MORAVIAN MISSIONS.

COPIES of the Moravian, published at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and containing an abstract of the annual report for 1867, of "the foreign missions of the Unity," were marked for use by the editor of the Herald several months ago; but the amount of other matter, pressing for a place, has kept them long in their "pigeonhole." Brief extracts, presenting a summary view of the condition of the work, in different fields occupied by the Brethren, will be of interest still, to many read

ers.

"1. Australia. (Commenced in 1849.) This mission has been the centre of interest during the past year. The Lord has granted his blessing to the long proposed advance into the interior of this immense and almost unexplored island-continent, and three of the young brethren who were sent out for this purpose have penetrated as far as Lake Hope, in the neighborhood of which is found the last settlement of colonists, and around which large numbers of the aborigines are living. ... The brethren were 104 days on the road, the distance from Adelaide being about 700 miles.... Their original intention was to have advanced a considerable distance further into the interior, to the region in the vicinity of Cooper's Creek, where, according to the reports of Burk and other discoverers, there are large tribes of the natives, but, at least for the time, they felt quite unable to proceed, being completely worn out themselves, and their horses in such poor condition that they could travel no further. After some search they found a favorable place for a station at Lake Kopperamana, about 24 miles distant. The natives here are a more vigorous race than those found further south, being tall and very savage. They are said to be fond of human flesh, and often kill their children for the sake of eating them. Their conduct towards the missionaries was at first very friendly. Towards the end of May, however, there was a sudden change in

the demeanor of the savages, probably owing to the influence of other tribes. The lives of the brethren were seriously threatened, and the timely arrival of some police-soldiers alone saved them from a horrible death. In order not to be compelled to engage in a contest with the natives, they have removed to the campingplace of two other missionaries from Hermansburg, who arrived at the same time with them, hoping that by presenting a large force they may be protected from an attack.

"At Ebenezer, the station first founded in Australia, the progress made has been very encouraging.... The mission at Ramahyuck, in Gippsland, is also in a pleasing condition. . . . There are 2 stations (not counting that in the interior), 7 missionaries, 3 female assistants, 1 native assistant; 14 communicants, 6 baptized adults, 7 candidates, 25 "new people,” 1 child; in all, 56 persons under instruction.

"2. West Himalaya. — (1853.) On September 7, 1865, the first communion was celebrated with the first four converts.... The difficulties which the missionaries encounter on this field are peculiar to it, and render progress very slow. They have to do with a people who imagine themselves far better informed on religious points, and more virtuous, than those who come to instruct them, and their prejudices are almost unconquerable. After twelve years of apparently fruitless toil, six converts have been made.

"There are 2 stations, 4 missionaries, 4 female assistants; 4 communicants, 2 baptized adults, 2 candidates; in all 8 persons under instruction.

“3. Surinam.—(1735.) Mention was made in the last Annual Report of the dawning of a better day for the inhabitants of the dense forest region in the interior.... There are 12 stations, 34 missionaries, and 35 female assistants; 12,109 communicants and baptized adults, 5,839 candidates and "new people," 1,837 under discipline, 4,975 children; in all 24,760.

"4. The West Indies.-(1732.) The

stations are on the islands of Jamaica, Antigua, St. Kitts, Barbadoes, and Tobago, in the British West Indies, and on St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. Jan, in the Danish. The reports from these stations are on the whole of quite a satisfactory character. There has been a considerable improvement in the external condition of the people, the long and general drought having been succeeded by plentiful rains and bountiful harvests. Still the condition of the working class is yet a very deplorable one, and it will be some time before the losses of the past years can be made good.

"There are 40 stations; 46 missionaries and 46 female assistants; 4 native missionaries; 734 male and female native assistants; 14,924 communicants and baptized adults; 3,930 candidates; 14,172 children; in all, 33,026.

“5. South Africa. — (1736 — renewed 1792.) The station Baziya, which was totally destroyed by a whirlwind in 1865, has been partially rebuilt. This new mission amongst the heathen Caffres is making very satisfactory progress. The people are peaceful, anxious to be instructed, and punctual in attendance on worship. The church is often over-filled. At the southern lowland stations great distress continues to prevail, owing to the drought of 1865. There are 12 stations; 28 missionaries, and 28 female assistants; 3 native missionaries; 222 male and female native assistants; 3,540 communicants and baptized adults; 593 candidates; 1,008 "new people"; 4,975 children; 382 under discipline; in all, 8,755.

“6. Greenland. —(1733.) The reports received from the stations are in general such as call for thanksgiving to the Lord. ... There are six stations; 14 missionaries, and 11 female assistants; 56 male and female native assistants; 1,216 communicants and baptized adults; 1 candidate; 104 under discipline; 9 "new people"; 459 children; in all, 1787.

“7. Labrador.—(1770.) The spiritual condition of the congregations is a very pleasing one, and the past year has been one of blessing also in externals. There are 5 stations; 17 missionaries and 15 female assistants; 34 male and female as

sistants; 637 communicants and baptized adults; 10 candidates; 10 under discipline; 9" new people"; 365 children; in all, 1,022.

"8. The Mosquito Coast.—(1848.) The visitation of the hurricane of 1865 has not been without its blessed influence upon the hearts of the people, as has been evidenced in many ways. There are 6 stations; 7 missionaries and 6 female assistants; 11 male and female native assistants; 248 communicants and baptized adults; 86 candidates; 328 children; in all, 662.

9. North American Indians. The mission among the Cherokees has been reorganized, and progress of an encouraging kind is reported."

Mention is made also of "the mission among the Delawares in Canada, and in Kansas." The following summary of statistics is presented :·

"1. Missions. Number of mission provinces, 15; stations, 88; preaching-places, 307.

"2. Laborers. Number of missionaries, 160; female assistants, 151. Total of la borers sent out by the church at home, 311. Number of ordained native missionaries, 7; native assistants, (as far as reported,) 580; female ditto, 407; Scripture-readers, 13; leaders of meetings, 45. Whole number of native laborers, 1,052. Whole number of laborers, foreign and native, (as far as reported,) 1,363.

"3. Schools. Number of training-schools, 7; station ditto, 80; country ditto, 65; Sunday ditto, 86. Whole number of schools, 238. Scholars in station and country schools, 12,904; in Sunday-schools, (children and adults,) 11,852. Whole number of scholars, (as far as reported,) 24,756. [From Surinam, there are no figures in the report on this point. In 1865, the whole number of scholars was 2,338.] Number of male teachers (natives) 117; female ditto, 75; monitors, 498; Sundayschool teachers, 1,090. Whole number of teachers, 1,780.

"4. Converts. Number of baptized members, 32,801; candidates, 7,167. Whole number of adult converts, 39,968; number of "new people," 4,401; number under discipline, 2,336; baptized children,

"5. The Financial Statement. The total receipts, from all sources, during the past year, were 100,280 German dollars; the total expenses, 118,072. From the

51,425 thalers; from Great Britain, 38,687; from America, 10,164. [The German dollar, or thaler, is at the present time equal to about one dollar in our currency].”

WHAT DOES THE WITNESS KNOW?

IN an address before the meeting of the (English) General Baptist Missionary Society, in June last, General Sir Arthur Cotton said: "During many years, when I was traveling over the Madras Presidency repeatedly, and over parts of Bombay and Bengal, I was brought into contact with missions and missionaries, and on this ground I have a sort of right to bear a testimony on the subject. Many come home, I know, who have not acquired one single item of information respecting missions, but who set themselves up to enlighten other people. In respect to other matters, such as irrigation, I find that long series of letters are sometimes written by men absolutely without information, who have never seen the works, and have never conversed with the people. In the same way opinions are passed upon missionary operations by those who have no knowledge of the matter, and are entirely adverse to the whole thing.... As to the missionaries employed in various districts, I have met with a very great number, and have known many of them very intimately, and have resided where they labored, and this I can most fully testify, that almost without exception they were faithful, devoted, earnest men, -men of God, who really knew the truth themselves, and knew how to communicate it to others; some of them men of first-class abilities and administrative power. I don't know a case of a mission-station where converted heathens are not to be found, persons affording satisfactory evidence that they are true disciples of the Lord; yet, in estimating what has been done, we must not look so much to cases of individual conversion

as to the general effects that have been produced."

An article was published some time since in the Foreign Missionary with reference to this matter, — unfavorable statements through ignorance, — which states: "Many. are sadly, and not a few wilfully, ignorant of the great missionary movements of the age.... This ignorance characterizes not a few who have abundant opportunities to become conversant with both the workers and the work. Among this latter class, are travelers who pass through the very region where missionaries are toiling and churches gathered, who either pay no attention to them, or speak disparagingly of what has been done. Thus the opinions of Taylor, Burton, Reade, Melville, and many others who could be named, as to the fruits of missionary effort, are but little worth. One of them stated in his letters respecting a heathen city where thousands of youth were daily under Christian instruction; where native ministers were regularly preaching the gospel, and several churches had been organized; he believed there were some missionaries in that place, but he could not hear that they had made a single convert.

"There are others sojourning for years at mission stations, for trade and gain, who have the best opportunities of knowing what has been achieved, yet having no sympathy in such endeavors, and keeping wholly aloof from them, have and give wrong opinions to others of missions and missionaries. In the letters of one of this class, a charge of extravagance and display was brought, some years ago, against certain missionaries, because in their houses they had mahogany doors, when the patrons of the society were content with

pine. The charge was true, but upon investigation it was found that as mahogany was so common in that country, and pine would have to be imported at great expense, the latter would have been extravagance in their case. . . .

"There are again, Christian ministers and laymen pushing their way to the East for health, relaxation, or other causes, but whose statements are not always reliable as to what missionary work has been accomplished. At a late anniversary of the Turkish Missions Aid Society, Dr. Bliss mentioned a case in point, which is not confined solely to Syria: "He knew an American clergyman who, in visiting Syria, met a friend of his, the Rev. Mr. Washburn, one of the American missionaries. This clergyman remarked to Mr. Washburn, that he did not think it was worth while for missionaries to be employed in Syria, as they did not seem to accomplish anything. Mr. Washburn said to him: Did you hear Dr. Thomson preach this morning?' 'No,' was the reply, 'I did not know that there was any service.' 'O, yes there was,' said Mr. Washburn, he preached in English this morning.' 'Indeed!' said the clergyman, 'I should like to have heard him.' The conversation was continued as follows: Did you hear Dr. Van Dyke preach in Arabic this • afternoon?' No; you don't mean to say that he preached in Arabic?' 'Yes; and he has a congregation of two hundred persons every Sunday morning.' 'Did you visit any of the schools at Beirut?' Schools! Do you mean to say that you have got schools here? I am glad to hear that you are going on so well.' • Did you see the printing-press? Printing-press! Have you got one?' 'O, yes; we have a printing establishment in which as many as twenty persons are employed.' Thus, but for this conversation, that clergyman, who was really a good man, might, when he got back to America, have told people there that the missionaries had never done anything."

It would be easy to multiply instances like these. "False witness" is very often borne against missions and missionaries; sometimes through malice, and sometimes through in scusable ignorance.

THE OPEN FIELD IN CHINA.

MR. BLODGET, of the North China mission, sometimes sends to the Missionary House what he styles "occasional notes." In those, on the 14th of January last, he wrote from Peking: "Yesterday, two men from a distant place, came four or five times to the chapel inquiring for me, and desirous to obtain books to take home with them. Ascertaining this fact in the evening, I sent for them at once. One of them soon appeared. He was a young man of some official rank, whose residence is in Manchuria, one thousand miles northeast from Peking, and about eighty miles from the Amour River. He was entirely ignorant of Christianity—whether as taught by Protestants or by Roman Catholics— and expressed his desire to learn, and for this end, to take books with him to his own home. He leaves in a day or two with a train of twenty carts. They will journey perhaps thirty miles each day.

"Some idea of the magnitude of the work to be done in China may be gained by following this young man in thought, through towns, cities, and villages, wholly ignorant of the gospel, to the end of his long journey of 3,000 li; then, in thought, taking a longer journey to the west, and still another to the southwest, and a fourth to the south, each of them along the great lines of travel, through a densely populated country which is open to the messengers of truth, and now waits, in the plan and providence of God, to hear the word of life."

THE MEN WANTED.

MR. CALHOUN, of the Syria mission, in a recent letter, referring to the need of men for mission service, says: We need self-denying men, men who will give themselves to the work of saving souls, and to nothing else; who will be ready to go anywhere where duty calls. We need men who make no reserves, who consecrate the whole life to the service of the Master. Others will assuredly faint by the way. The man who consecrates but half his life will very likely ere long find that too large a sacrifice; while he who

fully consecrates the whole, will ever be deeming his sacrifice too small. The one will work with a heavy, grudging heart, the other hopefully and joyfully.

"We need men who know Christ; who know him as a personal, intimate friend; and who, ever conscious how little their knowledge is, are ever striving after more. Such will be at home in the market-place and in the desert. Thankful for the privileges of Christian fellowship, they can still live on Christ when that fellowship is wanting. Lo, I am with you,' has with them a meaning. He is with them, and they know it. I am fearful that we are associating too much of our religion, and too much of our Saviour, with the everlasting future-with the rest and the blessedness of heaven; and too little with the conflict and the toil of this mortal pilgrimage. The missionary cannot be strong, the private Christian cannot be strong, the church cannot be strong, but in the life hidden with Christ in God. We shall need Christ in heaven -heaven will be a blank without him; but we need him almost more as a personal, living, present, and so felt to be, friend, in the midst of our efforts to save the perishing souls of our fellow-men. God grant that all our young brethren who go forth may be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. And may those who send them forth, ministers and people, be always praying with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, that utterance may be given them, that they may open their mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.' I would commend this chapter, the sixth of Ephesians, from the 10th verse to the 20th, to all Christian people.

I don't just like to turn here to a secular qualification, but perhaps it is well. I would recommend to all young missionaries to study book-keeping, at least in some simple form. They will find the benefit and the comfort of it all along. It is a very awkward and a very embarrassing matter, this not knowing how to keep accounts. If there be accounts, great or small, they should be kept; and it is easy to keep them. The time may come, for aught I know, when missionaries will take

not only their lives, but their purses (with nothing in them perhaps) in their hand. But under this present dispensation, there are wives, and houses, and native helpers, and teachers, and children's shoes and clothes, all of which involve the idea of accounts, and so of a moderate knowledge of book-keeping."

A NATIVE PASTORATE.

ANOTHER illustration (of which we have so many) of the happy results of putting natives in the mission fields into the full work of the ministry, as pastors of churches, appears in the annual report recently received from Ceylon. Some readers will remember letters of much interest, published in the Heralds for September and October last, respecting the ordination of such a pastor at Batticotta. The report now received says: "Though the desirableness of having a native pastor had been brought before that church in previous years, they seemed not ready for it. Now, however, it was a movement started and urged on by themselves, and the result has been in advance of our expectations. There was a cordial unanimity throughout the whole movement, which indicated a higher than human guidance; and since the ordination of the pastor, there has been apparent an increasing satisfaction and confidence in him on the part of the church. His salary has thus far been paid promptly, without the delay of a day, and without care or thought on his part. Both the pastor and the members seem to rise to meet the responsibilities assumed, beyond expectation. It is instructive as well as encouraging to see them throwing out new thoughts, and themselves originating plans of action, which had in former times been urged upon them with apparently little or no. effect. The church seems now to be in a position to increase in strength and numbers, till it shall become a great power for good in the land. On the last Sabbath in the year, eleven were added by profession of faith. It was a precious ingathering; and we trust but the beginning of many more and greater accessions."