of their own lives to teach; but they deemed such plans as visionary, attempts to hurry the Almighty in his own work, fraught with danger to nationalities, and involving such outlays of time, labor, and money as would discourage Christianity itself. But the men who went forth stood firmly at their post. Some died in foreign lands of climatic difficulties, some were eaten by cannibals, but none wavered in adherence to their sublime endeavor. When converts began to be made, and the joy of heathenism was expressed at receiving the news of the gospel; when new fields opened up, and the ripened harvests everywhere awaited the reaper's sickle; in a word, when the entire feasibility of missionary enterprises was practically demonstrated, then the Churches aroused, and committed themselves to an undertaking from which they can not desist until the false systems of religion which curse the earth are extirpated.

Consider what Christianity has done in less than one century, or since she addressed herself seriously to the task of evangelizing the world. Within about eighty years, she has increased her missionary societies tenfold, i. e., from seven to seventy; and her missionaries more than tenfold, i. e., from two hundred to twenty-three hundred ; and her native evangelizing force from almost none to twenty-three thousand male helpers, with a great number of female workers, and her converts from heathendom from fifty thousand to nearly seventeen millions, and her contributions to this work twenty-five hundred per cent.

The first signal triumph of missionary work took place in the Sandwich Islands. The inhabitants were degraded beyond description. They fed on raw fish and the flesh of dogs. They used to excess a native intoxicant, and made themselves drunken. They offered human sacrifices. They lived in the most extreme licentiousness. The family relation was unknown. Two-thirds of the children born were strangled or buried alive by their parents. They preyed on each other and upon foreigners that chanced to pass that way in ships. Population was dying out as the result of desperate vices. In 1819 a little missionary party from Boston reached those islands. The missionaries introduced themselves to the drunken young king, and made known their purpose. Happily, no objections were raised, and the work began. The native language was studied. The king and his court were induced to take lessons in reading and writing. This gave the new teachers wonderful influence. Preaching commenced, and the truth of Christianity commenced to leaven the awful errors of barbarism. Baptisms were frequent. An old warrior chief embraced

religion, and died a Christian.

Churches and schools were estab-
Marriage was insti-

lished, and a Sabbath law was promulgated. tuted and the family relation founded. A temperance society was formed, one-third of the people attended school, and the whole population came under the influence of religion. Within twenty years, Christianity became the accepted faith of the nation. The struggle between virtue and vice was, of course, in many cases a hard one; but as faith increased, morality also prevailed. The people became quiet and industrious. They entered into Christian work for themselves. Young natives studied for the ministry, and when they began to preach their own people supported them. The missionaries saw that their own work was done. The nation was Christianized. Fifty years from its opening the mission was closed, the entire cost being only about one and one-quarter millions of dollars. "Thus," says Robert Mackenzie, "at greatly less than the cost of one iron-clad shipof-war this little nation was turned to God. A complete success it was, too. Heathenism utterly disappeared from the islands; Christianity had come instead, bringing in its train security to life and property, peace, industry, education, arts, and general progress; raising the wasteful and treacherous savage to the dignity of a God-fearing, lawabiding citizen, who bears fairly his part in contributing to the common welfare of the human family."

Another example: In 1816 a man named Johnson, went to Sierra Leone to find a thousand people rescued from slave-ships, representing more than twenty nations, unable to hold converse, but preying upon each other like wild beasts, given to worse vices, brutal and devilish. "He preached the simple gospel to them, devoutly praying for their salvation. In less than a year the woods were echoing with prayers of penitence, and the hills ringing with hymns of faith. Honest industries took the place of thievery; they built a stone house, and filled it with a crowd of worshipers, and surrounded it by all signs of an orderly, thriving, Christian state. Marriage sanctified their homes, a thousand children crowded their schools, heathen revels gave place to Christian rites. All this Mr. Johnson himself lived to see, though he died seven years after he landed."

Those who assert that modern missions are a failure, lay themselves open to the charge of culpable ignorance, if not willful perversion of the truth. Take the example of India missions, and listen to the words of Rev. D. Valentine, D. D.:

"Eighty years ago the fires of Suttee were publicly blazing, even in the presidency towns of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta, and all

over India. Upon these fires the screaming and struggling widow— in many cases herself a mere child-was bound and burned to ashes with the dead body of her husband.

"Eighty years ago infants were publicly thrown into the Ganges as sacrifices to the goddess of the river. Eighty years ago young men and maidens, decked with flowers, were slain in Hindoo temples before the hideous idol of the goddess Kalee, or hacked to pieces as the Meras, that their quivering flesh might be given to propitiate the god of the soil. Eighty years ago the cars of Juggernaut were rolling over India, crushing hundreds of human victims annually beneath their wheels. Eighty years ago lepers were buried alive; devotees publicly starved themselves to death; children brought their dying parents to the banks of the Ganges, and hastened their deaths by filling their mouths with sand and water of the so-called sacred river. Eighty years ago the swinging festivals attracted thousands to see the poor, writhing wretches, with iron hooks thrust through the muscles of their backs, swing in mid-air in honor of the gods.

"For these scenes that disgraced the India of eighty years ago we may now look in vain. Every one of these changes for the better is due, either directly or indirectly, to the missionary enterprise. They were missionaries and the friends of missions who brought these tremendous evils to light. Branded as fanatics and satirized as fools, they ceased not until one by one these hideous crimes were crushed out by the strong arm of the legislature. Just so we will not cease to agitate until the accursed opium-trade and other evils cease to exist." A missionary, the Rev. Dr. Thackwell, says that India is as cosmopolitan as Europe. Europe has one religion, the Christian; India, also, has but one, that of idolatry. Along the lines of the railways lie the great centers of trade, and there the English language is spoken very extensively, so that travelers have no trouble whatever in passing through India. As an indication that the grip of caste has been relaxed, it may be mentioned that some of their temples, long lighted with a rare perfumed oil, are now lighted with American kerosene. Many high-caste Brahmins have already been converted, and joined the Christian Church. There are many allusions in the Hindoo books to Christ, and a prophecy that the world will all be Christ's. The Hindoostanee appellation of Christ means, "One who is pure-free from sin." India now has a Christian lieutenant-governor, and the conditions for the spread of Christianity there are all favorable. Look at some other countries. Most people, well informed in missionary intelligence, have heard of the China Inland Mission,

but its remarkable history and wonderful success are not so generally known.

Thirty years ago Mr. J. Hudson Taylor, a godly English Methodist, feeling impressed with the religious needs of China's millions, went to that country and labored alone for several years. In 1866, with six helpers besides Mrs. Taylor, he established the China Inland Mission. His plan was strictly one of self-support; no guarantee of income to his missionaries; no personal solicitation of money; only using what was sent in voluntarily. The mission is non-denominational, and includes Churchmen, Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists. The work has steadily grown, and contributions have flowed in, until one hundred and sixty missionaries are at work, and the voluntary income is $90,000 annually.

Twenty-five years ago, Madagascar had only a few hundred scattered and persecuted converts. Soon the draft of a treaty of amity and commerce was sent out from England to that country, and on the margin these words were written : Queen Victoria asks, as a personal favor to herself, that the queen of Madagascar will allow no persecution of the Christians." A month afterward the treaty was signed in Madagascar, with the insertion of the following words: "In accordance with the wish of Queen Victoria, the queen of Madagascar engages that there shall be no persecution of the Christians in Madagascar." Now the queen and her prime minister, with more than two hundred thousand subjects, are adherents to Christianity. The island is Christian.

What was accomplished in these communities is being done in Southern Africa, South America, Japan, and other countries. The work is yet only in its infancy, but enough has been done to indicate the triumphs that are yet to follow. Every year increases the number and power of the agencies employed. Faith in missions has grown broader and more intelligent. Christians do not now expect to see vast heathen territories occupied and time-worn systems of error and superstition overthrown in a day. The world's evangelization is the work of generations, perhaps of centuries. But our share in it is none the less important and binding. If we serve our generation faithfully, and our children theirs, and our children's children theirs, and so on down through the future, God will bless the common endeavor, and crown it with success. What matters it that our eyes behold not the end? We shall open them again when the roll of the centuries is complete, and surely we shall be glad for the part we sustain in helping to spread millennial glory over the earth.

Part II.

WHAT TO BELIEVE CONCERNING THE BIBLE.

HOW THE BIBLE WAS MADE.

"Tor pre-eminence. It is from the Greek, Belos (Biblos), The

HE BIBLE” is a name given to the Holy Scriptures by way of Book." The name is appropriate; for, as Sir Walter Scott said in his dying hour, "there is but one book, the Bible."

The Bible, as a whole, comprises sixty-six canonical (authoritative) books, of which twenty-two are historical, five poetical (written in Hebrew verse), eighteen prophetical, and twenty-one epistolary. These were written in three languages, at intervals during a period of sixteen hundred years, by no less than thirty-six different writers of every grade of culture, and moving in various spheres of life: "Two kings, one cup-bearer, one lawgiver, one judge, one scribe, and many prophets, one of whom was a king's chief minister, another a missionary, and a third a farmer's son; two fishermen, a tent-maker, a publican, a physician, and others." "Some were written in Asia, and some in Europe; some among heathen, others among true worshipers; two in Babylon, and one on a lonely island in the Mediterranean Sea." Unity, in such a variety, could not have been possible, except under the guidance of a Divine Mind. Only one type of doctrine and morality is unfolded in the entire record as suitable for man's adoption. This appears no less certainly in the glimmering symbols of Moses (B. C. 1450) than in the luminous codes of Paul and John sixteen centuries later.

It is a mistake to suppose the books of the Bible appeared in the same order as written. The Book of Job is probably the oldest book of the Old Testament. The books of the Old Testament are said to have been collected and arranged by Ezra, between 458 and 450 B. C. The books of the New Testament are believed to have come before the world in the following order: 1. St. Paul's epistles.