Mission Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jan 11, 1906

THE Hawaiian Evangelical Association has secured four Chinese preachers and one Chinese Bible woman for work among the Chinese in the islands. The viceroy of Kwang-tung was so pleased at the idea that he gave the preachers passports, gratis, for which usage permitted his demanding five hundred Mexican dollars.

THE Livingstone Mission of the United Free Church of Scotland has its field in Nyassaland, Africa, and its industrial side includes agriculture, building, quarrying, carpentry, engineering, blacksmithing, printing, and tailoring, and has one hundred and thirty apprentices. There are over one thousand members at London, where a great convention was held, attended by three thousand persons. Throughout the district of Bandawe the villages have small churches built by the natives themselves, and there are now fifty-four of these prayer-houses where morning and evening worship is held. The first number of a native monthly magazine for the Livingstonia Mission has been issued. It is in the Tumbuka language.

A MISSIONARY in Africa speaks of the demand for teachers from thirty or more towns in the region about Yakusu. His cook had been promised as teacher to a town some eighty miles from the station. Three times during the journey did deputations come to take possession of him. But the traveler, having a partiality for a well-cooked meal, told them to wait patiently till he reached their town. A week before the time for reaching the town they came again, this time with a crew of thirty young fellows. Importunity such as this could not be withstood, and they carried off their teacher in triumph. A week later the missionary found him hard at work with over a hundred scholars gathered around him, and the new school building in process of erection.

LET the truth be told, even if on some pleasant autumn morning the heavens fall. And so let it be definitely stated that child marriage has not been abolished in India. On this point what the India Witness says is conclusive, for it knows whereof it speaks. It certainly is a lamentable fact, on the authority of the Witness, that child marriages are an every-day occurrence, and when we say “child,” we mean it. Little girls eight, nine, and ten years old become wives, as everybody knows who knows anything about it, and yet among a list of the signs of the progress made in treatment of women in an English paper, is the “abolition of child marriage,” coupled with suttee. The latter is abolished, though it now and then occurs even now. The former is not abolished, although it has become a burning question, and although there is a law raising the marriageable age to twelve. Speed the day when the words quoted shall be true!—Selected.