HEATHEN LANDS AND MISSION WORK.
Idolatry is real. “The Hindus of the present day firmly believe in the real existence of innumerable gods and goddesses, who possess in their own departments full and independent power.” Life is excessively impure in the non-Christian lands. “Bad as impurity is in some parts of the West, it is much worse all over the East. In the most loathsome and unthinkable forms it is cutting into the best life of the young manhood of those vast regions.” Sin is enthroned in the heathen lands. “Sin is enthroned and deified and worshipped. There is scarcely a single thing that makes for righteousness in the life of unchristian nations.” The non-Christian religions are powerless. “There is no resurrection power in any one of them, and to the men who here and there are athirst for righteousness, and are groping after Him who is not far from any one of us, they offer neither guidance nor help.” The harvest is great. “There are 175,000,000 Mohammedans, and 870,000,000 heathen and pagan.” The laborers are few. In round numbers, Japan has one ordained missionary to every 200,000 people; Africa has one to every 250,000; India has one to every 300,000; South America has one to every 440,000; China has one to every 700,000. The church sacrifices but little for foreign missions. The entire contribution of the Protestant Evangelical Church of the world is only $19,126,120 annually; that of the United States only $5,828,300. The church gives but few men and women to missions. The entire Protestant evangelical mission force is only 15,460, including wives. Missions are great civilizers. “All the government [Bengal] could do by its educational department, all that local self-interest could do, which gave them money, culture, and social status, produced a smaller numerical result than that which the missionaries have produced.” The missionary work has far-reaching effects. “I assert it to be a fact beyond contradiction, that there is not a ruler, official, merchant, or any other person in China and Japan, Siam and Korea, who, in their association or dealings with their fellow-men in that quarter of the globe, are not indebted every day of their lives to the work and achievements of the American missionaries.” A century of missions has been fruitful in converts. In all Protestant evangelical missions there are 1,317,684 native communicants, and 4,414,236 native Christians. Missions develop true Christian life. “After long and careful inquiry, I believe the native Christians of China to be fully up to the average mark of our churches at home in essential knowledge, and above it in practise—societies of men and women in which the virtues of purity, honesty, self-denial, and charity are apparent.”—Burton St. John, in the Gospel in All Lands.