with this; that slave-marts, tolerated by the Turkish authorities, are found in a large number of places in Africa and Asia, belonging to the Ottoman Empire. The Cardinal says, moreover, that he has never known a cadi who gave a judgment respecting slavery or the slave-trade in which he did not assume, as of course, that it is sanctioned by the Koran; and that he has never known any theological teacher of the Mohammedans who failed to recognize them as sanctioned by the Koran for true believers as against infidels.

Whether this Cathareorody Effendi is a Moslem or not, I do not know. Turkey prefers as her envoys to Christian powers a class of nominally Christian Greeks, who, as Mr. Freeman says, have been among the most unscrupulously servile instruments of Turkish brutality and Moslem fanaticism. The truth is: as Christianity is the true development of Israel, Islam, as Ewald says, is Israelism perverted into hopeless moral corruption. When shall we be willing to recognize that there are cancerous growths in religion, which it is the duty of the world to cut out? The profession of Mohammedanism no one thinks of forbidding, but of abating its abominations.

The "Herald" for December extracts from the "Free Church Monthly" a more particular account of the evidence referred to above, that the gospel is practically laying hold of the Boers in their relations to the blacks.

"Three years ago a religious awakening began among these Boers in the northern part of Natal, and the genuineness of this interest was shown by their desire to reach the Zulus, whom they had regarded as little better than animals. There are now fifteen preaching places where the gospel is proclaimed, and which Mr. Scott says are simply the farmhouses of the Boers. He speaks of seeing eighty Boers and three or four hundred Zulus gather together for worship. The Zulus come from kraals and villages, both old and young, some clothed, but most of them heathen in their blankets. Over one hundred in Greytown have been formed into a native church in connection with the Dutch church. This work is now being carried forward under the direction of a committee of the Dutch farmers, employing three native evangelists. One of these evangelists is the son of the Zulu warrior who in 1836, at the signal from Dingaan, the cruel tyrant, fell upon the Dutch leader Retief, and his party of about seventy men, murdering them all in cold blood. This father still lives, and is a member of the Christian Church, and listens gladly to his son as he preaches the gospel of peace."

After everything had appeared so hopeful for extending missionary work into Gungunyanu's kingdom, the final interview with the king dashed all these hopes. A single school, of thirty scholars, had been opened by the Portuguese, and on the ground of this they claimed to have a mission already established in the kingdom, although there had been no religious instruction whatever given. The king's sentence was: "Tell those who sent you, your feet have delayed too long; had you been the first here to mourn the death of my father, yours would be the place now occupied by the Portuguese. They first came to mourn the death of my father. They are my teachers, and the teachers of my people. I cannot manage two sets of teachers at one and the same time." French or German Catholics might have been expected to take hold of the work in earnest, but who can trust the Portuguese? They are not likely to be anything else than mere dogs in the manger. It does not appear that they have a single priest in the kingdom.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has missions in South

Africa, and so have the Wesleyans, that is the English Methodists. But both are accused of somewhat reckless encroachments upon other churches: the English High Churchmen, of course, from their wellknown disdain of all other missionaries in British territory, as both schismatics and dissenters; the Wesleyans, from the disposition which they have brought with them from the circumstances of their origin to look doubtfully upon the Christianity of others, but especially upon that of the German Lutherans, who have a good many missionaries in South Africa. It may be that the people of both the High Churchmen and the Wesleyans are genuine gains from heathenism. But a taint of suspicion resting upon their results makes us less inclined to inquire into them, and more inclined to reserve our inquiries into their labors for fields of which they have the prior occupancy, and in which, therefore, they have the best right. As respects the High Churchmen, or Anglo-Catholics, if that is what we are to call them, the broad fraternity of the Universities' Mission shows how entirely practicable it is for them to avoid schismatical intrusions under the name of opposition to schism upon other men's line of things made ready to their hand. Bishop Selwyn, too, when in New Zealand, although he represented this school of Churchmanship, or something not far from it, declared that St. Paul's principle, of proclaiming the gospel only where Christ had not been proclaimed before, was one which he had religiously made his own. Better proof this of his being in the apostolic succession than if he could have established an unbroken line of ordinations up to St. Paul himself, which Cardinal Newman concedes to be something impossible without a miracle. For, as Origen says, "He that has Peter's virtues has Peter's keys." High Churchmanship and Low Churchmanship are both very good things, but only within the limits of Christianity.

THE CONGO FREE STATE.

The English Baptists have twenty-two missionaries and one female school-teacher on the Upper Congo. These, of course, are as yet principally doing pioneer work. They have, in their little steamer The Peace, done a good deal of exploring work. One of them, Mr. Grenfell, in a speech made in England in 1887, put the amount of navigable waterway on the Congo and its branches at not less than 6,000 miles. He says: "What we know concerning the Congo and its tributaries proves it to be one of the most wonderful systems of natural canals on the face of the globe. If we take a quarter of a million of square miles, occupying the central portion of the basin of the Congo, we can find no place within that area more than fifty miles away from one of the navigable arteries. If we extend that area to half a million square miles, we cannot reach any point more than a hundred miles away from one of the navigable channels in communication with Stanley Pool. These channels are the routes by which commerce and civilization and Christianity

and we must take care that Christianity is not the least of the trio — have access to the Southern Soudan, to the Egyptian Soudan, to the Empire of Uganda, to Tanganyika, and the Albert Nyanza, and to the Empire of Muatayamvo in the South."

Mr. Grenfell protests energetically against the shallow notion that anybody will do for a missionary to the negroes. An inferior man will not do for a missionary anywhere. Only a strong personality can break through the narrowness of imagining his tribal peculiarities to be iden

tical with human nature. A missionary to the negroes need not always be what is specifically called intellectual. But a strong will and strong good sense he must have, for strong good sense is almost specifically a negro characteristic. 66 Uncle Remus" is a true type of the negro. Wherever a pious weakling may be in place, it certainly is not in Africa. And, as Mr. Grenfell suggests, the negroes are not, as some call the Indians, evening race." They seem to be rather a morning race. Africa belongs to them in the future as in the present. Men of a master-instinct for laying foundations will find enough to engage them to the full in the Dark Continent.

an

Banza Manteka is one of the stations of the American Baptists. Mr. Grenfell says of it: "When I last past through Banza Manteka, three years ago, it was the stronghold of many gross forms of superstition. It seemed the most unpromising place on the whole route, and one of the last places to give us any hope of a harvest. It seemed as though the Lord had chosen the most unpromising places to reveal Himself in might and power, and to encourage us to go forward. As we neared the town, before entering into it, we encountered a band of native evangelists' going forth,' constrained alone by their loyalty to their Lord. They had not been sent by the missionary; he did not know anything about it till we told him we had met the men. When we got inside the town we found ourselves in quite a native Christian atmosphere, people had forsaken their old state, they had burnt their idols, and were earnest and attentive to all the outward observances of Christianity." - The "heavy and bewildering losses of European missionaries on the Congo have been a great drawback. How far acclimatization is possible and what is to be done in view of its limitations are very grave questions. The case of Mr. Shindler, one of the English Baptist missionaries, seems at least to show that it ought to be treated as a very grave offense in a white man on the Congo to walk where he can be carried. Americans, used to torrid summer heats, will probably endure better than Englishmen. The following is a little touch of description: "Presently we came to daylight, and emerged on a narrow ridge. On one side a steep forest slope, on the other a grand sight-a gorge 900 feet deep and half a mile wide, extending far into the plateau; the blackest forest everywhere in it and on its sides, except a cliff of gleaming white sand of about 200 feet in height, commencing from about 500 feet up. In front lay the beautiful valley of the Ntsele, flanked on either side by the plateau, 1,100 feet above the river."

A convert of the Baptists, named Nlemvo, had "learnt that his uncle was dead, and that he was once more chief of his town, and a noble of Congo, having the style and title of Ngudi-ankama Tulante. But he made up his mind to have nothing to do with it, for he had already found that to be chief he must follow country custom, and authorize, indeed instigate, witch palavers. His people would not have him as a Christian, and he would not sell his soul for the chieftainship of an African village."- Nlemvo's mother had just died, and he gave her an honorable funeral, which is thus described: "The body was brought out of the house wrapped in leaves and twenty-four yards of cloth as the first wrapping. Then they spread on the ground Nlemvo's part of the shroud, one hundred and fifty yards of cloth; with this the body was enshrouded, and then outside of all came my gift of six yards of cream satin, fastened with scarlet braid. The firing of guns had announced to

the neighborhood that the funeral was in progress. The women folk wailed loudly, and we formed the funeral procession."

After the burial, the Rev. Mr. Bentley, with prayer, addressed the people on the meaning of death, and the hope and way of life. "Every one must have felt that Nlemvo, with all these new strange Christian ideas and customs, at least gave his mother an honorable and worthy burial, and his white man came himself to show his respect. The funeral is a most important matter in a Kongo's mind; for this he trades and toils and sins. A great man will have a number of sheep and goats and pigs, not to eat at any near time, but for the feast at his funeral. The bundles of cloth wrapped in skins, and so carefully stored in his house, are for his shroud and towards the funeral expenses; if some part is used in trade, it is only that the pile may be increased, and that for the one great purpose. But for this, what incentive would there be to work and energy in this land where so little is needed? Nlemvo's presence and respect in this matter, and the proper fulfilment of the native customs, was very important, and would go far towards removing the prejudice against these too new customs and religious ideas which seem to them so subversive of all proprieties.'

Mr. Grenfell, in a letter written from Stanley Pool, November 30, 1888, says: "The steamer Stanley is just down with news of Mr. Stanley having returned to a point within a few days of the Falls, and of his having communicated with Tippoo Tib. It is said no letters have come down from him. The loads left by the late Major Bartellot's expedition are now in Stanley's hands on their way to Emin, with whom Stanley had left his white men, while he himself came back for the second detachment. This is good news for Central Africa, and is full of promise for the future. The Congo is now more conclusively than ever the great water-way to the very heart of Africa, and I pray that Christ's messengers may speedily recognize it, and in no stinted measure take advantage of it."

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The "Baptist Missionary Magazine" for February, 1888, speaking of various appearances of providential opportuneness in the establishment of the Congo Free State, says: "The Free State was formed at a time when, in equatorial Africa, there was one great race with one language. The Congo basin—indeed, all that vast territory which stretches (roughly speaking) from six degrees north latitude to Cape Colony is inhabited by the Bantus, who are the typical negroes and the greatest of African races. To be sure, there are among this people many tribes, with their various linguistic differences. But the dialects spoken are cognate, and belong to one great language or family of languages.' Mr. R. N. Cust, of the Royal Asiatic Society, is quoted as saying that The Bantu languages are soft, pliant, and flexible to an almost unlimited extent. Their grammatical principles are founded on the most systematic and philosophical basis, and the number of words may be multiplied to an almost indefinite extent. They are capable of expressing all the nicer shades of thought and feeling, and perhaps no other languages of the world are capable of more definiteness and precision of expression.' What a wonderful provision is this for the translation of God's Word, and for the easy acquisition of the vernacular by the Christian missionary! We are reminded forcibly of the providential preparation of the world for the coming of Christ, by the spread of the Greek language in its Hellenistic form."

The number of converts in the Congo Mission of the American Baptists is stated at 1,060, of whom about 200 have already been baptized. Three Christians have lately been put to death by the heathen. The "Baptist Magazine" has a very good summary of Central African Protestant missions. "Looking at a map of equatorial Africa, and casting our eye down the West Coast, we see a number of older stations, each separated from the other by a distance of from two to four hundred miles, the Baptist Missionary Society at the Cameruns, the American Presbyterians at the Gabun, the American Baptist Missionary Union at the mouth of the Congo, the American Methodist Episcopal Mission at the Coanza, and near Benguela are missionaries of the American Board. From different points along the West Coast missions are being pushed into the interior. But at present the centre of attraction seems to be the Congo and its newly discovered fields, so full of rich promise. On the lower course of the river we find the Swedish Missionary Society with its station in the cataract region. Bishop Taylor of the Methodist Church is zealously prosecuting his work at Stanley Pool, and is reaching out into the regions beyond. The American and English Baptists have already eleven stations on the Congo, and are endeavoring to stretch their chain of missions from the Atlantic Ocean to Stanley Falls. Passing across the continent to the eastern coast, we find the Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the United Methodists, the Universities' Mission, and the Scotch Missions (of both the Free and the Established Church). These societies have been extending their labor westward, till some of them, by the heroism of such men as Bishop Hannington, have reached the Great Lakes; and already the London Missionary Society has established itself on the upper waters of the Congo." The comparison is made, and may well be made, with the workmen in the Mont Cenis Tunnel, and it might be made with those ancient workmen of Siloam, who, in the Hebrew of their recovered inscription, boast how, at the two ends of the sacred channel, "workmen lifted up tool against tool," till they met in the middle. "We may believe that in the very near future these laborers of Christ will meet and join hands in the centre of the Continent."

ANDOVER.

Charles C. Starbuck.

CHURCH INCORPORATION.

ABOUT two years ago the legislature of Massachusetts passed an act authorizing the incorporation of ecclesiastical bodies, and allowing them to assume the entire management of their temporal affairs. Many churches have taken advantage of this opportunity to dispense with the services of a "society "; and others undoubtedly would, were they aware of the simplicity of the necessary steps. The order of procedure is as follows: Some member of the church must post, in a conspicuous place near one of the main entrances of their place of worship, at least fifteen entire days before the appointed time, a notice to the members of the church that a meeting is to be held for the purpose of organizing a church corporation.

On assembling at the appointed hour and place, a temporary clerk should be elected by ballot; all resident members of the church, of twentyone years of age and over, without distinction of sex, and none others, having the privilege of voting and holding office.