Brazilian Sketches

I was dining one day with a very successful business man who, although his business had extensive relations in many lands, was meagerly informed about the work of missions. I thought I might interest him by telling him something of the effects of missions upon commerce. So I told him about how the civilizing presence of missionary effort creates new demands which in turn increases trade. He listened comprehendingly for a while and then remarked: What you say is interesting, but what I wish to know is not whether missions increase business—we have business enough and have methods of increasing the volume—What I want to know is whether the missionary is making good and whether Christianity is making good in meeting the spiritual needs of the heathen. If ever I should become greatly interested in missions it would be because I should feel that Christianity could solve the spiritual problem for the heathen better than anything else. What are the facts about that phase of missions?
These words made a profound impression on me, and since then I have spent little time in setting forth the by-products of missions, tremendously important and interesting though they are. I place the main emphasis on how gloriously Christianity, through the efforts of the missionary, meets the aching spiritual hunger of the heathen heart and transforms his life into spiritual efficiency.
Since this is my conception of what the burden of the message concerning missions should be, it should not surprise anyone to find the following pages filled with concrete statements of actual gospel triumphs. I have endeavored to draw a picture of the religious situation in Brazil by reciting facts. I have described some of the work of others done in former years and I have recorded some wonderful manifestations of the triumphant power of the gospel which I was privileged to see with my own eyes. These pages record testimony which thing, I take it, most people desire concerning the missionary enterprise. More arguments might have been stated and more conclusions might have been expressed, but I have left the reader to make his own deductions from the facts I have tried faithfully to record.