REV. P. FREDERICKSON, KIFWA, CONGO FREE STATE T is surely wonderful how the Lord is opening up Africa in every direction. Seventeen years ago, when I came to Congo, very little was known of this dark continent, while at present very little is left that has not been explored. The railways from East and West, South and North, climb every obstacle and face every difficulty in order to reach the heart of this mysterious country, while steamers have been and are still carried hundreds of miles over land, and float on almost every accessible river and the waters of many of her lakes. Able men and noble officers yearly lay down their lives in this great work. They spare nothing in order that they may be foremost in this noble cause. It is not a time to move slowly; it is a time to make haste, if we want a true share in this good work; a share worthy of the Baptist cause, and of those redeemed by the blood of Jesus. Africans are a fine and well-developed race of men. They are evidently not going to die out before civilization, as the Indians and some other races have done. They accept it, and do honest work for their living. The large towns on the west coast, with their prosperous churches and large number of tradesmen of every kind, and hosts of workmen, indicate this. The railway company has in its employ 1,335 of these artisans. The state and trading companies have also a large number in their service. The Congo railway, now finished, has been built by the Africans, under the direction of a few whites. The railway company has the conviction that it will in the future find laborers enough to carry on the work without recruiting elsewhere, as the Congoes as well as blacks from the coast come in large numbers seeking work. The thousands of tons of merchandise every year carried between Matadi and Stanley Pool prove that the Congoes can endure hard work. I have been told more than once by the State officers that the Congoes make fine soldiers; they are superior to the Zanzibars. They are fine shots. With four hundred State soldiers Baron Dhanis took Nyangwe, the stronghold of the Arabs, and subdued the whole Arab force in the Congo Free State. At Lado, by the Nile, Captain Chaltin fought a force of three thousand dervishes, and drove them from the fortified position with the points of the bayonets of the Congo Free State force. The Africans on the whole are friendly to the missionaries. At Ikoko station, on Lake Mantumba, the Rev. J. Clark took up mission work. The people have proved to be his friends, while they have fought the State, killed and eaten white officers, with great skill and daring rammed the State canoes and capsized the soldiers into the water; yet a few miles off were four missionaries, trusting in God, quiet and safe in the midst of those people. When I was there a message was handed along from that very people to ask Mr. Clark for a white man to come and teach them, and that they had no intention to do the Clarks any harm. When I looked on the three hundred well-built men and women gathered on Sunday to hear the gospel, and saw the fine-looking young men and young women standing with their hymn-books in their hands, singing the praises of the loving Savior, of whom three years ago they knew nothing, I could not but praise the Lord for what I saw. The above may equally be applied to other stations on the Congo. A people so fond of children, and with their villages full of them, let them learn to read and write; let them learn to worship the only true God and loving Savior; let them be led on by good and noble men, and there is no fear but they will hold their own with any race which may come here. While the Lord has opened large fields and given large blessings in other countries, he has also opened large fields and given us promise of large blessings in Africa. Experience has shown that the black people are not adverse to the gospel, and my experience in Congo confirms that. The Congoes are not against the gospel as a people. It is only a few individuals: old chiefs and fetichmen that keep the people away from receiving the truth. With a very few exceptions, the children and young people up to twenty and twenty-five years. of age are friendly to the gospel; and was it not for the old chiefs and ngangas, the people would soon come forward in numbers larger than we are prepared to teach. The gospel has entered in numerous villages from Banana to far beyond the Equator, and it can only be a matter of time before large numbers turn to the Lord. If the Protestant missions are not prepared to receive them and lead them, the Catholics are. They have great faith in Africa as a mission field. Past experience shows that the colored people are favorable to the Baptist teaching. The negro Baptists in Jamaica number no less than 37,000. The only other denomination there that has REV. JOSEPH CLARK, MRS. CLARK, more is the English Established Church, which has about 45,000. The colored people in America number 1,700,000. They have very nearly twice as many young people connected with their churches as are found among the white churches of the North. Secretary Morgan says that if things continue as at present, twenty-five years hence there will be as many colored Baptists in America as there are white Baptists both in the North and the South. If it is asked what shall the American Baptists do with Congo or Africa, there seems, according to the above facts, no way out of it but simply to send out good and able men to take possession of this God-given field. The climate has been a little unfavorable in the past; but there is no reason to think it will continue so. Experience in the way of living and good houses will no doubt improve matters very much. In our own mission we have in the later years on the whole had good houses. We lost in 1896 out of forty-one missionaries, only one; and in 1897 out of forty missionaries we also lost one. This improvement is evidently due to the increased comfort of living. REV. RUBEN SAILLENS, PARIS, FRANCE HE opening services of our new chapel were most successful, and the Lord certainly was felt among us. We began Saturday, Oct. 15, with a prayer-meeting which was very good, though not large. On Sunday morning at 10.30 we had a fellowship meeting, presided over by Pastor Carlier of Nimes, and at which Brethren Andru, Revel, my own dear father, who had come all the way from Marseilles, Pastor Cremer of the Free Church, our English friend, Lord Radstock, and others, took part. Then we had a hasty lunch, and at I P.M. a prayer-meeting was conducted by Pastor de Roberts of Rouen, immediately followed by the formal preaching service (2 P.M.) at which from three to four hundred people attended. My text was from John 17, "Thy word is truth" (these words are inscribed on the pulpit), and I tried to show that truth is the basis on which any work can stand, and especially any church of God; truth as it is in Christ, revealed in the scriptures, is absolute, complete, and accessible to all men, and therefore sufficient for the needs of man, of mankind, and of the church. Pastor Jean Monnier of the Reformed Church, and an English friend of mine, a Congregationalist, Mr. C. W. Toms, who had come all the way from London on purpose, spoke after me, and expressed their cordial sympathy with our work. There were other ministers and leading brethren of other denominations in the audience, and some members of the Committee of Direction of the McAll Mission. At 6 P.M. we had a love feast. About sixty partook together of a light meal, as they were not able to return home and be back in time for the evening meeting. At the table a number of letters were read from many friends far and wide who had not been able to come, and among these was a letter from dear Mrs. R. W. McAll the widow of my honored friend and former leader, Dr. McAll, whom we had thought right to invite to our meetings, as we cannot forget the past debt of gratitude which we owe to her departed husband. She was not able to come, owing to the state of the sea, but she sent a very kind letter, along with a portrait of Dr. McAll, which now adorns our Young People's room. Among the audience of the afternoon I must not omit to mention the presence of our friend, Mr. Ernest B. Gordon, son of our lamented brother, Dr. A. J. Gordon, who was instrumental in founding our church and launching the Baptist work in France on new lines, ten years ago. Mr. Gordon's health did not allow him to take part in our meetings, but it was a great privilege to have him among us. At 8 P.M. a larger gathering assembled, about four hundred or more, to hear Brethren Sainton of the Rue de Lille and Revel of Tramelan, with our Lutheran friend, Pastor G. Affia, who was followed by a distinguished Methodist minister, Pastor Matthew Lelievre, who all had words of sympathy and encouragement for us. On Monday, the 17th, at 8 P.M. a family gathering of the two Baptist churches took place. A number of brethren took part, and the two hours passed almost without notice. One baptism took place. At that meeting a very warm, affectionate letter was read from our old friend, Dr. A. W. Rogers of Paterson, whose liberal contribution to your funds on behalf of our church is but one of the tokens of sympathy which he has given us. A few days afterwards Pastor Theodore Monod, who has been a personal friend since I began to preach the gospel, and whose kindness and brotherly counsel have often helped me, as many others no doubt, spoke in one of our evening meetings, as he had not been able to come on the 16th. Other friends would have been with us had their occupations allowed. These inaugural services have helped us greatly, showing us that notwithstanding our position, which some would call sectarian, and the fact that many of us have left other denominations to become Baptists, we have not lost to any appreciable extent the sympathy and confidence of the true Christian people. And now the work is in full swing, and we already perceive coming signs of great blessing. The Sunday attendance is some A what larger than at Rue St. Denis, although our membership has decreased a little by the passing of some of our members, in a brotherly spirit, to our sister church of Rue de Lille, which needed strengthening. The evening meetings are nicely attended, though we have not yet made much publicity. The kind of people who come are of a better class than at Rue St. Denis, and a few have already expressed their desire to give themselves to Christ. I hear that Rue de Lille church is also going on satisfactorily. Brother Sainton has taken courage, and we expect good things for this winter. AFTER THE CHIEF SEATS REV. CHARLES H. HARVEY, PALABALA, CONGO GREAT change is taking place just now at Palabala. The old desperate opposition of the chiefs and head men to the gospel seems to have quite broken down, and there is not only toleration but a patronage of the mission by the notables almost embarrassing in its demonstrativeness, while the old chief, Noso, has given up his fetiches and professes conversion. Last Sunday we had four chiefs present at the service, including Noso, and our chapel was very full; in fact, our seat accommodation proved to be inadequate. It was specially difficult to provide seats for the chiefs, as they refuse to sit on the benches like the common people, and would like their distinctions in rank in vogue among themselves in their palavers, to be introduced into the meetings for prayer and worship. But that, of course, is out of the question; for whereas one dignitary may sit upon a chair in their own gatherings, another may only squat on a leopard's skin, while others must be content with a rug or a mat. At this service, therefore, I was anxious to start aright. Fortunately, the head chief had before the service sent his own chair, and two more accommodated themselves upon stools lent for the occasion. Number four, however, thought that a stool was too lowly a seat for His Highness; consequently he mounted the rostrum and seized my chair, which I had just then vacated in order to begin the service. This would embarrass my movements and the chances were that the other great men present would have considered that the balance of power was seriously interfered with by one of the minor chiefs seating himself in high places, and a migration to the platform would have followed. Seeing that our rostrum is only about five feet square, such an arrangement would have left much to be desired. I therefore promptly laid hold of the back of my chair, and having successfully prevented its being tugged away, I escorted His Audacity to the edge of the platform, upon which he sat during the remainder of the service. Afterwards I announced that any members of the congregation not caring to use the benches are at liberty to bring their own seats, but that it is not the custom in Christian assemblies to make distinctions on the ground of superior dignity or dress. I quoted James ii. to them also, and showed that it was forbidden to do This latter especially was convincing, and indeed the chief already alluded to said: "White man, that settles it!" There can be no further controversy about it now. so. 4 MOUNT OMEI, THE SACRED MOUNTAIN OF WEST CHINA to A SUMMER DAY'S OUTING REV. W. M. UPCRAFT, YACHAU, CHINA T is our custom to take the Sabbath rest on Monday by going out to one of the nearby villages, which not only gives us a change, and thus a rest, but also affords an opportunity to see something of our village neighbors. Recently we had with us here a young Buddhist priest to be cured of the opium habit, which he had contracted at the age of ten, and was at the time he came to us an abject slave to the inexorable drug. He had gone home a new man physically, and left an urgent invitation for us to visit him at his temple, so we set forth one Monday morning to spend the day there. The road lay along the valley of the beautiful Ya, with the river dancing in the sunlight at our left and the mountains shadowing either side, while the fields between overflow with their wealth of rice and corn. It is easy to rise to the height of devotion in presence of Him who crowneth the year with His goodness, so that "the valleys are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing." The transition from the singing valley to the grimy precincts of the unlovely temple was abrupt enough to more than neutralize the spirit of happy harmony between our inner feelings and the face that smiles through nature, the more so that we found the whole place pre-empted by a noisy crowd ostentatiously performing their part before the dust-laden idols. What common ground could there be |