THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Summary of the Results of the American Missions.
Christians.
Greenland, Labrador, Alaska 20,500
Canada 43,500
Indians of the United States 95,000
Negroes of the United States 7,500,000
Chinese and Japanese of the United States. 4,000
West India ... 845,000
Central and South America 195,000
Total 8.703,000
2. Africa*: The African fields of labor occupied by the Evangelical missions include five principal regions: (1) The west coast of Senegal, which embraces Senegambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gold and Slave Coasts, Yoruba, Nigeria, Kamerun, Kongo, Angola. (2) South Africa, embracing German Southwest Africa, Cape Colony, Natal and Zululand, the former Boer Republics, Basutoland, Matabeleland, Mashonaland, and Gasaland. (3) The East African Islands, Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles. (4) East and Central Africa, embracing the kingdom of Basuto, the Lake Region, and German and British East Africa. (5) North Africa, with the Italian Erythraea, Egypt and, to a very moderate degree, Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco. For the details of missionary operations and for statement of results, see Africa, I., 4.
Summary of the RBStrws op African Missions.
Christians.
West Africa 208,000
Cape Colony 600,000
Remaining South Africa 301,500
African Islands 295,000
East and Central Africa 107,000
Total 1,511,500
3. Central Asia: In contrast with the American and African mission fields, in Asia missions have to do principally with compact masses of peoples, united by political, ethnographic, linguistic, and religious bonds, and possessing a historical past as well as an old civilization and literature. They form, therefore, much more important subjects for the world mission than do primitive peoples, without political unity, civilization, or literature, and with a low grade of religion. For this reason much greater obstacles are encountered in the attempt to Christianize the former than the latter. The extensive efforts for evangelization and education made in western Asia, with its old Christian and Mohammedan population, by American Congregationalists and Presbyterians and Episcopalians, reporting about 101,000 Christians and about 62,000 pupils, need not here be noted, because this is no heathen mission; and the Mohammedan Mission of the Church Missionary Society in Persia and the missions of the Free Church of Scotland and the Reformed Church of America in Arabia have had but small success. The present outlook is, however, very bright.
4. British India: The Evangelical Danish-Halle Mission began in Tranquebar in 1706, but it was strictly localized through the entire eighteenth century and its results were small, about 20,000 converts. Only in the second period, beginning with the entrance of William Carey (q.v.) into this field in 1793, and the opening of India to missionaries in 1813, enforced by an Act of Parliament, a slow ex-
* Supplementary or confirmatory data will be found for these fields in Africa, II.
pansion took place. The Anglican Mission, the London, the Baptist, the Wesleyan Methodist, and the American Independent Missions, and the Basel, Leipsic, and Gossner Missions, were most active. Especially the entrance of the Scotch missions of the Established Church as well as of the Free Church was of prime importance because this gave quite an impulse to the establishment of schools through the prominent missionaries John Wilson, Alexander Duff (q.v.), and John Anderson, and extended this activity to the upper classes. Even this second period bears essentially the character of foundation work and experiment; the numerical result is in round numbers about 130,000 Evangelical Christians. The third period, from the great rebellion in 1857 to the present day, is marked by the unhindered expansion of the mission over all the provinces of this vast empire, reaching far up into Afghanistan and to the doors of Tibet; by the organization of churches; by the increase of the number of societies to about seventy, and of the Occidental and native ordained workers to 1,000 of the former, and 900 of the latter; by the improvement of missionary methods; by an augmented activity in education and literature as well as by an increase in the number of women and physicians. In this period belongs also the great native movements both of reform and reaction (Brahmo Somaj, q.v., and the like), which partly prepared the way for Christianity and partly opposed it; in any case they give proof that the preaching of the Gospel has produced a fermentation showing that Christianity has begun to influence the religious atmosphere of the land. The growing female and medical mission, which has already numerous native women in its service, has gained great importance; among these the work of the Brahmin widow, Pandita Ramabai (q.v.), a deaconess of a superior kind, with her influential institutions in and near Poona, merits special mention. While in the second missionary period the prevailing form was individual mission work, in the third compact masses of Christians gathered from which sprang church organizations. This concentration is most marked in the south in the country of the Tamils, especially in Tinnevelli, the Anglican field of labor in the north in the region of the Telugus, the field of the American Baptists; and in the southwest, in Cochin and Tra vancore, the field of the London Missionary Society; in the presidency of Bengal, the field of the Gossner-Kols Mission, and in the northwest provinces in Oudh, the sphere of the American Methodist Episcopalians; and, lastly, in Lower Burma, in the Karen mission of the American Baptists. The great majority of Hindu Christians belong to the lower castes or to the casteless tribes, and their religious and moral quality is still elementary. But it is an important fact in the defense of missions, that precisely through the religious, moral, social, and even economic elevation of these down-trodden peoples, Christianity has shown a saving power which has been acknowledged even by the Brahmins. It is true that, while no general Christian movement has reached the higher castes, there are also converts from them; among the native government officials, lawyers, physicians, and others, a considerable per-