Now, as Nabonidos lived some six hundred years before our era, this would place Naram-Sin and Sargon I somewhere about 3800 B. C. No wonder, therefore, that scholars used to the subjective method of criticism manifested some skepticism about the correct rendering of the inscription, and attempted to ridicule the whole matter. Since that time, however, the earnest excavator has made excellent use of the pick and shovel, and has unearthed whole buried libraries with all their ancient treasure, and by means of other ancient clay books and monuments has corroborated the claim that great Sargon lived nearly four thousand years before the time of Christ. Moreover, the Assyriologist has shown that these ancient kings and their scribes were quite as proficient in chronology, and not half as much given to unprofitable theorizing, as the historical theologian of Germany and his faint echo in Great Britain and America.

The excavations of Ernest de Sarsec at Telloh, who only last year discovered a clay library of no less than thirty-three thousand tablets, have done much to show the great antiquity of Babylonian civilization. And still more so has the expedition sent out by the University of Pennsylvania, which has made such startling discoveries at Nippur, or ancient Niffer. Here, more than thirty-two thousand tablets of all kinds have been disinterred. So that now Professor Hilprecht is able to write, with as much assurance as any writer on ancient history, "Most of the early rulers of Babylonia, who were known to us only by name, and fourteen of whose very names had been lost, have been restored to history by this expedition." Not only have such a large number of texts of Sargon's time been found as to leave no longer any doubt about the powerful sway of this great monarch, but the script upon these tablets, though dating from about 4000 B. C., is also so perfect as to prove that it is not the product of an uncivilized people, but that writing and carving had been carried on for a long time, and that these inscriptions were executed in the "golden age of Babylonian history." We are, however, not left to mere inferences on this point, for while the American expedition was clearing the débris in the temple of Nippur, after having dug down some thirty-six feet the workmen came to a pavement made of huge bricks with the names of Sargon and his son, while some thirty feet under this pavement was still the "débris of other buildings." If, therefore, not less than thirty feet of rubbish was found between the foundations of Sargon's temple and that of the more ancient one built to Mullil, it is not unreasonable to conclude with Sayce that we have here to do with inscriptions dating as far back as 6000 or 7000 B. C. Among other things found under the pavement containing bricks with Sargon's name was a brick arch "in splendid preservation," as well as inscriptions of various kinds, not mere rude pictorial forms, but regular "cursive script, which we call cuneiform." So that, now, we may say with Sayce, "For the beginnings of Babylonian writing we have still to search among the relics of centuries that lie far behind the foundation of the temple of Nippur."

MISSIONARY REVIEW.

CHRISTIANITY IN WEST AFRICA.

WHATEVER may enter into the explanation of the fact, it still remains a fact that the Christian religion has not become the religion of West Africa to any such extent as affords a satisfactory guarantee that it will rapidly develop as an aggressive force in the near future. This is not a statement of a novel character, nor is it intended as a pessimistic view of affairs in that quarter of the globe. No less than forty-six native clergymen and laymen of the Church of England recently expressed the same judgment in a formal document presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the following words: "Christianity has seen about a century in West Africa generally, and yet it to this day wears the character of an exotic. It has not been able to root itself in the soil, to get the people generally to identify their interest and their life with its existence and that of its institutions, and exercise toward it that devotion There which they or their ancestors had exhibited toward heathenism. is no strong guarantee for permanence and continuity in this exotic character, and Africans who believe in the regenerating power of the religion and wish to see it cover the whole country, who have some knowledge of its fate in North Africa after many centuries of existence, and of the complete failure of even its Roman Catholic form in comparatively more recent times after over two centuries of existence, and who are not altogether ignorant of the causes of these repeated and signal failures, are naturally anxious to see a repetition of the sad and terrible calamity avoided." This is a startling declaration. The definite assertion of the religious conditions which now exist in Africa, as indicated in this document, entitles it to the best hearing and respect.

These Africans attribute much of this failure to white man leadership, to which they say they have been all the time subjected. And yet it is difficult to find in this all that these brethren affirm concerning it. The same failure cannot be predicated of East Central Africa, and yet Uganda has had white man leadership from the first till now; and from the first or early days of its history among those tribes Christianity has been taken hold of by the people with all the zest they ever showed toward heathen religions and has "rooted itself in the soil." The "seed of the martyrs" is the source of their assurance. There is still room, however, to heed the suggestion that overdependence on foreign societies and subjection to foreign domination is a danger to which Africans do well to give heed The native-born, captured, and released slave, who was for twenty-seven years bishop of the Niger-the renowned Bishop Crowther-certainly showed that much might be expected, if greater responsibility were thrown on the native Christians of even the West Coast. During his episcopate thousands of converts were won from the most debasing kind of heathen

dom and idolatry, many of them from cannibalism, infanticide, and other cruel practices; and some of these became the most aggressive agents in bringing about the splendid result of Christian congregations and churches and schools which have, in thirty years, made that African desert to blossom like the rose. Bishop Crowther was elevated to the episcopacy as an experiment, to prove that the negroes had capacity for evangelizing important sections of the continent by themselves, without the stimulus of the presence and supervision of Europeans, and ability for exercising the higher offices of the Church. The close of his administration, however, left the English Church to believe that the experiment was not such a success as warranted a continuance of the policy, and a white man was appointed to succeed Bishop Crowther.

THE TRACT AGENCY AND MISSIONS.

THE work of the Tract Society in missionary extension scarcely comes into the foreground sufficiently to accentuate it in the mind of the Church. The preacher who, rather than have a blank, contributes a dollar from his own purse, or chips it off from bulk collections, that it may be entered in the column of the Tract Society collection, is quite too typical of the estimate in which this department of our benevolences is held by the Church at large. We are prone to forget the order and balance of our official operations. The Church Extension Society is supposed to care for the edifices in which Christian services are to be held, while the Missionary Society has also to do with the men who preach the Gospel; yet both are missionary operations. The work of the Tract Society, as appointed by the General Conference, is still different, and includes the issue of that Christian literature without which the success of the Church Extension and Missionary Societies would not be so pronounced at home and abroad. As an ally of all other societies of the Church the tract organization is, in fact, indispensable, and is therefore entitled to the most general attention and support.

Take a few instances of the operations of the Tract Society. It assists the Conferences of western Europe in meeting the demand for literature. The society in Germany issues no less than six hundred different tracts, last year aggregating a million pages. The Scandinavian missions vigorously sustain their tract literature. Switzerland last year distributed six hundred thousand pages, and pushed the circulation of its paper, Friedensglocke, to thirteen thousand eight hundred and sixty copies. North India reports forty thousand regular subscribers for some issues of their tracts, so that, immediately on being printed, forty thousand are sent abroad, the subscribers paying postage and five cents per hundred for them. The Lucknow press alone issued two and one half millions of pages of tract literature last year, at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars, by the aid of the Tract Society. At Calcutta the paper, India's Young Folks, and a hundred thousand pages of other current literature were given to the public, all of which would have been impossible but for the aid of the Tract

Society. Far away, down at Singapore, for the Straits-born Chinese, who are without any literature, publications have been issued in the Malay language. In the far East the Christian Advocate, published at Foo-Chow, is issued monthly. It goes into the homes of the influential literati, and a high official of a part of the province where we have five thousand Christians expressed a desire that all official edicts be published in this Advocate. It is not quite self-supporting; the subsidy comes from the Tract Society. Methodist hymnals, catechisms, disciplines, and periodicals in Japan, Korea, Italy, Bulgaria, Mexico, and the Argentine Republic are printed and circulated, in whole or in part, by means of appropriations of the Tract Society.

In this country every Conference is represented in the grants made. These have been distributed to immigrants, inmates of hospitals, prisons, and asylums, soldiers and sailors, and pastors in their regular work, until, as the leaves of the forest, fourteen million pages were sent out during last year. Of our regular churches not less than twenty-five hundred received grants of this form of literature from this society. From the French in New England to the Chinese in California, and from the coke burners about Pittsburg to the Spanish-speaking populations of New Mexico, the silent influences of the tract have reached our wide population through the benefactions of this society, and yet the total contributions to this splendid organization from all the Conferences for the year are reported at but a little over twenty thousand dollars.

We distinctly wish to emphasize the missionary element in this literary benefaction. It is as distinctly and definitely missionary as any other agency used by the Church, and yet the total amount asked for this branch of the service is one cent for every thirty cents given to the Missionary Society. A close inspection of the publishing houses of our foreign mission fields would impress on us the fact of their most penetrating and farreaching influence. They reach persons and communities which by prejudice or other hindrance are positively beyond the reach of the living missionary. In the home fields the influence of tracts is also the same. Through all the mountains and valleys of our land, and in the great depths of vice to be found in hundreds of our cities these silent messengers are chiding consciences, offering consolation, inspiring the disheartened, enlightening the ignorant, and exerting influences which tend to save thousands from sinking to the level of the "submerged tenth," many of whom have become thus submerged by the resistless operation of evil forces with which they have been too weak to cope.

MISSIONARY OFFICERS IN COUNCIL.

THE Fifth Annual Meeting of the secretaries and directors of the several foreign missionary societies of the United States and Canada, held in New York city, January 12-14, suggested the growing unity between the several denominations and also the stage on which missionary discussion has somewhat recently entered, that of the consideration of polity. The

missionary magazines have come to recognize in part that their constituency now demand information on the comparative merits of the administrative and economic methods of conducting missionary operations, at home and abroad. The attempt to make comparisons, however, discloses to the several denominations many of their distinctive features which preclude parallel statement. This has long been known by experts. The statistical tables, for instance, regarding per cent of cost of administration and disbursements, are made on such radically differing bases as to render comparisons misleading. Yet an endeavor was made at this last session of the representatives of the various foreign missionary societies to find how far statistical forms could be adopted which would mean the same thing in all cases.

The effort to secure uniformity of practice in some other most important matters bids fair to be rewarded with a degree of success. No less than eighteen distinct decisions were unanimously agreed upon, such as the precedence of preaching over all other forms of missionary efforts; the restraint of native converts in their desire to come to this country or Europe for education; the discouragement of gifts outside the regularly approved estimates of missionary boards; the importance of frequent visitations of the officers of a missionary society to the several fields; the organization of simultaneous missionary campaigns; the value of the study of missions in theological institutions; and the necessity of a better definition of the relation of mission work to governments. The meeting also proposes the further discussion of many similar questions, such as uniformity in the salaries which are paid by the several societies to missionaries; the methods to be employed for raising missionary moneys; the "conversion" of pastors of the home churches who are not aroused on the importance of the evangelization of the world; the relation which higher education bears to the work of evangelization; the sending of lay missionaries to labor in foreign fields; the means of securing the best talent for foreign mission service; and the relation of industrial training to the development of mission churches.

The most interesting, and perhaps the most important, action was, however, the decision to make a call for a general conference of the missionary workers of the world at New York, in April, 1900. The committee appointed a year ago, to correspond with the societies in Great Britain and Europe on the desirability and feasibility of such a world's missionary conference to be held in this country at the close of the century, reported the uniform concurrence of all the societies which had been heard from, and which included nearly the whole list. Committees were also appointed at the present meeting to make further preparations for the holding of such a conference.

The representatives of the several woman's boards of foreign missions assembled for one day, January 15, and organized themselves into a conference similar to that of the general boards; and both these conferences will reassemble in 1898 as the guests of the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society.