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The Call to the Mission Field and its Answer.

BY REV. ERNEST G. WESLEY. WITHOUT further introduction let some facts which will be recognized by many supply a text.

1. Mr. and Mrs. A: Both called to the mission field; both gladly accepting the call; both working together, hand, heart, head as one; ten, twenty, thirty, forty, yes, fifty years pass-they are still together working in the foreign field for the Lord and his cause both so well love. Result: success along the whole line.

2. Mr. and Mrs. B--: The first called, clearly, distinctly called; the second going to the field because husband goes; going resignedly, not willingly but of necessity; staying their "sentence out"-ten years; then coming home with no thought of a return. Result: fair success, some measure of ill success, some hindrance all along the line.

3. Mr. and Mrs. C- -: The former called, clearly, as was Mr. B, the latter going out under protest, at heart wholly unwilling; in mind and soul unsubmissive; disliking the work, forced into it, complaining within the "inner self;' wearying and worrying the years away; health failing, returning before the end of "their ten-year sentence," husband with wife. Result: little if anything better than fail

ure.

4. Mr. and Mrs. D: The first called, the call welcomed, would be gladly obeyed, longing to go, burdened to go (as only the missionary call can burden a man), in agony praying that wife may see her way to go; she refuses; D-rejected by board because wife will not go. Result: an earnest, qualified, faithful laborer lost to the field.

5. Mr. and Mrs. E: Similar to last case, except that Mr. E— is accepted; "his wife will sail later;" wife privately urges husband's return; she cannot undertake so long a journey, her friends will not hear of her leaving them. The husband is wor ried, dissatisfied; mental conflict, heart struggle, overpersuasion. Result: a vacant field, several thousand dollars out of the treasury.

Similar cases might be multiplied; they call for consideration; they demand remedy; the evil can be remedied; the facts given are not, in the least degree, exaggerated. It is but a few months since I was speaking to a prominent physician as to the cause of the death of a returned missionary's wife, receiving the reply, "Dissatisfaction with the work in the mission field the chief cause of her complaint." Another well-known physician more recently assures me (he himself a medical missionary of over half a century in foreign fields) regarding the "sickness" of the wife of a foreign laborer: "She has absolutely no disease whatever; her whole trouble is nervousness, imagination."

I would here lay down two principles: 1. Every man called to the ministry should consider himself

under the strongest and holiest obligation in seeking a wife to seek only such a one as is willing to go with him anywhere where there is one soul unsaved. 2. Every woman, marrying a man called to preach Christ's Gospel, should clearly realize that it is her duty and privilege to accompany him to the uttermost parts of the earth if God sees fit to call.

It will be answered: "There are thousands of home fields where wives refusing foreign work will be most useful." This may be all true, yet the fact will remain that no man called of God to preach has any right to hinder his work anywhere by any alliance, matrimonial or otherwise. If God calls it is man's duty to obey. There is to-day (or was a few years since) a man in an asylum in New York who, being strongly called to preach, refused, asking God to withhold his call; the prayer was answered-insanity the result. I think all ministers (with but few exceptions) will bear witness with me that the "call to preach" came to their soul in an abstract sense with no qualification of place; all we heard was the inner, quiet, but tremendously force-filled voice: "Go, preach my Gospel." It is impossible for any of us to know where God may see fit to send those who have obeyed the first command, and then wait further orders. Paul was sent first to Damascus, but afterward to all Asia. We answer, Lord, I am willing to obey thy call to preach thy word," without know. ing, without the right to expect God to tell us then the where. We have no right to prevent instant obedience when he does show the place. If God sees that this man's place is in the home field, well and good; if God sees fit to call this man to India, to Africa, to China, to the Isles of the Sea, it is quite as well. Missionary history most clearly teaches that God always sends the right laborers to the right place-Morrison, Judson, Moffat, Patton, Mackay, Livingstone, Patteson, Clough, Carey, with an "innumerable host" of others as witnesses.

No one with very much experience will attempt to deny this statement: There are hundreds of fully qualified men, men willing to enter the foreign field, who cannot go because the wife does not wish to give her life to that work; she married without such an understanding; from one standpoint the husband has no right to expect she should accompany him because he married without any suggestion that God's call to him might mean anywhere; and yet, in marrying a minister of Christ's Gospel, every true woman, properly trained, would understand that foreign work was a possibility, a probability, a necessity if God called.

In view of the present demands of Christ's kingdom, its unreaped fields, its ripe harvests, its need of reapers, its open doors, etc., all Christians should realize that regeneration was but their "acceptance of the shilling;" that is, their enlistment in the service of the King of kings, and that before every recruit stands the probability of "foreign service." God

gives to no one exemption from service to which he calls; we exempt ourselves at our own risk. God grauts no substitute-right. If we take a not granted exemption or a not granted furlough we are in danger of being treated as deserters. Many have so entangled themselves, or in some other way have prevented their acceptance of the divine call, to find, perhaps after many years, the fatal nature of the step taken; perhaps to experience the fearful consciousness of a not withdrawn call with the no less clear knowledge that their own folly has made obedience impossible.

No one questions the right of all military authority to send troops wherever that authority sees best. Is anyone ready to admit the claim of any Cesar to outrank the claim of Christ?

When divinity students or ministers seek a wife they are under the highest and holiest obligation of the most sacred duty to seek only such as recognize the fact, "Our field of labor is not yet marked out; I am willing to go wherever the hand of God may lead us." No woman who does not mean this is fitted to be the wife of a minister; no minister should marry a woman who is not ready and willing to recognize and live this fact. It matters not whether the question of foreign service has been named or not, to every minister may come the call. If the Lord calls, the man should go. Are not such women to be found? Let no one dare to disgrace our Christian womanhood as ever to hint at a negative reply. Theological students could find such wives if they (the students) were as strongly attracted by spiritual as by physical loveliness. Hundreds of what might be spiritual Samsons have sold themselves into the hands of attractiveness, sociability, vivacity, agreeableness, and ordinary Christian life, without a thought as to the possibility of a call to foreign service. These words may seem strong, but they are too true.

The question of health should also be considered. Here, also, we find a demand for "heroic Christianity." No minister of the Gospel ought to think of marrying a woman whose physical strength would be likely to unfit her for mission service outside the comforts, climate, etc., of the home field. "Suppose the two love each other?" some one will suggest. Through the crucifixion of love, in its strongest, purest, holiest form, for Christ's sake souls are sometimes developed into the most perfect spiritual nature. A sickly wife in the foreign field means the support of a well wife taken to support one who cannot labor for souls; doing this is robbing the missionary treasury.

General qualifications, too numerous to name, but which will suggest themselves, should also enter into the forethought of all who are called to preach the word before they think of the question of marriage. A woman who will make a grand, good, loving, useful wife for a "lay member" may be a very poor wife

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for a minister. Beauty, attractiveness, etc., when surrounded with all the comforts and pleasures of a business man's home occasionally undergoes an almost marvelous transformation when found in the home of a poorly paid pastor. Much greater is this transformation in a mission outpost, with attendant discomforts, disagreeable surroundings, uncivilized natives, poor food, worries, hard work, waiting for funds, and a dozen or more objectionable things which are the perquisites of most pastors, unless in large city churches, and even there!

This article is only suggestive. It has, at least, the merit of being off the well-worn track of mission contributions, but some little knowledge of foreign work in easy fields, many years careful study of various mission problems, and a deep interest in all pertaining to the question fully convinces the writer that the subject considered is all important in its bearings upon "the supply of workers in mission fields," no less important as regards the continuance of missionaries, their success, the financial question, usefulness, and many other points well known to missionary boards. The experience of hundreds has shown that theological students do not, as a rule, obey the old-fashioned Methodist rule with regard to marriage; the majority choose the wife before asking for divine direction; to ask it afterward is of little practical use.

The Parliament of Religions.

THE Parliament of Religions that met in Chicago in September last awakened much interest and drew large audiences. It was not a place for the discussion of doctrinal differences, but where able men of different faiths presented their best reasons for their beliefs. The result will be not the lowering of our own standards, but more respect for the great truths that underlie all religions, and the finding that in the false religious there is much of good and of power. It has been declared that there is but "one religion." There is but one true religion, and there is no reason to fear that its believers and defenders are not strong enough to maintain their ground. It is not wise to underrate the strength of the enemy, and the parliament should give a fresh impulse to Protestant missions. We are pleased with the words of Mr. F. E. Winslow, who says in The Churchman: "That men should be found, even if some of them be Brahmins and Buddhists, to come from the ends of the earth to assert that man is a spiritual being, and that everywhere and always he is finding in this spiritual nature the presumption that he came from God, and so is making it his chief duty to find that God from whence he came, is, in face of the fact that so much of the world's life is given up to materialism, indifference, infidelity, and practical atheism, a noble assertion." We give brief extracts from some of the addresses made.

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Reuchi Shibata, a high priest of the Shinto faith in Japan, said: "I confess it proudly that I was the first to organize a society in Japan against Christianity, but it was not against real Christianity; it was against the injustice we had received from the people of Christendom. To-day we, the forty million people of Japan, stand still firmly upon the basis of international justice, and await further manifestation as to the morality of Christianity."

Rev. F. E. Slater, a missionary in India, said: "The problem of our time is how to bring a living Christianity interpreted in the light of the instructed modern conscientiousness into fruitful contact with the best convictions of non-Christian man, for wherever missionaries go they find that God has been before them; they do not bring Christ and humanity together for the first time, but they have an ally in the heart of everyone; and their own faith is confirmed by perceiving tokens of God's perpetual presence, by discovering that the scope of his purpose is ampler than they dream."

Count Bernstorff, of Germany, said: "I, for myself, declare that I am here as an individual evangelical Christian, and that I should never have set my foot in this parliament if I thought that it signified any. thing like a consent that all religions are equal, and that it is only necessary to be sincere and upright. I can consent to nothing of this kind. I believe only the Bible to be true, and Protestant Christianity the only true religion. I wish no compromise of any kind."

Mr. Alexander Webb, the American who has embraced Mohammedanism, said: "There is not a Mussulman on earth who does not believe that ultimately Islam will be the universal faith. Polygamy never was, and is not, a part of the Islamic system. To ingraft polygamy upon our social system in the condition in which it is to-day would be a curse. There are parts of the East where it is practiced. There are conditions under which it is beneficial. But we must first understand what it really means to the Mussulman, not what it means to the American. I say that a pure-minded man can be a polygamist and be a perfect and true Christian, but he must not be a sensualist."

Joseph Cook, of Boston, said: "I know I am going hence, and I know I wish to go in peace. There are three things from which I can never escape-my couscience, my God, and my record of sin in an irreversible past. Our hands are red with sin. I turn to Mohammedanism and ask, Can you wash our red right hands? I turn to Confucianism and Buddhism and ask, Can you wash our red right hands? I hold it to be a self-evident truth that unless a man is washed from the old sin he cannot be at peace in the presence of infinite holiness, and the only power that can do this is found in Christianity."

Mr. Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, of India, presented the claims of the Brahmo-Somaj: "Christianity de

clares the glory of God; Hinduism speaks about his infinite and eternal excellence; Mohammedanism, with fire and sword, proves the almightiness of his will; Buddhism says how joyful and peaceful he is. He is the God of all religions, of all denominations, of all lands, of all scriptures; and our progress lays in harmonizing these various systems, these various prophecies and developments, into one great system. Hence the new system of religion in the BrahmoSomaj is called the New Dispensation. The Christian speaks in terms of admiration of Christianity; so does the Hebrew of Judaism; so does the Mohammedan of the Koran; so does the Zoroastrian of the Zend-Avesta. The Christian admires his principles of spiritual culture; the Hindu does the same; the Mohammedan does the same. But the Brahimo-Somaj accepts and harmonizes all these precepts, systems, principles, teachings, and disciplines, and makes them into one system, and that is his religion."

Dr. Hale, of Boston, prophesied that "the twentieth century will give to every man according to his necessities. It will receive from every man according to his opportunity. And that will come from the religious life of that century, a life with God for man in heaven. As for purity, the twentieth century will keep the body pure-men as chaste as women. Nobody drunk, nobody stifled by this or that poison, given with this or that pretense, but everybody free to be the engine of the almighty soul."

Dr. George Washburne, President of Robert College, Constantinople, in presenting a picture of Mohammedanism, said: "The faith of Islam is based primarily upon the Koran, which is believed to have been delivered to the prophet at sundry times by the angel Gabriel. It is, in fact, very difficult for an honest inquirer to determine what is really essential to the faith. A distinguished Moslem statesman and scholar once assured me that nothing was essential beyond a belief in the existence and unity of God. And several years ago the Sheik ul-Islam, the highest authority in Constantinople, in a letter to a German inquirer, stated that whoever confesses that there is but one God, and that Mohammed is his prophet, is a true Moslem; although to be a good one it is necessary to observe the five points of confession, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage."

Mr. B. B. Nagarkar, a Hindu of Bombay, made an attack upon Christianity and its missionaries, saying: "Every year you are lavishing-I shall not say wasting-mints of money on your so-called foreign missions and missionaries, sent out, as you think, to carry the Bible and its salvation to the 'heathen Hindu,' and thus to save him! Aye, to save him! Your poor peasants, your earnest women, and your generous millionaires raise millions of dollars every year to be spent on foreign missions. Little, how little, do you ever dream that your money is expended in spreading abroad nothing but Christian dogmatism and Christian bigotry, Christian pride and Christian ex