the vast influences radiating from this Christian gathering may help to dissolve the last vestiges of that strange unreasoning antagonism.

It is his to awaken the attention of apathetic minds, which, content with the form rather than the life of Christianity, are blinded by local religious interests to the larger questions of the world's evangelization. This apathy can be broken. The same keen in

terest that springs to the realization of political events can be awakened toward the facts of the kingdom of Christ. But the man who thus conquers must himself first be conquered and set on fire of God.

It is his to educate the Church's intelligence. Knowledge is the true and substantial basis of an interest in missions. Vague perceptions of duty may help a flagging interest to survive, but the zeal that endures, the zeal that grows, the zeal that rises to the level of consecration is the zeal that is according to knowledge. The educational function of the missionary pastor can not be overstated. He must mediate between a great but little known literature and a community of minds not likely to come under its influence except through his leadership.

It is his to raise at home supplies for the Church abroad, to find the means that shall maintain the work of God. The far-off workers at the front depend upon him to co-operate with them by maintaining their supplies. He is a missionary as well as they, for the effects of his influence are telling on the maintenance of evangelization. By his acceptance of the pastorate he accepts an implied obligation to co-operate with those who are face to face with heathenism. To place a man in the pastorate in whom there is not the missionary passion is a twofold disaster; it breaks faith with. those who have gone to the front, believing that the leaders of the Church at home will keep pace with their advance; it occupies the place of a better equipped man, who, having that passion, might stir a whole community to acts of sacrifice.

These considerations bring before us the relation of the divinity school to world-wide missions. The question now under discussion, How shall we fire the young men of the future ministry with the missionary passion, is already in process of solution, and it is not impossible to show the main lines along which that solution is destined to advance.

The study of missions is slowly rising to the rank of a theological discipline. That it has not done so sooner is not altogether so strange as at first appears. The literature of missions is comparatively a modern literature, and recognition of its importance has not been unduly delayed. The Church is making her modern evangelistic history so rapidly and abundantly that it is but time to begin to feel the thrilling effects of that history reacting upon the divinity school. At many points that most salutary reaction is taking place, and the study of missions is finding its appropriate rank and proportion, while the opulent and splendid literature of missions is pouring into the library. It will soon be impossible, in all the divinity schools that seek to keep pace with the times, for

a man to pass through his course of training without having the world-wide point of view, without seeing the world-wide vision, unless he rejects it for himself, and shuts his eyes against it. The contact of living missionary workers with the divinity school life shall become frequent and intimate. The realism of missions shall demonstrate itself to many who once had but a speculative interest therein. The philosophical aspects of missions shall appear in the light of the modern literature, and the whole subject of missions in its largest and noblest relations shall take its place in the curriculum beside the study of the doctrines of faith.

But the study of missions as a discipline of the divinity school can not by itself bring to pass that setting on fire of the future ministry with the missionary passion. I see other forces at work which make for that glorious end.

I see developing at many points a new conception of the ministry that must attract toward it many of the most gifted and consecrated of our young men. The college and the seminary are drawing closer together. The study of missions in the colleges is bringing out a type of manhood which is full of heroic beauty, enthusiasm, and faith. The undergraduate is studying the world today as never before, is feeling in his fresh young heart the thrill of the new conceptions of applied Christianity, is realizing Christ's love and Christ's present salvation for the world in terms of reality. And in many a college to-day are found the very flower of our youth, to whom the ministry appears not as a reserved and gloomy world of ecclesiastical technicalities, but as the King's own highway to joyful and abundant service.

I see a spirit developing among our young men that portends a vast accession of missionary enthusiasm for the ministry of the future. The Lord Jesus Christ is manifesting Himself in His absolute Godhead, in His availing atonement, in His enlightening Word, to a great company of our most educated and most gifted youths. Personal consecration for personal service is a conception of living that grows more and more attractive to a multitude of our finest minds. And out of this class of minds shall be gathered the ministry of the future. It shall be a ministry devoted to the highest scholarship and the most fearless search for truth, looking upon the culture of the mind as no foe to the spirituality of life. It shall be a Christ-filled ministry, beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; worshiping Him with the enthusiasm of an absolutely fearless affection, and presenting Him as the only name given. under heaven whereby men must be saved. It shall be a Biblical ministry; holding fast the faithful Word and preaching that Word as the one great sufficient message and revelation of God to man. It shall be a missionary ministry; full of passion to redeem, cleareyed to discover the ongoing of Christ's work, faithful in its stewardship at home and abroad, apostolic in its assurance that Christ has ordained it to bear much fruit, apostolic in its eagerness to spread far and wide the Gospel of the risen and ascended Lord, apostolic in its blessed hope that that unseen and crowned Saviour shall surely come again,

CHAPTER VII

LITERATURE OF MISSIONS

Missionary Interest and Missionary Literature-Use of Public Libraries— Use of the Secular Press-Co-operation in Publishing Books on Missions-Missionary Periodicals-The Pastor and the Literature of Mis

sions.

Missionary Interest and Missionary Literature

MRS. J. T. GRACEY, Secretary Women's Foreign Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church, Rochester, N. Y.* An informed Church will be a transformed Church. Possibly one of the greatest factors in the development of missionary interest is the systematic study of missions. The power, extent, and influence of this, month by month, we can not calculate. Nearly every Woman's Missionary Society has its course of Study carefully prepared, covering its own fields and work, with something besides of a general character. Women prepare papers, search cyclopedias, clip the secular and Church papers, read the magazines, study the latest maps, make maps of their own, make imaginary itineraries to mission fields, hold imaginary conversations with their missionary representatives, until every phase and condition of missionary work is assimilated.

Woman's clubs, in some instances, are combining the study of missions with their other literary work. I know of a woman's club which has issued a syllabus on India, which for clearness and comprehensiveness can not be excelled.

Here is the outline:

A prelude by leader with general conversation.

1. Geography of the country.

2. Early history, architecture, monuments, palaces, mausoleums. 3. England and India. Under this head cover the history of England in India, from the East India Company's possession to the present time.

4. Relation of government to education, laws, taxes, revenue, system of English schools, universities, attitude of the nation to government, etc.

5. Religions of India, under twenty-four different heads.

6. The people of India, caste divisions, family system, child-marriage, widowhood, domestic usages, social life, music, moral condition, intellectual conditions.

7. Early Christianity in India, under seventeen topics.

8. William Carey as founder of modern missions, translator, etc.

*Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, April 30.

9. A study of Alexander Duff and his work.

10. A study of Judson and his work.

II. Denominational work.

This same plan is pursued in the study on China, and other fields. The educational department of the Student Volunteer Movement has rendered the cause of missions an invaluable service by publishing, in the last few years, textbooks to illustrate the courses of reading on missionary subjects which they have published. These are especially adapted to young people's societies, universities, and seminaries. When the Movement began its work in the higher institutions of learning, it found less than a dozen collections of missionary books, adapted to this need, abreast of the times, and in a very few cases could there have been found in the reading-room a single missionary periodical. Catalogues of missionary literature have been prepared from time to time, and courses of study have been outlined, and carefully selected missionary libraries have been introduced into a large number of institutions, and thousands of the most helpful and stimulating books have been scattered throughout the student field.

Annual missionary reports have been and are still by some considered to be an anodyne, and in many instances they are; but in the last few years there has been a marked change, for life and power have been put into the report. The up-to-date report is to be a vade-mecum or "go with me" to every missionary worker. It is a mine of information, a working power, and ought to be found on the writing-desk of everyone who has addresses to make, letters to write, or societies to enthuse. It tells of the location of workers, the appropriation and expenditure of money, it gives a record of schools, native pastors, itinerating trips, evangelistic and medical work-in fact, everything that pertains to your work and to the answer of your prayers. Between the lines you may see congregations organized, Sunday-schools established, people redeemed from heathenism in the prayer-meeting, the children rescued and in orphange and boarding school, and women going from house to house making visitations.

The missionary leaflet is the product largely of the last quarter of a century. Condensation is the demand of the day. Everything must be prepared and at hand. The busy man or woman has not time to read long articles, and so these little messengers are written carefully, clearly, and to the point, and put into the hand of the worker. They cover all subjects and sides, telling incidentally of home and foreign work. They have been helpful and instructive. to read in the monthly meeting, have been slipped into letters, and have been an omnipresent help and inspiration to the busy worker. Five of the seven Woman's Boards of the Presbyterian Church publish leaflets.

Some of our colleges and universities have missionary libraries, notably that of Yale. Starting in 1891 with 1,500 volumes, there are now over 5,000 volumes, and over seventy missionary periodicals regularly received. Sometimes an alcove or shelf is given in the town library. Periodicals are given and bound at close of the year.

An experiment was tried last year by the women of Minneapolis who are interested in missions. Their first proposition was to form a small missionary library, to be used by all denominations, and to be placed in some central place. Then they appealed to the public library, and a special rack was granted them in the library reading-room, upon which all missionary magazines are placed. The committee then made out a list of all the books in the library which bear upon the subject of missions, and this list is left at this library for consultation at any time. This experiment is being tried, and very successfully, in many large cities and towns.

Every Sunday-school library has or ought to have good, attractive missionary books, and could have, if those interested in missions would suggest to the library committee some good, helpful book. Let some of the miserable books, without respectable literary style, or without good moral teachings, be eliminated from. our Sunday-school libraries and be replaced by attractive missionary biography or story, and the young, to whom the management of our churches must be given in a few years, will have spiritual and missionary stamina.

All missionary Boards are now giving attention to the printing and distribution of miscellaneous missionary literature.

The greatest variety of such literature is published by the Church of England Missionary Society. Besides its 2,444,000 copies of its four missionary periodicals for adults, young people, and children, it issues a large list of books, sketches of its missions and workers, a Church Missionary atlas, a missionary hymn-book, a monthly letter to Sunday-schools, a missionary pocketbook and diary, a calendar, and a large number of books and pamphlets for children, missionary games, colored diagrams, a plea for missions, and about 100 leaflets for free distribution or at a nominal price.

Nearly all Woman's Boards make a specialty of missionary literature, issuing monthly magazines, children's papers, lesson leaflets, prayer calenders, mite-boxes, thank-offering literature, topic cards,

etc.

The various Woman's Boards and a few of the general Boards issue missionary prayer calendars, giving in connection with subjects for prayer, statistics, facts about work, pictures of missionaries, which serve to make real and vivid to the constituency the personality of those for whom prayer is offered. This forms a close bond of connection between workers at home and abroad, and is a delightful assurance that the missionary and the work are remembered.

Some of the Woman's Societies issue a year-book, giving the names of all the missionaries under their boards, with a little account of what they are doing, and where they do it. Each month of the year is devoted to some mission field, and each day to some special missionaries on that field. It is hoped that the people of the churches will thus come to know the missionaries by name and to pray for them.

Taking ten years, during which missionary leaflets were issued and distributed gratuitously in one society, we find the annual con