MISSIONARY MURMURINGS

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 2, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 46.

MISSIONARY MURMURINGS.

GATHERED FROM LEADING MISSIONARY JOURNALS.

A SUGGESTION was made at the Missionary Conference in London, 1888, that a World's Missionary Committee of Christian women should be established as a means of communication between the different denominations or societies. This has been carried out, and its chairman is Miss A. B. Child, of Boston, Mass.

IN Spain the gospel is preached in at least 112 chapels or halls, by 56 Protestant pastors, and 35 native evangelists. The number of communicants is placed at 3,442. There are also 80 Sunday-schools and 111 day-schools in connection with the Protestant work,—all the result of 20 years' work, during which time only Spain has been open to the gospel.

IN Chicago there are several wards where there is only one church for every 12,000, 17,000, 20,000, and even (in one case) 30,000 souls. There is little wonder that these wards are the breeding-places of anarchy. But even this is riches compared with one ordained missionary to every 150,000 souls in heathendom, while some have parishes containing 500,000, and very few helpers.

MEXICO has been and is a fruitful field for mission work. It is nearly twenty years since Protestant missionaries entered her territory, and the visible results of their labors are indicated in the following figures: Mexican preachers ordained, 146; other native helpers, 127; communicants, 12,135; adherents, 26,967; evangelical papers, 8; church buildings, 75; martyrs (killed by persecution), 62. Certainly this is a noble record for a mission field.

A CONGREGATION was formed in Andalusia, Spain, from one of the peasants purchasing a Bible from a colporter. The twenty or thirty members of the congregation did not know they were Protestant until they were told so by a passing visitor. They did, however, apparently know what the “great commission” meant, and every Sabbath a collection was taken for the support of a missionary in South Africa, to which every member of this extremely poor congregation contributed.

PERSONS desiring to send books to Syria will have to exercise considerable caution, or they may find their selections barred an entrance to that land. It is stated that recently 600 volumes were burned by order of the government, on account of some objectionable feature contained in them. Among the books refused an entrance we notice, Dr. Pierson's "Crisis of Missions," Thompson's "The Land and the Book," "The Church at Home and Abroad," etc. Fortunately, the Scriptures are not interdicted.

THE widow of the late General Colin Mackenzie, who for over thirty years was intimately acquainted with mission work in India, says that missionaries are not “in society;” that while they have neither the time nor inclination for such pastime, there is a great gulf fixed between them and the “station people,” which the latter, as a rule, never cross. Mrs. Mackenzie bears testimony to the simplicity of the lives of the missionaries, and says that nothing can be more unjust than to charge them with “self-indulgence” or “luxury.”

THERE is a strong anti-American feeling in certain quarters in China, which is said to be increasing. The Rev. M. C. Wilcox, B.D., says: "Several months ago an ordinary-looking Chinaman, in an obscure village on the Kucheng District, surprised me by asking, 'Did you have to present a certificate before you could land in China?' 'Of course not,' was my reply. 'Then why do the Chinese have to present certificates before they can enter America? And why is it that some are refused a landing who have proper certificates?'"

IN heathen countries, Protestants occupy 500 separate mission fields, containing 20,000 mission stations, supplied by 40,000 missionaries. In these 20,000 mission stations there are 500,000 Sunday-school scholars, an average of 25 to each station. In the 20,000 Protestant mission stations there are 1,000,000 native communicants, or an average of 50 to each station. There are also 2,000,000 of adherents who are friends of the evangelical faith, and hearers of the gospel preached from the Bible—an average of 100 to each station.

THE Hon. William B. Reed, a former U. S. Commissioner in China, thus speaks of mission work: "I went to the East with no enthusiasm as to missionary enterprise. I came back with the forced conviction that it is, under Providence, the great agent of civilization; and I feel it my duty to add that everywhere in Asia and Africa, among the Kaffirs in Natal, on the continent of India, among the forests of Ceylon, and over the vast expanse of China, the testimony to the success and zeal of our countrymen, as missionaries of truth, is earnest and concurrent. I heard it everywhere, and from high authority."

SINCE the founding of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, in 1861, 37 of its missionaries have found, in that continent, lonely graves. But the work survives, and there are now 105 laborers in that field. This mission was proposed by David Livingstone. Its Lake Nyassa branch is located right in the heart of a great slave-yielding territory, and the Arabs are endeavoring to drive out the missionaries, who form an obstruction to the prosecution of their nefarious traffic. There are as many laymen as clergymen, all receiving £20 each for clothes and private expenses, and receiving the necessaries of life from one common store.