MEDICAL MISSIONS

[s. 463] : “The history of Med i Mi ions is the justification of Medical Mi ions.” One of the oldest Buddhist writings recognizes the close connection between body and soul, and that the doctor should also be a mi ionary. We find the following expre ion: “No physician is worthy of waiting on the sick unle he has five qualifications for his office: 1. The skill to prescribe the proper remedy; 2. The judgment to order the proper diet; 3. The motive must be life and not greed; 4. He must be content and willing to do the most repulsive office for the sake of those whom he is waiting upon; and 5. He must be both able and willing to teach, to incite, and to gladden the hearts of those whom he is attending by religious discourse.” In view of the fact that healing was made so cal prominent in the Apostolic Church, we cannot but wonder at the extent to which, in the ages after the apostles, it dropped out of the Church’s work. Roman Catholics of the 16th and centuries used medicine largely as an aid to mi ion work. It is to them chiefly that we owe the use of cinchona, which has rendered mi ion work po ible in fever-stricken lands; as well as ipecacuanha and many other The 17th remedies which we probably should not have known so soon had it not been for their labors. America has been the foremost nation in this cause. Her sons, and later her daughters, have been among the earliest to enter the field. The first medical mi ionary to leave the United States was Dr. John Scudder, who, with his wife, sailed in 1819 from New York for India, where he labored until his death in 1855. In 1849 there were just forty medical mi ionaries in the world 26 from America, 12 from Great Britain, 1 from France, and 1 from Turkey or Arabia, at Jaffa. It was not until 1879 that the value of this agency for reaching the outcast and depraved in our large cities was realized sufficiently to lead to action. In this particular Great Britain has taken the lead, forming a large number of separate medical mi ions. In 1876 Dr. William H. Thomson, with the desire of aiding medical mi ionary students, succeeded in establishing seven scholarships at the University of the City of New York, U. S. A. In April, 1879, Mr. E. F. Baldwin opened in Philadelphia the first organized medical mi ion in America, which was followed in 1881 by the International Medical Mi ion Society in New — York City. The power of medical mi ions is now universally recognized. In all medicine the heathen world the practise of marked by the densest superstition and characterized by the most extreme in cruelties. Even the Chinese have no doctors worthy of the name; they have absolutely no reliable knowledge of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physics, surgery, or of obstetrical practise, and their “doctors” often do more harm than good. The sick are often left to die in the streets and McAll, Rev. Robert W, Medical Mi ions not even a drink of water is given to the wounded after a battle, who, if unable to drag themselves away, are abandoned to perish. In India charms and incantations are a common resort, the sick are dosed with putrid Ganges water, and patients are suffocated witli charcoal-fires. The Arab resorts with the greatest confidence to the most ridiculous, severe, or disgusting remedies. A slip of paper, containing certain written words, is swallowed with avidity; a man in the last stages of consumption takes a prescription directing him to feed, for a fortnight, upon the raw liver of a male camel, and fresh liver not being attainable, he continues the use of tliis diet in a putrid state until lie dies; while the Arab’s most common remedy for all diseases is the “kei,” or the burning of the skin, entirely around the seat of pain, with a redhot iron. To every mi ionary a knowledge of medicine is of e ential importance, for he may find himself removed many days’ journey from a physician, even, as has happened repeatedly, 250 to 800 miles. Let mi ionaries po e medical education, to enable them (1) to look after their own health; (2) to relieve the physical suffering around them; (3) to obtain ready entrance for the Gospel; and (4) to enable them to support themselves as far as po ible. At Melange, in Africa, 400 miles from the coast, Mr. Heli Chatelain, a few days after his arrival, was offered by a trader a home in his house and $1,200 a year to look after his family alone, and he was a ured that others in the town would increase the sum to $5,000 per annum if he would consent to remain. Advantages and Benefits: The benefits of medical mi ions may be well nigh placed beyond com”It will not strike you with put at i on in value. surprise,” said Dr. J. L. Maxwell of Formosa, “when I tell you that again and again the lives of valued mi ionaries in China have escaped destruction at the hands of evil and fanatic mobs just because they were providentially recognized to be the a ociates of the mi ion doctor at this During the Afghan or that mi ionary hospital. war the tribe of the Wazaris destroyed the town hospital, but government of Tank, and even the spared the mi ion hospital of the Church Mi ionary Society, because of their esteem and In the affection for the medical mi ionary. Chinese village of Na-than, 100 miles to the north of Swatow, a most remarkable work has been carried on without the agency of a resident It is the dwelling-place of a leper mi ionary. who, after having visited the hospital at Swatow, where he was converted, returned to his home and gathered about him a congregation of men and women whom he instructed in the Word and In South in the worship of the living God. Formosa I could point to four different congrefrom far removed each other, gatiqfhs which lie and at a distance from the mis.sion headquarters, each of which sprang from men who had received their first religious impre ions in the mi ion hospital, and these congregations have established flourishing schools.” may sum up these benefits as follows: as far as po ible, 1. Medical mi ionaries, become self-supporting, and go out on an unsectarian basis. We 2. This plan does not conflict with the work of the regular mi ion boards, but, on the con- ^.: Medical MlBslons Medieval Mi ions trary, its purpose is to supplement their efforts and pioneer where they may follow. 3. Where a dispensary has been located a church has soon been formed. In 4. Medical mi ion work destroys caste. the waiting-room in India may be seen, day after day, sitting side by side, the Brahman, Sudra and Shanar, the Pulayar and Pariah, the devil-worshiper, the worshiper of Siva, the Mohammedan, the Roman Catholic, and Protestant; men, women, of all castes and creeds, while waiting their turn to be examined, listening attentively to the reading of God’s Word, and the preaching of the Gospel, you sands of whom, otherwise, would never have an opportunity of hearing the tidings of salvation. 5. Medical mi ion work secures protection and provision. Dr. Summers, with thirty-six carriers, penetrated Africa 1,500 miles in a direct line, securing from his grateful patients all the means and material which they needed upon the long and difficult tour, and during his whole career of three and a half years he did not receive one dollar from the Home Society. 6. Medical mi ions are far-reaching in their results. As many as 1,200 to 1,400 towns and villages have been represented in a single year among the in-patients of one hospital, who, returning to their homes, carry with them some of the truth received. 7. Medical mi ion work is le ening the antiforeign feeling, is diminishing the power of superstition which connects disease with evil spirits, and is giving constant proof of the unselfish character of the Christian religion. 8. “One thing is perfectly certain,” said Dr. Post of Syria, “namely, that medical mi ion work never fails. Other work mav fail, but this affording of relief for physical sufiering goes on the debit side of Christianity in all cases, and opens the way for other work to follow.” As it is impracticable to notice in detail the growing work of medical mi ions in foreign lands, it may be well to give some account of the service performed by these mi ions on one or two fields, thus illustrating the power and po ibilities of this factor in Foreign Mi ions. The published reports of 1902 show that China has the largest number of medical mi ionaries, mi ionary hospitals and dispensaries. In that land there were, in 1901, 128 hospitals, 245 dispensaries, which during the year treated 1,674,571 patients; and more than 150 foreign physicians were in this service. In 1895 the men doctors were fourteen per cent, of all the mi ionaries, the women doctors were four per cent., and for each doctor there were more than 4,000,000 of the population of China. The need of medical mi ions in this vast field is appalling. The Chinese doctors are quacks of the worst type; their medicines are mostly decoctions of herbs, mixed with certain vile substances; their materia medic a is, perhaps, the worst on earth; their ignorance of the simplest principles of physiology is marvelous; and the “medicine man” is deceitful and unscrupulous in playing upon the credulity and superstition of these people. While nearly all diseases are common in this thickly settled country, smallpox is the most common. Vaccination was discovered during the last decade of the 18th century; and, soon after its discovery, Dr. Alexander Pearson, surgeon to the East India Company, introduced it into China. It has been 449 said of him that he “opened China to the Gospel at the point of the lancet.” But Dr. Peter Parker is known as the first medical mi ionary of China, and, commencing his work under the American Board in 1835 in Canton, he brought physical ble ings to at least 53,000 patients by his own hands, and many hundreds of you sands have been ble ed indirectly by him. Dr. Parker said: “I have no hesitation in expre ing it as my solemn conviction that, as yet, no medium of bringing the people under the sound of the Gospel and within the influence of other means of grace can compare with the facilities afforded by medical mi ionary operations.” Dr. Parker’s hospital at Canton still continues to exert a wide influence throughout Southern China, and until 1899 it was under the care of Dr. J. G. Kerr. It belongs to the Canton Medical Mi ionary Society, and, while the largest hospital work in China is at Swatow (English Presbyterian), this Canton hospital comes first in importance, for it is the first institution which combined the alleviation of human suffering and the extension of Christianity, and was, indeed, the pioneer of modern medical mi ions. In this hospital, during 1898, more than 26,000 patients were treated, and over 1,000 operations took place. By Dr. Kerr and under his supervision some 700,000 patients have been treated, and about 48,000 operations performed; and in addition to this active practise, he published thirty-two books on surgery and medicine. The writer of these words concluded, after visiting the foreign mi ion fields in 1895 and 1896, that no institution in China was accomplishing more good than the hospital at Canton. It was largely through the influence of a physician that India was opened to English trade. As far back as 1636 Dr. Gabriel Bought on, an English man, while practising at the court of the Great Mogul, cured a prince who was badly burned, and, as his only reward, requested that his countrymen might have the privilege of trade with India. The Danes established a medical mi ionary work at Tranquebar and Madras in 1730-32. Through the skill of Dr. Thomas, who went out with Carey as a medical mi ionary, Krishna Pal was cured of serious hurt, was converted and was the first Hindu baptized. The first woman medical mi ionary from any land was Dr. Clara A. Swain, sent by the American Methodists to Bareilly, India; and they also began the first medical cla for women at Naini Tal in 1869. In 1900 there were 111 mi ionary hospitals and 255 dispensaries in India. The native practises are barbarous; the death rate in British-India is almost twice that of the United States; cholera and small-pox are more or le prevalent among all cla es of the natives; the millions of demon-worshipers retard by their ignorance and superstition the work of the physician; and it is estimated that of the 67,000,000 of the people who have but little of British superintendence, hardly two per cent, of them live within twenty-five miles of a European doctor. At Neyoor, under the London Mi ionary Society, In is the largest medical mi ion in the world. 1901 there was here a hospital with fifteen dispensaries, and eighteen native medical evangelists; and in 1899 there were 109,029 cases treated. In describing the opening of a new dispensary at Sangli, a writer says: “The patients began to arrive at daybreak, continuing to come 447 ten o’clock, the hour for dispensing. A native Christian a istant was secured as interpreter and medical helper. He, aided by other native preachers, taught and preached to the they gathered and waited for treat people, while ment. Scripture texts were pasted on their medicine bottles, and tracts distributed.” In all foreign lands medical mi ions are becoming more popular and more powerful. It is an interesting question whether any mi ionary should be sent out without some knowledge, at The Christian phys i least, of the healing art. till is honored and welcomed always and anywhere in foreign fields; national and religious prejudices vanish before him, and in one year he can do what it would take another mi ionary many years to accomplish. It is stated that Dr. Asahel Grant had twenty times more intercourse with the Mohammedans of Persia than the mi ionary who was sent out expre ly to Many who are studying labor among them. thoughtfully the great problem of the evangenations agree lization of the that the consecrated medical mi ionary and the well-equipped hospital are most important elements of succe in cian the foreign field. “God had only one son and He gave Him to be a medical mi ionary,” exclaimed Dr. Living stone; and we recall the impre ive fact that this Great Physician sent forth His first disciples to Only a few hundred heal as well as to preach. Christian physicians has America sent forth to the billion of suffering people acro the seas; but we predict that the first decade of this century will witne a great awakening on this important question. Dispensaries and Statistics of Hospitals, From Survey of Patients treated annually. Foreign Mi ions, by Rev. James S. Dennis, D.D.: Location. Medical Ml lono Medieval MlsHlona, Medieval Mi ions of his Irish masters, he became the Apostle of the North. The Mercians likewise gave up the old gods with one consent, and England was now Christian from the Firth to the Channel, being bounded by the Christian Scots on the north and the Christian Welsh on the west, which latter, however, in their implacable animosity against their conquerors, had refused to take the slightest share in the work of conversion. In all this Rome had comparatively little share, so far as direct influence was concerned, and yet her merits in the conversion of England are not small: (1) she initiated evangelization after the earlier Christianity was almost extinct; (2) she mainly converted the Saxons, as distinguished from the Anglians; (3) she introduced the Gospel among the Anglians; (4) she undertook and carried through, with general consent of the English, that to which the Irish were everywhere utterly incompetent, namely, the organization and practical conduct of the English Church, which she thus held in unity with the general body of Christen dom, and preserved it from erratic developments and from final disintegration and anarchy, such as befell the Irish Church, and finally induced even her to submit herself to the organizing skill of Rome. The Irish Church was, during the early Middle Ages, equally zealous and equally effective in the work of conversion on the Contment. She was, indeed, the great Mi ionary Church of this era. The reception of the Gospel in Ireland, altho it did nothing to control the intertribal anarchy and to remove the moral rudene of the people generally, evoked unbounded enthusiasm in you sands of elect spirits, who gathered around their abbots in multitudes of monasteries, surrounded by pious families, and gave themselves up to an extravagant asceticism, but also to noble intellectual pursuits, and a deep study of “the Scriptures. While Irish piety had a very imperfect control over the pa ions of anger and wrath was deficient in that moral dignity which was congenial to Roman, and still more to the higher English piety; on the other hand, it was ethereal, full of tender and delicate sentiment and pervaded with the glow of a fiery enthusiasm, which, finding insurmountable obstacles at home in an anarchy which it knew not how to reduce into order, poured itself in an irresistible flood upon Western and Middle Europe. The Irish at this time were incomparably superior to the Romans in point of knowledge, while the Irish temperament and the Irish mind had an extraordinary power of communicating its; convictions. the secular The Irish monks, caring little for clergy, allowed them to marry. They honored an abbot vastly more than a bishop. But they themselves, in their unsparing asceticism, presented to the wretched Continental populations of that era, succeeding the fearful devastations of barbarian conquest, the impre ive spectacle of men living, by their own free will, a more wretched life than the wretched peasants, and yet making not the least account of this destitution of earthly comforts. They were listened to with profoundest reverence, and contributed mightily to the fuller Christian i zati on of their fellow-Celts (of the Cymric branch), the rural populations of Gaul, and to the rooting of the Gospel in Switzerland and in various parts of_ Germany, especially the south. The great Irish mi ionary on the Continent was Columban (not to be confounded with the 448 earlier Columba, of lona), who established his monastery in 590 among the Vosges Mountains in Eastern Gaul. His rule was severe but practical, combining ascetic self-discipline, manual labor in various forms and study, especially of the Scriptures. He laid great stre on the inward state, and subordinated all observances to this. But his courageous opposition to the wickedne of Queen Brunehild caused his expulsion from Frankish Gaul into what is now Switzerland. His enemies, however, following him up, expelled him after three years from his mi ionary labors here also. He withdrew into Italy, where he died in 613, in the monastery which he had founded at Bobbio, near Pavia. He left behind, however (detained by sick like St. Paul, among the Galatians), a ne , beloved pupil, a young Irish man of good family, named Gallus. Gallus sought out a retreat in the deep woods of Eastern Switzerland, where he founded the monastery famous for so many centuries as St. Gall, the nucleus of the present canton of that name. It became a great center of population, civilization, learning and Christianity for Eastern Switzerland, the Tyrol and Southern Germany. Somewhat later came the Irish Fridolin, laboring in Alsace, Switzerland and Suabia, and the Irish Thrudpert (whom the Germans call St. Hubert), laboring in the Black Forest. The Irish Cilian, after 650, labored in West Thu ring i a, toward the middle of Germany. And these are only shining examples of an end monks that poured out for two or three centuries from Ireland into Southern and Middle GerGaul, Switzerland, many. Before Boniface began his labors, about 720, Southern Germany seems to have been mainly, and Middle Germany largely, Christian i zed. The Saxons, who filled the great northern plain of Germany, gave not the slightest heed to the Gospel, the acceptance of which they regarded as the mark of subjection to their rivals, the Catholic Franks. From of old, along the Rhine and the Danube, and even farther in the heart of Germany, there le succe ion of mi ionary had been Christian congregations. And the these had been ravaged and trodden down in the tumultuous movements of the migration of the nations which overthrew the Roman Empire, they still offered a good many points of attachment for the Irish mi ionaries. The most illustrious of these were, on the Danube, Seyerinus, whom some held to be a North African and some a Syrian, and, near the Rhine, Eligius, of an old Christian family of the Franks, originally Both these a goldsmith, afterward a bishop. men distinguished themselves by boundle compa ion and works of mercy, sometimes redeeming captives, sometimes interceding succe fully for the wretched people with their barbarian conquerors, and thus laying foundations the traces of which still subsisted when the Irish mi i onE lig i us, aries subsequently began their labors. indeed, was later than the earliest of these mi ionaries. There was, however, the same difficulty with Irish mi ionary work on the Continent that there had been in England, namely, a want of unity and of organizing power. In Ireland itself, beyond a general deference paid to the abbey and bishopric of Armagh, there was no ecclesiasT he priests had no defined parishes, tical unity. the bishops no defined dioceses. The abbots were the real ecclesiastical rulers, but every 449 abbot only of his own monastic sept. And this confusion and jarring individualism was reflected in the Irish work abroad. Ireland, moreover, having been for a long while cut off by the wall of heathenism English from the rest of Western Europe, had diverged in various particulars, not doctrine much of (for both parties stood on the so foundation of the great councils, including the Council of Orange) as of ecclesiastical usage in discipline, worship and polity, points which nece arily occasioned a perpetual friction. Especially was it intolerable that while the Romans had adopted a corrected Easter cycle, the Irish still adhered to the earlier, unreformed cycle. Thus, before Oswiu of Nor thumb ria had wisely decided to accept the Roman discipline, the Northumbrian kings had sometimes been holding the Easter rejoicings while their Kentish or Saxon queens were still in the sadne of the Pa ion-week. Germany, therefore, compelled like England to commit her Christian future either to the uncertainty of Irish impulse or to the tho certainly much harder, hand of Roman discipline, decided, and doubtle on the whole decided wisely, for the latter. Many free influences and simpler Christian apprehensions were, it is true, compelled to give way for a time. But in reality the Irish national spirit was as distinctly alien from Germany as the Roman. And, except in some casual particulars, the spiritual depth and evangelical freedom of the future Protestant ism were no more anticipated in Celtic than in Latin Christianity. Protestant ism was, as to its human source, an entirely original creation of the Teutonic genius, which first really apprehended the full sign if i That Rome cance of the apostolate of Paul. prevailed, and Ireland gave way, in the final settlement of the German Church, cannot, therefore, be regarded on the whole otherwise than as a providential good. The more we learn of the Middle Ages, the more fully we become aware that there were never absent from them seething forces of spiritual and social anarchy, which Rome could hardly control, and which Ireland, herself anarchical, could not have controlled at all. There were, moreover, still latent in the Saxons of Northern Germany, and yet more terribly in the brooding cloud of Scand in avian piracy that was one day to burst forth over Europe, aggre ive forces of heathenism, which could not have been withstood by any fabric le firm than that great organism erratic steady, Medieval Mi lonB Germany into conformity with Rome, and away from conformity with Ireland. finally to bring Winfrid, as he was properly called, was born in Kirton, Devons hire, in the year 680. His father, a man of wealth, destined him for some secular profe ion, but, humbled by a reverse of fortune, yielded at length to his son’s ardent desire for a monastic life. In this Winfrid developed the same qualities of fervent piety, deep disinterestedne , unquailing courage, practical skill, monkish narrowne of mind, and intolerant orthodoxy which distinguished him subsequently when acting, under the name of Boniface, as the papally invested mi ionary archbishop of Germany. As a Saxon he had, of course, an affinity of race with the Germans, which doubtle came into play in his lon^ contest with the Irish mi ionaries of the Contment. To him the Roman discipline and the Roman supremacy were of the very e ence of the Gospel. He was incapable of making the slightest conce ion to the Irish monks, altho they had converted so much of Germany, for in his eyes the Irish hardly deserved to be called Christians at all, and he suffered grievous troubles of conscience that he could not altogether avoid an intercourse of social civility with them. He began his mi ionary labors in 715, among the Frisians of the German coast. His elder countryman, Willibrord, after twelve years of study Fries Ireland, had begun a mi ion land, aided by various other English men. Willibrord, altho of Irish education, yet, as an English man, conformed to the Roman discipline and visited Rome to solicit the papal sanction on his new mi ion. He was there ordained by the pope himself bishop of Utrecht, where he died after thirty years of not ineffective work. Winfrid first went to Fries land during one of the many intervals of adversity in the mi ion. He afterward, however, returned and labored for three years under Willibrord with encouraging Declining the aged bishop’s offer to results. consecrate him as his succe or, he journeyed to Thu ring i a, in Middle Germany, where he baptized two prince es and in various visits admitted at In He e, least 100,000 persons to the Church. his boldne in felling the sacred oak of Donar (whom the Scand in avians called Thor) so appalled the heathen that large numbers forsook the worship of gods who seemed unable to defend their own honor. He had already twice visited m m Rome, and at his second visit, in 723, had been ordained regionary bishop by the pope, with what we might call a roving commi ion, taking an oath of obedience and conformity to the Apostolic See, which became the keynote of his whole subsequent policy. Turning away from his nearest Glerman kinsmen, the Saxons (who were, indeed, at this time wholly insensible to Christianity), he spent most of the rest of his life owning Rome as its center, which finally extended to the very Orkneys, and at last took in Ireland herself, and grappled with the most formidable enemy by incorporating the Scand in avian North. Neander, regretfully as he recounts the ultimate prevalence of Rome, acknowledges that the rude nations needed a rigorous discipline of centuries before they would be ripe for spiritual and national indein ince ant, sincere, intolerant and finally succe ful efforts to bring Middle and Southern Germany pendence. The conference under the Roman obedience. His double controversy with Virgil, the learned Irish abbot, sub- York, in the year 664, before King Oswiu, between Bishop Colman, of the Irish use, and the Presbyter Wilfrid, of the Roman use, decided the Northumbrians and Mercians to join with the Saxons and Jutes of Southern England in accepting Rome, rather at than lona, as their future spiritual metropolis. It decided no le the ecclesiastical destiny of Germany. For it was an English man that was 29 sequently bishop of Salzburg, was, it is true, Rome, tho a great admirer of her unsucce ful. servant Boniface, decided both points against him, not without some gentle quizzing of his But Virgil was willing hyperbolical orthodoxy. to come under the new system, and after his death was impartially canonized by the A post olio See. Medieval MIsbIoiih In 738 Boniface visited Rome a third time, and received the fullest legatine powers, as archbishop of Germany. He held numerous synods, supported at length by Pepin, who, having been authorized by Pope Zachary to set aside the outworn Me roving i an line and to a ume the royal dignity for himself, was then, in the pope’s name, anointed by Boniface, and thus stood committed to the closest union with Rome. Henceforth Boniface had good a urance of complete succe in his effort to transform the German Christianity from the Irish to the Roman His veneration for Rome, however, had type. in it nothing of the slavishne of modern Ultramontanism. He did not apprehend the pope as Universal Bishop, but as the court of highest instance in a graduated scale of episcopal preeminence. He himself meant to establish the German primacy at Cologne, but, being disappointed of this by an Mentz. intrigue, fixed it, le suitably, at He also founded the renowned Benedictine abbey of Fulda, which for 1,000 years was the Monte Ca ino of Germany. In all his organizing Elans and administrative acts, his unsympathetic, Romanizing orthodoxy was eresy-hunting, accompanied by a large forecast of cool statesmanship, which in him decidedly prevailed over enthusiasm. Not even his most admiring di ays Neander, ascribed to him a single It is the judgment of one who has tiven much attention to his course that the eepest instinct of his heart was, after all, not that of the ecclesiastical administrator, but of the monastic mi ionary. To this his early life agrees, and much of his middle life, and, above For in 755, abandoning his great see all, his end. of Mentz, he set out for his early mi ion field of Fries land, and there, having fixed a day on which many of his baptized converts should return to him for confirmation, was, on that very day, surprised by a heathen band, and, in his seventyciples, miracle. fifth year, with many of his companions, joyfully received the crown of martyrdom. It may be disputed, in view of the earlier succe es of Ireland, whether we have a right to call him the apostle of Germany. Nor can we be blind to his deep defects, or at least to his narrow limitations. Yet after all abatements he stands forth as one of the great characters of Christian, of German and English, and of mi ionary history. Germany was now two-thirds Christian. Its full Christian i zati on, in the abandonment of heathenism by the mighty Saxon race of the northern plain, was accomplished, not by the mi ionary, but by the crowned soldier, Charles His spiritual adviser, the English the Great. abbot Alcuin, bitterly remonstrated against his unevangelical employment of force, and against his imposition of the tithe. But Charlemagne persisted, being convinced that his empire could never have peace until the Saxons were brought into the national and spiritual communion of his great realm. And tho they were thus compelled into the Church, yet, so soon as the national Eride of their adherence to paganism had been roken, they rapidly a imilated Christianity, and soon became perhaps the most stanchly Christian of all the German tribes. And when the fulne of the time had come, at the Reformation, for the complete emancipation of the Gospel, it was in Northern Germany that the adult Christianity of Protestant ism found its home. Luther himself, it is true, tho called a Saxon, was 460 onlv such by that curious territorial lapse which had transferred the ancient name from its proper seat, and made it the designation of a Middle German race. The conversion of Northern Germany laid the basis for the Christian i zati on of the three Scand in avian realms. The Apostle of Scand in a via, St. Ansgar, is a character of peculiar beauty. He was a native of the Prankish kingdom, having been born in the diocese of Amiens, a. d. 801. The delicacy of his imagination, and the sweet courtesy of his character, make it probable that he was a Roman rather than a German Frank; in other words, that he was a French man proper. He early became a monk in the neighboring Corbie, under the abbot Adalhard and the learned teacher, Paschasius Radbert. But when Charles the Great (Charlemagne), having forcibly converted the Saxons, wished to instruct them in new religion, and removed a colony of monks from Corbie to the Weser, calling the their daughter-abbey Corvey, Ansgar was one of the colonists. He had early been sensible of a vocation to the mi ionary life, and his whole life showed that he”was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” The pious and statesmanlike Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, having gained over to Christianity King Harold of Denmark, on a visit to the Emperor Lewis, deputed Ansgar to accompany the king on his return to his fierce subjects, a journey then so much he a the if dreaded that Ansgar could only find a single monk, Authbert, to go with him, who, soon dying, left him alone. After two years of residence, and some initial succe es, he and King Harold were both expelled. But now better prospects began to open in Sweden. Seeds of Christianity had already begun to germinate there. Ansgar, therefore, during some two years’ residence found much encouragement. His favorable report, on his return from Sweden, induced the Emperor Lewis to establish the archbishopric of Bremen-Hamburg as the basis of the Northern mi ion, and to dispatch Ansgar to Rome, where he received episcopal consecration and was invested with the archiepiscopal pallium. During many years, from the basis of his metropolitan see, with a flexible patience that knew no discouragement, that availed itself of every opportunity, and recovered itself after every shock of heathen aggre ion, such as once laid his own diocese waste, Ansgar steadily pursued his great purpose. He was aided by suffragan bishops in Denmark and Sweden, whom he supported a» occasion required by personal visits. At last, the heathen having already become accustomed by many instances of deliverance after invoking the name of Christ, to regard Him as a mighty deity, Ansgar visited the national a embly of Gothland, in the south of the peninsula, and that of Sweden proper, in the middle, and obtained from each a decree that the preaching and acceptance of the Gospel should be freely permitted. Ansgar, having made arrangernent* for the more effective prosecution of the mi ions, ’There were many subsequent vici itudes, especially in Denmark, for the Gospel seemed to cohere more intimately with the nature of the milder and perhaps more thoughtful Swedes, who, moreover, are of a returned to Bremen. deeply devotional turn. But the foundation* by Ansgar remained. Danish conquest in England, moreover, reacted for the evangelization of Denmark, especially through the influence laid j i, •, 4S1 of the mighty Canute. The proce of conversion was slow but steady. By the year 1100 it is doubtful whether any traces of avowed heathenism remained in either Denmark or Sweden. After more than thirty-four years of labor for the salvation of the heathen nations of the north, when past the age of sixty-four he was attacked by a severe fit of sickne , from which he died. His character seems to have the effectivene of Boniface without his hardne , and the zeal of the Irish mi ionaries without the wrathful impaa most winning tience adhering to some of them embodiment, certainly, of mi ionary excellence. The Christian i zati on of the Mongolian Finns resulted in part from the conquest of Finland by — the first Swedish king of that name, but still more from the evangelical labors of St. Henry, the first bishop of Abo. St. Henry’s Day is still a conspicuous festival of the Luther an Church of Finland. The introduction of Norway within the Christian pale resembles in its earlier stage a chapter of Muslim and, in its later stage, of Buddhist, propagandism more than any chapter of genu It seems to inely Christian mi ionary effort. have had very little root in the religious instincts of the people, altho genuine Christian influences But the kings who are by no means absent. finally subdued the whole of Norway under them, and rooted out the power of the petty local monarchs, being convinced that effective government could only rest on the foundation of a wider and richer civilization, and that this could only be supported by Christianity, really forced Christianity on their subjects at the point of the sword. And when these were once baptized, the Roman mi ionaries unfolded the utmost maghere again like the nificence of their ritual Buddhist mi ionaries in Japan. And as the Norsemen, says Herder, had the profoundest faith in the efficacy of magical rites and regarded the Roman ceremonies as merely a more exalted and a purer kind of magic, they finally surrendered themselves to the new worship without any But the fact that further thought of resistance. so few Norwegian kings or heroes have cared to be buried in the metropolitan cathedral of Trondjhem, is noted by Mr. Froude as signifying that they had little heart in their profe ed Christianity untU the Reformation gave them a form Luther an of it which they could really believe. Norway is now a genuinely and zealously Christian country. But the religious development of Sweden, both under Latin and under Luther an Christianity, has been (as is natural, in view of its much greater population) a far richer and more conspicuous one. In the 14th century St. Brigitta, the widowed Swedish prince , may be regarded as “the bright consummate flower” of the Scand in avian race, showing, it is said, almost equal vigor of the practical, the poetical and the prophetic instinct, and, rnder the veil of an extravagant devotion to the Virgin, revealing many deep evangelical perceptions, true harbingers 01^ the Reformation. And altho her ashes rest in Rome, and her name stands in the Roman calendar, yet her prediction is on record that “the throne of the pope shall yet be cast into the aby .” By this time Germany, France, Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Norway were all included within the pale of Latin, and Ru ia within that of St. Eric, — Greek, Christianity. Poland and Bohemia and the other Slavonian countries were thus morally medieval Mi ions certain, sooner or later, to yield to the irresistible influence of what was becoming the religion alike Moravia of Southern and of Northern Europe. and Bohemia, indeed, the two principal Slavonic countries of Middle Europe, rather antedated than followed the conversion of Scand in a via. By an unusual providence, they were Christian i zed by two Greek mi ionaries, CyrU and his Method i us. These had already been brother active among the Bulgarians, who also received mi ionaries from the pope, but after some wavering settled down under the patriarchal rule of Method i us then Constantinople. Cyril and labored among the Mongolian Chazars, in the Crimea, with a good deal of succe . They then came up into Central Europe, among the Moravians, not far from the year 850, and therefore while Ansgar was still laboring in the north. German mi ionaries sent out by the Archbishop of Salzburg had already effected a good many conversions. But their foolish obstinacy in adhering to the Latin liturgy was in the way. Method i us (for Cyril soon became a monk in Rome), with his more flexible Greek character, boldly introduced the Slavonian tongue into worship. The German bishops murmured; but the pope, who had already consecrated Method i us Archbishop of Moravia, stood forth as his Bohemia, then dependent on Mora defender. The Germans via, was Christian i zed from it. wrangled with Method i us over his independent jurisdiction and over his Slavonic liturgy, so that at last he went to Rome, and seems to have followed his brother Cyril into retirement. But the Christian i zing impulse had now become so strong among the Slavonians that, by somewhat obscure stages, the whole Slavonic race from Bohemia to the Adriatic is found to be Christian. It is interesting to note that, after long interruption, the use of the Slavonic liturgy has lately been conceded again, by Pope Leo XIII., to the Slavonic lUyrians. The propagation of Christianity among the Slavonic Wends, between Bohemia and the Baltic, is a confused history of genuine mi ionary succe es, of armed proselytism by over-zealous princes, and of violent and persecuting heathen still Yet ultimately Christianity prevailed Poland, here also, by an historical nece ity. like its great Slavonian sister and rival, Ru ia, was Christian i zed mainly from above, not far from the year 1000. But while Ru ia took Constantinople for her spiritual capital, Poland, as might have been expected from her rivalry, chose Rome. The Teutonic order of military monks had much to do with the suppre ion of paganism along the Baltic. reactions. The Magyars, of Mongolian race, who wrought fearful devastations in Germany in the earlier Middle Ages, but were finally shut up to their new kingdom of Hungary, of which they still form the dominant race, were found after this check not altogether inacce ible to German mi ionaries. St. Adalbert, Archbishop of Prague, who afterward died a mi ionary martyr among (near Poland), spent Prince Geisa and his wife were baptized, but remained about as much pagan as before. Their son Stephen, however, (St. Stephen) was a thorough and zealous Chris He married a German prince , received tian. the rank of king from the Christian Emperor Otto, and succeeded in impre ing on the kingdom of Hungary that deep character of medieval the Slavonic Pru ians some time in Hungary. Medieval Mi ions Me lanes i an Mi ion 452 yet kindly Catholicism which it still retains. Protestant ism is there powerful, and honorably considered; but nowhere in Europe does the ecclesiastical magnificence of the Middle Ages Vienne, of England. Every effort to arouse the Church having failed, he went himself once and again to Cyprus, Asiatic Turkey and Tunis, where at last his life was a sacrifice to remain so little disturbed. The Archbishop of Gran, the Primate of Hungary, is the only primate of actual jurisdiction in the Latin Church. his zeal. And at a coronation the lines of splendid horsemen wearing the insignia of mitred abbots show that in Hungary the illustrious Benedictine order The Hun still retains its ancient preeminence. gari an Christianity, which glories in the monarch’s title of Apostolical King, has been the anvil that has worn out the Muslim hammer of But this Mongolian Chris the kindred Turks. tianity has shown its zeal rather in the field of war than of spiritual achievement, in which the Mongolian race has seldom been preeminent. The latest surrender of a whole European nation to the profe ion of Christianity took place in 1384, when Ladislaus Jagiello, Grand Duke of the then very extensive and powerful principality of Lithuania, obtained the hand of Hedwig, Queen of Poland, and went over, with aU his people, from paganism to the Church. Such were the mi ions, proselytizing crusades, and proselytizing compacts of Catholic Europe, Eastern and Western, between the year 500 and the year 1500. The principles of the Gospel seem to have been most thoroughly carried out in the Christian i zati on of England, Scotland, Switzerland, Southern and Middle Germany and Sweden, and to have been the farthest departed from in the cases of Northern Germany and Norway, the former of which, however, became soon, and the latter ultimately, sincerely and zealously Christian. Not even the Gospel, accepted in this wholesale way as a national creed, could avoid large complications with uncivilized rudene , with violence, and with selfish policy. The Reformation brought in that sifting proce which every day becoming more rapid. Yet there is great occasion to thank God that over so large a proportion of medieval Europe so great a number of humble and self-devoted men of God secured is the genuine conversion of so many individuals and nations to the Gospel of Christ. While these movements were winning Northern Europe for Christianity, on the south there arose the conflict with Islam. The crusades were scarcely mi ions, and yet there was a distinctly mi ionary spirit in the desire to overcome Islam by Christianity as well as to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. So, too, the monastic orders which August in i an, Car thus i an, arose in this period. Carmelite, Francis can, Dominican and Cistercian, others, while specially organized for the development of a devotional type of piety, had a direct relation to the centralization of the Church, and were not devoid of the mi ionary idea, as became manifest when they came to their full fruitage in the succeeding period. Francis of A isi, when he forced his way to the presence of the Sultan of Egypt and preached Christianity in his court, was but the predece or of Xavier and liis a ociates. There was, however, one mi ionary of this type who has won a high place among the laborers for the spiritual extension of the faith. The story of Raymund Lull is like a romance of modern mi ions. Turning from the scientific studies in which he won great renown, he applied himself to the task of overcoming Islam. In this work he sought the aid of the king of Majorca, of the pope, of the Council of In considering the character of this period it becomes apparent that it is but the development of the close of its predece or. The Church as a whole had no interest whatever in the extension of Christianity. A comparatively small number of individuals, by superb devotion, saved Europe and laid the foundations of the development in the centuries that followed, in the educational institutions to which Germany and England owe their preeminence, in political and intellectual as well as spiritual life. It was the mi ionaries of the Middle Ages to whom the modern European owes much of the best life that he enjoys. In the degree that Southern Europe failed to share their influence, it fell below their standard. So far as methods were concerned, there was little of what may be called popular influence through these mi ions. The mi ionaries sought the leaders, relying upon them to bring with them their people. Even in their educational enterprises it was to the po ible leaders that they gave attention. The era of the common people had not yet come. So, too, the motive was inadequate. It was very largely the Church, its aggrandizement, its victory. Even with Raymund Lull, the great ambition was not so much the salvation of Muslims as the defeat of Islam. It remained for the Reformation to find for the individual soul his proper place in the scheme of a world’s salvation. Maclear (G. F.), Christian Mi ions During the Middle Ages, London, 1863; ( ), Apostles of Mediaeval Europe, New York, 1869; Smith (T.), Medic eval Mi ions, Edinburgh, 1880; Kings mill (J..!.), Mi ions and Mi ionaries, Apostolic, Jesuit and Protestant. London, 1854; Barnes (L. C), Two You sand Years of Mi ions before Carey, New York, 1901; Zwemer (S. M.), Raymund Lull, New York, 1902. A MEDINGEN: village in the Zoutspansberg District of Transvaal, Africa. Station of the Berlin Mi ionary Society (1881), with 1 mi ionary, 19 native workers, 8 outstations, 6 day schools, and 1,121 profe ed Christians, of whom 619 are communicants. MEERUT A: town in the Punjab, India, capital of the district of Meerut, situated 39 miles N. E. of Delhi. It is the headquarters of a British military division, with extensive camps. The mutiny of 1857 began here. Altitude, 737 Population (1891), 73,600, about evenly divided between Muslims and Hindus. Station of the CMS (1815), with (1903) 2 mi ionaries and their wives, 2 women mi ionaries, 58 native workers, 7 outstations, 1 place of worship, 17 day schools, 2 boarding schools, and 1,401 profe ed Christians, of whom 116 are communicants. Station also of the ME, with (1903) 1 mi ionary and his wife, 2 women mi ionaries, 36 native workers, 38 Sunday schools, 1 college, 10 day schools, 1 boarding school, and 1,275 profe ed Christians, of whom 480 are communicants. Station also of the RPS, with 2 native workers, 1 outstation, 1 college, 1 Sunday school, and 55 profe ed Christians. feet. MEESTER A CORNEL IS: village in the island of Java, situated 10 miles S. E. of Batavia. Station of the Netherlands Mi ionary Society (1886), with (1903) 1 mi ionary, 5 native workers, 3 outstations, 3 day schools, and 258 profe ed Christians, of whom 142 are communicants. 463 MEIGS, Benjamin Clark: Born at Bethlehem, Conn., August 9, 1789; graduated, 1809; spent two years and a half at And over Theological SemWhile there he determined to devote inary. himself to a mi ionary life. He was ordained June 21, 1815, and sailed October 23 following as one of the original founders of the in Jaffna, Ceylon. There he labored forty years. Failure of health in 1858 compelled him to relinquish the mi ion work. He died in New York City, May 12, 1862, aged sixty-three. ch090.xhtml a 471