RELIGIOUS PROGRESS IN UGANDA.
Dr. O. R. Cook, a medical missionary of Mengo, the native capital of Uganda, declares that the present opportunity must not be lost for training a band of native Christians who shall, in their turn, educate and evangelize East Africa. Uganda is that part of Africa under British administration comprising the Nile territory from the river’s exit from Lake Victoria to Gondokoro, where the Egyptian Sudan begins—an area of nearly a hundred and fifty thousand miles. Nile steamers ply between Khartum, the capital of the Sudan, and Gondokoro. In Uganda, as in China, the most far-reaching work is now being done by the natives. In the African province there are now twenty-seven native clergy and two thousand native teachers. Without this native support the wonderful work of the foreign missionaries could not have been accomplished. Ten years ago there was but one church for the three million natives in Uganda, now there are more than seven hundred; then there were only two hundred baptized native converts, now they exceed thirty thousand; then there were only twenty native teachers, now they number over two thousand. Best of all, this magnificent work is self-supporting. From Dr. Cook’s article, published in the Missionary Review, we see that a prime cause of the success has been in the work of the medical missions. The first medical missionary to arrive was Dr. Felkin, one of the authors of “Uganda and the Central Sudan.” Dr. Felkin went out nearly twenty years ago. The Mengo mission dates from 1897—even as late as that date the journey from the coast required three months; it is now made by the Uganda Railway, just completed, in four days.—The Outlook.