THE KING’S BUSINESS
439
The G rip of th e O ctopus T"\R. MANUEL G. PRADO, director of the museum in Lima and a well known Peruvian publicist, writes: “What does Lima resemble? A dead sea in which churches and monasteries appear as barren and waterless islets. When a street is pro jected a nest of Jesuits is planted. When an avenue is marked out a building of the Salesians glares white. Convents, which for" lack of native inmates ought legally to be closed, fill up with foreign friars and, as in obedience to a word of command, are transformed into colleges. Thus the city’s people are ringed in'by more than a hun dred edifices built for worship and relig ious teaching, but do not possess a single public school worthy of a civilized city. “From the city the religious orders radi ate through the whole republic. They reign in Arequipa, dominate Cajamarca, invade Huanuco, extend to«Puno and end in mas- tering the remotest ranches. All this with the complacent permission of Congress and our Governors. One cannot have education where there are no normal schools, where all instruc tion is limited to the disjointed repetitions of manuals made up from alien works. All our doctors belong to the Catholic Union, to the Perpetual Adoration and to the Arth Confraternity of the Rosary.”— Recor/i of Christian Work. The Empress of Japan has presented to a Christian hospital for lepers in Kumamoto the sum of 6000 yen. An edition of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, in,popular Japan ese, has been recently published in Tokyo. The imitative Buddhists of Japan are planning, one more institution of Christian pattern—a central Buddhist tabernacle in Tokyo. The English Baptist Mission in Shantung has twenty native pastors in self-support ing native churches, each of whom looks after from ten to fifteen small communities of Christians. These Shantung Baptist
churches also support two Christian teach ers to evangelize non-Christian areas. A further, step has been taken towards winding up the opium trade in China. The last twenty-five per cent, of the opium shops in the Shanghai Municipal Reserva tion having been closed. The open period for the provinces of Kiangsi, Kiangsu and Kwangtung and the extention of time for the ,sale of Hongkong stocks having been passed. In Yucatan are hundreds of Koreans, nominally Christians,. but in need of pas toral guidance. They receive the Presby terian missionaries gratefully and are care ful to pay all expenses connected with such visits. Nineteen hundred Chinese are also resident in Yucatan, mostly in the city of Merida. W ork in th e Philippines. 'T 'H E last mission report of the American Methodist Church gives striking pic tures of the old superstitions of the Filipino and of the new religious faith which is ever more firmly rooting itself in the islands. At the Roman Church in Obanda one corres pondent bought an assortment of wax fig ures, of hands, feet, eyes and ears, being assured by the woman w;ho sold them that had he any ache or deformity of any kind it would be made whole by burning the corresponding wax figure' before an image of the Virgin. With him was an American who had lost two toes, When he com plained that thet receipt did not work, the seller appeared greatly surprised, but refused to refund. One of the Methodist pastors was for merly g swindler and high-salaried official of the erstwhile Filipino Republic. Then he found Christ and gave up all to do the work of an evangelist on $7 a month, supporting wife and four children, too. He is preaching a Gospel which makes saints 'from sinners. He keeps two boxes with souvenirs of his ministry. . The one contains a bag of bricks and stones which have been thrown on his entering various towns to preach. In the second are little
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