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splendid Filipino people. So the Church of Jesus Christ, recognizing the call of responsibility and opportunity that came to her soon after that May morning in 1898, when news was flashed across the sea that Dewey had taken Manila, sent her missionaries to establish there a Church that would teach Christianity in its simplicity and its purity. The missionaries, recognizing the greatness of the task and the smallness of the force, organized themselves into an evangelical union, determined that there should be no overlapping, competition, or wasted effort, divided the territory among the different denominations, one denomination taking one province, another denomination another. In the large cities, as in Manila and Iloilo, two or more denominations are working together. For instance, in the city of Iloilo we have a union hospital operated by Presbyterians and Baptists. There is a Presbyterian doctor and a Baptist doctor, a Presbyterian nurse and a Baptist nurse, with fourteen Filipino nurses, and the wards are full of Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and Americans.

Aside from establishing hospitals, the missionaries have established schools. There are a number of industrial schools, carried on by the different boards. I have been especially interested in the one at Jaro, where we purchased a farm of sixty acres and have there three hundred boys being trained in industry and in Christian living. There are also schools for girls, training-schools for Bible women, and training-schools for Filipino teachers. Many of the

missions have kindergartens for the little children. Many of the missions have also perfectly-equipped printing establishments for the printing of Christian literature and the Bible; and of course. strong emphasis has been put upon direct evangelistic work and the establishing of the Christian Church.

An 1 so, through the school and the printing-press, the hospital and the workshop, through living and preaching and teaching, we are trying to do our full duty to these bright, eager people, our "little brown brothers," whom God has brought into such close relationship to the American people and the American Church.

STUDENT CONVENTIONS IN LATIN AMERICA.

CHARLES D. HURREY, NEW YORK

UNDOUBTEDLY the most baffling question facing the missionaries in the Latin-American nations, who have had a most earnest desire to reach the situation, has been the problem of reaching a point of contact. If we could solve this problem, it would go a long way toward obtaining an influence over this class of people.

When I was at St. Mark's University, in Lima, which was

founded in 1551, I talked for an hour with a young man about his proposal to go on the following Friday night to a neighboring community to teach the Spanish language to a group of Indians. I inquired as to his motive for doing this. He shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Mere sentiment." "What is back of your sentiment? Do you ever go to church?" I asked. "No, señor." "Why don't you go?" I continued. "I should not learn anything if I did go, and I have no interest in going there," was his reply. “Have you ever heard of Jesus Christ?" I inquired further. "You seem to be doing what in Columbia University we call 'social service' in some of the institutions up here." "I am not interested in the Church," he replied; "and as to Jesus Christ, I may be affected indirectly by His life." Then he added, what I related at the Convention meeting this morning: "He has been dead for two thousand years; I don't believe He can influence anybody much to-day."

I mention this as a rebuke to many of us students in North America, that this young man at St. Mark's was going out on a Christlike errand, but without the stimulus of the Christian Church, or intimate contact in a personal way with our Lord.

The success which has come, in a small degree at least, to the Young Men's Christian Association in reaching the student class, particularly in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, San Paulo, and Montevideo, I think is owing to the approach that was made personally to the men of the universities, bringing them into the educational classes, and into the social and physical activities of this organization, these exceptional features seeming to make a special appeal to the student class.

For example, Dr. Ewald in the University of Buenos Aires invited a group of students to come to his home to study English, and in the most tactful way led them to the point where he could say that one of the most enjoyable collection of books in the world was called the Bible, and suggested that they might be interested in studying English by reading it? Ultimately he had those men on their knees, praying for forgiveness, for their lives had been full of sin; and thus began the Young Men's Christian Association in the University of Buenos Aires, which now has two hundred and fifty members, and is wielding an ever-increasing influence.

I believe that the most successful means for reaching the student class will be through the international student conferences, to which we referred this morning; they will bring together young men from many nations, and ultimately each nation will have its own student conferences, where, away from distraction of the city, in the quietness of the ten days on the seashore, they will have time. leisurely to examine themselves. I believe that this plan possibly will aid greatly in reaching the student class, the most difficult problem of all, since how to rally the student class to the Christian Church, once you have won them to believe in God and follow

Jesus Christ, and accept Him as their Saviour, is a problem which, of course, the foreign missionaries know well, and regarding which there is such intense prayer to-day, not only in Roman Catholic lands but in Greek Catholic lands as well.

What is to be done with reference to church buildings? I have seen young men by the score pass by the mission-halls of various denominations that are altogether too poorly supported, we think, by the people at home. The halls do not interest them. They prefer to go to the great cathedral; they are fond of showing off their imposing church buildings, and sometimes Americans admire. the service that is going on.

A Mexican student of ability said to me at Columbia the other night, "If you want to win the student class and the ruling classes of the Latin world, you will have to adapt your message and your time of service a little more nearly to that which they are accustomed to, whether you like it or not." There may be something worth thinking about in that suggestion. It is true, at least, that if we are to win these men we must have the highest-trained Spanish-and-Portuguese-speaking people to appeal to them, and must adapt ourselves in every way to their manner of living. In that way, we may rally them ultimately to the Christian Protestant Church.

A STUDENT CONFERENCE IN SOUTH AMERICA

P. ARTHUR CONARD, MONTEVIDEO

IN JANUARY, 1913, which is midsummer in Montevideo, we had upward of eighty delegates in a university student camp of an international character, situated only fifty miles from Montevideo. Fifty of them were students from the national government universities of the four progressive nations-Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Under those conditions, and remembering the attitude of many South Americans mentioned here this afternoon, you will understand how startling was the fact that these four Governments paid out of the public treasury the traveling expenses for delegates from their national universities to our Young Men's Christian. Association camp. Not only did the Government pay traveling expenses-sometimes you can get money out of a public treasury, if you know the ropes, that you could not get out of a private pocketbut their diplomatic representatives visited us there; so we had the Ministers of Chile and Brazil, of Argentina, of Great Britain, and of the United States, at our camp. The Uruguayan Secretaries of State and of War, who had lent us our tents and other equipment necessary to conduct the camp, came out in a cruiser of the Uruguayan navy and made us an official visit. Remember also that

those government representatives-themselves mostly men who take the attitude of indifference or hostility to religious teaching— expressed hearty approval of the work being done there, not because we were a religious organization, but because of the valuable contribution we were making to the moral life of their students. He went on to say he believed the Young Men's Christian Association was making a larger contribution to national peace by their methods than any other agency at work among the South American nations, through the mercy of Jesus Christ, through those who have spent their lives working and dealing not with small classes of men nor with a single community, but with high and serious international issues.

But what do you do there? you will ask. Do you get really into the hearts of the men? Let me give one or two illustrations. On the last night of camp life we have what we call the night of the open heart around the camp-fire, and every man may say what is in his heart that night. Perhaps ninety per cent. of the men that came from those universities knew almost nothing of our religious position-I mean of our attitude toward what we consider constitutes real religion. When they came to give their testimony, a young student from the University of Chile said, "Men, I have a confession to make. I came a few days ago, as you know, from a Church hostile in religion, believing that my especial duty to my own Church was to take the religious teachings it offered, as my father and mother had accepted religion before me. I understood nothing of their interpretation of religion. But I have seen a new vision here, which has opened to me a new world. I cannot say that I go away a believing Christian; but I do go away an openminded man, to make a first-hand study of these things."

If I had time I would tell in full another story or two of other men who in that camp have become Christian men-one of them giving up a fine position in the University of La Plata, to devote his time to the work of the Young Men's Christian Association associated with the university work in Buenos Aires.

Yes, even the student who has turned completely away from religion can be won to our Lord, if we make points of contact and present to him the Gospel in a way that he will hear it.

The taking of South America-the student life of South America-for Christ, means a call to war; and that student or that organization which in time of war stands on a peace basis has the greatest opportunity of a lifetime.

THE DEMAND FOR ΑΝ INTERDENOMINATIONAL MOVEMENT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN SOUTH AMERICA

THE REVEREND SILAS D. DAUGHERTY, M. A., PHILADELPHIA

IN SOUTH AMERICA we have to do, directly or indirectly, with 50,000,000 souls in the ten republics of the continent, and with a state of illiteracy that varies in these republics from 50 to 95 per cent. The rapidly growing system of primary and secondary public schools is a departure from the colonial and parochial systems of the Roman Catholic Church, and, if possible, has even less of Christian training in it. The teachers are not supposed to be religious, except that they lead in the adoration of their heroes and their country. Besides these conditions, the universities, which have taken on new life, have broken or are breaking with the Roman Catholic Church, which to them heretofore has meant the only Christian Church. The professors in these universities are largely unbelievers, and make bold to assert that the Christian religion is no longer an open question, maintaining that science and philosophy have ruled it out. In consequence of this attitude of the professors, the student body has no use for the Christian Church.

It was my privilege to spend some months in the city of Buenos Aires in a study of the social, religious, political, and educational conditions. From information gathered from many sources, I was led to believe that fully 90 to 95 per cent. of the five thousand students in the University of Buenos Aires are in a state of unbelief; and that a large majority of them do not even believe in the immortality of the soul. This state of unbelief, I am informed, is common to the universities of the entire continent.

Indeed, you need not look to the universities alone for unbelief, for it is found everywhere. Like the tendency toward gambling and impurity, it seems to have permeated all ranks of society. In most parts the Church and the priesthood have not only lost especially their power and hold upon men, but they are despised and rejected. In company with Dr. Speer I called on some priests, who received us most cordially and showed us perfect hospitality; but when questioned as to the state of the Roman Catholic Church, they expressed regret even to have to speak about it. They told us with deep feeling of the deplorable religious conditions, and of

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