48 A Plea for the Hungry of India. Creator, and the other to maintain the purity of the family and make a home for the growing child—are violated, and in many places almost unknown. They OUR have put in the place of the Creator a creature as an object of worship, and God has given them over to their own lusts." A A Plea for the Hungry of India. NOTHER widespread famine is devastating large portions of India, though not to any extent in the same localities as in 1896 and 1897. However, the distress in some parts of the country is even greater than it was then. This is particularly true in that part of Bombay Conference known as Gujarat District, where the population is dense and the destitution appalling. The same may be said of a large district in Northwest India Conference. In these districts our missions have had large success in the last few years, but our people are poor, and under the most favorable circumstances live quite below the line of comfort. Consequently, when famine prevails they have no resources, and suffering and starvation are inevitable unless prompt relief is afforded. Our General Missionary Committee at its session held recently in Washington city had not the funds at its disposal to make a direct appropriation for famine relief, but it did recommend that an appeal be made to the Church for special contributions, provided the Board of Managers should approve. At the meeting of the board held November 28, by a unanimous vote, the appeal was approved. We now most earnestly request pastors and people to give prompt consideration to this cry that comes from afar-a cry that is heartrending, a cry from people who are now of our faith and fellowship, a cry for bread. Let these starving people be able to send back to us across the waters the grateful message, "I was ahungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink." We have just been giving thanks to our heavenly Father for bountiful harvests, and soon the Christmas season will be here, when we will be celebrating the advent of the Prince of peace by bestowing and receiving gifts. How appropriate it will be to give something out of our abundance to aid in saving our people in India from starvation! Upon reading this please inclose something, however small or great the sum, and send it to the undersigned, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, and it will be sent on to its destination without the loss of a penny. Will pastors kindly call special attention to this appeal from their pulpits, and take offerings or recommend their people to respond promptly and liberally by mail? Remember that delay to many means suffering and death. It should be remembered that money contributed for famine sufferers is not for missions, but for bread; consequently it cannot be credited as a missionary contribution. By order of the Board of Managers, A. B. LEONARD, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York. Mortgaging the Future. UR churches have in recent years been drifting into doing business in benevolence on the installment plan. Rich men have promised large sums of money to educational institutions conditioned on the raising of still larger sums, which the churches were not able to pay. Debts have been incurred by missionary societies which the churches could not lift at once and still continue to pay current expenses. It has become common for individuals, churches, and local societies to pledge annual payments for a term of years. These promises are often counted as cash, and announcements are made with hallelujahs that large sums have been raised. This benevolence on the installment plan is wasteful, disappointing, and elusive. We have known persons to promise amounts in future payments on which they could not even pay the interest. We have known ministers to pledge their congregations to give annual sums for a term of years, and then to move away, leaving their people to repudiate the promises made in their name. We have known jubilee meetings to be held over debts paid or gifts made by promises, when the money has afterward had to be raised two or three times over. At the present time many churches have so mortgaged themselves to pay in coming years for work already done that they have no heart to take up work which imperatively calls on them. Future years will have their own demands in missionary enterprise. We have no right to mortgage our abilities in advance while we do not yet know what these demands will be. We can best do business for God on a cash basis. Better than twentieth century funds will be the twentieth century motto for the churches, "Pay as you go."-Congregationalist. The Missionary Spirit. As a great general once said of an imminent hazard he had encountered, that he had now met with a danger worthy of his courage, so the missionary may regard his work as worthy of the noblest heroism. His must not be the low, self-inflated courage which fails where its exercise is most needed, because it wants genuine faith in God, but that lofty, noble, yet simple and quiet courage which wraps itself about with the panoply of God, and advances in his strength. The same spirit is demanded of us, that we may go forward with unwavering firmness and hope in the presence of discouragements. Where the laborer falls at the time when he is most needed in the work and best fitted to do it; where there is a long delay before the appearance of fruit; where persecutors arm themselves to defeat the cause; if we have not such a spirit of love, and trust, and devotion toward God, we shall faint and become weary. GOSPEL IN ALL LANDS. FEBRUARY, 1900. THE MADRAS PUBLISHING HOUSE: ITS BEGINNINGS; PRESENT CONDITION; OUTLOOK. BY REV. A. W. RUDISILL, D.D. IN the latter part of 1884, while Presiding are numerous, from the little native office Elder of the West Baltimore District, containing a few fonts of type and a hand Baltimore Conference, I received an unmis- press up to some which have hundreds of A. W. RUDISILL. takable call employees and machine presses worked by about to sail to work in steam. The government press in Madras for my new a little press, printing a tract four by six inches. I hesitated to accept the gift, and only after much persuasion, and to avoid hurting my father's feelings I took the little press with me. On arriving in India I found that Bishop Hurst had appointed me pastor of the Vepery Methodist Episcopal Church, in the city of Madras, and Presiding Elder of the Madras District. The city of Madras, the capital of the Madras Presidency, is on the southeastern coast of India, in latitude thirteen. It has a population of between six and seven hundred thousand, and has the largest native English-speaking population, and the largest percentage of native Christians of any city in India. The Madras District then embraced the larger part of southern India, and included the great dominions of the Nizam. The principal languages spoken were Canarese, Hindustani, Tamil, and Telugu, together with a number of dialects. There seemed to be a general impression among missionaries that something must be done to aid in supplying and distributing Christian literature in vast quantities, so as to arrest this devastating flood cast out with the awful intent of undermining and sweeping away all that had been done to Christianize "Dark India." Bishop Thoburn, who was then Presiding Elder of the Calcutta District, declared that missionary enterprise had entered upon an era in which it had become absolutely necessary to give the press a prominence far beyond that which it had hitherto enjoyed. In a long conversation I had with him at a camp meeting he urged that the little press my father had given me ought to be used, and predicted that it would, under God, become the beginning of a publishing house in southern India. Encouraged by these indications, in the latter part of 1885 I made a beginning. In a small room of the parsonage, calling into requisition the practical knowledge of printing which I possessed, I put into type in the Tamil language John 3. 16, and after my I soon found that printing offices in India wife, our little boy, a native Christian, and 50 The Madras Publishing House. myself had each offered a prayer, and we had sung the doxology, I "struck off" the first impression. Rev. M. Tindale, and J. H. Stephens, Esq., form the present committee. Almost from the beginning the Press has printed tracts and Sunday school literature in English, Hindustani, Canarese, Telugu, and Tamil, with money granted every year by the Tract Society and Sunday School Union of our Church. Since then the Press has grown steadily, until it now includes all that is modern in its various departments-printing, photoengraving, electrotyping, bookbinding, and other lines of work. It is located on one of the finest lots on the principal avenue of Many millions of pages have thus gone Madras, purchased in 1894 for 18,000 rupees, out from the Press and have been distriband is to-day worth 80,000; the building itself, uted through country districts, in villages, towns, and cities, extending from the Nizam's dominions, in central India, to far-off Singapore, in Malaysia. While the reader is perusing these lines a consignment of tracts is on its way from the Madras Publishing House to Manila. The agent is elected by the Central Conference, which is composed of delegates from the Annual Conferences throughout The Press earns profits in its various deIndia, and meets once in two years. That partments by doing work for the governbody also elects a Local or Supervising ment, printing text-books, illustrated price Committee. This committee meets quar- lists, catalogues, general job work for busiterly to hear a report from the agent, and ness firms and banks, monthly and weekly from one of its members who audits the ac- periodicals, and reports of various missions counts of the Press every month. In addi- in all parts of India. The key of success in tion an auditor approved by the govern- gathering, without solicitation, this work ment makes out a yearly balance sheet. from all parts of India into our Press is the Rev. J. B. Buttrick, Rev. W. H. Hollister, reputation it has established for neatness more than sixteen pages, never larger than two by three inches, and is manufactured at the rate of 50,000 pages for one dollar. A Bible Booklet Society has been organized, and will be incorporated. A guarantee is given by this society that six per cent of all subscriptions to it from one dollar and upward will be perpetually invested in the annual publication and free For the first time in the history of India her sightless sons and daughters are beginning to read. Our Press is now issuing embossed literature for the blind, including distribution of Bible booklets manufactured primers, text-books, and portions of Scripture in six languages, Gujarathi, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Canarese. I esteem it one of the privileges of my life to have met these noble men and done something toward helping on this work. One of the objects aimed at by the Press at the Methodist Episcopal Publishing House, Madras. By a provision in the constitution of this society the booklets can never be larger than two by three inches, and never, including cover, contain more than sixteen pages. This absolutely takes them out of the A yearly audit will be made by mission- | booklets must be most helpful, and I rejoice aries representing the various societies, and to know of it." a certificate based on vouchers will certify whether the full quota has been distributed. An annual report will also be printed containing the name of each subscriber and the number of booklets distributed equal to the value of six per cent on the entire amount subscribed. Bishop Thoburn, under date of May 23, 1899, writes: "For years I have wished to see printed pages of Gospel truth scattered like leaves of autumn all over the Eastern world, and here at last is a plan for realizing what I have so long cherished as a waking dream." As I clearly recognize the leading of Providence in the donation of the little press, so also I see it in the gifts in money that have been sent to me from time to time, and solely through which this many-sided Publishing House exists. And I believe also that God will raise up contributors for the Bible Booklet Endowment Fund until their gifts shall make possible the free circulation of these Bible booklets in all the languages in which the word of God is printed, and thus aid in fulfilling the prophecy, "For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." |