OPERATING ROOM OF THE SEVERANCE HOSPITAL (PRESBYTERIAN), AT SEOUL, KOREA. THE CIVILIZING WORK OF MODERN CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. BY CYRUS C. ADAMS. IF F were asked to illustrate the spirit of practical humanity that is an impelling principle in the work of thousands of Christian missionaries we might mention the Roman Catholic Mission of Saint-Trudon in the Congo Free State. For over three years the fathers at this mission have been paying the natives to bring to them poor people stricken with an incurable disease.* The mission stands on the broad pathway that "sleeping sickness" followed 2000 miles up the Congo and on to Victoria Nyanza, smiting about 200,000 victims, not one of whom recovered. In May, 1903, the fathers, seeing these afflicted ones dying in the roads, conceived the idea that if they should get them together they might miti It was reported in November last that a cure had been discovered for sleeping sickness" and was being applied with much success. gate the sufferings of their last days, and perhaps reduce, by this segregation, the ravages of the plague. From that day to this they have been paying 3 francs 75 centimes, about 75 cents, for every patient brought to them. On March 16 last 2049 persons had been received at their isolated hospital, where 15 women prepared the food, and the gentle ministrations of the sisters and fathers are bestowed till a decent burial marks the last act of heroic devotion. AFRICAN RAILROAD BUILDERS TRAINED IN MISSION SCHOOLS. On September 1 last a railroad was completed around the rapids in the upper Congo, and this great undertaking illustrates another phase of philanthropic missionary effort. At Accra, on the Gold Coast, about CHURCH AT BLANTYRE, NYASALAND, BUILT BY NATIVE ARTISANS. 1200 miles above the Congo mouth, is a famous mission station that has long taught trades to the natives. The Congo Free State took into its service many of these skilled black artisans, trained in carpentry, blacksmithing, brickmaking, masonry, and other practical arts, and sent them to the upper river to supply the skilled labor needed in this railroad enterprise. Under them worked hundreds of the Congo boys, trained in the same trades in the Free State mission schools, but not yet so experienced and efficient as the men from Accra. It was their duty also to supervise the common laborers, 2000 to 3000 in number, who did the rough work of railroad construction. So it was the disciplined skill as well as the brawn and LIME KILN ON THE UPPER CONGO. tellectual and spiritual. He taught barbarians to read so that they might spell out the Scriptures he translated for them. He went among them to win converts, and his first and highest duty was to preach the Gospel. He has not changed a whit in his conception of his high calling, but he has found new ways to make himself more effective in it. He has discovered that the seeds of religious teaching thrive best in soil where some elements of our material civilization have been planted, watered, and coaxed to grow; that if he meets with some success in training untutored peoples to habits of industry, he has laid a pioneer foundation upon which he may deliver his Gospel message with more satisfying results; that industrial training is worth more to men lowest rungs of the ladder than intellectual duties of his sacred office that was never education; and that, if he may make his his before. people sharers in some of the fundamental blessings of civilization, if science may even dimly illumine their dark lives, if the boon of modern medical practice and surgery may be brought within their reach, he has won a vantage ground upon which to discharge the These are the practical, humanitarian aspects of most missionary enterprise to-day. Long ago they were incipient features of the work; but it is only within the past quarter of a century that industrial education has had its remarkable growth, that PRINTING OFFICE AT BOMA, CAPITAL OF THE CONGO FREE STATE. the protecting arm of the missionary has been thrown around the orphan, the foundling, the blind, and the deaf mute, and that medical science at the missionary station has begun to confer its blessings upon the least fortunate races of men. The model farm is now seen among the savages of New Guinea, black men press clay into molds and produce on the Congo the counterpart of the brickyards of Haverstraw; women in one of our pictures are running sewing machines within a stone's throw of the spot where their cannibal fathers pushed canoes from the shore and gave Stanley his hardest fight in Africa. Where the church rises, the hospital is its concomitant. The mission station is builded upon a basis of broad philanthropy; and upon the same foundation are rising the higher schools and even colleges in regions prepared for them. The missionary is helping to refashion the life of the backward races. We must not overlook the large participation of some of the civilized governments in this work of regeneration. The Congo Free State, for example, has its trade schools, its orphan colonies, and its hospitals, as well as the Evangelical and Roman Catholic missions scattered over its wide domain. SCHOOL OF THE BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION, ON THE LOWER CONGO. VAST CONTRIBUTIONS TO INDUSTRIAL UPBUILDING. General statements on such a subject make little impression unless fortified by ample evidence. We know that important agencies at home and in Europe are promoting industrial training as a part of educational systems; but we may not have heard that industrial training has been an established feature of hundreds of missions throughout the world while many of the Occidental nations have done little more than to discuss the preliminaries. If we look into the matter we shall find the facts very fascinating, and almost bewildering in number. The mass of this testimony is enormous in the reports of colonial governments and of missionary so are cieties; in recent books such as Dennis' "Christian Missions and Social Progress,' (from which. we permitted to reproduce many of the illustratrations of this article), which is packed with testimony, and in thousands of photographs, like those recently published by the Congo Free State, showing not only the missions, churches, schools, and hospitals, but also the trade schools, printing offices, sewing rooms, brickyards, fields and other industrial aspects where the natives are working at their new trades or tilling the soil by modern methods. It is unfortunate that so many books, written from the standpoint of the evangelical denominations, do scant justice to the great achievements in this field of the Roman Catholic missions, which have had their full share of successful pioneering in this work of sowing the seeds of civilization. TEACHING CONGO CHILDREN USEFUL TRADES. Let us glance, for a moment, at the Luluaburg mission, a thousand miles from the mouth of the Congo, the scene of one of our illustrations, and a type of many of the best stations. The grounds are neatly kept, the schoolhouse with the little cupola, the hospital, the church, and other buildings not seen in the picture, are commodious. Good roads are maintained. The fathers here love most of all to have hundreds of children under their influence. "Give us the children," they say. "Their parents are so fixed in primitive and barbarous ways that it is hard to change them. So we wish to gather the children around us that we may mold their plastic minds and train their hands. We may help in this way to make the future fathers and mothers very different from those of to-day, and how vast will be their influence!" In no sense do they neglect the adults, but their hopes are chiefly based upon the boys and girls from five to seventeen years of age. These children fill the school and workshops. No walls or regulations compel their presence, but a large variety of work and play and unfailing kindness and patience keep most of them there till their education is completed. A little reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, well sandwiched with music, complete the schoolroom exercises; but every day for years they are absorbing knowledge as infants do. They learn to read the clock, to distinguish the days and the months. They receive small coins for doing certain kinds of work, and each must keep an account of his receipts and expenditures. They are familiarized with many conveniences of life and methods of work, and finally all are required to specialize in one or another branch of labor. Most of the manual trades are taught to the boys, sewing and all branches of housewifery to the girls, and there are regular hours when every one works in the fields or gardens. PROGRESS SINCE STANLEY'S DAY. In 1879, Stanley could not induce a Congo native to carry a pound of freight or do other work for him. He had to send to Liberia and to Zanzibar for labor. To-day |