MISSION NOTES | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 33.

MISSION NOTES.

KOREA remained the hermit nation until, in 1882, God used medical missions as the key to unlock its doors to the Gospel. Dr. Allen, by a strange accident—to human eyes, a strange Providence, as disciples see it—became installed as court physician, and the king built a “house of civilized virtue”—a government hospital under the care of this Presbyterian missionary. And now Korea’s valleys are being penetrated by Gospel messengers.—Missionary Review.

SAYS Isabella Bird Bishop: “We often hear, but not so much, I believe, as formerly, of the craving of the heathen for God, of the heathen flying as the doves to their windows to hear that Gospel which is for the healing of the nations. It is really no such thing at all. The craving of the oriental mind is for money, for wealth, for the things of this earth, and not for God. The longing which is represented to exist has, I believe, no existence at all. And it is this discovery which often tends to disappoint and crush the spirit of some young enthusiast who has come out thinking that he has only to preach and that he will gather hundreds into the fold of Christ.” And yet there are a few longing souls in all lands, like the Syro-Phenician woman of old, that are reaching out after God; and he who has the mind of Christ will find them by seeking the salvation of all.

THE total expenditure for foreign missions, says the Missionary Review, during 1896 was, from reported gifts, about £3,000,000 sterling. The whole number of ordained missionaries is about 4,300; of layman, 2,500; married women, 4,200; and unmarried, 3,300; this gives a total missionary force, from Christian lands, of 14,300. Mission churches have themselves given to the work 3,350 ordained natives, and over

51,700 native helpers, making a grand summary of nearly 70,000 actually engaged in a world’s evangelization, in some 21,000 mission stations, and sustained by a body of 1,115,000 native communicants, that stand for five times as many adherents; 62,000 communicants were added in 1896. And there are 18,000 schools, with a total of about 700,000 pupils.