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THE -KING’S BUSINESS
among the Zulus today? He said there were 60,000. I thought deeply, as I stood on the grave of the first Christian of their number. “How many Christian adherents have you from the Christian families?” He replied, “Two hundred and fifty thousand.” This is the statistical result of seventy-five years of missionary effort. After Mr. Patten had made several trips around the continent and into the interior, from three different coasts, Africa had another meaning to him. To see the natives clothed, demonstrated what the gospel was doing. That the African, humanity’s most refractory ore, eould have his life shaped and transformed in so short a time is a demonstration of incalculable value to the world. Some day China, Japan, Europe and America will be glad for the work of the Christian missionary done in the Dark Continent. Though the Congo river was discovered seven years before Columbus reached America, it was not until after Stanley’s descent of it, in 1877, that Protestant mis sion work began there, says the Brethren Evangelist. The gospel is . now being preached in about twenty-five languages. The English Baptist Missionary Society subscribes $40,000 a year to the work and provides 600 responsible teacher-evangelists and other helpers. But the call for mis sionaries is still urgent. The only religion of this people is the degrading superstition of fetishism, and thousands of innocent men and women are killed on charges of witchcraft. Their religion has nothing to do with sin and salvation; they have no hope of eternal life. There is a general movement in each of the American Board Missions, says the Missionary Herald. Africa is rapidly com ing into .the light, but since the outbreak of the war nearly every section has been under a war flag. However, our mission stations are not affected. Islam is crowd ing down from the north, but has not yet reached the limit of our .fields. In the meantime both the East and West African Missions are consolidating and organizing.
of converts from the higher classes is greater in the communities affected by the Mass Movement. Missionaries are follow ing rather than leading. The American Methodist Episcopal Church reported the baptism of 140,000 in the past four years, and last year had to turn back 40,000 for further instruction, while 150,000 other applicants were refused because there were no teachers to instruct them. At present the American section of the Board of Governors of the Christian Col lege, Madras, is acting as an informal committee on the proposed United Medical College for Women to be established at Villore, says the Lutheran WOman’s Work. Since 1902 the idea of a medical college for women in South India has been advanced, Dr. Kugler being one of the earnest advocates of the movement. The preliminary arrangements for opening the college in 1917 rests largely with a general executive committee, composed chiefly of representative medical missionaries, Dr. Kugler included. The society obligates itself for $1000 annually in co-operation of the movement. For the first year after Rev. B. N. Bushill landed in India, he spent most of his time in language study. After, his first examina tion he began to get into the district a little, and spent a week at Baraut, forty miles from Delhi. The purpose of his visit to Baraut was a ‘‘language cure,” and while there he lived with a Hindoo in a strict divorce from his mother tongue. On landing in India, he was deeply impressed by two great facts or conditions. First, the extreme poverty of its people, th e,wages being low and the laboring class very great. The second impression was the great oppor tunity; , E AFRICA C. H. Patten of Boston relates in Men and Missions , from his visit among the Zulus: “As I stood and looked at the grave of the first convert (the result of eleven years’ faithful service), I asked the native pastor how -many church members were
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