Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/538

Rh 516 MISSIONS world with a network of mission outposts, which within the last century have won nearly two millions of converts to the Christian faith. The continuity of missionary enthusiasm maintained through the primitive, the mediaeval, 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 occupies the first place in the religious census of mankind. 1 But 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 ; while, as for Mohammedanism, the character of its teaching is too exact a reflexion of the race, time, place, and climate in which it arose to admit of its becoming universal. 2 These and other religions of the far East may still maintain their hold over millions, but it must be admitted that their prospect of endurance in the presence of advancing Christianity is very small, and it is difficult to trace the slightest probability of their harmonizing with the intellectual, social, and moral progress of the modern world. With all its deficiencies, the Christian church has gained the &quot;nations of the future,&quot; and whereas in the 3d 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 five, 3 and it is indisputable that the progress of the human race at this moment is entirely 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, mediaeval, and modern missions. What Ulfila 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 Boni face 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 Eed Indians, Martyn to the church of Cawnpore, Marsden to the Maoris, Carey and Marshman to Burmah, Heber, Wilson, Milman, and Duff to India, Gray, Livingstone, Mackenzie, Steere, Callaway to Africa, Broughton to Australia, Patteson to Melanesia, Mountain and Feild to Newfoundland, Crowther to the Niger Territory, Brett to Guiana. 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 &quot; full ripe fruit before the first breath of the gospel.&quot; The Goths and the Vandals who poured down upon the Koman empire were evangelized so silently and rapidly that only a fact here and there relating to their conversion has been preserved. Now this is exactly analogous to modern experience in the South Seas, America, and Africa. We must here content ourselves with a cursory survey 1 Max Miiller, Chips, iv. p. 265. - Newman, Grammar of Assent, p. 424. 3 Lightfoot, Comparative Progress of A ncient and Modern Missions, 1-. 8. of what missionary enterprise has accomplished in those regions and among the more civilized nations of Eastern Asia. The South Seas. That missions have done much in these regions in suppressing cannibalism, human sacrifices, and infanticide, humanizing the laws of war, and elevating the social condition of women, is a fact confirmed by the researches of Meinicke, Waitz, Gerland, Oberlander, and even of Darwin. 4 In Australia work among the aborigines, wherever it has been zealously conducted, has been blessed with signal success. Amongst the Papuans the Moravian stations of Ebenezer in the district of Wimmera, and Ramahyuck in that of Gippsland, can point to their little villages of 125 native Christian inhabitants, their cleanly houses, and their well-ordered churches. In the district of South Adelaide, at Point Macleay, the Scottish Presbyterian Mission has been similarly successful, while in New Zealand the native population was converted almost within a single generation. In the islands north and north-west of Australia the Dutch missionaries have been especially successful in the Minahassa (see CELEBES), of whose 114,000 inhabitants more than 80,000 have been won over to the Christian faith, forming 195 communities with 125 schools; and in southern Borneo, the Rhenish Mission in the south and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the north have been enabled to establish themselves firmly, while the former society has also done a great work among the Battaks in Sumatra. Amongst the dark-coloured races of Polynesia missionary work has made great advances through the labours of the London Missionary Society, the &quot;Wesleyans, and the American Board. Making Tahiti its basis of operations, the first-named society has carried on missionary operations in the islands of Australasia, Hervey, Samoa, Tokelau, and Ellice, while the American Board has witnessed equally favourable results in the Sandwich Islands, and in Micronesia (Caroline, Marshall, and Gilbert Islands) the agents of the Hawaiian Association are actively at work under the direction of American missionaries. In Melanesia the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Wesleyans, the London Missionary Society, and the Presbyterians are all actively engaged. The Fiji group stands out as one of the most promising centres of Christian civilization, and the governor, Sir A. Gordon, was enabled to report in 1879 that, out of a population of about 120,000, 102,000 are now regular worshippers in the churches, which number 800, while over 42,000 children are in attendance in 1534 Christian day schools. The Loyalty Islands have been occupied partly by Roman Catholic missions and partly by the London Missionary Society, while in the New Hebrides the missionaries of the 1 rcc Church of Scotland and of the Presby terian churches of Cr.nada, New Zealand, and Australia, in spite of many obstacles, the unhealthiness of the climate, and the variety of the dialects spoken, have upwards of 3000 natives receiving Christian teaching. 800 communicants, and 100 native teachers. On the islands of Banks, Santa Cruz, and Solomon, the English Episcopal Church is achieving no little success, sending native youths for months at a time to Norfolk Island to receive instruction, whence they return again in order to spread the knowledge of truth at home. These islands will ever be famous in connexion with the martyr death of the noble Bishop Patteson. Tlie Uncivilized Peoples of America. The quiet humble labours of the Moravians have accomplished much in Greenland and Labrador, whilst among the Indians of Canada and the people of Hudson s Bay the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has not laboured in vain, nor the Church Missionary Society in the dioceses of Rupertsland, Red River, Saskatchewan, and Moosouee. At Columbia, on the coast of the Pacific, a practical missionary genius named William Duncan has succeeded in civilizing a bod} of Indians degraded by cannibalism, and at his Metlakahtla mission stands at the head of a community of some thousand persons, which has a larger church than is to be found between there and San Francisco. Testimony to the value of the results achieved was borne in 1876 by Lord Dufferin, then governor-general of Canada, who declared that he could hardly find words to express his astonishment at what he witnessed. Amongst the Indian tribes of the United States work is carried on by the Moravians, the American Board of Missions, the Presbyterians of the North and South, the Baptists, the Epis copal Methodists, and the American Missionary Society ; and the result is that 27,000 Indians, divided amongst the 171 communities of different denominations (including the Roman Catholic) are in full membership with the church, and have 219 places of worship, besides 366 schools attended by about 12,222 Indian children. The Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Creeks, the Chickasaws, have their own churches, schools, and academics, and may compare favourably both intellectually and morally with their white neighbours in Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. 5 Amongst the negroes in the United States more than 1000 places of worship have been built since the last war, while the American Missionary Association alone has erected 26 academies with about 6000 students, for the purpose of 4 See Christlieb, Fur tijn Missions, p. 88. 6 Ibid., pp. 98, 99.