King's Business - 1917-05

THE KING’S BUSINESS

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the neighboring province, having caught the contagion, was also financing one. This year these two provinces will support five missionaries and still another province puts an additional one in the field. This is a purely Filipino movement. All the mis­ sionary furnishes is suggestion and advice. The money is collected by Filipino preach­ ers, paid to a Filipino treasurer, and by him turned over to the support of the Filipino missionaries. It should be said that the Church of Rome has undertaken a great house-clean­ ing which is correcting many of the abuses of former days. Filipino Catholic students, after finishing their training in the islands,- are sent to Rome for advanced -instruction. Already some of these young priests have returned and are being sent into the prov­ inces where the Roman Church has fallen most into decay. Great sums of money have been collected in America and else­ where to restore ruined churches and to build schools and hospitals. Vet all this has not yet interfered with the progress of evangelical religion. In the past year, says our Methodist report, covering but little over eight months, more than 5000 con­ versions were reported, and these might as well have been ten or twenty thousand, had we the mission force to train and lead the native workers .—Record of Christian 11 ork.

steel blades, each about three inches long • and sharp as a razor, the weapons of the rooster in the cockpit., Scores of men who have heard the Word have repented and kilied their fighting cocks. Those who have been rich enough to own fori (spurs) have brought them to Pedro. No wonder the people have been allowed to tear up the church tiles to stone the preacher, for the priest is the largest stockholder in the local cockpit. The Filipino Methodist preachers are insistent on high moral standards for their people. During the quadrennium a young preacher was guilty of immorality under what some felt to be extenuating circum­ stances. When it was proposed to allow him to preach again the Conference leaders with practical unanimity burst out with: “No, he has disgraced the church and if we permit this the people will think that we are just like the friars. Protestantism is a pure religion and we must maintain its reputation for purity before the people.” These Methodist preachers in the islands are denying themselves to send the Word to other parts of the archipelago. Tithing their $7 a month salaries and collecting what they could from their flocks, they were just able some years ago to provide for a missinoary. The next year the preachers and- people of that province sup­ ported two missionaries instead of one, and

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