Rhode Island, with thousands of Christians, and no one to care for them. You have everything you have prayed for, and in audition the means to send forth those who are ready to go, and yet they tarry. Let the heathen perish if you will, but do send help to the Telugu converts just out of heathenism and still surrounded by it. Do also, I pray you, have mercy on the missionaries already sent forth. Do not, I pray you, kill the men who are always overburdened. You have thrust back on to Dr. Clough two large fields, each with Christian communities of above eight thousand. Kundakur is vacant, so is Atmakur. so is Allur. Stanton of Kurnool ought to have returned this year. I weigh one hundred and fourteen pounds, because I had to stay after I was unfit for work. Come, I say. Come, build up your broken wall. Send us men and send us women. I ask it in Jesus' name for the Telugus whom God has given you. It is very poetic for you to say, "We send the missionaries down into the pit FAMINE SCENES AT ONGOLF, INDIA Ordinarily this is full of water In the Famine Land REV. F. W. STAIT, UDAYAGIRI, INDIA [Although the famine in India is now, we are thankful to say, nearly at an end, its dreadful effects will be felt for years. This vivid picture by Mr. Stait is of interest as showing the state of things during the famine.] THIS day last year I stood here, on the hilltop, and gazed over the plains and valleys, verdant and beautiful. The great tanks, used for irrigation, full with water, sparkled in the sunlight, while the surrounding fields rejoiced the heart with their treasures of ripening grain, and beautiful tracts of green marked the banks of winding streams. The trees also held their heads high waving in the breeze. To-day, looking north, south, east and west, a dry burnt plain meets my eyes. Not one drop of water to be seen, not one field of grain, only everywhere the same dull, gray waste, the tanks showing only a dry extent of hardened soil, so hardened, so parched, that it has broken asunder, and great seams, like hungry mouths, run from end to end, as if pleading for one drop of moisture. And the cattle! They look at us with hopeless, pleading eyes, some of them too weak to stand up, and all of them so miserable and worn that we are glad to escape from a suffering for which we can offer no remedy. Even now as we listen we hear the blasting of the rock, where man is putting forth a last earnest effort to sink the shaft deeper down in some ancient well, hoping to gain water at a greater depth. First we had the months of suspense, when week after week, day after day, we watched the great clouds rise and sweep slowly up from the horizon and said, "Surely this will bring us help." But even while we hoped they rose higher and higher and carried their precious treasure far away. How we prayed, but the heavens were as brass above us and the earth as iron under our feet. And it seemed as if in the very wail of the wind that bore the waters away from us, we could hear the answer, "His hand is not shortened that he cannot save, but your sins have separated between you and God that he will not hear." People lie on the roadside in Northern India dying by the hundredsdying babes fall away from the shrunken breasts of dead mothers. Men who two months ago rejoiced in the life and strength that seemed to defy disease, now stretched out gaunt and trembling hands for a morsel to stay their anguish. They follow the carts along the roadside and pick the grains of undigested food from the offal of the oxen, devouring it with an eagerness that tells its own horrible tale. More valued than money, more precious than life, is his caste to the Hindu. To come in contact with an outcaste, or even with one lower than himself, but especially to touch the food or partake of a meal in company with such a one, would be to a high caste man more horrible than death, more degrading than any sin. So you can judge of what the need is in our district when I tell you that two caste men brought their children to us the other week and asked us to take them into our boarding school, because they could not bear to see their much loved little ones growing thinner and thinner day by day, and pleading for the food that could not be given. A year ago these men were well off, having others in their employ, but the lack of rain has brought the rich down to the level of the poor. In this part of the world we have what are called the dry and rainy seasons, and the sowing and reaping of crops is arranged in accordance with these natural divisions. If the rain comes out of season it causes ruin, as the fields are not prepared and the fruit and grain are not ready for the moisture. If there is a failure of rain at the time of the monsoons, then the newly sown grain must wither or die for lack of nourishment. In many places the ground may be too hard to prepare it for the seed, so that there may not be even the beginning of a crop. Large districts in Southern India are without the natural brooks and rivers that make cultivation easy in some parts. So with the government aid the people have built immense tanks, which are used to irrigate large tracts of land. In the vicinity of those tanks are the sagi, rice and yonaloo farms, and when we have good rains the torrents pour down from the surrounding mountains, filling them to overflowing, so that the supply lasts until the beautiful grain is fully ripened and gathered in. No rain means no water in the tanks, and no water in the tanks means empty fields and hungry people. You will see from the picture of this well (page 575) how some of the fields are irrigated from private or sectional wells, where oxen draw up the water in great leather buckets, which they empty into channels that carry it out to the paddy or rice fields. THE STEWARD'S REWARD Christian stewardship has its final issue in the reckoning before Him for whom men have been stewards. The wage-earner and the millionaire, the one who had the least committed to him and the one who had the most, each must stand before the judgment seat of Christ and have their gettings and their givings, their accumulations and their expenditures, their motives and their methods, brought under the searching scrutiny of Him whose eyes are as a flame of fire. money, all fraud and dishonesty and oppression, together with all wrong ways of All wrong ways of getting using and spending money will be laid bare in that day. All withholding from God. all selfishness and covetousness, all wastefulness and extravagance, all spending of money to gratify pride or sensual desires, will be seen in the light of the eternal throne, and no cloak of respectability or religiousness, no paltry excuse, such as is so often made by those who do not give, will be able to conceal or extenuate any blemish or flaw in any man's stewardship. works have been. Every man will be rewarded according as his On the other hand, all diligence and fidelity in the service of God as his stewards. all getting and giving for God's glory, all prayerfulness and consecration, all unselfishness and liberality and self-sacrifice, whether by those who have had little, or by those who had much, will be remembered by the Lord of those servants. Blessed indeed shall those stewards be to whom it shall be said when the King comes to reckon with them: "Well done, good and faithful servant: thou wast faithful over a little, I have set thee over much; enter into the joy of thy Lord."-REV. C. A. Cook. WOMEN'S BIBLE SCHOOLS The Bible school for girls in Rangoon, under the care of Misses Ranney and Phinney, is doing for women a work corresponding to that done by our department at Insein for men, and their public examinations are conducted with much credit. Last year they reported nine Burmans, ten Karens and two Chins under training. All these pursue a course of Biblical study according to a fixed curriculum, and are graduated with diplomas. I cannot speak too highly of this school of the prophetesses. Mrs. Rose and Miss Lawrence are engaged in a similar work for the Karen women. THE RANGOON MISSION PRESS The work of our mission press at Rangoon is too vast and too varied to admit of even a partial review at this time, but its importance to our mission work cannot be overestimated. It was never under abler or wiser management than at the present time, but it is sadly hampered by the lack of suitable quarters in which to prosecute its work. A very determined attempt is now being made to raise funds for the erection of new buildings, and the pressing need of improved quarters at the earliest possible day cannot be better shown perhaps than by reference to the action of our last convention at Rangoon. Mr. Sharp says: "There was one thing that was taken up and passed unanimously with enthusiasm; it was the resolution recommending the erection of a new mission press in Rangoon without delay, and to show their appreciation of the need they straightway took up a collection of Rs. 1,000 to help on the enterprise." EVANGELISTIC WORK At the opening of the last decade, Upper Burma and Shanland were still appealing to us as a denomination to come in and take possession of them for Christ. That appeal has been heard and in part answered. In Upper Burma we have established stations at Meiktila for the Burmans, at Myitkyina for the Kachins, and at Haka for the Chins. The last named station seems but one remove from Assam, and the dream of former years, of an unbroken chain of stations from Rangoon to the Naga Hills, seems nearing a realization. In Shanland we now occupy stations at Hsipaw, Mongnai and Namkham, three pivotal centers. From these three towns a very large number of Shans can be easily reached. Again large sections of country hitherto untouched or long neglected have in these later years heard the glad tidings again and again. I can myself testify that, with very few excep tions, the Gospel has been patiently and lovingly preached throughout the district of Sandoway, in long forsaken Arakan. Mr. Sharp writes from Toungoo that "during the year I have travelled with my helpers, by raft, and boat, and cart, and on foot, about 1,500 miles, visiting more than two hundred villages." Mr. Kelly writes: "The unrest and willingness to listen on the part of the Buddhists continue, and in my last trip I had the privilege of baptizing a company of sixteen, all converts from Buddhism. The large number of baptisms during these ten years, aggregating 22,231, show how vigorously this work has been prosecuted." |