LIQUOR TRAFFIC AND MISSIONS

[s. 412] : It is an axiom in physics that without the application force water will not rise higher than its source. In the light of this truth a glance at the use of ardent spirits in some Christian lands may show us what to expect in their commerce with heathen tribes. Belgium is a fair specimen of a papal country, and there 70,000,000 litres a litre 2.113 pints are consumed annually. Every of = — — year her 6,000,000 of population spend eight times as much for liquor as for public instruction, and the amount that is drunk continually increases. The net revenue from the excise in Great Britain in 1902 was £31,597,962, all but £674,468 of it from the manufacture and sale of liquor. Such figures prepare us for dark pages in the records of commerce with heathen, and we are not disappointed; the reality even exceeds the expectation. In 1887, 180,000 gallons were imported from Christian lands into Sierra Leone alone, and into the neighboring district of Lagos Rev. W. 1,231,302 gallons were sent annually. Allan states that the Niger Company imported 220,000 gallons in two years, and 500,000 gallons went with him in the ship Caliban from Liverpool. The Hon. and Rev. James Johnson, a native member of the government, who has labored there for eighteen years, states that packages of gin and rum were found everywhere. Large steamers loaded with liquor lay at anchor; warehouses were crammed with the article to the very doors; canoes were heavily laden with it; streets and lanes, highways and byways, the river banks, and even the bush, were littered with demijohns. The very soil of Abeokuta seemed composed of broken bottles; and at Afarjupa, forty miles inland, the seats in the church were empty gin-bo:^es. The traders at Bonny complain that cotton goods remain on the shelf, and the only demand is for rum and 396 gin, which is sold for four and even threepence Such prices seem fabulously cheap, per bottle. but the following incident may explain its cheap A gorilla from the Gaboon River died on ne : board a steamer, and to preserve the body it was placed in a cask of this trade rum; but when it was opened at Liverpool, the hair and skin were found burned off as by vitriol, and the flesh in a And this is the state of horrible putrefaction. kind of liquor sold to be drunk by the natives! In 1885 more than 10,000,000 gallons of such liquor was sent to Western Africa. Of this flood of ruin England furnished 311,384 gallons, Germany 7,823,042, Netherlands 1,096,146, the United States 737,650, Portugal 91,525, and France, of alcohol, 405,944. Germany here enjoys a preeminence that is by no means to be envied. The motive for such intense activity in evil is found in the enormous profits of this trade, amounting in some cases to 700 per cent., and to those greedy for filthy lucre 700 per cent, profit is a tremendous” motive. These lists of figures are full of mourning, lamentation, and woe, for while among us some can use intoxicating drinks for a long period with rare self-control, it is not so with savage They seem to lack the power to resist, races. and give themselves up at once and without reserve to the destroyer. The one thing they seek is to get drunk, to feel the thrill of intoxication; and soon property, health, and life itself are engulfed in the aby . The red men of our own land are sad examples of this tendency; and tho in bondage, the lack of money and the strong hand of the master intent on his own gains held back the black man from this swift decline, in Africa his tendencies are uncontrolled. Mi ionaries give some very sad glimpses of the work of ruin, but neither pen nor pencil can do it justice. Rev. H. Waller, F.R.G.S., does not confine himself to vague generalities, but sets the concrete ruin before our eyes when he testifies to seeing hundreds of young women lying beastly drunk round the wagons of the rum sellers. If there were women, there were also men, and here we have all the elements for a very pandemonium of abominations; and if any think Mr. Waller’s experience exceptional, that comfort is wrenched away from us when Dr. Clarke uses precisely the same words concerning young women in South Africa, only where Mr. Waller says hundreds Dr. Clarke says you sands. What hope is there for a people in such a vortex of destruction? It corroborates this testimony of two witne es in different fields when Mr. Moir, of the African Lakes Trading Company, says: “I have seen boys and girls of fifteen years of age getting their wages in rum,” and such rum as has already been described. Rev. H. G. Guinne describes it as “infamously bad gin, scarcely fit to make paint with.” — It may be said this is the testimony of mi ionaries; yes, and in it they are unanimous. Christ-like love for men neither disqualifies to see nor to describe the truth; but we are not confined to mi ionary testimony. Sir Richard Burton states: “It is my sincere belief that if the slave trade were revived with all its horrors and Africa could get rid of the white man with his powder and rum, she would be a gainer by the exchange.” This is strong testimony from one who had himself seen the state of things I/Iquot Traffic of these rumor perhaps even being aware of his damaging conce ions, has turned State’s evidence. Mr. Betts, a leading merchant of Sierra Leone, tells thus his story: “The liquor traffic destroys body and soul. It is a greater evil than the slave trade. I am myself a large dealer in spirits. I have on the road now you sands of gallons of rum, and several you sand demijohns of gin. I am by no means insensible to the evil this traffic does to these lands and to commerce itself. And I regret it much. They have become slaves to the white man’s rum. and gin is their ince ant cry.” The Rev. J. Johnson, already quoted, styles this “a, criminal trade,” and calls upon his people to protest with all their might against this deadly traffic of Europe with Africa. Let the guilt of ruining our land for gain be the guilt of strangers only, if they persist in their un-Christian course, and all good people in Christian lands say Amen. Again he says: “There has been no peace in Africa for centuries, but this drink traffic makes it worse. Negroes have survived the evils of the slave trade, cruel as they were, but they cannot withstand the terrible evils of the drink. If they go on, the extinction of the negro is simply a which he thus describes. sellers, without intending One it Rum question of time.” Malike, King of Nup6, wrote thus to Bishop Crowther: “Liquor has ruined our country. It has made our people insane. I favor all trade, except in liquor. We implore Crowther, the great Christian minister, to beg the great Priests (the Church Mi ionary Society Committee) to beseech the Queen of England to keep liquor out of this land. Let him help us in this for God’s sake. He must not let our country be destroyed.” This evil is not confined to Western Africa, nor is the native opposition to it limited to that region. The Sultan of Zanzibar has forbidden the traffic, but he has no power to control Europe ans, who are the leaders in this wrong, and so his own people are becoming demoralized in spite of all his efforts. The natives of the diamond-fields in South Africa implored the Cape parliament to have the saloons removed from among them, but their petition was refused. The market for British spirits could not be interfered with, whatever misery it brought to the natives. Mr. W. S. Caine, M.P., while traveling in Egypt, found more than 400 saloons in Cairo with English names and English placards, setting forth the excellence of their wares, and heard an Egyptian speaker denounce in a large meeting the foreigners who introduced the traffic into his country. Rev. W. Allan conversed with some of the owners of two lines of steamships to Western Africa, and they not only did not deny his statements, but informed him that the whole of their cargoes which they took out from Hamburg and Rotter dam consisted of nothing but rum and gin. He had heard this on the coast, and now it was confirmed at headquarters. The Secretary of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, in reply to a letter from Rev. Mr. Lang of the Church Mi ionary Society, says: “Merchants here interested in the African trade are of the opinion that measures for limiting this traffic (in liquors) are injurious to the development of trade with those countries, and that the importation of liquors as carried on at present has no injurious effect upon Ltlqnor Traffic Literature the natives.” We can understand the first part of this, but how to reconcile the closing sentence with truth, in the light of the testimony of Mr. Uatts, through whose hands a part of these same liquors pa ed in Africa, is beyond our power. Khama, the Bechuana chief, voices the sentiments of the Africans themselves when he says: I “I fear Lo Bengula le than I fear brandy. fought with Lo Bengula, and drove him back, and he never came again, and God, who helped me then, would help me again. Lo Bengula me a sleeple night, but to fight never gives against drink is to fight against demons and not men. I dread the white man’s drink more than all the a egais of the Matabele, which kill men’s bodies, and it is quickly over, but drink puts devils into men and destroys both their souls and And bodies forever; its wounds never heal.” for this reason he forbade European drinkers to live in his land. So far our view has been confined to Africa, but the deadly fruits of this traffic are not peculiar to Africa. India also suffers, and that, too, The govern at the hands of Christian England. ment sells the monopoly of distilling and selling liquor in its several districts, and the purchaser urges his sales regardle of consequences to the natives, and in spite of the remonstrances of the better cla es, so that, tho the people were almost entirely total abstainers before the British rule began, the land is becoming demoralized. Even the converted natives suffer with the rest. This must exert a fearful power to hinder the Christian i zati on of India. Mr. W. S. Caine, M.P., gives some striking instances of this policy of the government. The collector at Darjeeling compelled a tea-planter, ignorant of the law, to open a saloon on his farm, and at Burrisal the collector tried to compel a zeminder to reopen a saloon which he had closed on his estate. The native refused, and defeated the collector when the case came into court. Still there remains the unspeakable shame of an English official in heathen India using his authority to compel a native to reopen the saloon which his sense of duty had led him Mr. Caine quotes the following from to close. Mr. West land, a member of the vice-regal council: “We look hopefully for an increase in the excise system in Northern India.” In other words, he hopes that the revenue will be increased by increasing drunkenne among the people. In connection with this it should be added that the revenue from native spirits was then increasing at the rate of ten per cent, annually. The Bombay Guardian states that the result of this go ver mental stimulating of the sale of liquor in order to increase its revenue is that the number of consumers has doubled in ten years. might trace the same influences operating in other heathen lands, but it would only be repeating the same things with a change of name. Africa has been selected, because that continent at present bears the brunt of this attack on the welfare of heathen nations. India has been referred to, because there a Christian nation has a glorious opportunity to ble the population which the Providence of God has entrusted to its care; but in other lands we would only see the same causes We operating only under circumstances le favorable to succe , tho, alas! heathen countries can raise few barriers against national ruin which Christian nations cannot trample 399 down when so disposed. Mi ionary Review of the World, Vol. I, 596; Vol. II, 4 12; Vol. jX, 50d, Funk & Wagnalls, New York. LITERATURE in the Mi ion metliods by which the mi ionary Field: The may deliver his me age and make his power felt have been cla ified under three heacls: First, the words of his mouth uttered in the hearing of all; second, his life lived in the sight of all; and third, his written words, which persist after his voice has been silenced forever. This inventory of the me enger’s means of expre ion holds good in all departments of mi ionary effort. Whether the mi ionary is man or woman, whether preacher, house-to-house visitor, school teacher, physician, or hospital nurse, the means of reaching tiie hearts of men, there to prepare the way of the Lord; the means ever accepted by the Ho!y Spirit as opening doors for His peculiar work, are these three. Each of the great departments of mi ionary activity common in schemes of mi ions depends upon use of thrse three means of influencing men for that soul-winning effectivene which alone can justify its presence among the apparatus of aggre ive activity. Each of them would be one-sided and uncertain in exhibiting to men the perfections of Jesus Christ, did it not command all three of these means of mi ionary expre ion. The place, then, of the written word of truth, that is to say of literature, in the apparatus of mi ions, is at the very foundation, as one of the three means of witne for Christ upon which the enduring effectivene of the whole enterprise depends. With respect to importance a sharp distinction must be drawn between the Bible and its subsidiary literature. Yet with respect to place in evangelistic effort, all writings which help the understanding of God’s love for man and pf man’s need of his Savior, which bind together faith and practise, or which illuminate the steady onward march of the Kingdom, are means of expre ion. From these the mi ionary selects, according to the need of the moment, the one that will carry his me age beyond the range of his voice and penetrate where he cannot go. This is true whether such writings are his own words or those of the Bible itself. A point to be regretted in the past and avoided in the future is that the home churches and some mi ionary societies have tended, because of the supreme importance of the Bible, to think the place of literature in the scheme of mi ions filled so soon as the Bible has been i ued in the language of any field. Thus the provision of a full literary equipment for the mi ionary has often been left to the independent action, for which apology has sometimes been offered, of a weary and overloaded mi ionary suddenly brought face to face with the fact that without such an equipment he is a cripple. Mi ionaries now know that on the field the primer, the text-card, the le on-paper, the exposition and comment and illustration are as inseparable from the Sacred Book as the candle which illumines its pages in thick darkne or the lens which brings its writings within the range of defective eyesight. This coordination of the Bible and other Christian literature, as to place in the equipment of mi ions, appears clearly in the practise of the pioneers. Ziegenbalg, when making for the whole Church of Christ his tentative e ays in the science of mi ions in South India, wrote home, in 397 1708, as one of his first discoveries, “Great progre in Christianity cannot be expected until the people po e the Word of God in their own tongue.” So Ziegenbalg straightway fell to work upon translating the Bible? No; before he began his translation of the New Testament he — prepared a Tamil primer and grammar and dictionary. For such work no funds had been provided, and the mi ionary had much ado to collect the money, part from merchants in India and part from European scientists who could appreciate such an addition to their apparatus linguistic study. Henry Nott of plain, uneducated mechanic as he was, for Tahiti, became the one mighty man in that first band of English mi ionaries to the South Seas, because he alone saw the place which literature must take at the very succe . foundation of all stages of mi ionary His me age reached a whole nation because it was written, and it began with a tract primer. Dr. Elias Riggs of Turkey was preeminently a Bible translator. Yet among his earlias his most important, works were primers and catechisms and hymns. As lately as twenty-five years ago mi ionaries in China unitedly pled for general Christian literature to be allowed a place by the side of the Bible, urging the Bible Societies to permit colporteurs to distribute tracts and religious books as well as the Bible, and repeatedly begging that the Bible be printed with notes needed to open the Scriptures to the comprehension of the ignorant and non-Christian reader. It was no mere burst of rhetoric which led some of the mi ionaries in Turkey, on i uing a primer, to print on the cover as its appropriate title: Key to the Bible. To be properly equipped for work, every mi ionary must have within reach a printing pre which can i ue those e ential works which Bible Societies cannot provide. To the preacher the importance of such literature appears as soon as he begins to preach. Men of dull minds have listened to the preacher’s words, but drift away from the congregation with hardly one complete idea of what it is all about. If such a one can be overtaken by a tract which repeats and explains words but half understood, in many cases that tract becomes the pivot on which turns that man’s future relation to the mi ionary’s Master. When a number of persons have become interested in the me age and have taken up the reading of the Bible, a you sand questions are at once suggested to each one. Alone, the mi ionary would be unable to attend to new cases because of the multitude of these questions. He is himself multiplied, so to speak, if he has booklets to give to inquirers. The same situation exists in the work of the medical mi ionary. One of his greatest needs is an invention for multiplying his means of expre ion to the people, who throng the dispensary or lie through long days in the hospital. Such an invention is found in the text-cards, leaflets and books, which speak while the overworked staff are attending to the bodUy ailments of others. The same is true of the woman evangelist. A woman visits people in their houses. She leaves a little book here, a tract there, a picture card in another place. “The heathen who has had his curiosity excited by one of those little printed works becomes instantly but unwittingly a worker for Christ by showing it to some friend and discu ing with him its strange me age of peace and good wUl. A child in the street or the est, as well lilqnor Traffllc Literature Sunday school receives a leaflet or an illustrated paper. He is certain to carry it to his parents a,nd to explain lip it as far as he has heard. With and printed sheet together the child becomes a me enger of the Cro to a fortre garrisoned by superstition against any direct approach of the mi ionary. In Uganda this office of literature in evangelization used to be fully understood. The phrase by which a besotted heathen rejected the invitation of the Gospel used to be:”No, I do not wish to become a reader.” To read was to commit oneself to respect the me age of the mi ionary. Hence, to be a “reader” used to be the earliest mark of a follower of Jesus. It is safe to say that it is because of the free use of the pre in that field that the Uganda church is now a type of the power of the Gospel, for, within one single generation from ferocious savagery, it is taking its little books and evangelizing all adjoining regions. In the Arctic regions of our own continent, the Eskimos of Blacklead Island in Cumber land Sound have realized, perhaps quite as clearly as we, the effect of the printing pre in multiplying preachers, for after having grasped the fact that thought can be conveyed through written words they said, “Letters are as good as men, because they, too, can speak.” The fundamental importance of literature to the educational work of mi ions is particularly hard to be realized in lands where books seem to grow of themselves like the fruit in an apple orchard. In Christian lands the chief task seems to be to teach children to read books. In non-Christian countries the task of the mi ionary is to teach the children to read and also to make the reading sheets and the primers and many others of the books used in the school; for there books for the young either do not exist or they are as much to be shunned and dreaded as the heathen practises which they inculcate. Let us look beyond the region of school books, however. After the people have been taught to read, what are they going to read? Those who leave the schools in the early part of the course, where their work has been largely that of the memory, ought to have books which it is worth while to remember. Those who have stayed at school long enough to gain some training in the comparison of facts, need to have books which contain facts. But on the mi ion field, if literature exists, it is saturated with superstition, vice and the foolish science of the Dark Ages. If it does not exist, to those who leave school at twelve or fourteen years of age the world is almost a blank so far as stimulus to further growth is concerned. Men in Christian lands rely upon the library to be high school, college and university to the half-educated part of the community and even to act as an auxiliary force for the mental, moral and spiritual nurture of the families of the educated. But on the mi ion field there are no libraries for the common people, and books that will foster development can come from mi ion pre es only, until the growth of the Christian community shall have made native Christian publishing houses po ible. Such a situation compels us at this point to face the question of the completene of our plans for forwarding the enterprise of mi ions. Let us not belittle the great work that has been done for the production of books by the various societies directly or indirectly mi ionary in aim. The total number of mi ionary printing houses, lilterotnre Llvlnsrstone found in strictly non-Christian lands These are distributed as follows: is 122. 2 Basutoland 2 1 Cape Colony, Africa 3 3 British East Africa 22 China Congo Free State 5 Eritrea, Africa 1 German East Africa 2 India and Ceylon 45 Japan and Formosa Korea 3 2 2 4 3 3 Liberia, W. Africa Madagascar Nigeria, W. Africa Nyas a land, Central Africa Ocean i a 8 2 Persia Portuguese East Africa 1 Siam 2 Singapore 1 Turlcey (including Syria and Bulgaria) 4 Uganda 1 The power for good of these printing establish is incalculable. It is well, however, to note in pa ing that they do not fill the need, first, for lack of proper equipment, not more than thirty of them being on a scale that would entitle them to the name of printing house in civilized lands; second, because a number of them were opened in a period when the nece ity for cooperation in such matters was not understood, and some of the best equipped offices crowd each other while populous regions are without means of publication; thus of the 22 mi ion pre es in China 14 are concentrated in four provinces; of the 45 printing establishments in India seven are in the United Provinces, and the four pre es in Madagascar are all in one city. In the third place, the inability of these 122 pre es to meet the need of the non-Christian field is because of the vast number of different languages which have ments Mi ionaries are at work in somewhat over 300 languages, and altho some thirty of the mi ionary printing establishments are on a scale that permits printing in several languages, one cannot pretend that these can meet the needs of the vast field of the world. As matters are at present, the lonely worker in the mi ion field, weighed down by the knowledge that multitudes are not reached by his voice, longing to use the pre as a means by which a few can sway the thoughts of ma es of men, is eating out his heart in helple ne because the nece ary means of expre ion are grudgingly supplied. The case offers special justification for the proposal of a witty friend of mi ions for the formation of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Mi ionaries. Some desirable things which ought to be done to improve the literary department of the mi ionary enterprise are: (1) For mi ionary societies to select and set apart qualified mi ionaries, to be dealt with. for literary work. importance from the Sunday school le on-paper, and the Angola, W. Africa Arabia men and women, 38s (2) To increase the number and especially to improve the quality of the periodicals published in native languages by mi ionaries on the fields. These periodicals have considerable influence in non Christian lands. There are now about three hundred such periodical publications, varying in children’s illustrated paper, to the family weekly newspaper and the monthly mag a Improvement in the quality of these zine. periodicals is of very great importance for the increase of their influence. (3) Plans should be made in a large way for the development of a permanent Christian literature in all non-Chris For this purpose discu ion of the tian lands. needs and the po ibilities of the literary department should be a permanent feature in the programs of interdenominational conferences of mi ionary societies or of mi ionaries. Much can be accomplished by a wise cooperation between existing pre es. The task of providing books for ma es of people is not so stupendous as it appears, since one powerful and good book in a land where a living literature does not exist is equal in point of influence to a hundred good books in the lands where each competes with multitudes of others for a hearing. The most sanguine optimist cannot, however, claim tliat provision has been made enabling mi ion pre es to publish works for the nurture of communities already evangelized and seeking growth. The expenditure of great sums for the maintenance of schools and colleges is an accepted feature of the scheme of mi ions. But many a mi ionary revolts against teaching people to read when he must drop them, as they leave the school house door, into the mora es of doubt and corruption gladly made ready for them by non-Christian and anti-Christian writers. Another unsupplied need which springs to light in this connection is the need to train and bring forward native writers to be the spokesmen of the native Christian element in each nation. Such writers cannot be developed in non-Chris until the mi ions have funds for encouraging their efforts and fostering the creaUntil tion of an indigenous Christian literature. the mi ions receive a mandate from the home in nonland to engage seriously in literary work tian lands Christian lands, Christen dom will look in vain for Eastern scholars to appear who can stand forth as champions of Christ against the men in the guise of Eastern sages who already wait by the doors of our churches to rehash for us at home ideas and arguments furnished to the men of the East by Western rationalists. Another point of serious gravity in this situation is that Christiantiy should take a commanding position in the revival of literature, already begun in Japan and rapidly approaching in India, China and the Mohammedan countries. One century ago representatives of Western nations in all heathen lands confronted despotic rulers, whose bearing toward Christians and Christen dom was the arrogance of una ailable Before the end of the century the might. sceptre of world-sovereignty pa ed to Christen dom, and now every non-Christian ruler throughout the world is dependent upon the tolerance of Christian nations for the privilege of maintaining a semblance of power. To the Christian there is solemn meaning in this change of the But has this change not centers of domination. been used by the Almighty to bring the educated Hindu and Chinese and Japanese and Turk and Persian under compulsion to examine its causes? Never before have mi ionaries in those lands stood upon the vantage ground of rank as repre- 309 sentatives of the world’s progre . If they are given means to publish, then by virtue of intellecmoral superiority they can hold that tual and position of influence while they clearly set forth causes which the have lifted Christian peoples If supplied with funds in time, to supremacy. mi ionaries in all these lands can take leadership in the approaching revival of literature, injecting into the thought of many lands a strong Christian element with all that this means of gain to the people in justne of vision and elevation of national ideals. At such a time, as Edwin Greaves of Benares has said, “what we need is not writers of Christian books, but Christian writers of books.” It is true that as at present supported the mi ionary societies cannot a ume the expense of book publication to the extent demanded by the requirements of the growing opportunity during years which must elapse before the people of the various fields can fully sustain the Christian publishing enterprise. But some solution of the problem of providing literature e ential to the full succe of mi ionary effort should be diligently and strenuously sought by all bodies to which belong the discu ion and improvement Some steps should be of mi ionary methods. taken of common accord, also, to bring before the almoners of great wealth at home the fact that in non-Christian lands books do not grow, but for some time to come must be painfully provided by the beneficence of those who appreciate their permanent and penetrating and vitalizing power. A LITITZ: mi ion station in the S. part of the island of Jamaica, West Indies, situated about 7 miles W. N. W. of New Brought on. Station of the Moravian Mi ion Society (1839), with (1900) 1 mi ionary and his wife, 41 native workers, 1 outstation, 2 places of worship, 2 Sunday schools, 2 day schools, and 602 profe ed Christians. 417