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MISSION FIELDS] {| These missions are largely supported by the Society of the Propagation of the Faith (est. in Lyons, 1822), Society of the Holy Childhood (est. 1843 as auxiliary to the former; “children for children”) and Society of the Schools of the East (est. 1855).
 * XIV.||| Lazarists (founded by St Vincent de Paul, 17th century).—Missions: Abyssinia, Persia, China (Peking or N. Chih-li, S.-W. Chih-li, Kiang-si, Che-Kiang), S. Madagascar.
 * XV.||| Oblates of Mary Immaculate (1840).—Missions: Ceylon (nearly all), S. Africa (Basutoland, Natal, Transvaal, Orange River Colony), the “Great North-West” of Canada (Athabasca-Mackenzie, Saskatchewan, St Boniface, New Westminster).
 * XVI.||| Salesians (founded by Don Bosco).—Missions: Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, Falkland Islands, Indians of S. America (Ecuador, Brazil, Argentine); some missions in Palestine.
 * XVII.||| Pallottines.—Missions: Cameroon, W. Africa; Australia (Beagle Bay, native settlement).
 * XVIII.||| Jesuits.—Missions: India (dioceses of Bombay, Poona, Calcutta, Madura, Mangalore, Trichinopoly), Ceylon (dioceses of Galle and Trincomalee), China (Kiang-nan, S.-E. Chih-li), Madagascar, Koango (W. Africa), Zambezia, Jamaica, British Guiana, British Honduras, Alaska.
 * XIX.||| Dominicans.—Missions: Asiatic Turkey (Mosul), Tongking (N., E. and Central), China (Amoy, Fokien), Curaçao, Trinidad.
 * XX.||| Franciscans.—Missions: Egypt, Tripoli, Morocco, China (N. and S. Shan-si, N. and E. Shan-tung, N. Shen-si, E., N.-W. and S.-W. Hu-pe). Capuchins: Aden and Arabia, India (dioceses of Agra, Allahabad, Lahore), Seychelles, Eritrea (Red Sea), Gallas, Cephalonia, Trebizond, Mardin, Crete, Caroline Islands, Araucania, Brazil, Bulgaria. Conventuals: Jassy (Rumania).
 * XXI.||| Benedictines.—Missions: Ceylon (diocese of Kandy), New Zealand (diocese of Auckland), N. American Indians (Indian Territory and Oklahoma), Australian natives (New Nursia).
 * XXII.||| Trappists.—Missions: Settlements in Natal (Marianhill), West Africa (Congo), China, Japan.
 * XXIII.||| Augustinians.—Missions: Philippines, China (N. Hu-nan), Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor (“Assumptionists”).
 * XXIV.||| Carmelites.—Missions: Bagdad, India (dioceses of Verapoly and Quilon).
 * XXV.||| Redemptorists.—Missions: Dutch Guiana.
 * XXVI.||| Passionists.—Missions: Bulgaria (diocese of Nicopolis).
 * }
 * XXI.||| Benedictines.—Missions: Ceylon (diocese of Kandy), New Zealand (diocese of Auckland), N. American Indians (Indian Territory and Oklahoma), Australian natives (New Nursia).
 * XXII.||| Trappists.—Missions: Settlements in Natal (Marianhill), West Africa (Congo), China, Japan.
 * XXIII.||| Augustinians.—Missions: Philippines, China (N. Hu-nan), Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor (“Assumptionists”).
 * XXIV.||| Carmelites.—Missions: Bagdad, India (dioceses of Verapoly and Quilon).
 * XXV.||| Redemptorists.—Missions: Dutch Guiana.
 * XXVI.||| Passionists.—Missions: Bulgaria (diocese of Nicopolis).
 * }
 * XXV.||| Redemptorists.—Missions: Dutch Guiana.
 * XXVI.||| Passionists.—Missions: Bulgaria (diocese of Nicopolis).
 * }
 * XXVI.||| Passionists.—Missions: Bulgaria (diocese of Nicopolis).
 * }

On figures given in H. A. Krose’s Katholische Missions-statistik (1908), the following totals of Roman Catholic Missions amongst non-Christians have been compiled: European priests, 7933; native priests, 5837; lay brothers, 5270; sisters, 21,320; catechists, 24,524; native membership, 7,441,215; catechumens, 1,517,909. The annual baptisms of adult heathen are 190,000; those of heathen children at the point of death, 450,000. Over 840,000 children are in lower schools, 66,000 in middle schools, and 90,000 in orphanages. The total number of schools is 24,000, of churches and chapels 28,000, and of mission stations 43,000.

Note.—Where figures for 1910 are quoted in this article they are really those of two or three years earlier, collected for the World Conference of 1910.

Orthodox Eastern Church. —When the tsar Ivan the Terrible (1533–1584) began the great advance of Russia into Northern Asia, a large number of missionaries accompanied the troops, and during the 17th century many thousands of Tatars were baptized, though from lack of fostering influences they lapsed into heathenism. Very little was done until 1824, when John Veniaminov (d. 1879), a priest of Irkutsk, afterwards Archbishop Innocent, began a career of evangelistic activity which has few parallels. He founded missions in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, Kamtchatka and throughout Eastern Siberia, and established the Orthodox Missionary Society at Moscow. In Altai (Central Siberia) the Archimandrite Macarius, and among the Tatars in south-east Russia with headquarters at Kazan the great linguist Ilminski, did similar work. In addition to the nine distinct missions (300 workers) in Siberia and the six (with 50 workers) in European Russia, the Orthodox Church (Russian) has three foreign missions: (1) in China, founded at Pekin 1714, in the face of Jesuit opposition; (2) in Japan, established about 1863 by Bishop Nicolai, a chaplain at Nagasaki; (3) in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, the bishop residing at San Francisco and having jurisdiction also over members of the church settled in the United States of America. Altogether the Russian Church spends over £30,000 annually on these missions, and works with the British and Foreign Bible Society in translating and distributing the Scriptures. In Japan the mission has become a practically independent branch of the Church.

The continuity of missionary enthusiasm maintained through the primitive, the medieval, and the modern periods of the Church’s history, operating at every critical epoch, and surviving after periods of stagnation and depression, is a very significant fact. It is true that other religions have been called missionary religions, and that one of them long held first place in the religious census of mankind. The missionary activity of Buddhism is a thing of the past, and no characteristic rite distinguishing it has found its way into a second continent. Mahommedanism indeed is active, and is the chief opponent of Christianity to-day, but the character of its teaching is too exact a reflection of the race, time, place and climate in which it arose to admit of its becoming universal. It is difficult to trace the slightest probability of its harmonizing with the intellectual, social and moral progress of the modern world. With all its deficiencies, the Christian church has gained the “nations of the future”, and whereas in the 3rd century the proportion of Christians to the whole human race was only that of one in a hundred and fifty, this has now been exchanged for one in three, and it is indisputable that the progress of the human race at this moment is identified with the spread of the influence of the nations of Christendom.

Side by side with this continuity of missionary zeal, a noticeable feature is the immense influence of individual energy and the subduing force of personal character. Around individuals penetrated with Christian zeal and self-denial has centred not merely the life, but the very existence of primitive, medieval and modern missions. What Ulfilas was to the Gothic tribes, what Columba and his disciples were to the early Celtic missions, what Augustine or Aidan was to the British Isles, what Boniface was to the churches of Germany and Anskar to those of Denmark and Sweden, that, on the discovery of a new world of missionary enterprise, was Xavier to India, Hans Egede to Greenland, Eliot to the Red Indians, Martyn to the church of Cawnpore, Marsden to the Maoris, Carey, Heber, Wilson, Duff and Edwin Lewis to India, Morrison, Gilmour, Legge, Hill, Griffith John to China, Gray, Livingstone, Mackenzie, Moffat, Hannington, Mackay to Africa, Broughton to Australia, Patteson to Melanesia, Crowther to the Niger Territory, Chalmers to New Guinea, Brown to Fiji. At the most critical epochs such men have ever been raised up, and the reflex influence of their lives and self-denial has told upon the Church at home, while apart from their influence the entire history of important portions of the world’s surface would have been altered.

If from the agents themselves we turn to the work that has been accomplished, it will not be disputed that the success of missions has been marked amongst rude and aboriginal tribes. What was true in the early missions has been found true in these latter times. The rude and barbarous northern peoples seemed to fall like “full ripe fruit before the first breath of the gospel.” The Goths and the Vandals who poured down upon the Roman Empire were evangelized so silently and rapidly that only a fact here and there relating to their conversion has been preserved. This is exactly analogous to modern experience in the South Seas, Asia and Africa, to a survey of which we now turn.

The South Seas.—Missionary work in the Pacific began with Magellan (1521), when in a fortnight he converted all the inhabitants of Cebú and the adjacent Philippine Islands! The Jesuits, Recollets and Augustinians also worked in Mariana, Pelews and Caroline Islands, though the two latter were soon abandoned. The beginning of modern effort was made by the London Missionary Society in 1797.