CHALDEAN CHURCH

[s. 156] : Name taken by those Me so pot am i a who seceded from in 1780 and accepted the supremacy of the Pope of Rome. This sece ion was led by the Nestor i an Patriarch of Mosul, whose hereditary and official name was Mar Elias. The conditions on which these Nestor i ans sub Nestor i ans of their own church mitted to Rome included the recognition of the orders of their clergy, and the privilege of using their ancient liturgy. The office of patriarch was continued under the title of Patriarch of Babylon, but it soon ceased to be hereditary in the family of Mar Elias. The liturgy has been gradually modified in some respects, and at present the Chaldean Church is quite fanatically opposed to many of those very peculiarities of the Nestor i ans for whose preservation their fathers stipulated. The number of Chaldeans hardly exceeds 75,000. Laurie (T.), Dr, Grant and the Mountain Nestor i ans, New York. 189 CHA-LING-CHAU Town in the eastern part of the Province of Hu-nan, China; station of the CIM (1898), with (1900) 1 mi ionary physician and a chapel.: CHALMERS, James: Born August 4, 1841. At the age of fourteen Died April 8, 1901. he entered a law ofRce at Inverary, and it was about this time that his great interest in foreign mi ions was aroused by a letter from a mi ionary in the Fiji Islands. So powerful was the impre ion made upon him by this letter that, it is said, on his way home from the religious service he stopped in a lonely spot and, dropping on his knees, prayed that God might make him a mis After his conversion sionary to the heUthen. he spent three years in study, during which time he was engaged in mi ion work, and then he was accepted as a candidate by the London Mi ionary Society, entering Cheshunt College when about twenty-one to prepare for the foreign field. Leaving Cheshunt at the end of his second year, he completed his training in the institution at High gate conducted by the London Mi ionary In January, 1866, he and his bride set Society. sail for Raratonga, an island in the Cook group in the Southern Pacific. After a series of mishaps their ship became a total wreck on the reef at Savage Island (Niue), and they finally arrived at Raratonga in the ship of the piratical Captain Hayes, one year and four months after leaving England. When Chalmers arrived at Raratonga he found that the natives had been raised from a condition of fierce savagery to a state of semi civilization through the efforts of John Williams (1823) and Pitman and Buzacott; but immorality, His time especially drunkenne , still was rife. was largely occupied by his cla es for the training of native teachers and by visiting the different stations on the island on preaching tours; but he considered his work at Raratonga as a course for mi ionary labors in New of preparation Guinea, where heathenism and savagery were rampant. In May, 1877, under the London Mi ionary Society, he and his wife sailed for Their first settlement was made their new field. at a point on the bay lying between South Cape and Suau. By his remarkable tact and personal magnetism, he soon disarmed the suspicions of the people; a house of worship was erected in a short time, and at the end of two years the work at Suau was sufficiently advanced to be left in His time was spent in the care of a teacher. constant journeys to new fields, and one of the most important of these trips was his visit to the natives of Motumotu, a district on the coast some distance west of Port Moresby, where the people His were especially fierce and bloodthirsty. numberle perils by land and sea he referred to simply as “the pepper and salt” which gave zest He and his to his further and greater efforts. a ociate, W. G. Lawes, worked well together, the one discovering and opening new fields, the other mastering and reducing to working form the language, and training teachers for the work on those fields. In 1882, after making a visit to his old station at Suau, Chalmers was able to write “For over two years there have been no cannibal ovens, no feasts, no human flesh, no desire for skulls. Tribes that could not formerly meet, except to fight, now meet as friends and sit down side by side in the same house, worshiping the true God.” In October, 1888, Southeastern New Guinea was formally annexed to the British Empire, and Chalmers and Lawes rendered valu- Ceylon CUambcrlaln, George W. able aid, through their knowledge of the country and people. After an absence of twenty years Chalmers returned to England, where his speeches aroused marked enthusiasm. In 1887 he visited Australia, and in 1890 he made a tour of the colonies. It was on a voyage to Samoa that Chalmers met Robert Louis Stevens on, the novelist, and a loving friendship was formed. In 1892 Chalmers was established at Saguane, at the mouth of Fly River; his field embraced the south coast of the island and the islands of Torres Straits as far as Murray Island. Sir William Mac Greg or, who for years held the position of Lieutenant-Governor of New Guinea, wrote these words: “Many teachers died of illne ; several were killed by the In people for whom they had come to work. the history of the mi ion there loom out conspicuously the names of two great mi ionaries, the Rev. Dr. W. G. Lawes and the Rev. James Chalmers; the former typically a man of thought, Each of the latter typically a man of action. them has worked for and among the Papuans carry on still for over a score of years, and they work of the greatest importance.” Since these words were penned Chalmers, the wonderful peacemaker of savage New Guinea, after living to unscathed, tho many times condemned death, has suffered martyrdom for Christ’s sake. He and his young colleague, Oliver Fellowes Tomkins, were brutall}’ murdered by a tribe of skull-hunters at Goaribari on the Fly River. Lovett (R.), James Chalmers, London and New York, 1902; Chalmers (J.), Life and Work in New Guinea, CHAMA: A town in the Gold Coast Colony, W. Africa, about 50 miles west of Cape Coast Castle; station of the WMS, with (1901) one ordained native minister, 47 other native workers, men and women, 3 elementary schools, 23 preaching places, 3 Sunday schools, and 336 profe ing Christians. 157