EGYPT'S URGENT NEED by Lewis Glenn

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 10, 1906

EGYPT'S URGENT NEED.

By Lewis Glenn

[Lewis Glenn, in Herald of Light.]

PERHAPS it would be difficult to find a mission field where there are greater masses of people who have no Gospel privileges than in Egypt. Some of the larger cities are almost wholly neglected by Protestant missionaries. This is a city [Alexandria] of about 350,000 population, with but one man missionary working among the people. Owing to the customs of the country women missionaries can not work with the men in this part.

There are thousands of villages where the Gospel is never heard any more. There were a few "faith" missionaries itinerating among these villages, but the work has been abandoned for lack of support. The Presbyterian Church made a call for 280 more missionaries at their convention two years ago, but there appears to be very little response to the call. They have about eighty workers in the country, located chiefly in Upper Egypt. Much of their effort is spent in day schools, but there is a crying need for evangelization among all classes.

A member of the British and Foreign Bible Society told us how in former years he spent years itinerating among the towns and villages (some of these villages have from 3,000 to 10,000 population). He would go for weeks traveling from village to village, and often preaching to the people who would congregate in a native home; he would eat with his host, then sleep on a mat on the floor. He was received cordially and his labors were blessed everywhere, but since the people in England failed to support him and his family, he has taken employment in the above-named society with a salary sufficient for his support, but now the natives sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Think of these millions waiting for the slow-going mission movements to bring them the Gospel, while fevers and plague thin their ranks. You who are anxious to send them the light can support a missionary here if you can not come yourself. . . . While the Christian world waits, the zealous Moslem is going from place to place to confirm the people in their false belief, and is sweeping the newly-opened districts in the Soudan for Mohammedanism.