Connecticut western news., 1900-08-16
LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE.
The Missionary Problem.
Mfr Editor:

matter. Many are doubtless looking at it as you do, but that seems to the writer superficial view.
 It is true that ''the greed, the selfish ness of so-called Christian nations, will get their reward" but also the faithful ones of these nations will get their re- ward, "Fcr he that conveiteth sinner from the error of his ways, shall save soul from death and "They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever"
 It is true that there is as much nec- essity as ever for home missions for streams from all nations are pouring in- to our country, and home and foreign work are intimately blended. What we need is better type of Christians, ''living epistles."
 You think .'the great commission was given only to the eleven apostles" The great missionary Paul was not among those, yet he had clear call to preach, not only in Asia, but in Europe. If ever any man was fitted for work among his own people, he was. as he himself tells us. The Word says that Paul and Barnabas were ''sent forth by the Holy Ghost" And if you read the book of Acts, you find mention of others with Paul on every missionary journey. You will also read that these suffered the same accusation that you bring against our foreign missionaries. Did they not say in Thessalonia that "These who have turned the world upside down are come hither alsoI And at Ephesus "while Apollos was at Corinth," and Timothy and Erastus had been sent to Macedonia did not the smiths who made gain by the worship of Diana, stir up great tumult with the cry "This Paul hath turned away much people, saying that they be no gods which are made with hands" so .'tkat our craft is in danger to be set at nauqht." Were l these heathen so much worse than those of today that the Lord sent these men | (none of them of the eleven apostles) to endanger their lives time and again some to loose it even-in giving the gos- pei to people who thought they did not want it. Certainly not "gross dark ness covers the people" today and many of them acknowledge it.
 When a missionary to India read the 1st of Romans to a native audience some immediately said, "Now we know that you are liar, for you have told us that your book is very old one, while that you have read us now was writ ten by some one today about our own people," Almost the same thing was said to a missiona,y 7 in China. So we'll does it At, in our timel
 As the gifted and educated Paul of Tarsus was called to count his life as naught that he might preach the gospel and was ready to charge his ''son Tim othy" to "endure affiictions, do the work of an evangelist" so some of our best men and women are today called 1 ''Get thee out of thy county and from among thy people" because the Lord would have his kingdom come in all the earth. Read the life of Hudson Taylor, for one instance, and say if he did not have call to China.
 The question is not one of "econo- mics or expediency" but of duty. You say there are no results from the foreign work, and cite as proofs that s Greek, famed for his tobacco and his wines, and of the Greek church (which everyone knows Is a dead church as far | as an any vital Christianity goes) had made no converts in China, and that a missionary in Hawaii was said to have outrageously cheated native. Any missionary paper you might read would give you something better to tell than that.
 How many years would it take to con- vert all the unruly classes in the United States -or fraction of them-if there | ere but five or six ministers in each stateP That is about the proportion in | China.
 'One half the human race has never heard the gospel" We're it not that "a little leaven leaveneth the whole" we might we'll despair of visible result. Now few words about leaving the | heethen as they are, from a woman s | standpoint. If you are willing to leave the men of these nations to take their chances, out of their superstition and vileness; would you leave the women to suffer for centuries more the burden of misery heaped upon them in un-C Chris tian countries? For nothing better for them will ever evolve out of false re- ligions. Even the Mohammedan thinks that women have no souls, that 1t is useless to try to teach them; and he multiplies wives at pleasure, and throws the m away when he chooses, about as easy as you would an old shoe. In In dia where prevails "The Light of Asia extolled by Edwin Arnold. "Heaven for e woman is to live so we'll in this life that in the next she may be born g man. T And what is it to be man in country where there is no ''adequate term for conscience-no word fo1 chastity as applied to men?" In the holy places of Hindustan are multitudes of Nautch girls, some bearing on their faces marks of long life of sin and many are the young girls who are daily consigned to a life of public prostitu
 tion under the name of religion. And what of the widows, many of them chil. dren for whom one of these own mum
 Der, the Pundita Ramabai pleads SC earnestlyf Helpless, hopeless abuse heaped on them all their lives, because forsooth, they are held responsible fol the husbands death; and man is oi
 value, but a woman of none.
 In China man is insulted if you ask after his wife. If by any calamity he
 Is obliged to allude to her, it is in mosi
 opporbrious terms. Girl babies are hat
 ed and many of them thrown out to die
 Those who escape this suffer the tor
 lures of foot binding, if not of the lower classes, and many of the latter are sold
 by their own parents for slaves and
 prostitutes. Read of the misery among
 women, even in rich families, that the
 medical missionary finds and of the
 gratitude evinced by patients.
 Oh the voices of the women and chil
 dren in three-fourths of the world art
 crying to their Christian sisters, .'Come
 over, come over into Macedonia and
 help us" Yet you would leave
 "the heathen in his blindness" to stun
 ble on through the puzzles of this life
 and go hopeless out into the mystery
 beyond, because you think the Lord