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 CHRISTIAN

CHURCH,

Kussian, each 75,000,000; Spanish, 42,000,000; and English, 111,000,000. In other words, English, which was the least influential of European languages, now holds the leading place, while French has fallen from the first to the fourth place; or, to put this fact into percentages, the increase of the diffusion of these languages has been in ninety years as follows :— GI'S per cent. French Germanl 150 Russian / 61-5 „ Spanish 450 English It will be seen that the increase of the Teutonic races is far in excess of that of the Latin races; and when we keep in mind the greater birth-rate in the Teutonic races,1 we can realize that, unless some great and unexpected change takes place, the future influence of the Christian nations will be increasingly in the hand of the Teutonic or . Protestant division of Christendom. (e) The importance and significance of the ascendancy of Christian nations will be best realized by placing side by side the population and area of a selected number of the Christian nations and the native or colonial populations and areas now under their rule. We draw our statistics from an interesting monograph carefully brought up to date by Lieut.-Colonel V. Murari Bra, instructor in geography in the Scuola di Guerra in Italy. Dependencies. Mother Country. Population. Population. Area. Area. 314,950 41,220,000 27,861,000 348,496,000 Great Britain 540,658 56,000,000 2,605,100 9,230,000 Germany 33,000 5,200,000 2,045,700 35,500,000 Holland 194,580 130,000 38,830 2,175,000 Denmark 443,060 9,636,000 United States 9,450,000 78,500,000 536,408 38,800,000 8,812,710 50,340,000 France. 477,300 600,000 286,648 32,000,000 Italy. • . 340,000 709,450 497,244 18,100,000 Spain. 310,000 3,000,000 22,430,000 135,000,000 Russia. 34,127,738 406,995,000 43,458,900 457,272,000 If we group the nations according to kinship, arranging them under the classes of Teutonic, Latin, and Slav races respectively, we get the following results :— Dependencies. Mother Countries. Area. Population. Area. i Population. Latin. Slav.

..

..

927,438 104,595,000 32,706,380 393,356,000 . 1,320,300 88,900,000 9,999,460 51,280,000 310,000 3,000,000 . 22,430,000 135,000,000

Thus the governing power of the Teutonic, Latin, and Slav races in Europe may be represented by the following figures:—For every square kilometre or square mile of mother country, the Teutonic races govern 35, the Latin races govern 7’5, and the Slav 00T3 square miles; and for every inhabitant in the mother country there are in the dependencies of the Teutonic nations 3’7 inhabitants, in the Latin *057, and in the Slav -002. It is no flight of rhetoric to say that almost two-thirds of the world’s population and four-fifths of its area are now under the government of Christian nations, and by far the largest share of this has fallen into the guardianship of the Teutonic nations, who govern not far short of 600,000,000 of people, or more than two-thirds of the whole popula1 The birth-rate of all European countries declined between 1875 and 1900, but the statement in the text is still substantially true, inasmuch as the birth-rate in Germany is still greatly in excess of the birth-rate in the Latin kingdoms. The decline in the birth-rate in Great Britain is serious, but it is nothing like the decline in France ; though all English-speaking people should earnestly consider the population question as it affects their own race.

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tion now under Christian rule. So far then as political and administrative influence is concerned, the ascendancy of the Christian nations is beyond all doubt. In this influence wealth counts as an important factor, and the accumulations of that class of power which belongs to what is called wealth are chiefly in the hands of Christian lands. They make the markets of influence. the world ; they direct by far the largest portion of its commerce. And when wealth is measured as so much per head of the population, the non-Christian peoples scarcely enter into the calculation of the political economists. It is no doubt true that in countries not yet commercially organized there .are no materials on which to base a calculation, but it is also true that in a sense it is only when the means of production are organized that wealth in any economic sense may be said to exist; and it is in the Christian countries that these means of power are practically concentrated. The wealth per head of the Christian nations varies from <£60 in Russia to <£302 in England; France stands here at the head of the Latin nations with <£253 per head, as England does at the head of the Teutonic nations. The average wealth of the Teutonic nations is £226 per head, that of the Latin <£140, and that of the Slav about <£6. (iii.) As a statistical measure of Christian energy, it will be convenient to notice some phases of Christian activity which have marked recent years. {a) There has been a very marked development of missionary enterprise (see Missions). It is difficult to present a statistical estimate of the force of this development. It will be best to point out a few salient facts. We shall first confine ourselves to that which is popularly called missionary work, viz., Christian labours carried on among heathen or nonChristian peoples. The number of separate societies for that purpose has largely increased during the last century. It has been estimated that in 1790 there were in Great Britain only two societies which contemplated missionary work as within the scope of their operations, viz., the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Neither of these societies, however, directed its work solely towards the heathen world: the former aimed at circulating Christian literature in all quarters; the latter paid, and rightly paid, special attention to the needs of Britons in the colonies and in foreign parts. A century has seen the establishment of numerous societies for direct and exclusive missionary work. It has been estimated that the number of missionary societies is little short of 300; some of these are small and comparatively poor, but others are large and important organizations, resembling great State departments, commanding and distributing large revenues, and entailing upon their committees of management wide and varied responsibility and an almost statesmanlike judgment in the handling of difficult and delicate problems. (6) There are in Great Britain alone twenty-nine foreign missionary societies. Four or five of these administer each an income of over £100,000 a year. They occupy nearly 10,000 stations and sub-stations; they employ 2739 European missionaries, upwards of 1800 women workers, and more than 27,000 native helpers. In the article on Missions a full survey of the condition and prospects of various missionary societies is given. Here it may be enough to notice that the United States missionary societies employ about half the number of male missionaries sent out by Great Britain, while their women missionaries nearly equal the British, being over 1700; their native agents are about 13,000; and the estimated missionary contributions (Protestant) of the