Mission Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Feb 4, 1904

MORE than ever before is there need of prayer, in view of the unprecedented openings for preaching the gospel in all the world, the great need of workers, and the dearth of means. The ministry of intercession is a service in which all may engage, and one which will be a response to our Saviour’s command, “Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.”

Not five years have passed since the British, under Kitchener, recovered Khartoum, then a heap of ruins. It had been a city of seventy thousand inhabitants. Now the Gordon College is completed, and from its position stretches for two miles a street of handsome government buildings and private residences. The Khedival Avenue, with four rows of trees, is being rapidly lined with substantial business and private houses. Bands play in the public gardens, where an exhibition, agricultural and industrial, has just been held. Correspondents are astonished at the progress made, and amazed at the public confidence in the future of this city in the desert. It is reached by a railway of five hundred and seventy-five miles, with sleeping and dining cars. Built as a military road, it is now an artery of commerce. “Khartoum represents Europe transplanted into Africa; Omdurman is still Africa undiluted.” Mission work is not encouraged by the government among the Mohammedans, but is among the tribes to the south. A correspondent says the material on which missionary effort is to be exercised is infinitely more encouraging than the negro of the West Coast. The people are widely different from the negroes, and intellectually far superior. Although they may be fierce and sanguinary, their expression is not vicious. They are well formed in frame, and even handsome in features. The climate is less enervating than in the moist and swamp regions of Africa. Omdurman, just across the White Nile from Khartoum, has a population of fifty thousand, but only a section of the original city is yet reoccupied. Here Christianity may come in contact with representatives of thirty tribes of the better races of Africans.—Selected.

IN 1863—forty years ago—the British and Foreign Bible Society issued a booklet, “The Gospel in Many Tongues,” illustrating the Scriptures it was providing for many lands. It contained John 3:16 in ninety-one languages, and in about thirty varieties of letters or characters. The edition of 1893—ten years ago—contained sample verses from two hundred and eighty-four distinct languages or dialects. In thirty-six cases, a verse occurred a second, or even a third time, in the same language, but in different characters; for the society has often to provide the same translation in more than one kind of letters, to meet the reading habits of distinct sections of a population. The Centenary edition, revised and enlarged, of “The Gospel in Many Tongues,” has just been published. It contains no fewer than four hundred and three specimens. They consist of a verse in three hundred and fifty-nine varieties of languages, and of forty-four cases of this same verse reduplicated in another character. The figures present vivid evidence of the number of tongues in which the Bible has already begun to speak, and the preparation that is being made in all the world for the closing gospel message.

THE American Board (Congregational) reports for the year ending September, 1903, in twenty mission fields that belt the globe and include 75,000,000 souls, 101 strategic centers, with 1,196 connecting outposts. During the year the church-membership, 59,585, contributed for Christian work $176,439, one third of the whole amount appropriated by the Board for these missions. The sacrifice represented by such a gift is worthy of thought, and might stir those who are blessed with so much more of this world’s goods, to greater liberality. Many of these Christians receive only a few cents for a day’s labor, out of which must come the living for their families, which is meager indeed, as well as their gifts. These Christians have not only given until they felt it, but continued sacrificing until they felt the joy of the Father in giving all. This same blessing may be ours if we will but clear out the channel so that it can flow in. Shall we not make 1904 the banner year in sending the gospel to the world? Anything short of this will be displeasing to him who did not withhold heaven’s best gift that through him we might have life, and have it more abundantly.

A RECENT letter from Brother E. H. Gates reports an increasing interest in mission work among our Australian brethren and sisters. They are devoting the fourth Sabbath of each month to a missionary service similar to our second Sabbath missionary service. He says: “Everywhere there is a good interest in our missions, and a willingness to help in this work. I really believe that our churches here are going to do much toward supporting the work in the islands.” The whole wide world is astir to-day.