarian, of whatsoever nature, country, or place, a certain time of visitation, during which it is possible for them to be saved, and to partake of the fruits of Christ's death." But coupled with this conviction goes an earnest evan gelical love and zeal to proclaim, in spite of all obstacles, the further and completer revelation which they as Christians enjoyed, and which they knew to be the source of social progress as well as fuller spiritual enlightenment. As early as 1659, at the very beginning of the Society, John Taylor travelled widely in America, and records that he had " very good service for the Lord " among the Indians. George Fox, in 1667, writes to settlements of Friends in Virginia and elsewhere, " You should take some of the eminent, true, good, and upright Friends, and go and dis course with some of the heathen kings, desiring them to gather their council and people together, that you may declare God's everlasting truth and His everlasting way of life and salvation to them." Again, of a visit of his own, he says, " As we came among the Indians we declared the way of the Lord to them ; " and again, " It was upon me from the Lord to send to the Indian emperor and his kings to come to the meeting. I had two good opportunities with them ; they heard the Word of the Lord willingly, and confessed to it." Mission work in those days was no light or easy matter, but, as the same unadorned narrative tells, it meant journeys " through the wilderness, lying in the woods whether it was winter or summer, many, times through great perils, and danger of wild beasts and man-eaters." In 1679 he writes to Friends in America, "You must preach the grace of God to all blacks and Indians, and teach them that none of them must quench the motions of the Spirit, nor grieve it, nor vex it, nor rebel against it, nor err from it, nor resist it. And you must instruct them and all others how that Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man, and gave Himself a ransom for all men, to be 56 Our Attitude to Other Religions. testified in due time, and is the propitiation not for the sins of Christians only, but for the sins of the whole world, and how that He doth enlighten every man that cometh into the world." Again, in 1681 he exhorts them to preach to the Indians " the gospel of peace and life and salvation, for the gospel is to be preached to every creature " ; adding, " Christ hath tasted death for every man and died for their sins that they might come out of death and sin, and live to Christ that died for them." At this date William Penn, who as a yotmg man in " No Cross, No Crown " had given his confirmation to Quaker doctrine regarding the Light of the World, was preparing for his " holy experiment." Among the many wide objects that filled his mind, the foremost seems to have been, according to his own statement, " the glory of God in the civilisation of the poor Indians, and their conversion by just and lenient measures to Christ's kingdom." And when settled among them, " Nothing," says Clark- son, " could exceed his love for these poor people, or his desire of instructing them, so as to bring them by degrees to the knowledge of the Christian religion ; and in this great work he spared no expense, though whatever he bestowed in this way came solely out of his own pocket." We may observe again the inevitable law whereby creed affects practice for the natural result of such principles was that Quakerism should become the protagonist in the contest on the American continent against the horrors of the slave trade in later times. It is needless to multiply quotations. The attitude of the early Friends in this respect may be summed up in three principles. (1) Christ, whose kingdom is a universal one, has commanded us to proclaim to all nations the unspeakable' blessings of the gospel. (2) To do this in the spirit of His apostles, we must be all things to all men — that is, meet them on all possible common ground of love and fellowship as offspring of the same Father. (3) We go to them, as we are bound to do, with the knowledge that God has been there before us in the darkest times and homes of ignorance, that not a human soul is without a witness for God to the truth of the Our Attitude to Other Religions. 57 words we speak, and that many souls amid gross surrounding darkness have already "touched God's right hand in the darkness." We note again that these principles, so widespread now, were then wholly beyond the ordinary horizon of religious thought. And, secondly, they combine truths and qualities which, like most of the higher verities, seem incompatible from the standpoint of a lower plane of spiritual insight, but are absolutely fused on a higher. Conviction and principle on a lower plane of spiritual life are apt to thin as thought widens ; among the early Friends, as with the Apostle Paul, fervour and charity, zeal and the broadest sympathies, love and insight, go hand in hand. Provided that our spiritual life is. as deep and real as theirs we can safely retain their convictions to-day, when the pendulum of thought has swung from bigotry and exclusive- ness to the other extreme, an extreme which under the cover. of a tolerant optimism too often hides indolence, carelessness, and a lack of the Christ-like spirit it simulates. A century ago outside our Society it was thought as necessary for a good Christian to believe that other religions were from the devil as that his own was from God. A wider knowledge of our fellows, a deeper study of origins, a truer philosophy, and, above all, a sense of the universality of Christ's power and presence, has changed the views of most thoughtful and spiritually- minded Christians. But I should like to emphasise the point that ordinary opinion on such matters always represents the deeper religious conclusions run to seed, with a preference for the easy-going view, and now we are often told that it is intolerant to assert that in the Christian religion we have any special or consummate manifestation of God, or that we are necessarily bound to confer its benefits on our fellows who know nothing of it. To this we must reply, that quite apart from the unspeakable cruelty, degradation, and wickedness that even a degenerate Christianity alleviates, it is of the very essence of the Christian faith to believe that in it we have the absolute and universal answer to the needs of mankind. If our Christianity is to be a victorious force, that is to say again, if it is to be Christ's Christianity, for us Christ our 58 Our Attitude to Other Religions. Lord must still be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and while we recognise that other religions have lived by the truth that is in them, His religion must be for us the absolute religion and the highest revelation of God. We know now, indeed, that religion is not confined to this or that people, but is practically a universal phenomenon, a " note of the human race," which cannot be derived from outward sources any more than thought or love.* And it has been truly said that even crude and cruel forms of it indicate man's dignity, for " they are painful cries of the soul, torn from its centre, and separated from its object." t The great religious systems of the world all marked at their outset an advance from surrounding degeneracy. There is no great religion (to quote Max Miiller) but says, " Do good, avoid evil," and though we find in all times and spheres a fatal tendency to separate religion and morality, yet this can never be a permanent condition in which mankind will rest, for the one is always doomed without the other. And Christians who believe in Christ, and of all Christians, the Society of Friends, need not fear a reverent, sympathetic, and honest study of other faiths, for it must only confirm the truth they hold. It will show first that while God leaves no soul unwarned and unvisited, yet in J. J. Gurney's words, "The immediate and perceptible guidance and government of the HolyiSpirit are pre-eminently enjoyed by true believers in Christ to whom only are spoken the words, ' Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things ; ' or again, ' Ye need not that any man teach you ' " (i John ii. 20-27). Secondly, it will help to show that there is and can be no true severance of the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the Spirit.! It will confirm our conviction that while God speaks in divers manners to all, in His Son, to whom He gave not the Spirit by measure, He has spoken to us in a special and consummate form, and that without a spiritual faith founded on the historic facts of the Christian redemp- * Compare Hegel, " All peoples know that the religious consciousness is that wherein they possess the truth, and religion they have ever regarded as their true dignity and the Sabbath of their life." t Vinet. } See " The Christ of To-day," by G. A. Gordon. Our Attitude to Other Religions. 59 tion, the highest permanent results will ever be impossible. In certain spheres of philosophy and religion, not excepting our own Society, as in the movement under Elias Hicks, there has always been a somewhat confused and confusing tendency to undervalue the historic fact in Christianity and the historic Person whom the fact concerns, in the advocacy of the highest sphere of spiritual life.* But the conviction that the true spiritual freedom advocated is. for ever and inalienably rooted in the fact and the Person may, I think, be confirmed in a striking manner by the study of religions which have not been founded on the Christian revelation. In them, indeed, we find the witness of the Spirit, but what feeble and flickering response we see even in the highest forms of faith, what depths of degradation in the "dark places of the earth and in the abodes of cruelty ! " All great religious movements, as has been said, have abounded in noble and lofty precept, in Christianity only are the precepts made practicable, and the morality a permanent and pro gressive result of the religion. Thirdly, we shall arrive at a fuller understanding and a more assured belief that all revelation is the complement rather than the subversion of the highest human reason and aspiration. In other and simpler words, we shall see more clearly than ever that Christ is indeed the " Desire of all nations " ; that the manifestation of God in His Son is a universal answer to the questioning, the longing, the striving of human hearts the world over, and a remedy for the impotence, the disease, the sin with which generations of men apart from the knowledge of Him have so wearily and often so hopelessly struggled. Let us glance, as briefly as possible, at the four great non-Christian systems. I. To the marvellous Arab who founded Islam in the seventh century after Christ, a time of degeneracy and empty profession, God was the great Fact. Mohammed recognised truth in Moses and the prophets and in our Lord Himself, and sought to unite his great mission of reform with Christianity. * See " The Christ of To-day," by G. A. Gordon. 60 Our Attitude to Other Religions. " Say ye to the Christians that their God and my God is one," were his words at the outset. He believed that God called him to a vast work of reform, and he did indeed replace a polytheistic idolatry by a faith at least real to himself, in the unity, spirituality, presence, and power of God, in the neces sity of righteousness and the certainty of retribution. And though in his own person he fell from his early ideal and belied his noblest aspirations, his success lay in his vivid belief in God as a Person, as the eternal living Fact and chief Factor in existence. On a decadent form of Chris tianity, torn by disputes and sapped by false allegiance, this God-consciousness, born as it was from Jewish and Christian sources, made tremendous inroads, " Strong these contending mysteries to displace By one plain ancient creed." It has been truly said that until the message that God is supreme is asserted with apostolic power by Christians who are as true to the religion of Jesus as the Mohammedans are to that one great principle, they must fail in reaching them.* Islam, which literally means submission, is the soul of Mohamedanism, and though it has nourished lofty examples of stoical endurance it is only a half-truth. Christianity demands absolute submission too, but in the act of submis sion, slavery turns into sonship, and prayer into fellowship, while in Mohammedanism, because God is so far off from man, only transcendent and not immanent, supreme power rather than love, and because the awful gulf between God and man is only bridged by the external letter of the Koran, prayer becomes mere routine, and communion with the Father of Spirits is impossible. And this view of God inevitably reacts on man and on morality. True progress in face of a relentless fatalism becomes impossible, the brotherhood of man is unacknow ledged, the sphere of womanhood ruthlessly degraded, and ' travellers tell us that nowhere is there more fiendish cruelty shown than in countries under Mohammedan rule. The never-ceasing tragedies of the African slave trade and the present horrors in Armenia are instances too glaring to * Principal Grant, " Religions of the World." Our Attitude to Other Religions. 61 need comment. No religion shows more clearly the reaction of creed on character, or, on the other hand, the practical nature of Christian doctrine. Christianity, with its truth about God as Father, Son, and Spirit, the root of all Christian theology and philosophy, and of all the best religious life and power, and with its ideal of the union of human and Divine in One who brings God to man and lifts man to God, must finally assert its spiritual supremacy over the iron creed of Mohammedanism, though its armour seems at present well- nigh impenetrable. II. In Confucius we find another personality, preceding Mohammed by more than a thousand years, who has deeply influenced myriads of the human race. That he was a wise, earnest, and practical reformer none can doubt. But though his teaching reached to the point of formulating in his own way the morality of the Golden Rule, his system is one that confines itself to this world. Such worship as was pro vided for in it must be performed by the Emperor, but for ordinary mankind morality without religion was to be suffi cient. A code of ethics, a complete, elaborate, and syste matic body of rules and commentaries, carefully adapted to his practical and conservative race, was his remedy for human ills. Nothing can more fully prove how utterly inadequate and superficial an ethical system is without religious motive, or dependence on the Divine, than the failure of Confucianism to produce the highest results in any sphere. Shut out from the knowledge of "the mighty hopes that make us men," Confucianism has been barren of all the noblest arts, and has produced, or indeed it is fairer to say, has left, a people conceited, unprogressive, intolerant, and unspeakably immoral. China to-day remains the best argu ment against Confucianism. Ignore God, and a poor ideal of man must eventually result ; ignore sin, essentially a religious idea, and a character the very opposite of the Christian spirit of humility is produced. In these days of ethical societies, which are avowedly meant to inherit the work of Christianity, we may take the lesson to heart. Indeed the spiritual instincts in man could not be satisfied with Confucianism even in its home, and though 62 Our Attitude to Other Religions. most educated men in China call themselves adherents of Confucius, yet Taouism and Buddhism had to supplement its defects through the length and breadth of the land. Lao Tse, the founder of Taouism, was a man of far more original and philosophical mind than Confucius, and of even clearer ethical insight. He despised the conservatism and code- making of Confucius as superficial and ineffective, and taught men to dwell on the Eternal and the Absolute behind all moral rules. But like the Stoics in the Western world he could not draw the rank and file of mankind from the pleasures of sense and of time by presenting the blank forms of philosophy, and his doctrine degenerated into a mass of superstition. III. On the religious systems of India, with its 3,000 years of intellectual activity and 300 millions of people, it is difficult to touch in a few words. Indian religion has been compared to a " reservoir into which have run all the varied religious ideas which the mind of man is capable of elaborating." The doctrine of Deity, fluid in the Vedas, was followed by the religion of Brahma, the mighty IT, the eternal and im personal Something to knowledge of which only the pure intellectualism of the few can hope to attain. The inexorable system of caste was created in order primarily to preserve the Brahmans, " the ordained high priests of intelligence," from contact with the unspiritual herd. At first an advance on Vedism, in its assertion of a Supreme Cause and its admis sion of a sense of sin (sacrificial terms are commoner in Brahmanism than in Judaism), it seems at one period to have reached a high level of social morality. Behind the ritual, the philosophers carried on their speculations in a Pantheistic direction. But spiritual influences declined, sacerdotalism increased, the caste system became intolerable, and a recoil was inevitable. This recoil is seen in Buddhism, which was, moreover, that inevitable protest which the experience of life with its pressure and its pain, has ever made and will ever make against an overstrained intellectualism. And this reaction, apart from Christ, will usually take the form of pessimism. We see the same sequence in modern days when in Germany Hegel is followed by Schopenhauer. In its counter-reaction against Buddhism, Brahmanism became modern Hinduism, passing from the region of thought Our Attitude to Other Religions. 63 to that of fable, and crowded with gods, idols, and demons in bewildering confusion. Brahmanism at its best taught the supremacy of intelli gence, immortality of the soul, the importance of meditation, prayer, and sacrifice, of incarnation and propitiation, of self- surrender, faith, and good works. It held profound truth as to man's sinfulness and weakness, the littleness of earth and the grandeur of the things of the Spirit. Yet India did not find the true God, and presents a history of degradation from hopeful promise to a jungle of debasing superstition. But there are many minds among the nobler Brahmans to whom Christianity has come as a true gospel. For it includes all the best elements of their religion, demanding as it does that all men should reach the spiritual dominance, which in Brahmanism is confined to a few elect souls, and proclaiming a real deliverance from sin. The Pantheistic doctrine of God in Brahmanism, profound as it is, wherein distinction between God and man is lost in universal imma nence, and personal love becomes impossible, makes individual life an illusion and its ideal spiritual suicide. It has exactly the opposite defects to Mohammedanism, while Christianity reveals a God with us, neither hopelessly apart from us, nor indistinguishably in us. It has been truly said that there is something so deep in Pantheism that the Deism of Mohammed cannot sound it. In Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us, the Christian finds the meeting- place of the truth in each, and the practical solution of the problems they raise only to leave unsolved. I may add that as one reads of the higher forms of Brahmanism one is struck with the likeness to the ideals of Quakerism. Surely our missionaries ought to be able to " find an answer," in George Fox's phrase, in the heart of the Hindu, and supply the blank forms of thought with a true religious content ! IV. Buddhism was a great and promising reformation of Hinduism, and its success lay in the personality of its founder. The story of his life is familiar to us all. The principle of renunciation and of self-abnegation which came like a revelation to him, is only a fragment of the Christian truth, " he that saveth his life shall lose it." But because he did not understand 'that the root of. that truth is in a living God, who realises in us our true life, he did not reach the point 64 Our Attitude to Other Religions. that makes the paradox a fruitful reality. The consummation of Buddhism is negative, is loss, absorption ; of Christianity, positive, eternal life and love. To Buddhism, while individual sin does not exist, existence is in itself evil, and Paradise is 1 escape from it. And for that escape, through a series of transformations, man is sufficient without God. And though in its morality and some of its ideals Buddhism has no rival but Christianity, yet its introduction has never produced either spirituality or progress. "There must be something radically wrong at the root when the fruit is so poor." Its distinctive doctrine is the self-sufficiency of the human intellect, and hence its failure is significant. Its boasted agnosticism has become a confused idolatry. Buddhist temples are full of idols, and strange to say Buddhism of all religions is the only one that has invented praying by machinery. It began by denying God, and has proved that we cannot work out the deepest problems of life when its chief Factor is reduced to zero. Moreover, "a religion that knows nothing of guilt has not probed the wound of. humanity." The universe being inherently evil, sin is not a personal thing and remission is impossible. Christianity has the far nobler teaching that everything in its original nature is good, that moral evil is the result of a perverted development, and that hence remission is possible through appropriate means. The Christian redemption truly understood can have no selfish or immoral consequences, for it teaches that righteous ness is involved in love, and that atonement is the means of reconciliation to the truly repentant man only — the man crucified with Christ, whose very salvation means hatred of and deliverance from sin. And herein we find the explana tion of the fact that the loftiest morality has always been found in connection with the Cross of Christ. In conclusion, there seem three outstanding reasons for zeal in foreign mission work : — (1) The great and mysterious principle of responsibility for others. The best facts in our life are associated with this law, so that to cut it out, as some would do, from the tissues of human existence would be to destroy the very framework of moral, not to say religious, life. Human life is so constituted that we Our Attitude to Other Religions. 65 depend on one another often for the very highest elements in it, and though we believe that God can work without us in the darkest heart, yet to make that a reason for refusing a hand to help those in darkness to light and life, or indeed for grudging our best in their service, is surely to hide our indo lence or our selfishness under a flippant assumption of superior wisdom. This is true regarding their inner and religious wants, but as we read the accounts of travellers, not to speak of missionaries, revealing the desperate physical needs of the un- Christianised world, the seething mass of shame and corrup tion, the hopeless degradation of women and children, the barbarity to the weak and ailing, our very humanity rises in support of our Christian enthusiasm. (2) Sympathy with the aims of our Lord and Saviour. It does not seem to me that we can partake of the con sciousness of Christ our Master without partaking of His " inevitable missionary spirit," nor be loyal to His direct command without helping forward its fulfilment, and seeking to bring in His kingdom everywhere. " God is faithful by whom we are called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." These words imply the highest privilege, the deepest responsibilities, the most positive realities on which Christian life is based, and they imply missionary effort such as few churches have yet shown. (3) The greatness of the gift we bring. It has often been remarked that even a degenerate form of Christianity puts obstacles in the way of the worst forms of corruption. If that is so, how much more will every soul filled with the love of God, and by the very life in it insensibly spreading the knowledge of Him who .is the source of life eternal, avail to conquer the death and darkness around it ! Foreign mission work may have proceeded slowly in the hundred years since Protestant missionary societies were started. But already too many thousands of all tongues and peoples have witnessed to the blessing that it has brought to allow us to feel dis couraged. Problems, wide, pressing, almost bewildering, rise before the minds of thoughtful Christians living in non-Christian lands. But it is not the worker, the loving and obedient disciple, who despairs in presence of these problems. 6 66 Our Attitude to Other Religions. Despair is rather found, as always, among those who, as mere critics and not participants, lack more than half the data for the solution of them. And the knowledge of the face of God revealed in Jesus Christ, the knowledge that freedom from the burden of sin and sinfulness is gained for us in Him, and a life renewed at its very springs made possible, the knowledge that the Supreme Power recognised by the human race is a Power that is Love — surely this is a gift which may well fill its bearers with an enthusiasm which shall carry them to-day, as it did in the early days of our Society, to distant and less favoured lands. The Chairman : The paper carries on in the most interesting way some of the subjects we were discussing before, and perhaps to some may suggest reconciliation of some things which almost looked irreconcilable. Frederick Sessions : I hope A. W. Richardson will not think her paper at all too long. To me it has been most instructive and interesting. If Friends want to see the Buddhist system of praying by machinery, they will find in the missionary-room a prayer-wheel, which I bought from a Buddhist in the Himalaya Mountains. With regard to the questions raised in this paper and the previous one, though not a missionary myself, I should like to recall an incident which I witnessed in Hoshangabad while I was there. A Sadu, a wandering beggar, a holy beggar, as he would be considered, made his confession of faith in the Friends' meeting-house. The purport of it was, he had a spirit of unrest in his heart, and for many years had gone from shrine to shrine, and from one holy place to another, and could not get rid of it ; but he found it all removed when the Lord Jesus Christ was proclaimed to him. On the other hand, while there is sometimes a reaching out after God and taking hold of Him, we should not forget what a native Indian once said, that nobody can know the awfulness of reaching out in the darkness, feeling after God, and taking hold of nothing. William King Baker : I am very thankful for this last Our Attitude to Other Religions. 67 paper. I believe that it does in a very large measure recon cile the two lines of thought that have been so ably laid before us, and that it does give us counsel for the present time. The interesting review we have had of our early history brings before us the whole course of our Society, and we need not travel outside of its limits to find object lessons of the danger of divorcing the great thought of the work of the Holy Spirit, of the appeal of the Holy Spirit to our spirits, from its connection with our fallen condition, or the danger of divorcing His work and appeal from its con nection with the great revelation to be made by the Holy Spirit— the evidencing of Christ. Such a course is bound to result, I believe, in a state of loss, of partial death, a state of being separated from the very best of the power and love that ought to go with our testimony. I believe that our history, at any rate a period of it on the American continent, very thoroughly bears that out. On the other hand, we must likewise suffer if we look only to the machinery of evangelising missions, and lose sight of our great testimony— that direct appeal of God in the human heart, and that need of waiting upon God — which was so successfully maintained in the first years of our Society. So may we be able rightly to hold the truth, in its fulness and clearness, testifying to the witness of the Holy Spirit showing the things of Christ. Charles G. Clarke, M.D. : I am sure that we shall all agree with the reader of the last paper in saying that all that is non-Christian is not necessarily of the devil, and I am sure we shall say also that under the tumulus of tradition and superstition that has accumulated upon these other religions, we may find spiritual truth having close affinity with Chris tianity. We may even go further and add that the enlightened missionary will seek to find out these grains of truth, and make them the basis of his preaching with reference to Christianity. The late Gideon Ouseley, who was made of so much use to Roman Catholics in Ireland, used to take his stand out side a Roman Catholic chapel, where, as the people came out, he would say that he wanted to speak to them a few words about a saying of the Blessed Virgin. Then he would 68 Our Attitude to Other Religions. turn to the page where the miracle at Cana in Galilee is spoken of, and would read these words of the mother of Jesus : " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it ; " and he would take these as the basis of his appeal to the Roman Catholics. But let us never forget the great difference between these religions and Christianity, and that where they have failed it succeeds. Christianity gives a man power to make real and to carry out any truth there may be either in Buddhism or Confucianism, it supplies the power to make real and practical the truths that they profess. Just to give an illus tration of what I mean, I will recall the story given by a poor Chinaman of his conversion. He said he was down in a horrible pit, in the miry clay, and he had no power to get out of it. Confucius came along and looked down, and he said, " My poor man, I am so sorry for you ; if you ever get out don't go back again." And then Buddha came by, and he said, " Poor man ! I am very sorry for you ; if you come up here (the very thing he could not do) I will help you." But Jesus Christ came along and He reached down His hand and said, "Take My hand," and I took His hand, and He " lifted me up out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings, and put a new song in my mouth." Joseph P. Drewett : The subject which has been brought before us has interested me ever since Russell Jeffrey and William Brewin went to India on behalf of the Society of Friends, and quite recently I have been brought into intimate connection with a learned Brahmin, and have learned some thing from him of the relations of Christianity and Hinduism. I have thought that it is impossible that God should allow such a huge section of His own human creation as are the peoples of India and China and the followers of Mohammed, to be left altogether without any of His truth to guide them. Therefore I have thought that there must be in the teaching of such men as these, Buddha and Confucius and Mohammed — men who have exerted such an influence for so many ages on such a large section of the human family — I have thought there must be something in their teaching which comes from God. I have thought of this, too, in the case of the teachings Our Attitude to Other Religions. 69 of Moses, how when our Saviour came those teachings were overlaid with the traditions and teachings of men. With these thoughts in my mind, it seems to me the duty of all those who come into contact with what we call the heathen — but what I should prefer to call the Christless — nations, to find out what there is in these other religions that they can take hold of in order to bring before their hearers, and tlie better commend, to them, the beautiful religion of Christ, which is the sum and substance of all the teaching that has come from God through all generations. I have some times spoken with others on these matters. Travelling some time ago with a lady who had been a missionary in India for same years, I said, " How do you get over the Mosaic ritual and explain it to these people who believe in the transmigra tion of souls, and who are so careful of animal life — how do you teach Christian truth through the forms of the Mosaic dispensation ? " She said, " We don't touch it ; we dare not. These keen-witted Hindus would shut our mouths up in argument in a very short time. We leave the Old Testa ment to the college professors ; we simply preach Christ." The Brahmin to whom I have before referred said to me, " I thank God I am able to preach Christ through Buddha's Nirvana. Buddha is my Moses." Frederic Wood : There is one lesson that has come home very closely to my heart while we have been listening to this beautiful paper. I think we find in the life of the venerable missionary, John G. Paton, words to this effect : It is the faith of every missionary that the more the Church at home interests itself in the heathen, the more it will be blessed and prosper. We have a very strong confirmation of this testimony this morning, in the fact that our own Society has been so largely blessed since it has put its hand to the plough. A strong and vigorous Christian life will never cease to run on parallel lines with a practical Christianity. We have received the blessing of the gospel not for our own use and purposes only, but that we may dispense its blessings to those around us ; and I think we have very great cause for encouragement in the fact that though during a period in the history of our Society there seemed to be a cessation of 70 Meeting foi Parents. active work, yet we are largely indebted to the prayers of Friends in those days, who did not see exactly as we do — we are reaping the benefit of their prayers. May we be encouraged by this to go forward. The Clerk read the closing Minute of the sitting. At the opening of this Session' Charles D. Terrell introduced the Teaching of Holy Scripture upon the need of the World for Christ. After an address by the Chairman, papers were presented by John Stephenson Rowntree upon "The Work of the Society of Friends in Foreign Missions " ; and by Anne Wakefield Richardson, B.A., upon " Our Attitude to Other Religions." Third-day Afternoon, 22nd of Ninth Month, 1896. MEETING FOR PARENTS. A special meeting for parents, arranged at the request of Elizabeth B. Backhouse, was held between the morning and afternoon Sessions of the Conference. The meeting opened with a period of devotion and vocal prayer. Elizabeth B. Backhouse : It seems address by strange that God should have laid Elizabeth b. backhouse, it upon me to request that this meeting should be held, when I see so many before me who are much wiser and with more education and experience in missionary work. Perhaps my work may be done in just gathering this company of parents together that they may confirm one another, and that those who are more experienced and taught of the Lord may help us who have less experience and give us the benefit of theirs ; and, Meeting for Parents. 71 above all, that we may come to the Lord and ask Him to give us the power of His Spirit in all our work with our children. I believe that we can only bring up our children aright under the power of the Holy Spirit. I have wondered whether we as parents in the Society of Friends quite take up our responsibility in respect to foreign missions. It is essentially a parents' question, for it is our children who will have to carry on the foreign mission work in the future. I have wondered whether we quite understand what that responsibility means ; whether we have looked up and out on the field and have seen the need of labourers that there is, or whether we have just done what we could in the fields around us, forgetting the fields beyond ; or have thought that the work in those fields was for others and not for us. Surely if we lift up our eyes and have them anointed, we shall pray the Lord to send labourers into His harvest. I presume that we have in one way or another dedicated our children to the Lord from their birth. It may be only that in a general way we have desired that they should grow up faithful, God-fearing men and women. Sometimes it comes to us as a surprise when we see our prayers being answered. It should not be so, I think. I have so much desired that when we give our children to the Lord, and ask Him to accept and train them, we should not make any reservation. It seems to me that many of us have prayed to the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers, but we have sometimes had a reservation in our minds, and have thought, not in words perhaps, but instinctively, that it is to be other people's children who are to be sent, and not ours. That is not as it should be. We should each one of us come face to face with this question, and ask ourselves, what if the Lord should call our children or ourselves to work in the foreign field ? It may be that the answer would come to our hearts with something of shame. We may find out that we are not so willing as we thought we were, that God's will should be done with our children. If so, it will open our eyes, and our sense of shame and deficiency will lead us to offer up our children, those that we love best, to His service. I think the story of the way in which Hannah gave up her little child Samuel to the Lord's service is full of 72 Meeting for Parents. teaching for us ; that little child whom she had longed for and prayed for so much, and whom she had brought up so tenderly. Yet, when the time came, she took him up to the temple at Shiloh and gave him up without a word, rejoicing. She went down to her house and sang that beautiful song : " My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, mine horn is exalted in the Lord." She felt so full of happiness because she had lent that which, perhaps, she loved best of all, to the Lord's cause. I have longed that we should not be withholding that which we have promised to the Lord. I know that it is one thing to pray that labourers may be sent forth, one thing to pray that our children may be used of God, or even that the time may come when they may be called to Foreign Mission work, and quite another thing to be willing to let them go when the call does come. Probably only those who have had to part with their children in this way know quite what it means. But I think there is no trial, no proving that we may have to go through, but that the Lord will give us strength to serve Him in it. We ought not to feel it a trial, but an honour, a privilege and a blessing, when He calls our children, if He calls them for this purpose. There is another thought that has rather occupied my mind, which came to me several years ago in reading the life of the late Mrs. Booth, where one reads how she set her heart, at the very beginning of her family life, that her children should become evangelists. She said that as those who wanted their children to become engineers put them in the way of learning engineering, and those who wanted them to become chemists apprenticed them to a chemist, so she set herself to train her children to be evangelists. We know how her training was rewarded ; how she had the joy of seeing all her children going in the way that she would have them. I think that is a proof of how such earnest purpose meets with its reward. Of course, it was not only her training that she trusted in ; she looked higher than that. But it is interesting to us to see how one plan and purpose ran through the whole of her domestic life, and how it was rewarded. Of course it would be foreign to us, as Friends, to make up our minds that our children should be evangelists. We believe that only those called to this work Meeting for Parents. 73 can rightly enter upon it ; and it is not, of course, all our children that would be called. Many are more fitted to do the work at home, and some, from questions of health and other causes, are quite unfit for foreign work. But are we doing all we can in the way of training and teaching to make it— I was going to say easy, but that is hardly what I mean— to make it natural for our children to turn to a life specially dedicated to the Lord's service ? I think there is so much in the influence of our lives on our children ; it teaches them so much more than our mere words. So much may be done by the atmosphere in which they live, that they may come to think naturally of work for the Lord as part of their future life. It may be that only a small part of the children who are represented by their parents here will be called to the foreign field. It is not for us to choose, but to pray that workers may be sent forth, to pray with wholly dedicated hearts, so that when the call comes to any of our children, we may say " Go." It is rather a painful thing to speak of differences of circumstances amongst us, but we cannot lose sight of the facts. I have thought so much of what has been alluded to here, that the stagnation of missionary effort at one period, in our Society, is thought to have been partly caused by the accumulation of wealth amongst us. I have sometimes thought whether those in easy circumstances are quite alive to their responsibilities in relation to the difficulties which these things throw in the way of their children. I don't mean to say that the cares of the world may not choke the good seed quite as much as the deceitfulness of riches, or the lusts of other things. But I think that the cares of the world are more apt to draw people to Christ, and the pleasures of life to draw them from Him. We are not likely to be pleasurably absorbed in our cares ; we are more likely to be led to cast them on Christ. But I do think there is a danger lest the pleasures of this life should engross too much time and attention. And I would ask those blessed with a large portion of this world's goods, who are comfortable and easy in their circumstances, without very many cares pressing on them, to consider whether in the kind of life we enter upon, and the companions and pleasures we give to our 74 Meeting for Parents. children, we are helping or hindering them in regard to those great purposes of life — living for God, living to follow Christ their Lord. It seems to me there is so much in the present day that tends to draw people away from God, away from Christ, and to absorb them in the things of this earth. I think there is such a danger of our being entangled in the affairs of this life ; and, therefore, not being such good soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is so for ourselves, just as much as, or more than, for our children. And how sad it will be if by giving unwise or harmful indulgences to our children, we make it more difficult for them to yield to the Lord's call, when it comes, for foreign service. Those who are really called of the Lord, and so baptized by His Holy Spirit, that they are ready to give up all for Him, do not when they come to that point find the pleasures and delights of life stand much in their way. But they are likely to prevent them from receiving the call. When engrossed with the things of this life, they are much less likely to hear the voice of the Lord calling them. I know it should not be so. God's good gifts are given that we should employ them rightly. We should be thankful when God has given us the means, that we are able to use them for Him, and we should teach our children to do so. But I have felt the pressing need that there is at the present day, to teach our children to sit more loose from the things of this world, and not to be entangled in them. I hope to hear much from others of the way in which we may avoid these difficulties, and lead our children to whole-hearted consecration to God. I trust that some of those here this afternoon will be able to give us more of their experiences, and that they may speak out of the fulness of their experience and of their knowledge, as to what is the will of the Lord for their children. And then I hope we may be favoured with a time of prayer to Him. Mary J. Davidson : There is a message laid on my heart, that I should like to give as the daughter of a missionary, and a mother. Years ago there was a little girl who, at her home in North London, used to sit by her mother's side reading the Juvenile Missionary Magazine — the one child's Meeting for Parents. 75 magazine containing missionary news that circulated at that time. As she grew older, the desire was in her heart, first impressed by the reading of this little magazine month by month, that she should some day be a missionary. And afterwards as she was sitting in that farewell meeting at Birmingham when Joseph S. Sewell and Louis and Sarah Street were about to go to Madagascar, she asked the Lord that some day she might be sent. And, later on, with the desire still stronger, she besought the Lord, " What wilt Thou have me to do ? " The answer came back, " Behold thy mother," and it was shown her that at that time that was the work for her to do. With joy she took it, believing that God could give home work as well as the foreign. He does give it, and He wants that we should do the right work, at the right time, in the right spirit. But still she believed the time would come when He would call her, and He did. Now she stands before you to tell you something of the needs of the heathen who sit in dark ness, and to ask every mother and every father to let the needs of the whole world, and the command of the Lord, " Go ye into all the world," be a big, part, shall I say the first part, of the education of your own children. How I thank God for all the way that He has led me, step by step. The work at home was the right and true preparation for the foreign work, which came at the right time. And how I thank Him that as a mother myself I have the privilege of teaching my little boy not only to say, " What wilt thou have me to do ? " but to look forward to the time when he shall be not only an " M. H." — a missionary helper, as he signs himself now, but when, as he said to me himself, " Mother, mayn't I one day drop the ' H.' and put ' M.' only, and be a missionary ? " It is such a blessing and pleasure to train our little ones to feel that there is a work for them to do in the future. Caroline Shewell : I very much unite in what has been said about the right education of our children in the Lord, and training them for His service. I feel very strongly the great importance of Foreign Missions. The greater part of us here feel that it is not our duty to go into the Foreign 7° Meeting for Parents. Misson field ourselves, but to stay at home, though it makes some of us long to be young again that we might go abroad. The thought has passed through my mind, how delightful it would be if we could have a second life to give to Foreign Mission work. This cannot be ; but cannot we train up our children to the idea that God may some day call them to go into His service abroad ? I think that we are too reticent on this subject with our children. I do think that we ought to look upon it as a practical, possible thing that they may be called upon to go abroad as missionaries, as ambassadors for Christ, as witnesses for Him. Let us put it before them ; teaching them that the first thing is to give themselves to Christ, and afterwards, if they are called, to be willing to give themselves to this blessed service. Let us show our children that dearly as we love them, we love the Lord Jesus Christ far better, and would gladly, willingly, and rejoicingly spare them to go out in His name in this way. Let us tell our children what a joy and honour and privilege it would be, letting them see that we would not be selfish in our love, we would not keep them for the sake of having them at home with us, or for the sake of keeping them from possible clangers ; but that we should feel it a great honour and a great joy to give up our children to the Lord Jesus Christ for the Foreign Mission field. Charles D. Terrell : " By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son : that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore ; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies ; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed ; because thou hast obeyed My voice." Isabella C. Fryer : It has sometimes come very forcibly to my mind whether, in accepting our dear children as gifts, or perhaps more properly as loans from our God, and in giving them back to Him entrusting them to His care and guidance, we may not sometimes busy ourselves rather too much about the mode of training them. In the perplexities and difficulties Meeting f 01 Parents. 77 of dealing with a variety of minds, which come to us in our family life, do we not sometimes feel comparatively helpless, and as though in this matter ways and means seemed to be of little use, and as though the only thing to do was to lay on one side the idea of reasoning, and to take them straight back to the arms of the Father who gave them, and who loves them with a love far beyond what we are capable of. If we take them back to Him day by day, asking Him to train them, and to show us how we shall walk before them, how we shall walk in company with them, if we are willing to give them entirely into His care and keeping, He will bring them to the desired haven far better than we can ourselves. We long to have them good soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are apt to think- that He must needs lead them by the same way that He has led us ; and perhaps we may be apt to forget that they are living a quarter of a century at least in advance of the time at which we lived. Then, again, one has felt how helpless one is, how one cannot please one self entirely in the education of these dear children. Our surroundings were different from what theirs are at the present day. There again one has felt that the only thing is to take them back to the arms of the Father who gave them, to tell them that they are His, and that He knows how to train them and teach them far better than we do ourselves. And if we are really willing that they should be first His children and then our children, then whatever path of life He should see fit to open before them, whether in the Home Mission work amongst our own people around them, or in the Foreign Mission field, whenever the time for it comes, we shall have the power to be willing to give them up, and to allow them to enter upon the work, feeling that it is the work of their Father, and of our Father, who can make no mistake in dealing with His children. Then it may be a difficulty With us, sometimes, fully to understand — though we may be able to sympathise up to a certain point — the many difficulties that come around our children in the matter of the thought of the present day. How incumbent it seems upon us as parents to keep ourselves abreast of such thought, that we may to some extent know what our children are passing through. Because, however much we may correct them, 78 Chairman's Address. and strive to impress our thoughts of things upon them, the young people in the world around them have more influence on them in this respect for the time being than their parents have, though I do not believe that that influence will be more lasting. I have often wished that the parents of children whom one knows and loves, might be led to educate themselves to keep in touch with their children. Henry E. Clark : One question that has not been alluded to at all is that with regard to any of us who may be called as missionaries, who may be grown up and have children of our own. That is the position we found our selves in when, twenty-six years ago, we were first called to His work ; and we recollect how the thought arose in our hearts that the time might come when we should have to leave our children, and we had to face the question whether it would be right for us to go and leave them. But it would not be right for me to leave this room without testifying that God who called us to the work, and gave us unmistakable evidence that we should go to Madagascar, has during that whole twenty-six years abundantly opened the way for us. He has raised up kind friends for our children, and they have been kept and cared for in every way ; and perhaps the crowning mercy of all is that He has called two of our dear children to be missionaries themselves. Frederick Andrews, B.A. : There may be Friends here who have not had the blessing of having children of their own called into the mission field. It may be the mission of such to care for those whose parents have been so called away — not by placing them in institutions, but by taking them one by one into their own homes, and doing for them as tenderly as if they were their own children. Third-day Afternoon, 22nd of Ninth Month, 1896. John Edward Wilson in the Chair. The Chairman : I should like to say that I do trust we all desire that that blessed sense of the Lord's presence with Foreign Mission Work by Friends : Advantages and Difficulties. 79 us, which we so earnestly sought in prayer this morning and which I think we received, may be continued during our sitting this afternoon. Our first subject is, " Foreign Mission Work by Friends : its advantages and disadvantages," introduced by Joseph S. Sewell. Opportunity will be given after the reading of the paper for any remarks from Friends, if there should be such present, who feel difficulties on the subject of Foreign Mission work. Every one knows that a large meeting of this kind cannot possibly become a debating meeting, but it was thought well that there should be an opportunity during the Conference for any Friend whose mind is burdened with any difficulty relating to our work in the Foreign Mission field to express the same, and possibly something will be said in the way of helping to solve the difficulty. After that, another paper will be read by Frederick Sessions upon " Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work." I will now ask Joseph S. Sewell to read his paper. Joseph S. Sewell : I don't think I have had quite as long a time given me as some of those who read papers this morning. That may be one reason why the latter part of my subject is very much omitted — the difficulties of Foreign Mission work. Some allusion is made to it, but very little. Joseph Stickney Sewell then read the following paper on FOREIGN MISSION WORK BY FRIENDS : ADVANTAGES AND DIFFICULTIES. PAPER BY JOSEPH STICKNEY SEWELL. To those of us who have taken a deep interest in Foreign Mission Work for fifty or sixty years, and have carefully watched the action and tendencies of the Society of Friends in relation to such work during that period, the mere existence of the present Conference and its appoint ment by the Yearly Meeting cannot but awaken feelings of joyful admiration and deep gratitude. Not that there has ever, during that time, been a marked absence of interest on the part of the Society in the spread of Christ's kingdom among the heathen : popular 80 Foreign Mission Work by Friends : missionary works such as Ellis's " Polynesian Researches," John Williams's " Missionary Enterprises," Robert Moffat's "Labours in South Africa," the Lives of the Judsons in Burmah, of Dr. Carey, of Henry Martyn, of William Knibb, and of other apostles to benighted nations, including some very devoted women, were to be found on the tables of Friends, probably quite as often as on those of other repre sentatives of the religious world. There is no doubt that these works stirred the hearts of many amongst us, making them long to go and do likewise. On the other hand there was an awkward barrier in the way, a strange, but a very honest conviction that missionary enterprise on the lines adopted by these true soldiers of Christ was contrary to the principles of Friends. They, who wished to work on lines like these, could not expect support from those with whom they were in religious fellowship : they would have to resign their membership. Yet there were many who subscribed liberally to the missionary societies of other religious bodies, some without reserve ; others calming their consciences by adding to their subscription the words, "for education." And again special appeals for missionary printing presses and schoolrooms, for the publication of Scripture lessons, and other useful addenda to missionary work, found hearty and liberal response here and there amongst us. All this, however, was exclusively individual work. Friends in their corporate capacity had nothing to do with these manifestations of right feeling and of high regard for noble Christian deeds, either in the way of approval or discouragement. With hardly an exception, the only line of missionary enterprise that was approved by the Elders of the days referred to was itinerant. Hearty support was given to the foreign labours of James Backhouse, Daniel Wheeler, and a few others, but these visits were mainly to our colonies ; they barely touched a thread of the fringe of heathendom. However good and effective their work might be, and some of it was very good, the transitory character of the visits paid would have rendered them all but valueless in places where the light of the gospel had not previously penetrated. So for sixty or seventy years after active missionary Advantages and Difficulties. 81 enterprise had been vigorously commenced among other British churches, the Friends of London Yearly Meeting in their corporate capacity practically stood aloof. The present Conference bears a grand witness to the fact that this is so no longer ; the offending barrier has been removed, and we are confident that it will never again be replaced. But how has this barrier been removed ? In attempting briefly to answer this question I wish to avoid stepping out side the limits of my subject, but I desire strongly to affirm my conviction that the barrier in question has not been removed by overriding what we call " our principles " ; but * rather by cultivating a broader and more correct estimate of them. As an illustration of what I mean : we have long ago learned that " true plainness of speech, behaviour, and apparel " is not dependent on a rigid adherence to one set form. Those who still love true simplicity in -these things have not forsaken " our principles," though they no longer stick to the old forms. And in like manner, though in this our eyes may have been opened more gradually, we have come to see that our Lord's words, " Freely ye received, freely give," do not forbid His servants under certain circumstances, especially when called to labour in strange countries amid gross ignorance and its usual accompaniments, to receive the freely given support of those who, unable to join them in their work, heartily sympathise with them in it. Thus the line previously drawn between itinerant and resident labourers disappears. So, too, in matters of more essential importance — our principles in regard to worship, the ministry of the word, and the headship of Christ in the Church. How opposed to the ideas on these subjects, with which in early life our minds were imbued, is the picture of a missionary as yet imperfectly acquainted with the language in which he has to speak, patiently preparing his sermon for the coming Sunday, writing it out, and then reading it to his native teacher for correction, lest inadvertently he should have made some ridiculous, or worse than ridiculous, mistake. He sees no ground to expect a miracle will he wrought on his behalf, and so he takes all the pains he can that the message from God which fills his heart may be delivered intelligently, 7 82 Foreign Mission Work by Friends : faithfully, and to God's honour. But is there in this anything really at variance with the principles of Friends ? Had we observed him previously in earnest prayer, and been able to read his heart, should we not have seen that his worship was " in spirit and in truth " ? that he was casting himself in all his weakness on the strength of Him who had entrusted him with this work, and to whom he looked as Head over all things to His Church ? Do we not realise that the earnest efforts of such an one and the deep yearnings of his heart are in closest harmony with the most cherished principles of Friends ? Much more might be said on this subject, but it is not needed. It is too much like recalling ancient history. In harmony, however, with what has just been said, it may be added that we who first set out for Madagascar under the auspices of the F.F.M.A., did so under the firm conviction that there is no divinely authorised form of church govern ment laid down in the New Testament for universal adoption ; but, what is far better, there is the all-sufficient promise of the presence of the living Lord, always near, and always, by His Spirit, ready to give the guidance and wisdom and grace adapted for every emergency. To us this conviction was an unspeakable comfort ; and as our call, unlike Paul's customary one, was to work among those where Christ had been already named, and, moreover, side by side with those whose teaching was not in all respects in harmony with our own, we felt it to be a sacred duty, whilst firmly maintaining what we believed to be right, never to allow any difference of opinion between us and our fellow workers to gender disputes or cause divisions among the natives. Had we gone out upholding the views of Friends in the rigid character of the old style, this would have been im possible. As it was, the following extract from the " Ten Years' Review of their Madagascar Mission," issued by the London Missionary Society, in 1880, will serve to show how far we succeeded : — " It has been our duty and our pleasure to include the Friends labouring in Madagascar among our fellow-workers, and as being in fact a part of our general mission. Though two distinct societies in respect to management and support, Advantages and Difficulties. 83 yet our plans of work are much the same, and the union which exists among us and also among the Churches, of which respectively we have charge, is such that in the eyes of the natives we are as brethren joined together in one common work. Since the arrival of the first Friends, in 1867, the pleasantest relations have prevailed among the representatives of the two societies, and the co-operation and Christian union were never closer than at the present time. The new and joint arrangements for the conduct of the Medical Mission have tended to draw us nearer to each other. We believe that this union has been a means of strength to both parties, and has had a most salutary influence on the native churches." These statements, for the most part, I believe, still hold good, and the missionaries of our own Association have often gratefully acknowledged that from the first the " Christian union " here referred to has been to them a means of real strength. Long may it last ! It is in some respects a union unique in missionary enterprise, and, so far as the Friends are concerned, is certainly dependent on the continued mainten ance of the broad principles on which their mission was commenced. Our missionaries in India, Syria, China, &c, began their work under different circumstances ; an un occupied field was before them, and they found there no Christian workers to whose judgment they felt bound to defer. But, if I mistake not, they too have reaped great advantage from their training among Friends, and in the breadth of their principles. Do not suppose that I advocate laxity of principle in doctrine or practice. " Let each man be fully assured in his own mind," and honestly uphold what he believes to be right ; but at the same time let him be careful how he interferes with another man's conscience. The influence of the Society of Friends in Great Britain and Ireland on the social, moral, and religious welfare of the nation is not to be measured by its numbers. To its patient firmness in early days in faithfully upholding the right, whether going with the stream or against it, much of this influence is due, and the work begun then is yet far from finished. A decline of spiritual life and zeal during the last century led to many well meant but often mistaken efforts to regain 84 Foreign Mission Work by Friends : health and strength by more stringent discipline and a careful weeding out of offenders. These measures were but partially successful ; fresh life and warmth and love are not thus en gendered. In the early decades of this century, however, a true re vival of light and life and devotion to Christ awakened in the Society a fresh outburst of healthy activity, the influence of which we still feel. This has been manifested in a great variety of ways ; very strikingly in the First-day Adult School movement, in Home Mission efforts, and not least in the work of the Foreign Mission Associations which we have met this day to consider. As yet these associations are in their infancy, but our earnest hope is that they may live on till their work is done, and till through God's grace and blessing they have been the means of bringing light and salvation to multitudes who now dwell in darkness. Two fervent aspirations on their behalf at this time fill my soul. May they always maintain the steadfast spirit of the Society of Friends in its early days. Like it may they be ever true to their allegiance to Christ as the one Head of the Church, allowing no man and no rite to come between the soul and God. May they also, like the early Friends, stead fastly hold up Christ as Lord and King, whose right it is to direct His people in the every-day concerns of life ; in all their so-called secular affairs, as well as in those that pertain to their religious duties. And again, may these associations, following the same example, be ever firm in their protest against all war. Unwavering steadfastness in these and other things, maintained in a humble Christ-like spirit, will present many difficulties, but the Lord's words to Paul should remove all hesitation : " My grace is sufficient for thee." And if in these and in many other points we, who are now engaged in foreign mission work, pursue our course in true accord with that of our spiritual ancestors, I also long very earnestly that we may never swerve from what I have called the broad principles which characterised the commencement of this work amongst us. I have already alluded to the happy awakening which aroused our Society to fresh life and devotion in the early decades of this century. That devotion was to Christ, not in the first place to our own Advantages and Difficulties. 85 religious body, to its interests and progress ; though the blessings which have flowed to it therefrom have been great beyond reckoning. The leading workers in the Adult First- day School movement were not actuated by narrow denomi national considerations, but what now would have been the condition of our Society if that movement had never been made ? Our Lord's words, " Whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it," apply to Churches as well as to individuals. This truth has been strikingly illustrated in the histoiy of our own Society. True then to the rich inheritance we have received from our forefathers, and untrammelled by the restraints of a narrow denominationalism, may our one aim be that of the first great missionary to the Gentiles, who, when at Corinth, determined not to know anything among them, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The Chairman : Our dear Friend J. S. Sewell is, as we all know, practically the pioneer of this work in foreign lands during its comparatively recent development in our Society ; and the weighty words he has laid before us this afternoon will be much valued. They have a special appro priateness in coming from one who has not only served this work so long, but has sacrificed so much for it. The meeting is now open for remarks from Friends. Henry Josiah Gill : I think one of the things about this Conference we have to be very thankful for is that it has not declared that Friends must abrogate their former principles, or change them, in order to take part in this mission work. We have had it laid down in paper after paper, and speech after speech, and we must all feel in our hearts that it is rather a fulfilling, a carrying out into practical life of these Quaker principles (which have some times been thought to stand in the way of Foreign Mission work) which impels the Society to the course it is now taking. One thought has occurred to me, not as an objection to this work, but as a matter of grave danger, that of allowing the spirit to be overlaid by the matters of form 86 Foreign Mission Work by Friends : with which it is surrounded; There is a danger in pre paration of somewhat clogging the true spiritual life and fervour. We may mistake Conferences, subscriptions, re ports, and all the paraphernalia which surround missionary work, as being the work itself. .1 don't think we are likely to mistake them permanently. These things are the chaff that the wind driveth away. True, but I never heard of any one who could grow wheat without chaff, although I think the Society has sometimes made the mistake of trying to do so. The despised chaff is essential as a nursery and protection to the grain grown within. But we must feel the distinction between the covering and the inward spirit. And when the thrashing time comes we must be willing to let all our committees, all our preliminaries go to the winds, so that we secure the essential spiritual wheat. The Chairman (in reply to an inquiry by Henry Stanley Newman) : I think it is quite understood that questions may be asked now. The meeting is open to any Friends who desire information, as well as to any who may be in difficulties as to the action we are taking. Gilbert Gilkes : I have seen a very strong illustration during the last few months of one of the dangers of missionary work where there is only the name of Christianity, and of belonging to Christ's Church with an almost entire absence of any but a superficial truth on the part of the heathen converts. I allude particularly to the colony of Natal and to the Kaffirs there. It was a strange and disappointing thing, when I landed there, to find almost everybody dis gusted with what they call the " Christian Kaffirs." It was my lot to live for several weeks amongst them, with every opportunity for learning about them. A number of these men and women receive some education ; they get to speak a little English, and learn by rote the principles of religion, and they go forth to the mines and other places with the name of Christianity upon them, but they are not really Christian at all. Yet they are included by some of the mis sions there as members of the Church, and very much harm is done. I have been introduced to families where they have Advantages and Difficulties. 87 said, " Don't let us have a Christian Kaffir for a servant, we would rather have one of the raw material." That is a great danger, and I think it must apply to other countries as well, though Natal is the only one I am qualified to speak of. Mis sions and missionaries are in discredit in that colony, though there are notable exceptions, of whom every one seems to speak well. It was my lot to meet Elbert Clarke there, and to have some long talks with him. I believe he is doing a useful work, and I heard of others who are doing the same. But the difficulty lies in the fact that as soon as a Kaffir comes to speak English, he can take situations that others cannot ; and thus it makes it for his advantage to go to the school and to profess Christianity. He gets amongst people, is able to understand wickedness, and to pick up a great deal he would not otherwise have been enabled to ; and so the missionary work is discredited with a great many. People say, "Why trouble with these Kaffirs ; let them lead the simple, happy lives they seem to now." That is a vast mistake ; no one can live amongst them without seeing that they are in the deepest darkness and degradation, and it is utterly selfish to let them remain as they are. The people there are willing now to employ them as labourers, but many fear that they will become skilled artisans, and thus a great deal of harm be done to the interests of English workmen, so they want to keep them down. I should like Friends, in looking at Natal, to remember that there is a continual rush for gold and business out there, and to keep the Kaffirs down is the natural instinct of the selfish heart. I would say to all Friends trying to do mission work, that any one going out there under the name of Christ who has not in his own heart the vital essence of the truth, is sure to bring harm to the cause which we all want to succeed. Henry E. Clark : I don't know if it is necessary for every remark to be replied to as it is made, but I have just come from that part of the world which has been spoken about— not actually landing at Natal, but calling there, and in conversation with people on the ship, I have heard some thing of the other side. Though there may be truth in what we have heard, yet I am told, on competent authority, that one reason why people do not like Christian Kaffir servants 88 Foreign Mission Work by Friends : is because they will not do what they used to in their heathen state. We meet with something of the kind in Madagascar. The young men, for example the medical students, are not always to be found when they ought to be at their classes. There may be a religious service going on ; and frequently when the Christian servants ought to be at their work, and the medical students at their classes, they will be absent with out leave because they want to go to these religious services. I have frequently heard ladies complain that their cook or their house-man is missing when he ought to be at his work, and all his excuse, when he comes back, is that he was at the service. We often have to instil this lesson on the hearts and minds of the servants and students, that there is something even better than going to religious services, and that is doing their proper work at the proper time. Frederick Sessions : I think that some of the difficulties we hear about Foreign Mission work link us very closely with Home Mission work ; the difficulties and objections that are mentioned are not at all unknown to us at home. We also have inconsistent Christians, and people who go back to drink and to the world. That should make us very patient and charitable with those who have just been brought out of heathendom, with all its darkness and surroundings making against a higher tone of moral life — even more patient than with our people at home. When I was going out to India, I heard a good deal about Christian servants being such failures on that continent. I generally found, upon inquiry, that those who made the complaints were of about the same class as the mistresses who are never able to keep a servant in England. I think Henry E. Clark may have touched on one reason. In heathen times these people may have been better slaves, but now they are independent Christian servants, and I don't blame them. If Christianity is going to do anything for them, it is going to lift them up. There are faults on both sides some times, but I will give you a practical illustration of the way in which Christianity does improve these people. A friend of mine who travels for a large firm, and goes all round the world, was in Bombay at the same time that I was. He had been collecting in Burmah, and had left some unpaid accounts Advantages and Difficulties. 89 behind that he had not had time to collect. He had taken with him a Christian native servant whom he had put to the test before. He said, " I will send him out to collect these amounts." Everybody said, "You foolish man; you will never see your servant or the money again, or he will only bring back a part of it." But he told me that not only had his servant returned, but he collected every penny and ac counted for it honestly. There are two sides to every question. Annie Fothergill : Hudson Taylor tells us of one of the missionaries in China who lived in a very distant part; where, in a time of famine, it was impossible to send him fresh supplies. He had used all his money and food, when his servant, who was a native Christian, came to him and asked him if he- would take the money that he himself had saved from his wages. The missionary lived on the servant's wages, with the understanding that it was not to be repaid to him, the mission being conducted on the principle of never going into debt ; and it was only just the very day when the money and food was all finished that Hudson Taylor was able to send fresh supplies. We have often heard from my brother and sister, Elbert and Emma Clarke, of converts who have been wonderfully true and helpful to them. I should like to endorse what was said about being very patient with those who have been brought out of such darkness ; and that, as we remember what great privileges and how much fuller life we have, we may ask God to make us more consistent in our lives. John H. Williams : A great many exceedingly unkind and very often altogether mistaken, if not false, things are said in India about the native Christians. We have native Chris tians at the Mission House as servants, and we have found them exceedingly faithful. Some of them have been with us all the time we have been in India, and we have found them honest all the time. There are exceptions of course. I have no doubt as to the dear Friend who spoke just now with respect to Natal, that some of the persons he spoke about were honest, upright Christian men and women ; but some of 90 Foreign Mission Work by Friends : them, perhaps, were not so. We require to be very careful in a country like, India how we listen to statements about native Christians. Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. : I should like to ask the missionaries if they have often found a difficulty in keeping to their spiritual work, owing to the quantity of secular work being pressed upon them by their converts ? I can easily understand that to a missionary going out to any of these heathen lands, surrounded by people of a much lower order of intellect and education, it is impossible that this should not be so. It is in the natural course of things that he should be made, and rightly made, an adviser, and a settler of disputes and something almost like a judge. But one sees that there is in this a danger lest the missionary should be sliding into a position rather like that of the mediaeval bishop of the middle ages, who became a great temporal power, not entirely through lust of power or greedi ness for gain, but through being the one person of superior education in the district of which he was bishop. We don't wish to see our missionaries become temporal potentates, but I fear sometimes there is a possibility of their spiritual work being hindered by such power being thrust upon them. We have heard accusations that some missionaries in the South Sea Islands were turning their mission work into business, and running it as a money-making concern. I have never heard such a hint about our missionaries, but I should like to hear if their spiritual work is ever interfered with by temporal concerns thrust before them. Henry E. Clark : I think in my own case the hindrance to my true missionary work icomes more from engage ments placed upon me in connection with my own mission ; such as keeping the accounts for the F.F.M.A., and acting as treasurer to the Medical Mission and the Native Mis sionary Society. As regards Madagascar, I think that what Thomas Hodgkin alludes to will apply more to the missionaries in the country, away from the capital, where their advice has been often sought, and very readily given so far as opportunity offered. But I do not think that there is Advantages and Difficulties. 91 cause for alarm at all in the direction that Dr. Hodgkin pointed out. I believe that all our missionaries are careful to place true evangelistic work before this other work, which I think is a very suitable one in the degree which has been spoken of. Joseph P. Drewett : Before this meeting closes I think I must redeem a promise which I made to some Friends of Westmorland Quarterly Meeting, to ask one or two questions and make one or two observations. They were a little anxious about the work of the F.F.M.A. in this country. It weighed on their minds that often, while the Association was deeply in debt to its treasurer, missionaries and those who thought they had a call to the mission field presented themselves before the Committee and were accepted, adding consider ably to the expenses incurred, when already there was a heavy deficit against it. That is one trouble on their minds. Another and a very much smaller one is, that they thought that too much money was spent over printing. With regard to this Conference, they take the Friend, the British Friend, and Our Missions, and in the first two of these there was an advertisement occupying two pages, as well as a notice in the latter. Besides that, each received two notices direct by post. They thought it was not right, that it was rather a contravention of the command, " Owe no man anything," &c, that further expenses should be incurred when the Associa tion was heavily in debt, and it could see very little way of meeting increased expenditure. The Chairman : I desire to refer to two matters — one, the remarks of Henry J. Gill in the early part of the con sideration of the subject, in which he spoke of the difficulties about college training, and the way in which it sometimes, and I believe not infrequently, interferes with the spiritual " impact," I was going to say, that the candidate has received, so that sometimes those who seemed very promising as candi dates for foreign work, lose the earnestness that they had, owing to their minds being unduly occupied with some years of study. I think that on that point there is a great deal of care exercised by the F.F.M.A., and I believe it is so also 92 Foreign Mission Work by Ft iends : with the Friends' Syrian Mission and others. We are exceed ingly careful not unduly to prolong the time of preparation ; but it is quite necessary that there should be preparation. At the last Committee meeting we had two applications from thoroughly satisfactory candidates, in whom we felt the greatest confidence, from the work they had already done in this country. But in neither case was it at all suitable that they should be sent out at once, and in both some training will be given, though differing somewhat for each. There is perhaps some exception to this where Friends go out as medical missionaries. Then, if they have not the proper qualifications, it is quite necessary that they should obtain them in this country. We are always anxious that when a candidate shows fitness for immediate service, there should be no unnecessary period of probation, and no undue money or time is spent on training not really required. Joseph Drewett alluded to two matters ; I will deal with the less important one first. Do any Friends know of anything in which a large amount of money is not spent on printing ? There may have been a needless number of circulars sent out in a few cases. But it is almost necessary nowadays, if we are to lay hold of public attention, that there should be even a little super-abundance of notice. And — I don't wish to give it as an excuse, but — I believe the Yearly Meeting pays for the printing in this case. That is not an excuse, I know, but from the Foreign Mission Association point of view it is helpful. Then as to the more important point, that while we are actually at the moment in debt, candidates for going out to the foreign field have been received. That is perfectly true — I know it of my own knowledge. And yet there again I believe that the Com mittee always looks at these matters in a very careful way, and desires to act as, in the sight of God. We receive these applications, and if we are convinced, after very careful con sideration, that the Friends, men or women, making such are really called of God to go out to the foreign field, we accept them. I have been on the Committee for a good many years, and I don't remember a case in which we have made lack of funds a reason for refusing. If the person satisfies the Com mittee that he or she has received the Divine call to go out, we believe that the Divine seal will be placed on that call, and Advantages and Difficulties. 93 that we shall not suffer financially. And I believe that really, taking it in the long run, that has been the case. Our last year has been our best year, financially. We have seldom or never had a year, I believe, in which funds have come in so steadily, and in which we have been so little behindhand at any part of the year. I believe it is the only right way to do it ; I do not see how we can do other, as Christian people believing in the guidance of God in these things. To wait until we can say, " We have £1,000 in the bank ; now we will send some one to China or India," I don't think would be the right way. We ^ are not indifferent to our financial position — we think a great deal about it ; but we think that what I have indicated is the proper line to take. Watson Grace : While I endorse what has been said by the Chairman, whose services on the Committee are so valuable, I believe there have been times in the history of the F.F.M.A. when, owing to the position of financial affairs, Friends have not felt so ready to encourage applications or offers of service. But he is quite right in saying that no one has ever been actually refused on that ground. I feel that it is extremely kind of Friends to criticise the expenditure of the Association upon Foreign Missionary work. I hope there will ever be a watchful care exercised on all our expenditure, not only in these but in other respects. We need to see that the funds entrusted to this or any other religious body are used with true economy. There are times when one feels that certain expenditure has not been so productive as at some other times. But I think, looking at the whole expenditure, there are few societies that are administered so carefully and economically as the F.F.M.A. I have prepared a little leaflet showing the percentage of our expenditure at home and abroad, and Friends will see what a very large proportion of their contributions is expended on direct Foreign Mission work, as compared with the home expenses. A smaller percentage is expended in the latter way than is the case with the large missionary societies. There are many other points Friends might raise, of more importance than this, with regard to the difficulties and advantages of the work. I am very anxious that Friends should realise the difficulties in which our mis- 94 Foreign Mission Work by Friends : Advantages and Difficulties. sionaries are often placed ; the pressing problems of good order and Church government ; and the questions arising in their work, to which the missionary in a strange country can only apply his own knowledge ; the difficult positions which he feels hardly able to cope with. As we realise some of these we shall be more able to sympathise with them. At the same time I should like to emphasise the advantages which we as Friends have in engaging in Foreign Mission work. There is so much in the freedom that we enjoy, so much in the fellow ship which prevails among us, so much in the ample confidence we have in one another. Knowing each other in our small community as we do, it is no small gain to be able to obtain reliable information regarding the offers of service that come before us. These are some of the advantages — and may we not say the responsibilities ? — that we possess, in connection with Foreign Missionary enterprise. I trust we shall receive a higher sense of these privileges, as a result of this meeting, not thinking too much of the difficulties, but desiring to meet them in a spirit of brave foresight. Peter H. Hughan : As a convinced Friend — the only Friend in Wigtownshire— there is a personal difficulty that I have in supporting Foreign Missions. It is this : Dr. Hodgkin was speaking of the missionaries in reference to the doctrine of the inner light, which I regard as the foundation doctrine of Quakerism. I am a witness, as a convinced Friend, to this light. The Light has led me from Home Missions, amongst which I was brought up, to something higher. I have given these up since I became a Friend. If it is right and proper for me to give up attending upon paid ministers and paid home missionaries, then, as Friends, can it be right for us to support home or foreign paid missions at all ? Frederic Taylor : As one who had the same difficulty at one time, I have some sympathy with the remarks of the Friend from Scotland. I feel with him that what we call paid ministry is not a thing the Society has sanctioned in the past, and we hope it will not do so in the future. But it is one thing to be supporters of those who feel it to be their duty to labour abroad, and another thing to provide salaries for Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. 95 ministers, as is done to so large an extent in other churches. I am glad of the opportunity of saying that whatever difficulty I felt some years ago has been very largely removed by the wise action of the Committee appointed to deal with this question. I think we ought to be thankful that we are able to unite together in an effort that is very real and honest, not only on the part of those who go forth, but of those who gladly support them. I think if our Friend is able to consult a little further with some of his friends, he may be able to come to the same conclusion that I have. Frederick Sessions : Before reading my paper I should like to thank the Committee for the opportunity of doing so. Yet I cannot help fearing that Friends may think it is not exactly on ,the lines of some of the papers we have already heard. It is specific rather than general, relating more to ouf internal organisation and practice than to our prin ciples, to practical methods rather than to academical or historical questions. And yet I want Friends to give me credit, whether they agree with me or entirely disagree with me, that this is just as truly a concern on my mind as any thing that is likely to come before this Conference — a concern that has been on my mind for some years, and has been steadily deepening as I have watched what I regard as the weakening of our missionary efforts for want of a little prac tical system. Frederick Sessions then read the following paper on HOME PREPARATION FOR FOREIGN MISSION WORK. In this paper many things must be taken paper by for granted. Frederick sess/ons. We assume that missionary volun teers, for whose more efficient home- training I am to plead, believe themselves called by God to their life-work, and that the Committee responsible for their support and oversight endorses that belief and recognises their general fitness, physical, intellectual, and spiritual. The Scriptural views of the Society of Friends as to the 96 Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. absolute necessity of a Divine call and separation to the work of the ministry, and of a Divine equipment for it, are not disputed. There can be no substitute for an anointing by the Holy Ghost. The only " holy orders " we know are those received direct from the great Head of the Church Himself. We cannot make a man a good steward of the mysteries of God by mere scholastic education. Brain power is but the cannon-ball which needs the propulsive energy of the blessed Spirit behind it to enable it to breach the ramparts of prejudice and the love of sin. It was well said by Dr. Gillson, of Hankow, that " a man who goes out to the foreign mission-field thinking to convert the heathen by means of his gigantic intellect, will be a gigantic failure." Nevertheless, brain power and accurate knowledge are as cannon-balls, and by helping those whom Christ has called into His service to become possessors of them, the Church is doing but its bare duty to both the Caller and the called. The day is long passed, even if it ever existed, when commercial failures, " stickit ministers," "ploughed " students, and the like, can be considered suitable for foreign service. There is no room abroad for any but the best type of our young manhood and womanhood, though these are not necessarily found in wealthy or upper social circles, nor among our birthright members exclusively. With the grace of consecration, natural capacity, and bodily vigour as a basis, an effective degree of culture of the right sort can be built thereon in due time. I do not forget that there are diversities of gifts and administrations. Medical, industrial, and educational mission aries require special training for their special branches. This we usually expect them to get, and I believe rightly, apart from our funds. But hospitals and dispensaries, the teach ing of arts and crafts, high schools and colleges, are only means to an end. The end is the winning to Christ that little piece of the world which immediately environs the doctor or the schoolmaster. Over and above his special requirements, therefore, every such labourer for the Lord ought to have the knowledge which only a course of direct missionary training can ensure, whether the two lines of study run concurrently or consecutively. Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. 97 Neither do I forget that exceptionally able and cultured men and women of mature age and experience seldom offer for either Home or Foreign Mission service. What the ex planation may be it is hardly expedient now to inquire, though the fact should make us thoughtful and prayerful. An Eastern proverb tallies with the experience of all mission Boards : " It is easier to find a thousand soldiers than .one general." It is for the benefit of the rank and file of mission ary volunteers that I offer some suggestions as to the broad principles which it seems to me should guide us in their home-training, with the understanding that any details I have gone into by way of making my meaning clear would really fall within the province of some competent committee for actual settlement. There is one thing we have done which I certainly would not do. In no case would I again give a mere schoolboy- education at the cost of the Foreign Mission Association. How desirable soever shorthand, map-making, and the rule of three may be, I cannot think it is incumbent upon us to provide them. They are just as much outside our province as the professional course of an intending medical or educa tional missionary. If we offer to young men needing an ele mentary education a free residence at Chester House * under the late John Horniman's munificent trust, then their friends, or some supplementary fund, should be chargeable with their school fees. We, on our part, should, however, insist that, whether obtained during residence at Chester House or outside its walls, our candidates should have reached a certain degree of proficiency in what is called " commercial " education before we assume any responsibility whatsoever for their direct and specific missionary training. I think this degree should be at least equivalent to the highest grade of ordinary College of Preceptors, or Oxford or Cambridge local examinations ; but this is a matter for consideration. Assuming our candidates pass their entrance tests satis factorily by actual examination or production of certificates, what, then, is to be done for them ? We should place them in the Hall of Residence at once ; but this should be made much more than a Hall of Residence — nothing short of an * The Friends' Missionary Home, Clapton, London. 8 98 . Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. efficient training school for missionaries. There they should remain, on an average, for two years, during which time they should go through the hardest intellectual work they are ever likely to get in their lives. I would recommend a curriculum somewhat as follows : Give them at least three Bible lessons a week with a monthly recapitulation by the students. If they have passed the examination I have suggested they will have obtained a certificate for general Biblical knowledge. The lessons now to be received should, therefore, bear upon their future careers, and might be after these patterns : — Showing that the appeal to heathen nations to forsake their idols is, in both Old and New Testaments, on the ground that Jehovah is the Creator, and as such is entitled to their worship. Collating the Old Testament prophecies respecting the ingathering of the Gentiles to Christ ; examining our Lord's own teaching respecting the nature, extent, and duration of the kingdom of heaven upon earth ; studying both the theme and the methods of apostolic missions in the Book of Acts ; learning how to establish and build up native churches, self-supporting and aggressive, as did the earliest Christian missionaries ; searching into the character and qualifications of successful missionary pastors, such as Paul desired Timothy and Titus to be ; realising the necessity of prayer, patience, and tact from the glimpses of missionary biographies we get in the New Testament ; beholding the influence and work of the Holy Spirit in missions among Jews and Samaritans, Greeks and barbarians, bond and free, cultured and uncultured ; drinking in wisdom and power from the revelation of the heart and mind of Christ our Saviour as given us in John's Gospel ; or dwelling on the proofs that the one topic which in old time touched the innermost depths of the heathen's heart was the word of the Cross : "Jesus Christ and Him Crucified" ; and many similar subjects that will as readily occur to the minds of others as to my own. Another course of study, only second in importance to Bible study, and involving about the same number of weekly lessons, should have reference to non- Christian systems of religion, and the attitude of Christ and the Christian missionary towards them. For the most part our candidates come to us Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. 99 with an intense ignorance of other religious systems than their own, ethnic or philosophic, and are in darkness also about the histories, characteristics, and habitats of the nations they ask to be sent to. Perhaps they are not altogether to blame for this. They have had access to few books, no one to direct their reading, and limited time for literary pursuits. It should be our privilege and pleasure to place them in a position to acquire this desirable knowledge. They should not go abroad before they have acquired more of it than the average merchant or civil servant brings home with him at the close of his career, which is no great task. The lessons I propose for them must embrace clear defini tions of the essential difference between Christianity on the one hand, and Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism, respectively, on the other, as well as the differences and similarities between these and Fetishism, animism, and ancestor worship, and how many of all these, in popular faith, are mingled in a truly eclectic fashion. They want accurate, if elementary, knowledge of the actuating motives of popular idolatries, and a realisation that the Shastras, or sacred books, are as little known by the millions of India and China as they are by those of Europe, whatever excellences may have been found by searching, and translated for us into English. They must not be de luded into the belief that a few pearls of ethical truth, strung together by Sir Edwin Arnold in his own smooth versification, constitute the substance of Hinduism, any more than his pretty description of its temples and their services of dance and song are true pictures of realities. The highest utterances to be culled from the Shi-King do not place the literature of one of the three religions of China on an equality with the Christian Bible, nor is esoteric Buddhism, as pre sented in English garb, a fair representation of the teachings of Gautama, still less of living forms of his worship in any part of the world. There is so much loose and ignorant talk about these things in this country that it seems best to throw in a word of caution. No real scholar endorses this talk, and the saving of our young men from its influence will depend largely upon the right use of such works as those of Sir Monier Williams, Sir Wm. Hunter, Professors Max Miiller, ioo Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. Rhys Davids, and Legge, Sir Wm. Muir, and Mr. Sell. St. Paul's appalling description of the actual facts of heathenism I used myself to think, or hope, was an exaggeration. When I saw them for myself, I realised that he had in truth rather under than over-drawn his picture. At the same time that they are taught to differentiate accurately between true systems that make for holiness and false that make for evil, I should trust, however, their teachers would point out that devout men, fearing God, are in every nation accepted of Him. It is doubtless true that as Griffith John, of Hankow, asserts, " we hear much more of the enlightened heathen at home than we see of him in China " ; nevertheless, an individual soul here and there has in modern days, as well as in those of Seneca and Socrates, attained to something very near to Christianity, and deep down below the incrustations of false teachings and degrading practices there lies in every man a capacity for spiritual knowledge, to be reached by digging for it. What is essential is that this should be understood to be the result of devout meditation, and the conscious or unconscious influence of the Holy Spirit, and not of the teachings of non-Christian systems. Not one of these reveals or acknowledges a Fatherly and loving God who concerns Himself with the best interests of His children — even the monotheism of the Mohammedan is strictly fatalistic. Not one of them knows of a divinely appointed atonement for the moral defilement and sin of the world — all-sufficient because made by Incarnate Deity, and all-embracing because made by Incarnate Love. The Hindu sacrifices of goats to Kali are to avert her wrath and- pro pitiate her from scourging them with small-pox or other plagues, and to secure her protection for " life, honour, off spring, wives, and wealth." None of them so much as men tions that inward, purifying, energising power of God whom we know as the Holy Ghost. The heaven of one religion is materialistic ; that of another consists of annihilation at the end of myriads of rebirths ; a third has no hereafter but one of ghostland and haunting spirits. It v/ill be seen that such studies would promptly bring the students face to face with the great problems of life and Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. 101 death, which are solved only by Christian theology — by which term I mean the Biblical doctrine of God, His relation to the visible world and to mankind through His Christ — and they imply some acquaintance with what are technically called apologetics and evidences. These could not be shirked if we wished to, and time would have to be found for entering carefully and sympathetically into them upon a wholly Scriptural basis, and not from the standpoint of any philosophic school, orthodox or heterodox. The form in which I would like to see the Bible readings given, and the lessons on non-Christian systems and on the Christian verities, would be that of lectures lasting about an hour. Notes should be taken, and each lecture should refer the classes to authoritative books to be found in a well- selected library, which should be studied with a view to the monthly recapitulation. The mornings might be devoted to these lectures and the ensuing private study. But do not misunderstand me. I do not advocate sending forth a band of polemical preachers. For though I hold that a missionary will be the abler advocate of the covenant of grace for know ing what his non-Christian hearers are thinking, I also hold with him whom men call Saint Francis of Sales, that " he who preaches love is opposing heresy without saying one controversial word." The afternoon I should have occupied — except Saturday, which should be religiously reserved for a holiday — by quite a different course. It is an open question whether living languages — Arabic, Malagasy, Chinese, Hindi — are best studied by missionaries in England or during their first two years abroad. The balance of opinion seems to be in favour of the latter plan. Assuming this to be correct, I still think the first year of study should be utilised in laying a linguistic foundation and in testing the student's capacity for languages. To this end, if the tongues of their prospective spheres of labour are to be excluded, I would substitute Greek. I quite understand that a year or two's study will not turn out an accomplished Greek scholar. Yet I hold that if a man cannot master a Greek verb he has small chance of getting hold of Arabic or Chinese, whilst, on the other hand, even such a slight knowledge as he can attain to will enable him 102 Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. to handle a lexicon with ease, and the New Testament will become full of freshness to him. His Greek might stand him in good stead if he were ever called upon to assist in translating any portion of the Scriptures into the vernacular or in revising a translation already made. If Greek is objected to, let Latin or French be the substitute, though either would be a poor one under the circumstances, except that French may now become essential to our Madagascar mission, and a language of some sort would occupy a portion of — say half — the afternoon. The other portion might well be given to a little Church history, especially on the missionary side of it, both mediaeval and modern, and to missionary biography. They would thus learn the folly of the clamour from home that they should speedily see conversions and " count heads." It took three centuries to make the Roman Empire even nominally Christian, and then, through being in too much of a hurry, the Church absorbed heathen super stitions and custom, and Romanism was the product. They would learn also that though the mightiest forces of God operate slowly they never fail, and that while three genera tions of missionaries may have to sow, the fourth inevitably reaps, not converts by ones and twos, but by hundreds and thousands. The evenings I would apportion between some of the suggested lessons on Christian truth, and outside mission work in some Home Mission centre as at present. The Home Mission evenings and all Sunday's work should receive as much attention from the management as the lessons and study. The power of reaching men's con sciences and influencing their minds, though based on spiritual gifts and insight, can undoubtedly be increased by practice and wise counsel. The " art of putting things," whether in mission services, meetings for worship, or street preachings, or lectures, is not to be acquired by alternations of neglect and snubbing. The young fellows need to be lived with, sympathised with, and talked to kindly by those who can judiciously apportion praise or blame, and at the right seasons. Secure their love and confidence, as well as their respect, and there will be very few that you cannot mould to your liking of such consecrated men as the Association wishes to aid. Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. 103 They should be expected to work together on a committee of the Mission, that they might thus learn lessons in co-operation and mutual forbearance, and their Principal should be no more in this committee than its chairman. Besides serving on such a committee, each student should have a department, if only a class of infants or a Band of Hope, for the success of which he should be responsible to his fellow-workers, with their advice and assistance. Hitherto I have spoken only of the first of two years. If a man is able at its termination to go at once into the foreign field, well and good. Few would be: If he is to get his second year's training it is manifest that most of the first year's subjects must be continued, but in an advanced stage. He would probably now be ready to pick up that simple knowledge of medicines and elementary surgery which it seems desirable the majority of missionaries should possess. Perhaps, while each lesson is stiffer, there might be fewer on non-Christian systems, and time gained for some on the history, ethnology, and folk-lore of the populations of their adopted homes. This, again, is a mere detail. Time for the medical study might well be gained by lessening the week-night mission work, supposing the first year's testing in this direction has been satisfactory. This two years' course now suggested, when it is looked into, is really a very modest and moderate one for those who have secured the entrance passes which I propose. I am not pretending to build ships from planks cut out for boat building. There is nothing that cannot be carried out at our present Hall of Residence at Chester House. The House- Father must, however, in the first instance, be liberated from the necessity of earning any portion of his living, and be enabled to devote his whole time to tuition and oversight. He must be as much a Principal as the Head of the Flounders Institute or the Superintendent of York or Ackworth. The demand upon his time and energies will certainly be no more than that upon the master of a large boarding-school or college. He would require assistance in proportion to the number of missionary volunteers in training, and it would probably happen that he was not himself acquainted with all 104 Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. the subjects in the curriculum. Such aid as was required should be given, not outside the house, but in it — under the eye of the Principal, who should always know the details of everything going on. Frequently the services of our ablest retired or furloughed missionaries could be secured for special courses. Some are better fitted for this than for deputation work, and would vastly enjoy it. The cost of such an extension would be less than might be imagined, because the endowment already provides board and lodging, &c, for Principal and pupils, and the fees now paid to a preparatory school would be saved. But even if it ultimately cost fourfold, and even if no supplementary sub scription list or endowance were forthcoming, our Mission Association funds would be more wisely expended, and produce a far better return from a missionary's point of view than the present system — or rather want of system. The Board of Management would have to be enlarged — probably it should consist of representatives of the Horni- man Trust for the Boarding House, and representatives of the F.F.M.A. and Syrian Committees. This enlarged Board should meet monthly. Its cue should be to leave well alone when things are going right, and only to interfere if the Principal happens to get slack, or the work proves beyond his powers, or he appeals for their help. Their functions should be both advisory and supervisory^ like our public school committees. It will be obvious that almost all I have said will be, in general outline, as applicable to young women as to young men. The inevitable closing of Forster House — inevitable under the circumstances, and yet wholly unfortunate — has left us not only without the machinery for training them, but without even a place of residence in which the machinery might be set up and set to work ! When we get a new Forster House it will be time enough to discuss the question of training our young lady volunteers. I feel that one of the causes of failure was precisely the want of any provision by its managing committee for systematic training and oversight in a strictly home and foreign missionary sense, but I know there is a widespread hope that a false start will not prevent a better one being made. Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. 105 For the young men, on whose behalf I have been specially pleading, is there no hope ? or is Chester House to follow the fate of Forster House, only lingering a little longer because of its endowments ? Am I to appeal in vain to a Society so eminently practical as ours in all the com mercial and civil relationships of life ? Is not the Lord's work in the foreign mission-field better worth the expendi ture of thousands than the technical education of our sons, necessary as this unquestionably is, or than any political object, how freely soever we grant that politics are lawful for Christ's and His people's sake ? If I may venture to interpolate some modern words into the ancient question of Moses to the Sons of Korah, I would ask, " Seemeth it but a small thing unto you that the God of Israel hath separated these young missionary volunteers from the congregation of Israel to bring the heathen near unto Himself ? " Watson Grace: The difficulty that comes before us with regard to the training of candidates is premised by that of obtaining suitable candidates for the work. An experienced missionary secretary who had a good deal to do with this work said recently that there were four things a missionary candidate needed in addition to the indispensable Divine call — tact, application, animation, and humour. I believe that these four characteristics will carry a man or woman through many of the difficulties they will meet with in Foreign Missionary work. At the same time, granting the suitability of the candidate, it is a wise expenditure of Foreign Missionary funds when he can be rightly trained for the service, and I believe that is a work well worth the attention of the Society of Friends, though the number of such candidates must necessarily be small. The question arises in a large degree from the difficulty of providing an establishment for such a purpose for a comparatively limited constituency. May I refer to a paragraph in the paper read by Joseph Rowntree at the Conference held last year at Manchester, in which he said : '' In what way could a rightly gifted man do a greater service to our Society than by gathering round him in some fitting centre ardent young spirits, full of love to God and man, and through personal 106 Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. association, and the influence of spirit upon spirit, and wise guidance and instruction, fitting them so far as human agency is concerned, for service in our meetings through the exercise of gifts of teaphing or ministry ? " * Applying that principle — and I believe many of us at the time felt that there was a lack in the Society with regard to it— applying the same principle to Foreign Missionary work, we shall find that something of that kind is needed in order that the problems Frederick Sessions has alluded to may be met. Charles Brady : It', seems a bold thing to criticise a paper from one so experienced as Frederick Sessions, but I must confess that it is to my own mind a little discouraging. It is discouraging that a Friend with so large an experi ence should think that so much is needed to train a foreign missionary. One of the recommendations of the F.F.M.A. is the extreme simplicity and directness with which it has met the opportunities that have come to it. I fear that if so much were attempted as has been suggested this afternoon, not only would part of the spiritual force evaporate, but it would act as a great discouragement upon those who are conscious that they do not possess so much of the outward qualifications as are there insisted' upon, who yet do feel a strong love for souls in their hearts and a definite call to the work. I don't think we are any the worse for having heard the paper, but I should view with distress and almost alarm any attempt on the part of the F.F.M.A. to lay down any such elaborate system of training. Some amount of training, we shall agree, is needful, but I trust it may always be kept in the simplest possible form, that too much time will not be taken up, or too much crowded into it, and that there will always be the simplicity which has hitherto characterised the dealings of Friends with those coming before them for service. James Briggs : I fully united in the first part of the paper that has been read. I quite believe also that Christ teaches His own people Himself and prepares them for their * Manchester Conference Report, p. 269. Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work. 107 work. As we are willing to come down under the living power of Christ in our own hearts and to be taught by Him, He will set before every individual what He requires at his hands. If we come down here we shall be led to see that the spirit which prevails in the world is not that which gathered our early Friends into a Society to hold forth certain prin ciples. Are we holding forth those principles now? We want to get down into our own hearts, to the living seed of the Kingdom. As we are brought here we shall come to see and to feel what our duty is, and as we are willing and obedient unto what He shows us we shall become a growing people, and the spirit of the world will die out amongst us, and the spirit of righteousness will rise within us. It is not self- working and self-running that will do it ; it is Christ Himself. The Chairman : I should like to say a few words on this particular point. Our friend, Frederick Sessions, has had a good deal of experience both of home work and of foreign. He has visited Foreign Missions in India, and he has had a good deal to do with the candidates for service. Friends must realise that one of the objects of a Conference like this is to hear the views of persons of some experience in these matters. Frederick Sessions has very properly given us his own views, but his own admission that we are not doing anything to this extent at present is rather an answer to Friends who think that what we are doing is too elaborate. It is thrown before the Conference for the opinions of Friends. Some think it is too elaborate a scheme. I don't wish to say anything to depreciate the paper, which is a very careful one, and, coming from Frederick Sessions, is worth our serious consideration. The Clerk then read the following Minute : The subject of " Foreign Mission Work, its Advantages and Difficulties," has been introduced by Joseph S. Sewell. Following upon this, Frederick Sessions read a paper upon " Home Preparation for Foreign Mission Work." 108 The Heathen's Knowledge of God. Third-day Evening, 22nd of Ninth Month, 1896. PUBLIC MEETING. Arthur Pease, M.P., in the Chair. In connection with the Conference a Public Meeting was held at the Central Hall on Third-day evening. The meeting had been thoroughly advertised, and the hall (which is the largest in the town) was well filled by the inhabitants of Darlington and members of the Society. The proceedings commenced with the singing of the well-known missionary hymn, " From Greenland's icy mountains," after which vocal prayer was offered. THE HEATHEN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. The Chairman : So large a proportion of address by this company is composed of those who arthur pease, m.p. have been attending the meetings held in the Friends' meeting-house to-day, that it seems only necessary to briefly explain that the Society of Friends, at its Yearly Meeting held in London in May, gave its approval to the holding of meetings at Darlington for two or three days, for the purpose of considering various aspects of the Foreign Mission work carried on by members of the Society. Two meetings have been held to-day at the Friends' meeting-house, and they have been times of very considerable interest. It was felt that these meetings ought not to be confined merely to members of the Society, but that when so many Friends were gathered here with infor mation about Foreign Missionary work, it was only right that the townspeople of Darlington should have the opportunity of hearing what they might have to say to them. The F.F.M.A. is a comparatively modern institution — modern compared with some of the great Protestant missionary societies, which have much larger resources and a much larger number of missionaries in the foreign field. But though a body comparatively small in numbers and of recent date, it may interest some here to know that, besides native The Heathen's Knowledge of God. 109 helpers, there are more than seventy men and women Friends engaged in the Foreign Mission field. I have sometimes thought that some of us have had to recast our views with regard to Foreign Mission work. When we were children we were taught how the heathen abroad recognised in their idols their gods, bowed down to them, and looked upon them as the source of blessing and suffering. As we have grown older, we have more thoroughly realised that there has been a recognition of a spiritual existence beyond and outside the idol itself. I was interested in read ing, a day or two ago, in a " credo " of the ancient worship of Egypt, words like these : " Thou art not graven on marble ; Thou art not seen by mortal eye ; Thine abode is in the unseen ; no temple can hold Thee ; vain are all their images of earth." Thus whilst we think of the golden calf and the sacred bulls and ibises in connection with ancient Egypt, and we know that they had such objects of adoration ; still we find, thousands of years before Christ, a recognition of the great Divine power and influence, of the fact that the image itself was vain, and that God dwelt not in temples made with hands. In the ancient Hindu religion we find much the same ideas — recognition of the Fatherhood of God, monotheism — though they did have many images of gods, and sacrifices, showing that God did not leave Himself without a witness. Allusion was made this afternoon to Socrates and Seneca. There, again, we can recognise, in the ancient Greek and Latin mythologies, that though there were gods and goddesses many, yet there was a recognition of one great god, Zeus or Jupiter as he was variously called, who was superior to all the minor gods and goddesses. So we do not feel now that the missionary goes forth to quite such a simple work as some might be inclined to believe. He does not go to point out that there is no real life or vitality in stone, or wood, or marble images, but to point out to the heathen how those notions that he has of God have been degraded, how the idea of a great God and Father of all has been degraded, how the idea of sacrifice has been degraded. We point to the all-good Father in heaven, the great God of love, and to the efficacy of the sacrifice made by the Sinless One for sinners the no The Heathen's Knowledge of God. world over. And with that teaching our missionaries desire, in the words of the early Friends, to reach the "witness" ; and they do reach it. Those of us who have travelled abroad have seen men, and women more especially, brought out of the degrada tion of heathen worship into the light of the gospel, whose whole characters and demeanours have been altered thereby. I think we should recognise that there is much, even in those still outside, of purity of life amongst indi viduals. I enjoyed my association, when upon the Opium committee in India, with the late Mr. Haridas Veharidas, the prime minister of one of the Native States ; a Hindu, who would not take a cup of tea with us for fear of breaking his caste. But he spoke of God ; he would not do anything wrong for fear lest God should see him ; and he was doing everything he could for the best welfare of his own people, taking a great interest in temperance, thrift, the opium question, and everything that tended against vice and immo rality amongst them. In a letter written just before his death he said that he had withdrawn from all political duties, in order that he might spend the remainder of his days in reli gious meditation. One little story about him may amuse us. He had lost some of his faith — had lost a great deal of faith in the superstitions of his religion. But when we were at Benares he went to bathe in that sacred river, the Ganges. He came and told me what he had done, and then he said, " You know, my mother " and he stopped. " I know," I said ; " your mother would think that you had missed a great opportunity." " Yes, that's just it," he replied ; " she would think I had missed an opportunity." He did not think him self that he had derived any spiritual good from bathing in the Ganges, but he had bathed for her satisfaction. So it is well that while we talk about the degradation of their ideas of God, family life, women, and morality, we should recognise that there are still among them men of purity of life, men earnestly seeking after God. We don't go to them and say that they have never known anything of God. As the mis sionary speaks of the redeeming love of Christ, he does reach the " witness," and those who acknowledge it find a joy and comfort in believing, sustaining them under all the circum- Friends' Mission Work in India. in stances of life, and assuring them of a glorious resurrection at the end of life. Our missionaries, in dealing with a great deal of prejudice and difficulty, are often met with evidences of more purity of life — unfortunately, I was going to say — amongst the natives, than they find amongst some professing Christians of those lands. There is no doubt that the behaviour of some of these Europeans is a great stumbling- block in the way of the missionaries there. FRIENDS' MISSION WORK IN INDIA. John H. Williams : I believe that praise and address by thanksgiving to our loving Father in heaven john h. williams. has been very much upon the hearts of most of us gathered within these four walls to-night. But I believe that it has been even more so — I can speak, at least, of myself — upon the hearts of those mission aries who have returned from their fields of labour and who are here to-night to speak to you about the work in the fields which they represent. I thank God for this meeting. The Chairman said that the missionary going forth to his work goes to no easy task. Some of us can testify to that. To realise this come and stand in the bazaar of one of our Indian towns, or in one of the great melas — those religious gatherings, in one of which it was my privilege to stand with Frederick Sessions, on the banks of the Ganges. We saw there sights we can never forget. Much is said about the enlightenment of the heathen. One needs to stand face to face with this awful blackness — the darkness of heathen dom — to realise how small a being man is. Early in my experiences as a missionary, I was privileged to stand with Samuel Baker as he preached to the people gathered in Itarsi market, and I thought then, Who is sufficient for these things ? It seemed to be impossible to reach those people ; but we had to go on working and praying, faithfully doing what God had called us to, in the best way we could. For eighteen years my wife and I have worked in the Central Provinces of India. We had the privilege of being co-workers for a few years with Rachel Metcalfe, who has 112 Friends' Mission Work in India. since passed away to her reward, after much faithful labour among the women of Hoshangabad. When we first arrived there was but one mission station, now we have five. The work is an ever-increasing one — we say it humbly ; but the Lord has blessed it so richly, it is growing and extending, and we can only say, Glory be to God for it all. We now have stations at Hoshangabad, Sohagpur, Seoni Malwa, and Itarsi, in the Central Provinces, and Sehore in the Native State of Bhopal, with many other detached stations scattered around these centres. Under our care are several trusted native teachers and Bible-women, who are lending their services to the good work that is going on. We have seen workers taken away, and the gaps are not yet quite filled up. But we are thankful that we have some young missionaries here to-night who are looking to go out to India and China almost im mediately. I am sure the prayer of this meeting will be that they may be blessed with health and strength ; that they may be helped to acquire the language, whether Hindi or Chinese, so that they may soon be able to preach the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to the people where they are going. Ellen Nainby is working in Sohagpur, assisted by Ada Stephens, until it shall please the Lord to take me and my wife back again. I have a letter from E. Nainby, saying how the missionaries were earnestly praying that an interview, about to take place with the Begum of Bhopal, might be blessed. The Begum is a Mohammedan, and hitherto she has opposed the entrance of the Christian missionary into the State. But we have been praying for, and watching for indi cations of an open door, and the letter says how Mr. and Mrs. St. Dalmas were about to visit the Begum. They were going with prayer in their own hearts, and followed by the prayers of many others, to try and get her to yield what she has hitherto refused. Twelve years ago I went with Mr. St. Dalmas to see what could be done there. We were allowed within the walls of the City of Bhopal, but on con dition that we did not preach the gospel. My dear friends, I want to ask you to pray our Heavenly Father that He may touch the heart of the Begum, so that not only the city, but also the many hundreds of villages of that State may be Friends' Mission Work in India. 113 thrown open, and that our missionaries may speedily enter in and carry the gospel there. At Sohagpur we have two schools for boys and two for girls. Some of our more promising lads have been passed on to our High School at Hoshangabad, that they may have the advantage of the education given in that institution. When I went to Sohagpur, sixteen years ago, I remember how difficult it was to get boys to come to our school. We called on the fathers and mothers, but they would not trust us ; they were suspicious, they could not understand that mission aries could leave their homes and come out there with the purely disinterested idea of doing them good. They thought there must be something selfish in the whole matter. It took a little time to break that clown, but under the blessing of God, we gained their hearts and confidence, and now we have an open door. In conclusion, I want to ask whether one of the results of this Conference is not to be that some of the young men and young women attending it shall feel themselves con strained to enter upon work for the Master, in some part of the foreign field ? I believe that the missionaries in India, in China, in Madagascar, and in Syria are praying to-night that this may be the outcome of this Conference. Charles D. Terrell : As I was looking address by to the Lord this afternoon about to-night's charles d. terrell. meeting, He led me to a passage in Nehe miah, which I should like to read before speaking about our work in Sehore. " Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me ; as also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work. But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they laughed us to scorn, and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do ? will ye rebel against the king ? Then answered I them, and said unto them, The God of heaven, He will prosper us ; therefore we His servants will arise and build " (Neh. ii. 18-20). I do thank God that we who have come here, from India or from other countries to 9 114 Friends' Mission Work in India. speak to you to-night and to-morrow night can ' give our testimony that the good hand of our God is upon us. I want to speak about our work in Sehore and in the State of Bhopal, because I feel that that part of our district in India especially needs our prayers at this time. In a letter I have received from Henry St. Dalmas, he asks me to bring this subject specially before the Conference, and to say how the Lord is, we trust, opening the door for the gospel to be preached in the Bhopal State. As John H. Williams has told us, Bhopal is a Mohammedan State, and in that lies the root of our difficulty in working there. Though only one-fifteenth of the people in the State are Mohammedans, yet the fact that it is ruled over by a Mohammedan princess, called The Begum, renders it exceedingly difficult for us to make headway there. In the spring of 1890 we first went to Sehore through the invitation of Colonel Wylie, who was at that time political agent. The reason he asked the Friends' . Mission to take up work in that part was because he was just starting a leper asylum in connection with the State, and he wanted to have Christian teaching given there. He had been struck by seeing the numbers of lepers who congregated in Sehore and Bhopal City, and one day while riding out he found a dead leper lying by the roadside. He asked the people of the next village why they had let the man die. The answer was, " Oh, he is only a leper ; we cannot do anything for him ; " and there and then he had to get some people of the very lowest caste to bury the body. So he made up his mind to start a leper asylum. The Begum made him a grant of land for a site, gave money, and promised to support it. Colonel Wylie then invited us to come up and work there, but he told us at the same time that we should have to stay in Sehore, within the boundary of the territory given to the English by the Begum. And we soon found that this was true. One lady came up to Bhopal City, intending to work amongst the women. She began to visit, but I am not sure that she had been working for twenty-four hours before the Begum sent one of her servants to ask her to pack up her luggage and go to the railway station, where he saw her off. However, we were very glad to get into Sehore, and have always cherished the hope that this opening may be the Friends' Mission Work in India. "5 thin end of the wedge, and that in God's time we may have free access into the whole of the State. Soon after we arrived a Mohammedan came up to me, a son of one of the chiefs, and told me that he wanted a little business conversation. He said, " I believe you have come up here to make people Christians." I replied, " I have come up here to teach them about Jesus." " Well," he said, " I want you to make a bargain with me, and then I'll come with you, and if you'll only promise me one thing I'll help you. You tell the Hindus that they are to become Christians, and I'll take my gun, and then if they say they won't become Christians I'll tell them I'll shoot them." " What is the other side of the bargain ? " I asked. " Oh, that you are not to make any Mohammedans Christians." " I am afraid," I said, " you have come to the wrong person. In the first place, I have come to preach the gospel to every creature — Christ has told me to do so ; and, in the second place, it is not I or you who can make any man a Christian, but the Spirit of God. That is the difference between the Christian and the Mohammedan religion. You make people converts by force ; we lead them by the help of the Holy Spirit to Christ." He went away very disappointed. We went on praying, and last year two Moslems, the first to make any attempt to become Christians, came up and told me they wanted to do so. I told them to come another evening for a little Bible-reading and prayer. They came another evening, and another, and when I thought they understood about it, I said, " Now you must go and speak to your caste-fellows and tell them you are going to become Christians." To this they agreed, and went home, promising to come up to the meeting-house the following Sunday and make their public confession of Christ. I sent one of my workers to bring them up. On reaching the house he found all the leading Mohammedans of the place outside the door, and he got a great deal of abuse. They told him he was trying to bribe these men to become Christians, and that they intended coming up to the bazaar to oppose the Christian workers. When we reached the bazaar, we saw a great crowd of Moslems waiting. We started a hymn, they started a song, and for a little time the question was which could sing the loudest. We found that would not pay, so we went 116 Friends' Mission Work in India. a little way down a street and held a meeting there, while they were telling the people that I was to receive two hundred rupees for every native convert, the native helpers were to receive fifty or one hundred rupees, and that a large reward would be given by the F.F.M.A. for every Mohammedan who was made a Christian. If there were any truth in that we might be criticised for throwing away our money ! Then they began to abuse us and use bad words. The next day I went to see the Hazi or chief religious teacher of the Moslems. I said we did not want any difficulties, but that we were going to preach the gospel in the bazaar, and they could not stop us. He said, " Will you leave the Moham medans alone ?" "No," I replied, " we have to preach the gospel to every creature. If a Hindu comes, if a Moslem comes, we are glad to have them, but it is not we who make Christians, but the Spirit of God." He soon saw he had gone too far, and promised to leave us alone. But our schools were boycotted ; the priest sent down word that all Mohammedan boys were to leave at once. One man who tried to continue sending his child to school was told that if he did so he would have to leave the place, and would be heavily fined. He came and told me that he could not keep his boy at school any longer. These are a few of the diffi culties we have to meet with, but God's cause must triumph eventually. I believe that God is going to open a door to us in Bhopal. In a letter from Priscilla Fowler in Sehore, she says that several more Mohammedan houses have been opened to the ladies, and God is evidently working in the hearts of some of the Mohammedan women there. I have also a letter from Henry St. Dalmas ; he and Mrs. St. Dalmas have been to the Begum and have presented her with a Persian translation of the Bible, and had a very pleasant conversation with her, lasting nearly an hour. He prayed that it might be made the means of inclining her heart to open her State to Christian work. I want you to realise that you and I have our part in this matter. We cannot get away from our individual responsibility. I remember a story about some men who, while they were digging out some excavations, were buried by the. fall of some earth. While some others were trying Friends' Mission Work in Syria. 117 hard to get their companions out, another man stood by with his arms folded. A woman came up to him and said, " Bill, do you know that your brother is lying down there?" "No!" "He is !" In an instant that man's coat was off, he had a spade in his hand, and was working harder than any of the others. Why ? Because he was brought in a moment into intimate relationship with those who were lying imprisoned by the fall of earth. Orie single word made the difference — " Your brother " — and I pray God that word may be spoken to us to-night. These heathen in India, in Syria, in Madagascar, in China, are our brothers and sisters. They are in the darkness, and what are we going to do ? Are we going to leave them there, or are we going to do our best to bring them out of the darkness into God's marvellous light ? One Friend said to me, " I do hope you will set a match to light the fire that there ought to be in the hearts of your hearers." I said, " I cannot do that — that must be the work of the Spirit of God." But I believe that He is ready to lay the match to light the fire, and I ask you, if God shows you that the time has come for you to do your part — are you ready ? The call may come very near home, it may claim your sons, or your daughters, or brothers, or sisters for the work ; or it may claim you yourself. Oh, that the Lord may give us the spirit of conse cration, that we may say, " All that I have is on the altar laid, for Thee to use just how and when Thou wilt ! " Do remember Bhopal and the Hindus and the Mohammedans there, and pray to God and work with God as you have never done before for the salvation of these people. FRIENDS' MISSION WORK IN SYRIA. R. Hingston Fox, M.D. : " Believe me, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain " — that is to say, the mountain of the Samaritans — "nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father. . . . God is a Spirit : and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." Surely if there is one place on the earth which, it might be thought, does not need Foreign Missions, it would be that land which ADDRESS BY R. HINGSTON FOX, M.D. 118 Friends' Mission Work in Syria. was trodden by the feet of the Lord Jesus, that land where His teachings were given, and which was the first to receive the glorious gospel. But the Lord Himself has taught us by the words which I have quoted, as well as by what we see in that land to-day, that there is no sacredness in places, that for the Christian there is no Mecca, no Jerusalem, no one spot more sacred than another on this wide earth. In the words of Jerome, in the fifth century, " Et de Brittannia. et de Hierosolymis aequaliter patet aula coelestis " (" From far-off Britain the heavenly gate is as open as it is from Jerusalem itself"). And so we find that to-day in this land of Syria and Palestine there is almost as much need for the work of the preaching of the gospel of Christ as though He had never been within its confines. We find it inhabited by a great variety of races. Some of them are Mohammedans- — it is one of the provinces of the Turkish Empire — others are repre sentatives of the old Eastern Churches ; corrupt Churches, still professing the name of Christ, but having the form only without the power. Their worship is a series of rites blindly followed — for instance, they will not wash a child lest they should wash off his baptism — or the priest comes to sprinlde a dying native Protestant in order that he may be received, unconscious though he be, into the true Church before he dies. Amongst these people, on the goodly mountain of Lebanon, Friends have been carrying on for twenty-three years a mission work, seeking to live, so far as they may be enabled, the Christ-life ; seeking to put a picture before the people of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what He enables His servants to be. In our favoured country, much as some of us may feel that there is lacking in the standard of Christian life or of Christian morals, yet, in contrast with such countries as these Eastern lands, we must acknowledge that the teaching of the gospel has struck its roots deep into the very structure of society. We may take any of the moral virtues which are respected to-day, which form the conven tions and sanctions under which our social fabric is organised, and see how they are the results of the teaching of Christ. We could not have, for example, such elementary virtues as truthfulness, obedience to parents, or personal purity of life, KE5RAWAN * * Dvsjisk Miles SYRIA : THE BRUMANA DISTRICT. Friends' Mission Work in Syria. 119 if the Lord Jesus Christ had not come and taught as He did. So that even the very man in the street, whether he knows the Christ or not in his own heart, is influenced by His teaching, which has raised the moral standard of our country, and which has produced those virtues that have made our country what it is. If we go to an Eastern country, such virtues as these — the three that I have mentioned — are unknown, except in so far as Protestant Christian influence may have in some degree produced them. So the primary work of Missions in such a country as Syria is to uphold the Lord Jesus Christ, and to bring before the people, partly by teaching, especially by teaching the young, but largely also by living faithful lives before them, the beauty and value of the true Christian life. And this is what our Mission seeks to fulfil. Like the American Missions, which are so widely spread over the Asiatic provinces of Turkey, our Mission also is becoming in its way a centre of enlightenment and educa tion, and of a higher moral standard, which has influenced those around, and made them more ready, let us hope, to receive each for himself the true and saving knowledge of the Lord. The Lord Jesus called the children to Him, and we seek to call the children also. It is upon the children that the great hope of our Mission mainly rests. We have at Brumana, on Mount Lebanon, two training homes for boys and girls, containing some thirty of each sex, and we have schools in the villages ; and though a good education is aimed at, and given in these institutions, yet I need hardly say that it is with a Christian object, and that teaching of the truths of the Christian religion is the primary motive. Very thankfully do those who have charge of these institutions see evidences that the gospel finds its way to the hearts of these children. The Lord Jesus healed the sick, and this part also of His work is represented at Brumana. We have a hospital of fifteen beds, and we receive into it representatives of all races and all religions ; sometimes the Bedouin Arabs, who come to it from long distances. Their hearts are often opened by sickness, so that they are brought under the influence of the truth, and many of those who have been there have given evidence of faith in Christ. 120 Missionary Enterprise and Commerce. The Lord Jesus preached the gospel in the villages, and this is a work also that we seek to carry out. There is an out-station, Ras-el-Metn, where two of our missionaries, Daniel Oliver and his wife, have recently settled. His zeal in the cause of the gospel amongst the surrounding villages is most interesting to see. He wrote a few lines, knowing that this Conference was going to take place, about two villages which were on his mind, where he desired to open schools. He said : " Please bring Saleema and Hamana prominently forward at Darlington. Don't be backward in asking ; remember it is for the Lord." He wants means to open work at these two additional villages. I would we might remember that in all our work we are serving not only a crucified Lord, but One who is glorified, the Lord of glory. So that our work should be strong, because it is done in the name of Him who is glorified, and to whom all authority is given in heaven and on earth. MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE AND COMMERCE. J. Rendel Harris, M.A. : My idea address by about Mission work is that it is largely j. rendel harris, m.a. a thing which, if our hearts are right with God, is just as natural as the principle of gravitation. I think it was George Eliot who said at one time in conversation with a friend, striking her hand with great force upon the mantelshelf, " One day it will be just as natural for us to answer to the call of humanity, as it is for my hand to strike that marble." The principle of spiritual gravitation leads us to the conclusion that it is the business of one who goes by the name of " Little More " to help his brother who goes by the name of " Little Less." We have to understand that there is not so much difference between us after. all. Not so much in one sense ; but though it be only a little difference, yet " The little more, how much it is, The little less, what worlds away." He that hath, let him give to him that hath not. That is the principle that underlies all true Mission work. I have Missionary Enterprise and Commerce. 121 remembered in Tennyson's poem called " The Golden Year," the lines — "Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press ; Fly happy with the mission of the Cross ; Knit land to land, and blowing havenward With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll, Enrich the markets of the Golden Year." That phrase " Silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll," I am very fond of. I once had the pleasure of repeating it in one of the most protectionist spots on the face of the earth, an American city, and I did it with a great deal of satisfaction. I watched them as I repeated those words, " Silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll," and they looked as though they did not like it. But I gave it out as though it were gospel ; and it is gospel. Do you feel that there is something of incongruity, of bathos, in dropping from Christ to commerce, from the Cross to " silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll " ? It ought not to be so ; because these two things, commerce and Christianity, cannot be divided without great detriment to each. If you divide the two, you come to the place where it shall be said that " this Child is set for the rise and fall of many in the labour world, and for a sign that will be spoken against in the commercial world, for He has come to put up a crucifix over every factory, and to write ' Jesus and Co.' over every shop." If it be true that His claim is so great over all our lives, it is evident that there is no incongruity in putting these things side by side — they must go together. So mis sionary enterprise cannot stand on the platform it used to — that of persons going out to communicate spiritual truth, or the formularies of spiritual truth, to those who did not know it. Our Missions already show signs of this evolution, this larger connection with the world. The industrial ele ment has already been shown in connection with our Missions ; and not only the industrial element, but the " happy happy sails " which carry the Press as well as the Cross. If we are afraid of this, are we not rather — narrow ? It is our business to give along every line of life where we have ourselves received increase from Gqd. This is the reason why our Missions will become much more educational than they have 122 Missionary Enterprise and Commerce. been in times past. This is why we do not say that there is any bathos in coming from the Cross to the ordinary business of life ; neither do we say that the printing-press is an inven tion of the devil, and that it is his private property. I remember noticing one of James Russell Lowell's later poems, in which he alluded to the " mark of interrogation," which he notes as the characteristic of so much of modern life, as the " devil's crook episcopal." I have thought myself sometimes that there is a wrong flavour about it ; that the shape of it is wrong. But latterly I have been changing my mind a great deal, and thinking that it may after all be the crozier of the Good Shepherd. By asking questions ourselves, by not being afraid of asking hard questions, and teaching other people to ask them, without supplying the answers, as the old schoolbooks used to do, along with them, we may be doing Christ's missionary work in the world as truly as it is in our power to do. I don't mean at all that doubt is the greatest thing in the world, but that our power to make inquiry is one of the things God has conferred for our own personal progress ; and it will be one of the things most essential in a mission to the world at large, when we have such a mission, that we should not go out to teach people merely, to teach them the conclusions we have our selves arrived at, but to lead them to search in their own souls, and see if they find the witness we speak of, to the message that we have come to proclaim. All Oriental nations are showing a sense of this unifying of life. Trade follows the flag, we hear ; and it follows the flag of Missions as well as of nations. Even the politicians are becoming the friends of Missions in their sly, underhand way. And surely trade should be a constructive part of their work, and not a destructive part. By the by, we may come one day to such a state of things as a government which does not exist to destroy men's lives, but to save them. We have not come to that yet, because we know that it is the mission of England to destroy the Matabele, but not to save the Armenians ! But the time may come, it may be very near, when all that shall be changed. God grant that it may ! But if that time is not yet come for governments, we may begin by insisting that it is the Missionary Enterprise and Commerce. 123 mission of commerce not to destroy men's lives but to save them. So we shall have to stop slavery following the flag, we shall have to stop rum from following the flag, and I suppose we may have to say also that we must put a stop to Martini- Henry rifles following the flag ! God grant that these things may come, because it is not until life is one, and the spirit of love permeates the whole, that we can preach the gospel in the way it really should be preached. I have been very much struck to see, in Armenia, the way in which the American Missions show their sense of this progress. They were giving the arts and the comforts of life to the people, and these things were becoming a part of their work. I have here the programme of. the tenth annual commencement of Anatolia College, at Marsovan. It is not printed, because the Turks had sealed up all the printing presses, but it is reproduced by some process which I believe the Turks hold to be dangerous, for the hectograph is also under the ban. The college is under the control of the American Board of Missions, and they are doing a splendid work. I find that the examination began at eight o'clock in the morning, and went on till four o'clock in the afternoon— with some small interval for refreshments, as was very proper. The examination was in history and philosophy, in the Bible, in Turkish, in arithmetic, in logic, in English, in Armenian, in zoology, in Greek, and in music. Then one of the class-rooms has an exhibition of maps, another of drawing. There are prize contests in oratoiy in the English and Turkish languages, and also in Armenian and Greek. And finally, and rather ironically in an American college, an examination in English pronunciation ! I wanted to read that, not to say that we should introduce all that into our Missions— I don't think we are quite ready for a class on international law at Brumana ! But, they say, these things are necessary to fit the Armenian for the place that he has to occupy in the East. Now free trade, dear friends, is the concrete expression of the great law of human brotherhood. We are a little shy about saying that in England, but I am not shy about saying it, because I have passed through so many custom-houses this summer. I have put it down on my mental scale as 124 Christ for the World. almost the first thing to be done, when the kingdom of God comes with power, that dynamite shall be put under the last custom-house — only of course I don't want any body to be inside it at the time ! And it seems to me just as necessary to tell people their duties in this sense as to bring them a higher literature or a purer culture. I apprehend that the experience of the Missions themselves is driving them that way, into industrial and educational methods. If we do that, we shall find out just in the same way as we have found experimentally when we began to carry gospel truth to the people of other countries, there was immediately a reaction on our own spiritual life, which lifted it up to higher communion with God, and gave us deeper intuitions of His work and destiny for the race of which we form a fraction. So our ideas with regard to education at home will change ; and instead of thinking it a common, almost an unclean thing, as in the minds of many religious people I apprehend it is yet regarded, taking man away from religion, we shall find it carrying us right on to some larger religious truth and experience that God is laying up for us, and that the mark of interrogation which is the sign manual of modern intellectual life, will be seen to be in truth not the " devil's crook episcopal," but the crozier of the Good Shepherd and Bishop of souls. The meeting closed with the singing of the hymn, " All hail the power of Jesu's name." Fourth-day Morning, 23rd of Ninth Month, 1896. George Grubb in the Chair. The sitting opened with the reading of John xv. 1-12 by the Chairman, and a period of devotion in which vocal prayer was offered. Ellwood Brockbank gave the following Bible-reading on CHRIST FOR THE WORLD. John iii. 16, 17.—" For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have Christ for the World. 125 everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world ; but that the world through Him might be saved." John i. 12-14. — " But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name : which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth." John i. 18. — " No man hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." 2 Cor. iv. 6, 7. — " For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge. of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." Eph. ii. 13, 16-22. — "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were f ar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us. . And that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby : and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God ; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone : in whom all the building' fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord : in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." Eph. i. 10. — "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth ; even in Him." Acts iv. 12. — " Neither is there salvation in any other : for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Matt. xi. 28. — " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." John vii. 37. — In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." 1 Cor. i. 30, 31. — " But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemp tion : that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." Eph. iii. 17-21. — "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height ; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto Him that is able to do exceed ing abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that 126 Christ for the World. worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." • My subject this morning is "Christ for bible-reading by the World " — God's message of salvation ellwood brockbank. in all its length, and breadth, and fulness, and power. I cannot possibly do it justice. I do not, however, understand that I am to attempt to do more than speak of Him, not of our ways of telling about Him, or of the methods available, either at home or abroad, for winning souls to Him. H. S. Newman has spoken of the duty pressing on the Church, and Charles D. Terrell on "The World for Christ." So, if it is not a misuse of words, I may say my duty is narrowed to tell of the great Name which is above every name, a duty so vast as to be hopeless. We can look together for a few moments in admi ration and reverence ; we can exalt His name in our midst, and as we bow may a great sense of His eternal power come over us, and a measure such as we can take in of His bound less love, so that Our hearts may grow strong in confidence in that gospel of His grace which is still " the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." The texts I have read speak of the fulness of this reve lation of Christ as our Redeemer and our Indwelling Power. They give us a vision of triumph and victory through His name, and we seek the inspiration of this certainty as we gather to-day. The revelation has been gradual, and the veil has slowly fallen. Abraham saw a chosen family, Moses a chosen nation. Isaiah, with rare prophetic insight, had a wide vision of Christ for the world, and he claimed for God the Divine right of universal providence and government. Shading his eyes, he swept the horizon for the coming King. In the fulness of time Christ, as the revelation of God, was manifested. He was the crown and fulfilment of a thousand signs and promises ; a revelation of God, for He could say, " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." All else had been elementary, significant, preparatory. The great central fact of the world's history is Christ. His message was universal; as a modern writer has said, "It was for all who took Him as their Captain, and His cross as their Christ for the World. 127 banner." He was more than a message, He was a vital force which came to work out the fruits of truth, mercy, and holiness in human hearts. Herbert Spencer says, " Nothing is more certain than this, that we are ever in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed." The Spirit of Christ is this energy in the world of souls, and His a living message in the heart witnessing to the written message seeking entrance. He stretches out a strong hand to draw unto Himself — going after the soul, speaking to it as a holy witness against sin, bringing it into humility and brokenness by the power of a love now, at last, seen by the same light to illuminate the Father's face. Westcott says, " Our power of reverence is a measure of our power of rising." And as the revelation of the Father in the face of Jesus Christ is thus received, we get to the point of possible rising ; " we are nothing, Christ is all." The marvel is, that deep enough down in the heart of man there is a vestige of the likeness of God that can so respond ; explaining the words used by Westcott again, " God's image was given to him that he might gain God's likeness." The keenest hunger of an awakened soul is for holiness, just as its first sight of God was as a holy God, the reflex light, con vincing at the same moment of the abomination of sin. The two appeared in deadly conflict, in irreconcilable antagonism, the hopelessness and despair of the position, its better strife revealed in the all-searching Light. The sin becomes exceed ing sinful as the soul struggles into the light. The Cross as its measure, the agony in the garden, the awful solitude of a pure soul forsaken of God, become illuminated mysteries. They speak of the unutterable love of God in providing a Divine remedy when no other is sufficient, for with all its littleness the soul has one boundless capacity, " My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God." Nothing but "Christ for the world" was enough — enough for man in his extremity ; enough for God as an expression of His redeeming love. He must gather in one all things in Christ. God was au absolute necessity to man, fallen or unfallen, and the incarnation was God's way of reaching His lost children. Wilful self-assertion, with its unworthy transfer of allegiance, had done its deadly work. Sin had 128 Christ for the World. thus entered into the world, and death by sin. It was the infinite pity of God that went after the wanderer, to seek, to save, and to fold the lost. In doing this our Lord entered upon the heritage of human woe, its pain and suffering, its sin and death, its darkness and cruelty, its misrule and selfish ness, its vileness and slavery. He bore them all, and His love reached its high- water mark in suffering, as if indeed the suffering were — as some one has said — "the fuel of love." And so we come to the central revelation of God as a Divine and holy One with a tender human heart, and yet with the strength, the holiness, and the infinite resource of Deity. And, in working out His own will, He plucks the brand from the burning, the perishing soul from death, that He may restore it to His own life and presence, to set it among princes, even the princes of His people. Thus, gathering every scattered fragment of humanity into one vast redemption, " He died for our sins, and rose again for our justification." There are two ways of expressing this great fact. Dr. Dale, who helps us in this matter greatly, does it in these words : " i. Christ achieves our redemption by revealing God's love to us. 2. He reveals God's love to us by achieving our redemption. In both Christ is charged with powers of life." In regarding here to-day our work as messengers to a lost world, it is absolutely needful that on such a crucial point as this we should be clear in our facts. What is the fact set before us in the revelation of Christ which is God's own message to a lost world ?' I cannot enter fully upon the matter here. Christ tells us Himself in John x. 18, " I lay it down of Myself." In many places, and in varying words, we are told that Christ died for us — for all, " I lay down My life for the sheep." Paul, in- writing to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, clearly says, " Christ died for us." As- Dr. Dale points out, we never read of Christ living, or hungering, or being wearied or tempted "for us : " the expression is con fined to His death. In various other places it is as clearly stated that " He died for our sins," or " our trespasses," "Who His own self bare our sins ;" and in 2 Cor. v. 21 it is stated " He hath made Him to be sin for us." Then " remission of sins," " redemption," and similar words are Christ for the World. 129 used as results of His death, culminating in the wonderful expression, " He is the propitiation for our sins : and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world " (1 John ii. 2). Paul gave this fact a foremost place, " I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died f or our sins according to the Scriptures " (1 Cor. xv. 3). The references are almost endless. We notice at once that here is something different from the forgiveness that we can give to one another. We cease to be vindictive, and dismiss resentment if wronged ; but the sin remains. That is beyond our touch. God does all this, and deals also with sin and even with sinfulness. We are saved by His death and by His life. Love is at the bottom of it all ! By an act of the noblest and loftiest heroism Christ opens a way unto God, and reveals the love of the Father at once. He gives a new heart as a cure of the love of sinning. In other words, the death and the redemption revealed in Christ become the power by which sin is destroyed. " Who hath delivered us out of the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son : in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the for giveness- of sins" (Col. i. 13). So the new kingdom gives a new start ; old things are passed away, all things are become new. Introduced into the new family, joint heirs with Christ, there grows up a family likeness — remote but real ; its points have been well indicated. He is "the Light of the world." We are " lights in the world." He is the Great High Priest, King of kings. We are " kings and priests unto God." He is the Eternal Sacrifice. We are to present our bodies "a living sacrifice." In Him is " all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." We are " filled with all the fulness of God." The Christian is thus a humanity in which Christ dwells—" Christ in you the hope of glory," and there is such a thing as being " perfect in Christ Jesus." The way of life is through death, not only by the way of the Cross of Calvary, but by the way of death to the old nature. "lam crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved 10 130 Christ for the World. me, and gave Himself for me." Oh ! glorious illusion, for a soul to be so taken up with Christ as to fancy that He gave Himself "for me" ! — the soul filled with a precious mono poly, whilst the supply is free, and full, and boundless for all. A soul enamoured of Christ cannot be satisfied with a half-hearted life, it must be real — a life hid with Christ in God, and a life of victory through His name. Such a soul is called out of the world, and it can never rest without the cry, " Come thou with us, and we will do thee good." // becomes missionary by stress of circumstances. Surely as we ponder the measure and the meaning of " Christ for the world," we must feel His greatness as a gift, and His fitness for our need. He is as welcome and as well adapted to the savage peering into the grey dawn of a new day as for the soul emancipated and yet crying out for more of the living God. The universality of the thirst is met by a well of the water of life, sweet, refreshing, blessed, into which the bucket may be plunged to any depth, the only limit being the length of the rope of faith. Here is the message for the world — a religion of power and life that has descended out of heaven from God. No fabrication of man grovelling at his own level, but a work of God ever leading upward to Himself. It is so true what Lyman Abbott says : " Religion is not a creed long or short, nor a ceremonial complex or simple, nor a life more or less perfectly formed to an external law ; it is the life of God in the soul of man, recreating the individual ; through the individual constituting a Church, and by the Church transforming human society into a kingdom of God." Our great purpose here is to grasp so entirely the fact of the supreme excellence of this living message, by a steady upward looking into the face of Him who bears it, that we shall expect results, not because we tell it well, but because its energy is a Divine one— as potent in China or India, Mada gascar or Syria, as in our hearts at home ; and only paralysed, in ourselves or in them, by an unwillingness to bow under its power. If we would allow the will that rules us to be His will, He would open to us all the treasures of grace and glory hidden from the natural man, but within the reach of the redeemed and consecrated soul, to its eternal joy. Methods of Work. 131 Another time of prayer followed, and at the suggestion of Elizabeth B. Backhouse, the hymn, " How sweet the name of Jesus sounds," was sung. The Chairman : Before we proceed with the address by papers upon " Methods of Work," I feel it only george grubb. due to the Conference to express my feeling of thankfulness for being privileged to take this part to-day. I have no doubt it is because I am one of the representatives from your sister island, and of our auxiliary of the F.F.M.A. there ; and if my occupying the chair should become an evidence of our interest in the work, and our desire to be continually united with you in furthering it, I am thankful for the occasion of showing it. With regard to that, I have felt all through this Conference that it is an interesting fact that not only are Friends in England and Ireland moving in this great subject, but that we have also the united sympathy of Friends on the other side of the Atlantic. Our Friends in America have stations in various parts of the world — in Mexico, in Alaska, in Japan, in India, in China, in Syria, and in Jamaica, and I understand that two Friends have offered to enter on work in that neglected con tinent of South America. We cannot but be thankful that the Society of Friends has been aroused all over the world to a deep and deepening interest in this work. We come now to the papers which are to be presented at this sitting upon the important question of " Methods of work." We had put before us yesterday, very impressively, the groundwork of the call and qualification for missionary service. That begins at home, but methods of work, I conclude, generally begin abroad, except so far as we look at the fundamental training- school of Christ. When He would send forth His disciples, taking them, in the earnestness of their zeal, from their out ward calling, He said to them as he asked them to leave that calling, " Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." And He trained them, prepared them, and sent them forth upon their work. But He did not lay down any hard-and-fast lines as to the methods of their fishing. We know that the variety of fish is very great, so also the variety of methods to catch them is very great. He shows where to fish, but He 132 Methods of Evangelistic Work. gives an understanding heart that we may know what tackle to use. We know very well that the delicate line and tackle suitable for trout would be of very little use for the great deep-sea fish. If one were to put into our hands a child's shrimping-net, it would be of little or no use in gathering in the shoals of fish that go along the coasts, whether of England or Ireland, Madagascar or Japan, India or China, or any other country. So I feel that while at home we take a deep interest in all this fishing, we have little understanding of the character of the fish that is to be caught in foreign parts ; and therefore we are glad to hear from our Friends who are working there regarding the methods that are desirable to be used. We find, for instance, that that great missionary, John G. Paton, went to islands where he had actually to construct a language before he could reach the minds of the cannibal inhabitants. He had to test the methods he would use, and one thinks how, while he was doing this, they would come round him, feeling him to see whether he were ready to be eaten or not ! Our missionaries have not got to such quarters as that, but they have got to places where idolatry is rampant, and by the understanding heart that God has given they will devise methods according to His will as they sit at the feet of their Master, to gather in the fish successfully to His praise and glory. Each of these papers will be put before us in pretty rapid succession, but if there should be, after the reading of any one of them, anything upon the mind of any Friend relating to a particular subject touched on in that paper that they wish briefly to refer to, there will be an opportunity of doing so. Henry E. Clark read the following paper on METHODS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK. I have been asked to write a short paper paper by that will not take more than ten minutes henry e. clark. to read, on Methods of Evangelistic Work : this can only mean for me methods of evan gelistic work in Madagascar, which may be very different from the methods employed in India or China. It must be Methods of Evangelistic Work. 133 remembered that the principal part of our work in Central Madagascar is among a nominal Christian population. I know very well that during the past few months there have been attempts on the part of some among these to throw off Christianity and re-establish the worship of idols, yet this does not materially affect the above statement. Again, it is well to remember the wide extent of out work, and the large number of churches — or we will call them meeting-houses, if you like — in the district under our care : we may reckon these in round numbers at 150. In all these places people meet together on the first clay of the week, and expect that there will be some one to preach to them. I must ask you not to misunderstand me as to what I include in evangelistic work. If in this paper I paused at every point to make explanations, I should probably hear the sound of the bell, which is to me of all things most disagree able. But I must say this, that I fully admit that, in a sense, all mission work is evangelistic — nay, in a sense, all mission work is preaching the gospel, for the great aim of all our teaching in colleges, high schools, and elementary schools, of all our Bible classes, classes for women, of our Medical Mission, industrial work, and printing office, is, or should be, to gain the people for Christ. While admitting all this, yet I hold that the preaching of the gospel is of these the most direct evangelistic work — I place it first and foremost. It is still mainly, I believe, by the foolishness of preaching that souls are saved. I mean, of course, that it is by preaching that people come to know about the gospel — what it is, what it is for the world, and what it will do for them if they will only accept it. If we admit this, then our subject is simplified, and I have very briefly to tell how we in Madagascar seek to bring the gospel within the hearing not only of those who attend a place of worship, but also of the far larger number who now very seldom enter one. It is manifestly impossible that on every one of the 52 Sundays in the year, there can be a missionary present at each and all of these 150 meetings under our care in Madagascar. Some far away from a mission station will only have this privilege, if privilege it be, once or twice a year ; others even will hardly see the face 134 Methods of Evangelistic Work. of a missionary from year end to year end. How, then, shall they have the gospel preached to them ? In a few of these places there may be one or more well- concerned individuals who are both willing and able to tell to others something of what they themselves know of the way of salvation. Then at most of them there is a fairly well-trained school-teacher or evangelist who has passed through our Training School in the Capital. Many such are most devoted to and earnest in their work, and it may be truly said of them that they do what they can in this line of service. As one means of helping this class, it is our custom to have periodical Bible Classes with them, some being held weekly, some fortnightly, some monthly. In my own case, when conducting these classes, I often used to point out texts that were likely for them to make use of when addressing the congregations on the Sunday. But it is manifest that we should fail in our duty if we did not make an effort to reach the very large outside public, who, whatever they may have done in the past, now hardly ever enter our meeting-houses. For these there is the market preaching, which of late years has been systematically under taken in our district. A large proportion of the inhabitants attend the markets, which are a very important institution in Madagascar. Not only buying and selling takes place there, but all sorts of other business, including Government business and church and school affairs, for many an impromptu meeting of church and school officials is held at the market. So it will be readily understood that these are capital places for bringing the sound of the gospel to the ears of the many. Any one with a good voice and apt at illustration will soon have an audience of several hundreds. A hymn is sung in the first place, a suitable passage of Scripture is read, a short prayer is put up, then the gospel is preached. I have taken part very frequently in this work, and I tell you, friends, that a man has to know where he is himself — he has to have his own feet on the Rock — before he dare stand up, and with hundreds of eyes fixed upon him, in a foreign tongue preach to these people, most of whom are very ignorant, and pro bably living in gross sin. In looking back upon my life in Madagascar, there is, I think, no work I dwell upon with Methods of Evangelistic Work. 135 more satisfaction than this, and I seldom left the market without having some make profession of a desire, at any rate, to turn from their sins and accept the offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. One more subject I must allude to. In a Mission like that in Madagascar, special services — call them Revival Services if you like — ought to be among our methods of work. Many here will remember those we had in Antananarivo in the years 1891 and 1892. They were wonderfully successful — not so much, it must be confessed, in bringing in people from the outside, but in being the means of the conversion of very many who had thought themselves Christians already, but who found out at these services how very far short they were from having these words fulfilled in them : " Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature : the old things are passed away ; behold, they are become new " (2 Cor. v. 17). The result of these meetings is abundantly seen in Antanana rivo to-day, and of many a young man and woman it can be said that he or she was converted at one or other of those remarkable services. Similar meetings have been held in various parts of Imerina. I have thus endeavoured to place before you some methods of evangelistic work, and I will conclude by expressing my conviction that it is only the gospel that can change the world, and it is only by an individual acceptance of the gospel that men's hearts can be changed. Sometimes, as I think about this, I am amazed at the unwillingness of people to come to that which promises them such great blessings. The words are still true of so many: "Ye will not come to Me, that ye may have life" (John v. 40) ; and the reason is not far to seek : " Men loved the darkness rather than the light ; for their works were evil " (John iii. 19). I hope the result of this Conference may be the more perfect fulfilment in all our mission fields of the words of One addressed to the greatest of all evangelistic missionaries : " The Gentiles, unto whom I send thee, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in Me " (Acts xxvi. 17, 18). 136 Methods of Evangelistic Work. Howard Nicholson : May I say, in allusion to this sub ject, that the racy and rapid delivery of Henry E. Clark has well illustrated to me some of the needs of evangelistic work out of doors. I don't believe that we can hold our ground by standing with our heads bowed amidst the busy crowds in our large towns, and I don't believe they can do so in Madagascar. One young Friend I know was full of prejudice upon this point, and when asked to speak, said No, he would wait until the Lord told him to speak. He seldom got a second invitation, for there were plenty of others to speak or sing. In a few months he grew wiser, and was ready to speak when asked to. Joseph S. Sewell : I know that our dear Friend who has just read the paper is very able in the things of which he has spoken. I am quite sure that the main thing he left out he believes in quite as strongly as I do. But I don't wonder at the consciousness of having to write a ten minutes' paper on such a subject keeping a person from remembering every thing. I daresay there was something about it in that which he excluded. That which I refer to is the great advantage of frequent conversation. It is not only public preaching that is needed, but frequent conversation with two or three in daily life. I know very well my dear son-in-law (the late William Johnson) 'felt most strongly that preaching of sermons was of little value as compared with conversation and intercourse in private life. It is one of the most useful ways of evangelising. C. Stansfield Wilson : I am very glad Joseph S. Sewell has alluded to that point. I believe that personal conversation, both at home and abroad, is a very valuable supplement to the preaching of the gospel to the unconverted. I wish to encourage all Friends to cultivate the habit and practice of the discernment of the spirits of those whom they approach to tell of our great object. I remember a South African mis sionary, a Methodist, a few years ago, saying that gathering a few natives around him and opening the gospel to them, was about the only way of permanently influencing them. Anna F. Fox : I think many of us must have felt that Education the Handmaiden of Christianity. 137 Henry E. Clark's earnest paper on this deeply interesting portion of evangelistic work was only too short, but perhaps it will impress itself the more strongly on our memories.' Yesterday we were told that tact, application, animation, and humour were qualifications that came next to the call of the Lord for missionary service.. I would venture to add that fervency of spirit, power, and clearness in setting forth the gospel, and earnest individual speaking to sinners, are exceed ingly important elements. Arthur Rowntree, B.A., read the following paper on EDUCATION THE HANDMAIDEN OF CHRISTIANITY. When the busy secretary of this busy paper by Conference asked me to write a paper arthur rowntree, b.a. on education, I agreed on the ground that the main principles of education are of universal application. I will only add by way of preface, that we must endeavour to see as clearly as we can, in the few minutes at our disposal, what we mean and what we do not mean by education and Christianity. It is needless to remind this audience that cramming and education are in diametrical opposition ; needless to remind it that a child must not be left to nature alone ; needless to remind a Conference of men and women whose forefathers founded Friends' schools, that education does not consist merely in training the intellect. We must go far wider afield, must look at men and women in their complexity ; and when we understand what they may become, then we begin to see the meaning and possibilities of education. Education con sists in preparing boys and girls for usefulness in the world, in preparing them to be happy and to make happy, in pre paring them to become fully developed men and women. Education is development. True education is advancement in life. " He only is advancing in life," says Ruskin, "whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the 138 Education the Handmaiden of Christianity. men who have this life in them are the true lords and kings of the earth— they and they only." * John Milton too was looking wide afield when he called that a complete and generous education "which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and publick of Peace and War."t In like manner Herbert Spencer tells us that the function which education has to discharge is " to prepare us for complete living." % For all this it is obvious that there must be physical training, and training of feeling and will as well as of intellect. I decline to assert dogmatically which section of training is most important, when all are necessary : all sectional training in volves other sections, and the interdependence of all parts of human nature forbids our dividing a child into compartments. Will is the seat of character, and character-building is the essential part of education. But just as a child of two cannot remember verses of poetry, so he cannot remember right action : the " memoiy of the will " must be strengthened. If education is really " the leading of human souls to what is best, making what is best out of them," § the formation of character must take a foremost place. I have said that education does not consist in training the intellect ; and I yield to no educationist in strong denuncia tion of any one-sided system, that sets up intellect as an idol instead of worshipping at the .shrine of noble character. Nevertheless, the training of intellect is an all-important factor in the development of faculty, and in the formation of cha racter itself. Herbart has clone his great service to mankind in insisting on formation of character as the sole end of the teacher, and in emphasising the vast influence of the " circle of thought " on the formation of character. He only, says Herbart, wields the full force of education who cultivates in the pupil a large circle of thought, " which possesses the power of overcoming what is unfavourable in the environment, as well as of dissolving and absorbing from it what is good." For " if inner assurance and the intellectual interests are wanting, if the store of thought be meagre, then the ground lies empty for the animal desires ; something of an abortion, which looks * " Sesame and Lilies." \ Tractate on Education. I Education. § " Stones of Venice." Education the Handmaiden of Christianity. 139 like the caricature of a character, will be at last the outcome of this also."* Instruction that makes for character is Herbart's food for the intellect, and we see the practical value of this kind of instruction as contrasted with shoving facts into a brain, like pennies into a slot, when we remember that opinions " shape ideals, and it is ideals that inspire conduct." I have never found a single case where the greatest Teacher of men used a method of teaching that tended to stifle inquiry. We search the Gospels from end to end, and we find that part of His universal method consisted in awakening intelligence. Another reason for cultivation of the intellect lies in the fears that some people have for the safety of the Bible and of Christianity. As if their safety could depend on smothering intellect ! If " modern thought " puts their safety to the hazard, this is no time for arming the defenders with old- fashioned blunderbusses that explode in their own faces. It is the time of all others for equipping them with the most highly finished rifles, and for supplying them with the latest produce of civilised nations — nickel-plated bullets that will kill, or wound without causing festering sores. Not one here thinks the social and religious condition of England to-day the best of all possible social and religious conditions, in full harmony with the spirit of Christ. But nowadays public opinion must be on our side before we effect a great trans formation : that is, opinion is the conjurer of democracy ; therefore youths must be trained to think fearlessly and truly, that they may form true opinions. Think, too, how rich life becomes, how full of latent power to overcome what is un favourable in the environment, as we enter into the thoughts of Plato, as we go on pilgrimage with the " perpetual fountain of good sense," walk in the goodly fellowship of Shakespeare's heroines, dwell in the abiding presence of thoughts that breathe and words that burn. Or think how vastly important it is that we should be truthful. We cannot be completely truthful without some personal search for truth. And intellec tual training increases our chances of searching wisely for truth. John Morley's argument on intellectual responsibility is an impregnable fortress. He tells those of our educated * " The Science of Education." 140 Education the Handmaiden of Christianity. people who are " sadly contented in a show of things," that if they remain dilettanti in matters social, political and religious, they will assuredly strengthen " the hands of the persons least fitted by judgment, experience, and temper, for using such power rightly." He shows that holding error makes "the intelligence less and less ready to receive truth in all matters whatever."* Turning for a moment to Christianity — " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work," are the Founder's words that have come to abide with us. We take those words exactly as they stand, and say that they hold the kernel of practical Christianity. Our means of growth lies in doing Christ's will. In humble reverence we say that Christ's will is that men and women shall do the will of His Father, and that those whom they teach shall learn to do fhe will of God too. In their emotions they shall show love pre dominant ; in their thoughts they shall follow the truth ; in their conduct they shall realise that their wills are theirs to make them Christ's. The deduction follows, with no need of formal syllogism, that an ideal educational system is the lowly handmaiden of Christianity. My experience has not extended to those children amongst whom our foreign missionaries labour ; but I have yet to learn that Hindu and Chinese children are differentiated from European children by abnormal psychological development. And the hope for nations, all the world over, always lies in the children. " A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts." And children are such tender beings that it is of utmost moment fbr them to breathe pure air, strong and fresh from the uplands ; that their whole atmosphere be healthily Chris tian. The Roman Catholic insists on training the very young children, and cares not who approaches them later. Similarly, but with dissimilar object, we say " Let us educate your children, and we pray God that noble character and Christ like lives will follow." No element of mission work can be * "Compromise." Education the Handmaiden of Christianity. 141 more full of hope than the healthy training of the young. The way seems long and toilsome when we think of enor mously enlarging the mental and spiritual horizon of millions of Chinese ; but it is not given to every one to storm the mountain crest by sudden attack. It was 300 years after Christ's time that the Roman empire became Christian ; the Revival of Learning was no sudden work ; Europe did not wake up one morning to find a new organism thriving in its midst called the Reformation ; our Society knows well enough that the Anti-Slavery Crusade was no mushroom growth ; if we look at Christian England to-day we see how century after century has gone by, and slowly, very slowly, is the teaching of Jesus being applied to the social and international relation ships of civilised peoples. Had we looked on far-off Palestine on the day of Crucifixion, we had pronounced the life of Jesus a hideous failure. The same principles, with varied multiplicity of detail, guide education in all parts of the world. All kinds of activity of hand, and heart, and head, must be called forth by appeals to interest spread over a vast area. And the methods must vary. In especial reference to missionary work we can easily picture a simple-minded Hindu child touched at once by the story of the child of Nazareth ; it is equally easy to picture another keenly interested in all that appeals to the history of his race and religion, living a beautiful life of love, and pity, and manliness, lifting his fresh heart in youthful awe to some Power beyond himself. An unwise word might crush his very life ; wise care might make of him a great force if he were guided to Christianity on the foundations of his own religion. Health and strength are not compatible with hot-house forcing. Travellers tell us that there are marked religious emotions amongst the rudest of savages, tell us, often more prosaically, " That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings, For the good they comprehend not ; That the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God's right hand in that darkness, And are lifted up and strengthened." It would be as absurd to expect the immature minds of 142 Education the Handmaiden of Christianity. children to understand abstruse theological abstractions, as to look for a grasp of the second book of Euclid in an untutored Hottentot. A writer has recently objected to the teaching of fads to children ; for moral progress is effected amongst them by a devoted pursuit of old truths. " It was not the children, but the disciples, to whom Jesus taught the lesson of charity ; the children's only lesson from the Teacher of Galilee was to be taken up in His arms and blessed." He urges that the only road to success with young minds lies in understanding young human nature ; and insists that the method of moral and religious influence, equally with that of intellectual influence, must be based on psychology, on a knowledge of child- nature.* This brings us to the fact that an educational -system such as I have suggested involves teachers who understand their work. I believe that Friends have recognised this, and have secured the strongest teaching help that they could for their foreign schools. t The 600 children in our Indian schools will soon be under the charge of a graduate of Oxford and London ; whilst a lady who has had private-school experience, and has taught at Ackworth, is head of the girls' department. In Madagascar the same number of children is under English teachers of experience, one an old Flounders student and Ackworth teacher, another a successful Board School mistress. A graduate of Dublin University superintends the few children under our care in China. Let none think that I am here to glorify graduates. Good schools need the teachers who were described to the inaugural meeting of the Friends' Guild of Teachers, with power of acquiring and retaining knowledge, power of imparting knowledge, power of drawing out know ledge, and power of character. \ On the power of character I will only add one word more from Ruskin. He says that education does not consist in teaching the youth of England the shapes of letters, and the tricks of numbers : " it is training them into the perfect * J. J. Findlay : Journal of Education, September, 1896. t The number includes seven Flounders students in the past five-and twenty years. \ Vide "A Teacher's Ideal," by Lucy Harrison. Educational Mission Work in India. 143 exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and souls — by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise — but, above all, by example."* On the power of drawing out knowledge, I will only add, the teacher must take self- effacement as his talisman if he really has at heart " moulding or developing the self-activity " of his pupils. As I look back over the twelve months I spent at the Flounders Institute, I remember that one fellow- student is living laborious days in one of our foreign mission schools, and that another has recently met death in the midst of his labour of love in the mission school of Hoshangabad. It is true we need in England the very best teachers we can get ; but we would not utter a word to stay the best trained amongst us from going abroad if he felt the Divine call. We are one brotherhood of teachers, unbounded by time or space ; the noblest of the world's worthies are of us. We know no higher, no holier calling. As we remember these things, there comes the oft-recurring yearning that those who teach under the dark clouds of heathendom, and those who teach in the sunshine of civilisation, may live up to the life-devotion and life-consecration that are due alike to the study and the practice of education. William Baker read the following paper, written by his brother, Samuel Baker, on EDUCATIONAL MISSION WORK IN INDIA. It is well known to the Christian public that paper by missionaries have ever taken a foremost place samuel baker, in the cause of education. Their objects have been twofold, viz., to teach the children how to read that they may be able to use the Bible, and to give an education permeated with Christian truth. In our educational work we have both of these objects before us. Before Christian Missions opened schools for ordinary people in India the art of reading was confined to the few, and these few were largely Brahmins, whose interest it was * " Crown of Wild Olive." 144 Educational Mission Work in India. to keep knowledge in their own hands, so that they might the more easily work on "the superstitions of the people. Following in the wake of Missions, the Government of India set itself diligently to the task of educating the people, and an elaborate but excellent system has been worked out, beginning with the alphabet of the vernacular of any given district and ending with university degrees. The following is the course in the Central Provinces. No . child may be enrolled in a school till he or she is five years old. Four years are allowed for the primary school : this ensures a good groundwork in the vernacular and arithmetic ; also a beginning in grammar, geography, and a few extra subjects. On passing this standard, which is called the upper primary, the child receives a certificate from the Education Department to that effect : without this none may enter the next stage, i.e., the Middle School. Middle Schools are of two classes, vernacular and Anglo-vernacular. In the former a thoroughly sound education is given, including nearly the whole of arithmetic and some mensuration, geometry, and algebra : this is a two years' course, and is the highest vernacular education given. The Anglo - vernacular course takes four years, and then comes what is called the Middle School examination, which is the highest standard the Education Department examines in. A youth who has passed this standard should be able to read English well and write it fairly, but is not able to engage in conversation in English. Then comes the preparation for the Universities ; two years more are required to fit a student for the matriculation examination. As this is the highest which our Mission has yet undertaken we need not particularise further. A matricu late should know English well, and be able to converse in it with considerable ease ; he has had a good mathematical training, and must have studied some second language ; the usual ones in this part of the country are Sanskrit or Persian. In order to have our schools recognised by the Education Department, it is necessary to teach up to the Government standards ; it is good for the teachers and schools generally, as it is an object to attain to. We regard education as an important branch of our Educational Mission Work in India. 145 mission work, but only a branch. It cannot ever take the place of the public preaching of the gospel, and we have not had the apparent success in this direction that has attended our village preaching and medical work. As a branch it is a tangible advantage which the Mission brings within the reach of the poor and downtrodden as well as the rich ; it thus gains us the confidence of the people amongst whom the school is located, and gives us a certain influence over them. It enables us to give the children attending school regular daily Scripture instruction, and in most cases forms the nucleus of a Sunday School. The lessons taught in childhood are never wholly forgotten, and so a permanent knowledge, more or less intelligent, of gospel truth is widely spread. We have tried to establish Sunday Schools where we have no day schools, but the result has not always been encouraging. As the chief means of reaching the children of India, and through them spreading the knowledge of Christian truth, we regard the primary schools as most important. Similar arguments apply to the High School. The youth of India thirsts for an English education ; we long to take the know ledge of Christ to these, and believing educational establish ments to be the best (in many cases the only) way of bringing the better class youth within the sound of the gospel, so as to understand what they hear, we have established the High School at Hoshangabad. The earnest efforts of Friends always to couple Bible teaching with what is called secular education, even in the National Board Schools, proves that the Society at large recognises the need of a Christian education. If this is needed in Christian England, surely heathen India stands in greater need of it. Education is provided by the State, but the lowest castes are excluded from its benefits, not by Government enactment, for this does not recognise caste, but by the cruel caste-laws of the Hindus. The education is secular, or with a strong Hindu bias in some cases : this it is difficult to avoid. As the education advances, Hindu science, geography, caste prejudice, &c, are undermined, faith in their own religion wanes, the forms are followed only for social reasons, and infidel or un-Christian literature comes in to fill the gap left by the destruction of former faith. 11 146 Educational Mission Work in India. The whole tone and bearing of Indian students became so objectionable that during the Marquis of Dufferin's adminis tration a strong minute was issued by him on the subject. The need of moral training was dwelt on, and Government was committed to the policy of encouraging missionary and other educational institutions where regular religious instruction was given, rather than establishing fresh insti tutions of their own which would be purely secular. Though Government action in this matter has somewhat modified since then, we still have the opinion of one of our ablest politicians, publicly expressed, that in order to raise up a set of students of gentlemanly bearing and good moral tone a religious education is needed. He could go no further in his difficult position as a politician, but we as missionaries and Christians can say that no religion makes as true a gentleman or gives as sound a moral tone to any man or woman as Christianity. We therefore urge our Master's command to " make disciples of all," the apostle's example of being " all things to all men," and our great politician's opinion as reasons for carrying on Christian education in all grades as a branch of our Mission work. But if our object simply be to turn out moral gentlemen and gentlewomen we shall fall far short of what the Lord Jesus wants us to attain to. His command " make disciples " is deeper than this, and it is incumbent on us to seek to carry it out literally. There is always the danger of considering our students in groups, instead of remembering that the Lord wants us to seek to make a disciple of each individual. We need to guard against this. Our High School has been the means of earnest individual effort, perhaps more so than any of our primary schools ; possibly because educated intelligent youths are better able to consider and converse on these things. But it is our heartfelt desire that all our schools may - be nurseries for the Church of Christ. The great need in our educational work is for earnest, devoted missionary schoolmasters from among the people themselves.^ We Europeans can do much, but the people of the country can do a great deal more. Pray that the Lord may raise up these valiant soldiers for this branch of His work. Industrial Work. 147 Summary of School Statistics for 1895-6. F.F.M.A., India Mission. 24 Day Schools — Boys' and Girls' average attendance 464 Orphan children not included in above, about 100 High School average attendance 68 632 31 Junior Sunday Schools — average attendance including orphan children 829 Thomas P. Newman read the following paper on INDUSTRIAL WORK. To proclaim the gospel to the heathen is paper by the call of foreign missionaries. Perhaps thomas p. newman. to most young missionaries, when the call is first felt, evangelistic work or preaching to the people would seem to be the natural if not the only way. Many earnest supporters of Foreign Missions have objected to the spending of Mission funds on industrial work as outside the primary object. Experience teaches, and knowledge and thought teach, that preaching to assemblies in the bazaar or the villages is not at all times possible, and there must be much which goes to make up the life of a missionary that is not what we call vocal ministry. Missionary service calls for diversity of gifts just as any other service for Christ, and even for a much greater diversity. In all our missions education and care and training of the children have played a principal part, so that some candi dates have felt a special call to educational work. Recently in India an opening has been found for higher education amongst men and youths of the higher castes, and the degree man has been found ready to undertake the work. In China the present opening is for the education of missionaries' children ; in other countries for the education of the chil dren of native wprkers. Everywhere education of some kind takes an important place. But not only in these more direct ways can the missionary serve. There is much of daily routine of mere management to be gone through ; and the 148 Industrial Work. living of the Christian life in daily contact with the people is full of opportunity for service. It may be that personal inter course brought about in this way and constantly renewed is more blessed for the conversion of souls than even public addresses or school teaching. All means have their right place. Nearly all missionaries have had, if not actually with their own hands, to build their houses and dig the wells, yet certainly to superintend. Pioneer missionaries have done much more. Mackay speedily set up his smithy at Uganda. " Forge, anvil, lathe, vice, and grindstone," he writes, " are now in order, and will, I hope, be of very much service." And next day, " Host of chiefs and slaves crowding my smithy." In the Central African Mission there were boats to build and sails to make ; and to get to Ujiji, roads to make and new means of transport to attempt. And so it may be said that industrial work has formed a part of all pioneer missionary effort. From this has developed the establishment of regular trading industries, sometimes on a very large scale, in which religious, educational, and industrial teaching are combined with the preaching of the gospel. This combined method seems essential to the widest kind of success in missionary work on the African Continent. At Lovedale Mission, South Africa, carpentering, wagon-making, blacksmithing, printing, bookbinding, and even telegraphing are taught ; and there is a large farm. The Mission seeks spiritual growth as its highest and most permanent result and as its primary aim. It has some 800 or more under instruction at one time, 500 of whom are boarders or residents in the place. At first much persuasion was required to obtain students, but after a time so greatly was the training valued that a small annual payment was demanded ; now £8 a year is charged for each student, and there is no lack of applicants. It is not, however, nearly self-supporting. Another great Industrial Mission is on the Kibwezi river, East Africa, in the territories of the Imperial British East Africa Company. Here the industrial work takes advan tage of the natural conditions of the country and develops them ; timber has to be felled, and a saw-mill is set up to Industrial Work. 149 utilise it ; the land grows coffee, and coffee is extensively planted ; wheat and Indian corn are grown for food ; eucalyptus for its antiseptic properties. The German Evangelical Mission in South-West India has several industrial establishments : these include weaving, tile-making, printing, and machinery ; and there is a mercan tile mission. They employ more than a thousand native church members. These establishments have proved an exceedingly valuable help when many converts have had to be provided with some work or other. " But let it not be for gotten," says the report, " that the admission of converts — men and women advanced in age as many of them are — and their apprenticing in a new trade is a cause of much additional trouble and care to the superintendents." Habits of thrift are taught and encouraged, and many of the weavers now possess houses of their own and money besides. The best means of providing suitable employment for Christians is regarded as of vital importance, and an agricultural school is in contemplation. The experience of the F.F.M.A. in Industrial Mission work began with the printing press established in Madagascar in 1872 : it has done good service in providing leaflets, pamph lets, school-books, hymn-books, magazines, and religious and educational works of various kinds. More than half a million were issued during the first few years, and about 45,000 are now annually published. Two monthly magazines, The Children's Friend and Church and School, have a wide circula tion. The press has proved an effective helper to the school in the Christian education of the Central Province of the island. Our industrial work in India sprang from the visit of Frederick Sessions. He was impressed with the need for employment for inquirers and converts, and for the boys at the Hoshangabad Orphanage as they grew up. There were converts and inquirers who, by breaking caste, must needs suffer the bitter prejudices and persecutions of the caste system, and who would be starved and left to die unless maintained by the Mission, or put into the way of honourably maintaining themselves. It was undesirable to maintain them without honest work. The orphan boys, too, would have the 150 Industrial Work. same difficulties to face, and there was grave risk of their lapsing into heathenism if means of self-support were not found. The F.F.M.A. Committee sanctioned commencement of the experiment on condition that a suitable superintendent should offer, who must be of business training, industrial knowledge, and missionary sympathies ; and also on con dition that the necessary capital could be raised apart from the funds of the Association. Both the man, Alfred Taylor, and the capital, about ^1,500, were forthcoming. Alfred Taylor is the brother of Joseph Taylor, of Seoni Malwa, and had been employed by Sessions and Sons at Gloucester, and afterwards received special handicraft training. In the meantime a native with Christian sympathies, proprietor of a small business at Hoshangabad which comprised all manufactures between blacksmith's work and watch-making, had offered the goodwill to the Mission without payment and himself as foreman, on condition of permanent employment, though at a very small salary. This was accepted, and thus we began in the year 1892 with a nucleus of business, and a practical foreman accustomed to carry it on. Additional plant and tools were added. Alfred Taylor Suffered from having to plunge at once into work without proper study of the language ; but with help from others the Scripture was read, and a short explana tion given, to the workpeople daily. This practice has been regularly maintained. Besides this, there is the constant influence of the Christian missionary, treating his men with kindness and sympathy while insisting on the value of honest work. Financially the works have not yet been remunerative. The first year, with about 30 workpeople, there was a small loss. The second year saw the permanent workshop built and considerable interruption to trade from various causes, and the loss amounted to ^140. Next year there was some improvement, while the balance-sheet for 1896, the fourth year, shows a turnover of 8,868 rupees ; a wages bill of 4,794 rupees ; about 40 workpeople employed, of whom 11 are Christians ; and a net loss, after full allowance for wear and tear and depreciation, of about ^30. Industrial Work. 151 When we consider that a new business takes time to establish, and a young man takes time to get business experi ence, and when -we remember that Alfred Taylor had to establish a new business in a strange land, of which all the manners and customs were also strange, and that he under stood at first no single word of the language of his work people ; again, that many of the workers are selected, not because of their fitness for and knowledge of the trade, but because employment has to be found for them ; — we shall no longer wonder that there has been a small money loss. We wish the works to pay and to help support the Mission, but this is not the chief aim. The Mission is helped by the testing of inquirers, teaching of the orphans, and Christian influence over the Hindu workers. Surprise may be felt at the large number of heathen ; but skilled workmen must be employed to do skilled work, and must be obtained whatever their religion ; however, the larger their number the larger the field for Christian work. Some samples of the work done are on view, but the bungalows and carriages, which are part of the regular work, are not so easy to exhibit. George E. Clark, of Stockton, goes out next month to assist Alfred Taylor, and the good wishes of all will accompany him ; he is " skilled in wood," and has architectural and building experience. He is to have the advantage of hard study of the language before commencing work. Recently two other most interesting branches have been developed. Early in 1895 a weaver family from an outlying village, where the father had heard Ernest Munnings preach, came into Itarsi. They became Christians, and were pre vented working with Hindu weavers. The man wanted to be taken as a servant, or a living found for him and his family. But this was firmly refused : he had his trade, he could work, and he could be helped to find a market for his goods, but no other help would be forthcoming. After some delay he set to work, and Ernest Munnings was readily able to sell his manufactures at Hoshangabad. Afterwards George Swan succeeded to the management of the Itarsi station, Ernest Munnings having returned home on furlough. Another weaver and his family arrived and joined the first ; afterwards another, and still another, until there is now a colony of some 152 Industrial Work. seventy persons crowded into ten small houses which have been cheaply erected. Finding the first weavers wanting in business ability, George Swan determined to keep the finance in his own hands, and formed a limited company, borrowing about .£30 from Friends in England and putting in about ^20 more, his own savings, as capital. At one time every individual was down with influenza, and food had to be supplied out of capital. This industry has paid a living wage to several families, has opened a wide field for Christian work, bringing in a number of converts, and has paid a small money profit. With extended business more capital is needed, and unnecessary anxiety is being caused to George Swan. In spite of the number in the colony, the whole thing is in a very small compass financially, and another ^25 invested would make matters quite easy. George Swan has put his whole energy into this concern, living amongst the people, and making them an excellent house-father. He gives reli gious instruction twice daily, so that the spiritual aspect is kept well to the front, and is at present devoting practically his whole time to the work. We have last to speak of the Ojhas, a tribe of wandering beggars, who have settled at Bhantna, a deserted village not far from Itarsi, where they have permission to occupy a given quantity of land. They have been established as farmers, and money has been lent from England to buy cattle and seed corn. It is now a Christian community of about 40, Jug Raj, the convert whose influence has caused his other caste people to follow him in becoming Christians, being headman. Visits are paid by George Swan as often as he can manage. This is another prosperous work requiring a little more capital as it grows. An interesting account of a visit to this settlement by Joseph Taylor will be found in Our Missions for September, 1896. There are, then, other ways of doing missionary work besides preaching. All men learn by what they see as well as by what they hear. The life and activity of missionaries tell wonderfully without much formal speech. The mission station should be to the natives an object-lesson in order, progress, cleanliness, and industry, as well as religious teaching, and be also a place where they may always be sure Industrial Work. 153 of kind treatment. India can never be evangelised by Euro peans. Climate, language, number of men required, and the cost are all against the hope of that work being so effected. Europeans can but train and direct the agents. Industrial Missions must be looked on as a definite means to this end, and not in any way as a financial speculation. The highest spiritual results must be sought by the industrial missionary. Francis Appleton : Perhaps I shall not be out of order in alluding to a subject we all have on our hearts, that English troops are now fighting savage tribes in Africa. My reason for rising is to refer to the work of Dr. Moffat in Central Africa, which has been so extremely productive of blessing. Instead of fighting the natives he taught them industrial pursuits and the cultivation of the land. If our settlements in Africa had tended more in that direction, we should not have such a sad and mournful retrospect with regard to the natives. Gilbert Gilkes : I want to tell you what is going on at a little mission where I have just been staying. It was founded by our friend Elbert Clarke on his first arrival in Natal. He afterwards felt called to go further into the interior, and the work was taken up by the Birmingham Y.M.C.A. It is a successful mission, and the people going out from it are doing good, I believe, though the work is carried on in a very simple way. I want young Friends to know that there is an opening for service for the Lord in South Africa, for there may be just as much mission work in going to teach carpentering as in going definitely to preach. Some have gone into that district and have turned away faint-hearted, because it seemed such a long time before they could really preach the gospel. Young people going out there should be content to learn the language first of all, and to teach the boys and girls industrial pursuits. The schools connected with this mission are now under Government inspection, and a very fair financial grant reaches them year by year, for the work is of such a class that it is deemed worthy of Government support. The boys are taught joinery work, farming, brickmaking— a little brickmaking machine has just been sent out ;. and the girls are taught all that the 154 Industrial Work. ladies here would imagine they should be taught, by a motherly Christian lady. In such a small mission very many years must elapse before the work can be made to pay. But I unite fully with the expression that the reader of the first paper made use of, as to the value of instruction that makes for character. I believe that much good will be done to these people, who have no books or literature, but are simple uncultivated savages, still existing in the immediate reach of civilisation, by going in the simplest way amongst them, trying to form their characters, and teaching them those things they need to know and so take them one step forward in civilisation. You would, for instance, never think of teaching people to be watchmakers who, if one asked them how long it was since a person had passed by, could only point to the sky and say that it was since the sun was " there." But you must teach them to read their Bibles, teach them how to build square houses instead of living in mud hovels, and many other things. It has been a perfect revelation to me to learn what I learned, right amongst the heathen themselves. Dark and dismal as their condition may have seemed, one could not help feeling that one knew little about it before ; one had no idea of the feeling of despair, of the impossibility of progress, which meets, all who come amongst them to try and break down their superstitions. If young Friends, or older Friends, can make a special journey just to see these things for themselves, they will add to their interest in missionary work for the rest of their lives, and perhaps will add to their own usefulness as missionary agents at home. Frederick Sessions : My justification for saying a word or two now must be the very deep interest I have had in two branches of our Mission work in India — the High School and the Industrial work. Just about the time I went out to India, five or six years ago, a great controversy was going on as to whether it was right for the missionary societies to undertake secular educational work ; the discussion was going on amongst those opposed to Missions as well as those in favour of them. I came back with a very distinct impres sion that it was absolutely necessary that missionary societies should face the educational problem. A friend of mine, who Industrial Work. 155 has now gone into the better land, a Christian Hindu, himself a graduate of Calcutta University and of an American university, an author of no mean repute, the writer of several English books — Ram Chundra Bose, of Lucknow — told me it was simply impossible to sweep away the educational branches of missionary work in India. If it were done the missionaries would have to start again de novo on the same lines. The common charge against them was that they were not turning out Christian converts. I had a very interesting commentary on that. When I was in Bombay, ready to sail, a report came in from one of the Christian colleges that eleven students had made profession of Christianity, and some of them had gone through bitter persecution from their castes and families. I believe there is a tendency on the part of Government to increase the number of special subjects in examinations, so that it requires great care on the part of Christian schoolmasters to prevent the Bible from being crowded out. But I believe that is all that can be said against these establishments, and I am very thankful that Friends have been able to start the Hoshangabad High School. I should like to bear testimony to the good influence of my late dear friend, George O'Brien, and of his widow Fanny O'Brien over the native students. I believe that private talks of such students with a missionary must be extremely useful. I should like if there had been time to have enlarged a little on Alfred Taylor's industrial work in Hoshangabad and also upon that of George Swan, who is at the head of another industrial branch of the work — that of the weavers. I want to say as to the ^25 spoken of in Thomas P. Newman's paper, I have promised the India sub-committee to lay that need before Friends as I have opportunity. If any Friend is inclined to give me any sums, large or small, towards it, I shall be very glad to receive them on behalf of the Christian weavers of Itarsi. Priscilla A. Fry : I should like to say a word on behalf of the women missionaries and industrial teaching from a business point of view. One of our teachers, the late Sarah Street, who was one of our earliest missionaries in Mada gascar, learned embroidery for the sake of making her 156 Industrial Work. school self-supporting, and she was able to do a great deal towards it. Helen Gilpin who, I regret, is not able to be here, did still more. Only the girls in the advanced classes were permitted to learn the work. They were also taught to make garments, which were sold to many of the natives. One of the missionaries of the London Missionary Society learned the Bedfordshire lace-making, because they did not wish to interfere with us, and that has also been a great success. There are many other native industries which, if our schools were encouraged to take up and to send the results to England, would, I am sure, sell very well, and help to elevate the girls. The Home for Girls was thus supported for a few years with regard to all the children's expenses, though not including that of the missionaries over them. William Edward Turner : I only intend to occupy a very few moments of this Conference, but I wish to say how very much interested I have been, together with all here no doubt, in listening to the very able and helpful papers read to us by our Friends to-day, as well as by the valuable papers we listened to yesterday. I cannot but feel that all here who are engaged in distant fields of Mission work must have felt extremely helped and encouraged in their labours far away from home. I have no doubt that when tidings of the proceedings of this Conference reach those now far away, they too will receive somewhat of the helpful blessing that is introduced into our own hearts now. One must feel that the work of a missionary in non-Christian countries is a very complex one. He cannot avoid the conviction that he must be a civiliser and educator, as well as a moral instructor and religious teacher. These things seem to be necessarily bound together in any successful Mission work amongst people who are living under such conditions as we have heard described over and over again. The paper read to us by Arthur Rowntree is a most valuable one. I hope that it may be read in some form by all our members. He takes us back to some most important questions, which it is desirable that we should all carefully ponder. Education is not a mere cramming of the mind with The Printing Press as a Missionary Agency. 157 knowledge ; it is primarily the formation of character, teaching to discharge the duties of life well and honourably. While in the work of the missionary there must always be the primary concern to bring the knowledge of Jesus Christ to the hearts and consciences of the people ; there should go along with it the promotion of, perhaps, industrial occupa tion, or some practical interest in the social life of the people he lives with. I was very much interested in listening to Thomas P. Newman's paper upon the industrial part of Foreign Mission work. I remember that in one of my journeys to Southern Europe, over thirty years ago, it was my privilege to be at Chrischona, near Basle, where the venerable Christian mis sionary Spitzler was teaching two hundred young men ; he was also adapting them for practical usefulness by instructing them1 in the various trades which his missionary society were using to carry forward their mission services, especially in Africa. One felt while watching the earnest religious spirit that prevailed amongst these young men, and the character of the teaching that Spitzler addressed to them, what a very great help it must be to them, going out in little companies — a man and his wife, with two or three younger men — to establish Christian Missions, to have the aid of industrial labour. Perhaps it may be felt by our own Foreign Missionary Society that it would be very difficult to provide an efficient branch of this kind ; yet I have no doubt that the committee will give it some attention, and I hope that by and by we may have a fuller establishment of this important aid to the Christian Missionary's work, in the spread of the knowledge of Jesus Christ in distant parts of the earth. THE PRINTING PRESS AS A MISSIONARY AGENCY. John C. Kingzett : Reference has been address by made to the work of the missionary press john c. kingzett. in Madagascar, as one of the branches of industrial work in connection with our Mission. Of course, in the establishment of a printing-office 158 The Printing Press as a Missionary Agency. in Madagascar, the idea was not simply to teach the people how to print. It was necessary to establish a press for printing the books with which to carry on the educational and other work. I cannot attempt to give a full description of the work of the printing-office, its extent and usefulness, but I may say that the Mission work in Madagascar could not possibly be carried on as it is without the printing-press. Take the educational work. The missionaries had to write the necessary books, establish a printing-office, print them, and carry out the whole work of education. We publish for the village schools little books on elementary grammar, geography, and arithmetic ; and in the different grades of the higher schools, right up to books on astronomy, botany, zoology, and kindred works. And again from the little Scripture lesson-books right up to the more advanced ones, such as commentaries and biographies. The missionary press provides the native teacher with a library. There are two or three hundred standard books published in Malagasy, from which, according to his means, each student and teacher can purchase. Again, away in the village where he has been placed, the country teacher's sympathies and interests might be expected to be narrowed down into the groove in which he finds himself. But the missionary press sends out periodical publications, by which he becomes interested not only in his own little work, but in all the Christian work going on in Madagascar, and also in that of other lands. He has few opportunities of attending lectures, stirring services, and so on ; but the missionary press takes the best lectures, the most striking sermons, prints them, and sends them out to these men, so that though he cannot go to these meetings, the addresses come to him and help him in his work. Turning for a moment from the educational to the medical work, we find the press equally necessary. In the hospital you find the doctors teaching from books, printed, illustrated, and published by our missionary press. Not only so, but if you will follow me in imagination, you will see the evangelist and his wife who have gone away hundreds of miles into distant parts of Madagascar to carry the gospel to other tribes. He goes far away from any of the many helps he would have in Antananarivo, and perhaps a month's journey The Printing Press as a Missionary Agency. 159 from any doctor. He carries his life in his hands ; but the missionary press sends something to help him in his work. He has not only his library for reference and help, but the •evangelist has a little row of bottles on his shelf, or, if he has no shelves, in his box, and with them a number of drugs. He has very little knowledge of medical work. Perhaps it may be said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Still, with his little row of bottles, he is the only man who has any pretension to medical knowledge in a large district. He has a book, " Diseases and their Treatment" ; another, " Till the Doctor Comes " ; another, " Fever, and how to Treat it." And so when his help is sought he looks at his books and goes to his bottles, and in this way is able to do a vast amount of useful work. It may sometimes happen that by applying his little knowledge in this way he shortens the sufferings of those whom he desires to relieve, in a way that he had not intended ! A Tract Society has been formed, which uses the press for the purpose of sending out hundreds and thousands of religious tracts up and down the country. Another native Society that has been formed for visiting the sick uses the press for printing texts of Scripture on the calico garments they give to poor sick people when they have not the means of buying them for themselves. So in every branch of the mission work the press forms an essential feature. A word has been said about profits and losses on this kind of work. I don't know that I need give any figures, but I can say of the work of the press in Madagascar that it cloes not cost the F.F.M.A. a single penny. The printing-office is worked on business lines, it pays its way, and hands over a considerable amount into the funds of the Association in Madagascar year after year. All our machinery, plant, and material is thus paid for by us. Of course, early on in the histoiy of the printing- office the expense to the F.F.M.A. was large. You cannot get a printing-machine out to Madagascar without paying. A machine which costs ^100 here, costs another £80 or more to deliver in Antananarivo. Henry E. Clark : I think one explanation is needed, the mission press does not pay for the salary of the missionary printer. The needful capital was provided by Friends in the 160 Industrial Work. first place, but no more has been needed lately. It is worked as a business establishment. The local treasurer of the F.F.M.A. in Antananarivo is its banker, and receives the surplus money as it is available. Frederick Andrews, BA. : I simply want to ask a practical question. We very properly do not allow applause in a Friends' Meeting, and so it is a little difficult to gauge how much support certain propositions obtain in the minds of Friends in the Meeting. I understand that up to the present time the F.F.M.A. has not recognised as a branch of their work the industrial work that Thos. P. Newman speaks of. I have been quite in accord with the paper, and I have wondered if others have, and if they have, I wish that the Committee of the F.F.M.A. should be encouraged to include this as a branch of their work. If Frederick Sessions is going to try to obtain ^25 for Itarsi from private sources because he would so get ^25 that would not find its way into the coffers of the F.F.M.A., by all means let him do so ; but if he does it because he cannot get it from the funds of the F.F.M.A., I think that within wise limits the Committee might be encouraged to include the work. Watson Grace : In reply to this point, while the F.F.M.A. Committee has not made special grants to an extensive degree, such as might seriously involve our finances, which are not in too flourishing a condition, we have always sent out those Friends who are concerned for such work, and we have treated them exactly as the other missionaries, nor have we charged their allowances as expenses to the industrial departments. It is true that the F.F.M.A. has treated the capital expenditure of the industrial work as a distinct item from their general account, but they have always regarded it as an extremely important part of their work, and have supported those engaged in it. John Edward Wilson : I am anxious lest this large gathering should be under a misapprehension in this matter. I have been a pretty active member of the Committee, and I know something about its affairs. For the printing press Industrial Work. 161 in Madagascar, when it was started, private subscriptions were taken. But it is not to be understood in any sense that we undervalue this work. We hold it as an absolutely essential part of our labour there, and we give the highest esteem to those Friends who have conducted it up to the present time. A Friend asked the question yesterday how is it that the F.F.M.A., when deeply in debt, feels it right to send out fresh missionaries into the foreign field ? We had a partial answer to that given yesterday. But supposing we are in debt we feel bound to accept their services. Another important question comes up. The school for missionaries' children in West China, which is now proposed, will be a most valuable part of our work. We are receiving great encouragement from other bodies ; they come to us and say, " You Friends have our absolute confidence in starting a school and preventing us from the necessity of having to send our little children all the way to Europe." It takes a good deal of money to do so, yet we have the strongest desire that it should be an integral part of our work. Where we can we obtain special subscriptions, not from any lack of sympathy, but because Friends might say, " We give our subscriptions to the F.F.M.A. to help Friends to preach the gospel, and you are turning it into an industrial or educational business." We therefore thought it well that Frederick Sessions should be asked to collect special sub scriptions for starting the industrial work that he has spoken of, but it is the work of the F.F.M.A. as much as any other part. J. Douglas Maynard, B.A. (speaking upon the invitation of the Chairman) : In coming to this Conference I came rather to learn than to teach others anything, as I am not a missionary, and my experience is very small. But I am interested in the work. I am going out to the High School at Hoshangabad to follow out the principles that Arthur Rowntree has put forward in his paper. If I have grace to carry this out then I shall be successful in the work. The following paper by Emma Fothergill was in- 12 1 62 Elbert and Emma Clarke's Mission in Natal. tended to have been read at this Session, but time did not permit : — ELBERT AND EMMA CLARKE'S MISSION IN NATAL. Elbert and Emma Clarke have now been paper by most devoted workers in South Africa for emma fothergill. twenty-two years. This is the eighteenth year of their present mission to Zulu Kaffirs, who had never heard the gospel before our Friends pierced their way into the hitherto unevangelised parts, reached without bridges across the broad rivers, and with scarcely a track over the lofty mountains they had to pass. Here, without any white men as neighbours, having bought a patch of land, they pitched their tent on a hill-side, and began their work among the swarms of heathen towards whom their hearts so yearned — a people who had no idea of God, very warlike and superstitious, suspicious and deceitful, but, nevertheless, a fine race. They soon found in the mis sionaries true friends, and the good work amongst them has prospered and been blessed. Throughout a very wide and extended district, the gospel message has been given and is being freely received, and the civilising influences of Christianity are very apparent. Elbert Clarke has been working four stations, employing a native evangelist at each — at Entakamu (now his 'head quarters) ; at Rock Fountain, ten miles distant ; at Hope Vale, twenty miles ; and at Endunduma, fifty miles from Entakamu. At the last-mentioned place a most interesting and satisfactory work has been going on, but the natives, to their great distress, have been driven away by the encroach ments of foreign settlers, and compelled to remove from their bracing mountain regions to a distant location in the low lands to the south-east, appointed to them by Government. The change is proving disastrous to them ; but they go as Christians, and many of them are real Bible students. They beg E. Clarke to visit them whenever possible. There are also preaching places in the Umkomas and Lifafa valleys, where native evangelists are employed. Elbert and Emma Clarke visit these stations regularly, some times staying several weeks at a time. Elbert and Emma Clarke's Mission in Natal. 163 Our Friends work hard to support the Mission, which they do, to a great extent, by their farming operations. As its needs grow and new claims are created, they cast them selves upon their Heavenly Father in restful trust, and thank fully recognise the help sent out by their fellow-members and others in England, including much appreciated contributions from the M.H.U. Just now they ask special prayer for the already famine-stricken people around them. A succession of seasons of extreme drought, followed by the ravages of myriads of locusts, have reduced them to comparative poverty, and starvation stares them in the face ; and as the young of the recent " great army " are appearing in swarms, there is little hope, humanly speaking, of the growing crops being spared. But this is a time of spiritual awakening, and with much thankfulness our missionaries record, that in con nection with each of their stations very many among the heathen are turning to God for salvation. Their mid-week meetings and kraal-to-kraal visitations, as well as Emma Clarke's Bible classes and meetings for women, have greatly increased during the year with many tokens of blessing. Often during their services the people all over the crowded meeting-houses have been broken down by the Spirit of God. Not only women and girls, ' but powerful men have been prostrate before Him, crying for mercy. They have some times been unable to break up their meetings till " sundown." Elbert Clarke's knowledge of medicine and his surgical skill have greatly added to his usefulness and success as a missionary. Persons have travelled as far as fifty and even seventy miles to avail themselves of his help. In several instances patients have been too ill to return at once, and have been entertained and nursed at the mission station till able to return to their homes. Favourable opportunities have been thus afforded for gospel teaching, which has been greatly blessed, and confidence, respect, and gratitude have been secured. Recently a neighbouring farmer, whose leg was broken and crushed by a waggon accident away from his home, was brought to Elbert Clarke ; and so serious was the case, that he could not be removed for many weeks. A similar case had occurred shortly before. The need for a small hospital has been greatly felt. 164 Meeting on Armenia. Elbert Clarke attaches great importance to itinerating. He thinks that this is the most effectual way of taking the gospel to the heathen. He and his wife travel round a certain district, sending a messenger in advance to inform the headmen of the kraals that they are coming " to preach the Word of God." The people are called, and gather together in large numbers in a central position,, and a meeting is held. By this means thousands of natives are reached who would not have gone to a mission station, and the whole district has thus been permeated with gospel truth. It was by such journeys that the interest was aroused, which led to the formation of the various mission stations; the chiefs became very anxious for their people to be educated, and, with themselves, to be made further acquainted with the gospel. Now, itinerating goes on from each of these centres. The people are encouraged to talk and ask questions after the meetings, and these after-times are often most helpful and interesting. Elbert Clarke has introduced industrial work into his mission : he has his blacksmith's forge, carpenter's shop, &c. He has made roads, sunk wells, quarried stone, and made bricks for needed buildings. His carts and waggons, school furniture, and the woodwork for various buildings have also been of home manufacture. I earnestly commend this Mission to your continued prayerful sympathy and support. Fourth-day Afternoon, 23rd of Ninth Month, 1896. MEETING ON ARMENIA. Edmund Wright Brooks in the Chair. Between the morning and afternoon Sessions of the Con ference a special meeting was held, when J. Rendel Harris gave some account of his recent visit to the persecuted people of Armenia. The meeting opened with a time of prayer. J. Rendel Harris, M.A., said, in the course of a deeply Meeting on Armenia. 165 interesting and stirring address, that there were two main forces at work, — anti- Christian and anti-social. In one place the anti-social element is present, in another the anti-Christian. The course of the persecutions is, however, tending more and more to be an anti- Christian movement. It is a religious question — " Christ or Islam ? " The misery is widespread — well-nigh universal — and the massacres will probably continue. It is certain that we shall not evade our part in this business by a conspiracy of silence. It is already a state of war. The angel of peace would blush to be told that such things were done under her wings. The Chairman said that the Society of Friends occupied a place of peculiar difficulty at the present moment. It seemed as though there was hardly any way out of the present position which would not lead to military operations. As adherents of the Prince of Peace we could not support a movement which led to war. He believed, however, that there was another course which we could consistently take up and pursue. He had drafted a memorial to the Prime Minister of this country, which he hoped the meeting would feel it consistent with their duty to send, as the united opinion of this gathering representing the whole Society in this country. He then read the Memorial, which advised the Government to publicly abrogate the Cyprus Convention of 1878, and to surrender the Island to a European commission as a pledge of our good faith. We should thus be no longer responsible for any act of the Turkish Government. Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., welcomed the proposal, as he was satisfied that the one great reason which prevented the other Powers from supporting England in this matter was that they were not convinced of her sincerity. Thomas Pumphrey, William Jones, Joseph F. Clark, Joseph Storrs Fry, Thomas P. Newman, Mary L. Cooke, and several other Friends heartily supported the proposal. It was agreed to ask the Conference, at its next sitting, to adopt a memorial to Lord Salisbury on the lines of that brought forward by the Chairman. 1 66 The Society of Friends and the Fourth-day Afternoon, 23rd of Ninth Month, 1896. Caleb R. Kemp in the Chair. The Chairman : I sympathise with those Friends who have felt so engrossed with the subject before the meeting just preceding this, with the suffering Armenians, that it may seem a little difficult to turn attention at once to the quieter subject which will be before us now, that of methods regard ing the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom in foreign lands. I know of no better preparation for changing our thoughts from the one to the other, and producing the settlement and quiet which we desire than our entering upon a time of devo tion and waiting upon God, to seek His presence and blessing at this sitting. I hope that now, in both outward stillness and quietness of mind, we may spend a short time of waiting upon God in prayer. A period of devotion, in which vocal prayer was offered, followed. THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS AND THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY. The Chairman : Our Secretary, in writing to address by me to ask me to take the honourable position caleb r. kemp. of Chairman this afternoon, suggested that I should offer some remarks in reference to the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society and of Friends in connection therewith. I gladly respond. Now the object of the British and Foreign Bible Society is a simple one ; perhaps I may say we have two objects. One is to produce the Scriptures in the common tongues of the people, so that in the various nations of the world and the many tribes of those nations, each man who is able to read, may be able to read the Holy Scriptures in the tongue familiar to him. Then we have the further object of circulating the Scriptures when produced. With regard to the deeply interesting work of translation — which has fascinated many scholars — it is a most important work, and it is approached by the Committee of the Society not only with such intelligence and scholarship British and Foreign Bible Society. 167 as they command, but also with very earnest prayer to God. The plan adopted is to select some Christian man acquainted with the language into which the translation is to be made, if he is acquainted with Hebrew and Greek so much the better, and entrust him with the work. Beyond this we try to get a Revision Committee representing all the churches working in the district, if there are any, where the translation is to circulate, so that these may be, to a certain extent, responsible for the editions produced, and thus prevent rival editions of the Scriptures competing in the particular district. Now sometimes it happens that we are asked for a copy of the Scriptures in some Eastern language which is rich in literature and history. It requires great care and is often difficult. We have difficulty in rendering Scriptural terms into these Eastern languages, and not least the very name of the Supreme. At other times we have applications from districts where there is little or n,o literature, and where the people are so rude as not even to have a written language at all. I remember that years ago we were asked to produce a copy of the Scriptures for the people of Tierra del Fuego. Prof. Darwin, who had taken a great deal of interest in the people — and Friends will remember the point of view from which he approached Christian truth— said it was absurd to ask it ; it was ridiculous to attempt to give it, for the language of these people was but the chattering of apes. We got hold of a man connected with the South American Mission, Thomas Bridges. I feel an interest in mentioning his name because he was a nameless waif picked up in the streets of Bristol, and was named Thomas because he was found in the parish of St. Thomas, and Bridges because he was found upon a bridge. He knew the language of these people sufficiently to talk it. He undertook the labour of reducing the language to a written language, and produced the transla tion, a copy of which was sent to Darwin, with the result that the great authority on evolution said he marvelled at the result, and forwarded a substantial subscription in acknowledgment to the Missionary Society with which Bridges was connected. Now with regard to our work of distribution. A great 1 68 The Society of Friends and the deal of it is through the Missionary Societies. Probably Friends know very well, but in speaking on other platforms on behalf of the Society it is necessary to say that the British and Foreign Bible Society supplies the missionary societies with all copies of the Scriptures they want. We charge nothing for them, but we expect that where the missionary societies sell the copies they get from us they will give us the proceeds of the same. We send them away up into Madagascar for instance, and the cost of getting these books from the coast to Antananarivo has been a great deal more than getting them to the island itself. Well, we do not ask that we should be recouped that sum, but we do ask that we may receive such sums as the missionary societies are able to give us as the produce of their sales. Now there is another method of distribution, through the colporteurs of the society. We have hundreds of these labouring in Roman Catholic districts, many in India and in China, and in other parts of the world. Our system is never to give, always to sell ; but we reduce the cost to such a sum as we think the people are able to pay, and we think that they are more likely to value an article that they buy than if it is simply given to them. Very often our paths are crossed by enterprising and well-meaning Christians who distribute the Scriptures free. Our colporteurs frequently tell us that they think their work is injured by these methods. But still our sales go on increasing, and they are very large. We sell extensively in Russia, in fact, one-seventh of our whole circulation is within the limits of the Russian Empire. We have considerable difficulty between the Stundists on one side and the priests of the Greek Church on the other. If we get an earnest Stundist, it is sometimes difficult to get him to keep simply to the quiet work of selling ; he likes to preach. If he preaches the gospel he is offensive to the priests of the Greek Church, and we get into trouble. We consider these men are not sent out to preach the gospel in the ordinary sense, but to sell our books. Of course, they are not tongue tied. They can speak of Him the book refers to. What is the object of all this ? It means that we look upon the Holy Scriptures as the great message of God to man. He has there told us of His dealings with men. It British and Foreign Bible Society. 169 is the Scriptures that reveal the Lord Jesus Christ the Redeemer and Saviour, and we consider that to distribute this book is unquestionably missionary work. Therefore we claim to be not merely an auxiliary to the missionary societies, but to be engaged in direct mission work ourselves, in extending the Redeemer's kingdom, as Christ by the Holy Spirit is pleased to bless the circulation of the Holy Scriptures. Now I am asked to say something in regard to Friends' connection with the Bible Society. Friends have been con nected with it from its rise. In Darlington I doubt not there has been an auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society from the early part of the century. Certainly, the ancestors of many Darlington Friends, residing at Norwich, were foremost in this work, and it was remarked to me not long ago at the Bible House in London that we were indebted to the faith fulness of Joseph John Gurney for the many auxiliaries that we had in the villages and towns of Norfolk. Speaking at Darlington of Friends connected with the Bible Society, I should like to say that I believe we have at the Bible House the best collection of the various ancient editions of the Scriptures that can be produced. And a large part of that most valuable and interesting collection we call the Fry library. It consists of a very large number of volumes collected by the late Francis Fry, of Bristol. We are largely indebted to Sir Theodore Fry and members of his family for this gift to the valuable library at the Bible House. We have these and others of much interest, and we invite Friends when in London to come and see them. We have Friends connected with the Society in its working ; several vice-presidents of the Society are Friends, the Treasurer is a Friend, and two members of the committee ; * and I find Friends have done considerable voluntary work abroad. Henry E. Clark has been a most faithful representative in Madagascar ; and Helen Gilpin wrote the references for the Malagasy Scriptures ; our agent in Japan is George Braithwaite, a son of J. Bevan Braithwaite. I desire that the interest of Friends in the Bible Society should be extended, that they may work for it and remember it in prayer. If I speak of Friends' connection with the society, * Caleb R. Kemp is Chairman of the Committee.— Ed. 170 Society of Friends and the British and Foreign Bible Society. it is in no sense of self-congratulation but of thankfulness to God. If the work has prospered, it has prospered as God's work, and men may be humbled in the thought. I have a memorandum here with regard to the work in Japan, which seems to come home to us because of George Braithwaite's labours there. A pious lady the year before last went to Japan, and thought she would like to place copies of the Scriptures in the shops of Osaka, a town of 500,000 inhabitants. We have so reduced prices in Japan, that we can sell a Gospel for half a farthing. She found that a sovereign would purchase 2,000 copies of these little books. A sovereign enables her to place in shops on sale 500 copies of Matthew, and the same of each of the other evangelists, Mark, Luke, and John. If any Friend here inclines to give a sovereign for this purpose, I will take care that it is faith fully transmitted to Japan and used accordingly. The work there has been blessed. Again, we make grants towards the expenses of native helpers who are engaged in Zenana work. Our plan is to give to any bond fide missionary society ^144 a year if they can use it profitably. Our idea is that we may have twelve women at a cost of £12 a year each. Some societies take the whole of it, some employ a fewer number. I think that we have thirty societies that take it. The Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, and the Wesleyan Missionary Society take the whole ; the Baptist Society a partial grant, the Zenana Mission the whole, the Women's Foreign Missionary Society a partial grant— they have perhaps _£8o or ^70, I have not the particulars here. In this list of thirty-two missionary societies I find printed the name of the F.F.M.A., but the figures run out " nil." Perhaps I am wandering from my subject, for I was to speak of the connection of Friends with the Bible Society, and this seems a disconnection. It is one that I regret. I believe we have once or twice paid money to the F.F.M.A. for Zenana work. I should be glad if our Friends in India would be good enough to see if they could not get earnest and devoted people to read the Scriptures to these poor women, teaching them to read themselves, and distribute the Scriptures amongst them. Surely that must be one of the Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. 171 many ways by which, under God, we may advance the Redeemer's kingdom. Our only desire is that this work may be blessed of God to the furtherance of His own truth. John H. Williams : I hope the impression will not have been given that we have no Bible women in India working in connection with the Zenanas. If we have not applied to the Bible Society for money, it is because dear Friends in America and England have been liberal enough to support the Bible women we now have. We look upon it as one of the most important parts of the work, to send native women to declare the gospel among their own people, to preach and sing the gospel, and carry the Bible along with them. The Chairman : I am exceedingly glad to hear it, and I hope we may be allowed to have a share in the work. I ought, perhaps, to have acknowledged the very large and varied work that the American Bible Society is carrying on in many parts of the world, and also the National Bible Society of Scotland. J. Tregelles Fox, M.R.C.S., formerly of the Medical Mission, Antananarivo, said that the following paper was based on seven years' experience as a Medical Missionary in Madagascar, followed by a sympathetic interest in the subject during the past nine years. MEDICAL WORK AS A METHOD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. PAPER BY It is impossible in the time allotted to do justice to this subject. I will „. tregelles fox, m.r.c.s. only attempt to justify our Foreign Medical Mission work, briefly de scribe its salient features and varieties, and conclude my observations by some general remarks and thoughts rather suggestive of further prayerful study than professing dog matically to dispose of the problems which present them selves for solution. I would postulate in my hearers an acquaintance with the progress, or at least a sympathetic interest in, some of the many and varied foreign fields. 172 Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. I recollect the crude idea I formed of Medical Missions when I first heard of them, and mention it now in case such may yet be in any of my hearers' minds. It seemed that they were a sort of trap for unwilling hearers, that the medical relief was offered in exchange for the opportunity to force the gospel — a sort of silvering of the bitter pill ; and I confess my own mind revolted from the conception ! Practical acquaintance with them, at home and abroad, has removed this erroneous impression. It is true that they have been the means of opening doors closed to Christian teaching, removing prejudice, and of gaining the attention, nay, the affection, of the indifferent and debased ; but it is not a necessary part of this work to take a mean advantage of suffering humanity in time of weakness by encroaching on conscience, or to bring the "noble profession" of medicine under bondage to a creed. Those who have worked in Medical Missions know what a harvest of hypocrisy might be expected from such a method of sowing. Time would fail me to describe the bitter cry of bodily pain, most of which we possess, in the medical art, the means of relieving ; the unutterable methods applied by the un civilised to various forms of disease ; and the crafty super stitions by which the ills of the flesh are used for enslaving the spirit — and emptying the purse ! But the example of Jesus, and His commissions to the twelve and to the seventy, are surely sufficient justification to us for using what I esteem as the God-given power of medicine and surgery as a means of mission work. Our Lord did not merely proclaim a root- principle, the living seed and source of good, but He also exemplified and scattered broadcast the visible fruits of that new life, and "went about doing good" to men's bodies, even when their souls were unconscious of their still greater need. Following in His steps the Christian philanthropist will remove hindrances and prepare the way of the Lord coming by His Spirit into hearts hitherto unreceptive of His gracious influence. For I take it the true work of the medical pro fession is but a particular case of the whole gamut of philan thropic effort made for the temporal good of mankind, such as feeding, housing, and clothing the hungry and destitute ; liberating the slave ; reconciling enemies ; raising the fallen, Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. 173 through vice or intemperance ; tending the weak ; teaching the ignorant, and guiding the erring into the paths of righteousness, industry, and peace. All these owe their origin, or still draw their chief support from Christianity, and most of them can be suitably brought into the service of foreign missions. The Medical Mission is an attempt to retain an intimate connection between the work for the body and for the soul, and is therefore strictly comparable to the other branches of mission work, such as the Educational, the Industrial, &c. Controversy has arisen concerning these — and the question is important in regard to the medical work, Are they mere adjuncts to the mission, or are they as truly mission work as preaching the gospel ? Not mere adjuncts, but part and parcel of the whole. In proof I refer to ex perience in the various mission fields, and appeal to an enlightened judgment whether deeds do not often speak louder than words, inasmuch as " faith without works is dead also." Some division of labour is right, but not to this extent, that one only preaches, the other practises ! Far be it from me to imply that .the preacher is a man of words merely ; but surely we do not need to be reminded that evangelical preaching, to be worth the name, must be the expression of one's true life, not a mere setting forth of correct doctrines. The central idea of a Medical Mission is that the same workers — doctors and nurses — should! tend the bodies of the sick and point their minds to the Physician of souls ; their own daily life being also faithfully lived as a witness to the Master. It is true that the mere medical work is a task well- nigh sufficient to absorb one's whole energies in the endeavour to maintain it reasonably near the ever-advancing standard of scientific medicine and surgery. Yet it is a great loss if the doctor allows the privilege of testifying his allegiance to Christ, and definitely working for the souls of those amongst1 whom he labours, slip out of his hands. One man camnot do everything, but every doctor may have a " hobby " — some thing to which he devotes earnest attention in relaxation from his engrossing duties. The most successful medical mission aries have the winning of souls for their best-loved hobby. I believe that in our own Society we have the opportunity of approaching nearer to this ideal than in most, inasmuch as we 174 Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. do not consider " the ministry " need generally absorb a man's whole time or hinder the duties of his outward avocations. Among the patients much regular preaching is impracticable, or would be burdensome. Complete theological instruction is not so much required as the "word in season" arising under the blessing of the Lord's Spirit from a heart habitually prepared to minister to others. Active ministers amongst us, abundant in diligent labour, testify to the freedom from care and relief of work gained by not preparing each address beforehand, but leaving it prayerfully to the Lord to open the hearts of the hearers and the lips of the speaker ; and I think I see in this how it should be possible for every medical missionary, perhaps every Christian physician, to be, without sensibly adding to the burden of his daily toil, the channel of untold spiritual blessing to those amongst whom he works. Which of us, alas ! reaches this standard ? Let me briefly outline the medical work and its branches as they grew up in Madagascar ; then speak of the training of native doctors, and conclude by some general observations. I. On first arrival the doctor is soon sought out by crowds of native patients, ignorance of whose speech need not hinder him from removing offending teeth, dressing wounds, observ ing the signs of disease and administering doses, nor from giving object-lessons in cleanliness, health, and nursing. Such is the first stage of the work, and such may be continued under the name of " Medical Itinerating," full of variety and romantic experiences. It is a powerful means of good in the hands of a man like Livingstone, " whithersoever he entered into villages, cities, or country," and still holds an important place in some countries. I had comparatively little experi ence of it, the needs of Madagascar pointing to developments in other directions first ; but my successor, and several of our native students, have carried it on more systematically. In the second stage a regular time and place is set apart for seeing out-patients : the Dispensary is established. A very few days after our arrival at Antananarivo this step was taken, almost in self-defence, to get some peace from the patients' besetting William Johnson's hospitable gate at all hours and every day ; and the need of interpreters and assistants led also to the reception of students and nurse probationers at Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. 175 this early stage. Dispensary practice forms at first the great bulk of the work abroad, as it does in this country. Here is the grand opportunity for proclaiming the gospel to many who never enter a place of worship, and influencing by word and deed some who are " gospel-hardened " till the softening grace comes in mercy through suffering. The doctor cannot go everywhere, and unreached villages in populous countries like China may hear their first note of the gospel music through some returning patient, as they do in other cases from a stray publication, a colporteur, or a mendicant ; and in such ways, under God, the leaven spreads. Finally a large proportion of this work comes in course of time to be performed by the students, thus saving the time of the missionary for the more serious cases. The third, and crowning, stage of the work is the establish ment of a hospital in which the continuous treatment of severe cases can be undertaken by nursing and operation if required. According to the success of the out-patient work so is the need for a hospital — if it be but a clean cottage in which a few beds can be fitted up for urgent cases. Another plan is to visit and nurse the people in their own houses as " Extern- patients " ; but whilst this brings the workers very near to the people it is more arduous and less satisfactory than treatment in hospital ; fitted to be used in addition to, rather than instead of it. With the hospital the whole work is lifted on to a higher plane, both medically and as an occasion for spiritual labour, and the responsibility on the workers rises in pro portion. Madagascar is exceptionally favoured in this respect. I pray that the Mission Hospital at Isoavinandriana, probably the best equipped in the foreign field, with the numerous daughter hospitals at Mandridrano, Fianarantsoa, Ambato- ndrazaka, and elsewhere, may long be preserved for Christian medical work. The continuous exercise of kindness and teaching wins many souls not reached by intermittent work, affording opportunity for that conversational work mentioned by a previous speaker ; and the treatment and observation of patients is of the utmost value in training students and nurses. I will here allude to the help it is the doctor's privilege to render to his fellow-workers. In a place where, perhaps, there is no one else to rely upon, the medical care of the 176 Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. missionaries, their families, and perhaps other foreign resi dents, is in itself a sufficient reason for the settlement of a properly qualified medical missionary in most centres in heathen lands. I should also mention the large amount of good medical work done by missionaries not medically quali fied, under pressure of necessity — finding a little common sense and knowledge of simple medicines and minor surgery so very much better than the ignorant practices, or neglect, of the heathen. Efforts — like the Livingstone College at Bow — to give all foreign missionaries a little safe sw6-medical knowledge in these directions have my hearty sympathy. II. It is to the training of native doctors that we must principally look for permanence of the work through future generations ; as well as to multiply manifold the number of patients which can be treated in the lifetime of one man. This work passed through a similar gradation to the other : first the interpreter picking up knowledge like an apprentice, then the dispensary assistant, and lastly the clinical student in hospital ; whilst the teaching consists first of the verbal explanations of the doctor over the patients, then more regular lessons given in some of his spare time ; and lastly, if circumstances permit, the regular lectures and text-books of a medical college. When we arrived in Madagascar we found a number of native doctors and nurses left by my predecessors, and some of them are, I believe, even yet alive and doing useful work. In a country where there was little other provision of medical education and literature than that the missions supplied, this work has been almost, if not quite, equal in value to that of directly healing the sick. I must content myself by referring to the interesting accounts of the Medical Missionary Academy at Antananarivo, in which, by the co-operation of several Missionary Societies, a further development of medical edu cation has been reached, and given from the outset a moral and a Christian character which we hope will influence it through the changed conditions of the coming time. Another method of procedure is exemplified in the Training Institute at Agra, founded, I believe, on the model of the Edinburgh Society. The students pass through the Government College, and thence receive their diploma, the Medical Officer's House. Mission Hospital at Antananarivo. Lady Superintendent's House. Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. 177 Institute meanwhile supplying theological training and over sight. The great growth of medical learning, and the highly technical and specialised methods which require to be mastered, make the work of medical education no light matter. Where, as in European countries and many parts of India, there already exist Medical Colleges and Hospitals equipped by Government or private enterprise, let us utilise them, and reduce to small proportions the costly and en grossing in-patient and student work ; for there is plenty else to do for the out-patients, District Nursing, and Medical Itinerating. In proportion as the same civilising process which has made such phenomenal growth in Japan goes on in other countries, it should be our endeavour not to compete against, but gladly to avail ourselves of the help of the scientific workers of the world, especially in the teaching of highly technical subjects, so as better to compass the moral and spiritual aspects of medical work ; recognising that all true progress is really the fruit of Christianity, and " cometh down from the Father of lights " — it may be through the service of some of His unconscious children. An adjunct to the teaching work is the preparation of medical books in the vernacular. A few popular and simple medical tracts, on common diseases or to combat injurious customs, may be of general utility. The literary work was much enjoyed by me ; it was helpful in teaching the students, and offered opportunities for enforcing spiritual truth like the other branches. But the need for it varies in different places, and I would say, when good medical books are provided by others, let us avoid overlapping here also, and use them. Some say, " Teach the students English or French, and let them have the benefit of our rich medical literature." In my opinion the difficulty of medical studies is great enough without adding this, that the student must acquire them in a foreign tongue ! It is essential, then, to get the main outlines in the vernacular. Afterwards, when the mind is stored with a broad foundation of fact, laid down to a large extent in a new vocabulary of technical terms common to all medical literature, the intelligent student who is even a fair linguist can gather much help from European scientific and medical works. *3 178 Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. III. The great difficulties and discouragements met with in medical mission work must not be forgotten. They are abundant cause for us to uphold the workers by prayer, and strengthen their hands by every means in our power. The personal and human limitations are often felt acutely, for of none can it now be said, " He healed every one." Part, then, of the witness of the doctor for Christ must be humbly done by contrast : it is the Physician of souls alone that can cure all cases, be found at every moment, and who works without money and without price. Again, the ignorance, prejudice, and superstition of the people give way but slowly even before the faithful labour of years ; and though at times some striking case seems to turn the hearts of many in the right direction, at other times a contrary effect appears when least expected. Another too frequent difficulty arises from the inadequacy of the means available : for instance, no hospital, to nurse such serious cases as it is idle to pretend to cure with " a bottle of medicine " ; or insufficient supply of drugs, &c. ; or, still more serious, a worker insufficiently qualified for so responsible a position. But the most constant difficulty arises from the very magnitude of the work itself, threatening to crowd out all opportunity for spiritual exercises. I would encourage any, if need be, to limit the work or delegate part to others rather than submit to this result ; and by all means let the patients see us as definite in our presentment of spiritual truth as we would be skilful in the use of remedies, and as zealous for the ingather ing of souls as enthusiastic in the science and art of healing. What are the qualifications for a medical missionary ? I think they are three : medical knowledge, missionary fervour, and health. It is essential that he be a sound prac titioner ; well versed and self-reliant, though conscious of the limitations of his skill ; inspiring confidence, yet not one rashly to court disaster. If, beyond this, he possess high pro fessional scholarship or the mastery of specialties, so much the better is he able to fill positions of sole responsibility, or where the educational work is important. Again, to be a missionary at all one must have the love of souls — that missionary spirit which we believe should animate all Christians. The varied forms which a " gift in the ministry " Medical Work as a Method of Foreign Missions. 179 takes would be an additional spiritual equipment, especially desirable for the medical missionary in the directions of "understanding of the Scriptures," prayer, and "govern ment." Lastly, in addition to the "mens sana in corpore sano," so essential to those going to tropical and other trying climates, all that contributes to form an all-round character — charity, judgment, tact, experience of human nature, and general resourcefulness, both mental and bodily, add greatly to the fitness of a medical missionary. Under the same heading may be mentioned culture, education, and the mastery of language. Another question is whether the medical relief should be given freely to the people, or be charged for ? From my experience at home and abroad I think it is best, at present, to make a small charge. The people value and pay more attention to that which costs them something. Some maintain the principle of giving to all sick persons freely, relying upon voluntary contributions to counteract the pauperising effect ; and I can imagine this may succeed in the hands of those who have special aptitude for evoking such benevolence ! At Antananarivo the students take it in turns to weigh out the patients' money before they are seen by the doctors, and on the whole the plan works well. Really destitute people are admitted free ; the majority pay a sum well known to be under the average value of the medicines prescribed. Middle-class patients are charged extra for expensive drugs, &c. ; and the wealthy — many of whom avail themselves of the treatment at the Mission equally with the other classes— are charged something approaching a medical fee ; all, of course, for the benefit of the mission funds. Even the routine of gathering such payments need not be thrown away. Not unfrequently people pay for their poorer fellow- sufferers, or voluntarily give something over the charges made. In conclusion, I commend the medical work as a method worthy of the best attention of our Committees, the devotion of our most talented men and women, and the heartiest support of us all. Esteem it as no mere accessory of missions, far less as a bait for adherents, but an integral part of the Church militant. Do you think a high standard of pro- 180 Women's Work in Syria. fessional skill and knowledge is wasted on such a cause, and that lesser qualifications will do for those who are to be " only medical missionaries " ? But how, if they be less reliable as doctors than such as make no profession of religion, how can their practice add weight to the preaching ? None should essay this high ideal in search of lucre, fame, or gratitude. It is better to be devoted to this Christ-like work for the very work's sake, still better if for humanity's sake, but best of all when the medical work is performed also for Christ's sake and the gospel's. Are there any Friends here whom God is leading into this work ? Know that there is nothing higher to which you can devote your talents and your profession. But whether you enter the service under the Societies or not, I appeal to every Christian doctor to follow in the Master's footsteps in your professional practice. Let it be our aim to do always the very best in the interest of each patient, with out reference to fee or reward ; to watch also for oppor tunities for ministering to sin-sick souls, and to confess the Cross of Christ in life and word — if need be to the loss of practice ; to be, in fact, wheresoever placed, true medical missionaries. Mary S. Whiting read the following paper on WOMEN'S WORK IN SYRIA. In one way it is probable that the Syrian paper by Mission, of all those under the care of our mary s. whiting. Society, is the most widely known and realised by Friends throughout the country. Every spring some travellers, with or without certificates, are to be found at the Brumana Hotel or in one of the Mission houses, who come home in time to give at the Yearly Meeting a glowing account of the beauty of the goodly mountain, and the work carried on in the substantial buildings of the Mission at Ain Salaam. Photographs of the district, costumes and curiosities brought home in abundance by travellers and mission workers have made most of those who are at all interested somewhat familiar with the outward life of Syrian women. But, besides all this, there is a need Women's Work in Syria. 181 of the knowledge of the inner home life and character of the people, the difficulties of the work, and the necessity for its extension, that there may be true prayerful sympathy with our Mission there. Several societies are working, and individual labourers are giving their lives, strength, and substance for the women of Bible lands. Seventy years ago the American Board began their noble work of education in Beyrout, and from their printing- press have issued the Bibles, tracts, and books which have materially helped all mission work in Arabic- speaking countries. For twenty-eight years in the same city Miss Taylor has devoted her life to the training of Moslem and Druse girls. Miss Bowen Thompson and her fellow-labourers have carried on the work of the British Syrian Schools in the district for thirty-six years. The German sisters from Kaiser- werth have brought up a number of native girls, besides giving education to the children of Europeans residing in the country. The Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East have worked at Shemlan and other places for forty years, and other societies have their representatives in Syria. Although such a list of agencies, in the face of the com paratively neglected fields of China, India, or Madagascar, may cause some to question the need of another Syrian Mission, it has been proved that there is here a special work for Friends. The spiritual nature of our testimonies stands in strong contrast to the exterior religion of the Greek and Maronite churches, whose deadening forms only serve to blind the eyes and harden the heart. It would seem that it is just by this people the message God has given to our Society is needed, and when they have been faithfully proclaimed and received our principles have been found to work out well in Syrian life and character. Scattered up and clown in our own district of the Lebanon are hundreds of villages as yet untouched by the good news of the saving power of Christ, where suffering has no healer and sorrow no comforter. In very many of these places the influence of the Brumana Mission, with its schools and medical mission, has 1 82 Women's Work in Syria. been strongly felt, and any one going by the name of " Friend " is welcomed on this account. For no other reason, even were no fresh work attempted,. it would be worth while to carry on in these distant villages the work begun in the Central Mission. There are to be found patients from the hospital who there for the first time listened to the story of the Cross, but who, humanly speaking, may never hear of Christ again ; and girls from the school who have gone home with the love of the Lord in their hearts, surrounded by the old forms of temptation and spiritual death. With the total absence of any human friend who can sympathise and help them in the better life, the chance of their standing firm is small indeed. Truly there is among these numerous mountain villages room and need for many Women Friends, going in the Bible order of two and two, visiting, with kindly words, among the people, overseeing the schools, assisting and encouraging the teachers, helping in times of sickness, and, as they live in close contact with them, showing forth the fruits of the Spirit to those who need to see as well as hear of the power of the risen Lord. Syrian women, although most of them nominally Christians, have heard very little of the gospel, much less understood it. They go to their churches, where the worship is performed for them (often in the ancient Syrian language), and know nothing of what is going on. When they attend our Mission meetings so unused are they to fix their attention that they find it difficult to understand anything they hear. Mothers' meetings are better, and that carried on for so many years in Brumana has been successful. The attenders, instead of freely indulging in personal recriminations during the meetings, as in former years, have been reduced to order, and know (at least in the head) a wonderful number of texts and Scripture portions. But visits paid to the homes, with their many opportunities for personal dealing, seem the best way to really get at the women. They have much need of sympathy. From childhood the boys of the family are allowed to grow up, pampered, indulged, and unrestrained, while the girls are made to have the worst of everything, attend on and submit to their brothers. When they are married, by their parents, to men (as is often the case) much Women's Work in Syria. 183 older than themselves, of whom they may know but little, and that little bad, they accept hard treatment as part of their new life. Is it any wonder that the new idea of living a holy, happy life in their present surroundings is at first looked upon as hopeless ? One woman remarked to her visitor, " It is all very well for you to be good, you have such white hearts ! " and another affirmed that she loved Christ, but forgive her enemy she never could ! Many young women in these villages are employed in silk factories, the only manufacture carried on on the mountains. Like their class in England, they are rougher and wilder than ordinary girls, but it has been proved that simple classes held for them after sunset are well attended and appreciated. Much patience is needed, but a gradual refinement has been known to come over them ; they are more reverent during the times of devotion, and, what is more, it is thankfully believed that some have come to a-personal knowledge of the Saviour. The Druse women are an especially interesting class on Mount Lebanon. With greater intellectual power than their neighbours, they have somehow learnt to read and to know many truths of Christianity, to which they apparently assent. As their religion not only allows but encourages deceit, and they are permitted to assume any other to attain their ends, their professions of conversion must be taken with reserve. When this fact has been once realised, the effect on the worker is chilling and disheartening, but who dare question either by word or deed that the grace of God is not sufficient to reach even a Druse's heart ? More than one noble girl has been known to endure tribulation, persecution, and starvation for Christ's sake, and is not this answer enough ? To work in the land " beneath the Syrian blue," where " God manifest in the flesh " lived out His earthly life, is often of itself an inducement to many women to offer themselves for Mission work in that once favoured country. Apart from this feeling of sentiment, there is a peculiar natural attraction in the bright, handsome faces, the unvaried cour tesy, and the freely expressed appreciation of Syrian women and girls. The hatred, sometimes terror, of the foreigner, which is so trying to the natural woman of the missionary in 184 Women's Work in India. China, is unknown here. Their "Sitt" (or lady) is adopted at once, and they watch over her progress in their language as a mother over the first lispings of her child. Mistakes which in some countries might be laughed at are met with polite gravity, and any unusually successful attempts at a word or phrase are often greeted with the exclamation, " How clever Sitt is ; she knows Arabic well ! " There is no persecution to endure, and stories from the Bible are an endless diversion to this story-loving people. " Manners and customs " need no explanation, and, when put into homely language, the characters and scenes of olden times are easily realised. Natural surroundings are ex tremely beautiful, and the comparative short distance from home is no small alleviation to the missionary's lot. All this appears on the surface, but sooner or later people who were loved and admired are apt to prove untrustworthy, their interest in spiritual things merely superficial, or assumed to curry favour. The enemy sows tares with no unsparing hand, romance fades away, enthusiasm dies, and woe ! woe ! to the worker who cannot fall back upon the assurance, " Have not / sent thee ? " Lebanon is yet to be turned into a " fruitful field," and the Lord works through and by His people : they are His witnesses, His ambassadors. Are there none who are hear ing His call to this needy corner of the vineyard ? " How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace ! " C. Ernest F. Munnings read the following paper, written by his wife, Sarah R. Munnings, on WOMEN'S WORK IN INDIA. Work at home and work abroad is in paper by many ways very similar, for in India, as sarah r. munnings. in England, the human heart has its sorrows and its joys, its needs, its long ings, its reaching after something higher, stronger, and purer than itself ; and those of us who have lived in India know what a privilege it is to help our sisters there to come to a knowledge of the true God and of His Son Jesus Christ. Women's Work in India. 185 Owing to the social customs of India women can only be reached by women, and the methods adopted to attain the one end are varied. ZENANA WORK. In the towns are found the zenanas, in many of which we are gladly welcomed. In the course of the day some six or eight houses are visited ; in each of these we probably have two or more pupils. Our chief object is to give them Bible teaching, but we also teach them reading, writing, and fancy work if they wish it, so lessening the monotony of their lives. Outsiders may, perhaps, look upon this branch of the work as more discouraging than any other, not often hearing of conversions and additions to church membership, but we who are actually engaged in it note with joy and thankfulness the gradual change for the better which takes place in many of our women as they come under the influence of Christ's teaching. I remember that once in one of my zenanas there was a woman who for long had been visited by another of our workers ; but she seemed to me very indifferent to the teaching given, and frequently on going -to her house she sent out an apology, saying she was busy, &c, till at length I was sorely tempted to omit her from my regular list, giving her hour to one of the many others who were anxious to be taught. But sickness came, and she began to look for ward eagerly to her Miss Sahib's visits. One day as I was reading part of John iii. to her she stopped me at verse 16, repeating it over to herself. I shall not easily forget the change that came over her face as the meaning of those words dawned upon her ; the old indifference was gone, and in its place seemed to come a settled, abiding peace. A few days later her earthly life was over, but her spirit was, I doubt not, learning more and more of the fulness of God's love. There was no public confession, no record of Church membership. And I believe that there are many hidden ones like her — some taken to the heavenly home just as they are beginning to understand something of God's great love mani fested in Jesus Christ, others exerting a quiet, gracious influ ence for good in their dark, heathen homes. So we go 186 Women's Work in India. forward rejoicingly, knowing that in God's work God's record must be fuller than man's, and His children are reminded that their labour is not in vain in the Lord. VILLAGE WORK. This is in some ways quite different from zenana work, for in most cases we can only visit the country districts once a year, during the camping season. In the villages women are not closely shut up as in towns, but they are very ignorant, few at present showing any desire to learn to read. Nevertheless, the missionary lady usually meets with a hearty welcome, and little companies of six, ten, twenty, or more women gather around her as she accepts an invitation to sit in the enclosed space in front of one of the village houses. At first they are full of curiosity, asking all sorts of questions — How old is she ? what salary does she get ? is she married ? and if not why not ? &c, &c. These polite preliminaries over, an opportunity comes to sing a hymn and explain its meaning, or to tell them something of the gospel message ; and were the workers numerous enough to pay more frequent visits the results would doubtless be greater. MEDICAL WORK. This is a most important branch, for it gives many opportunities of helping spiritual diseases as well as physical. And was it not the Master's method ? I have often wondered at the implicit faith most of the people place in the treatment given by the missionaries, and God does bless the little we can do in this way. I want to call special attention to one great need which is being brought to my mind continually in our dispensary work — the need that there is for a fully qualified medical woman. We want some one who has not only taken her medical degree, but who has had some practice and respon sibility at home. We also want a thoroughly qualified nurse who would come out to India to devote her time, after having mastered the language, to the training of a class of young native women as nurses. Is there any young Friend attend ing this Conference who feels that she is called to fill either of these posts ? Development and Organisation of the Native Church. 187 schools. Schools for girls take much time and thought ; they are an indispensable part of our work, our hope for future Christianity in India being placed so largely on the training of the children — of the girls as well as boys. There is not time now to do more than allude to the schools and classes for women — Christian and heathen, though in the building up of the native church there is, perhaps, nothing more helpful than these classes for the leading out of those not Christians, and the strengthening of those already professing Christ. In the foreign field there is abundant room for diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ; for differences of administrations, but the same Lord ; for diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all. In conclusion, may I ask that you will continue to uphold our hands with your prayers and sympathy, in the great work of leading our downtrodden sisters in India to the light and liberty of Christ ? It may be that He is asking yet more of some here : — " Is it too great a thing ? Will not one rise and go, Laying her joys aside as the Master laid them down ? Seeking His lone and lost in the veiled abodes of woe, Winning His Indian gems to shine in His glorious crown ? " The Chairman : I am sure that in the name of this Con ference I may ask Ernest Munnings to express to his wife, not only our appreciation of her paper, but our sympathy with her in her absence. Robert J. Davidson read the following paper on THE DEVELOPMENT AND ORGANISATION OF THE NATIVE CHURCH WITH ITS RELATION TO THE HOME CHURCH. We take it for granted that through the paper by various means and agencies — teaching, robert j. davidson. preaching, and healing the sick — of which we have heard this morning, the gospel has been proclaimed, and the one great aim of the 188 The Development and Organisation of the missionary has begun to bear fruit. A Christian Church has been formed, composed of those who were formerly idolators, but now have given up their heathenism, expressed their belief in Christ, and by a consistent life have shown some desire to serve Him. The question then before us is, How can this Church be made to grow in grace, power, and extent ? What means can be used to increase and develop its Christian life and usefulness ? We have in the first place to consider the condition of these converts who have just been brought out of heathenism. Most likely they have been for some time under the instruction of the missionary ; they have learnt the evil of idolatry, and become acquainted with the first principles of the Christian religion ; but as a rule on first entering the Church the majority of them have no adequate idea of what is their high calling in Christ Jesus. Heathenism, with all its superstition and sin, does not easily relax its hold upon them ; their faith in the new religion is easily shaken, and they are liable to return to their idols when called to encounter temptation and trial. In order to strengthen their faith, to foster what life they have, and to help them to be earnest active Christians, I should say that the first essential was to teach and lead each individual member to have an intimate contact with Christ Himself, to lead them to complete self-surrender and obedience to the guidance of the Spirit of God in their hearts. This is what is wanted in the Foreign Mission field — that the natives may know Christ for themselves through living contact with their souls — that He may be not simply an historical personage, a foreigner, merely some one they read about, but a living Person who dwells with them, loves them, rules their lives and homes, and is their constant ever-abiding help and support. As Dr. Griffith John puts it in other words, " It is abso lutely necessary that our native brethren should be brought to believe in the Holy Ghost — in His personal and conscious indwelling. We must teach them to hold close and constant communion with God. Ere they can become strong men in Christ they must be brought to believe in, and cast them selves upon the living, ever-present God." He says, " I shall Native Church with its Relation to the Home Church. 189 never forget what I witnessed when the Spirit was ' poured out from on high ' on some of the native Christians at Hankow. Feeling intensely my own lack of spiritual power, I spent the whole of a Saturday in earnest prayer for a baptism of the Holy Ghost. While thus praying the question suggested itself to me, ' Why not pray for the same blessing on behalf of the native Church ? ' I then felt for the first time that I could ask in faith that the converts might receive a baptism of the Holy Ghost, and be filled with all. the fulness of God. " On the following morning I preached on the subject. The inspiration of that service I shall never forget. At the close, I proposed that we should meet for an hour on every day of the ensuing week to pray for a baptism of the Holy Ghost, and to my great joy I found that the converts were just as anxious for it as I was myself. From fifty to seventy of them met day by day, and confessing their sins with tears pleaded for the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon them selves, the Christian Church in China generally, and upon the nation at large. The native Church at Hankow received an impulse then the force of which continues to this day." This power I feel is the first requisite for the develop ment of all native Churches, and it is what we long and desire for our Friends' Churches to-day in heathen lands. Until it comes we shall not see the development of the Church that we hope for. How is this to be brought about ? (1) Let us as missionaries seek to have this power of the Spirit our selves, let us live this daily life of intimate dependence and union with God. We cannot expect the natives to rise to a higher standard of Christian life than ourselves. (2) Our meetings for worship — where an opportunity is given for individual and yet collective worship — should indeed be held in the power of God, and each believer should be taught that it is his privilege to hold direct communion with the Almighty, and that God is far more really present to him than he used to believe the heathen god was when he bowed in the temples. This Conference will have wrought much good and made the way for a great development of our mission work if it can by its united believing prayers bring down a rich outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the mis- 190 The Development and Organisation of the sionaries and native Christians in our various Foreign Missior. fields. In order that the Church may be strong and healthy it is also necessary that its members should be deeply taught in the Scriptures, so that they may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Besides our mission and fellowship meetings, classes for Bible study should be arranged, in which God's dealings with His people in the past are considered, the sorrowful are comforted, the tempted are strengthened, the persecuted are helped to rejoice in their temptation, and so, according to his need, each receives a word in season. Meetings also should be held, when addresses would be given on gospel doctrines and duties, the truths of Scripture explained and the Church edified. A growing Church will often be found, like the early disciples, continuing with one accord in prayer and supplica tion, realising their great privilege of being able to cast all their care upon the Lord who cares for them. A healthy Church means an active and aggressive Church ; so the wise missionary will encourage and stimulate each convert to do some work for the furtherance of the Lord's kingdom. A dispensation of the Spirit is given to all to profit withal. Each has a work to perform, a service to render, a testimony to deliver. The old Quaker doctrine of individual faithfulness will be strongly inculcated, while the equally necessary duties of the collective Church will not be forgotten. These last two points are of great importance ; the native Christians are very ready to consider that all the responsibility of initiating and sustaining aggressive work rests upon the missionary, thinking the work is his rather than theirs ; some are even inclined to imagine that they are conferring a favour upon the missionary if they show an interest in his schemes for the furtherance of the gospel, and so long as they think thus, the Church will make little or no progress. At the earliest and at every opportunity the missionary should strongly impress upon his native brethren their privilege and duty in this respect. What we want is that the Churches be self-sustaining and self-propagating, and to accomplish this we must insist by example and precept upon the converts taking their full share of the responsibility and work of the Church. Native Church with its Relation to the Home Church. 191 Their activity and zeal; should be stimulated by the example of the missionary himself. If he is full of love and enthusiasm for Christ and earnest longing for the salvation of men, and at the same time possessed of an infinite amount of continuance and patience, the fire of his zeal and the long-suffering of his love are sure, sooner or later, to catch hold of his native brethren. It is necessary that the missionary be a pattern of good works, an example of the believers in all things. Then arise the problems of the training and employment of native helpers — paid and unpaid. If paid, shall they be supported by the mission or the native Church ? It will readily be granted by all those who have taken the trouble to think about missionary work that if Christianity is really to take root and grow in heathen countries, it must be preached and published by the natives themselves. Dr. Murdock . (Secretaiy of the American Baptist Missionary Union) says, " We shall never bring the world to the knowledge of Christ through the instrumentality of mis sionaries imported into the various countries of the earth." The reasons are so obvious that they do not require discus sion. The missionary, deeply realising this, often feeling himself so much of a foreigner in thought, word, and life, to the people amongst whom he lives and his own inability to cope with the work which he sees requires to be done, endeavours to find suitable men to whom he can commit the trust of preaching the gospel, feeling that they may be much better able to do this than himself. Many methods have been adopted to find such men. The hopeful Chris tian boys in the schools have been placed in training colleges. Men who have shown some aptitude to teach, and have given some evidence of a Divine call, have been trained, and in other instances the most earnest worker that could be found has been specially set apart and employed to try and meet the crying need. These methods, while in some cases successful, have also in too many instances proved a great snare. As members of the Society of Friends we have to face this question from our point of view. It is foreign to us to have training colleges for our ministers, pastors, and evangelists, and yet last year at Manchester remarks were made which showed that there is 192 The Development and Organisation of the some felt need in this direction in the Church at home, and our Society has always felt the great importance of the education and training of all its members. It is not supposed to be in accordance with our prin ciples to pay our Christian workers a salary ; though the Society has always felt it a duty and privilege to pay what is necessary for the support of those who are called of God to service for Him. I think it is agreed that we must have native workers for the propagation of the truth and the building up of the Church, and these must be trained men and women deeply taught in the Scriptures, and wise to win souls. If the Church is to develop as it should, means must be taken that when the Lord chooses and sends forth His labourers nothing shall be lacking on our part or that of the native Church, that they may be thoroughly furnished for the work to which they are called. The missionary should endeavour to call forth as much voluntary service as possible, and should teach every believer to be a missionary for Christ in his own sphere, impressing upon all the necessity of individual witness by word and action, in public as well as private life. It is from this voluntary effort that we are the most likely to see per manent results. There is no doubt that at first the work will be very slow, results will appear smaller, and there will be a greater strain on the faith and patience of the missionary and the Church at home, than would be the case where many native helpers are employed. The employment and training of any class of men to preach the gospel, at the present stage of missionary work in China, requires very great caution. Dr. Griffith John says, " Keep the staff of paid agents as low as possible, and encourage the private members to do Christian work — make them preachers, but don't pay them for their sermons, and don't engage them as paid agents as soon as they evince evangelistic gifts and graces." This opinion was very strongly supported at the Missionary Conferences held at Shanghai in 1877 and 1890. Voluntary effort counts for far more in the eyes of the natives, and is more likely to do good. Friends at home can hardly realise the temptation it is to a zealous missionary abroad to engage native helpers. A Native Church with its Relation to the Home Church. 193 man has been a convert for four or five years ; he has a gift of fluent speech, and knows the facts of the gospel. The people around perish for lack of knowledge. How useful, we think, this man might be, and only four shillings per week — perhaps less — will keep him, and he seems so earnest. After much thought he is engaged, but in too many cases it is to the detriment of both man and Church. On the other hand one feels that if the Church is to grow, if the gospel is to spread, how difficult it is to find those who have leisure enough from the daily struggle to maintain home and family, to give time to active Christian work ; and so where it seems necessary to employ native agency, and the converts have grown in grace and faith sufficiently to be entrusted with special service, let the native Church pay them and prove that their call is of God. If a man really has the love of God in his heart, be he of what nationality he may, it will out, it will constrain him and he cannot but tell of what Christ has done for him. Such as these, are the native agents we want — men who work because they love, not because they are paid. What I have said does not conflict with the fact that while the whole work is in its initial stages, it may be a lawful and wise course for evan gelists and teachers to be supported by foreign funds. I must briefly allude to one or two things which we in China have found detrimental to the growth of the Church. (1) The presence in the Church of those who are mere professors, whose object in entering it was not Christ, but employment, money, or help from the missionary, or some other such motive. Get such men set right, get them really to Christ if possible. So long as they are in the Church as professors only, they are a hindrance to the believers as well as enquirers. Great care must be taken with these, for often a man joins from wrong motives, and in after days becomes a consistent Christian. We must ever remember that we cannot expect to find the highest motives in heathen dark ness ; that it is Christ alone who can implant and develop these. (2) Another point requires care. Often the converts are made too much of by the missionary zealous for results. They become proud, and so their own spiritual life, as well as that of the Church, is hindered. It is quite possible to coddle all the life, vigour, and independence out of a Church. Here 194 The Development and Organisation of the the missionary requires much heavenly wisdom. None but those who have experienced it, know the intense joy that it is to see a man coming out of darkness into light, giving up his idols and his sins and confessing Christ. The missionary — like the angels — rejoices over the lost being found, he enters into the joy of the Father as He welcomes with open arms the son that was dead and is alive again,, and his deepest sympathy and love goes out toward this new-born soul. But as in the natural, so in the spiritual life, it is a mistake to give more nourishment than is needful, and though we love the new-born child, we must not smother it with clothes. In more senses than one, he is wise that winneth souls. CHURCH ORGANISATION. With the pioneer missionary the question arises, what organisation shall he adopt ? In most cases the missionary will form the centre round which the Church will gather, and with him rests the decision as to the form of Church government which shall be adhered to. In Madagascar, I understand, the case was different, the people coming over en masse to Christianity and forming their own Churches. Naturally the missionary will decide on that form with which he is most familiar, and which he thinks most in accordance with the Scriptures. As Friends, we in China turned to that which has been and is so dear to us, and we asked ourselves, " Is this form suitable for transplanting in a heathen soil ? " We noticed wherever we went, that other societies and denominations had been able to adapt their own form of Church government to their surroundings, and it seemed to us with all the liberty of the guidance of the Holy Spirit so upheld by the Society of Friends, there could be no doubt but that we also would be enabled to adapt our Church government to the needs of the people as they arose. While ever remembering that the missionary's first work is not to establish a Society of Friends, but to make the people amongst whom he works Christian men and women, yet we believe that the more a man becomes like Christ the more he becomes a true Friend. We had to consider whether the Church organisation to Native Church with its Relation to the Home Church. 195 be formed should be a Mission Church or that of the Society of Friends pure and simple. In most of the mission churches in connection with our home work, the basis of membership is " Belief in the Lord Jesus Christ with an evidence of a desire to serve Him," under which condition many true Christians are admitted into Church fellowship who would probably not be admitted into the Society. We felt that there was something lacking in the Church which could not accept those who were true and devoted Christians, and that it was not an ideal state of affairs to have a Church within a Church. So our endeavour was, if possible, to make our organisation that of the Society at once, and to consider those who joined us to be Friends. In doing this we were in some perplexity how to proceed, failing to find much help in the Book of Discipline. In the first , place there were only four of us who were members, belonging to different Monthly Meetings, and two Chinese brethren who wished to unite with us in Church fellowship. How could we receive them ? We instituted a Monthly Meeting with ourselves as temporary members — we could not see what else to do, being members of Monthly Meetings at home. We could not find any instructions in the Book of Discipline as to the formation of Monthly Meetings which would help us, and whether we were, or are, a properly constituted Monthly Meeting, we do not know even yet. We then adopted the same forms as pursued in a regular Monthly Meeting in England, with the exception that it seemed advisable to us, that as well as a written form of application for membership, there should be a public con fession of renunciation of idolatry and of faith in Christ, and that instead of appointing one or two Friends to inform the applicant of his being received, such information should be given in a public meeting, and the right hand of fellowship extended in Chinese fashion, and in this way we have received our members. But we often question in China, and have asked Friends at home, of what Church or society are these people members ? Are they members of the Society of Friends, or only of a mission community in China ? Our desire is that they should be, and their belief is that they are members of the Society of Friends, but we have 196 The Development and Organisation of the been told they are not, not being members of London or any other Yearly Meeting. In India, Syria, Madagascar, and China I believe all the members of our Churches call themselves, in their own language, " Friends." In other missions in China, especially the American Methodist Episcopal, their native Churches are very distinctly recognised by the home Churches as being members equal with themselves. Those admitted into membership in Chung- King are as much members of that body as any admitted in New York. Why should not this be so in the Society of Friends ? It may be that it is, but trustworthy information on the subject is difficult to obtain. Would it not be a help and source of strength if London Yearly Meeting recognised the native Christians, who unite with our mis sionaries in Church fellowship in our various mission fields, as being members of the Society of Friends ? Could it not give us some official statement as to the relation of these meetings to the Society at large, and also, as to the consti tutional method to be adopted in the formation of such meetings ? Why should not the Quarterly Meetings held in these mission fields be recognised by the Yearly Meeting as regularly constituted meetings of the Society, and, if necessary or desirable, be under its care until such time as the Churches in these countries have grown large enough to form their own Yearly Meetings ? The Continental Committee has taken notice of those members of London Yearly Meeting who reside abroad, but it has not, so far as I know, recognised the native Church as such. We cannot but be exceedingly thankful for the large measure of help and recognition which London Yearly Meeting has officially and unofficially bestowed upon the various mission fields. And while such a gathering as this Conference confirms our belief that the bond of union between the Home Church and Foreign Missions is destined to grow stronger and stronger, we shall hail with gladness any further steps which can rightly be taken to strengthen the union. And may we, one and all, pray with a great longing, like the Apostle Paul, for these young and struggling believers in heathen lands, that their love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that they Native Church with its Relation to the Home Church. 197 may approve things that are excellent, that they may be sincere and without offence, and filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, stedfast, unmov- able, always abounding in the work of the Lord. These are the indispensable requisites for the true development of living Churches. Jonathan B. Hodgkin : I do not want to raise a dis cussion on the exceedingly interesting paper we have just listened to, but to make one definite proposal. We were glad when the Yearly Meeting sent down a minute asking its subordinate meetings to consider how they could best draw into closer religious fellowship those working in adult schools and in other outside organisations. I wish to propose that we pass a minute this afternoon, and embody it in the report we shall send to the Yearly Meeting, requesting it to give full consideration and deliberation to the suggestion made by Robert J. Davidson, as to how we can best draw into closer fellowship with ourselves those whom he has told us are practically our fellow-members in foreign lands. I don't wish to enlarge upon this, or to do more than to ask the Yearly Meeting to consider it. Howard Nicholson : I believe that, as Robert J. David son hinted in his paper, there is a great deal of ignorance as to the real position of the members of our Mission in China. I find a paragraph bearing upon it in our Book of Discipline, though the position of the meetings in Australia is rather different from those in China.* I suppose that was adopted at the time of the revision of the Book of Discipline. Are we not now ready to receive in a properly constituted way these Churches of the East as part and parcel of the Yearly Meeting ? I ask this knowing some of the difficulties * " The Meetings for Discipline established at Hobart in Tasmania, at Melbourne in Victoria, and at Adelaide in South Australia respectively, are recognised as regularly constituted meetings, having the standing of Monthly Meetings subordinate to the Yearly Meeting of London. They are encouraged to correspond with the Meeting for Sufferings, and one or two Friends in each of these Meetings are to be appointed as corres pondents " (§ 50, p. 213). 198 The Development and Organisation of the at home that will have to be faced, knowing that we have here Mission Churches with which we are in membership, though ourselves members of the Society. Our converts in London are not all ready to become members of the Society. But what is wrong in London is often right in India and China. And it seems easier to have, thousands of miles away, organisations in the form of Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, and, in course of time, of Yearly Meetings, than to have it so here. I hope the suggestion of Jonathan B. Hodgkin will be carried out, and that we may send a minute asking the Yearly Meeting to consider the proper organisation in these Mission stations, to open the way for those in them to be received into the Society of Friends, and so further the dissemination of our doctrines. John Edward Wilson : I think it is a right step to take, as the Yearly Meeting has appointed this Conference, and we can rightly approach it on this subject. It is a cry that has come to us from the farthest ends of the earth. They rightly desire to know their status, they desire a closer bond of union with the Yearly Meeting. I don't think that we should dictate to the Yearly Meeting the line that it should take, but we should express our desire that it should give full consideration to this really important subject. Thomas Pumphrey and some other Friends briefly, ex pressed their unity with the proposal. Ellwood Brockbank : I warmly approve of this pro posal. I found when I was out in Brumana, that they had an overseer in the meeting who was not a member of it, simply from the want of connection that ought to exist. There, as elsewhere, the organisation is a purely initiative article, and we ought to remedy it as soon as possible. R. Hingston Fox, M.D. : There is something more in the Book of Discipline than has been mentioned, referring more directly to the Mission stations, and I think it is desirable that before a minute is passed it should be carefully re ferred to. I know there is a regulation that allows mem- Native Church with its Relation to the Home Church. 199 bers of meetings connected with our Mission stations to attend London Yearly Meeting without asking leave.* Joseph S. Sewell : I quite agree with the proposition of Jonathan B. Hodgkin. I think that is the simplest way of doing it. There are many questions that must come up when we come to consider this matter, and some dangers too ; it is not entirely an advantage to be in membership with London Yearly Meeting. We want to carry on the work for the Chinese in China, and an independent organisation there may be better than connection with London. But this is only one of many questions that will come before us. I think that the simple proposal of J. B. Hodgkin, without again going into the Book of Discipline, will be best. The Chairman : There are some foreign districts where American Friends are working as well as British. But I think that the mere question of being attached to London Yearly Meeting, or New York Yearly Meeting, is of very much less consequence than our receiving these brethren in China, in Japan, or in India, in some way as members of our common community. I don't like that we should commit ourselves hastily to any minute or proposal. It is quite clear that the suggestion contained in Robert J. Davidson's paper has taken some hold of this Conference. I think that Jonathan B. Hodgkin proposed that we should send forward a minute to the Yearly Meeting. Would the Conference allow the Com mittee to look carefully at the proposals of Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin, Howard Nicholson, Ellwood Brockbank, R. Hing ston Fox, and Joseph S. Sewell, and introduce some para graph into the report to be presented to the Yearly Meeting ? G. Theodore Crosfield and several other Friends expressed a hope that this would be done. The Chairman : I take it that the matter is referred to the Committee. They will give it their best attention. The Chairman : A meeting was held at a quarter-past * See § 7, p. 184, in the Book of Christian Discipline of the Society of Friends. 200 Armenia : Memorial to Lord Salisbury. two this afternoon, presided over by Edmund Wright Brooks, to hear an address from J. Rendel Harris. The paper that I have in my hand is a memorial addressed to the Marquis of Salisbury, which that meeting desired we should adopt. I think we should not send anything to him that has already appeared in the press, so I hope that no one will communicate it to the newspapers until it has been sent to the Marquis of Salisbury and the usual forms have been gone through. Probably it is merely a question of a day or two. The Chairman then read the memorial. After some consideration of the terms of the memorial, John W. Steel : I will in a few words express the opinion with regard to this document that I do not think it is desirable to adopt it. I am one of the representatives of Durham Quarterly Meeting. When I was appointed it was without any dream that there would be such a proposal to the Conference, and I do not feel inclined to take any share of the responsibility of committing the eleven or twelve hundred members of that meeting to a memorial of which nine-tenths of them know nothing, and some must disapprove. . The Chairman : That is a most apposite remark, and if the Conference is prepared to adopt it, we must let the memorial fall. A large number of Friends briefly hoped that the memorial would be adopted. The Chairman : I think the Conference is prepared to adopt the memorial. The Committee will consider the means by which it shall be forwarded to Lord Salisbury. The Clerk : I regret that we were not able to give greater time to the consideration of the " Methods of Work " introduced to us by various Friends. I think the Conference will agree that we have been able to enter into some measure of sympathy with them in the varied and laborious work that has come before them, and I have embodied that in the Minute which I have drawn. Armenia : Memorial to Lord Salisbury. 201 During the first hour of the Conference to-day Ellwood Brockbank gave a Bible-reading entitled, "Christ for the World." Following upon this and during the present sitting papers have been presented upon various methods of missionary effort, as " Evangelistic Work," by Henry E. Clark ; " Educational Work," by Arthur Rowntree, B.A., and Samuel Baker; "Industrial Work," by Thomas P. New man ; " Medical Work," by J. Tregelles Fox, M.R.C.S. ; and "Women's Work," by Mary S. Whiting and Sarah R. Munnings. The Chairman of our Session this afternoon has referred to the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society, in which so many Friends have been and are deeply interested. The several agencies and methods of Foreign Missionary effort which have thus been introduced to us have strengthened our sympathy with our Missionary Friends, in the various and manifold problems which are presented to them in the pursuit of their work for the Kingdom of Christ. Robert J. Davidson has read a paper upon the development and organisation of the Native Churches and their relation to the Home Church. We ask the Committee of Arrangements to con sider the subject of the connection of missionary congregations with the organisation of the Society of Friends, with a view to the matter being brought under the notice of London Yearly Meeting. The following address has been adopted by this meeting, and is to be forwarded to the Marquis of Salisbury : — 202 Armenia : Memorial to Lord Salisbury. "To the Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. " This Conference of members of the Society of Friends in Great Britain and Ireland, convened at Darlington to consider the Foreign Missionary Work of the Society in its various branches, re spectfully urges upon Lord Salisbury the desira bility of publicly abrogating the Cyprus Convention of 1878, by which this country is bound to defend Turkey against Russia, and of surrendering to a European Commission the island of Cyprus in pledge of our good faith. This Conference believes that such action would promote a cordial under standing with Russia, which it regards as a first and necessary step towards a peaceable settlement of the Armenian question, and the restoration to that distracted people of safety, life, honour, and property, and the peaceful enjoyment of the Christian religion. " On behalf of the Conference, " Caleb R. Kemp, Chairman. " Darlington, " 2yd of Ninth Month, 1896." Fourth-day Evening, 23rd of Ninth Month, 1896. PUBLIC MEETING. Joseph Storrs Fry in the Chair. This Meeting was held in the Central Hall, which was again well filled. The proceedings commenced with the singing of the hymn, " Far, far away in heathen darkness " Lord, What wouldst Thou have me to Do 1 " 203 dwelling," and a time of devotion, in which vocal prayer was offered. "LORD, WHAT WOULDST THOU HAVE ME TO DO ? " The Chairman : We are met this evening address by with regard to one of the most important joseph storrs fry. subjects that can occupy Christian thought, and one of the most important objects that can call forth Christian energy, effort, and self-denial. We are met together, however unworthily, as those who are desirous of promoting the great and glorious work of carrying the knowledge of the gospel of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to heathen lands. I do not see how we could set before ourselves a nobler object, or one more worthy to be pursued with single-heartedness by those who call them selves followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. We very much desire that the meeting this evening may be not merely an occasion for listening to the narratives of our missionary friends, interesting as they are, but we desire that the hearts of those present may be stirred up to serious thoughtfulness and prayer, and that each one here may put to himself the inquiry, " Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do ? " whether in the form of personal devotion of life to the service, or in the way in which many must be engaged, of helping, by prayer at home, by effort to spread the interest amongst others, and by contributions in various ways, to strengthen those engaged in fighting the battle abroad. I think that although the Church of Christ has roused itself largely to interest in the missionary cause, there is still much room for further and deeper interest, and for much greater effort and sacrifice. We remember there was a day when the Church of Christ was not nearly so much alive as it is now to this great work. When Carey, the great Indian missionary and pioneer in much of the missionary work in that land, laid before his Christian brethren at home his desire to go forth and preach the gospel to the heathen, I daresay that many of us remember the way in which the proposal was met by one, I believe an experienced minister 204 " Lord, What wouldst Thou have me to Do ? " of Christ, who stood up and said, " Young man, when God wants to convert the heathen, He will do it without your help." No doubt it is perfectly true that God could carry on His work without the help of any one or all of us. But He has pleased, in His great mercy, to link with Himself, in. the work of His own blessed Spirit, human agency. Since the days when our Lord Jesus Christ called His twelve apostles to Him, and associated them with Himself, ever since then the Lord has been inviting His servants and handmaidens to be associated with Him in it ; and it is desired that this evening we may afresh hear His call, and may be made willing to yield ourselves to it, in whatever direction that call may come to us. We have our mission stations planted in several parts of the world, and although our work has been very small compared with that of the larger missionary societies, we have had the happiness of working in very cordial co-operation with some of them, and we feel that, notwith standing the noble work in which they are engaged, there is plenty of room in this still dark world for every effort that we can put forth, and for every means which under God's guidance and blessing we can employ. And I do not think that any part of the Church of Christ ought to be satisfied, for its own sake, without taking some part in mission work ; for, important as the work is as respects the heathen abroad, it is equally important in relation to the Church at home. I have a most distinct remembrance of a meeting which I attended, now I suppose nearly thirty years ago, when some of the first missionaries going forth from our Society took leave of their friends. I shall never forget the solemn impression made on many hearts on that occasion, and on myself amongst them. I thought then, and I feel now, that there was a very distinct and peculiar blessing resting on all who were associating themselves with those who were going abroad, and not only endeavouring to enter into sympathy with them, but heart with heart and spirit with spirit, striving to be one with them in serving our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. No doubt the work of Missions abroad is attended by many trials and many difficulties. We have been speaking Friends' Mission Work in Madagascar. 205 of the difficulties which have arisen in the past, and to some extent may arise now, from hindrances at home, though, blessed be God, these are very largely removed. But there are many trials abroad, and those who have followed the course of recent events will know that in the land of Madagascar, where so many faithful missionaries have been labouring, great trials and difficulties have arisen. Our own little band of missionaries has shared in these trials, and we have lost, by that which would be spoken of in human language as a cruel death, and yet one that we dare not look upon otherwise than as permitted by God for some great and blessed end — we have lost a faithful missionary and his wife and their child. These indeed are sad events, and yet we know that God has ever been pleased through the darkest clouds, and the most trying difficulties to lead His people onward and forward into further victory under His banner. And I cannot but think that thosei who have passed away may be looked upon as inviting us to be more faithful to our Lord than we were before. I remember some lines which were written on the death of the devoted Christian missionary, Henry Martyn, some time after his death, and I think they may to some extent apply to our circumstances : " Is it for nothing he is dead ? Send forth your children in his stead ! Oh Eastern lover from the West ! Thou hast outsoared these prisoning bars, Thy memory, on thy Master's breast, Uplifts us like the beckoning stars. We follow now as thou hast led ; Baptize us, Saviour, for the dead." I will ask our dear Friend, Henry E. Clark, one of our missionaries in Madagascar, kindly to address the meeting. FRIENDS' MISSION WORK IN MADAGASCAR. Henry E. Clark : I feel it to be a very great address by privilege to stand on this platform to-night henry e. clark. to advocate the cause of foreign missions generally, and especially that which is carried on in Madagascar. A year ago to-night, or to-morrow 206 Friends' Mission Work in Madagascar. night, I was in my bed at Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar ; about eleven o'clock at night there was a very loud ringing at the door — we have door bells even there — and I went down and opened it, to receive a message from one of our native friends in Madagascar who wished to inform me that probably the French were going to assault the city of Antananarivo that very night. The attack did not come then, but it came a few clays later. It has been intimated to me that in my address here to-night I should speak a little of our position there during the war that came to an end on September 30th, last year. In speaking here to-night I feel sure that I am speaking not only to members of the Society of Friends, but also to many supporters of the L.M.S., with whom we have been so cordially, and are now so cordially, working in Antananarivo. You will perhaps know that as the French were approaching Madagascar's capital city, Antananarivo, we were urged by many who thought they knew what was the duty of the missionaries, to leave Madagascar during the expected attack. They were almost ready, if we would have let them, to take us by the shoulders and push us out. But we were not willing to go ; we felt unmistakably that God was telling us to remain there. I felt that almost the very existence of our two missions, the L.M.S. and our own much smaller one, depended upon what we did at this time. If we, so to speak, ran away, and left the Malagasy Christians in the hour of their great trial, I for one felt that I should not dare to go back again as a missionary. I have been told during the past few weeks that I have been in England — not by a member of our Society — that "As it turned out it was all very well, but — " and we may imagine the clash after the but to mean : " it might have been other wise, and we think that it would have been better for you to have come away." I don't feel it so ; whatever had been the result of the war to us — even if some of us had been killed there, it would not have influenced my opinion. I nowhere find in the Bible that those who trust God and do that which He tells them to do, are supposed to go scot free from all trouble and trial, even from death itself. But we are told that we are to be faithful unto death. As we were told just Friends' Mission Work in Madagascar 207 now, some of the members of our Mission, two dear friends of mine, have been faithful unto death. Reverting to ourselves, the British Vice-Consul almost ordered us to leave the capital ; and we had some special correspondents there representing London papers, and they seemed to know not only their own business, but ours too, and told us that we ought to leave. One of them was formerly an officer in the English army, and after he had been speaking very strongly to me one day, I reminded him that he had been an officer in the English army, and so I asked him whether he would have run away from danger. He seemed almost offended with me, and said "No, certainly not." " Well, then," I said, " don't expect us to run now, as you say that we are in danger." Another said to me, " Oh, Mr. Clark, you wish to pose as a martyr." I replied, " No, not a bit of it, but I wish to be faithful to that which is my duty." With a wife and children in England, it is not likely that I should wish to be killed. But there is something worse than death, and that is running away from your duty, and I have yet to learn that it is the first duty of a missionary to save his own life. One day during that time the late William Johnson wrote to me, " Some might think it to be the first duty of a missionary to save his own skin." Please remember I am not speaking this in any boastful spirit ; for I can never be sufficiently thankful for all God's help at that time. All that we did, we did because we felt that God was leading us. And so, during those hying days when bombs were actually flying over our heads, no harm came to us. Many of us felt it to be our duty, as the French came very near the city, to retire to the Mission hospital, and there await events. I was there myself, and we little thought that there we should be under fire. Immediately behind the hospital was a high hill, on which there was a Malagasy battery which was annoying the French a good deal. There was another hill beyond, which the French had taken, and when they were attacking the Malagasy battery from that, the hospital was hid by the nearer hill, and several of the shells came over into the hospital compound. But all this time, during that Monday, the 30th of September, the work in the hospital still went on. The Malagasy nurses were 208 Friends' Mission Work in Madagascar. going on with their work as if nothing were taking place — for there were a considerable number of sick in the hospital — so admirably trained had they been by Miss Byam, the lady superintendent. They did this, I thoroughly believe, because they felt it to be their duty to do it, because they felt that they were doing their work under God. Some of the medical students, only some of them, left, that is to say, they were not seen, they disappeared. At twenty minutes past three, the flag went down on the Queen's palace and the white flag went up, and we knew that all was over, and the firing at once ceased. In an hour or so a French officer rode up and inquired how many sick and wounded we could accommodate there. And when he was told that we had been thinking of sending out to him and saying that we were willing to take in all that we could, he seemed perfectly surprised. What he thought we were like I don't know. We learned afterwards that he had an order in his pocket to take the whole hospital if we had made any objection whatever. I believe our reception of the sick and wounded — when we helped to carry the French sick into the hospital, and the ladies went round to help them — tended to bring about the good relations which I am glad to tell you have always existed at Antananarivo during the last year between the French high officials and the missionaries. When General Duchesne came up we went out to pay our respects to him. He said " Gentlemen, go back to your work ; go on with your work, and tell the people that they have nothing to fear if they will only be quiet and attend to their own business." But the Malagasy were very much afraid. I believe that quite four-fifths of the people in Antananarivo fled away into the country. The Hovas had years ago conquered nearly the whole of Madagascar, and frequently, just as they were going to fight, they said to the other tribes, "Just lay down your arms and nothing shall happen to you " ; but when this was clone, immediately all the men were murdered, and the women and children were taken captives. You know that we are very apt to judge other people by what we would do ourselves. In the same way the Hovas quite expected that all the men would be killed, and their women and children taken captives. A MADAGASCAR. Friends' Mission Work in Madagascar. 209 Malagasy came into my study a day or two after the capture of Antananarivo and said, " We are all going to be killed, and I want you to give me a letter to the French general to say that I am a trustworthy person, so that I may not be killed with the rest." I told him to go home and be quiet, as he had nothing to fear, and to tell his friends to be quiet. So I believe our action in receiving the French at that time was one great means of bringing about cordial relations between the French and the missionaries. Don't let us make up our minds that the French are going to turn us out of Madagascar ; I believe with regard to this even, the words of our Saviour may be applicable, " Be it unto thee according to thy faith." If we suppose that we are going to be turned out, we may just bring that about ; but if we act as though our work was to go on, then I believe that we shall be allowed to continue in our work there. But some may ask, What good is all your work in Madagascar, and what use is all this education to the Hova youth, if the only result is the lamentable exhibition made by them in the late war ? That is a perfectly fair question ; but it is capable of an answer, for the utter break-down of the Malagasy in the late war was not the fault of the rank and file ; when the true history of the war is written it will be told that the army was shamefully defeated because of divided counsels in the palace of the Queen, because of treachery and bribery and incompetence on the part of high officials, and officers in the army. It is not for me to say more, but it would not be fair to say less. Do not judge the Malagasy by their conduct in the late war, but rather by what I am going to tell you. You know how the rebels are devastating the country now, and have it pretty much in their own hands. As they were approaching one village a Christian man fled away from his village with his two sons and came into the French camp. The French officer said to him, " It would be well for you to go back to your village, and try by every possible means to get the people to be quiet and to settle down." He went back, but as soon as he arrived at his home his house was surrounded by the rebels, and he was given his choice, either to swear by the idols, or to die. He said, " I can never swear by the idols ; I 15 210 Friends' Mission Work in Madagascar. can never believe in them any more ; " and at once he and his two sons were put to death. There were many other such cases, we cannot tell at present how many, but I may , mention another instance, though rather a different one. Not long ago one of these rebels was shot in Antananarivo ; he had a large number of slaves, and the French Resident gave them all their freedom. There was one little girl with them, and he asked her what she wanted to do. She said, " I want to be clever ; to learn." The Resident was so struck with the little girl's answer that he went to one of the lady missionaries of the L.M.S., and asked her if she would be willing to receive this little child into her house and teach her, " and I," he said, " will be responsible for the cost." That was the Protestant Resident General ; and while there are such officials as that in Madagascar we must not despair. I fully believe, dear friends, that all these troubles will pass away, and that the Church in Madagascar will .rise again into a new life. Remember how it was there in the days of the persecution, long gone by. A somewhat similar trial is passing over Madagascar now, the central provinces in particular. Sometimes I wonder why I am here, and why I am not in Madagascar's capital city at the present time, to help to support our friends there who are so sorely tried. It is pleasant to be in one's fatherland again, to get home to wife and children ; pleasant to be here at this Conference. Yet you will not wonder that I sometimes wish to be back again and help them in this hour of trouble. Yet I know that I am in my right place here ; I have my work in England to tell to you here, and to others wherever I am permitted to speak, that Christianity is not dead in Madagascar, and that I am hopeful for it. It is a dark day there, and the days may be darker yet ; but at eventide, we are told, it shall be light. The devil is not going to have his own way in Madagascar. After William and Lucy Johnson and their little child were done to death, I went to the village and saw the spot where that had happened. I was discouraged and cast down ; but from that very moment my faith revived. We are told by Jesus Christ that unless a corn of wheat be put into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit, and that was true of our blessed Lord Himself, Friends' Mission Work in Madagascar. 211 and I believe in a measure it is true of our dear friends who were done to death on that day. So it must be in Madagascar, dear friends ; the time will come when the work will be resumed there ; when we shall want men and women again to go out to Madagascar. When Professor Kriiger, of the Paris Mission, came and saw our work he said, " Tell your committee that they must double their missionaries in Madagascar," and that was from a Frenchman. Do all you can in India, China, and elsewhere, and if I can help you, to the best of my ability I will. But remember that in Madagascar you still have a mission, and the time will come when you will want men and women to go out there and to spend and be spent for Christ in that large island. Surely if our companions have fallen, our duty is to fill up the gaps. Those in Madagascar now are holding the fort — it is ours to uphold them by our prayers, ours to tell them we will help them further if we can. For myself, while I have health and strength given me I am willing to go anywhere to tell to others that I have yet a hope for Madagascar. It is for us to keep up the interest in it ; to believe that the work is not done there, but it may be is only just beginning. When the devil failed to prevent Christ from becoming the Saviour of the world, he put forth his power to prevent people from accepting Him as their Saviour. So I believe he is now doing what he can to hinder the work in Madagascar, and destroy what has been done. Our work just now may be to watch and pray, knowing that the time for action will come again. Let us be faithful. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of Christ — that is true of the Church as a whole, and it is true of the Church of Madagascar. I am even now full of hope, even for Madagascar. I dare not be otherwise ; I ask you to be the same. The Chairman : I have now the pleasure of calling on our dear friend Mary J. Davidson, who is this evening leaving Darlington with her husband, Robert J. Davidson, on their return to Chung-King in China. I am sure that we shall all sympathise with our friend in these circum stances. 212 Friends' Mission Work in China: FRIENDS' MISSION WORK IN CHINA. Mary J. Davidson : I have been asked, dear address by Friends, to say a few words to you to-night niary j. davidson. about the work of Friends in China. While I shall endeavour to keep to my theme, I am glad and thankful that it is impossible for me to ignore the work of other noble societies that have not only been longer in the field than ourselves, but whose number of workers and converts far exceeds that of our own. A meeting upon an occasion like this links the past with the present in the knowledge that although China is called one of the youngest of our Missions it was, in fact, one of the very first countries that was laid on the heart of the Society of Friends. For not only did George Fox, more than two hundred years ago, desire that some Friends might be led to publish the truth in China, but some of his contemporaries did actually make the attempt. Though they never got so far, they did really try to do so. I will not detain you with the oft-repeated details of the establishment of our Mission. Probably a large number of those present have, during the past winter, heard from our lips of the wonderful way in which our steps have been led into the province of Szchuen. I want to give you a picture of the Mission as it stands at present, and then to dwell a little upon its future prospects and needs. We look now hardly on the present, but on the future ; hardly on the scenes of England, but on our home in China and our work there. In a few days, as you have already heard, we shall be on a steamer, with our little boy, sailing from Marseilles. When we reach Shanghai by the end of next month only the shorter half of the journey we have to take will have been accomplished. It will then take us two more journeys by steamer, and a tedious journey of a month at least in a native boat up the Yangtsi to reach Chung-King. In that strange city, which has been called the Liverpool of Western China, 300,000 people are crowded within the walls. Right in the centre of the city are three good-sized compounds, the purchased property of the F.F.M.A. In these, besides good residences for the eleven workers, there are two preaching halls, capable of holding Friends' Mission Work in China. 213 over 500 people, class-rooms, guest-rooms — so essential to a Chinese missionary — a dispensary for men and women, and a boys' school and a girls' school. Each compound forms a centre of activity in daily preaching and teaching. Just this time ten years ago, as we were starting out for our first journey in China, the little handful of missionaries in Chung- King, of the Methodist Episcopal and China Inland Missions, were ruthlessly threatened by the Chinese, their premises destroyed, and they all had to leave the city. To-day no less than four Missions are established there, and the growth of respect by the natives for the foreigners is so pronounced as to be in itself a proof of the influence of Christian Missions. Whereas the Chinaman at first measured the missionaries by his own standard, and could only conceive of our visiting him to gain some good for ourselves, he has learned now to see that these Christians have come for the sake of doing good to others. " These Christians," he says, " are honest ; they don't cheat." This, in itself, is a gain for which we give thanks. It is the thin end of the wedge, a preparing of the way of the Lord. But some may ask, why do you settle in this city when there are three other Missions there, while hundreds of others are without a missionary at all ? It must be remembered that in China we cannot always go. where we wish. We tried to occupy a large district where no other missionary had ever lived, but we were turned out of that, and we had to be con tent with a portion of the city of Chung-King. But what at one time seemed a cause for regret has now turned out to be a blessing in disguise. These various Missions in Chung- King, each according to the consciences of those who belong to them, are doing their duty in their various localities, yet they are so bound together in true friendship that they are a witness to the Chinese of how little sects and doctrines need separate those who are really one in Christ Jesus. Here is a letter from a missionary with whom we have associated. He writes, " I like this city veiy much for many reasons, not the least of which is the abundant opportunity of meeting for prayer and mutual edification with so many earnest workers of other Missions. We are as one family. Missionary society here seems to me ideal, at least as nearly ideal as anything in 214 Friends' Mission Work in China. this world can be. The kind feeling and real Christian life that exists amongst the missionaries is most refreshing. A united prayer meeting is held every Friday evening, where we take it in turn to speak, and many a refreshing time has God given us. Every month a united meeting is held of the Christians from the various Missions, and these are addressed by the missionaries in rotation." No one, I am sure, would think that Darlington was overcrowded with four centres of Christian activity in the town. But besides this work in the city, the very district which six years ago was closed to us seems opening again, and before the year is over I hope two of us will take up our residence there. Our district is as large as all the English counties north of Chester. What would you say if there were only one preacher of the gospel in such a space as this ? The one cry from every Mission in this vast empire is, " Send us more men." We ourselves have reported it hundreds of times during the last twelve months, and four single ladies have offered themselves ! I hope they will soon be in the front ; we will give each of them a hearty welcome, for there is plenty for them to do — work amongst the women and children. But there is work to be done in China that we women can never do — work amongst the men and pioneer work. I am not clear of my- duty here in England if I do not to-night emphasise this need. We in our own Mission have but five men, and as I go from place to place and see the workers crowded together as they are in England, I marvel that so few hear the cry from abroad. Lately I sat in a meet ing with no less than nine ministers before me, and I thought of China. Do you wonder that my meeting was chiefly taken up with the prayer, " Lord, send forth more workers " ? There is another phase of the work laid upon Friends upon which I want to say a few words. There are over sixty little children growing up in the houses of missionaries in the three western provinces of China who are away from the privileges of English life because their parents are obeying the Master's call. It has been much on our hearts that a school should be provided for these children where they could have the advan tage of a good English education. Friends have warmly responded, and of the .£800 that will be needed ^600 has Friends' Mission Work in China. 215 already been given, and we are hoping that the whole amount will be received before we sail from Marseilles. But I want to commend our further needs to this meeting. We want more than money to start this school — a staff of good teachers with an earnest missionary spirit. Two young ladies have already offered their services and have been accepted. We want one more ; is she here ? A little later on we shall want a teacher and his wife ; who will respond to this call ? We want the continual prayer and sympathy of every father and mother in this new department of our work that it may be blessed by God in every detail. Why do we plead for China ? Because of the millions that know not Christ. Because of its size, for it is the second largest empire on earth, and in point of population the very first, and therefore it cannot be left out when the command is, "Go ye into all the world." Another reason why we should not leave out China is that we do not believe as a young man did who spoke to me the other day and said, " These Eastern people are an inferior race. Why do you not stay at home and do the work where you can get better results as you can in Yorkshire or Lancashire ? " Those of us who have followed recently the notices that have appeared in the papers of the visit of Li Hung Chang may perhaps unite with what has been said of him that he is one of the cleverest of foreign ambassadors, and a match even for many of our own statesmen. If he is so he is not the only Chinaman with such ability. If a country can produce such men under present cir cumstances, what could she not do when once she has embraced Christianity ? Another claim I think that China has upon us is in the fact that we, in our Indian Empire, to our shame, do not hesitate to draw a large revenue at the expense of the ruin of thousands of Chinese. How can Christian England be clear unless she not only does away with the opium traffic, but also endeavours to undo some of the evil that she has done by offering to the Chinese some of the good things of the Kingdom ? I know that there are many who would like to hear of results from our work. When I was visiting at the house of a Christian gentleman, a member of Parliament, a few weeks ago, he asked me this straight question, " Do you really see 216 Friends' Mission Work in China. that you are doing any good amongst these Chinese ? " I was a little taken back ; and I answered, as you know Quakers sometimes do, a little indirectly : " I know that I am in my right place." " Oh, yes," said he, " but do you see any good being done ? " I turned upon him and said, " Do you see that you are doing any good in Parliament ? " He shrugged his shoulders and said, " You have me there." Now, Friends, the husbandman when he puts the seed in the ground does not expect to see much at once ; he has to wait a long while before he sees anything. But does he cease to sow ? No, he knows that the harvest is to come. Is not the test of the success of any foreign mission that we sow in faith and patience, knowing that we shall reap if we faint not ? In the Fu-Kien province of China the C.M.S. worked for eleven years without making a convert, and they were about to give it up but for the earnest pleading of one of their workers, who thought that he knew of three hopeful inquirers. Two of these disappointed him, the third became an earnest Chris tian. But look to-day at the thousands of converts that have blessed the work of that Society in that province alone. We in our little Mission have had our first-fruits, and as the first convert was publicly received we prayed that the little one might become a thousand, and we believe it will be so if the Church at home is faithful. As we go forth once more, I love to think we do not go alone. We are linked together, spiritual workers together, and both you at your end and we at ours share in the responsibility of the work. An old school-fellow of mine said to me lately, " Are you really going back again to that country where they kill the missionaries ? " I answered, " If we are in our true place the promise is secure, ' There shall no evil befall thee.' " Of course we are going back, and though we may have to toil before we see the abundant harvest, we thank God for something of the spirit of that noble missionary son of Robert Moffat. When standing on a London platform by his father's side, he said, " Fourteen years and not a convert, yet as soon as this deputation work is over I am off again. Why ? Because I believe in God, because I believe in His commission, because I desire to obey, and I know that the fruits will appear in His own good time." "Are Ye Able?" 217 The Chairman : I have now to ask the Honorary Secretary of the F.F.M.A., • Henry Stanley Newman, to address the meeting. "ARE YE ABLE?" Henry Stanley Newman : I have address by been trying to gather up the lessons henry Stanley newman. that we are intended to learn from the addresses we have listened to this evening. In the family Bible-reading this morning was the query of the Lord Jesus Christ : " Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink ; or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? " There are many willing hearts in this house this evening ready to say, " If the Lord calls me, I should be glad to go to China or to Madagascar for His sake." God loves this whole-heartedness, yet at the same time the Lord Jesus wishes every man to count the cost. Let us look the matter practically in the face, as Christ put it to those two disciples. A great many willing-hearted Christians say, " Yea, Lord, I am ready and willing to go anywhere for Jesus." It was so with the young man Moses, after he had been to college in Egypt, as he felt the manhood springing in his heart, believing that his duty was to go and deliver the Israelites. And how did he begin trying to carry out that thought ? We are told that, following his own impulse, he slew an Egyptian. Moses had forty years waiting after slaying that Egyptian, ere he was to fulfil his mission. Perhaps to many of us there has come first of all a sense of failure ; learning our own impotence, foolishness, insufficiency, before we can become competent missionaries. We want to get something deeper than enthusiasm or human impulse before we can become fit to be missionaries. We need to count the cost, and I am sure the narrative of Henry E. Clark, showing the courage of the missionaries in Madagascar in time of difficulty, is a lesson to us. Courage is one of the necessities of a missionary, and until he has that in his heart he is not fit to go. But he also needs persistence of purpose and patience, the power of learning 218 "Are Ye Able?" to wait. Until a man has learned to wait the right time, he' ought not to go. The query of our Lord Jesus was addressed to men with a good deal of fire in them. A remark has been made during this Conference, " We want more fire." If a couple of young men could be found who had plenty of fire, they were James and John, rightly named " Boanerges " — Sons of Thunder — men who were ready to call for the fire of God to descend from heaven upon those who would not receive Jesus. But that was not the spirit for a missionary, and Jesus Christ had to say in effect to these two young men, " Count the cost : are you ready, are you prepared, to drink the cup I have to drink ; are you prepared for My fiery baptism ? " And what did they answer ? " We are able." When Jesus tests them, puts the great, crucial question, they deliberately reply, "Yes, Lord ; we are able." Little did they understand their own hearts ; and as little, often, does the missionary candidate know what he is in for. He may have read the romance of missions ; but he needs deliberately to count the cost. It may mean a battle with difficulties. Jesus Christ, we are told, once said, " He that is near Me is near the fire." Henry E. Clark has told us to-night that the missionary is to expect disappointment and trouble. Is that to take the missionary call out of him ? No, not one bit of it. He must be prepared to face the difficulty ; and unless he has the courage to meet it, and is prepared to fight battles without and within, he is not fit to go. May God teach us to-night a little of what He really wants ! It is courage, stability — it is men who have been tested and proved by the discipline of life, that are wanted in the foreign field. We are told of the way God tested men of old time. He sent twelve men into the Land of Promise, flowing with milk and honey, and ten-twelfths of those men, who in their vigour went into that land flowing with milk and honey, turned out failures. They came back admiring the beautiful vegetation, and so forth — " but there were giants," and they discouraged the people. Two of them only, Caleb and Joshua, had good missionary stuff in them, and turned out satisfactory. A little further on in Bible story we read of a vigorous man named Gideon. He had "Are Ye Able?" 219 an army of thousands of men under him ; surely he was prepared to go out and fight the heathen. No, he had to test his army, and the way he tested it was to send messengers crying, "Whoever is faint-hearted among you, let him return home." He told them to get up early the next morning and go back home again lest they should discourage other people. But if God gives us the true call He will also give us the true spirit. The spirit of the true missionary is that of steadfast courage. Our missionaries have proved that in Madagascar. That dear martyr of Arivonimamo, William Johnson, when he was at home on furlough said, " I have come to the conclusion, that it is not those who suddenly spring up and say, ' I want to be a missionary,' who have heard the real call. The real call is a thing of such importance in a man or a woman's life that it commonly springs up first of all like the little seed sown in the earth ; then it grows and takes possession of the man, and when it has taken possession, let him go forth." It may not be that everybody will be called just on that line. But the missionary call is of such import ance to our own future and that of the work, that we need to settle clearly that we have received the call from God. There comes a time in the experience of the missionary when it is essential that he shall be able to look back clearly to the Divine call. One word more. I attended some years ago, in the city of Calcutta, a meeting of missionaries. Some had gone out but a few years before, and were getting pale under the climate. Others there were, like Bishop Thoburn, who had been out many years. One thing I noticed amongst them. The young men who had recently come out were some of them a little down-hearted. But the grey-headed veterans were full of enthusiasm. The hopeful missionaries were those who had been longest in the field. The experience they had had brought them to the conviction that Christianity was going to triumph in India. It may take a long time, yet the oldest men in the mission field have the clearest witness in their hearts that the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ is going to win, and that His kingdom shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. 220 The Call to Foreign Missions. R. Hingston Fox, M.D. : It has felt to me as I have listened to our dear friends who have spoken to us, that God has been speaking to many hearts here. We cannot command these seasons of the visitation of His love, and I desire that in the few moments that are left, we may each seek to know what is God's will for each one of us in the promotion of this great cause. A period of devotion followed, in which vocal prayer was offered. The meeting closed with the singing of the hymn, "Jesus shall reign where'er the sun." Fifth-day Morning, 24th of Ninth Month, 1896. Henry Stanley Newman in the Chair. The proceedings commenced with the reading of Ephesians iii. by the Chairman, and a time of devotion during which vocal prayer was offered.. Alice Mary Hodgkin gave the following Bible-reading on, THE CALL TO FOREIGN MISSIONS. The call to witness to the Lord Jesus bible-reading by Christ is a universal one to His whole alice mary hodgkin. Church. " Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a purchased people : that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness, into His marvellous light " (1 Peter ii. 9, margin). It is only those who know what it is to have been brought out of darkness into light that can tell others of the Saviour. But all such are called to witness somewhere and in some way. " He that hath My word, let him speak My word faithfully " (Jer. xxiii. 28). " Ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judsea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts i. 8). It is a universal call ; we are all soldiers of one great army, and should be ready, every one of us, to The Call to Foreign Missions. 221 be ordered off on foreign service at a moment's notice. " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark xvi. 15), was our Saviour's last command, a universal command to His Church. There was once a poor old Chinese woman who had given her heart to the Lord, but long hesitated to join the ¦ outward Church. When pressed for her reason, she said that if she became a Christian she would have to obey Christ's commands, and it was impossible for a feeble old woman like her to obey His last command, and go into all the world to preach the gospel. " Of course I have told all my neighbours and friends the good news," she said, " and I will gladly go to the neighbouring villages and tell it there, but it is quite impossible for me to go to distant lands." When it was explained to her that she was indeed doing what the Lord required, she hesitated no longer, and was received into membership. Are we witnessing as faithfully as that poor old woman ? The greatness of the need in heathen lands is of itself a call to foreign service. We should go where the darkness is greatest. " I have strived," Paul said, "to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation : but, as it is written, to whom He was not spoken of, they shall see ; and they that have not heard shall understand" (Rom. xv. 20, 21). The cry from the people themselves is another call. When our missionaries camp out in the villages in India, the people constantly say to them, " Why do you not come oftener ? How can you expect us to remember what you teach us if you only come once a year ? " And our lady missionaries cannot possibly visit all the Zenanas where they would be gladly welcomed. But besides the greatness of the need in heathen lands, and the message " Come over and help us," and besides the universality of Christ's call to His Church to be His witness in the world, we each one need an individual call. No one must go forth as a missionary in order to escape home difficulties, or because his life at home has been a failure. A love for teaching, or for nursing, or doctoring, or even a desire to do good to our fellow-men, is not in itself a sufficient 222 The Call to Foreign Missions. call. Every missionary must know that he has a personal call from the Lord to win souls for Him in a foreign land. Nothing short of this individual, personal call will carry him through the difficulties he will have to face. In times of loneliness, or danger, or persecution he will need to fall back upon the certainty that the Lord has called him, and that he is in the very place of His choosing. For each of us there is one right place, where the Lord would have us be, and it is the knowledge that we are just there which makes us calm in the face of danger, and hopeful in the midst of discouragement. When the early Friends had a " concern," or a call from the Lord to some special service, they used to carry it through at all costs. Now there is, perhaps, hardly a meeting in the whole country where there are not some one or more members who are deliberately refusing to give a message entrusted to them by the Lord for that meeting. It is only those who are faithful in the little things at home who will be called to service abroad. Amos is an example of a faithful messenger. Amaziah, the priest, sought to divert him, and told him not to prophesy in the king's chapel, but to go away into Judah and prophesy there. But Amos replied that he was no prophet, neither a prophet's son, but a poor herdman, and that the Lord had called him as he followed the flock, and he was simply doing just what the Lord told him (Amos vii. 10-15). We must not seek to divert our missionaries from the work or the place for which they have distinctly been called. The actual country, however, is not always made known at first. The call comes, distinct and clear, to go to the heathen, and as it is yielded to the further steps are made known, sometimes by the opening of circumstances, sometimes by a more detailed knowledge of the various fields, or by the judgment of the committee. It was so with the Apostle Paul. He received first the general commission, " Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts xxii. 21), and gradually the Lord's plan unfolded, as now he was " forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia," and then, through a vision, " assuredly gathering " that the Lord had called him to preach the gospel in Macedonia (Acts xvi. 6-10). And not one of us who are called to the Lord's The Call to Foreign Missions. 223 service, whether at home or abroad, should rest content without His detailed guidance as to where and how He would have us labour. Though we each need this individual call, we see from Isaiah's life that it is allowable to ask the Lord for it. When he knew that a messenger was needed, he said, " Here am I, send me." And when we lift up our eyes and look on the world's white harvest-fields and see the greatness of the need, we too may cry, " Lord, here am I, send me." Is not the Lord calling some one here ? Some one who, perhaps, feels himself the most unlikely person to go out as a missionary. God does sometimes lay His hand on the most unlikely ones. Amos, the poor herdman, probably felt himself to be very unlikely. But so much stress has been laid upon the blessed truth that God chooses the poor and weak and despised ones, that it is just possible there is some one here who feels that his wealth or his talents excuse him from the call, that just because he possesses a large share of these good things, that therefore he is an unlikely person for the Lord to call to leave all and follow Him. But if He is calling any such, let your heart respond, and say, " Here am I, send me." When the Lord called Isaiah, He gave him the necessary qualification. He touched his lips with a live coal from off the altar. And this is the second point that every missionary should be quite sure about. " An ambassador is sent unto the heathen " (Jer. xlix. 14). An ambassador may be utterly un important in himself, but when he is sent to a foreign land he carries the whole power of his country at his back. Every missionary should be able to say — " From the glory and the gladness, From His secret place, From the rapture of His presence, From the radiance of His face, Christ, the Son of God, hath sent me Through the midnight lands ; Mine the mighty ordination Of the pierced hands." Just as much as he needs a personal call, so does every missionary need also this qualification. We can hardly 224 The Call to Foreign Missions. imagine anything more forlorn than an ambassador in a foreign land deprived of power; and yet how many mis sionaries are content with this as the normal condition of their lives ! The Lord Jesus does not trust us with power as an abstract thing, He Himself is the power, and He goes with us. People do not need us — what they need is Jesus, and it is just in proportion as we are filled with Jesus that we shall be made a blessing to others. " Tarry ye until ye be endued with power from on high " (Luke xxiv. 49). Nowhere are we told to tarry until we have mastered all the ins and outs of the religions of the people we are going to teach, but we are told to tarry until we are endued with power from on high. As we trace the work of the Holy Spirit in the human soul, we see that He convicts the unregenerate heart of sin and shows the need of a Saviour. He glorifies Christ, and brings the sinner to the foot of the Cross, and through thus seeing Christ as a personal Saviour the soul is born again, " born of the Spirit," and knows what it is to have " the earnest of the Spirit " in his heart, guiding him and bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit. But in how many Christians are these fruits but imperfectly brought forth ? They are needing something more. Just as simply as they accepted the gift of Christ as their Saviour, so simply do they need to accept the gift of the Holy Ghost as an in dwelling power. When the Holy Spirit is thus received, He transforms the heart and life, the hasty tempers are cured, the timid become courageous, the vacillating gain steadiness of purpose in the Lord's service, the proud become meek and lowly, the unloving have the love of God so shed abroad in their hearts that they find it easy to love everybody. Is not this enough ? I think not. Besides grace for the life, we need power for service. It was after Jesus had breathed on the disciples and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," that He said to those same disciples, " Tarry ye in Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high." Sanctification is not power. The enduement of power comes to a sanctified soul. A missionary friend of mine was asked the following question : " You won't go back to your field of service without the enduement of the Holy Ghost and of power, will you ? " That question, repeated to me, convicted The Call to Foreign Missions. 225 me of my own need, and I want to pass it on to each blood- bought soul here : " You won't go back to your field of service, will you, until you are endued with the Holy Ghost and with power ? " When candidates apply to be sent out as missionaries they are put through all sorts of tests in order to find out if they are truly called and qualified. But the closest test of all is the one that they should each put to themselves alone with God, " Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed ? " (Acts xix. 2.) This is a test which should be applied by the Church or by the committee, if it is a Church or committee so filled with the Holy Ghost as to be able to apply it. In the early Church, when seven men were heeded for serving tables, they were to be " of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost," and there was no difficulty in finding them. If such men were needed for serving tables, surely the same qualifications should be required for every service of the Church. But have we not too often been content if we could find men of honest report, without insisting that they should also be full of the Holy Ghost ? Let us apply this same test to ourselves, not only to our missionaries. Let us all ask ourselves this question, every member of a missionary com mittee in this meeting, every F.F.M.A. correspondent and M.H.U. secretary, " Have I received the Holy Ghost since I believed ? " Would thy name, or mine, have to be crossed off if tried by this test ? Why are we coming short as a Church ? What is the cause of all the worldliness and unbelief amongst us ? Is it not because we are not ready for the cost of being filled with the Spirit ? It means death. " Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death ? " " Buried with Him by the baptism wherein we shared His death." When we begin to speak of this subject— death with the Lord Jesus Christ— some are sure to say, " This is difficult and mysterious ; we cannot understand it.'-' It is not because it is too difficult that you do not understand it, but because it is too simple. "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." It is because it cuts straight at the self- life that people are not willing to accept it, because it goes 16 226 The Claim of Foreign Missions on the Society of Friends. right to the core, and makes a clean sweep of worldliness and pride. Again, others say, " It is hard and terrible, this thought of death." No, it is not hard, it brings blessed peace and rest. Is not self the one trouble in your life, the one thing that is at the bottom of all the evil, and that brings in all the unrest ? Let it go to the death by the power of the Cross of Christ, and you will find rest. It is because I know that there are hearts in this meeting longing to hear about this deliverance more than about any thing else, that I speak of it now. Come and yield yourself wholly to God, and God will work. He will bring self to death. Come and trust the Lord for power. '' It is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." Rest upon His promise, the thrice-repeated "shall " of Acts i. 5-8, " Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." " Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me." And the universality of the promise is shown in the next chapter. " Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call (Acts ii. 39). And lest any young missionary or missionary candidate should feel discouraged after letting God apply this test, I want to add that there is no need to be discouraged. God delights to give. God can work very swiftly in a yielded soul. Give thyself up to Him now, and He will take thee in hand now and work it out for thee. Yield now. "As the Holy Ghost saith, ' To-day.' " THE CLAIM OF FOREIGN MISSIONS ON THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. The- Chairman : Our next subject is -address by that of the influence of Foreign Mis- henry Stanley newman. sions on the Home Church. Two papers will be read on that question. I should like to allude to one phase of the remarkable influence which Foreign Mission work has had on the Society of Friends. I allude to the healthy action of our Foreign work upon us in giving us a clearer understanding of the foundation The Claim of Foreign Missions on the Society of Friends. 227 principles of the Christian religion through our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the way in which those foundation principles are to be carried out and exemplified in practical mission work in daily life. Those who have been called out in the Foreign Mission field have found that their religious convic tions have been refreshed and confirmed by the experience they have had in those fields. That causes us to enquire the attitude we should take towards the heathen, and as to the lesson the heathen may teach us as to the best way to present truth to them. The Lord Jesus Christ gave us a beautiful example of the way to deal with foreigners who had in them thoughts and longings which He recognised. He makes the most absolute claim to His kingship of human hearts, and quietly does this by meeting what we may call the point of least resistance. We have an illustration of this in the way in which He dealt with the woman of Samaria. Though one might suppose that such a woman was not one open to the highest lines of truth, we find Jesus putting high truth before her, meeting the enquiry of her heart with the words, " the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." I expect many of us have been startled to find such a magnificent testimony from Christ regarding the central point of true worship given first of all to the woman whom He met at the well. Yet Jesus made no mistake whatever in His announcement to that woman, there was in her the longing and the looking for that line of truth. Though it may be a truth the Society of Friends has thought itself specially called to proclaim, Christ practically commences his work with this woman by opening to her that thought about the worship of God in spirit ; not calling her attention to some outside religion or to the difference between ceremonies, but calling her directly to the worship in spirit. In many ways the Society of Friends, from its absence of ceremony and insistence on spiritual worship, seems peculiarly adapted to meet the heathen world and speak to the needs of the heathen world. Thus with regard to 228 The Claim of Foreign Missions on the Society of Friends. Mohammedanism. I only wish we could learn to love men, even when we differ much not only from their conduct, but from their views. Take one illustration from the heart of Mohammedanism in Persia as to the way in which we may find ourselves in touch with people from whom we suppose we greatly differ. In the sayings of Faridu ddin Attar, the Sufi, who died 660 years ago, we see a point of contact between these people and ourselves : " When the seeker raises his voice and calls out, he is as a tank, but when he becomes silent, he is like an ocean filled with pearls. From streams of running water thou hearest a sound, but when they reach the great sea it is hushed. All this talk and activity, and noise, and movement, and craving, are without the veil, but within the veil is silence, and quiet, and rest, and awe. Others derive their knowledge from the dead, but we from the Living One. Whoever knows God loves Him." Such words, uttered in the heart of Mohammedanism 660 years ago, represent the aspiration of men's souls. Surely every one of us as Friends recognise a point of contact between such seekers after spiritual worship, and ourselves. We find them expressing a line of thought which has over and over again been in our hearts in our quiet meetings, realising that in the silence God Himself draws near to us, and that within the veil, entering into true rest of soul, we hear a message that comes to us from Heaven. At the other side of the world, there comes something of the same theught to us from the Red Indians of North America. These men express the yearning of their hearts after God, whom they call the Great Spirit, when they say of one seeking to know His will, that he seeks after his Manitou. When a young man becomes about sixteen years of age, whether in Canada or in the Indian Territory, he will some times go right away into the forest, and sit clown by himself for two or three days, " seeking his Manitou " — his guardian angel ; he is seeking to understand the mind of the Great Spirit as to what is his destiny and purpose on earth. Now this searching after the Great Spirit is not only an aspiration that appealed to the heart of William Penn as he learned a little about the Red Indians, but is one that ought to come home to us to-day. American Friends have found The Claim of Foreign Missions on the Society -of Friends. 229 it helpful as they have gone with the gospel message to the Red Indians of North America. It is instructive to sit with these people in the Indian Territory in their own meetings. They seem almost naturally — and yet I think it is a spiritual gift — they seem almost naturally to settle down into a Friends' meeting, as though they felt at home there, to search after the mind of the Great Spirit. I remember attending one of these gatherings, where they had collected together in what Friends call a Monthly Meeting, where a woman who did not understand half or a quarter of what had been said in three foreign languages, stood up at the end and said, "I felt that the mind of the Great Spirit was in all of it. It was one Spirit, though expressed in divers tongues." That thought of a Red Indian ought to confirm us in our view, that there is a great underlying unity where there may seem to be great diversity. I remember a dear friend of mine belonging to the Seneca Nation, John Winney, a great friend of Isaac Sharp's, and chief of the Seneca tribe, saying how on one occasion he had been gambling, and, having won, the thought that he had won all the money from another young Indian troubled his conscience. The money was like a burden in his pocket. He said to himself, " He has gone away desolate, and I have got my pocket full." The thought of winning brought such conviction of sin to that man, that he went after that young man and returned him eveiy penny. On another occasion, in trouble of soul, he went out into the forest and sat on a log silently hour after hour, with his head bowed down under the sense of sin. When he had settled the matter alone with the Great Spirit he came back to a Friend missionary, Jeremiah Hubbard, shook hands with him in the face of the whole meeting, and that hand-shake sealed their friendship for life, and henceforth he bepame a Christian man. He stood up in a quiet meeting in the Indian Territory, and said, " I am going to live a new life, and give my heart to God." That was the means of winning a large portion "of his own tribe, and to-day we find a Friends' Meeting- House on a central spot in the midst of the Territory of that tribe, the tribe having given the land and built the meeting-house largely out of their own funds. Who 230 The Claim of Foreign Missions on the Society of Friends. would say that these thoughts, burning in the hearts of the Red Indians, burning in the hearts of some amongst the Mohammedans, are not thoughts that ought to appeal, and are intended to appeal, to our own Church ; so that we may realise that our foundation is on the Rock, even in Him who loves every man on the face of this earth, and who, by His Spirit, is searching the lost. I want to refer to one other illustration of a somewhat different kind with regard to the work in India. There we have had springing up during the last thirty years, under the influence of the Government schools and colleges, a remark able band of men, who talk English fluently, the Brahmos of North India. They have thrown aside their idols and, to some extent, their caste prejudices, and are endeavouring to act as reformers in Northern India. They are searching after truth, and I think they have a strong claim on the Society of Friends. I saw something of their meetings in Calcutta, and there, not altogether according to our ways, they were endeavouring to seek the mind of the Spirit, and those who spoke were supposed to be speaking under the influence of the Spirit. They are not Christians, but they are searching ; they are eclectic, but they are drifting ; and I think Friends ought to try and help them. When, in 1881, 1 visited Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, in Calcutta, he said : "We cannot comprehend the Bible without the help of God's Spirit. We do not come to a termination when we have found out one truth. We find there is yet a deeper truth beyond it. I do not know," he added, " what lies before me. That must be left with God. I am not to-day what I was yesterday, and I know not to-day what I shall be to-morrow. We must follow Christ, and, like Him, cast all that is of self aside. We need to lose sight of self. The less we have of self, the more we have of God." Surely such a man was near the kingdom, and surely such words as these, spoken to a Friend, ought to be a claim on our Church. I believe we have yet a great mission to fulfil, and I long that our meeting this morning may reflect to the heart of the Society of Friends this deep sense of a call to human brotherhood, towards those who desire to worship in the spirit of truth, but who yet do not understand Christ and His great sacrifice for sin, Influence of Foreign Missions upon the Church at Home. 231 many of whom are drifting, not established by any means in the truth, and yet would gladly know more of it. We are now to consider the influence of Foreign Mission work on the home Church. That influence has already been for good. We find that our Friends who have come home on furlough from the foreign field value their faith even more strongly than when they went out. Yet we may hold certain views so rigidly that we may not know exactly how to adapt them to the varied circumstances of different people. It is not for us to do a thing just because it was done two hundred years ago, but it is for us to-day to come under the direct government of the Spirit of God. Therefore the subject to be introduced by our two Friends is a valuable and important one, in its bearing on the future growth and future healthy action of the Friends' Church, that we may learn to adapt ourselves to all the emergencies of the present day, the emergencies both of the foreign field and of the home field. James Henry Barber : The feeling uppermost in my mind is a desire that I shall not interfere with the strong devotional tone which has hitherto characterised this meeting. James Henry Barber then read the following paper on THE INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS UPON THE CHURCH AT HOME. The words "The Church at Home" paper by must be understood to mean our own james henry barber, little Church. Incidentally only can I venture to touch upon the interesting and wider subject of the influence of foreign missions upon the Christian Church as a whole. I wish to consider the influence of foreign missions upon the Society of Friends under the following aspects, viz. : As regards the life and vigour of the Church ; the harmony and love amongst its members ; the special qualification of Friends as foreign missionaries, based on their principles and past history. These subjects are so much interwoven that it may not be quite easy to discuss them separately. 232 Influence of Foreign Missions upon the Church at Home. As regards the life and vigour of the Church, one recol lects the time when Friends had no organised foreign missions to the heathen. There were in the early part of this century foreign missions of the Stephen Grellett, Daniel Wheeler, and James Backhouse type, and a very good type it was, but these missions were not exactly to the heathen. They were rather of the kind of those of the Apostle Paul, when he visited distant Churches to confirm them in the faith, or when he addressed rulers and influential men, and witnessed for Christ. Friends' foreign missions, above named, were not like those others of which the apostle said, " So have I striven to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, . . . but as it is written, to whom He was not spoken of, they shall see, and they that have not heard shall understand." At length, however, the questions were raised amongst us, Has not the Christian Church, and our Church as part of it, an obligation, so far as practicable, to preach the gospel to the heathen? Or was the final command of the Saviour, " Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," a command given only to those sectional Churches baptizing with water, but excusing the Church not thus baptizing ? Such questions presented themselves to Friends' minds half a century ago. As Friends pondered them, confirmation of Christ's command to carry the gospel abroad came to mind. In the prayer of our Saviour— the only prayer of His of any length recorded in the gospels, one so wonderful in its depths of earnestness and communing love — there occur these words : " As Thou hast sent Me into the world, so have I sent them into the world," the " them " being not alone the disciples who then knew Him, but also those who should thereafter " believe on Him through their word." And thus, His after promise, " Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world," linked the Quaker Church as a part of the uni versal Church in the nineteenth century to the commands the duties, and the promises of the infant Church of the first century. But, as I have said, there was a time when the Quaker Church did little or nothing towards going into all nations for the conversion of the heathen. A Church neglecting the final and impressive injunction Influence of Foreign Missions upon the Church at Home. 233 of the Saviour might be expected to be a drying-in Church, decayed in places, and with a good many closed meeting houses. I visited one such meeting-house in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in company with two well-known Friends, in the days of General Meetings. The ivy flourished inside as well as outside of this venerable ruin. The benches were still there, but becoming rotten, as the roof was broken. There was a large box full of Friends' books, ancient, damp, and mouldy. The caretaker had died suddenly about twelve months before. He had had no successor, but on the mantel piece of his cottage room were his last pipe and box of matches. We were told that the end of the meeting-house was indeed nigh at hand, but the Charity Commissioners alone were able to put an end to its misery, and they were slow-moving executioners. There was a touch of pathetic humour about this casual survey of a deserted gathering ground of the Society, and the question would force itself, Is this typical ? Of late, however, the feeling of our Church has changed. From bemoaning itself as becoming moribund, and suffering from incipient decay, it has risen to a sense of hopefulness and a vigour of convalescence. One of the causes of this change of feeling I believe to be the springing up of a missionary spirit. We had once a member of our religious body who in his active benevolence knew no limit of clime or colour of skin, but whose love for humanity embraced the Birmingham rough, and negro slave, and Finlander ruined by war. This Friend was the founder (under Providence) of our Adult First- day Schools. More and more since that foundation has the Society become interested in the British workman. The sympathy given has been responded to, mission meetings in divers places resulting. From such home mission effort the step to foreign missions was a natural one. And in the work for others, and the carrying out of Christ's command to evan gelise, the Church has been blessed. The atmosphere in which it has lived has been fresher, and freer, and it has been less sectarian and exclusive. It has had a more robust life and greater vigour. Turning to another question, What has been the influence of the missionary spirit in promoting love and harmony 234 Influence of Foreign Missions upon the Church at Home. amongst our members ? It happened to me, as a youth, to be present at nearly every sitting of the Yearly Meeting of 1836, and I have attended most of its sittings in the year 1896. The earlier Meeting would not have stood the Saviour's test, " By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one toward another." It was a meeting in which strife reigned. The period is known in our annals as that of the Beacon Controversy. Beacons were warlike signals. In this time of dissension friendships were shattered, and members left us, to our loss, and probably to their own. In 1896, on the other hand, a notable feature of the Yearly Meeting was the condescension, the loving spirit which ruled the discus sions, even amidst diversity of opinion and outspokenness. It is true that sixty years ago Friends did not long continue to be unloving to each other in speech. The controversial period passed gradually away. Nevertheless I thankfully believe that the Society has more of internal harmony than in the preceding generation, less disposition to be contentious about trifles, or non-essentials, and I think the broader mis sionary spirit has at least contributed to the change. Doubt less it is a duty at any cost to defend the essentials of truth. The great missionary, the Apostle Paul, used strong terms as regarded those who should preach any other gospel than the one he was inspired to preach. But he thought the Corinthian Church might employ itself better than in quarrel ling about the leadership of himself and Apollos and Cephas. In London Yearly Meeting, as a body, we have, from our first association, had little serious differences in fundamental belief. George Fox's declaration of faith, contained in his letter to the Governor of Barbadoes, forms the first pages of our Book of Doctrine and Discipline. It has been confirmed by the Yearly Meeting's Epistles for 240 years, and down to the present time. There have been diversities of operations at various times, and occasional heresies of individuals, but the Church has been steady to its first Christian faith. Where people are at times inclined to be somewhat quarrelsome, it is highly beneficial to them to unite in doing good to somebody else. To use a homely illustration, two neighbouring women falling out about their clothes-lines will drop their quarrel and combine their aid if another neighbour falls down in a fit. I Influence of Foreign Missions upon the Church at Home. 235 believe quarrelsome dispositions on our part in the past have been fading away under the influence of the love to our neigh bour, which received so wide a definition in the parable of the good Samaritan. We have grown in harmony as we have felt the growth of sympathy with those whom Carlyle styles " the dim common populations," and this sympathy has found vent in missions at home and abroad. One influence of foreign missions upon our Church has been to encourage liberal expenditure for the good of others. Surely this'.has been a good thing. A scoffer of two genera tions ago described Friends as " pursuing wealth with a step as steady as death and a grip as close as the grave." I do not believe the taunt was ever well deserved. But there was a time when accumulation was a danger in the Society of Friends. Rightly avoiding many expensive things, not to say vices, in which the " world " indulged, trained in habits of simplicity, industry, and thrift, the Quaker drifted naturally into riches. I knew a meeting well, more than half a century ago, which was then two millions richer than it is now. " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven ! " What a blessing it has been that foreign missions have helped to unburden our rich ! Like mercy, their liberality has been twice blessed, to the giver as well as the receiver. I do not wish to libel the Church of our adoption as respects its past history. The Church of Woolman, Grellett, the Gurneys, William Allen, Josiah and William Forster, and many another worthy has had inscribed in letters of light across its annals — civil and religious liberty, peace, love to the criminal, the drunkard, and, above all, the slave. And now may I say a few words on the question whether Friends have a special qualification as foreign missionaries, based on their principles and past history ? The story of modern colonisation is a sad one. It is very like, in some respects, that of our ancestors, the Vikings, who, finding farm and homestead inadequate to increasing families, built war ships, and sent off their adventurous younger sons across the sea to invade other lands, either to settle there or return home with plunder. The colonising modern Spaniard had a strong missionary spirit, but his methods were objectionable. Unlike the Mohammedan, who speedily closed his argument by the 236 Influence of Foreign Missions upon the Church at Home. sword, the Spaniard patiently racked the body of his Indian for the good of his- soul. The choice was between baptism and torture. Meantime the Spaniard robbed the natives of land and gold, and made them slaves. The Englishman went to work differently. His method was division of labour. The English settler, with more or less of preliminary palaver, seized the lands of the heathen, and if he resisted, which he mostly did, slew him. If the Englishmen were Puritans, they acted in the spirit of their three famous resolutions, viz. : (1) The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof ; (2) He hath given the inheritance thereof to the saints ; (3) We are the saints. Under which system extermination of the heathen in the end was probable, especially when ardent spirits and vice came into play. Thus fields, including goldfields, were won. But in the division of labour the English missionary preceded or followed the settler, preaching the gospel of peace. He, however, made but little progress generally. The indiscrimi- nating heathen judged of the faith of the Christians, not by what they preached, but by their works. Not that the mis sionary approved the acts of the settler. On the contrary, he raised his voice against them. Nevertheless, to the Red Indian, or darker Zulu, the two seemed to be somehow in partnership, and he preferred to eschew them both. The people of one little Christian Church colonised after a different fashion. They had been led into the truth that Christ's gospel was based on the infinite love of God to man, on justice and human brotherhpod, war being forbidden. They had colonised long ago in this faith, and to the astonish ment of mankind they had succeeded, having established a State Government, which on this Christian basis had continued and prospered for seventy years, not a native being slain, or war waged, whilst around them were wars amongst the nations, and the mutual hatred of races of men. If William Penn and his friends had failed, the attempt might still have been a protest before the world against cruel and unrighteous colonisation. But they succeeded. No contrast could well be greater than their' settlement, and that of the States, north and west of them, so far as the Indians were concerned. How strange that for generations this little: Church, thus blessed in its unique experiment, was the last in the field as regards The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. 237 foreign missions generally, though not without good service amongst American Indians and negroes ! The difficulty in the way of organising foreign missions gradually vanished. The Apostle Paul had taught what was its solution. Called of God to preach the gospel, he worked at his trade when he could. When he could not, he accepted aid in all needful maintenance from certain of the Churches. Latterly there have been clays of deep sorrow and great peril to our missionaries. How have these circumstances influenced our Church at home ? The grief has bound us closer together, drawn us into larger sympathy for our missionary friends who have stood firmly to their duty, two of them even to death. And when war came, the officials of a jealous and half hostile European nation were touched by the courtesy and ready aid to the wounded of the missionary friends of peace. Charles G. Clarke, M.D. : Our Chairman has rather narrowed down the subject to that of the influence of Foreign Missions on the Society of Friends. If in illustrating my subject I have alluded to societies longer in the field than ourselves, Friends will understand that it is not from any want of loyalty to our Society. Charles G. Clarke, M.D., then read the following paper on THE INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS ON THE HOME CHURCH. The subject naturally presents itself in paper by two aspects. 1. The Positive : — i.e., charles g. clarke, m.d. What reflex benefits and blessings come to the Home Church through a deep, genuine, and sustained interest in missions. 2. The Negative side, What comes to the Home Church, and what is the condition of the Home Church which fails to take such an interest. The Church of the Old Dispensation, if I may be allowed the expression, was Evangelical, but it was not Evangelistic. Holy men spake as they were moved by the 238 The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. Holy Ghost, and there was, especially at times in its history, a good degree of the knowledge of God and of spiritual truth ; but so far as I am aware there was no organised aggressive or missionary effort on the part of the chosen people to carry this knowledge to the nations around them. Hence we find that, so far from influencing these for good, they were influenced by them for evil, and lapsed readily into iniquity and idolatry. Is not this a, picture of too many Churches and Christians of later times, who, intent only upon keeping up their own feeble spiritual life, instead of overcoming the world, have been largely overcome by it, so that it is difficult at times to say which is the Church and which is the world ? The seed of the kingdom has been so choked by thorns— the riches, and cares, and pleasures of this life — that it has had no fruit nor ear for self-propagation. It is said that before the ear or grain is formed upon a stalk of wheat or corn it puts forth a second set of roots. A good many Churches and Christians would perhaps be the better for a second set of roots. The Church of the New Dispensation was not only evangelical, but, impelled by the dynamic force of the Holy Spirit, it became immediately and of necessity evangelistic. The first missionary journey undertaken by Paul and Barnabas, " sent forth by the Holy Ghost," was to prove more momentous, perhaps, than any ever undertaken by man, and was to illustrate thus early that the mission is the natural outcome of the true Church, and the pure, vigorous Church the outcome of missions. What blessings must have come back to the Home Church at Jerusalem, not only in the contribu tions to the poor saints there, but in the glowing narratives which told of all that God had wrought among the Gentiles through Paul, " The travelled ambassador of Christ " who, in the words of Martineau, " snatched Christianity from the hands of a local faction and turned it into a universal faith, whose powerful words shook all the gods from Cyprus to Gibraltar, who turned the tide of history and thought, giving us the organisation of Christendom for the legions of Rome, and for Zeno and Epicurus, Angustine, Eckhart, and Luther." Coming down to more recent times, we find the counter part of these two Churches I have hastily and imperfectly sketched. In the first half of the eighteenth century, when The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. 239 there were no foreign missions and very little home mission work, we find even England, as Isaac Taylor has said, " in virtual heathenism," with a worldly Church, a deistic theology, a lascivious literature, and an infidel society. To diffuse such a Christianity would have been dangerous, even had it possessed any self-propagating power. Between 1735 and 1785 came a fresh reformation, which awoke the Protestant world from its deathlike sleep and with mighty impulse sent the story of the Cross over the seas to many lands. I need hardly remind this audience that the early days of our own religious Society were days of remarkable missionary activity, which could not be confined within these sea-girt shores. The decline of this aggressive effort witnessed also the decline of our Society in numbers, and I think we must add in spiritual life and zeal. The heart in the physical economy has a marvellous and important responsibility, namely, to send the blood, which is the food and the life, to every part of the system, even the remotest member. If it fails in this mission the consequences are disastrous, not only to the members but also to the heart itself, which becomes clogged, weakened, and hindered. The Church may be compared to the heart, the fibres of which would correspond with theitruly converted members. To it is confided, figuratively speaking, the life- blood of the gospel, and if it does not send this life-blood to the remotest sphere of its influence, whether at home or abroad, the consequence is not only that the extremities are left starved and lifeless but in the nature of things the Church itself seriously suffers. Two causes of the decline of missionary activity in our Society may perhaps be incidentally referred to in passing. 1. The exaggeration of the offices and work of the Holy Spirit, till, forgetting that the workman who builds must have not only tools but mortar, the idea became more or less prevalent that the Holy Spirit was so far above the Scriptures that we scarcely needed them, and that His direct guidance and influence were to supersede them, an injurious error — which we need not go further to see refuted than Peter's sermon at Pentecost, in which he made Scripture the groundwork of his arguments and appeals — but which 240 The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. nevertheless resulted, as it has been truly said, in Friends settling quietly down in their meeting-houses, apparently ignoring the Master's plain command, " Go ye," and waiting for some extraordinary impulse of the Spirit to drive them out into the world to carry the message of salvation and deliverance to the lost and oppressed. 2. A perverted appli cation of the Inner Light doctrine, resulting in the belief that the heathen might safely be left alone to follow the light they had. To quote from an eminent and earnest servant of God : * " We must either give up the inspiration of the Bible or accept the lost condition of the heathen. The Epistle to the Romans leaves no standing-room for candid doubt. That Epistle begins with a fearful indictment of the whole Pagan world for idolatry and iniquity, and affirms that they are without excuse, because when they knew God they glorified Him not as God. . . . They are to be judged, not by our supernatural light, but by their own natural light." (Against which they have wilfully shut their eyes.) " They sinned without law, and without law they perish. . . This argument in the first chapter Paul supplements in the tenth by a series of questions. How, then, shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed ? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard ? and how shall they hear without a preacher ? and how shall they preach except they "be sent ? These questions are indirect affirmalions that the preacher must be sent to them, that they may hear, and hearing believe, and believing call, and calling be saved." " This does not limit the power or grace of God. If there be anywhere a soul feeling after God, following the light- of nature and of conscience in hope and faith that the great unknown will somehow give more light and lead to life and blessedness, we may safely leave such to His fatherly care. He who sent Peter to tell a Roman centurion words whereby he and his house might be saved ; He who went to the very coasts of Canaan to help one poor woman ; He who bade Philip join the Ethiopian eunuch that he might guide a perplexed inquirer, will not leave any sincere seeker to seek in vain ; . . . but the salvation of the few would only justify the condemnation of the rest." * Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. 241 Through the causes referred to, and others, our Society for a time became too much like the hypochondriac who devotes most of his time to the consideration of his own state and feelings and ailments which, in many cases, would take to themselves wings and fly away if he would forget himself and go to work for others. Our Lord's standard for His Church was assuredly not that of a mere hospital for the sick and incurable. Turning now more particularly to the positive and brighter side, I think we have abundant and historical proof that, as Joseph Cook expresses it, there is no plan for quickening the life of the Church like exercising the limbs of the Church. As a speaker at the Centenary Conference of Missions said, " It is now historical common-place to affirm that the non- missionary Church decays and dies, that the missionary Church lives and grows. Secondly, it is historically clear that every great spiritual awakening in the Church at home has witnessed a fresh departure in the great field of missions. And the converse is true that missionary epochs are always times of blessing to the Church at home. Thirdly, it is historically manifest that where great Church movements have not included the outward movement of missions, their benefi cence has been woefully marred." An honoured and experienced minister of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland says : " The first thing that increased our zeal for Home work was our Foreign Mission work. We began that work when a comparatively small and poor Church, and we went up by leaps and bounds from .£500 in 1845 to ^40,000 a-year. Did this impoverish our Home work ? No ! for our Foreign Missionary Secretary used to be proud to tell that it was Foreign Missions that had raised the stipends of our Home Ministers, that had built their manses, and had provided an evangelistic fund to send labourers among the masses of our population." Foreign Missions have taught us among other things — 1. The value of personal testimony, and how to use converts to reach their unconverted companions. To make workers out of converts is one of the most important links in the chain of missions. Says Charles H. Spurgeon : " He who wins a soul draws water from the fountain ; but he who makes a 17 242 The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. soul-winner digs a well from which many may drink unto life eternal." 2. Co-operation among different denominations and workers in the foreign field has tended to the break ing down of sectarian barriers and bigotry at home, and has made more manifest the real and indestructible unity which exists between all the members of that body of which Christ is the head. 3. Foreign Missions have taught the Home Churches liberality, and have brought home to them, both as regards workers and money, the lesson contained in the words of the Lord Jesus, " It is more blessed to give than to receive." No doubt we have all heard of the little chimney sweep in Belfast who happened to be attracted by missions, and contributed to a mission-box the not inconsiderable sum, for him, of twopence. One afternoon a friend of this boy met him going along the street in an unusual condition, for his face and hands were washed, and he was dressed in his best. " Halloa," said the friend, " where are you going ? " " Oh," said he, " to a missionary meeting." " What are you going to a missionary meeting for ? " " Well," said the sweep, " I've become a sort of partner in the concern, and I am going to see how the business is getting on." There is much truth in Christlieb's declaration of the need of a three-fold conversion — namely, of the Heart to secure holy affections, of the Head to secure right convictions, and of the Purse to secure ample offerings. 4. Foreign Missions have done much to teach the Home Church how to reach the masses of our population, and thus to understand the true nature of its own work, and to emphasise the fact that none of us liveth to himself. 5. Foreign Missions have also done much towards binding the Church to the simple evangelical truths of the gospel. An experienced missionary * testifies as follows : " I find great complaints made in this country that the Atonement of our blessed Lord is often kept in the background, and Christian morality and the example of our Lord are too exclusively put to the front, and even substituted for the doctrine of the Atonement. Well, now, as a missionary, I feel that if it were not for the Atonement of Christ all our efforts for the spiritual conversion of the heathen would be in vain. In India, when I have spoken to natives about our Lord as an example and * John Hewlett, L.M.S. (Benares). The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. 243 about His morality, I have indeed seen proofs of their being much interested ; but this is not what has touched their hearts. It is the doctrine that our Lord loved them and gave Himself for them ; that they were sinners and could not be saved unless God's clear Son had come into this world and taken their guilt to Himself, and laid down His life for them, that has touched their hearts." And he adds, " When our hearts go forth in love toward the whole human race, when we pray for the human race, when we contribute of our wealth to bring the whole human race to Christ, it is then we become more Christlike, and thus that we attain better than in any other way to the Higher Christian life." In conclusion, it has been truly said that missionary enterprise is not a phase of Christianity, but Christianity itself ; and if this is true, Churches and religious societies which have not the spirit and the motive of missions must be themselves lacking in the essentials of Christian life and progress. This Conference surely gives good ground for gratitude and hope as regards our own beloved Society. It amply proves the existence within our borders of the true missionary spirit, and gives cheering evidence that into the web of many earnest and devoted lives is being woven the truth contained in the words of own Quaker poet — ." Hands that ope but to receive, Empty close. They only live Richly, who can richly give." Joseph F. Radley : Time is so limited in this Confer ence that it is impossible to avoid speaking out of order. I wish to add a few words of encouragement to what Heniy Clark said last night, words of encouragement to those who are in great doubt if they ought to go on with the work in Madagascar. Do not the words of the Quaker poet appeal to us at this juncture : — " We wait beneath the furnace blast The pangs of transformation ; Not painlessly doth God recast And mould anew the nation. 244 The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. Hot burns the fire Where wrongs expire ; Nor spares the hand That from the land Uproots the ancient evil." The ancient evils of forced service, of slavery, of bribery, and corruption are being uprooted in Madagascar, but in the process the hand of our God has not spared us. At the same time I believe that there is harmony in the Divine workings from the beginning, and I think recent events in Madagascar - have constituted a call no less imperative than those from the South Seas and other places where martyrdoms have taken place, a call no less imperative to some here who may make the reasonable sacrifice of their lives for Madagascar. Frederic Wood : I think that if we have never con sidered the subject before, we must this morning have been brought face to face with that which is really the spring and fountain of all missionary service. First, I place the thought to which our minds have been directed — the need for the absolute renunciation of self, the acceptance of Christ as our Leader and King, and then, that He is clearly to each one of us a reality ; not now a cloud, but a glorified personality ; not now a shadow, but a blessed reality : and that under the leadership and guidance of Him who has promised to go with His people, we can never doubt that what the Lord calls us to do He will enable us to do. I think we must also remember that when looking at the history of any Church, our own or any other, we always find that Christian Missions have repaid a thousandfold all the energies we have been capable of putting into them for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and the very fact of our carrying on such Missions is in itself an evidence of the Lord's blessing and presence with us in our work. I remember the touching words of the famous explorer who, in his last days, when he could hardly hold his pen, wrote down in his solitude, " The spirit of missions is the spirit of our Master ; it is the very genius of His religion. A diffusive philanthropy is Christianity itself. It requires per petual propagation to attest its genuineness." Thus we are brought face to face with the responsibility that rests on every The Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church. 245 child of God to be an instrument for the propagation of the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the world may be lifted out of darkness into the light of God. One of the most thoughtful writers of the present day has put before us in words to this effect, with regard to the requirements of self- giving (it is not well to say self-sacrifice, for we often hear our missionary friends reprove us for the use of this word), that " the requirement of self-giving, so characteristic of our Christianity, is a universal law of the Lord our God. That fact is impressed upon us throughout the whole creation of God. The veiy sun itself could not continue to shine and flood the world with light unless it were slowly consuming itself." And so we are glad to be co-partners with Christ, who first gave Himself for us, and poured out His life that we might live unto Him, that all we possess might be given unto Him and to those around us for His name's sake. It may be that we sometimes realise our weakness ; but let us put our trust in Him who said, " All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth." To-day is an evidence that as we are faithful to Him, His Divine blessing will rest On those who are thus willing to put their lives at His service, and to give all for His honour and glory and the extension of His eternal kingdom. Joseph S. Sewell : The words of our friend Joseph F. Radley seem to open the way for a word I have wished to give to this meeting. He spoke of Friends saying that it was no longer of much use to go to Madagascar and cany on the Mission there. I will only reply to that, with, if I can properly read them, a few words that I have copied from a letter of my dear son-in-law (the late William Johnson), written in 1891, after an evening during one of his missionary tours. There had been a terrible storm, the wind raging, the rain swelling the rivers ; and they came to a river which it was veiy difficult and dangerous to cross. They did cross it, he and his men, and then got safely housed. That same evening, when it was dark, and the sun had long set, he wrote in his journal these words : — " I have just looked out into the night — a lovely sky, the bright stars overhead, with a few light clouds bright in the clear moonlight. It was surely on some other planet that we were delayed this afternoon. Somehow, when 246 Home Organisation : The Missionary Helpers' Union. we are in the thick of the storm it is difficult to realise that there will be the after calm and peace." I found these words in his journal when I was seeking material for the little memoir which is soon to be published. They struck me as so forcible, so symbolic of what is now taking place. For him, and for my dear daughter and their' child, there is now no fear whatever. They have reached the calm and peace which shall last for ever. But I am thinking, I do think perhaps more, of the nation, more of the Church that has been established there, than of them. It is a terrible storm now, the wind raging, tempests blowing, with wide rivers to cross. But most assuredly He who has preserved that nation and that Church hitherto will not leave them alone, but will take care of them. The storm will pass by, and there will yet be peace and calm among these people, who have suffered so much and are still suffering — for there are noble men and women among them — though at present all seems so gloomy. The Chairman : I am sure that the words of our dear Friend who has just spoken must have reached all our hearts, and I trust that they will be long remembered by some of us here. Our next subject is that of " Home Organisation." A paper has been written by Ellen Barclay, so well known to us all as Secretary of the Missionary Helpers' Union. It is to be read by Elizabeth B. Backhouse. Elizabeth B. Backhouse read the following paper, written by Ellen Barclay, on HOME ORGANISATION: THE MISSIONARY HELPERS' UNION. The Missionary Helpers' Union has been in existence since the spring of 1883, and has grown from a very small beginning. Most Friends now know a little, more or less about its work in the past, and therefore what has been done need not be dwelt upon here. PAPER by ELLEN BARCLAY. Home Organisation : The Missionary Helpers' Union. 247 There is now a total of rather more than 200 branches. Of these five are in Australia amongst Friends there, with whom we are very glad to have this link of work in common. The Indian orphan children, the schoolgirls at Antananarivo, and the girls in the Brumana Training Home form three more branches. This leaves about 200 in Great Britain and Ireland, and of these, roughly speaking, about 50 are composed of the members of Bible Classes, Mothers' Meetings, Adult or Sunday Schools, Mission Meetings, &c. That is to say, the members of these branches (with the exception of the secretary, and perhaps one or two others) are not as a rule members of our Society. Their help, interest, and prayers are most valuable, and probably there is room for much extension of M.H.U. work in our Home Missions. This leaves, however, only about'i5o branches, whose members are principally Friends, and yet there are 352 particular meetings and 42 allowed meetings in London and Dublin Yearly Meetings, so it is evident that there is still plenty of room for growth amongst Friends also, though no doubt many take an active interest in foreign work where there is no branch of the M.H.U. The Union is intended to be a link between the needs of the workers abroad and the helpers at home, whether older or younger, and for this purpose a simple organisation is necessary. From the beginning the membership has not been confined to children, as no one is too old to belong if they can do anything to help, so all ages and classes are welcome as members. The last time our late dear Friend, William Johnson, attended our Annual Secretaries' Meeting in 1894, he said he felt that men Friends had stood too much aloof from- the M.H.U., and yet he was sure if the ladies would take them in hand they would become very much interested, and be glad to help. Our late Friend, John T. Dorland, belonged to the Willesden Branch, and doubtless many others have gentlemen members, or else they give financial help towards the purchase of materials for busy fingers to make up. But cannot more still be done by our men Friends ? To gather information to pass on to others may be quite as im portant missionary helper work as making "kurtas," forinstance. Sending parcels abroad, and holding sales of work at home, though distinct features of M.H.U. work, by no means 248 Home Organisation : The Missionary Helpers' Union. form the whole of it. We need to be banded together, to stir ourselves and one another up to a living, prayerful interest in Foreign Missions, and in a very real sense to uphold the hands and share the burdens of our Friends abroad ; and to do this we must make ourselves acquainted with their needs and circumstances, we must try to understand something of the problems before them, and feel that we have a part in their work. The magazine, Our Missions, is an important factor in the M.H.U., especially since the beginning of this year we have had a bi-monthly supplement. If it is carefully read we must gain some of the knowledge of what is going on in the mission field, which is so absolutely essential towards a real interest and consequent desire to help. Maps, pictures, written lectures, and other helps for meetings are sent out through the M.H.U., and a lending library of missionary books containing over 200 volumes is at the disposal of members. The Missionary Helpers' Prayer Union is intended to help us to definiteness in prayer, and also to bring the needs of our missionaries from time to time before the members, that we may know some of the special objects for which they ask our prayers. Papers containing these requests, culled from our missionaries' letters, &c, are sent once a quarter to each member of the Prayer Union. This branch of our work is not intended for the children, but for older Friends, and any one may join, whether a member of the M.H.U. or not. At present the total Prayer Union membership is only about 270. Acquaintance with Foreign Missions is wonderfully educative. I shall not soon forget the interesting talks I used to have with a poor crippled, bedridden woman, living in one room, and dependent on parish relief. She took a keen interest in the almost world-wide work of the Church Missionary Society, and her knowledge and intelligence about it often greatly surprised me. As she lay day after day, and prayed over the needs of Africa, India, and the whole world surely she was a true missionary helper, and immeasur ably happier than if all her thoughts had been centred on herself and her sufferings. For prayerful interest of that sort we need not only to know about missions, but a living union with the Lord Himself, and such love to Him and to Home Organisation. 249 our fellow-men everywhere that we really do care about them, and long for their eternal welfare. We have been hearing of our various mission fields, of the evangelistic, educational, industrial, and medical work carried on in them, also of women's work amongst women ; we have had Bible-readings' impressing upon us Christ's teaching and our duty with regard to the world at large. We know the need for more labourers, for more support through our free-will offerings, for more earnest endeavour on our part, for more sympathy and for more prayer. Shall we not therefore go home with increased responsibilities with regard to these things ? This Conference will fail of its end if we go away well satisfied with ourselves and what we are doing in the face of all the infinite needs of the world. Should we not rather confess with shame before the Lord how little we have done, how little we have cared, how little we have given, and how little we have loved ? May we each one ask in all humility, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? " and then, as He shows us, may we promptly obey, and do it with our might, realising that it is His work and not ours. He identified Himself with the persecuted Church when He asked Saul, " Why persecutest thou Me." He also identifies Himself with the hungry and thirsty, the stranger, the poor, the sick, and the captive. Let us therefore praise and thank Him that we are allowed the privilege of ministering unto Him, of sharing in the grandest enterprise ever set before man, and rejoicingly go forward, even if it involves some fellowship of His sufferings, some loss on our part for the sake of Him who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich. Watson Grace read the following paper on HOME ORGANISATION. This will seem to many a dry and uninterest- paper by ing subject in comparison with the history, watson grace, philosophy, and actual Christian activity which have been our staple fare in the previous sessions of this Conference. But it is well to re- & 250 Home Organisation. member that— (1) "The more perfect the organisation, the more perfect is the instrument through which the Holy Spirit can carry on His work. (2) Advance proceeds most rapidly by doing not extraordinary things, but ordinary things extraordinarily well. (3) Attend to the presence of God ; that will dignify a small congregation, and annihilate a large one. (4) ' Because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.' " * The kingdom of Christ has an organised history, and its ideal is an organic whole. The prayer so often on our lips and in our hearts, " Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven," breathes the spirit of order, of power, and of beauty. As it becomes increasingly in corporated in the life of our Society, the proclamation of the gospel in all the earth becomes an indispensable part of our service. Although our total membership is numerically in significant and the extent of our missionary enterprise very small in comparison with that of other societies and Churches, it possesses vital interests to ourselves, and this Conference is an evidence of our desire to make our foreign service more effective, more practical, more spiritual, and more Christlike. The history of our work need not be repeated here, but there are some points affecting its organisation which must be noted : 1. That the numerous organisations having charge of this department have developed on somewhat individualistic lines. Besides the F.F.M.A. having care of work in India, Madagascar, and China, the Friends' Syrian Mission have their well-known work upon Mount Lebanon. Two Com mittees of Friends are interested in work in Constantinople and Bulgaria respectively ; a Committee of Women Friends is assisting quiet but excellent Christian work in France. 2. That the Foreign Mission organisation, though linked with the Society of Friends is not organically a part of it. 3. That all the missionary work has grown out of individual concern for the truth. (1) The first-named point, considered theoretically, at once strikes an impartial observer as entailing loss of strength, and in such a small community as ours we cannot afford this. * " Suggestions for Advance " (The Church Missionary Society). Home Organisation. 251 At the same time we must recognise that the present condi tion of affairs has arisen from the tendency amongst us to encourage individual effort as distinguished from corporate action. Whilst it is cause for rejoicing that there is this evidence of overflowing and outflowing life, we believe that the truest and highest policy will be to encourage union amongst these organisations as tending to impart catholicity and permanence. At the same time each missionary Com mittee (or the one, if such should .exist hereafter) should always foster that individual conviction of duty to Christ which must ever be the highest basis of success. It is our desire that these meetings may promote that mutual love and confidence which shall find fruit in co-operation and union in Christian service. (2) This naturally leads us to consider our relation to the Society of Friends. We all rejoice that the Yearly Meeting has itself appointed this Conference, and many would be thankful for closer union with the Society organisation. It is not necessary to make definite propositions, but there can be no fitter opportunity than the present for the expression of the conviction that we lose both in the Society of Friends and in our Foreign Mission organisation from the separation of our work, and that everything that unites and binds us together should be encouraged. What business would so encourage a Monthly or Quarterly Meeting as the liberation, in conjunction with the Foreign Mission Committee, of one of their membership for foreign missionary service ? The knowledge that he had received official encouragement from his own friends at home would be helpful to many a lonely or disheartened missionary. We fear that the place of the Church in regard to our Foreign Mission enterprise is only beginning to be under stood, and we long for the time when, as in apostolic and early Quaker clays, the organisation itself took official cogni sance of the foreign labours of its members, sending them forth under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Again, why should not Particular, Monthly, or Quarterly Meetings, in addition to the regular contributions of their members, support their own missionary (if one of their own members so much the better) in the foreign field of service ? 252 Home Organisation. We believe that the fuller recognition of our congregational responsibility in this matter would be a vitalising force in many of our meetings. (3) Our third point, the individualistic character of our work, and how the force of units may best be organised into effective service, is perhaps the most important part of the subject. It is the duty of every Church member to link himself in some definite service with his Church organisa tion. On the other hand, the organisation has a duty to each member by giving full scope to his right concern and encouragement in his service for Christ. Thus eveiy member is made helpful, the organisation is strengthened, Christ is glorified, and the whole body is blessed. Paul expresses his desire for the Church, that "speaking truth in love [we], may grow up in all things into Him, which is the head, even Christ ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in clue measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love " (Eph. iv. 15, 16). That body is in the soundest health and promises to do the most effective work which is least in evidence to its possessor. But such a state requires that healthy conditions of life should be observed ; and possibly an occasional consultation with expert and well-disposed friends regarding the course to be pursued may be desirable. A consultation of this kind is taking place to-day, and we hope thereby to discover how we ourselves as members of the body may discharge our functions more effectively. At the same time our hearts rejoice in the healthy growth which our organisations have already shown. We may note some conditions of healthy life which must be observed by the members of Foreign Mission societies, (a) The attitude of our souls towards Christ is to be that of servants ready to receive orders and prompt in obedience. We are wrong to bind ourselves to a particular course before orders are received. We have as little right to say that we will go as foreign missionaries as to say that we will not go. We have a right as citizens of Christ's kingdom, we have a privilege as His children, and we have a duty as His servants to make and pay our vows, to go where He sends, Home Organisation. 253 and to do as He commands, (b) We must be interested and enthusiastic in our work. Do we take time to inform our selves on the subject ? I shall be glad to receive the names of subscribers to Our Missions, the magazine of Foreign Mission work carried on by Friends." Its regular perusal will help us to maintain a living interest in the work. Again, when we need change and foreign travel, many parts of the mission field afford ample opportunity for personal acquaintance with missionary problems, (c) The contribution which the work of the Lord needs from us is not an annual subscription, but a daily one ; not a stated sum, but all that we have. In giving money v/e should have some sense of the tremendous need, so that our gift may be proportionate in the truest sense. Do we as Friends sufficiently understand and act upon the admonition to give as the Lord prospers ? It is a peculiar pleasure to me to receive donations for the F.F.M.A. in this way, whether they are of a large amount, or the contents of the missionary box of a little child, or the result of regular weekly offerings from a Friend who thus reminds himself of missionary interests, (d) Every department of our work should be remembered by us in prayer — in our meetings for worship and other public gatherings as well as in our families and private retirement before Godw in a corporate capacity there are many ways in which the organisation may be helped. (1) In work with others. We may find many opportunities through the Missionary Helpers' Union. I should like to suggest the need for further means to be found to interest and enlist men Friends in its ranks. (2) The F.F.M.A. is glad to receive help from interested correspondents, tactful collectors, and wise members of its Committees. (3) In First-day Schools, both adult and junior, there is a vein of ore of missionary interest which is not worked as it should be. Some of these schools are glad to be linked to a native helper or teacher. The First-day Schools in con nection with the Bedford Institute are an example of what may be done in this way by organised interest. Last year * Particulars of the periodical will be found at the end of this volume. f The Missionary Helpers' Prayer Union was referred to in Ellen Barclay's paper (see p. 248). Further particulars will be found at the end of this volume. 254 Home Organisation. they raised ^50 for the support of native teachers in Mada gascar. Besides this it should be noted that three former workers at the Bedford Institute are now valued missionaries of the F.F.M.A. (4) In our Meetings for worship we do not hear many missionary-addresses. More frequent reference to this subject, as the Holy Spirit leads, would help to quicken and revive the interest of Friends. In some meetings an annual collection at the close of the meeting for worship for the service of this cause is made, and I think the plan might well be extended. (5) The visits of our missionaries as deputations need more systematic arrangement. At least one Quarterly Meeting has a standing Committee for this purpose, and every winter a missionary makes a visit to many of its meetings. The lantern is now of great service in this respect, and sets of lantern slides illustrating Friends' Mission work in India and Madagascar can be obtained on loan from the F.F.M.A. We have to accomplish only a small part in Christ's great work during a short time, and we desire that our organisation should well fulfil its work. The organisation is not an end in itself, but a means towards the success of the most glorious cause that can occupy our lives. The organisation needs to be alive with the presence of Christ, and quickened by Him in imagination, counsel, and action. Only under such conditions can it fulfil its purpose in providing a channel for active service for Christ in foreign lands and help for this department at home, in the extension of the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Chairman : These two papers almost bristle with suggestions of one kind and another. I trust the twenty minutes that remain to us will be spent to the best advantage in the discussion on " Home Organisation." I am sure a good many of us feel that what we need in the Society of Friends veiy much is a little real Christian statesmanship. C. Ernest F. Munnings : It would be unfair to our Friends across the Channel to make no reference to the special organisation in Dublin to reach men Friends there the Missionary Guild. It arose in the first place from the Home Organisation. 255 concern of a lady Friend who has visited India, who lives near Dublin, and who is present with us this morning and is one of the Secretaries of the Missionaiy Guild. She found the Missionary Helpers' Union did not succeed in reaching the men, and, conversing with others, she wondered if it would be possible in any way to attract our young men to attend the meetings and do something to arouse their interest in Foreign Mission work. A meeting was held, and the Missionary Guild was started. I think at the present moment there are about an equal number of men and women Friends belonging to it. We have held several meetings of a most interesting character, the last on the tenth of this month, when " Armenia " was the subject. The object, in short, is to increase and spread our knowledge and information con cerning the Foreign Mission field, not only with regard to the actual evangelistic work that is going on, but concerning those fields as a whole, the geography of a country, its peoples, language, and everything in connection with the Foreign Mission fields. With one exception, we have been able to hold these meetings monthly, and many Friends have been present and have taken part in the discussions. I trust that the good example of Dublin Friends may be followed in other parts of Ireland and of England also, and that we may have many branches of the guild started. The majority of their members should be men willing to devote a portion of their time to looking up missionary subjects and imparting their knowledge to others. Catharine Wilson : I fear my remarks will need a little apology for digression, as I desire to make a few remarks on the general subject. I have been feeling very much during the last few years, with regard to Foreign Missions, that we hardly face our full responsibility towards them, and I have not noticed the thought expressed in this Conference. We have sat here from day to day with such a feeling of trust and thankfulness, and a sense that we have progressed in our duties with regard to Foreign Missions. We have heard a great deal, and rightly so, about our success, and we have also had the dark side set before us. It is rather with regard to the dark side that my thoughts have 256 Home Organisation. been under pressure, because, in looking back to the time when the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled His promise and bestowed His Holy Spirit on the Church, we find that there was nothing lacking. Had the Church been faithful the members of the Church would have gone forward into all the world and preached the gospel. They had every power at their disposal to fulfil this command of the Saviour ; there was nothing lacking. It is because the Church has not fulfilled its mission, has not used the power then given, that we see all these dark squares and circles and continents around us here to-day. We have to feel that even now, at the close of the nineteenth century, some of this blame is upon us, for, as we have heard it said to-day or yesterday, can one of us say that we have been, since we became the children of our Lord Jesus Christ — as full of this Holy Spirit and power as we ought to have been ? Therefore it has been much pressed on my heart lately that when we seek encourage ment, which we must do in order to keep on with our work, from the spread of missionary enterprise and the results we see in foreign lands, let it be with our faces on the ground, acknowledging in deep humility that it is not the fault of the Lord Jesus Christ and His salvation that these dark places of the earth are existing around us, but because His wonderful power, with which He endowed the infant Church, has not been lived up to. R. Hingston Fox, M.D. : There are two practical sug gestions in Watson Grace's paper that I hope may claim a little attention on the part of this Conference. One is that it would be helpful, and generally strengthen the cause of Friends' Missions, if it were possible for the separate Mis sionary Organisations at present existing in connection with our Society to be more closely united. Interested as I am in the next largest of these organisations to the F.F.M.A., the Friends' Syrian Mission, I should welcome any practical plan that could be devised whereby such union might take effect. I should be glad if this Conference could see its way to express an opinion upon the desirability of such a union of Missionaiy Committees and organisations, if it can be rightly done. The other practical suggestion is that the Mission Home Organisation. 257 work, as carried on by Friends, should be taken more directly into the organisation of our Society. I think most of us must feel that though there have been obstacles in the past, and reasons why it was not desirable at the time the work arose for the Society to take it up in its corporate capacity ; yet those reasons and obstacles have very much disappeared. If this Conference could see its way to make such a suggestion in its report, I should feel thankful. One other practical matter I should like to allude to. Members of Missionary Committees know of what exceeding importance to the right maintenance of Friends' Mission work it is to keep the bond of sympathy and union fresh and strong, between the Mis sionaries abroad and Friends at home. This has to be done to a large extent by correspondence. Those of us who have week by week endeavoured to keep up communication with Friends abroad, in our official positions in connection with the Missionaiy Committees, feel how helpful it has been when other Friends, who have not the official position, have allowed their love and their energy to be drawn out in writing from time to time to our Missionary Friends letters that may convey to them some of the life, the fresh spiritual activity, and the blessings we enjoy in our favoured Church at home, and so keep them in touch with what they have left behind. I would encourage those with a personal acquaint ance with Missionaries, here or there, to write to them from time to time. Frederick Sessions : In the rough draft of the paper I read the other day on the training of missionary volunteers, I put in in parentheses the remark, when speaking of the sug gested governing body for such an enlarged institution, that I could not quite understand the need of two separate organisa tions at the present moment, one for Syria, and one for the other mission fields. I struck it out because I thought that it was not quite suitable for the subject under discussion. I am doubly thankful to hear that any difficulties there may have been in the past have passed away. I don't suppose that the Conference could make any practical suggestion this morning, or that it is within its province to appoint a committee to go into the matter. But I trust that the committees of the 18 258 Home Organisation. two organisations may be able to devise some method by which they may be linked more closely together. This might apply to some other bodies outside the larger ones, which might also be amalgamated. I cannot but think that we have had a very great loss of power in the separation, which at the beginning was perhaps inevitable, but the time for closing it has now come. I believe with Watson Grace that the closer we can draw this work together and to our own organisa tion, the better it will be for the body itself, and for the organi sation we represent this morning. Charles D. Terrell : I am very glad that the question came up yesterday, and is revived to-day, about bringing those of our native Christians in the Foreign Mission field who are members of our native Church more into connection and touch with the Society of Friends at home. There was not time to say anything yesterday, or I should have liked to have spoken about it. Some have asked the question, What do the missionaries from India think about this matter ? At the last Quarterly Meeting in India that I attended, in January, we had our first meeting of elders and overseers, who were then recorded for. the first time. We believed that we were very clearly led by the Lord to take that step. Up till then we had our Preparative and our Quarterly Meetings, and now we shall have our meetings of elders and overseers as well ; and yet, when the members of these different meetings ask us if they are really members of the Society of Friends, we hardly know what to say. There should be a clear under standing on the subject ; the whole question should be referred to the Yearly Meeting. I want also to refer to another matter, to that of the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings sending out their own representatives to the foreign field. This matter has been very much on my heart since I came home, and I have brought it before Friends at Bristol. I think it would be exceedingly helpful if each Monthly Meeting in this country could support, by its money and prayers, its own repre sentative abroad in connection with the F.F.M.A. I believe it would bring the meetings more into sympathy with the work abroad, and it would make the missionaries feel more Home Organisation. 259 in touch with the work at home. It would be a mutual help to us out there and to the Church at home. Some Monthly Meetings would be too small for this, but two or three might combine for the purpose if one could not send out its own representative. I trust that those who are delegates here from different meetings about the country will think over the suggestion. Howard Nicholson : There is one point in connection with home organisation that has not been touched upon, that has been pressing rather heavily on my own heart for some years. That is (if I may so call it without being misunder stood), the spiritual organisation of the Church at home in relation to missionaries on furlough. Probably it is necessary for our missionaries who return home to do a great deal of deputation work. I suppose the primary object of such is to stir us up and induce us to do what we should have done before. But even with that deputation work, I think that what I plead for need not be lost sight of. When our foreign missionaries come amongst us to touch our hearts with pictures of the darkness of heathenism where they live, I want them to find a spiritual atmosphere in our homes and a little of the fellowship that we so much enjoy and perhaps treat so lightly. Let us see that the spiritual atmosphere of our homes and meet ings is doing for them, in the short time they are amongst us, that which they have missed in their years of foreign service. It is said that the waters of spiritual life will not rise above the level of its teachers — or some expression to that effect. We cannot expect the spiritual life of our missionaries abroad, reasonably and rightly, to rise above the spiritual life of the home Church. Don't let us defeat our own object ; don't let us, while putting our hands into our pockets — and they might go a good deal deeper in many cases — and appealing in meetings for candidates for foreign service, don't let us forget that if we do not send them forth clothed with holy spiritual power for their service, they will be of little avail in the foreign field. I believe — I have had no information on the subject, but I believe it by spiritual intuition — that there has been a sense of disappointment in many of our returned foreign missionaries as they have attended meetings for 260 Home Organisation. worship and have seen the aspect of the Society at home. I believe that there has been a wail within their hearts for spiritual life and power — to come into contact with spiritually minded men and women in our- meetings and homes. Let us see to it that the spiritual organisation of our home and Church life is such that when these come amongst us they may, under the warming influence of the Sun of Righteousness, expand, and go back to their work better fitted for it than when they came amongst us. The Clerk read a Minute referring the question of the desirability of the union of Friends' Missionary Organisations to the various Committees. Edward A. Brayshaw : I wish to call attention to the fact that a proposal was made for bringing the Missionary Associations into closer connection with the Yearly Meeting. Thomas P. Newman : I felt that it was a most important proposal. Several Friends briefly expressed a desire that the question might not be overlooked. Thomas Pumphrey : While I have long desired that all our missionary organisations could be more thoroughly united, and also that the missionary work of our Society might be more recognised and brought under the control of the Society itself in its Yearly Meeting capacity, yet I feel veiy great jealousy whether by attempting the latter we should in any way rob the work of the various agencies of their spon taneity and life by any alteration in the form and constitution of the Committees. John Edward Wilson : My own view is, that the course taken at the table is the right one. We decided at the previous sitting to bring before the Yearly Meeting a very important question which bears closely on this subject. I think it would be wise not to complicate the matter with another. If we take the one step it may very likely lead to the further one. Home Organisation. 261 But I do not think the Conference has had time to come to a weighty conclusion on the matter. Frederick Sessions and Joseph Storrs Fry briefly united. The Clerk : I think it manifestly the decision of the Conference that we are not in a position to go forward to-day on this point. Caleb R. Kemp : If I understand the minute aright, it does point to the desirability of the union of the F.F.M.A. and the Syrian Committee. That is a point I have long been desirous should be considered by the Committees, and I am thankful for the minute adopted to-day. The Armenian Committee has already suggested union with the F.F.M.A. The Clerk then read the following Minute : After a solemn time of devotion and prayer, Alice Mary Hodgkin presented to the Conference a Bible-reading upon " The Call to Foreign Missions." In the following session of the Conference, the Chairman spoke of the special qualifications of the Society of Friends, and of the call to them col lectively to foreign missionary service. Papers upon " The Influence of Foreign Missions upon the Home Church," were read by James Henry Barber, and Charles G. Clarke, M.D. The Home Organisation of Friends' Foreign Mission Work has been brought before us by papers written by Ellen Barclay and Watson Grace. The desirability of the union of the different Friends' organisations which have charge of 262 Closing Sitting. Foreign Mission Work having been suggested, the Conference considers that this important matter should receive the careful attention of the Committees of these organisations. A copy of this Minute is to be sent to each Committee. Fifth-day Afternoon, 24th of Ninth Month, 1896. Jonathan -Backhouse Hodgkin in the Chair. The meeting opened with a time of devotion in which vocal prayer was offered. Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. : I have been asked to express very briefly and simply, as becomes the Society of Friends, the feeling which I think all of us will have who have come from a distance to attend these meetings, a feeling of great grati tude to our Friends at Darlington for the pains and care they have taken in preparing for these meetings, and in all the arrangements that have been made. I think it will be the general opinion that the arrangements have been admirably made and carried out. Any one who has had anything to do with the organisation of meetings of this kind knows the almost incalculable amount of unseen work that it involves. The test of success is that it has moved without hitch or friction of any kind, and that none of the arrangements have broken down. If any had done so we should have heard of it soon enough. The fact that the arrangements have worked so smoothly is a sufficient testimony to the care and pains our Darlington Friends have taken. A great many young men have taken part in this work. I might call them the deacons of Darlington meeting, because it is the business of deacons to serve tables, and they have done so effectively. I must also express thanks to Darlington Friends for the thoughtful, hearty, and liberal hospitality they have extended to us. Those who are in the habit of coming here from my own Quarterly Closing Sitting. 263 Meeting know that hospitality already. But I am sure all the Friends from the South will agree that we are greatly indebted to Darlington. Henry Dell : As a London Friend L'wish to thoroughly unite with that expression of thankfulness to our kind Friends in Darlington, who have taken so much trouble for our comfort and convenience. George Grubb : On ibehalf of the Friends who have crossed from Ireland I may express my hearty concurrence with what Dr. Hodgkin has expressed. Thomas Barrow : We are not surprised at, though very much indebted to, the Darlington Friends for their kindness. Frederick Sessions : My wife was anxious that the ladies should not be forgotten, because she knows that a good deal of the helpfulness has come from them as from the men. Joseph Storrs Fry cordially concurred with the above. The Chairman : Until to-day I was very much disap pointed at being prevented from taking any part in the arrangements here. Now I am thankful, because the thanks that have been expressed can pass on through me to those who have done the work without any being intercepted in the channel through which they pass. I should like to remind Friends of the names of those who have been the principal workers — though not by any means to the exclusion of those who have so cordially helped them — Sarah J. Burtt, convener of the Lodging Committee ; Sir Theodore Fry, of the Catering Committee ; Frederick Clark, of the Premises Committee; and William John Cudworth, of the Finance and Printing Committee and General Secretary of the Local Committee. But for those Friends it would have been impossible for the Conference to have been carried out comfortably. I am glad to be the medium of conveying their thankfulness for the thanks that have been expressed, and of expressing to those who have spoken so kindly our 264 Introduction of Missionaries. unfeigned pleasure to have the Conference here, and to see so many Friends who are dear to our hearts amongst us. I hope that without passing a formal vote we shall not forget how much we are indebted for the smooth working of the Conference, and for his services as clerk, to Watson Grace, and as assistant clerk to William Baker, and also to Herbert Catford, who has done so much work beforehand. But for a great deal of that unseen work to which Dr. Hodgkin has referred the work could not have gone on so smoothly. I am quite sure this Conference will warmly endorse all that I say of thanks to them. May I just say one thing? You have spoken kindly of Darlington Friends : there is one way in which you can more than repay any trivial debt you owe to them. We, in Darlington, have for years past had many tokens of our Heavenly Father's favour, and we have much to thank Him for. But we are not satisfied, and we have no desire to be. One reason we welcomed this Con ference was because of the hunger amongst us for a deeper spiritual blessing, not only in Meeting, but in all our life and service individually for Him. Will you who have come amongst us and have prayed for us go on- praying for us that God's work may prosper without let or hindrance amongst us, and make us and the Meeting in Darlington such a power as we never yet have been ? Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. : William Jones reminds me that our thanks should go out especially heartily to those, not members of our Society, in Darlington who have kindly opened their houses for the reception of Friends. The Clerk : There is one other matter that needs to be mentioned. We are indebted to the Committee of the Mechanics' Institute for their kindness in placing their premises at our disposal. The Clerk : Our Friends wish that our' missionaries and all those who are likely to go out shortly should be introduced to us. As their names are announced, will they kindly stand up ? The Clerk then proceeded to call out the names of the various missionaries, each standing up as he did so. Introduction of Missionaries. 265 INDIA. John H. (and Effie) Williams : I have tiie impression that my voice has been pretty often heard, though not so much here as in other -gatherings, but I can say now how thankful I am to be here. I have been praying for this gathering, and praying that our Heavenly Father will send more Friends out to India, and the prayer shall remain with me. Charles D. (and A. Mabel) Terrell : I am veiy thank ful to have been at this Conference, and my wife would say with me that we do thank God with all our hearts for having been privileged to be here. C. Ernest F. Munnings : It has been a privilege to be here, and a greater privilege to be one of God's workers with Him in the foreign field. Fanny O'Brien : I shall obey orders by saying nothing. Albert Pearce Taylor : I desire to testify to the great help I have received at this Conference. Mary Ann Jones : I have nothing to say but that I do want your prayers, that I may be made useful. , J. Douglas Maynard, B.A. : I am heartily glad this Conference has been held before we start for India. I should like to thank all the Friends who have-been so kind to me since I have been in connection with the Society. Joseph (and Frances J.) Malcolmson : I should like to express my thankfulness for being here, and the help that my wife and I have received at this Conference, and to ask Friends to pray for us. Remember that we are going out to a new work in Ceylon, and we especially need your prayers that we may be guided and kept very near our Father in heaven, that He may guide us in everything. George Edward Clark : I am very pleased to have been at this Conference ; I think we could not have had 266 Introduction of Missionaries. anything to stimulate us more in our retrospect than this. It has been a great help to myself, and I am very glad to be here. I do feel, I must say, a little jealous for China, there seem so many of us going out to India. I really grieved last night to see R. J. and M. J. Davidson returning alone to China. I am sure they felt it very much indeed. MADAGASCAR. Henry E. Clark : I think you have heard my voice frequently enough, so I will leave my wife to speak for us. Rachel M. Clark : After a good many years spent in Madagascar, I cannot but say how very thankful I am that I was ever called to go there. I look back on the years spent there, in work amongst the native women, as a time of very great happiness, though mingled with disappointment. John C. Kingzett : I will only say, dear Friends, that I, like the others who have spoken, feel very thankful to have been at this Conference. Henrietta Deane : I am very glad indeed I came to this Conference. I ask you to pray that we may be endued with power as we go back to our fields of labour. Edith M. Clark : I think it is scarcely necessary for me to say, " Pray for Madagascar." The Clerk : We are sorry that the health of Mrs. Fenn prevents Dr. S. Backwell Fenn from returning to Madagascar. Owing to the illness of one of his children, he is prevented from being with us at this Conference, which I am sure is a great grief to him. If Friends feel a little jealous with regard to the number going to India, I ask them to bear very warmly on their hearts the needs of the mission in Madagascar. If the condition of affairs in the island was to improve, the need for more missionaries would be so great that unless we had large reinforcements we should have to be laying clown work instead of taking it up. William Wilson has, in his hospital work alone, sufficient Introduction of Missionaries. 267 for one man, but with John Sims he has charge also of the native Church in the capital, as well as the oversight of two large districts, and just at the present juncture the necessaiy correspondence with the native Churches is a matter of extreme difficulty, and requires most careful thought and earnest deliberation. Not only he, but all his fellow mission aries, are fully engaged in Antananarivo. We have had one country station destroyed, but there are two other stations intact and ready to be occupied as soon as the country be comes settled. With regard to China, our hearts have turned veiy lovingly to Robert J. and Mary J. Davidson. We have here our Friend, Elsie M. Hunt, who is likely to sail at the beginning of Eleventh Month. CHINA. Elsie M. Hunt : I shall always be thankful that I attended this Conference, and I hope it will not be the last. SYRIA. Mary Robinson : I can only say what so many others have said, that I feel it a great privilege to be here. I hope you will pray that the blessing of this Conference may extend to the mission work. Mary Eleanor Stevens : I thank God that I am at home on furlough this year, to be able to attend this Con ference, and I hope to go back with fresh zeal and love to' the work that lies before me. Antonius J. Manasseh : I feel veiy thankful that I have been allowed to attend the Conference. It has been very interesting to me. My prayer rather differs from the prayer that has been offered. My prayer is for the raising up of native workers to lead the missionaries, not the missionaries to lead the natives. I think it takes each missionaiy four or five years to learn the language, but it takes him more than five years to learn the character of the people and how to work among the natives. I hope that our missionaries will tiy to raise up the natives, so as to be able to reach the hearts of the men with whom they intend to work. You 268 A Few Thoughts in Relation to find that natives are very keen observers ; they don't perhaps listen to all your preaching, but they observe your character and the life which you live amongst them. J. Bevan Braithwaite sent the following paper ; no opportunity offered for it to be read at the Conference, but it finds a suitable place in the Report here : — A FEW THOUGHTS IN RELATION TO FOREIGN MISSIONS AND MISSION WORKERS. It is one of the great privileges of a paper by Christian Church to bear an effec- j. bevan braithwaite. five witness to the power and reign of her ever-living Lord. The promise of the Messiah to the patriarchs included within it the promise of blessing through Him to " all the families of the earth." " To Him," said the patriarch Jacob, " shall the gathering of the people be" (Gen. xlix. 10). And how emphatic and significant are the declarations of still later inspired witnesses ! " He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." " Men shall be blessed in Him : all nations shall call Him blessed " (Psa. lxxii.). And " of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end " (Isa. ix. 7). These and the like pre dictions, which might be almost indefinitely multiplied as to the worldwide extent and eternal duration of the Messiah's reign, are no less emphatic and no less necessary to be fulfilled than those relating to His sufferings and death. How impressive is the harmony of these solemn predictions with one of the latest commands of the risen Redeemer immediately before His ascension when He was about to enter upon His glorious reign ! " Go ye info all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark xvi. 15). Such a command from such a King necessarily carries with it the gracious assurance of the supply of all that is needed for its fulfilment. But in order to this, how necessary it is that the Church should continually abide in her ever-living Head, in the reverential attitude of expectant faith and prayer ! May she never presume to put any narrow limita- Foreign Missions and Mission Workers. 269 tions of her own upon her Lord's express declaration, " All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth " (Matt. xxviii. 18). "It hath," indeed, "pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell" (Col. i. 19). He is "the Captain of salvation " (Heb. ii. 10) ; and it is His gracious purpose that the members of His Church should "all," according to the measure of their faith, " receive of His fulness" (John i. 16), as from an inexhaustible fountain of life and power, and thus exhibit in a most blessed experience the reality of that victory of faith which overcometh the world. For, as saith the apostle, " He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet " (1 Cor. xv. 25). Can we enough dwell upon the glorious possibilities which such a victory involves ? Or shall we ever cease fervently to pray that the word of the Lord, in all that He has been pleased to reveal of His righteousness and love for the redemption of the world through the life, the death, the resurrection, the mediation, and the all-availing intercession of His beloved Son, may have free course and be glorified ? In meditating upon this great subject — the vastness of which, embracing the counsel of the infinite God, " foreordained before the foundation of the world" (see1 Acts ii. 23 ; 1 Pet. i. 20), for the redemption of fallen man, far exceeds the limits of such a paper as this — I have been led into a sympathy, not easy to be described, with beloved brethren and sisters who, under the constraining love of Christ, have yielded themselves to the work of the Lord in Madagascar, in India, in China, and in other distant fields of labour. To you, dear brethren and sisters, permit me to address a few words of cheer. Great as are the privileges of such a call, there may be times when you may be brought into deep discouragement under the sense of the greatness of the work, and of your own apprehended weakness and unfitness for it. You may think that you see but little fruit of your labours, after, it may be, many years of weariness and toil in the Master's vineyard. Faint not, beloved brethren, under these discouragements. " Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain " (James v. 7). Consider the patience and longsuffering of your Lord and 270 A Few Thoughts in Relation to Mission Workers. Master. How touching is the language proclaimed by the Spirit through the prophet, in the name of the Messiah, " I have laboured in vain ; I have spent My strength for nought and in vain." Yet, marvellous as it may seem, it was through these deep and mysterious provings that even the Messiah condescended to learn the lesson of His life, set forth in the words, " I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and My God shall be My strength " (see Isa. xlix. 4-6). Even Christ was willing to run " with patience " the race of suffering and of trial that was appointed Him, for the unspeakable joy set before Him of the fulfilling of the Divine purpose, pro claimed by the prophet, " I have set Thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that Thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth " (Isa. xlix. 6 ; see Acts xiii. 47). Beloved brethren and sisters, who have surrendered yourselves to the service of the Captain of salvation, how wondrous is His declaration — "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain " (John xv. 16). Accept your part in these precious words with the same simple and childlike faith with which you have already accepted His gracious invitation, " Come unto Me " (Matt. xi. 28). Follow Him fully. Fear none of those things that He may permit to come upon you. Dwell much upon the joy granted you in His priceless love, of sharing with Him the glorious privilege to which He has called you as " workers together with Him " (2 Cor. vi. 1), in the conversion of the world. Let your eyes be single unto Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself. He is the glorious forerunner in the race marked out and consecrated for them thatlove Him, and has Himself trodden the path in which He calls them to tread. Having such a commission from Him, see to it that you faint not. Lean continually upon His arm and rest in His love. Abide in Him faithful to the end. The prize is before you — a prize not of earth, but of heaven, not a corruptible crown, but an incorruptible. So run that ye may obtain. Thus will He condescend to guide you con tinually, and in His unmerited mercy will make you sharers of His victory and partakers of the exceeding and eternal joy reserved for them who are made even more than conquerors. Some Lessons of the Conference. 271 The Chairman : It will be remembered that a Committee was appointed to prepare a report, to be considered at this meeting and adopted, and then sent forward to the Yearly Meeting. It is obvious that that report may require a sentence or two added after the close of the Conference. I hope it will be understood that the Committee will have power to add that. It is also clear that it would be worse than a waste of time to attempt to criticise the report in detail or to amend its phraseology. I hope, therefore, that the Conference will accept the report, unless there are any points of importance that require speaking to. The Clerk then read the report, which is to be presented to London Yearly Meeting in 1897. John Edward Wilson : I hope we shall accept the report. I am thankful that the Committee has been able to prepare such a valuable one. After some consideration of a proposal to send the Report to Dublin Yearly Meeting, Caleb R. Kemp thought that it would be better to forward it to London Yearly Meeting only in the first place. Several Friends concurring, this was decided upon ; Fielden Thorp and Caleb R. Kemp expressing the hope that Irish Friends would explain that this course was taken from no lack of courtesy to Dublin Yearly Meeting, but that as the report contained a proposal regarding the Discipline of the Society of Friends, it should first be considered by London Yearly Meeting, by whom the Conference was appointed. SOME LESSONS OF THE CONFERENCE. The Chairman : We have been address by favoured with a happy and a Jonathan backhouse hodgkin. helpful time together. We have sat down under our Lord's shadow with great delight, and His fruit has been sweet to our taste. We may say that the prayer has been answered, " God be merciful unto us, and bless us." But surely that is not a safe prayer. It is not right to take any words of scripture, 272 Some Lessons of the Conference. however beautiful, apart from their context : that prayer is only safe when we take it with what follows. The prayer for blessing to our own souls, however deep the longing may be, needs to be prayer uttered in no selfish spirit. We need to make it a whole prayer — that God may cause His face to shine upon us in order that " Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations." On all the days of our Conference, I believe, that prayer in its completeness has been and is being put up, and it will be answered. It would not be wise for me to introduce any new subject now ; we have had enough to fill our thoughts. But it has been helpful to myself, and I thought it might be so to others, to recall some of the many points that have come before us. Again and again throughout the Conference the dangers of wealth have been dwelt upon ; and I cannot doubt that the words uttered on the subject have come home to many of us. I believe there are not a few of us here who can testify that what we have known, whether in a greater or a smaller degree, of the lessening of wealth, has been one of the main instruments of personal blessing to our souls, one of the most direct causes of spiritual growth and nearness to our Lord. And it seems to me that the experience of those who can speak like that is a direct confirmation of the words of warning that have been again and again uttered here. As regards the other side of the matter, the duty and privilege and joy of holding all our possessions as a stewardship and of giving to the Lord what He calls for at our hands, I will not dwell upon that, because it is to form the subject of one of the Bible-readings that will shortly follow. Another subject which came prominently before us was that of the duty and privilege of parents, the joy and privilege of being ambitious that our sons and daughters should be good soldiers of Jesus Christ — yes, even if need be the ambition of giving them early for His service in the courts above — as compared with the lower ambition of seeing them distinguished amongst men. I hope that thought, and the many wise and loving and tender words that were spoken on the subject, will bear rich fruit, and that we who have the honour of being parents may count it all joy to give our children to the Lord and to train them for Some Lessons of the Conference. 273 His service, leaving it to Him to choose exactly where, and how, and what, that service shall be. In the last Yearly Meet ing, my dear friend, J. Fyfe Stewart, whose absence from this Conference is a great sorrow to me, told us that our meetings for worship were very much what we made them. Is not the same true of our children ? It is because we don't sufficiently make our children the first business of our lives, throw our selves alongside them, make them our companions and keep them companions to us, enabling them to share our thoughts and interests so that they will be glad to make us share their thoughts and their interests ; it is because we don't definitely train them for God's service and expect them to be faithful servants, that so many of them have grown up very different from what their parents wanted them to be. Let us remember that by God's grace, under His Spirit guiding and directing us and them, our children are very much what we make them. Another thought that has been prominently before the Conference is the variety of service — I was going to say the infinite variety of service, but I never like to use that word, for it is incorrect — the incalculable variety of service, whether amongst the workers abroad or at home, or on the committees of the various organisations, which direct the service of others. It is such a joy to feel that there is this variety of service ; and instead of grumbling at those who are called in an utterly different way from ourselves, we may this afternoon wish all God-speed, heartily and without reserve. I remember the words, " Be of good courage. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil." Whatever our service for Christ may be, and wherever it is, we wish each other God-speed in that service. There is another thought in connection with that. There are those whose active service is of the most limited description, not from their wish but from their want of power. And I have remembered the words of our Lord, how He spake of the man who left his house and gave authority to his servants and to each one his work, and he " commanded also the porter to watch." There is the watching and the praying for those who are laid aside from active work, but who can assist the active workers wherever they are. 19 274 Some Lessons of the Conference. I have a word also to say about the work of God's Holy Spirit, that Spirit whose guidance and government our forefathers so emphatically realised as the main reason why they came out from the other Churches. We have heard of His work in bringing men to see their need, and in bringing men to repentance and to Christ, so that they might indeed be born of the Spirit. We have heard of the need of His work for ourselves. I won't repeat agaiii the opening verses of the Sixty-seventh Psalm, but I would say that we seek in all reverence for the Holy Spirit to possess us, not in any selfish spirit, but just that we may be made better instru ments in the Lord's hands for doing each man his own work. During the last year or two I have sometimes been pained to hear even amongst Friends the work of God's Holy Spirit spoken of somewhat lightly, as if it were a matter of course that every one was filled with the Spirit, forgetting what our own Society so emphatically testifies, that while God's Spirit does indeed plead with eveiy human heart, so that He has made the converts, and not the missionaiy, yet still, as our own Yearly Meeting epistle said, the Holy Spirit dwells not in the unrenewed heart. I want, when we speak of the work of the Holy Spirit, inviting one another to yield ourselves up that He may possess us, to remember that it is a solemn thing and not to be lightly spoken of. It means turning out of the heart and life much that we have clung to and worshipped with a tenacity we perhaps were hardly conscious of. And all through this Conference, not perhaps in just these words, but right along nevertheless, there has been the testimony that only as the servants of the Lord Jesus set forth Him as the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord, in all the simplicity and power of His work for man, can their work be truly blessed. And this is the one thing that I long more than anything else we may take away with us. It is to Christ we look ; He is our Master, and it is His saving power that is to do the work that needs to be done in the world. In this meeting-house last Sunday there was much prayer that we might see Jesus. Have not our eyes been opened to see Him afresh, and our hearts gladdened at the sight? Then, as we have been won by His love, as our blessed Lord has become more to us than ever we The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. 275 ventured to think possible before, let us remember the words that came to His disciples, "This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner." Without indulging in vain and profitless speculations upon unfulfilled prophecy, surely that glad hope of the Church is our hope to-day, and the missionaries abroad and those at home who back them up and sympathise with them can surely unite in the longing that He who is so dear to our souls may be seen not only with the eye of faith, but that we may see Him as He comes to claim His own. He who testifies these things says, " Surely I come quickly." May our united answer to-day be, " Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." Caroline W. Pumphrey gave the following Bible-read ing on THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PROPERTY FROM THE BIBLE STANDPOINT. " Honour the Lord with thy substance " bible-reading by (Prov. iii. 9). " The conversion of the Caroline w. pumphrey. world waits on the honesty of God's people." " The use of property is the surest test of a man's character." These three sentences from three great thinkers of East and West and our own land, set the responsibility' of property clearly before us, from the standpoint of our own character, from the larger outlook of duty to others, and from the highest point of view in relation to God Himself. Yet so intimate is the connection between these different factors of the subject that we cannot touch one without the others, and with each, personal responsibility with regard to possessions is a subject of hourly application, widespreading issues, and eternal importance. As such we find it continually dealt with by other great religions. " He only does not live in vain Who makes all means within his reach, His wealth, work, time, prayer, thought, and speech, Advance the. good of other men," is one of the grand redeeming statements of the Vedas. " Thou shalt be benevolent," is one of the eleven commands 276 The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. of Buddhism. " The sign of unreality in religion is shutting the hands from the giving of alms," is truly said in the Koran among much else on the same subject. Hence we find a Moslem, after buying some article of luxury, will say, " I gave one hundred liras for that, and therefore I gave ten liras to the poor." It is impossible for the table of Britain's expenditure to be complete, but statistics scarcely indicate a like habit here. On the contrary, three farthings a month from each professedly Christian Briton is very little for spreading in other lands that gospel to which he owes so much.* Yet the Bible we profess to follow deals far more thoroughly with the subject of property than does any other sacred writing. In its earliest book we find men careful of the property of others, because the Lord was with them and they remembered it, and therefore (Gen. xxx. 27 ; xxxix. 3, 23) He made them prosper. We behold those regardless of the rights of others coming to trouble (Gen. xiv. 1-16 ; xiii. 21). But as we watch the evolution of the law of God as men are able to bear it (John xvi. 12 ; Mark iv. 33) we see ever more and more clearly how the highest blessing comes through present personal loss (Mark x. 29, 30 ; Luke xiv. 33 ; John xii. 25, &c). Self-sacrifice is the law of the gospel. Bishop Westcott says : " He who resolves to keep for himself all he has now, * Britain's Income £1,350,000,000. Britain's Expenditure. Savings £240,000,000 Foreign Missions . . . . 1,300,000 Church Work at Home . . . . . . . . 30,000,000 Military Expenditure in time of peace, including Interest on National Debt . . . . . . 80,000,000 Amusements 37,000,000 Education 11,000,000 Tobacco . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,000,000 Household Coal 15,000,000 House Rent 70,000,000 Woollen Goods 46,000,000 Tea and Coffee . . . . 20,000,000 Strong Drink 141,000,000 Bread . . 70,000,000 Pauperism, Lunacy, and Crime, indirect cost of Drinking Customs 180,000,000 The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. 277 pleasures, privileges, possessions, has lost the power of entering on a higher life. . . . There is a devotion to earth, a willing absorption into its interests and pleasures, which from moment to moment deadens every higher faculty. . . . We are not afterwards what we were before we either welcomed or refused the opportunity for self-denial. We are stronger or weaker. Our sympathies are broader or narrower. Our spiritual vision is keener or duller. Life is for us larger in meaning and promise, or brought more near to the standard of our self-chosen littleness." " May the Lord make us more loyal to the law of sacrifice" (J. Rendel Harris, M.A.). We listen to the Mosaic law, and hear three out of the Ten Commandments dealing directly with property (Exod. xx. 9, 10, 15, 17), and the last so deeply that it pierces the very intents of the heart (Heb. iv. 12). We study the fuller enunciation of that law through the remaining books of the Pentateuch, and find insistence on honesty (Exod. xxii. 1-5 ; Lev. xix. 11, 35 ; Deut. v. 19) and industry (Exod. xxiii. 12 ; Deut. v. 13) ; obligation of the rights of labour with fairness to the employer (Lev. 25 ; Deut. xv. 12-18) and generosity to the employed (Lev. xix. 13) ; enforcement of alert care for the property of others (Exod. xxi. 29-36 ; xxii. 6-15), even of an enemy's (Exod. xxiii. 4, 5) ; and sympathetic consideration with wise relief for the stranger, the foreigner (Exod. xxiii. 9 ; Lev. xix. 34), the bereaved (Exod. xxii. 22 ; Deut. xxiv. 19- 22), and the afflicted (Exod. xxii. 25, 26 ; Lev. xix. 9, 10 ; Deut. xv. 7-1 1 ; xxiv. 14, 15) ; while, if we will give unto the Lord, it must be with a joyful freewill offering (Exod. xxxv. 29 ; xxxvi. 3 ; xxiii. 15 ; Lev. i. 3 ; vii. 12 ; xxii. 18) over and above His rightful firstfruits (Deut. xxvi. 2) and tithes (Lev. xxvii. 30 ; Numb, xviii. 28 ; Deut. xiv. 22). We mistake, too, if we look upon the tithe for God as a simply Levitical ordi nance. It was of much earlier origin (Gen. xiv. 20), and received Christ's enforcement even to minute details in " These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone" (Matt, xxiii. 23). We trace the histoiy of the Jews, and see that whenever there is decline in their spirituality and obedience, there is neglect of the Lord's dues and other men's rights (Judg. xvii. ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21 ; Isa. i. 17 ; Jer. vii. 6 ; xxii. 3 ; Ezek, xxii. 278 The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. 7, 12 ; Zech. vii. 8-12 ; Amos vi. 1-6 ; Mal. iii. 5, 8), but with revival comes joyful and ample recognition of both (1 Chron. xxix. ; 2 Chron. xxiv. 2-14 ; xxix. 31 ; xxxv. 8 ; Neh. viii. 12). Nehemiah says what others imply, that the people gave " because they understood the words (of God's law) that were declared unto them." In Ezra's days silver and gold and goods and beasts were ordered to be given besides the free will offerings (i. 4). Were there time it would be interesting to trace our subject through the historical, prophetical, and poetical books of the Old Testament, and see how often it bursts upon us where we little expect it. In Barzillai, for instance (2 Sam. xvii. 27-29), we see the liberality of the loyal ; in Naaman (2 Kings v. 23) the generosity of the grateful ; in the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings xvii. 13) the foreigner's need put first ; in the Shunammite (2 Kings iv.) God served in His servant ; in David (1 Chron. xxix.) and Nehemiah (chap, viii.) the winning strength and joy of giving with true heart to the Lord. In the Psalms the responsibility of our daily mercies (xl. 2, 3, lxvii., lxxi. 15, lxxii., xc. 14, 16, cvii., cviii. 3, 4, cxvi. 12-14, cxlv., &c), and the connection between praise and sacrifice, evangelisation and giving (lxviii., lxxii., xcvi., cvii. 21, 22, ex., &c.) are constantly manifest. As is natural in a book devoted to details of daily life, there is not a chapter in Proverbs that does not touch on duties with regard to property. We are incited to diligence (vi. 6 ; xxiv. 33, &c), warned against greed (i. 19 ; xv. 27, &c), blessed for our bounty (xxii. 9), urged to consideration of others (xxix. 7), and reproved for our ignorance and indifference. " If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain ; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not ; doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it ? and He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it ? and shall not He render to every one according to his works ? " (xxiv. 11, 12). One strong purpose of Ecclesiastes is to declare the unsatisfying character of property when applied to selfish ends. Isaiah (v. 8 ; iii. 16-24 > xxxii. 9-14), Ezekiel (xxiii. 42), Amos (vi. 1-6), and others of the prophets (Jer. ix. 23 ; xvii. 11; Dan. iv. 30; Micah vi. 10-12, &c), are strong in their denunciations of pride of wealth, careless indulgence, enervating luxury, and grasping greed. The burden of the ' The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. 279 prophecies both of Haggai and Malachi is to show that God's claim on us and ours stands first, that we dishonour Him if we give Him less than our best (Mal. i. 13) or exclaim at His frequent calls, " What a weariness it is ! "—that all the blessing of property when it is selfishly used is lost (Hag. i. 6), and whether we recognise it or not we are " cursed with a curse " when we " rob God " (Mal. iii. 8, 9). It would simplify many of our problems with regard to property to grasp the full force of Haggai's message—" The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord " (ii. 8) whether we have inherited or earned it, whether it barely suffices for food and clothing, or is enough and to spare. Dr. Livingstone's words might well be written on the title-page of every one's cash-book : " I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything I have will advance the interests of that kingdom, it shall be given or kept, as by giving or keeping it I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all. May grace be given me to adhere to this ! " The evangelisation of the world is the first duty of the Church, and to learn what are the true relations of property to spiritual health and missionary enterprise we must come to the teaching and example of Christ Himself. As the essence of evil is selfishness, and the essence of Christianity is self-sacrifice, and as selfishness is most easily fostered by our possessions, material, mental, or spiritual, we find Christ directly applying the principles of the new life to the duties involved in the ownership of property. His teachings abound in comments and commands relating to it, and to the connec tion which our ways of regarding and gaining it, of holding and using it, bear to our moral character and spiritual life. Among all the forms of evil spoken of in the Sermon on the Mount the inordinate love of possession is the one which Christ selects as God's great antagonist (Matt. vi. 24). He knew well that the devil's most powerful agent in the conquest of man is that which most often makes him think of self and choose his own way. It was so he tempted Eve. It was so he tempted Christ (Matt. iv. 1-10). In that same Sermon on the Mount Christ bids us—" Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth" (Matt. vi. 19). 280 The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. " Give to every one that asketh thee. Do good, and lend, despairing of no man " (Luke vi. 30, 35). " Give, and it shall be given unto you" (Luke vi. 38). "Give, and all things are clean unto you" (Luke xi. 41). On other occasions he teaches : " How hardly "—with what difficulties all the way — "shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God?" (Luke xviii. 24). "Take heed and keep your selves from all covetousness, for not in a man's abundance consisteth his life" (Luke xii. 15, R.V.). "Whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath; he cannot be My disciple '' (Luke xiv. 33). " If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me " (Matt. xvi. 24 ; Luke ix. 23). " Though He was rich yet for our sakes He became poor" (2 Cor. 8, 9). " He gave heaven itself the lost to save," and we — what is our giving compared with that ? In the parable of the sower (Luke viii. 5-15), while the first danger to the growth of the seed is the indifference which does not receive the gospel, and the second the instability that does not hold on, the third is that which comes through the cares, riches, pleasures, and desires of this life. And does not the fact that for every penny our nation gives to spread the gospel in foreign lands she spends nine hundred in " other things " (Mark iv. 19) show that we must be in the very midst of this danger, and need to watch always lest some fruit that might be perfect should be dwarfed and blighted, and perhaps ruined, through Mammon's all- pervading and insidious influence ? The young man who had kept all the commandments from his youth (Matt. xix. 16-22) failed when put under the property test. Dr. Emerson gives a striking series of lessons on other parables from the property standpoint, though admitting that in some cases they are not the primary teaching they were intended to convey. The parable of the tares (Matt. xiii. 25) portrays the sin of injuring another man's property, the hid treasure' (Matt. xiii. 44) of acquiring it for less than its value. The unmerciful servant (Matt, xviii. 28) turns on the hard- heartedness of a creditor, the labourers in the vineyard (Matt. xx. 1-16) on want of discrimination in the payment of wages. The parable of the two sons teaches the duty of labour (Matt. The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. 281 xxi. 28), the wicked husbandmen (Matt. xxi. 33-41), the un just steward (Luke xvi. 1-8), the talents (Matt. xxv. 14-30), and the pounds (Luke xix. 12-26) the accountability of all who hold property in trust. The ten virgins inculcates a wise foresight (Matt. xxv. 1-13). The friend at midnight (Luke xi. 5-8) and the good Samaritan (Luke x. 25-37) show our dependence on each other for help and kindness and the obligation to give and lend. The rich fool (Luke xii. 15-21) exhibits the folly of supposing life to consist mainly in an abundance of material wealth. Again and again we see the abuse of wealth through selfish acquisition, expenditure, or hoarding, described as foolish — a word which Ruskin says means both wrong and stupid. While this parable teaches how we may sin in hoarding our possessions, the prodigal son shows how we may sin in squandering them (Luke xv. 11-32). In Dives and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 19-31) the warning is given of the end of one who simply enjoyed his wealth too regardless of waste or of others' needs. The incidents of the alabaster box (Mark xiv. 3-9 ; Luke vii. 37) show that there are times when true love must lavish its costliest ; that of the two mites (Mark xii. 41-44) that no poverty need prevent the joy of giving. He is rich who has aught that he can impart to his fellow-men. It is required of a man according to what he hath, and not according to what he hath not (Luke xii. 48). " Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of the little ones a cup of cold water only . . . shall not lose his reward " (Matt. x. 42). Peter had learned his Master's lesson when he said " Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I " (Acts iii. 4-7), and through like eye to see, heart to care, word to cheer, hand to help, and knowledge of Christ to save, we may any of us be used to work His miracles if we will. The only words of Christ recorded elsewhere than in the Gospels are, " It is more blessed to give than to receive " (Acts xx. 35). In the awful picture of the last judgment (Matt. xxv. 31-46) unselfishness is pre-eminently the test. It is not professed belief in God, though elsewhere He lays strong emphasis on that ; it is not Church connections, though they are important ; nor acceptance of a sound creed, though that is helpful ; but it is whether in everyday life we have, or have not, fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty 282 The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. clothed the naked, cared for the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned. If any stronger lesson can be given it is in the hateful greed that betrays and crucifies our Lord (Matt. xxvi. 15). The same teaching with regard to property is reiterated in the Acts and the Epistles. In the early chapters of the Acts we see how soon the perfect picture of " great grace " and no lack, of united hearts and multitudes converted (iv. 32-34) is marred, at first through but one man's and one woman's love of possession (v. 1-10). There is not an Epistle that does not treat on the unselfish use, or rather the faithful stewardship, of our possessions (Rom. i. 14 ; xii. 8, 13 ; xv. 16, 26 ; 1 Cor. iv. 2 ; vi. 10 ; x. 24, 33 ; xiii. 3 ; xvi. I, 2 ; 2 Cor. viii. ; ix. ; xii. 14 ; Gal. vi. 10 ; Eph. iv. 28 ; v. 3 ; Phil. ii. 5, 8 ; iv. 8, 15 ; Col. i. 10 ; iii. 5, 12, 22 ; iv. 1 ; 1 Thess. i. 3 ; 2 Thess. iii. 8-13 ; 1 Tim. ii. 2 ; iii. 3, 8 ; v. 8, 10 ; vi. 8-10, 17, 18 ; 2. Tim. iii. 2 ; Titus i. 7, 8 ; iii. 14 ; Philem. 14, 18, 19 ; Heb. x. 34 ; xiii. 3, 5, 16 ; James i. 27 ; ii. 15, 16 ; v. 4 ; 1 Pet. iv. 10 ; 2 Pet. i. 7 ; 1 John iii. 17 ; 2 John 5 ; 3 John 5 ; Jude 16 ; &c). In Rom. i. 14 Paul reminds us we are debtors alike to Greek and barbarian, wise and unwise, and speaks of the joy of ministering in sacrifice the gospel of Christ (xv. 16). In 1 Cor. xv. 58 the command to be always abounding in the work of the Lord is followed at once (xvi. 1) by a practical application " concerning the collection." From this and other passages we may infer giving to be an essential part of true worship (Exod. xxiii. 15 ; xxxiv. 20 ; Deut. xvi. 16 ; Psa. xcvi. 8, &c). Two chapters of 2 Cor. (viii. and ix.) are devoted to an exhortation to those who already abound in many graces not to come behind in that of giving. For giving should not only arouse the conscience to immediate and continuous action through the importance of the duty, but it should win our enthusiastic love through the beauty of the grace, and our real devotion through its relation to our God. We are to give lovingly (1 Cor. xiii.), cheerfully (2 Cor. ix. 7), liberally (Rom. xii. 8 ; 2 Cor. viii. 2), unostentatiously (Matt. vi. 1-4), obser vantly (1 Cor. xvi. 17), not grudging trouble (Job xxix. 16), systematically (1 Cor. xvi. 2 ; 2 Cor. ix. 2, 3), constantly (2 Cor. ix. 8-11), faithfully (1 Tim. iii. 11). We are to work to give (Eph. iv. 28), and sell (Mark x. 21) and sacrifice (Rom. xv. 16) The Responsibility of Property from the Bible Standpoint. 283 to give, to remember to give (Heb. xiii. 16), and rejoice abun dantly to give (2 Cor. viii. 2). The difference between those who love the Lord and trust in Him and those who do not often hinges on the grace of giving (James ii. 14-17 ; 1 John 111. 17). For " whoso hath this world's goods and seeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ? " What we should give through men to Christ is often put in close connection with what He has given to us (2 Cor. viii. 9 ; ix. 8 ; 1 Tim. vi. 17, 18 ; 1 John iii. 16, &c). " I gave My life for thee, What hast thou given for Me ? " Is it not coldness to His gifts that makes us so cold in ours ? A South African missionaiy, Dudley Kidd, prays : " From all the selfishness of my self-centred soul ; from all its love of ease, comfort, luxury, and sloth ; from all my love of money ; from all my false professions of love to the heathen so clearly belied by my actions and lack of thought ; from all my miserable and contemptible small-heartedness, good Lord, deliver me." What do we know and show of the constraining love of Christ in our use of what we have ? (2 Cor. v. 14, 15). " God so loved the world that He gave " (John iii. 16). "Who loved me and gave Himself for me " (Gal. ii. 20). " Bearing witness still by the gifts of the Holy Ghost " (Heb. ii. 4). We cannot judge one another, for we never know all the circum stances ; but, as we look at ourselves, do not we long to be uplifted by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John iii. 17 ; James iv. 5, R.V.) out of our self-deception, self-centredness, little ness, and worldliness into the truth and love of God ? May we not heartily unite in the Moravian prayer : " From cold ness to Thy merits and death ; from the influence of the spirit of this world ; from self-complacency, selfishness, and indiffe rence, preserve us ever, gracious Lord and God." Anna F. Fox : It would be a matter of regret by any spasmodic effort to take away from the weight of the paper which we have listened to. But I have thought whether we might not follow the example of some of the American Meetings, and hand up to the desk what any of us might 284 The Heart's Service. be able to give, little or more, to complete what is now needed for the school in China, which I think is about ^200. The Chairman : The plan our Friend suggests has already been met by papers distributed throughout the meeting house. I hope, however, that any action that may be taken to-day will not, as Anna Fox has said, take away from the permanent impression made by the paper we have just listened to. We know so often how those who have been touched in this way have given something there and then, and have then dismissed the subject from their thoughts altogether. It is far better that we should think over the paper, read it when it is printed, and ask God to keep on teaching us our own personal duty. William Henry Wilson then gave the following Bible- reading on THE HEART'S SERVICE. In the opening of my subject I shall bible-reading by want to go over a little ground that has william henry wilson. been traversed already. The subject of my address will be found in Mark xii- 38-44. " And He said unto them in His doctrine, Beware of the Scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the market places, And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts : Which devour widows', houses, and for a pretence make long prayers : These shall receive greater damnation. And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury : and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And He called unto Him His disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury': For all they did cast in of their abundance ; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living." Here the Lord is pictured sitting over against the treasury and watching those who give. I want that we should bring The Heart's Service. 285 the picture to ourselves, and remember the Lord Jesus Christ to-day, how His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth. He sits beside God's treasury as when on earth He sat beside the temple treasury ; and the Lord Jesus watches eveiy gift that is put in. When He sat there in person He saw the rich casting in much. And I doubt not there was some rich man, perhaps a publican, who had made his riches by ex tortion in his business, whose conscience smote him for the way he had robbed the widow and the orphans, and so to stop the fretting of his conscience as he passes by he casts in much into the treasury. The Lord saw what He gave, and the Lord counted it as nothing, although it seemed a great sum. And there came by perhaps a Pharisee, swelling him self in pride, with his enlarged phylacteries and the borders of his garments, making himself very conspicuous ; one of those who loved the chief seats in the synagogues, that he might be seen and taken notice of by men ; and as he passes by, opening his money bag, he pours into the treasury, with a great clang as it goes in, a lot of money, that the people may see what a splendid gift has been given. It has been given in accordance with most of his actions in life, that his name might be admired and talked of as that of a most liberal giver, but the Lord Jesus, though he saw that it was a lot, counted it as nothing. Perhaps there comes by a man who shows from his very appearance that he is wealthy, and in a shame-faced way he puts a little into the treasmy. It was his superfluity of a truth, the same as the gifts of the others ; all he had to spare. But why was it so little ? He had not more because he was spending far too much on himself. Where he might have been living on £400 a year, he was spending £1,000 ; where he might have been living on £700 a year he was spending £3,000. The Lord saw the little gift as it went in, and the Lord counted it as nothing, because he was a man who was wasting upon himself the money that ought to have gone into the treasury of the Lord. You notice that all these people whom the Lord saw casting into the treasury were casting in of their superfluity ; it was something that cost them nothing ; and because it cost them nothing the Lord reckoned it as nothing. Do we bring 286 The Heart's Service. the question of our giving to a standard such as this ? It is surely the correct one. The One who sits in unerring judg ment over the treasury of God to-day sees exactly what we are giving to God. If He sees we are giving of our super fluity, and are practically not a farthing the worse for it, but just give because we find we are expected to, the Lord reckons it as no gift. There came by as he sat there, over against the treasury, a poor widow, and she cast in, in a modest and simple way, fearing to be seen, two mites, which make a farthing — or, according to our money, half a farthing between them. We say, that is nothing, not worth giving ; she might as well have kept it. But the Lord called to His disciples and He said, " This poor widow hath cast more in than they all." Much as all the rich men had given, she had given more than all the rest. Why ? Because it was heart's service that she had given. She had given what cost her a very great deal, because the Lord said it was all that she had, even all her living. I wonder if we have thought that what we have given to the Lord, He judges according to what it has cost us. If we will only bring the question of our worldly possessions to this standard, we shall see that often when we have almost congratulated ourselves upon giving, or have given with grudging hands, taking care to say that it was only a donation and not a subscription, because we did not want to repeat it another time, the Lord did not reckon it as a gift ; or when we only gave because somebody wrote us a letter and asked for help, and we did not know how to get off without giving something. The Lord wants our hearts to-day. He is Lord of the cattle upon a thousand hills, and if He were hungry he would not tell us. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. Does He need our paltry gifts ? No, but He needs the heart's service, and that is what He calls for to-day. It is not just a question of what money we have to give to the Lord's service that I wish to speak about only. I want you to remember that the Lord's treasury is in need of other things besides money. The Lord needs to-day our talents, our time, and our efforts ; and the Lord needs our children, and the gift of our position. There are a great many things that the Lord's treasury is in need of besides money, and what are we The Heart's Service. 287 doing ? To-day the Lord is calling to us, as He has been speaking during the sessions of this Conference, and our hearts have been touched by the spirit of God. What have we been answering back ? Perhaps He has called some one for foreign service — I trust He has. Have we been holding back, thinking what a great deal it would mean, or that surely the call must be for somebody else and not for us ? If the Lord calls for the whole heart's service, surely that ought to go into His treasury, and He will take it as a great gift. Perhaps there is some father or mother here who knows that the Lord's call is in the heart of their child, and they have discouraged it because it was going to cost them so much. The Lord values the gift by the cost of it to us, and if He calls for your child and wants your child's life to be given to His service, dear father or mother, don't keep back that gift from Jesus : it will be a far greater gift than all the wealth that you might bestow upon Him giving out of your superfluity. Some have great opportunities ; the Lord has given them position. Do you give it to the Lord, or only as much as would be fashionable and proper, but no more, because it would cost you too much ? The Lord wants your position as a Friend, or your position in the home circle, to be so put into His hands that if His service brings you into discredit amongst your friends you will not shrink back. Are you willing to give your position to the Lord, to be used for His glory either at home or in the foreign field ? That poor woman when she cast in the two mites, cast them in because they were all she had, even all her living. I want you just now to submit to the Lord's claim upon you. Nothing short of all the heart will satisfy the need of the Lord Jesus. He claims from you and from me all that we have, even all our living. He does not claim a part of our time, talents, and money, but all. Those of us who have wealth and position in this world, if we think of our right position as stewards, and remember that everything we have belongs to Him and not to ourselves, will see that the Lord's claim to all is only a right and a just one. " Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own ? For ye are bought with a price : therefore glorify God in your 288 The Heart's Service. body, and in your spirit, which are God's " (i Cor. vi. 19, 20). Know ye not ? How we need to think of the words to-day. People don't seem to know, don't seem to remember, that He bought us with His own precious blood, and that we are not our own, but His. The Apostle Paul counted all things, every talent, and the position that God had given him, as only given that he might use it for God ; and, dear friends, I would plead that we may to-day give all to the Lord Jesus, our heart's service, our whole affection and being, all that we possess. We have been reminded that unless we are prepared to renounce all that we have we cannot be His disciples. It may be said by God's children, What hard terms these are ! They are not hard, they are the very best terms. If you notice, in reading Luke xiv. 33, our Lord says, "So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple," and you look on to Luke xv. 31, we have the beautiful counterpart of that, in the story of the prodigal son, where the father turns to the elder son who had been in the field, saying, " Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." Which is the best, to keep the little that we think we possess, and refuse to give to the Lord what He asks for, or to give all that He claims, and then to receive all that He has in return. Do you suppose that our brothers and sisters who have gone out re nouncing all they have, to serve the Lord Jesus at His call, would take back the gift ? No. And we at home, who have known the joys of a consecrated life, would we take back the gift ? No, our prayer is rather, " If there is anything that is still in my hands, take it, Lord, for I want to have more of Thyself." There are some hungering hearts here, I know, hearts that have been longing for years for life and peace and joy and blessing. Are you willing to give to the Lord all you have, all your life ? If you are, He will give you back all He has, and you will know that you are possessors of riches untold, because you have the Lord Himself, and all He is ready to give to you. Our hearts went out in unity with the Bible- reading this morning speaking of the enduement of power and of the Holy Ghost. Did not the cry arise up from many hearts, this is just what we want to know, just what for years we have been longing after ? the Heart's Service. 289 Dear friends, the Lord comes to you again in the closing moments of this meeting, and says, " If you want me, all that I have, the arisen power of My life indwelling by the Holy Ghost, the condition is that you give all of your own, all that is yours, even all your living." And when you give your whole life, and talents, and powers, and love, and money, and every thing for Him to control, then the Lord Himself will fill your heart with His love and power, and you will know what it is to have the very joy and blessing that you have been longing for, and the Lord will give you His Holy Spirit in fulness, that you may go out and serve Him and speak of Him as you have never done before — serving Him with a heart filled and overflowing with the love of Jesus. At such a moment as this when God speaks to us, shall we pass away with the thought, "It is very interesting and important — but not just now?" At this moment we may settle the matter. We have thought about it, looked at it from all sides long enough, let us give Him our heart's service to-day, that He may give us back His heart's love and His presence continually in the person of the Holy Ghost. Edward Pearson : I feel that I cannot be clear if I let this Conference close without naming the word " Arabia." For nearly a quarter of a century Arabia has rested on my heart. I hoped at the beginning of that time that I might be per mitted to carry the Word there. I can hardly expect it now. The slave-raiding Arabs have been our terror in Africa, and the missionaries they have met with there have met them with wal-_War in defence of the poor negroes. We have found it difficult not to hate these Arabs for their cruelty. Let us hate them not, but seek to be permitted to go in the simplicity of the gospel of peace— as only Friends can go— and carry the truth to them in the land whence they issue forth. I dare not any longer bear this burden alone, and I share it to-day with Friends. The Conference closed with a solemn pause for devotional exercise, during which vocal prayer was offered. The Clerk read the following Minute : 20 290 Meeting for Worship. At this closing sitting of the Conference, the teaching of Holy Scripture regarding " The Responsibility of Property," and " The Heart's Service," has been introduced by Caroline W. Pumphrey and William Henry Wilson. A report of the proceedings of the Conference prepared by the Committee of Arrangements has been approved, and is to be presented to London Yearly Meeting in 1897. The Conference has been enabled to transact its business in a spirit of harmony and brotherly love. Much prayer has attended its sittings, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, has been exalted amongst us. We trust that the result of the Conference may be to deepen the interest felt by the Society of Friends in the great cause of proclaiming the Gospel to the heathen, and to bring home to the hearts of our members the call to take a part in the furtherance of this service. And in a thankful sense of the Lord's blessing and help we render to Him all praise. Fifth-day Evening, 24th of Ninth Month, 1896. MEETING FOR WORSHIP. A Meeting for Worship was held in the Meeting House and was largely attended by Friends and others. The service in this meeting was shared by many of our members. It was a solemn and impressive occasion when the presence and power of the Holy Spirit was manifested. APPENDIX. LONDON YEARLY MEETING AND FOREIGN MISSIONS : A CHAPTER OF HISTORY, 1830-35. In this chapter we record one of the many links in the chain which led up to the Society of Friends taking definite steps to send out missionaries to reside amongst non-Christian populations. In his paper on "The Work of the Society of Friends in Foreign Missions," * John Stephenson Rowntree ref ers to the subject being brought before London Yearly Meeting in 1830. The proposal originated in West Somerset Monthly Meeting, held at Wellington on the 13th of Fourth Month, 1830, and Sylvanus Fox, of Wellington, the only Friend living who recollects the meeting, considers that the subject was probably introduced by the late Richard Young of Mil- verton. The Minute states that — " The subject of our Society's taking a more active part in communicating Christian knowledge to the heathen having been laid before this meeting, and having claimed its consideration, it suggests to the Quarterly Meeting the propriety of proposing to the ensuing Yearly Meeting to give the matter its weighty deliberation on the simple ground of inquiry whether the time may not be come when our Society is called on to take a more decided part as a body than it has hitherto done in communicating to the heathen the glad tidings of the gospel." * See p. 25. 291 292 Appendix. The Minute came before the Quarterly Meeting of Bristol and Somerset eight days later, and was referred to the Yearly Meeting, which recorded its "solid considera tion " of the subject as under : — Minute of London Yearly Meeting, Fifth Month 2$th, 1830. " The following Proposition has been brought in and read : — "'Quarterly Meeting of Bristol and Somerset held at Bristol, 21st Fourth Month, 1830. The subject of our Society's taking a more active part in communicating Christian knowledge to the heathen having been laid before this meeting, and having obtained its solid consideration, it suggests to the Yearly Meeting to give the matter its weighty deliberation, whether the time may not be come when our Society is called on to take a more decided part as a body than it has hitherto done in communicating to the heathen the glad tidings of the gospel.' "The foregoing proposition has obtained the solid consideration of this Meeting under a feeling of much solemnity, and whilst it believes it right to record its judgment that the subject is deserving of further and close attention on its part, it does not see its way to take any other step therein at the present time, but refers the matter to the consideration of the next Yearly Meeting." A year later (Fifth Month 24th, 1831), the Yearly Meeting, " under a renewed feeling of the importance of the subject," again referred it "to the attention of the next Yearly Meeting." A large Committee, consisting of fifty-six Friends, was then appointed to give further con sideration to the matter. This Committee reported to the Yearly Meeting in 1833, as the following Minutes record : Minute of Loudon Yearly Meeting, Fifth Month 31s/, 1832. "This meeting has been again occupied in the con sideration whether our Society is called upon to take a more decided part than it has hitherto done in communi cating to the heathen the knowledge of the gospel, and under a solemn sense of the importance of the subject Appendix. 293 concludes to refer the further consideration of it to a Committee of this meeting, which is to make such a report thereon as it may judge proper to the next Yearly Meeting. The Committee is as follows : — Sylvanus Fox Josiah Forster George Jones Richard Cockin John Talwin Shewell Joseph Marriage Joseph John Gurney Thomas Shillitoe Cornelius Hanbury John Candler Samuel Tuke Thomas Maw Samuel Lloyd George Stacey John Barclay Richard T. Cadbury Joseph Foster John Young William Allen Edward Pease George Crosfield Richard Ball William Ball , Peter Bedford Luke Howard John Brown William Dillworth Crewdson William Foster Reynolds William Binns Isaac Braithwaite Robert Forster Robert Jowitt John Capper Wyatt George Gibson Joseph Jewell James Ireland Wright Richard Dykes Alexander William Gundry James Forbes Richard Barrett Sheldon Dudley John Rickman Edward Smith Samuel Capper John Dymond Thomas Bigg Robert Were Fox William Boulton Barnard Dickinson John Talbot Isaac Wilson Dykes Alexander Joseph Storrs Fry Jonathan Hutchinson Henry Newman John Wilkinson." * Minute of London Yearly Meeting, Sixth Month $th, 1833. " A Report from the Committee appointed to consider the subject of communicating the knowledge of the * Added to the Committee on the following day. 294 Appendix. gospel to the heathen has been brought in and de liberately considered. The Minute proposed for the adoption of this meeting by the said Committee has been, after some alterations, agreed to, and with the Report is as follows : — • " ' On considering the important subject referred to us, we have been led into a deep feeling of interest therein, but after much deliberation and the free interchange of sentiment, we have come to the conclusion that we cannot recommend to the Society as a body the adoption of any specific measure at the present time. The Com mittee feel best satisfied to submit the following Minute to the adoption of the Yearly Meeting : — " ' The deplorable condition of the heathen, and the degraded circumstances under which they are living, have been felt at this time, as well as in former years, to be truly affecting. And although no way appears to open for the Society to adopt any specific measures in order to communicate to them the knowledge of the truths of the gospel, we earnestly recommend their benighted condition to the Christian sympathy and frequent remembrance of all our members. " 'We are fully convinced that there are various means of diffusing a knowledge of Christianity among them which in no degree compromise our religious principles. The Holy Scriptures abundantly testify how offensive in the Divine sight are the abominations of idolatry, and we desire that all our members may stand open to the in timations of the Heavenly Shepherd, and follow the leadings of His Spirit into such services as He may be pleased individually to appoint to them. We rejoice in the part which many of the members of our religious Society have taken in the general diffusion of the Holy Scriptures and in promoting a Christian education of the poor in this and in other countries, and we desire that these very important objects may receive the continued attention and support of Friends. Appendix. 295 " ' We feel at this time a warm and affectionate solici tude that all our members may strive through the help of the Holy Spirit to live up to that profession of the Christian religion and to^ maintain those views of its simplicity, spirituality, and purity which our Society has uniformly thought it right to uphold. And we believe that as living faith in the doctrines of the gospel and a practical observance of the precepts and example of our blessed Lord regulate our affections and conduct, we shall be enabled more correctly to perceive our individual places in the Church. In the exercise of this faith and obedience we shall become more weaned from the love of the world and more filled with the love of God, and whether our lot be cast at home or abroad, in more civilised or less enlightened countries, we shall be made instrumental in advancing that kingdom which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' " Two years later the subject was again brought before the Yearly Meeting by Bristol and Somerset Quarterly Meeting. It received " serious attention," but no practical steps were taken. The Minute runs as under : — Minute of London Yearly Meeting, Fifth Month 25th, 1835. " The following proposition from Bristol and Somerset has been brought in and read. This meeting has entered into the consideration of the subject with serious atten tion, but it does not at the present time see its way to take any steps in consequence of the said proposition. " Proposition to the Yearly Meeting from the Quarterly Meeting of Bristol and Somerset, held at Bristol, the 18th of Third Month, 1835 :— "'This meeting has been renewedly brought under deep concern on account of the spiritual condition of the heathen world, and in some degree of that love of Christ which embraces all mankind as objects of one common salvation, it feels constrained again to bring the subject under the consideration of the Yearly Meeting. 296 Appendix. "'Referring to the advice on this subject issued by the Yearly Meeting in 1833, this meeting submits whether the time be not arrived for our Society (as a section of the Christian Church) to come forward more decidedly in aid of the great work of conveying a knowledge of the gospel to the heathen by those various means which in no degree compromise our religious principles. With this view it is suggested that a channel be opened by the appointment of a Committee or Committees for the raising and appropriating a fund and for aiding such personal exertions as may, under the Divine direction and blessing, promote this great object.' " MISSIONARIES AT THE CONFERENCE. INDIA. Date of Arrival at Mission Missionaries. Mission Field. Station. Johm H. and Effie Williams 1878 Sohagpur. Charles D. and A. Mabel Terrell 1889 Late of Sehore. C. Ernest F. Munnings 1890 Itarsi. Fanny O'Brien 1891 Hoshangabad. Albert Pearce Taylor 1896 Seoni Malwa. Mary Ann Jones 1896 Itarsi. J. Douglas Maynard, B.A 1896 Hoshangabad. George Edward Clark 1896 „ CEYLON. Joseph and Frances J. Malcomsox 1896 Matale. MADAGASCAR. Henry E. and Rachel M. Clark 1871 Antananarivo. John C Kingzett 1882 „ Henrietta Deane x888 Arivon'imamo. Edith M. Clark 1889 Antananarivo. Joseph F. Radley 1889 Late of „ CHINA. Robert J. and Mary J. Davidson,, 1886 Chung-Kino-. Elsie M. Hunt ; '. 1:896 SYRIA. Antonius J. Manasseh 1889 Brumana. Mary Eleanor Stevens 1891 Mary Robinson ^892 INDEX TO SUBJECTS AND SPEAKERS. Advantages and Difficulties, 79 Andrews, Frederick, 45, 78, 160 Appleton, Francis, 153 " Are ye able ?" 217 Armenia, Meeting on, 164 „ Memorial to Lord Salisbury, 202 Attitude to Other Religions, Our, 51 Backhouse, Elizabeth B., 70, 246 Baker, Samuel, 143 „ William, 143 „ William King, 66 Barber, James Henry, 231 Barclay, Ellen, 246 Barrow, Thomas, 263 Bible-readings, 9, 16, 124, 220, 27s, 284 Brady, Charles, 106 Braithwaite, J. Bevan, 268 Brayshaw, Edward A., 260 Briggs, James, 106 British and Foreign Bible Society and Friends, 166 Brockbank, Ellwood, 124, 198 Brooks, Edmund Wright, 165 Call to Foreign Missions, The, 220 China, Friends' Mission Work in, 212 Christ for the World, 124 „ The World for, 16 Christ's Teaching on the Evangelisa tion of the World, 9 Chronological Memoranda, 43 Claim of Foreign Missions on Friends , 226 Clark, Henry E., 46, 78, 87, go, 132, 159, 205, 266 „ Rachel M., 48, 266 „ Edith M., 266 „ Joseph F., 165 ,, George Edward, 265 Clarke, Charles G., 67, 237 Clerk and Assistant appointed, 3 Clerk, The, 3, 4, 5, 15, 200, 260, 261, 264, 266, 271 Closing Sitting, 262 Commerce, Missionary Enterprise and, 120 Committee on Arrangements, 4 Cooke, Mary L., 165 Crosfield, G. Theodore, 199 Davidson, Robert J., 47, 187 „ Mary J., 74, 212 Deane, Henrietta, 266 Dell, Henry, 263 Drewett, Joseph P., 68, 91 Education the Handmaiden of Christianity, 137 Educational Mission Work in India, 143 Evangelisation, Christ's Teaching on, 9 Evangelistic Work, Methods of, 132 Foreign Missions and Mission Workers, 268 297 298 Index to Subjects and Speakers. Foreign Mission Work by Friends : Advantages and Difficulties, 79 Fothergill, Emma, 161 „ Annie, 89 Fox, Anna F., 49, 136, 283 „ J. Tregelles, 171 ,, R. Hingston, 117, 198, 220, 256 Fry, Joseph Storrs, 165, 203, 261, 263 „ Priscilla A., 155 „ Sir Theodore, 5, 6 Fryer, Isabella, C, 76 Gilkes, Gilbert, 86, 153 Gill, Henry Josiah, 85 Grace, Watson (see also The Clerk), 93, 105, 160, 249 Grubb, George, 131, 263 Harris, J. Rendel, 120, 164 Heart's Service, The, 284 Heathen's Knowledge of God, The, 108 Hodgkin, Alice Mary, 220 Jonathan B., 197, 263, 271, 284 „ Thomas, 22, 50, 66, 90, 165, 262, 264 Home Organisation, 246, 249 „ Preparation for Foreign Mis sion Work, 95 Hughan, Peter H., 94 Hunt, Elsie M., 267 India, Educational Mission Work in, H3 „ Friends' Mission Work in, III, U3 „ Women's Work in, 184 Industrial Work, 147 Influence of Foreign Missions on the Home Church, 231, 237 Jones, Mary Ann, 265 „ William, 165 Kemp, Caleb R., 166, 171, 199, 200. 261, 271 Kingzett, John C, 157, 266 Lessons of the Conference, 271 " Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to do ?" 203 Madagascar, Friends' Mission Work in, 205 Malcomson, Joseph and Frances J., 265 Manasseh, Antonius J., 267 Maynard, J. Douglas, 161, 265 Medical Work, 171 Meeting for Worship, 290 Methods of Work, 131 Miller, Jane, 47 Minutes, 1, 3, 4, 5, 15, 70, 107, 201, 261, 290 Missionaries at the Conference, 296 „ introduction of, 264 Missionary Enterprise and Com merce, 120 „ Helpers' Union, The, 246 Munnings, C. Ernest F., 184, 254, 265 „ Sarah R., 184 Natal, E. and E. Clarke's Mission in, 162 Native Church, The, Its Development and Organisation, 187 Newman, Henry Stanley, 9, 217,226, 246, 254 „ Thomas P., 147, 165, 260 Nicholson, Howard, 50, 136, 197, 259 Object of the Conference, 6 O'Brien, Fanny, 265 Opening Sitting, 1 Organisation of Native Church, 187 Organisation, Home, 246, 249 Parents, Meeting for, 70 Pearson, Edward, 46, 289 Pease, Arthur, 108 Preparation for Foreign Mission Work, 95 Printing Press as a Missionary Agency, 157 Property, The Responsibility of, 275 Public Meetings, 108, 202 Index to Subjects and Speakers. 299 Pumphrey, Caroline W., 275 „ Thomas, 165, 198, 260 Radley, Joseph F., 243 Religions, Our Attitude to other, 51 Richardson, Anne Wakefield, 51 Robinson, Mary, 48, 267 Rowntree, Arthur, 137 „ John Stephenson, 25 Sessions, Frederick, 66, 88, 95, 154, 257, 261, 263 Sewell, Joseph S., 48, 79, 136, 199, 245 Sharp, Thomson, 46 Shewell, Caroline, 75 Steel, John W., 200 Stevens, Mary Eleanor, 267 Syria, Friends' Mission Work in, 117 „ Women's Work in, 180 Taylor, Albert Pearce, 265 „ Frederic, 94 Terrell, Charles D., 16, 76, 113, 258, 26s Thanks, Expressions of, 262 Thorp, Fielden, 271 Turner, William Edward, 156 Whiting, Mary S., 180 Williams, John H., 47, 89, 111, 171, 265 Wilson, C. Stansfield, 136 John Edward, 5, 78, 85, 91, 107, 160, 198, 260, 271 „ Catharine, 255 „ William Henry, 284 Witness in the Heart, The, 22, 45 Women's Work in India, 184 Syria, 180 Wood, Frederic, 69, 244 World, Christ for the, 124 „ for Christ, The, 16 Work of Friends in the Foreign Mission Field, 25 Yearly Meeting Minute, 1896, 1 „ „ and Foreign Mis sions, 1830-35, 291 FRINTED BY WEST, NEWMAN AND CO., HATTON GARDEN, LONDON. DALTON HALL, Licensed as a HALL OF RESIDENCE by THE OWENS COLLEGE, VICTORIA UNIVERSITY. Principal: THEODORE NEILD, B.A. (Lond.). Tutors: JOHN W. GRAHAM, M. A. (Camb.), B.A. (Lond.). BEVAN LEAN, B.A. & D.Sc. (Lond.), Lecturer and Demon strator at Owens. J. W. HAYWARD, B.Sc. (Vict.), University Scholar in En gineering. FRANCIS E. POLLARD, M.A. (Lond.). THIS institution has been established by MANCHESTER MEETING to furnish Friends' sons attending Owens College with a home and with assistance in their studies. It is situated on the country side of the College, and contains library, class-rooms, dining-hall, common room, workshop (with lathe and gas-engine), photographic chamber, and separate rooms for forty students. The premises are well warmed and ventilated ; a covered Rugby fives-court and a considerable amount (recently increased) of recreation-ground are attached. There is also a football field at a little distance. The Owens College has an endowment of nearly three-quarters of a million, and is thus enabled to attract the ablest professors, whilst charging very moderate fees. N.B. — Exhibitions in reduction of the Hall Fees are offered to members of the Society of Friends. The Owens College also offers several Exhibitions for competition. PEACE SOCIETY. — ESTABLISHED 1816. — Offices: 47, NEW BROAD STREET, LONDON, E.C. lpvesioent— SIR JOSEPH W. PEASE, BART., M.P. Ureasurer— Secrctacg— WALTER HAZELL, Esq., M.P. W. EVANS DARBY, LL.D. MEMBERS. THE Society consists of persons of every denomination who are desirous of uniting in the promotion of Peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Its objects are not limited by local attachments, nor circumscribed by geographical boundaries, but extend to the whole human race. Donors of £5 5s. and all Annual Subscribers are Members of the Society. Local Societies may be affiliated on the same terms. THE HERALD OF PEACE. The Herald of Picace is the organ of the Peace Society, and the chief centre and channel of information respecting the various Peace movements throughout the world. It is sent regularly to Subscribers, and may be had for is. 6d. per annum, post free, from the Secretary, 47, New Broad Street, London, E.C, from whom the Tracts published by the Society may also be obtained. LITERATURE. The Society has published a large selection of pamphlets and tracts on the Peace and Arbitration Question. Price lists sent on application. THE FKIEND. ?Tbe Meeftls paper of tbe Society of jfrienos. PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY (FOR FRIDAY), PRICE Id. Ibistotg of "Cbe jfrien&." In essentials unity, in -non-essentials liberty, in all things charity. THE first monthly number of this paper was issued under the editorship of Charles Tylor, in London, in 1S43, fifty-three years ago, Josiah Forster, George Stacey, and John Hodgkin, constituting the responsible committee. Charles Gilpin, afterwards M.P., was the publisher, at Bishopsgate Without. The objects announced in the first article, and ever since maintained, were the diffusion of Gospel truth, the faithful upholding of our great Christian principles, the moral, social, and spiritual welfare of mankind, the advancement of peace, temperance, and education, the extinction of slavery, the promotion of Bible circulation and study, and the extension among heathen nations of the Kingdom of our Redeemer. In 1849 Joseph Barrett became editor, succeeded in 1852 by Edward Newman, under the guidance of Charles Gilpin as proprietor. In 1861 the proprietorship centred in Bristol, and John Frank became editor, introducing in his first article the now well-known motto — Homo sum ; humani nihil a me aliemtm puto. Joshua Rowntree succeeded to the editorship in 1871, John S. Rowntree in 1875, and Joseph S. Sewell in 187S. In his hands Foreign Missions and First-Day Schools, which had become great concerns of our Society, received increased attention. In 1892 the proprietors, chiefly through the inspiration of George Gillett, concluded to make it a weekly paper, and from that time Henry S. Newman has edited it with the assistance of E. B. Reynolds ; Headley Brothers being now the publishers. The circulation is larger than it has ever been before, and the paper has become the recognised channel for prompt information on all branches of Home and Foreign service, in the busy and vigorous life of the Society of Friends to-day. Those who wish to keep in touch with the work of the Society at home and abroad should subscribe for one or more copies of " The Friend." SUBSCRIPTIONS :— In the United Kingdom, 12 months (post free) 6s. 6d. Abroad „ „ 8s. Sd. Or it may be obtained regularly from newsagents at One Penny, if orders are placed with them. From its long standing and the class amongst whom it circulates, " The Friend " is acknowledged as an excellent medium for ^5X ADVERTISEMENTS. K^ Applications respecting advertisements and subscriptions should be addressed to the Publishers— HEADLEY BROS., 14, BISHOPSGATE ST. WITHOUT, LONDON, E.C. THE BRITISH FRIEND. NEW SERIES. A Monthly Journal circulating among the Society of Friends throughout the United Kingdom, in America, and the Colonies. SIX SHILLINGS & SIXPENCE PEE, ANNUM. POST FREE. Including SPECIAL. YEARLiY MEETING ISSUE. Edited and Published by WM. ED. TURNER, BIRKENHEAD. Special Advantages as an ADVERTISING Medium. "Wl London Advertising Agents :— HEADLEY BROS., 14, BlSHOPSGATE, E.C. Third Edition. Royal 16mo, Cloth extra, bevelled hoards, yellow edges, 2/6; Paper boards, 1/6; flush, stiffened, 1/-; all net. If sent by post, 2d. additional on each copy. THE GOLDEN CLEW; or, Why We Children are "Friends." By G. Crosfield. " Deserves to be welcomed by every child in the Society of Friends, and to find its way to others also." — The Friend. " The spiritual tone and general tenour of the book are most admirable. We repeat our most hearty commendation of the book." — The Christian. " We give it a cordial welcome ; it will find a useful place amongst the rising generation of Friends." — Friends' Quarterly Examiner. " A singularly wise and good book. A charming little present." — The Bible Society Gleanings for the Young. " Sure to charm the little ones."— British Friend. LONDON : WEST, NEWMAN & CO., 54, HATTON GARDEN. FRIENDS' TRACT ASSOCIATION, 14, Bishopsgate St. Without, LONDON, E.C. $nm ftecretarj atrti ®tea»urer : FREDK. SESSIONS. COLPORTEURS :— DAVID MORT, Friends' Bookstall, 52, Market Hall, Birmingham. R. ERNEST DAVIES, 67, Tatham Street, Sunderland. W. H. BROWN, Birmington, Shipston-on-Stour. HARRY PERKINS, 13, Coburg Street, Plymouth. BEN. MATTHEWS, Claytown, off Charles Street, Lurgan. GEORGE PLUCKNETT, Dorland Cottage, Bletchingley, Surrey. CATALOGUE OF PUBLICATIONS SENT ON APPLICATION. For Grants of Tracts for free distribution apply by letter to the Office. Frieqd^ Fii^-DaiJ School A^ociatioi} Founded 1847. Re-organised 1893. presifcent: JOSEPH STORRS FRY, Bristol. Wfce=lpres(6cntB : ARTHUR F. GRAVELY, Wellingboro'. THOMAS BARROW, Lancaster. JOHN MESSER, Reading. JOSEPH B. BRAITHWAITE, Jun., WALTER STURGE, Bristol. London. GEORGE HARRIS, Plymouth. S. N. HOLMDEN, Cambridge. CHARLES J. DYMOND, Newcastle- WILLIAM WHITE, Birmingham. on-Tyne. FREDERICK SESSIONS, Gloucester, BRIGHTWEN BINYON, Ipswich. JONATHAN BARBER, Sheffield. Secvetatg (pro tern.) : JAMES EDWARD GRACE, 24, Clare Street, Bristol. Office : 24, CLARE STREET, BRISTOL. THIS is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Association connected with the Society of Friends. The Association was able to report an increase of 33 Schools and 1,854 Scholars for 1895, making a total of 41,777 Scholars in 292 Schools. The Adult School Movement originated in the Society of Friends, and there are now over 27,000 men and women in the Schools connected with the Association. To this important work only a comparatively few Friends subscribe. A larger list of subscribers would be a great assistance to the Committee in the extension of the work. Contributions will be received and acknowledged by the Treasurer — J. EDWARD GRACE, 24, Clare Street, Bristol. SOCIETY FOR THE ~~™~ SUPPRESSION OF THE OPIUM TRADE. ||r.esibxttt : Sir JOSEPH W. PEASE, Bart., M.P. JOSEPH G. ALEXANDER. THIS Society, founded in 1874 by the late Edward Pease, has for its main object to put an end to the traffic in opium at present carried on between India and China, for the sake of revenue to the British Indian Government. This traffic, from its past history and continued existence, has been repeatedly declared by the missionary body in China to be a serious obstacle to the progress of the Gospel in that country. (See Resolutions of the Shanghai Missionary Conference, 1877, and 1890.) The Society therefore appeals for support not only to those who are solicitous of the honour of our country and the good of China, but especially to all who are interested in foreign missions. Office— FINSBUBY HOUSE, BLOMFIELD ST., LONDON, E.C. Crown 8vo, oloth, Is. 6d.; roan wallet, hand-made paper, 3b. 6A. THE IJFE - REGISTER: A DIARY from the DAY of BIRTH to OLD AGE, TO FACILITATE AN ORDINARY RECORD OF PERSONAL EVENTS, PURSUITS, AND ATTAINMENTS. With Memoranda as to Management of Health ; Tests of Sight ; Spaces for Photographs ; and, to aid the memory of those filling up the Register in retrospect, a List of some of the principal English events since 1830. By JONATHAN HUTCHINSON, F.R.S., LL.D., &c. MAY BE COMMENCED AT ANY AGE, OR BEGUN BY PARENTS < FOR THEIR CHILDREN. t> " We warmly recommend this ' Life Register.' " — British Medical Journal. " An interesting little book. Its extreme simplicity, its brevity, and convenient form, will probably make it a favourite." — Lancet. "We should certainly recommend every one to become possessed of this register." — Journal of Mental Science. "We would highly recommend it." — Hospital Gazette. " The author is of opinion, and not without reason, that such an undertaking may prove of much value to individuals and their descendants, and may also serve the higher purpose of helping the perception of the dignijy of living. It might also assist medical advisers." — Morning Post. " A novelty in the book world. . . . Altogether the volume is a fascinating suggestion. Great would be the advantages, personally, socially, biographically, and scientifically, if there were in existence this somewhat brief and simple record of the life of every individual. Every parent must be tempted to devote such a book to the history of his child." — School Board Chronicle. " Properly it should be begun by the parents at the birth of the child, and kept by them till the individual has arrived at an age to continue the record for him self." — Schoolmaster. " There can be scarcely any doubt that the ' Life Register' will soon enjoy very general use. There is an admirable treatise on the management of health, and a mass of other interesting information." — Society Herald. LONDON : WEST, NEWMAN & CO., 54, HATTON GARDEN, E.C. Crown a,lo cloth, 400 pp. ; with TEN Genealogical Tables and u CORRECTED Index to the Marriages, 12s. 6d. ; without genealogy, 7s. 6J. PCORDS OF A QUAKER FAMILY : With Portraits of Isabel Casson and one of her sisters, Jonathan Priestman and John Richardson Procter. By ANNE OGDEN BOYCE. "All those who, like Charles Lamb, 'love the early Quakers,' should read Mrs. Boyce's ' Records of a Quaker Family.' " — The Athenceum. " Mrs. Boyce has given us a delightful ' Quaker Exhibition ' in her full and varied gallery of portraits and genre-pictures." — Saturday Review. " A skilfully drawn picture of Quaker Wit."— Newcastle Chronicle. " The Richardsons of Cleveland have been fortunate in their historian." — J. S. Rowntree, in Friends' Quarterly Examiner. " We can recommend the volume as one of unusual interest and attractiveness, whilst its healthful vigorous influence makes it intrinsically valuable."— The Friend. The folloioing letters have been received by Mrs. Boyce : — " Hawarden, May 11, 1895. " Dear Madam, — I have been for some days in possession of your kind gift, and to-day I have your obliging letter. I have read much of the work and with much interest. For the slight numerical importance of your Society stands in singular contrast with its undeniable moral importance, and the numerous lessons which are to be derived from its historv. — I remain, your most faithful and obedient, "W. E. GLADSTONE." " DEAR Mrs. Boyce, — I feel that I ought to write a few lines in order to tell you what unfeigned pleasure your 'Records of a Quaker Family' have given me. I have long thought that the story of Quaker life, as you and I know it, had in it elements of pic- tMresqueness and interest which strangers knew little of, but it wants the artistic touch to make these picturesque elements come together into a picture, and this power I think that you have abundantly shown that you possess. The book deserves to have a deep, if not wide popularity, and I sincerely hope that it may attain what it deserves.— I am, yours very truy" "Thos. Hodgkin." " Oak Knoll, Danvers, Mass., 7 mo. 1, 1890. " My DEiR Friend,— I have read thy beautiful book with great satisfaction. As a truthful picture of the old Friendly life, it seems to me perfect, and I give thee my heartfelt thanks for the privilege of reading it. Our dear Society seems changing, and becoming more and more like the Calvinistic and other dissenting Churches, both in doctrines and testimonies But the good work it has done, and the simple exterior of its life in the past, will not be forgotten by the world it has made better and sweeter.— GratefuUy, thy aged friend' " John G. Whittier." MAY BE HAD SEPARATELY. The Ten Tables, and Index to the Marriages complete, 5/-. The-Tenth Table, and Additions and Corrections to the Marriage Index, a/6 New Portrait (Isabel Casson's Sister), 1/6. LONDON: WEST, NEWMAN & CO., 54, HATTON GARDEN. 21. Demy Bvo, 160 pp. Quarterly, price is. 6d., The FRIENDS' QUARTERLY EXAMINER Edited by RICHARD WESTLAKE.' The Current Number contains Articles on — Meetings on Ministry and Oversight. By John Stephenson Rowntree. The late James Hack Tuke. By Howard Hodgkin, M.A. The Moravians and Count Zinzendorf. By Thos. W. Marsh. New Jewry. By Charles Sharp. The Royal Commission on Secondary Education. By Walter G. Bell, M.A. Missionary Training for Missionary Volunteers. By Frederick Sessions. The Darlington Conference; and many others. Amongst other recent Contributors have been :- J. Bevan Braithwaite. Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. Henry E. Clark. Joseph Taylor. Dr. S. Backwell Fenn. Anna L. Evens. George Newman, M.D. Evelyn Noble Armitage. Charles Tylor. Richard H. Thomas, M.D. A. W. Bennett, M.A. Henry Stanley Newman. R. Pearsall Smith. Samuel James Capper. E. T. Wedmore. Henry M. Wallis, and others. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION:— PRICE SIX SHILLINGS, post free to any part of the Woria. The Friends' Quarterly Examiner is the Literary Journal of the Society of Friends, amongst whom it circulates widely : it is thus AN EXCELLENT MEDIUM FOR ADVERTISEMENTS. London : WEST, NEWMAN & Co.,. 54, Hatton Garden; FRIENDS' SYRIAN MISSION COMMENCED IN 1869. Income - £2,400. SfwasnMr: WILLIAM C. ALLEN. Doit. Swrtltttg: R. KINGSTON FOX, M.D. Mission Stations I BRUMANA and RAS-EL-METN, 1 Mount Lebanon. THE work of this Mission is carried on among the Villages on the Lebanon in the neighbourhood east of Beyrout. The means adopted are Educational and Medical as well as Evangelistic. At Ain Salaam, Brumana, Training Homes for Boys and Girls are maintained, each accommo dating about 36 scholars ; also a Hospital with 16 beds, and a Dispensary. There is a well-attended Day School in the village of Brumana. The Friends' Meeting House is adjacent to the Boys' Training Home premises. Some technical teaching has been given, and it is in prospect to enlarge this industrial work, for which there is much need. New premises have recently been purchased to accommodate the Mission at Ras-el-Metn, which includes a large Day School for Boys and Girls, Mothers' Meeting, Adult School for Men, and Classes for Factory Girls and others. Sunday Schools, House Visitation, and other Evangelistic work is carried on at both stations, as well as in the surrounding villages, where Day Schools also are giving instruction to between 400 and 500 children. Thirteen Missionaries are engaged in the work, assisted by a staff of native helpers. Subscriptions or Donations will be gladly received by the Treasurer, Wm. C. Allen, 7, Cowper Street, Finsbury, E.C. ; E. C. Pearson, Parksyde, Wilmslow, near Manchester, or by the undersigned, WILLIAM BAKER, Assistant Secretary. 12, Bishopsgate Without, E.C. A Booklet entitled "Friends' Mission at Brumana, on Mount Lebanon" (price 3d.), by M. Brockbank, has recently been published by the Friends' Tract Association. This gives, in a graphic and interesting way, a brief history of the Mission. Copies may be obtained from William Baker. Special terms given to purchasers of 12 or more copies— 1/9 per dozen, including postage. FRIENDS' FOREIGN MISSION ASSOCIATION. Established 1868. FIELDS OF MISSION LABOUR: India— Madagascar— China- Central Provinces Imerina. Province of and Bhopal State. Ceylon— Sz-chwan. Matale. (wmracr: JOSEPH STORRS FRY, Bristol. gjmtoiarjt Secretary : HENRY STANLEY NEWMAN, Leominster. Srottarg: WATSON GRACE, 12, Bishopsgate Without, London, E.C. THE ASSOCIATION has now 62 missionaries, of whom 29 are connected with the India Mission, 2 with Ceylon, 20 with Madagascar, and 11 with China. These figures include wives of missionaries. The work in INDIA is in a district of the Central Provinces and in the valley of the river Nerbudda, with the city of Hoshangabad as a centre. Missionaries reside in that city and in the towns of Sohagpur, Seoni Malwa, and Itarsi. There is also a mission station at Sehore, in the native state of Bhopal. In addition to religious meetings, visiting among the people, open-air preaching in markets and villages, and elementary schools, the Association carries on a Mission High School for Boys, Orphanages for Boys and Girls, Medical Dispensaries, and an Industrial Department for teaching handicrafts and giving employment to native converts. A Mission has been commenced in CEYLON, in 1896. It is intended to make Matale, near Kandy, the centre of the work. In MADAGASCAR the missionaries of the F.F.M.A. have been working since 1867 in the capital of the island, Antananarivo, and in a large district to the south-west of that city. The last available statistics show that there were 157 Christian congregations in this district, and at the last examination in the village schools nearly 10,000 children were in attendance. The late war and its after consequences have had dire effects upon the Christian cause in the district, and the need for the proclamation of the Gospel of the Prince of Peace is emphasised by recent events. At Antananarivo the Association carries on two large Schools for Boys and Girls, with nearly 600 pupils. The Printing Press is also very serviceable to the mission work, and many religious and educational works are published there, including two monthly periodicals, "The Children's Friend" and "Church and School." A Medical Mission is carried on at Antananarivo in con junction with the London Missionary Society. In 1895, 883 patients were treated at the Mission Hospital, and 4,268 out-patients were seen at the Hospital and Town Dispensary. The training of native doctors and nurses is an important feature of this department of missionary effort. The work of the F.F.M.A. at Chungking, CHINA, an important city and port on the river Yangtze in the western province of Sz-chwan, was commenced in 1890. The nucleus of a mission centre is being slowly gathered. Much time is given to street-preaching and itineracy in neighbouring districts ; Schools for Boys and Girls and a Medical Dis pensary form useful adjuncts to the mission work. An out- station in the Tung-chwan prefecture has lately been opened. The average yearly income for the past three years has been, from Subscriptions and Donations £^9,586, from Interest on Investments ;£8i2, from Legacies and Special Gifts £2,454. The average yearly expenditure lor the same period has been, in Madagascar £5,972, in India .£4,636, in China .£1,300, and at home £^895 . Contributions on behalf of the work of the Association will be gratefully acknowledged by the Secretary, or by the appointed correspondents in the different meetings of Friends. Cheques should be made payable to Watson Grace, crossed " Barclay & Co., Ltd.," and sent to the Office of the FRIENDS' FOREIGN MISSION ASSOCIATION, 12, Bishopsgate Without, London, E.C. MISSIONARY HELPERS' UNION. " Yc also lielping together by prayer." — 2 Cor i. 11. " And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men."— Col Hi. 23. OBJECTS. I. — To help by prayer : it is hoped that Members will pray for Missionaries and the Heathen some time every Sunday. II. — To help by interesting ourselves and others in the cause of Foreign Missions. III. — To help by getting others to join the Union, and, where possible, to get new Branches started. IV. — To help by doing handiwork suitable either for sale or to send out to the Missions — such as needlework, painting, drawing, making scrap-books, &c. V. — To help in any way we can. Secretary— ELLEN BARCLAY, The Briars, Reigate. Total Number of Branches ~. 213 Income for year ending March 25, 1896 ^552 12s. iod. The M.H.U. iLibrary contains about 200 vols., which may be borrowed from Ellen Barclay, The Briars, Reigate. United to the FOREIGN MISSIONARY PRAYER UNION. In order to promote definiteness in Prayer or Praise, the following order is suggested : Sunday. — For all Home Mission work. For all Missionaries and other workers, and our fellow-members of the F.M.P.U. and M.H.P.U., that they may be filled with the Holy Spirit. Monday. — For Greek and Roman Catholic Churches, and Friends' work on the Continent of Europe, in France, Philippopolis, and Constantinople. Tuesday. — For Asia, including Friends' work in Syria, India, Ceylon, China, and Japan. Wednesday. — For Africa, including Friends' work in Madagascar and Natal. Thursday. — For North and South America, including Friends' work amongst North American Indians, and in Mexico, Jamaica, Alaska, &c. Friday. — For Mohammedan lands, including Friends' work in the Turkish Empire, India, and China. Saturday. — For the Jews ; for all home work for Missions, for Committees, and others. Anyone, whether a member of the M.H.U. or not, wishing to join the Prayer Union, may send name and address, and 6d. (per year) in stamps, to the Secretary, The Briars, Reigate, who will send the Card of Suggestions, also a Quarterly Paper of special requests for prayer from our Missionaries. Monthly ; Demy 8vo, Sixteen Pages and Coloured Cover ; Price One Penny. Our Missions. The Magazine of Foreign Missions carried on by Friends. EDITED by CAROLINE W. PUMPHREY, and JANE E. NEWMAN. -as- our missions -se- IS ISSUED ON THE 15TH OF EACH MONTH, ILLUSTRATED. Articles on yarious aspects of Foreign Mission Work. Latest information from Mission Stations. Notes of Foreign Mission Committees. Missionary Bible Lessons. M.H.U. Letters and News. Books Recommended, &c. M.H.U. SUPPLEMENT, 8pp., Illustrated, Issued every two months, for the Children, free with OUR MISSIONS, or at 3d. a dozen separately, post free to any address, 4\d. per dozen. OUR MISSIONS is the official organ of the F.F.M.A. and Friends' Syrian Mission. Annual Subscription, payable in advance, is. 6d., post free to any part of the world. To promote the circulation of the Magazine in Schools and M.H.U. Branches, the following Special Terms are offered to Teachers and Secretaries : — 6 copies, 6s., post free to any part of the World. 13 copies, 12s. ; 26 copies, £1 2s. 6d. ; 39 copies, £1 13s. ; 52 copies, £2 3s. 6d., post free to any part of Great Britain and Ireland ; if preferred, these amounts may be paid monthly, viz., is., is. 1 id., 2s. 9d., and 3s. 8d. respectively. Amounts under 5s. are not acknowledged unless a stamped envelope is enclosed. Orders and remittances to be sent to Watson Grace, F.F.M.A., 12, Bishopsgate Without, London. May also be had through Booksellers and of the Publishers, WEST, NEWMAN & CO., 54, HATTON GARDEN, LONDON. FjjEM PpiDENT INSTITUTION A MUTUAL ASSURANCE ASSOCIATION For the Society of Friends and those connected therewith by Marriage, Descent, or Religious Profession. ESTABLISHED, 1832. Head Office: BRADFORD, YORKSHIRE. London Office : 17, Gracechurch Stree/. directors : Frederick Priestman, Chairman. Henry Wm. Crossley, Deputy Chairman. George Baker. Robert Parkinson. James Henry Barber. Henry B. Priestman. Charles Bixns. John Priestman. Richard Ecroyd Clark. John S, Rowntree. Alfred Jesper. Joshua Smithson. Henry Tuke Mennell. William Fredc. Wells. Buoltors :— William C Allen, Charles Brady, John King, Jun., AND Barber Bros. & Wortley, Chartered Accountants. JSanftetS :— Prescott, Dimsdale & Co., Limited, 50, Cornhill, London. Coneulttng actuary :— Joseph John Dymond. Xonc-on JBrancb /llianager :— Wm. Hy. Gregory. The Business of this Institution consists of assuring SUMS PAYABLE AT DEATH. ANNUITIES— IMMEDIATE OR DEFERRED. ENDOWMENTS FOR CHILDREN. SUMS PAYABLE AT A SPECIFIED AGE OR DEATH. The INVESTED FUNDS amount to over £2,500,000. A division of SURPLUS is made every five years. More than £1,600,000 have been appropriated as Bonus amongst the Members. The next Division will take place at the close of 180,7. CLAIMS are payable ten days after proof of death and title. The PREMIUMS are low and the EXPENSES OF MANAGE MENT are small. Policies in force for three years are free from all restrictions as regards TRAVELLING or RESIDENCE in Foreign Countries. Policies are issued available for ESTATE DUTY, payable before Probate is obtained. Prospectuses, Tables of Premiums, Forms of Proposal for Assurance and other information, may be obtained on application to the Secretary' Bradford, Yorkshire ; at the London Office ; or from the Local Agents JOHN BELL TENNANT, Secretary and Actuary. 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