Mission Notes

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 21, 1902

AN Episcopalian, who does not wish his name mentioned, has given one hundred thousand dollars for a church building in Manila.

THERE are now at work, it is estimated, six hundred and eighty medical missionaries, and of this number two hundred and ten are women.

THE following brief note from a missionary in China, written to the editor of the Baptist Missionary Magazine, gives a faint idea of the present condition in China, and the need of entering that field now with a strong missionary force: “There is a tremendous movement on foot all over the country toward Christianity as represented by Protestants. Cities and towns and villages are calling for leaders. The great question of the hour is, ‘How can these mighty forces that are launching themselves out from the depths of heathenism into the current of the Christian faith, be marshaled for the Lord and his kingdom?’ The demand for Western learning is overwhelming. It is almost pathetic to see the hundreds and hundreds of students that are absolutely helpless—no one to help them but the missionary, and he is overcrowded with other duties that demand his attention. We cannot afford to evade this question, but must do something.” The magazine adds: “Men and brethren, these burdens should not be those of our missionaries alone; they are ours, they are our Lord’s. Let us begin in earnest to be religious co-laborers with him, and send the gospel to China.”

THE great scheme of the late Mr. Cecil Rhodes, the Cape to Cairo Railway, is being pushed forward with all possible celerity. The road has been surveyed as far as the Zambesi River, which is to be crossed by a great steel bridge, having one span of five hundred feet, at the Victoria Falls. The whole section from Buluwayo to the Zambesi, two hundred and seventy-five miles in length, is to be opened next year. Locomotives for contractors’ purposes are now running on it for a short distance north of the present terminus, and a railway exploration party has been dispatched over the railway route beyond Victoria Falls as far as Lake Tanganyika. For forty miles north of Buluwayo the embankment of track is more or less complete, bridging work on the Victoria Falls section is in progress, and about five miles of the line is finished. The work of connecting the Buluwayo and Salisbury sections is also progressing rapidly, and rails are already laid from Salisbury to Sebakwe, a distance of sixty miles. From the Buluwayo end of this line the railroad has reached the Arguza River, so that when this gap is filled and the line completed, as it is hoped that it will be by the end of the present year, trains will be able to run from Cape Town to Beira, via Buluwayo, Salisbury, and Umtala.