Mission and Bible Society Appeals
THE Moravian Mission Board faces the serious situation of a growth of its missions until a regular annual deficit is produced, impossible to overtake before a new one occurs. The Board issued in November a clear statement of what this situation means to the church and its friends. Either an increase of annual gifts to the missions must be made, or the Board must abandon two or more of its largest missions, with irreparable injury to the whole church. The financial advisers of the Board have now sent out a further bulletin, calling for the most earnest effort to raise sufficient money to maintain the missions; every one working in faith that the God who has taken away the debt of sin from his people can surely take away their debt of money. It is a case where all friends of this great mission enterprise should offer it sincere and practical expression of the same. THE British and Foreign Bible Society is raising a Centenary Fund to be held for emergency use. Out of the $1,216,000 planned for the fund, $972,000 had been received by the middle of December. A considerable proportion of the gifts have come from foreign mission fields. Dayaks in Borneo, who “used to collect ‘human heads as boys collect postage-stamps,’” have sent their contribution; former cannibals from Oceania prepared copra, and have given that; women have sat down amid the war terrors of Manchuria, and have made embroideries to send; child widows in India have given the pet kid or the pet hen; black Australians of North Queensland have dived for oyster shells, and have given them. This is a revelation that great multitudes in all parts of the world have actually used the Bible in their lives, and have found that it works.