adrift from their families with the curse of blood on their heads. In pleading thus for admission. into the Christian Church, they have been known to urge as authority for their claim the teaching of the Apostle Paul about "meat offered to idols," and Naaman "bowing in the house of Rimmon." Dr. Vinton told me that, on first assuming charge of the Karen mission on the death of his father, he was astounded to see whole families coming up for baptism. The first thought which naturally occurred to him was that only one or two of the applicants probably had undergone the real change of heart, and that the rest had applied merely in deference to the opinion of the elders. This fear was, however, he said, soon dispelled when he inquired and found out how and when the change of heart had taken place. It was then, he said, seen how great had been the strugglings for years in the families. The husband would point with tears to the scars which his drunken fury had left on his long-enduring wife for refusing to join the family sacrifice. One after another had been touched till all had come together, proclaimed their faith, and sought admission to the Church.

When any member of a family is seen to be irrevocably determined to become an out-and-out

Christian, his heathen relatives often try to induce him to submit to a childish ceremony. They ask him to feign sickness. They then offer sacrifices to the demons on his behalf, as if he were really ill; then they mourn for him, as if he were really dead, and go through a mock funeral to make the demons believe that he is dead, so that at the next sacrifice his absence may not be regarded as causing a break in the family.

To illustrate the way in which the heathen Karen harmonizes his demon sacrifices with his loyalty to God, here is a parable which they tell :— A man and his wife once lived in a wild forest. They were obliged daily to leave their children at home while they went to work on their distant toungya, or forest clearing. They owned a large One day, during the

sow and a litter of pigs. absence of the parents, a tiger came and killed the sow and ate her up. On the return of the parents, the terrified children crawled from their hiding-place and told of the peril in which they had been. The parents, knowing full well that the tiger would return, made a high platform, so high that the tiger could neither spring nor climb into it, and next day placed the children and the litter of pigs on it. The tiger came, and, disappointed of

his prey in the house, soon scented out the children. He sprang upwards at them, but fell short. He tried to climb, but the hard smooth surface of the bamboo defied his claws. He then frightened the children by his terrible roars. So in terror the children threw down the pigs to him, one after another. Their eyes, however, were fixed not on the tiger, but on the path by which they expected to see their father come. Their hands fed the tiger from fear, but their ears were eagerly listening for the twang of their father's bowstring, which would send the arrow quivering into the tiger's heart. And so, say the Karens, although we have to make sacrifices to demons, our hearts are still true to God. We must throw sops to the foul demons who afflict us, but our hearts are ever looking for God.

The Red Karens keep the month of Tagoo (April) absolutely sacred to the worship of the one God. During that month demon sacrifices are strictly prohibited.

Perhaps, however, the most convincing proof of the Karen's firm belief in a personal God is to be found in some of their hymns. The following is one of their ancient hymns handed down by their bards from generation to generation. The transla

tion is true to the original both in words and

metre.

"Father God is very near,

Lives He now amongst us here;
God is not far off, we know—
Dwells He in our midst below.

"'Tis because men are not true
That He is not seen to you;
'Tis because men turned to sin
Now no longer God is seen.

"All upon the earth below

Is but God's foot-rest, we know ;
Heaven in the heights above

Is God's seat of truth and love."

It is interesting to note in these verses a peculiarity common also in Hebrew poetry— parallelisms. The thought of the first couplet is followed by a repetition in the next in a slightly varied form.

The Karen ideas of a future state after death are somewhat indefinite, and it is difficult to disentangle the childish, extravagant details from the two or three articles of their belief. They believe that rewards and punishments will be meted out in the next world according to the deeds done during life on earth; and they believe that the future state will be one of activity, similar in many respects to the life led on earth. They further believe that

the spirits of those who have been righteous and have kept God in their hearts here below, are permitted to watch over the destinies of those dear to them whom they left behind. Their conception of the destiny of the human soul is totally different from that of the Burmese. The Karen believes that the soul will be actively employed. The Burmese, who are all Buddhists, believe in nirvâna, or complete absorption, absolute extinction of individuality—a deathless, dreamless sleep of the soul swallowed up in the Infinite. The Karen believes in a living, personal God; the Burman is a blank atheist.

When, nearly sixty years ago, the attention of the American missionaries was first drawn to the Karens, they found them in possession of a remarkable set of traditions, both in prose and poetry, exactly corresponding with the history of the creation and the fall of man as told in the Bible. Many of the national traditions vary in details locally; but these God-traditions, as they are called, are found to be absolutely identical everywhere, from Mergui to Toungoo, and from Cape Negrais to far east of Zimmay, in Siam. They tell how, after the fall, God gave the Bible to the Karens first, as the elder branch of the race; that