A Century of Protestant Missions.
IN an article in the Missionary Review for September, entitled "A Century of Protestant Missions," Rev. James Johnson of England says:— We rejoice in the work accomplished by modern Christian missions, while we mourn over the sad fact that the increase of the heathen is, numerically, about seventy times greater than that of the converts during the century of missions [from 1786 to 1886]. It is true that converts multiply in a much more rapid ratio, but the number to be multiplied is so small in the one case and so large in the other that the prospect of the former overtaking the latter in any measurable period seems hopeless at the present rate. With one or two slight exceptions the Christian is not perceptibly overtaking the heathen population, except among nations that are numerically stagnant or races that are dying out. Those who calculate on Christian missions converting the world at the present rate of increase, strangely overlook the annual increase of the heathen by birth-rate. The increase of the population of the world during this last century is altogether unprecedented in the historic period. The early Christian centuries cannot be brought into comparison with it. The population of Europe during the decline of the Roman Empire, and after its overthrow, must have been almost stationary and in many cases retrograde. If it had increased at the rate at which Europe has increased during this nineteenth century, its inhabitants to-day would have been thousands of times the population of the whole world. This fact made it much easier for the early Christian Church to overtake the population of the Roman Empire, than it is for missions to overtake the populations of the world in the present day. England doubles its inhabitants in seventy-two years, and Scotland, with its greater rate of emigration, in seventy-four years. The Saxon races on the continent increase fully as fast; and although the Latin races increase more slowly, the Russians more than make up by an almost double ratio, while America, the great outlet for the redundant population of Europe, doubles its population in twenty-five years. The computation for the increase in India is one per cent. per annum, and the careful census of 1881, compared with that of 1871, shows that it is not far from the truth. In spite of specially severe famines, the actual increase gives fully seven per cent. in the ten years, which would double the inhabitants in 102 years. Thoughtful men are staggered by this rapid increase of populations in view of the limit to the increase of food supply. It is already felt in India, and Mr. Giffen, in his presidential lecture at the opening of the session of the Statistical Society in 1882, called attention to the fact that the United States of America would in twenty-five years be fully occupied with its population of one hundred millions, and "that the conditions of their economic growth will be fundamentally altered." In view of the present rate of increase of the population, we may say that the economic condition of the whole world will be fundamentally changed during the next century, and long before it has run its course. It seems as if the old command, "increase and multiply and replenish the earth," were soon to reach its consummation, preparatory to some grand climax in the history of our race. Prophecy and the laws of population are, like converging lines, pointing to one issue in the near future. Never had those words of the apostle such significance, "This I say, brethren, the time is short." Theorists talk of restraints on the increase of population. That, if it does not mean the application of the Darwinian theory to the human family—the destruction of the weak by the strong—means the consumption of the strong by the weak. By an eternal law the nation that ceases to grow begins to decay. The lean and ill-favored kine will eat up the fat and well favored, as in the days of Pharaoh. But this question of increase is too large a subject for a tract. It is enough to note the fact and its bearing on the possibility of Christian Missions, with their three millions of converts, overtaking the increasing one thousand millions of heathen and Mohammedans in the world. Another sad thought oppresses when we think of the slow rate of the increase of missions. Not only has the heathen and Mohammedan population increased by two hundred millions, while the three millions have been added to the church, three generations of men, women, and children have passed into eternity during that century of missions. That means the death of more than two thousand millions, without the consolations of our Christian hope, and without the knowledge of the love of God.