To many it may seem an incongruity to speak of a Protestant Papacy. So devoted and loyal are many Protestants to their cause, that they may be inclined to regard the thought of a Protestant Papacy as an absurd slander. To all such we would make the request that they consider and weigh without bias the facts that will be presented in the paragraphs that follow.
Of course it must be understood that in speaking of a Protestant Papacy we are not considering Protestantism in its broadest, truest sense; we are not speaking of Protestantism as it has been understood in theory; neither are we speaking of it as it was taught by some of the Reformers that helped to start the great Protestant Reformation in its onward and uplifting course. We must speak of it as it was taught by some and practised by many others. For just as the Papacy itself grew up in the true church that followed Christ and the apostles, even so did this Protestant Papacy grow up in the very midst of the renewed church that struggled to rid itself of the rubbish of error, despotism, and superstition through the mighty workings of the Spirit of God in the Reformation.
In a previous article attention has been called to the efforts that have been made by men to dominate the earth in universal empire. We had one world empire after another until the climax was reached in the empire of Rome. And when Rome came to her zenith and began to crumble and decay she had the idea of universal empire firmly fixed in the minds of men. Even the barbarians that were making incursions into her territory and breaking her to pieces were so impressed by her greatness and grandeur that they too imbibed the idea that Rome must stand a universal empire till the end of time.
This idea of universal empire was taken up and fostered by the church as she began to apostatize. The church too must be universal, and she must have a universal State, or universal civil arm, to support her in her work. And these sentiments grew into the "Holy Roman Empire," as was shown in last week's paper — an empire in which it was claimed that we had a universal holy church supported by a universal holy State.
With these ideas so strongly entrenched in the minds of men, it should not be a marvel that many of the Reformers that were contemporary with Luther should have imbibed the idea that the State should compel conformity in matters of religion. Martin Luther himself maintained strongly that the Reformation did not need the State to protect or to defend it, for the mighty power of God was behind it, and the power of the Infinite did not need the arm of civil power to assist or to protect His followers in their work. The Gospel was the purest, and had done its mightiest work, when the first apostles carried it into the very teeth of the heathen Roman Empire. Rome, aided by the Jewish nation, that rejected Christ, sought to suppress the new faith by imprisoning and killing its advocates. But the Gospel was carried right over every obstacle to triumphant victory. And it was this power that is inherent in the Gospel itself that was needed, so Luther affirmed, and not the civil State, to help it along.
But Zwingli thought to depend upon the carnal sword; and altho his name has come down to us as one of the greatest of the Reformers next to Luther, yet history has had to record the sad fact that he helped to inspire an army to go against those of the Catholic faith, and the great Reformer perished ingloriously on the field of battle. He thus fulfilled the words of the Master whom he sought earnestly and faithfully to serve even tho he was misguided: "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."
John Calvin was also one of the prominent Reformers who went against the tyrannies of the Papacy, at least in theory; but he could not allow freedom of conscience to Michael Servetus, and so he burned him at the stake. His notion seemed to be that it was wrong for the Catholic to burn any one at the stake, for the Catholic did not have the true faith; but he being right in faith, he must not allow any differing views, and therefore it was all right for him to resort to the stake to suppress heresy.
Thus it will be seen that some of the earliest and most prominent Reformers stained their work by resorting to the very methods of the Papacy that they were protesting against. And in these acts they laid the foundation for the church-and-state notions of the Papacy to be brought into the Protestant ranks. The great enemy of all truth was not content with bringing the tyrannies of persecution into the church that followed the apostolic times, but he must lead the church of the Reformation to think that it must depend on the civil power and persecute those who would not yield to the creeds that it formulated.
The Reformation kept growing stronger and stronger until practically all of Western Europe came to be called Protestant countries. There were only a few exceptions to the rule. Germany became a strong Protestant country, but she had a State religion — she preserved much of the church-and-state notions of the Middle Ages and of the Papacy. England became strongly Protestant, but she also established a State religion; and so with Holland, Switzerland, and others of the nations of Western Europe.
And not only was Protestantism established as the State religion in these nations, but the Protestantism that was thus established became just as bitter in its persecution as had been the Papacy. In this way it showed that no difference what name you call a thing by, that will not keep it from persecuting, provided it adhere to the principles that lead to persecution. The following paragraph from Gibbon, speaking of the work of the Reformation, is worthy of more than a passing glance in this connection:
The chain of authority was broken, which restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking as he thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world; and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the Scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom, however, was the consequence rather than the design of the Reformation. The patriot Reformers were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal vigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or personal animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus the guilt of his own rebellion; and the flames of Smithfield, in which he was afterward consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists by the zeal of Cranmer. The nature of the tiger was the same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs.—"The Roman Empire," chapter 54.
Speaking of "the Reformation and its effects," Bryce says:
The principles which had led the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have taught them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned them from the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with the indispensable forms of secular government. Still less ought they to have enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own showing, had no value save when it was freely given.
... In almost every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself with the State, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages, while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based. It was thus that there arose national churches, which were to be to the several Protestant countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to the world at large; churches, that is to say, each of which was to be coextensive with its respective State, was to enjoy landed wealth and exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive powers against recusants. . . . They could not claim to have in any one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could not even fall back upon general councils. . . . The dominant party in each State, if it did not claim to be infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it was right, and could attribute the resistance of other sects to nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England, or the will of the majority, as in Holland, the Scandinavian countries, and Scotland, imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the practices of medieval intolerance without their justification.—"Holy Roman Empire," edition of 1907, pages 381, 382.
The foregoing extracts are merely samples of statements with which history is replete, showing that mere Protestantism is not sufficient to keep the human being from intolerance and bigoted persecution. We must have the real Christianity as taught by Christ and exemplified in His life. Among Protestants, as among papists, there has been a disposition from the start to coerce the consciences of men and to torture them if they did not yield. The only nation of any consequence that has ever existed that has not had a State religion is the United States. And wherever there has been a State religion there has always been more or less of persecution.
Next week we will give some of the evidence that shows that this very generation in which we live is to set itself to establish a world-wide holy empire, and when it comes all history shows that it will attempt to persecute.
The Power of Small Countries
By John A. Shedd
SMALL countries have been large enough to stir the whole world; the Soul of the Universe never stepped outside of little Palestine; the mind of the world lived in Greece. The country preacher with the Gospel of Christ can still work miracles.—John A. Shedd.
The Anti-Saloon League of America
By W. A. Colcord
Fourteenth National Convention
By W. A. Colcord
ONE of the most earnest and active organizations in this country at the present time set for the suppression and eradication of the liquor traffic, is the Anti-Saloon League of America. The fourteenth national convention of this league was held in the city of Washington, D. C., December 11-14, 1911. The convention was well attended, and was considered the most important and the most successful gathering of the league yet held since its organization in this city sixteen years ago — December 18, 1895.
About three hundred delegates and officers of the league, representing nearly every State and Territory in the Union, together with several other hundreds of interested men and women, were assembled to recount the victories of the past two years, or since the last national convention held in Chicago, and to lay plans for the further suppression of the liquor traffic and the driving out of the saloon from this fair land, and making the map "all white."
Many earnest, able, and well-known temperance speakers and workers addressed the convention. Among those who were present and took part in the proceedings were Bishop Luther B. Wilson, of Philadelphia, the president of the league, and a leading bishop of the Methodist Church; the Rev. Purley A. Baker, of Westerville, Ohio, the general superintendent; the Rev. S. E. Nicholson, general secretary; E. H. Cherrington, editor of the "American Issue," the official organ of the league; the Hon. John G. Woolley, once a Prohibition presidential candidate; the Rev. H. C. Stuntz, of New York; the Rev. E. S. Chapman, of Los Angeles, California; Governor Noel, of Mississippi; Ex-governor Hanley, of Indiana; Senator Luke Lea, of Tennessee; the Hon. Richmond P. Hobson, of Alabama; Judge A. Z. Blair, of Ohio; Joseph Gibson, president of the Ontario branch of the Temperance Alliance of Canada; the Rev. Wilbur F. Berry, of Waterville, Maine; Mr. Filmore Condit, of New York; the Rev. Joseph Clark (Timothy Stanby), of Columbus, Ohio; and the Rev. George R. Stewart, the fiery temperance orator of Tennessee.
The sessions were held alternately in the Calvary Baptist and the First Presbyterian church, in the heart of the city, Bishop Wilson presiding throughout the convention. The music and the song services were conducted by Prof. E. O. Excell, of Chicago, and were interspersed with a number of peculiarly but entertainingly rendered solos by Mr. Bacon, the "Nightingale singer" of Yorkshire, England.
The Opening Address
The opening address of the convention was made by Mr. John G. Woolley, his subject being, "Prohibition with the People Behind It." By means of sound logic, enlivened with witty sallies and striking metaphors, he discharged "a volley of oratorical grape-shot and shrapnel" into the ranks of the liquor interests. He spoke encouragingly of the work and victories of the past, but by no means thought the battle won. Illustrating from history, he compared the temperance forces to General Braddock and his army, and the liquor dealers to the Indians; his moral being, that the temperance workers should not despise their enemy, and as a result be overcome and conquered after being taken by surprise through lack of vigilance, born of self-confidence. Among other things he said:
If there is any human activity in civil or moral engineering entitled to be called fundamental and eternal, it is that of casting up highways for the people.
Our present cheers must not shut out the voices of the future. We shall have hot work from now on. Villainy takes naturally to strategy; cruelty dies hard. The organized liquor trade is base and crooked to the core.
Coöperation is the key-note for the future. The right hand of fellowship among ourselves is the best formation we can use against the enemy. With hearts of oak, we must close our ballots, the white fingers of our Christian citizenship, on the throat of the liquor traffic, and squeeze its accursed gullet till it quits forever.
Is prohibition unscriptural? Who says it is? — The brewery. Who says it is not? — The church. Which should know best? Which has the best character as a witness? The whole area of Scriptural endeavor, from Sinai to Salvation Army, stands for prohibition. . . . We are not dealing with medical prescriptions, or ancient Oriental hospitality, or wine miraculously made, but with twentieth century breweries and distilleries that organize dissipation into trusts to exploit the weak and ignorant and vicious, to the tune of billions annually. The scripture that is in point is, "Wo unto him that giveth his neighbor drink."
Who says, "Prohibition does not prohibit"? — The liquor dealer. Who profits when it fails? — The liquor dealer. Who makes it fail? — The liquor dealer. Why does it fail? — Because the average liquor dealer is confessedly and incorrigibly a criminal, a combination of Fagin and Bill Sikes, in contempt of the popular will and the popular right. Tell me, wherein is a fence for stolen goods worse than an office of big business that knowingly and wilfully supplies liquor to brothels and speak-easies, to the contempt and confusion of law? Tell me, by how much is the sender of obscene literature or lottery tickets through the mails a meaner degenerate than the merchant prince that establishes his agents on the border and ships alcoholic liquor to illicit dealers in prohibition areas?
Prohibition already works well in country places, next best in villages and little towns, worst in cities, but better and better everywhere.
In his closing remarks, Mr. Woolley referred to the Federation of Churches organizing for leadership in this work. This he thought a mistake. Its claim to leadership, he said, is based on "ecclesiastical regularity;" but "the masses will never stand for a religious 'union label,'" he added. "The American Anti-Saloon League is prohibition with the PEOPLE behind it," and this he thought ought to accomplish the desired results.
Conditions in Other Lands
Homer Clyde Stuntz, D.D., of New York, for some years a foreign missionary, gave an interesting and illuminating address on "Foreign Missions and the Liquor Traffic," in which he told of conditions particularly in India, China, and the Philippines. In India, under the present government, he said, the liquor business was practically "farmed out," territories being sold to the highest bidder for a term of three years.
Report of the General Superintendent
The report of Mr. P. A. Baker, the general superintendent, contained much of interest, and was couched in thoughtful and earnest terms. While rejoicing that there was now local prohibition in all but three of the States, — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada, — and State-wide prohibition in eight States, he prophesied no easy victories for the future. He said:
The temperance people of the country must learn that the battle before us is not a rose-water conflict. It is war — continued, relentless war. If they (the Christian business men) are anticipating that this is a skirmish to quickly pass away, they do not rightly read the signs of the times. The day of peace on this proposition has passed. The conflict for the overthrow of the liquor traffic will increase with added intensity every hour until this brutal, humanity-destroying traffic is forever eliminated from our civilization.
The battle against the liquor traffic is national and world-wide. Until the recent past the liquor interests were not largely united nor compactly organized. The past twelve months has witnessed a coming together of the hosts of rum, in much of the country, in a way that challenges the thoughtful consideration of every discerning man. Evil is cohesive; easy of organization, because it pays in dollars and cents. Righteousness is always in danger of being divisive, because it requires a standard of usefulness to which few have attained. The liquor people are up to their fighting best in many of the States, while the temperance people have not one in six of their natural fighting force in the field doing real service, and whole regiments are not aware that war has been declared.
To engage in a traffic that is condemned by science, outlawed by the church, ostracized by decent society, excluded from fraternal orders, policed by the State, and lives upon the weakness and wickedness of humanity, is to abandon one's self to the devil and all his works. It is to the saloon that the officers of the law go in search of gamblers, counterfeiters, prostitutes, thieves, housebreakers, highwaymen, incendiaries, and assassins. These are the only places outside of prison walls where this breed is welcome. It is the gangrene of the body politic.
We must print our way into the knowledge and favor of the people before we win this work. Circulars mailed into the homes, large posters hung upon bill-boards, in factories and churches, and the circulation of our league papers, will be of abiding value. The masses are utterly without knowledge.11They will not seek knowledge. It must be literally forced upon them when they are not looking.
How shall we get the money? — Put a piece of literature into the hands of interested men of means, that has real merit in it, and ask them to pay for the printing of ten thousand, fifty thousand, a half million copies, and they will do it. Men of means respond best to definite propositions.
Millions of money are now being poured into the treasuries of certain colleges — some of them of doubtful moral standards — that already have more money than they can spend. Why not some one give a few million dollars to destroy this breeder of strife, this chief of human butchers?
It is becoming increasingly evident that a prohibitive law is much more easily enforced than a regulative law. The only successful part of any regulative enactment against the liquor traffic is its prohibitive feature. We must not accept the half-loaf theory as in any sense a solution of this difficult problem. The only solution of the saloon problem is no saloon.
Finally, we must not overlook the fact that we confront a foe that has ill-gotten wealth without limit and no conscience in the spending of it. Love for country, human character, domestic happiness, personal reputation, have no place in its code of warfare. Bribery is amongst its mildest methods for accomplishing its purpose. It laughs at virtue; it mocks religion; it scoffs at common honesty; it defies every appeal of outraged womanhood, and robs helpless childhood of a fair chance. And when laws are enacted, this treasonable institution tramples upon them with impunity. It refuses to be regulated. It is incapable of reformation. "It would rather die than obey law." There is nothing left but to abolish it from every foot of territory everywhere as speedily as an advancing civilization and a developing conscience will permit.
Mr. Baker stated that the league was now sending out about three tons of anti-saloon literature daily from their new printing house at Westerville, Ohio, but he hoped that soon the amount would be ten tons. Mr. Cherrington said that, including the State editions, the circulation of the "American Issue" was 500,000.
Remarks by Governor Noel
Governor Noel, of Mississippi, told how, when he began the legal profession, he espoused the cause of prohibition, and how, little by little, he, with others, had worked away until the liquor traffic had finally been outlawed in his State. "In this cause," he said, "we want the assistance of county, municipal, and State governments, and no opposition from the Federal Government." As to whether the prohibition law was violated in his State, he said: "All laws are violated. No laws enforce themselves. We still have murder in our State; but we have not ceased to make murder punishable by law. We want the same protection in this matter that is given against hog-cholera, rinderpest, cattle tick, and the Texas cattle fever. It is a world-wide acknowledged evil. We want to see nation-wide prohibition."
The Great Destroyer
In his address on "The Great Destroyer," Tuesday evening, December 12, Congressman Richmond P. Hobson, after indicting the liquor traffic as a greater destroyer annually than all the wars since the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., spoke of the recent discoveries of science that alcohol is not merely a stimulant, but a poison; and he held that it ought therefore to be dealt with as such, and treated as are other poisons. He spoke of the effect of alcohol upon the blood, and through this on the brain, and through the brain upon the morals, and thus upon offspring and the rising generations. Alcohol, he affirmed, is both destructive and degenerating in its effects, and the result of its continued use is to produce a race of degenerates; which, in its last analysis, means the destruction and downfall of society, the nation, and the world. "It has been
stated," he added, "that already the number of degenerates in such cities as Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago, is in the majority. If true, this means that they have already lost the power of self-government; that they must necessarily be controlled by corrupt men and corrupt motives, — that liberty is already at an end in these cities." He traced the course of empire, showing how the old, corrupt nations of the East had fallen and given place to newer and better people of the West, and pictured America as the last great nation, and the last hope of the world. If this nation falls, he said, the world will fall with it. Here are his words, and his appeal for immediate action:
In this generation our people must take their choice; in the next generation it may be too late. There is no alternative. We are fairly in the death grapple. All the pages of history are crying out to America, "Conquer this great destroyer or perish."
Suppose America should go down before this destroyer, whither will a rural and frugal fragment of America go to start a new empire? History leaves no hope to go back eastward. There is no longer any westward. We have reached the shores of the last ocean. In America the star of empire westward finishes the circle of the world.
Photo by Gutekunst Bishop L. B. Wilson, President Anti-Saloon League of America
In America we are making the last stand of the great white race, and substantially of the human race. If this destroyer can not be conquered in young America, it can not in any of the old and more degenerate nations. If America fails, the world will be undone, and the human race will be doomed to go down from degeneracy into degeneracy till the Almighty in wrath wipes the accursed thing out.
Notwithstanding the activities of the various temperance societies and reform movements, and the apparently splendid victories won of late in the cause of prohibition, it was impossible for the convention to close its eyes to the ever-present fact that despite all these efforts and victories, and the fact that practically half of the United States to-day is nominally "dry" territory, still intemperance is steadily on the increase here; that in the past seventy years the annual consumption of intoxicating drinks in America has increased from four gallons per capita in 1840 to twenty-five gallons in 1910 — an increase of over five hundred per cent.
Another matter closely related to this, and several times alluded to during the convention, was the fact that the large cities are the great centers and hotbeds of the liquor traffic; that most of the drinking is done in these, and that little difficulty is experienced in controlling matters in the country and in small towns and villages — a comment on the evils of city life.
The Interstate Commerce Law
One of the leading matters emphasized during the convention was the fact that it was practically impossible to make prohibition effective in the States as long as liquor could be shipped into a prohibition State from a non-prohibition State under the protection of the present national interstate commerce law. In connection with the convention, and immediately following the convention proper, an all day's session of a "National Conference on the Interstate Liquor Question" was held to consider this question, and decide upon the best method to pursue looking toward a remedy for this evil. The call for this conference had been signed by over two hundred prominent men of the country, and delegates to it appointed by twenty-seven State governors.
Resolutions Adopted
Near the close of the convention, resolutions were unanimously adopted, expressing gratification over the prohibition victory in Maine; declaring that the liquor traffic must be dealt with as a crime; against the return of the army canteen, and in favor of federal prohibition in the Hawaiian Islands; condemning the system of raising money for the schools in Alaska from liquor taxes; and protesting against interstate traffic in prohibition States.
Bishop Wilson was again elected president of the league; Mr. P. A. Baker, general superintendent; and Mr. S. E. Nicholson, general secretary.
At the closing meeting, over $2,000 in pledges and donations was raised for the work.
Hardly a breath was heard during the entire convention about the Sunday closing of the saloon. The league program practically precludes this, as it is set for the total abolition of the saloon on all days. Nor was anything heard concerning party politics, much of the success of the league being attributed to the fact that it is non-sectarian and non-partisan. It considers that it has a work above and beyond party lines, and worthy the support and best efforts of all parties, all creeds, and all denominations.
P. A. Baker, General Superintendent Anti-Saloon League of America
Star Ornament
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The Most Lawless.
By Editor
At a dinner given by the Young Republican Club in New York recently Senator Borah said: “We are even now, in our youth, the most lawless of any of the great civilized nations. There is no country of first importance where there is so little respect for law because it is the law.” The senator would have come nearer the truth if he had said that we are in a time when lawlessness is coming to be a leading characteristic of the whole world. In some parts of the world this lawlessness is due to a revolt against unjust and oppressive laws, while in other parts it is due to a failure to administer honestly and justly the good laws that are on the statute-books. The selfishness that is at the bottom of the scramble for business and money is leading men through bribing, grafting, and the like, to lose their sense of justice, and lawlessness is the result.
Single-Star Ornament
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Earthquake Shocks in Illinois and Wisconsin
An earthquake shock was felt on January 2 in Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. It was sufficiently severe in some places to throw bric-a-brac and dishes from shelves and tables. The occasional shocks in that section ought to cast doubt on the theories of some of the scientists that Chicago and vicinity are not in the earthquake zone.
Republican National Convention
The Republican National Convention for the nomination of a President will meet in Chicago June 18, 1912, on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo.
Decorative Divider
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Abyssinia
By Anol Grundset
Eighteen Years in Prison for Conscience' Sake
THE following is taken from a news-letter from Adis Abeba, the capital city of Abyssinia. It tells of sufferings endured because of religious convictions.
Wobe, or Wube, as the name is written in the Amharic, received lasting impressions, when the German missionaries under King Menelek's younger days were here. A Bible translation came out, if I remember rightly, in 1845, which has since been revised twice.
The Bible in Amharic—Geez the people do not understand—has proved to be stronger than all martyrdom that the priests invent for the readers of it. . .
Before the German missionaries came here—they were supported by an English company—the people spiritually lived in deepest darkness. That darkness the bishop and priests delighted in. But as the light began to pierce through the darkness, there began the persecution of the light bearers. Those found to adhere to the way of light were imprisoned. Those drawn toward the light did not, however, reveal the forbidden Book, but hid them in the earth, uncovering and reading them nights. In this way, many even to-day read in secret. The light advances. There are Nicodemus souls scattered in the land, the open professions are very rare. Such souls as imprisoned Wube are few to be found. There was but one like him, who dared openly confess his faith. This his comrade was whipped to death, and Wube at the time received forty stripes. Since then he has been dragged from province to province, from mountain [lone place] to mountain, with his limbs locked in chains, and with chains still tighter drawn at every time he has been retried and been unwilling to surrender his faith. When now Tajelenj was imprisoned, Wube was brought here and again questioned, but remained steadfast. He has not suffered in vain.
The bishop and minister of justice have at every trial gnashed teeth against him; but it has been heard from persons standing near these officials, that their consciences are aware that they have not dealt rightly with him, that he is more righteous than they; but what shame now to acknowledge their wrong! Because of fear that, if they should let him loose, light should take on wings, and much which they suppose to be hidden would be revealed, they keep him guarded in chains. They hope in this way to torment him to death, and in silence hide him and his history under sod. We may yet see the outcome. A few pages of this man's sufferings ought to be written up in Amharic and spread among the people, for one or more of such histories should help toward attaining here religious liberty.
The happenings of the last months, in which the bishop and priests, after the death of the late king, began another persecuting career, in which even foreign representatives have taken steps to interfere, prove that darkness is still cherished and the Bible and its adherents made subjects of attacks. To us especially interested in the removal of barriers, are these things momentous. I believe the Lord in and through all this will work out in His own time, in His own end, the opening of Abyssinia for the preaching of the everlasting Gospel of the third angel.
The ambitious, unscrupulous queen of Abyssinia, who reached the throne by a series of cruel murders, among which were two or three husbands
We hear often Abyssinia spoken of as a Christian land; but ah, 'tis a land of utter darkness, with a corrupted priesthood holding the people by reins of superstition and falsehoods. The messengers of the Gospel are interpreted to be demons, and their teachings errors. The people are warned to have nothing to do with us. Nevertheless, amid obstacles, our school has gone well. Some students have run away from home and villages to come to us to get the opportunities of education and learning.
Dear believers, let your prayers unite with ours, that the Word, God's precious light, may soon have liberty to circulate among the people of this dark land, and that its saving truths may germinate in some honest hearts to bear future fruits.
