The Missionary Herald

have been influenced by the hope of temporary advantage, it is noticed that, as a rule, the greatest interest has been shown where most labor has been put forth. The interest is thus well grounded, and likely to be permanent. The carefulness of the missionaries in testing the character of the converts is worthy of special notice.

In the Mahratta Mission, as believers are largely from the humbler classes, who have the greatest difficulty in securing the means of subsistence for themselves and families, it is not easy to bring up the churches to a condition of independence; but examples of self-denial and sacrifice are not wanting. The eighteen pastors in the Madura Mission are wholly supported by the people, through a common sustentation fund, while the preachers more immediately concerned in developing the work in new places are a charge to the Board. It is remarked in this field that in spite of the famine, which swept away thousands of the people, and reduced nearly all to the greatest straits, the contributions for various benevolent objects were greater than ever before. These contributions have been made out of deep poverty, sometimes in handfuls of grain laid aside from the daily family allowance, sometimes in small copper coins, sometimes in larger quantities of grain, but everywhere the offerings have been the expression of a genuine hearty interest. It has seemed that whatever else these native Christians were obliged to give up, they would not be denied the blessing of self-denial for the cause of Christ.

There has been but little change in the methods of labor pursued in the India missions. The gospel has been regularly preached from Sabbath to Sabbath, at over three hundred different places. Thousands of pupils have listened to religious instruction in the schools. Bible readers and Bible women have gone from house to house, and found ready listeners. There has thus been a great amount of seed-sowing, which now only waits for the blessing of the Holy Spirit.

The missionaries are alive to the importance of higher Christian education for the training of an efficient native agency, and to meet the many forms of error coming in with the progress of western civilization. One hundred girls are reported in the female seminary at Ahmednuggur, and a still larger number in the boarding schools of the Madura Mission. New and commodious buildings will soon be finished for the accommodation of the girls' school at Oodooville. Jaffna College has had the special blessing of God in the conversion of half the young men connected with it. The theological seminary begun at Ahmednuggur is the first of its kind in Western India. No pains will be spared to make this institution, as well as that at Pasumalai, in the Madura Mission, worthy of the name, and prepared to send forth men to take up and carry forward the work begun by the missionaries.

The past year has been one of the most remarkable in the history of India; but great and cheering as have been the results, it is believed that they are but the first fruits of a far richer harvest. Great changes are imminent, such as call upon the church for the largest exercise of faith and prayer and effort.

The year 1878 will be remembered as one of the most event

ful in the annals of the North China Mission a year of famine, of pestilence, and yet of the greatest progress in the missionary work. As in India, so here, the famine has been overruled to the spiritual welfare of multitudes hitherto apparently indifferent to the gospel. The Bible has been studied and preaching listened to as never before. The self-sacrificing efforts of the missionaries in ministering to the physical necessities of the people have given emphasis to their words. Over twenty thousand persons living in more than one hundred villages, received aid at the hands of our missionaries from funds placed at their disposal by British Christians. Here, too, as in India, spiritual results have followed where previous instruction had been given, while very little religious interest seems to have been awakened elsewhere. The fact is remarkable as showing the value of previous efforts to have been far beyond the thought or even hope of the missionaries. Seven new churches were organized, and nearly two hundred members received on profession of faith. The story of the heathen temple transformed into a Christian church by the authorities of a Chinese village belongs to the romance of missions, and suggests a new solution to questions of church building. This mission has pleaded long for medical missionaries, not only for missionary families, but also to aid in the general work. In no country is there so fine a field for men or women possessed of medical education and thoroughly consecrated to the cause of Christ The time has come for enlargement in this field. Six or eight new families are imperatively needed to strengthen the hands of those already in the field and to occupy new centers of influence.

In the Foochow Mission it is still a time of seed-sowing, with results enough to encourage the hope of ultimate success. Miss Payson, after witnessing the very satisfactory growth of her girls' school, and much to cheer her in the changed lives of many of her pupils, is now on a visit to home friends. Christian education is more highly esteemed, and the women are becoming more accessible to the efforts of the missionary ladies. Much time has been given to the translation of the Scriptures into the colloquial languages. The medical work of Drs. Osgood and Whitney is greatly valued, more especially for the success in curing patients addicted to the use of opium. Foreign residents and native Chinese have shown their regard for it by subscriptions of over two thousand dollars for its support. Religious instruction is carefully attended to, so that no patient can fail of hearing of the gospel.

JAPAN. The three remarkable events of the year in the history of the Japan Mission were the completion of a translation of the New Testament, in which Mr. Greene has been engaged with missionaries of other societies; the occupation of Okayama as a new station on the Inland Sea, and the remarkable welcome accorded the missionaries by the authorities of the city; and the graduation of the first class of fifteen choice men from the training school at Kioto, all but one of whom devote themselves to Christian work in behalf of their countrymen. No better proof of the high character of these young men could be furnished than the graduating address of one of them published in the October number of the Missionary Herald, unless it be the order sent to this country for books by one of them, including such

works as Hopkins's Outline Study of Man, Hamilton's Metaphysics, Porter's Human Intellect, etc. This school has had in attendance during the year one hundred and twenty-seven pupils, and hardly less success attends Christian culture of girls at Kobe, Osaka, and Kioto; but direct personal labor for women in their home has special attractions for the missionary ladies.

The value of Christian literature as an evangelical agency among a people so intelligent and ready to read, is fully appreciated, and nearly three million pages have been issued from the mission press. Indeed, whatever is needed for the defense and propagation of the gospel in this country is required in Japan for a people so awake to new ideas, so exposed to the influences of an ungodly and a materialistic civilization.

MICRONESIA. Thirty-six churches, with nearly two thousand members, of whom over five hundred were added the past year, attest the success of missionary work in Micronesia. Hawaiian and American missionaries unite in this enterprise, and natives of Ponape follow the veteran Sturges into the regions beyond. Mr. Doane, after a brief experience in Japan, has returned to the field of his first choice, with enlarged experience and new consecration. The Morning Star visited twenty-six islands on her last trip, five of them for the first time, and is prepared for further exploration on the present voyage. The new captain has proved himself a skillful officer, and an earnest co-laborer with the missionaries. Mr. Bingham, compelled by ill health to reside at Honolulu, rejoices greatly in the turning of many to Christ in the Gilbert Islands, the scene of his earlier labors. With the help of Mrs. Bingham, he is doing what he can to supply them with the means of education and Christian culture.

On one island we hear of two hundred and fifty church members out of a population of one thousand, and in another that every adult is a professed follower of Christ. It is something quite unprecedented in our missionary history that native Christians, but two or three years out of heathenism, should be building large church edifices and school-houses, and meeting all the expenses of their teachers. Yet this is the record from the Mortlock Islands.

Dr. Hyde, besides making a great success of the North Pacific Institute at Honolulu, as a training school for native preachers and missionaries, has made himself eminently useful in other labors for the cause of Christ in the Hawaiian Islands.

DAKOTA.

Favorable reports are received from the Dakota Mission. The time has come, not only for enlargement of the work carried on at existing stations, but for new stations at other points. The time for reaching the Indian population is short. Already we hear of seven different lines of railway projected through the country occupied by the Sioux. The white man will soon occupy the land, and the Indian will be driven out unless the most vigorous measures are taken to prepare him for American citizenship. He must have a Christian education, a home, and a legal standing in the country. The possibility of civilizing the wild Sioux has been demonstrated beyond question by Dr. Riggs and his sons. Men who only two years ago were among the most turbulent and bloody Indians of the border are now eager for schools, busy building houses, and opening farms. At

the Santee Agency the acreage under cultivation doubled during the year, and the Indians are eagerly waiting such legislation by Congress as shall give them legal titles to the farms they have cultivated and the houses they have built. In the Normal School for young men, the Dakota Home for girls, Indian youth of both sexes, at comparatively small expense, can now be thoroughly educated and prepared for positions of influence among their own people. With some just sense of the value of the gospel, the Dakota Christians have organized a Home Missionary Society, which has raised over $800 during the past three years to meet the expenses of native teachers and preachers among the wild tribes. Forty-three new members were added to the eight churches during the year, making an aggregate membership of 599.

PAPAL LANDS. The work of the Board in Mexico has lost ground for want of men to carry it on. Mr. Edwards, left alone and in feeble health, was well nigh crushed under his many burdens. The return of Mr. and Mrs. Watkins, and the coming of Mr. and Mrs. Kilbourn, transferred from Monterey, have given a new impulse, and it is hoped that the early promise of this mission may be realized. The lawlessness and fanaticism of the people, easily aroused to acts of violence, may well enlist sympathy and prayer in behalf of those who are teaching and accepting a purer faith.

Opposition to the gospel in Spain is no less bitter, but is under some restraint from outward violence. The truth is nevertheless making its way, and nearly fifty additions are reported to the churches, including an interesting work at Bilbao, in charge of Mr. Gulick of Santander. A beginning has been made for the Christian education of girls that promises good results. The more fully the moral condition of the masses in Mexico and Spain is understood, the more important and necessary appears the work of the Board in their behalf.

In Austria no pains have been spared by the authorities to suppress all evangelistic teaching. In some cases the holding of every kind of religious service, and even presence at family devotions in any household but one's own, are forbidden. The ingenuity of a high church ecclesiasticism, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, is taxed to its utmost to prevent men from accepting the gospel in its simplicity, while the want of true church life in existing church organizations has led the more intelligent to renounce all belief in anything that bears the Christian name. The field is thus a hard one, harder in many respects than in a purely heathen land, while the need of the gospel is, if possible, yet greater. It is hoped that some relief from the restrictions now imposed may be secured through the intervention of the Evangelical Alliance recently convened at Basle, and that the patient persistence of the missionaries may be crowned with success. The repeated admission by persons connected with existing Protestant communions of their inability of themselves to secure the spiritual renovation of Austria, at once justifies and adds to the moral necessity laid on us of pushing forward the work begun.

The review now made gives but a very imperfect conception of the great work committed to this Board. We have cause for gratitude, and lively

hope for the future, that so much was accomplished in a year of trial and retrenchment, - that thirteen new churches were organized; that more than two thousand converts were enrolled among the disciples of Christ; and that seven hundred young men were gathered in higher institutions of learning, the larger part preparing to become teachers and preachers of the gospel; that twelve hundred young women in boarding schools and seminaries have enjoyed the personal influence and Christian instruction of educated women from our best institutions; that so great an advance has been made generally in the work of Christian education; that the native churches have shown such zeal in supporting their own institutions and in personal labors for their own countrymen; that new opportunities have been opened on every hand for the wider proclamation of the gospel; and that war, famine, and pestilence were so strangely overruled for the furtherance of the kingdom of Christ, in turning multitudes from darkness unto light. The new year opens hopefully, with the signal blessing of God, in larger means for the development of the work in hand, and for the establishment of new mis sions. With humble gratitude to God, and renewed consecration to Christ as our great Leader, let us press forward to new conquests in his name.