Mission Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 19, 1905

“THE door to the heart of the remote East is Japan, and to-day it is wide open to all that is best in the West.”

A MESSAGE to a church missionary society of London states that a man was crucified at Akpu, in Nigeria, by the king of Ugboko, as a sacrifice, at an annual festival. It is believed that human sacrifices are made frequently among these tribes, notwithstanding their proximity to a region governed by white people.

“Of late the roar of cannon in Manchuria has been heard in Peking, and slumbers ages old are disturbed. Japan has sounded the call for China’s rejuvenation, and China is listening. Witness her military and commercial activities, the new demand for education, and the calls from some thoughtful men for reform in worship and religion. A new China is knocking at the door of the American churches.”

It is not the missionary, but the Book given him to expound, which changes dissolute, brutal, and blood-thirsty savages into godly, peaceable, and useful citizens. Wild head-hunters and slave-raiders are changed into men by the power of the life and words of Jesus Christ. When we at home realize that the mission fields are full of illustrations of this power of the Bible, we shall go humbly to them for the wherewithal to silence doubters and build up the faith of our own people.

FROM Sumatra the Rhenish Missionary Society reports a year of harvest such as it has never before seen. The number of pagans baptized during the year was 4,712, besides 136 Mohammedans. The total of Christians is now 61,764. In 301 schools 14,519 boys and girls are under instruction. The Bataks, among whom the society has its field, are the same people who in 1834 killed the American missionaries Munson and Lyman. Now 412 of these Bataks are skilled Christian workers, twenty-seven of them being ordained clergymen.

THE government of Holland has laid before its parliament a report on the condition of the native races in Borneo, Sumatra, Nias, and other Malaysian islands. It declares that while the government has found itself powerless to extirpate various cruel or immoral customs of the savage tribes of these islands,—cannibalism, slavery, head-hunting, debauchery, etc.,—Christianity has abolished them over a wide territory, and that the tribes which have accepted Christianity are steadily improving in propriety of social habits, in character, and in material prosperity.