Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

The following passage, slightly abbreviated, from a German writer, presents a glowing sketch of the wide extension of recent missionary labors:—

"At the beginning of this century, the island world of the Pacific was shut against the gospel; but England and America have attacked those lands so vigorously in all directions, especially through native workers, that whole groups of islands, even the whole Malayan Polynesia, is to-day almost entirely Christianized, and in Melanesia and Micronesia the mission-field is extended every year. The gates of British East India have been thrown open wider and wider during this century; at first for English, then for all missionaries. This great kingdom, from Cape Comorin to the Punjaub and up to the Himalayas, where the gospel is knocking on the door of Thibet, has been covered with hundreds of mission-stations, closer than the mission-net which at the close of the first century surrounded the Roman empire; the largest and some of the smaller islands of the Indian Archipelago, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, and now New Guinea also, are occupied, partly on the coast and partly in the interior. Burmah, and in part Siam, is open to the gospel; and China, the most powerful and most populous of heathen lands, forced continually to open her doors wider, has been traversed by individual pioneers of the gospel, to Thibet and Burmah, and half of her provinces occupied from Hong-Kong and Canton to Peking; and in Manchuria, if by only a thin chain, yet at many of the principal points, stations have been founded, while the population overflowing into Australia and America is being labored with by Protestant missionaries. Japan also, hungry for reform, by granting entrance to the gospel has been quickly occupied by American and English missionary societies, and already, after so little labor, has scores of evangelical congregations. Indeed, the aboriginal Australians have, in some places, been reached. In the lands of Islam, from the Balkans to Bagdad, from Egypt to Persia, there have been common central evangelization stations established in the chief places, for Christians and Mohammedans, by means of theological and Christian medical missions, conducted especially by Americans. Also in the primitive seat of Christianity, Palestine, from Bethlehem to Tripoli, and to the northern boundaries of Lebanon, the land is covered by a network of Protestant schools, with here and there an evangelical church. Africa, west, south, and east, has been vigorously attacked; in the west, from Senegal to Gaboon, yes, lately even to the Congo, by Great Britain, Basel, Bremen, and America, which have stations all along the coast. South Africa at the extremity was evangelized by German, Dutch, English, Scotch, French, and Scandinavian societies. Upon both sides, as in the center, Protestant missions, although at times checked by war, are continually pressing to the north; to the left, beyond the Walfisch Bay; to the right, into Zululand, up to Delagoa Bay; in the center, to the Bechuana and Basuto lands. In the east, the sun of the gospel, after a long storm, has burst forth over Madagascar in such brightness that it can never again disappear. Along the coasts from Zanzibar and the Nile, even to Abyssinia, out-stations have been established, and powerful assaults made by the Scotch, English, and recently also by the American mission and civilization, into the very heart of the Dark Continent, even to the great central and east African lakes. In America, the immense plains of the Hudson's Bay Territory, from Canada over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, have not only been visited by missionaries, but have been opened far and wide to the gospel through rapidly growing Indian missions. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of freedmen have been gathered into evangelical congregations; and, of the remnants of the numerous Indian tribes, some at least have been converted through the work of evangelization by various churches, and have awakened new hope for the future. In Central America and the West Indies, as far as the country is under Protestant home nations, the net of evangelical missions has been thrown from island to island, even to the mainland in Honduras, upon the Mosquito Coast; and in British and Dutch Guiana it has taken even firmer hold. Finally, the lands on and before the southern extremity of the continent, the Falkland Islands, Terra del Fuego, and Patagonia, received the first light through the South American Missionary Society (in London); and recently its messengers have pushed into the heart of the land, and are rapidly pressing on to the banks of the great Amazon, to the Indians of Brazil."

RESULTS OF MISSIONS.—In carrying forward missionary work during the nineteenth century, the Bible has been translated into numerous languages. Missionaries, as in the early days of the Church, have reduced the languages of uncultivated peoples to writing, and made the beginning of native literatures. Schools, colleges, and printing-presses follow in the path of the preachers. The contributions made to philology and to other branches of science by missionary preachers and explorers are of high value. As far as the number of converts is concerned, progress has been more rapid, as was the case in the first Christian centuries, among uncivilized tribes. The reception of Christianity is more slow in a country like China, and among the Aryan inhabitants of India. But the influence exerted by missions in such communities is not to be measured by the number of converts. Moreover, history has often shown, that, in the spread of the Christian religion, the first steps are the most slow and difficult: they are like the early operations in a siege. Sir Bartle Frere writes thus: "Statistical facts can in no way convey any adequate idea of the work done in any part of India. The effect is enormous where there has not been a single avowed conversion. The teaching of Christianity amongst a hundred and sixty millions of civilized, industrious Hindoos and Mohammedans in India, is effecting changes, moral, social, and political, which for extent and rapidity in effect are far more extraordinary than any that have been witnessed in modern Europe." Of the same tenor is an opinion expressed in strong terms by Sir Henry Lawrence, governor-general of India during the mutiny of 1857, and a most competent judge.

It is worthy of remark, as one characteristic of the Christian missions of the recent period, that the religions of the non-Christian nations have been studied more thoroughly, and the true and praiseworthy elements in them have been better appreciated.

The progress made in the past encourages the hope that the unity of mankind, a unity which shall be the crown of individual and national development, will one day be reached. That unity of mankind, in loyal fellowship with Him in whose image man was made, is the community of which the ancient Stoic vaguely dreamed, and which the apostles of Christ proclaimed and predicted,—the perfected kingdom of God.

LITERATURE. See lists on pp. Alison, Hist. of Europe, from 1815 to 1852 (8 vols.); Bulle, Gesch. d. neuesten Zeit, 1815-1871 (2 vols.); Flathe. Zeitalter der Restauration und der Revolution; Stern, Geschichte Europas (3 vols.); Debidpur, Hist. Diplomatique de l'Europe (2 vols.); Seignobus, Political History of Europe since 1814; Sears. Political Growth in the Nineteenth Century; Lavisse et Rambaud. Hist Gén., Vols. X., XI., XII.; Phillips, European History, 1815-1899; Müller, Political History of Recent Times (Peters's translation, 1882); Müller, Politische Gesch. d. Gegenwart (an annual, since 1867); Honegger, Grundsteine einer allgem. Culturgeschichte d. neuesten Zeit (5 vols.).

Works on the History of Italy. Thayer, Dawn of Italian Independence (2 vols.); Reuchlin, Geschichte Italiens (4 vols.); Stillman, Union of Italy; Probyn, Italy from 1815-1878; Lives of Cavour, by De la Rive (English translation), by E. Dicey, by Mazade (French); Life and Writings of Mazzini (9 vols.).

Works on the History of Germany. Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte; Von Sybel, Founding of the German Empire (6 vols,); Busch, Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War (2 vols.), Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman (2 vols.); Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs (2 vols.).

France. Hillebrand, Gesch. Frankreichs (1830-1870); Adams, Democracy and Monarchy in France; Stein, Gesch. der Sozialen Bewegung in Frankreich; Guizot, Memoirs of His Own Time (1807-1848) (4 vols.); Delord, Hist. du Second Empire (6 vols.); Zevort, Hist. de la 3'me Republique (4 vols.); Hanotaux, Contemporary France (Vol. I.); Bodley, France (2 vols.); Simon, The Government of M. Thiers (from 1871-1873) (2 vols.).

Works on the History of England. Harriet Martineau, The History of England (1800-1854); Walpole, A History of England, from 1815 (6 vols., 1878-1880); Molesworth, The History of England (1830-1874); Justin McCarthy, A History of Our Own Times (1878-1880); Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea (6 vols.); Seeley, The Expansion of England; Rutherford, The Fenian Conspiracy; Richey, The Irish Land Laws; King, The Irish Question; Morley, Life of Gladstone, 3 vols. (1903) (an able historical review).