Christianity see the non-Christian still far outnumbering the Christian world. It is only in the present century that the Church of Christ has rediscovered her missionary constitution, reawakened to her original design as her Founder's propaganda, and repossessed herself of the long-lost ideal of her youth to bring all nations to His light. The century now closing has been distinguished from many before it, not more by the births of the scientific spirit than by the rebirths of the missionary spirit. Nor have steam and electricity changed the relation of man to nature more than the revival of missions has changed the relation of the Christian to the non-Christian peoples. Nor will any one who is disposed to make a sociological study of results thus far reached-as Dr. James S. Dennis has done in his remarkable volumes on "Christian Missions and Social Progress"-fail to see signs that we are approaching a transition from the slow snowflake stage of advance to the swift avalanche stage. Of such signs the one which is to be looked for at home rather than abroad is in the integration of the previously disintegrated forces, the unifying of the previously independent plans of many various churches in a well-concerted, co-operative advance, the deepening of all the channels of individual or denominational activity by a tidal inflow of sympathy with the united endeavors of all Christians. It is forty years since this process of integration was formally begun, which is nearing a new stage in the Ecumenical Conference meeting this month. Nor has there been Nor has there been any less conspicuous gain in this than in other lines of the missionary advance. The preliminary step was taken in March, 1860, when a General Conference BENJAMIN HARRISON was convened at Liverpool from all churches and societies in Great Britain engaged in foreign missions. Their conference continued four days, but the meetings were in private. The first public conference of an ecumenical character came in the next decade. It was held at Mildmay Park, in the northern part of London, October 21-26, 1878. That illustrious philanthropist, the Earl of Shaftesbury, presided. Some European and a few American delegates attended, but not many missionaries. In all, there were less than two hundred delegates. The printed "Proceedings" made a volume of 434 pages. The second Ecumenical Conference, also in London, was held at Exeter Hall, June 9-19, 1888, the Earl of Aberdeen, afterwards Governor-General of Canada, presiding. Special interest attached to it as commemorating a century of Protestant missions. Sixteen hundred members were enrolled-nearly one-eighth of them from the United States-and the printed "Proceedings" made two volumes of 1,184 pages. Discussions of the relation of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and other religions to Christianity showed the clearer light thrown upon missionary problems by the new study of Comparative Religion. Special prominence was given to the principle of comity between the different missionary bodies. "Comity," it was declared, "is now the rule." The stimulating effects of this Conference upon the missionary zeal of the British churches appeared in an increase of fifty per cent. in their offerings within the next two years. Early in 1896 began the preparation for the third Ecumenical Conference, to be held in this city, April 21-May 1, 1900. When one reflects that there are about three hundred and fifty missionary societies-great and small-in the Protestant Churches, the immense labor of organizing a conference and making up its programme by correspondence with all quarters of the world is at once apparent. The programme includes a survey of the several missionary fields in all the non-Christian and some papal-Christian lands; discussions of the various branches of workevangelistic, educational and literary, medical, philanthropic, administrative; the relation of Christianity to other religions, and of Christian missions to social progress, international peace, commerce, colonization, science and discovery, governments and diplomacy; the relations of the several Churches to each other in missionsionary co-operation; the home work required for the basis of the foreign work; the women's auxiliary organizations; the Student Volunteers movement; the training of children to an interest in missions; the translation and distribution of the Bible. In addition to all this, a prominent place is given to the veterans who have returned from their fields in Japan, China, India, the Turkish Empire, Africa, Oceania, and elsewhere, to speak of successes gained and opportunities waiting, and to plead for a tenfold reinforcement to meet the call of nations for light and leading and healing for the body and the soul. Four years have proved none too long to organize suitably for all this. The place of assembly is Carnegie Hall, most of whose ample space is reserved for the delegates and honorary members. Admission will be by ticket up to a fixed time-limit, after which all unoccupied seats will be thrown open. Here will be the general meetings, morning and evening, where the subjects of central impor DR. J. C. HARTZELL tance will be presented and discussed. Section meetings will be held in the afternoon in smaller halls and churches. To secure adequate time for each of the many topics presented, a twenty-minutes rule has been adopted for the papers to be read, and a five-minutes rule for the discussion of them by volunteer speakers who have previously given in their names. Particulars must be learned from the official programmes, which may be procured by addressing Room 812, 156 Fifth Avenue. The personnel of the Conference includes many well-known and many noteworthy names. Ex-President Benjamin Harrison has accepted the position of Honorary President, and will occupy the chair at the opening and closing meetings. In the list of those who have accepted places as Honorary Vice-Presidents are President Low, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, and the Hon. John W. Foster. President McKinley, ex-President Cleveland, Admiral Philip, Captain Mahan, President Schurman, and Justice Brewer are among those who have accepted honorary memberships. In the list of speakers are many names of eminence in the churches and colleges of this country, such as Bishop Doane, of Albany, President Angell, of Michigan University, President Barrows, of Oberlin, United States Commissioner Harris, of Washington, Dean Emily Miller, of Northwestern University, Dr. Grace Richards, of Vassar, notable for her heroism amid the Armenian massacres. Besides these there will be many "outlanders," whom we shall greet as our fellowcitizens in the Christian_commonwealth, who will be the objects of equal attention, with somewhat more of curiosity. These will be more generally from Great Britain EUGENE STOCK JAMES S. DENNIS DR. GRACE KIMBALL DR. S. MERENSKY and her colonies, for a transatlantic voyage seems to Continental Europeans a very formidable thing. A A specially interesting visitor will be the Rev. Alexander Merensky, D.D., now one of the Secretaries of the Berlin Missionary Society, and from 1858 to 1882 its chief missionary in the Transvaal and adjacent regions. In 1880 he was at the head of the sanitary staff of the Boer forces in their war with England. In 1891 he led a corps of missionaries to the north of Lake Nyassa. Another veteran of varied service is the Right Rev. Bishop Ridley, who was sent to the Afghans in 1866 by the Church Missionary Society (of England), and in 1879 was appointed the first bishop of Caledonia in British Columbia. much younger but equally significant figure is that of Dr. Harford-Battersby. While in Cambridge University he was active in Christian and missionary interests, and, after graduating with honors and taking his professional degree, he sailed in 1890 as a medical missionary to Africa in the service of the Church Missionary Society. Out of his experience grew the Livingstone Medical College for missionaries, of which he became the Principal. He desires to meet here those who are interested in medical missions, and hopes to see a committee formed here which will take up the subject of the liquor traffic among native races. This has been done in England with good results by the "Native Races and Liquor Traffic United Committee," of which he is the Honorary Secretary. The present scandal of the liquor traffic at Manila makes his visit seem very opportune. Omitting many more of equal mark, we note the presence of the Rev. R. W. Thompson, of the London Missionary Society; the Rev. W. J. Edmonds, formerly a missionary in India, now a canon of Exeter Cathedral; the Rev. James Stewart, D.D., for thirty years a resident of South Africa, and head of the Lovedale Mission there, also Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland; the Rev. Joseph King, organizing agent of the London Missionary Society in Australasia; Mr. Eugene Stock, of London, for many years Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and organizer of its branches in Australasia and Canada; the Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., Missionary Bishop of the Methodist Church in Africa; also many other well-known missionaries, as Dr. M. L. Gordon, of Japan, and Dr. H. G. O. Dwight, of Constantinople. Mr. and Mrs. Duncan McLaren, of Edinburgh, have been for many years active in promoting the missions of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and will speak with authority from what they have observed in the tours they have made to visit their missions in India, China, and Japan. Among other names which we are reluctant to pass over is that of Miss Mary Reed, head of the asylum for lepers at Chandag, India, whose interesting story was lately published by the Revell Company; Miss Irene H. Barnes, of London, representing the Zenana Mission of the Church of England among Hindu women; and Miss Lilavarati Singh, a Hindu lady, who, having taken the 1900] The Ecumenical Missionary Conference of 1900 A.B. and A.M. degrees with honor in the University of Calcutta, is now professor of English literature in the Woman's College of the Methodist Church at Lucknow. All these are expected to address the Conference. And probably no speakers will touch the general public with such interest as those who, like the venerable John G. Paton, the Apostle of the New Hebrides, from actual contact with the facts of human life in non-Christian lands, describe the struggle and the achievement of the missionary in lifting that life from lower to higher levels of morality and religion, of intelligence and welfare. The evening assemblies in various places will be largely of this character, while the mornings in Carnegie Hall will be more devoted to subjects requiring deliberation and discussion. But the names above mentioned, with the others on the programme, are, with few exceptions, British or American. Representatives are there of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, but none from France has as yet been enrolled. There are several French Protestant missionary societies, one of which, since the French conquest of Madagascar, has been doing good work as the successor of the London Missionary Society. Some one of these may yet respond to the invitation to appear. But, as the Conference represents only the Protestant part of Christendom, some have asked, How can it be called "ecumenical," a name which affirms it as representing the inhabited world? Because it is a Conference of missions that are truly ecumenical, of workers who have actually gone into all parts of the inhabited world, and can truly say, with wandering Æneas: Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? Because it represents the Protestant missionary societies, whose fields are in all non-Christian lands, in their present endeavor to co-operate in a united forward movement for the evangelization of the inhabited world, it is, in the genuinely Christian sense of the word, more truly ecumenical than any of the ancient councils which are so termed councils which indeed represented the entire Church scattered throughout the Mediterranean world, but represented no interest in, no missionary undertaking for, the outer darkness of the pagan multitudes that stretched northward, eastward, southward, through the world as then known. This wide-world interest will be imparted to the coming Conference not only by the personality of the delegates from all quarters of the globe, but also by the representative objects there brought together. A Missionary Exhibit has been prepared, which will visibly illustrate the social and moral conditions of the peoples for whom the Conference is interested, and the actual surroundings of the missionary in his work. It will also be, as far as possible, representative of the actual progress made during this century of missions. The ample Parish House of the Church of Zion and St. Timothy, at 333 West Fifty-sixth Street, quite near Carnegie Hall, has BISHOP DOANE DUNCAN MCLAREN LILAVARATI SINGH 775 DR. C. F. HARFORD-BATTERSBY been generously granted for the occasion. To secure the permanence of this exhibit, which is likely to prove as serviceable here as it has been in England, particularly in furnishing loan exhibitions whenever desired to promote interest in missions, a corporation has already been formed. The Conference will open on Saturday afternoon, April 21, with an address by the Honorary President, Mr. Harrison. The Rev. Judson Smith, D.D., Secretary of our oldest missionary society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, will deliver, as Chairman of the General Committee, an address of welcome, in response to which four addresses will be made in behalf of the British, German, and Australian delegations and the missionary corps. On the two following Sundays the various churches in the metropolitan district will be addressed by delegates and missionaries. Some time during the week, crowded as it will be with the general, sectional, and overflow meetings that are planned, a public reception will be given, which, it is understood, President McKinley will attend, with many others of high position in the public service and other stations. The Conference will close on Tuesday evening, May 1, with addresses on the present situation, the general outlook, and the demand for the twentieth century. Never before have the churches of this city and vicinity been greeted by the op portunity of such a spiritual uplift as this World-Conference presents. That uplift is most thoroughly spiritual which is most broadly human in its sympathy with the gracious purposes of God for the raising of all fellow-men out of darkness into His marvelous light. In our times new tests of Christian character, different from those that satisfied less philanthropic centuries, must be applied both to individuals and to churches, to whom the physical, moral, and religious destitutions of the nonChristian peoples have been uncovered, and doors formerly shut have been opened by the ubiquitous hand of commerce for access to their relief. In such times as ours the Christianity that cares little for ministry to the needs of the unevangelized parts of the world is not enlightened Christianity; the church that declines its due quota of missionary service is no true church of Christ, led by the Spirit of Christ. That Spirit is essentially a missionary spirit. And the blessing which this World-Conference of Missions brings to the churches of this city and vicinity is precisely in the revival and reinforcement of the missionary spirit essential to the reality of their Christian faith. And now it is high time for very many who as yet are but dimly conscious of the greatness of the opportunity to be fully awake to it before it has passed. It is both desirable and probable that sympathetic meetings will be arranged in various cities not too far away to borrow from the Conference a few delegates or missionaries for a day. Yet many churches more remote will be gazing hitherward, and regretting the distance that prevents their getting into even the outermost ring of participants. The most distant of these, however, may get coals from our fire. Let such a church select the best member it has-man or woman-for the business of observing and reporting; send that member here as its delegate, expenses paid, and then turn out in full ranks to hear the story of the Conference from him. This foreword of the Conference must end with a business-like word—a word so far from being an anticlimax to a great subject that St. Paul annexed it to his sublime paan on the Resurrection: "Now concerning the collection for the saints." This Conference will cost $40,000—-a fraction, indeed, of the amount often spent on some popular celebration; a fraction, too, of the amount it will produce, as experience has proved, in the increased returns of coming years to missionary treasuries. One-half of that $40,000 has been guaranteed; less than half paid in; the time has come when the whole should be in hand. Every church should at once send $5, or more, to the Treasurer, Mr. George Foster Peabody, 27 Pine Street, New York. Somebody in every church should concern himself, or herself, to see that it is done the day after reading this. And now, to all to whom this article has appealed to interest themselves in this Conference by due attention to it, as the greatest Christian assembly that has yet been gathered on this continent, there is but one thing more to say. It is not on their business any more than yours that these brethren are coming hither from all parts of the world. |