p. 14 | Mission Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Sep 8, 1904

Mission Notes

“Missions first, missions last. Why not? Millions! Think of it. Millions destitute, and dying! What other work is half so important?”

“An exchange says that the apostle James addressed his epistle to ‘the Christians scattered abroad.’ If he were writing it now, he might address it to the Christians huddled at home.”

In China there are 1,746 walled cities. In only about 247 of these are missionaries at work, leaving 1,500 unoccupied, and in only 88 villages and unwalled towns have mission stations been established.

“It was a wonderful thing when Stanley in nine hundred and ninety-nine days crossed the continent of Africa; it’s a more wonderful thing that a quarter of a century sees a chain of missions across that same road, the last to be established immediately.”

The annual expenditures in the United States for various objects run on the following scale: Foreign missions, $5,000,000; home missions, $12,000,000; church expenses, $125,000,000; dress, $250,000,000; jewelry, $450,000,000; tobacco, $600,000,000; liquor, $1,200,000,000.—Exchange.

Pilkington, of Uganda, in Africa, not long before his death, wrote: “O, let us be real! Emotion is no substitute for action. You love Africa, do you? God so loved that he gave. God gave what? Superfluities? Leavings? That which cost him nothing?”—Selected.

There are now laboring in Japan thirty-five missionary societies, twenty-one of which are American. Connected with these societies are 692 missionaries, male and female, with 143 stations and 864 out-stations. With the 423 organized churches there are connected 40,921 members, of whom 3,070 were received on confession in the year 1898. There are 308 ordained Japanese ministers, besides 725 preachers who are not ordained.—Exchange.

A native preacher in China who was noted for his many thorough converts, on being questioned, answered that an American merchant who supported him had a list of not only his converts, but of those under conviction, for whom he prayed, locking himself in his office an hour daily for this purpose.—Selected.

The British and Foreign Bible Society issues the Word of God in forty-two Indian languages, either in whole or in part, and there are still one hundred and eight languages untouched. But it is reported that the forty-two languages into which the Bible has been translated are in use by 220,000,000 out of the total population of 294,000,000.

A British subject was once asked if Queen Victoria should issue some proclamation to every man, woman, and child on the earth, how long he thought it would take to carry it out. He thought a moment, and calmly replied: “Sir, I think we could do it in about eighteen months.” Nineteen hundred years have come and gone since our King gave us his commission, and time goes swiftly rolling on toward eternity, whirling its teeming millions on toward eternal darkness because we haven’t told them. The good news was for them, too, but they don’t know it, and the responsibility is mine and yours.—Selected.

A Hindu, who lived a long distance from any missionary, and who had never been inside a Christian church, was led to believe in Christ by reading the Gospels. Finding a command to eat and drink in memory of our Lord’s death, and knowing nothing of church order and ritual, he was accustomed to take a little rice, saying, “This I do in remembrance of Christ,” then, drinking a little water, he would say, “I drink this because Christ died for me.” Thus in his solitude this disciple was taught of the Spirit, and his inner life was nourished without the help that comes from the communion of saints.—Selected.