There are now fifty-two Protestant evangelical missionary societies engaged in giving the Gospel to the unevangelized nations, with an aggregate yearly expenditure of over $5,500,000. Our own country has five hundred and seventy-four Protestant missionaries in various fields, supported in their work at an expense of $1,704,000. The missions of Methodism are to be found in all prominent fields, and those of the Methodist Episcopal Church alone, eleven in number, though late in the field, are achieving encouraging success in such vast empires as India, China, Africa, Europe, Mexico, Japan, and South America.

In no land are Christian missions more aggressive than in India. Seven hundred missionaries, working under fifty different societies, are pushing the battle to the gates. Founded in the blood of a mighty rebellion, our own mission rises, with her history of twenty-eight successful years, to show her list of ten thousand converts and twenty thousand Sunday-school scholars, and push on to still harder work. In no land has Methodism found so peculiar a people, both with respect to their social and to their religious system. In all non-Christian lands there are some helps and many hindrances to the spread of the Gospel, but none so marked as in the land of the Veda. It is the purpose of this address to name briefly some of those things which are of the nature of helps to mission work in India, and a few of the great hindrances which obstruct and retard.

I. And first, the Helps. 1. There is a great encouragement in the character of the field itself. India is not a small, barren country, only inviting the missionary because the inhabitants have souls. There are three things especially to be noted concerning the field. (1.) First, its size. It is a great triangle, two thousand miles long and nineteen hundred miles wide at its widest part. It is as large as all the United States east of the Mississippi, or all Europe except Russia. (2.) Second, its population. India, including the native states, has a population of near three hundred million souls. British India has two hundred and sixty-three million people, or five times as many as all the United States, or quite as many as Turkey proper, Great Britain, France, Germany, United States, and Russia combined. In many places there are five hundred, and some places eight hundred, souls to the square mile. (3.) Third, the people. The vast majority are of the Aryan race, and are of an intelligent, intellectual cast of mind. India is the home of philosophy and mathematics. These are great encouragements and helps to the missionary, and he feels that to make a Christian land of India is to accomplish a great work. 2. There is a great help in the fact that the people are pre-eminently a religious people. That can not be said so emphatically of any other people. Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese display such a profound religious sentiment as the Hindoos. (1.) First, they are meditative. It is one of the tenets of their philosophy to secure absorption by meditation and deep thought. Hence the temples and monasteries are full of men seeking to gain the highest good by a course of deep and prolonged meditation upon God and spiritual things. (2.) Second, they are devout. I have never seen a prayerless Hindoo. They are taught to pray from their earliest infancy, and end their life in prayer. They take time to worship. Thousands give up their lives to worship, and no Hindoo will ever eat until he has performed his most devout duty to his god, usually consuming an hour each time.

(3.) Third, they are zealous. Their zeal is seen in the manner in which they flock to the festivals in honor of their gods, in the long and painful pilgrimages to distant shrines, which they gladly undertake, in the faithfulness with which they observe the rites of their religion, and in the voluntary support of a large retinue of priests and teachers. If the Christian Church had half the zeal of Hindooism, she would soon overspread the world. In this religiousness of the people the missionary finds a great help. They are interested in what he says, and can comprehend more easily what he teaches than could painted savages or indifferent stoics. 3. And not only are they a numerous people and a religious people, but they are, as a rule, a docile race. The Hindoo villagers, who compose the larger share of the population, are simple-hearted, well disposed, kind, and polite, who respectfully listen to the missionaries' words, and ask many questions which give opportunity for practical teaching. The masses of the people are mild in their disposition, and the missionary, if he is at all qualified for his work, has no difficulty in becoming interested in them. This is certainly a great advantage in trying to teach such a race. 4. The system of village communities also helps in the work of evangelization of India. We do not find there, as here and in other lands, that the people live in isolated farm-houses, but all reside in villages of five hundred or a thousand souls each. Often five or six such villages can be seen in a radius of as many miles, which can be reached in a morning's walk. 5. Lastly, the frequent bazars, fairs, anniversaries, and festivals in honor of their gods afford grand preaching opportunities not known anywhere else on earth. Often half a million people from all parts of the land will be assembled for a week or more, at which place the Christian missionary, with his helpers, can preach, teach, sell books, etc., with great success. These are some of the things which are a great help to the work in India.

II. But, while there are these helps peculiar to India, there are also peculiar difficulties and hindrances in the way, and much more numerous than the helps. These are so great and numerous that at the beginning of this century the devout Henry Martyn said: "If ever I see a Hindoo converted to Jesus Christ, I shall see something more nearly approaching the resurrection of a dead body than any thing I have ever yet seen.' Bishop Taylor, fresh from his successes in Africa, acknowledged that he had never seen any thing like the peculiar difficulties in India. Among these hindrances might be mentioned, first, the massive force of Hindooism. Up and down that great peninsula throng millions upon millions of human beings devoted to a religion old before Christianity was born. Among these millions are but a handful of missionaries but imperfectly acquainted with either the people or their religion. The very ponderousness of the system seems to overshadow and overpower every effort. Second, the gigantic system of caste. The leading castes had a natural origin in the occupations of the people, but soon, by selfish priests, were made of divine origin, as one of their own poets has said:

"From him called Purusha was born Viraj,

And from Viraj was Purusha produced,
Whom gods and holy men made their oblation.

With Purusha as victim, they performed

A sacrifice. When they divided him,

How did they cut him up? What was his mouth?

What were his arms? And what his thighs? His feet?
The Brahmin was his mouth, the kingly soldier
Was made his arms, the husbandman his thighs,

The servile Sudra issued from his feet."

And so to-day there are more than three thousand different castes, and eighteen hundred and sixty-six separate classes of Brahmins alone. Behind this stronghold is Hindooism fortified, and there can be no progress or individuality while it remains. 2. Second, there are peculiar customs which are a great hindrance. Widow-burning and infanticide have been made illegal by a Christian government. But other customs almost as bad prevail. (1.) First, child marriage is a custom which hinders the Gospel everywhere. Girls must be married before they are nine years of age. In the North-west Province alone, at the last census, were two hundred and eighty thousand seven hundred and ninety married girls under nine, and more than a million between ten and fourteen years of age. These early marriages break up our schools and leave the mothers of India, not only physically unfit for these duties, but weak and ignorant. (2.) Second, the condition of widows. Though girls become widows, they are never permitted to remarry or become any thing in life but slaves and drudges. They are degraded in every way, and thousands of them enter a life of shame. There are seventy-seven thousand three hundred and sixty-five widows under ten years of age in India, and millions of all ages. Such customs as these hinder the work of God. 4. Fourth, climate, too, comes to the aid of the others in hindering the missionary in his work. (1.) First, India is a hot country. No missionary on the plains can live through the hot weather from April to October without artificial means, such as fans pulled by natives, to keep down the temperature. Day and night these must swing. The sun is the great enemy. (2.) Second, it is a malarious country. Fevers prevail everywhere; thousands of natives die of them annually, and but few missionaries escape an attack, and many suffer for years. (3.) Third, the rains, and poisonous reptiles, such as the Cobra de Capello and Karaita, snakes which will kill in half an hour, and for whose bite there is no known antidote, abound. They come into the house, are sometimes found in beds, and are to be dreaded. The missionary is hindered greatly by climate, and is under the necessity of great caution in consequence of its subtle influences. (5.) Fifth, there are difficult languages to be learned. The leading language within the boundaries of the North India Conference is Hindustani. The Hindustani language is composite, like English, and in order to know it well the student must know something of Persian, Arabic, and Hindee, all of which are cognate and difficult to acquire. Learning this or any other language of India so as to be able to preach in it intelligibly and impressively is no easy matter. There are too many dental, nasal, guttural, hard and soft letters and sounds, and strange and difficult phrases and idioms and peculiarities of orthoepy and orthography to ignore the language as something which can be picked up in an hour. It is the work of years, and but few excel. Take it altogether, then, there are hindrances enough to the work in India. What with the paucity of workers, the thronging millions, caste, custom, climate, the languages to be learned, the poverty and ignorance of the people, the lack of funds, and other things which might be mentioned did time permit, the missionary has need to pray for “grace to

help in time of need,” and all devout Christians should pray for him that his "faith fail not." Let us thank God for the natural helps there are, and press on in spite of the hindrances,

"Until this land, so dear, so sorrowed o'er,

With all its load of misery and sin,

After long ages of transgression, turn,

And, pierced in heart with love-shafts of the King,
Fall down and bathe his blessed feet with tears;
Then rise, and to the listening world tell out
Her deep repentance and her new-found joy!”

THE CONQUEST OF THE WORLD FOR CHRIST DEPENDENT ON THE WITNESSING POWER

OF THE CHURCH.

O. H. TIFFANY, D. D.

THE object of missions is the conquest of the world for Christ. The divine plan declared by Christ includes human agency. Victory, "overcoming," is to be achieved by divine atonement; "the blood of the Lamb," and by human testimony and self-sacrifice; "the word of their testimony," who "loved not their lives unto the death."

Human testimony is thus a factor in the world's conquest. "Ye are my witnesses," "Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth;" and Christ, proposing to build his Church on the testimony of his disciples, has organized no other plan for the spread of his kingdom than preaching, that is, testifying.

Christ proposes to save the world by the proclamation of a universal religion by authorized agents, to whom he has promised divine companionship. This preaching or testifying is attended uniformly with like results. The Church has had many days of pentecostal blessing in its history. This method is found to be efficient just as it makes plain the simplicity of the plan of salvation. Preachers have been learned and eloquent, but the regeneration of their hearers has not resulted from their learning nor their eloquence, but from the fact that they testified of Christ. The personal testimony of those who have experienced the saving power of Christ has brought men to him as an agency of redemption.

The results of such testifying have been wonderful. The explanation of the power is in the fact that it is God's plan. Just as he made the paths of the mountain-sides tracks for the rills and streams to reach the sea, so he made the testimonies of believers the channel of communicating grace

and power.

Starting where prejudice was most bitter and bigotry was most uncompromising, the testimony of believers disarmed prejudice and overmastered bigotry. Sanguinary persecutors became loving adherents; humble disciples bore their testimony in the camps of mailed warriors and before the courts of crowned kings until they ascended the throne of the Cæsars, and gave laws to the then known world.

With the acquisition of empire came engrossment with the world and

the self-seeking of ambitious political strife. The luxuriance of exalted position engendered pride and ostentation, and the seeking to be rich, and consequently the testimony became less and less confident; until it largely ceased to be uttered, and ceremony usurped its place, and, as a necessary result, the power of Christ waned, and the Dark Ages covered the earth, while silence brooded over the people. Times of illumination were periods of testifying; the reformations have been periods when men became conscious of salvation and boldly spoke forth their conscious convictions.

There is no power that can prevail against the voiceful testimony of the renewed soul. Christ, the Master, has himself declared that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it-though the gates be hinged on the philosophy of Hegel or of Comte; though they be barred with the historic arguments of Hume or of Rénan; though they be locked with all the scientific skill of Darwin or of Huxley, and written all over with the arithmetical computations of Colenso, and the materialism of the Evolutionists; for the testimony of believers is to bring every thought into subjection to the dominion of Christ, and thought is the master power of the universe.

Of course, we may not tell the precise channels through which this testimony-bearing is to reach the world's great heart. We can not tell how God may work it out, but there is wonderful power in the telling of salvation. And the results of this preaching and testifying have exceeded all human expectation. In the first century it secured five hundred thousand converts, and since then its adherents have multiplied until they now number nearly four hundred and eleven millions. Statistics show that while it required fifteen hundred years to secure one hundred millions, the last eighty years have added two hundred and ten millions. Now nearly seven times as many people are under the control of Christian nations as were at the opening of the sixteenth century.

These very remarkable results show plainly that the increase of Christianity has been more rapid since the year 1500 than it was before, and most rapid since the year 1800, and these dates are significant of Protestantism and Methodism.

As all forms of Christian life and organizations are modes of testimonybearing, Protestantism may be called on to compare its method with Romanism and the Greek Church which divided the Christian world before their day.

And I surely do no injustice to Romanism and the Greek Communion when I say the testimony they bear is ecclesiastical or governmental, as compared with the individual and personal testimony of other Christians.

The Romish and Greek Churches say to their members that they are forgiven-members of Protestant communions say to their Churches, we are conscious of forgiveness. "The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are born of God." The Roman and Greek Churches speak the word of absolution, while to Protestant and Methodists the Gospel comes "not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.'

Romanism in Europe started on a basis of about eighty millions in the year 1500, and has gained sixty-nine millions, while Protestantism, starting soon after from unity, has gained five millions more of adherents in the same territory.