MISSIONARY REVIEW.

PROTESTANTISM IN MADAGASCAR.

THE French have ventured to abolish slavery in Madagascar, an act which has been held for many decades to be perilous because the Hovas, the most vigorous race on the island, are the slave masters, and it was thought dangerous to legislate thus boldly against them. This is but one of the good things the French government has done in Madagascar, but unfortunately the Jesuits dominate its religious movements, possibly laying claim to do so because of their agency in bringing the island to France. The directors of the London Missionary Society have felt constrained to issue a circular stating the case of the native Protestant Malagasy Church, in which they say that the Protestant natives of Madagascar are in sore straits. They write of them: "In the 'dark days' of persecution (1835-61), to which they often touchingly allude, they had to undergo long-continued cruelty and injustice at the hands of their own sovereign. Last year, again, on the outbreak of rebellion and antiforeign feeling following upon the French annexation, it was the leaders of the native Protestant Churches who chiefly suffered. Their friendly relations with Europeans and their prominence as Christians, together with their refusal to join in heathen rites, rendered them specially obnoxious to the rebel bands which at that time were devastating large districts of the central province. Consequently they, more than all others, were the objects of attack. Their houses, chapels, and schools were burned to the ground; their property was looted and destroyed. Were it necessary, the directors could furnish a detailed narrative showing what these Malagasy Protestants then endured." The Protestant world must recognize the right of the London Society thus to express its poignant disappointment, after having spent many millions to civilize and Christianize this island.

The position of Protestant missionaries in Madagascar is exceedingly precarious. They are exposed as Europeans to the wrath of the native tribes in arms against French rule, who do not distinguish between foreigners, and on the other hand the Jesuits seem to have control of French colonial policy. It is enacted that instruction in schools must be given in the French language, and the London Society has handed its schools over to the Protestants of Paris; but their ownership of property is now jeopardized, the Jesuits by trickery and misrepresentation attempting to obtain places of worship raised by Malagasy Protestants. The Jesuits are in many cases the only interpreters to which the government officer has The Friends (Quakers) Foreign Missionary Society is in trouble over the loss of their hospital buildings, on which they have spent some thirty-five thousand dollars, besides meeting two thirds the annual cost of support. The French took these buildings for military purposes, as they had a right to do, and the missionaries nursed their sick and wounded

access.

soldiers; but the queen, having been made a Roman Catholic, asked the Mission to relinquish the property under a legal technicality of which she avails herself. The London directors say that this Jesuit persecution, "though differing in form, is carried on with a bitterness, audacity, persistency, and unscrupulousness equal to anything that has marked persecutions in days gone by."

THE FAMINE IN INDIA AS A MISSIONARY OPPORTUNITY.

THE largest area in India ever affected by famine at one time within the present century is that of the territory now under distress. On the authority of the government of India the statement has been published that thirtyseven millions of people are in districts where the scarcity of food is so great that life cannot be maintained, while there are in addition forty-four millions of people in districts where there is not sufficient food to maintain health. This makes a starving population equal to one and one third times the population of the United States. This does not mean that the whole of the thirty-seven millions will die of starvation, or that all of the forty-four millions will fail in health from want of food. But it does mean that death by starvation and by diseases superinduced by poor food threatens probably one in ten, or perhaps eight millions of people, while the death rate among twice as many millions more is greatly advanced.

The government of India is expending a vast sum of money, and the officials are working beyond their strength in their effort to save life, but it is absolutely beyond the power of the government to keep the people alive. A penny a day is the wages paid on the relief works, food is at famine prices, and large numbers are unable to go to the relief works. There is great difficulty in getting food to the homes of the people where starvation stalks, many being too feeble even to carry it to others. The injustice with which it is distributed by dishonest native agents or seized by the strongest among the villagers, without regard to claims of equity or necessity, also contributes to increase the dire distress which prevails. There is here a large field for private charity, and God seems to call on the Christian world, which has long prayed for the conversion of India, to supplement the subsistence rations provided by public funds, specially among the sick, the infirm, and the little children. The duty is pressing to provide for the maintenance of orphans, and to help those who shall survive, but have lost all, to make a fresh start in life.

It would be far from easy to name a government that has, within the same period and under similar conditions, done so much to become an "earthly providence" to so many millions of people as the British government in India. It has constructed vast systems of irrigation, of water storage, and of railways to prevent the occurrence of famine on a large scale; but all are dependent on the "rain from heaven," and when that fails no human providence can command the conditions. Some slight relief in food supply may have been realized since the first of April, with a harvest of a few kinds of grains. If it rains in June there will be some

hope of the October harvest. But already widows and orphans by hundreds of thousands call for attention and aid. The orphans in particular afford a vast field for Christian missionary enterprise.

THE STATEMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN MISSION COUNTRIES. SOONER or later, in all successful work among the heathen, the question of a creed comes to the front. The missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church have gradually grown up without any serious trouble on this line. Very early in the history of each of these missions among the great heathen nations the Discipline was translated into one or more of the vernaculars of the several countries, and the native Church has grown up around it without much questioning as to whether it is the best form of symbolic expression. While some have recognized that many of the Articles of Religion are negations, and might possibly suggest rather than repress forms of erroneous beliefs, it has been held on the other hand that these negative propositions only have reference to such inquiries as may arise on the advanced consideration of Christian doctrine, and that it is well for the beginnings of theological thought to be guarded against misconception. Mr. Wesley and the founders of Methodism greatly abbreviated the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England for Methodists. There has, as yet, been little temptation to modify our Twenty-five Articles for our foreign churches, though there can be scant reason for requiring Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese Christians to express any political faith in the republic of the United States as defined in the twenty-third article. The contest in Japan has precipitated, for that country, the question as to how far it is desirable to reproduce the old theological and ecclesiastical controversies that have heretofore excited the Western Churches. The Church of England societies in Japan have made a sweeping concession to the Japanese sentiment by excluding the Thirty-nine Articles altogether from the Japanese prayer book. Bishop Bickersteth justifies this action thus: "Now, the Thirty-nine Articles have no ecumenical authority. They are English of the English, an outcome of the special circumstances of the Church of England in the sixteenth century. They are not, and do not pretend to be, a complete statement of Christian doctrine, and were certainly never intended to be imposed as a standard of orthodoxy outside of the British Isles." There is certainly room to exercise robust common sense in all such matters. Nobody can suppose that Bishop Bickersteth does not hold to every iota of doctrine in the Thirty-nine Articles. Yet their incorporation in a Church of totally new environment is a separate question.

JAPANESE IN TRANSITION.

THE "curiosities of literature" must include the discussions of the Japanese weekly press on the subject of religion. Some of these have recently been occupied with the relation of Christian Churches to foreign

missionaries. Thus, they have declared, "The foreigners are the lords, and we are the servants; " and again, "The only possible way of effecting union between foreigners and Japanese is for the former to recognize our independence, and to show themselves ready to meet us on equal terms." It was this sort of sentiment that drove the Doshisha trustees to turn the American Board out of its own school property, which another Japanese paper declares to be a "narrow-minded, antiforeign policy," that has not "met with the approval of the Christians generally." It adds: "Hence the episode, instead of furthering the cause of independence in the Christian Church, has proved a hindrance to it." Another weekly Japanese paper says that "the day is not far distant when mixed residence will be allowed, and foreigners will be settling in the interior and practicing their religion in our very midst." The writer therefore regrets the antiforeign attitude adopted by many Christian Churches at the present time.

THE PLAGUE AT BOMBAY.

SEVERAL features of contrast between heathenism and Christianity are finding illustration in the city of Bombay in the presence of the plague which has driven three hundred and fifty thousand persons from the city and has slain several thousands. The superstition of the heathen furnishes a ready explanation of the causes of the great calamity. One reason assigned for the presence of the disease is that the queen of England sent the plague because her statue was defaced a few months ago by some miscreant pouring tar over it; another is that the government will keep the plague there till the livers of five hundred men are sent to the empress. These stories affect missionary work as the people grow terrified at the approach of the Bible woman or the missionary seeking to carry relief, lest these be spies. They refuse to have their houses fumigated, or to carry their sick to hospitals, and live on in the filth, dampness, and darkness of heathenism.

It is said that the native Christians fare far better because of their increased intelligence and attention to hygiene, and because they are less fearful. Very few of them have run away, and most are ready to help save others at risk of their own lives. Many of them go humbly to their work every day, reading the ninety-first psalm. This has attracted the attention of the heathen, who say, "Yes, your God is stronger than our gods, and more merciful;" and some of them pray their gods to let the disease spread among English and Christians, and not to let their people suffer. It is said that up to a late period in February only two native Protestant Christians were known to have died of the plague, though the Roman Catholic natives have suffered a great deal. These, however, live like the native heathen; and as the plague is a "dirt" disease, the substitution of a crucifix for an idol, and of "Hail Marys" for the name of Hindu gods, does not avail against filth, ignorance, and the loss of those moral and religious qualities which are conducive to the resistance of disease.

FOREIGN OUTLOOK.

SOME LEADERS OF THOUGHT.

Wilhelm Schmidt. Although his opinions are not universally shared by his theological brethren, and, though some of them regard him as able rather than learned, he is, nevertheless, acknowledged to be a powerful factor in present-day thought. We give his views on a few closely-related points. Religion, he holds, is a universal phenomenon of humanity. And as there is no people without a religion, so no individual human being can be originally and absolutely without religion, since each is a product of the general culture of the nation and, with his entire mental life, is rooted in the same. He can become irreligious, but he cannot be religionless. All the various attempts to explain the origin of religion in man by natural psychological processes, from impressions made by the world of sense, or from practical ethical motives, are inadequate. Hence it is necessary to assume a religious capital with which man is originally endowed, a consciousness of God which he finds within himself as soon as he comes to self-consciousness. He cannot avoid entertaining this consciousness of God; and since he is not its real efficient cause it must be regarded as the effect of a divine operation in and upon him. This native consciousness of God is monotheistic. Since it is a necessary effect, its actuality is a guarantee of the objective reality of the idea of God. Its influence, however, upon the individual is dependent upon his subjective treatment of it. The Bible lays claim to this universal revelation for the human race in such passages as Rom. i, 19, f., John i, 5, 9, and Acts xvii, 28. In addition to this revelation of God which is given to every individual human being as a part of his nature, Schmidt believes in the value of a knowledge of the world as an aid to our knowledge of God. Jesus did not exclude a rational knowledge of the world from the domain of religion. In his parables he assumed the facts of the life of nature and of the reality of the world in order to make plain heavenly truths, and called in the aid of rational intelligence in order to aid men in attaining certainty in religious things. Ritschl's fundamental proposition that we know nothing of God except from his revelation to us transcends the idea of revelation. If this proposition were true we could never know anything of God, since his revelation reaches only susceptible natures, those who have a sensorium for his revelation. Historical revelation is necessitated by the fact of sin. Christianity we know to be the perfect religion by its effects.

G. A. Fricke. As one who for more than fifty years has been engaged in the study of the proofs of God's existence his ideas on the subject will be of value. He believes that a scientific demonstration of the existence of the personal God, distinct from the world, is necessary, possible, and