RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Missions to the Heathen
the greater number. Of 4,000 natives 3,150 are Roman Catholics; there are 8 stations, 7 priests, 10 lay brothers, 10 sisters, 660 scholars. (17) The vicariate of Hawaii is also in the hands of the Picpus Society. Nearly half of the islanders, who were long before evangelized, have been converted, resulting in 14,000 Roman Catholics (14,922). Almost as many have been won among the Chinese and Japanese immigrants, with whom the Roman Catholic Portuguese are counted. There are reported 15 stations (1), 24 priests (3), 33 lay brothers, 48 sisters, 17 schools (50?), 1,943 scholars (5,599). Die katholische Kirche gives the following statistics in regard to the whole Catholic mission in the Pacific: 205 stations (207), 268 priests (122), 219 lay brothers, 452 sisters, 126,032 converts (278,000), 426 schools (2,917), 19,927 scholars (71,437). The corresponding figures in regard to the aborigines on the mainlands could not be obtained. The whole Roman Catholic mission to the heathen can be summarized as follows: 2,870 stations (3,790), 4,009 priests (4,485), 1,954 lay brothers, 4,937 sisters (3,119 unmarried female missionaries, according to J. S. Dennis, Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions, New York, 1902), 10,494 schools (18,921), 700,000 scholars (867,370), 3,878,712 converts (3,371,588 excluding the Negroes in the United States).
R. Ghundemann. B. Protestant Missions.
I. Introduction: Christianity being the one world religion, it alone has the vocation for a world mission. It is the world religion, because it is both universal and absolute. It is the unii. The versal religion ; for it offers to all hu- Basis of manity, without difference of sex, age, Christian education, rank, civilization, nation- Missions, ality, color, or race, that assured salvation which is needed by all, and imposes a condition of salvation which can be realized by all. It is the absolute religion; for it differs from all other religions through the assurance of the objective truth of its faith, warranted by the sacred person of Jesus Christ. It therefore differs not only in degree but in kind in that it substitutes (1) an objective true knowledge of God for purely subjective human conceptions of him, and (2) the divine act of deliverance for human attempts at self-deliverance. As God has prepared in Christ the salvation of the world, so he wills that this salvation should be offered to all men, at all times, and in all places; and since this can be accomplished only by the orderly sending forth of messengers of salvation, so God wills the world mission. The whole history and doctrine of Christian salvation is so penetrated by thought of universal salvation that the world mission is a simple and natural consequence. But, outside this logical obligation, there is a direct mission command which, like a categorical imperative, compels obedience from every one who wishes to be a disciple of Jesus. Tradition declares that the risen Christ gave the command to his apostles to go forth and, by proclaiming his Gospel to the whole world, to bring all nations to him. The mission command is as much the logical result of the human personality of Jesus and of the universalistic quality of his teachings as the fruit of his death. Altogether the instrument of God, Jesus made salvation a reality at first in the most modest sphere; from the holy seed in Israel he raised his instruments, and only when everything was accomplished he gave them the royal command to conquer the world. He first familiarized them with the great idea of the universality of his kingdom, and then drew the
practical consequences; he sowed one missionary seed after the other, until, with the growing understanding of his life-work, the understanding of the missionary task was ripened. And only after he had fulfilled everything, and as the Crucified and Risen One went unto his Father, he promised to his disciples strength from above enabling them to do greater works than he had done. To these great works especially belongs the preaching of the kingdom beyond the bounds of Israel over the whole world.
A great world movement was produced by the marching order of Jesus, so majestic in its simplicity: " Go forth." Innumerable armies of messengers have " gone forth " — first to the 2. General Greco-Roman world, then to the Ger- Results. man-Slavonic world, and lastly over all parts of the earth since the age of great discoveries, the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. The whole history of the Christian Church has become mission history, and if now and then there have been periods of quiescence, that marching order has nevertheless always produced a renewal of missionary work. Nineteen hundred years after its issuance, it has become again so vital that Christian nations and churches have started a missionary movement which has no parallel in either of the two former periods. The words of Jesus demonstrate their truth by their effect. The mission command of Jesus has revolutionized the history of the world. Of the about 1,540 millions of human beings who inhabit the earth today, 550 millions are Christians at least in name. This status of Christendom is the fruit of missions, for to each of the Christian peoples of the present era the Gospel has been brought by missionaries. This great Christianity gathered in by missions is composed both of peoples who already possessed a civilization before they were Christianized, and of those who lacked this possession; and it is striking that the barbarian nations since their conversion to Christianity have become the standardbearers of civilization and the leaders in history. So the mission history of the past has proved that neither race nor civilization constitutes a difference; salvation in Christ is for all men, all are in need of it, all may gain it, and in all it has proved its strength. This fact of missionary history is a proof of so much greater force for the vocation of Christianity as a world religion and a world mission in that it is not confined to the closed missionary periods of the past. There is a modern missionary period in which this fact is being repeated, and this phase is the subject of this article. Unfortunately it is not a united Christianity which carries on the mission of the present day — a circumstance which constitutes one of its dark sides and causes many impediments and disagreements.
This section will treat of Protestant missions in two principal divisions: (1) a general view of the history of colonial missions, by which is meant Christian work carried on by different nations within the limits of Christendom or of the territories acquired by them; and (2) of the separate fields of foreign missions.
Missions to the Heathen