called phenomenal. The same success attended his trip to Tasmania and New Zealand. With a foot that never tired, he went to South Africa and then to the Island of Ceylon, awakening the people by his eloquence and earnestness. He returned through India, arousing the sleeping nations, and leaving as a permanent monument to his fame the fully organized South India Methodist Conference.
SOME OF BISHOP TAYLOR’S MISSIONARIES. 1: Rev. B. F. Kephart, St. Paul, Minn. 2: Mrs. Kephart. 3: Agnes McAllister, Troy, Ohio. 4: Barbara Millard, Hemmingford, Quebec. 5: Eddy H. Greely, Fostoria, Ohio. 6: Georgina Dean, Des Moines, Iowa. 7: Clara Binkley, Bristol, Ontario. 8: K. Val. Eckman, Fulda, Minn. 9: Robt. C. Griffith, Gotland, Sweden.
He was now in the midst of his powers, and with well defined aims as to the plan and scope of mission establishments. As to himself, personal work was what was required; as to the missions, a sense of independence which would conduce to their growth and perpetuity. No mission was to be an asylum for lazy, superannuated men and women, drawing on a home fund for support, but each was to be self-supporting as far as possible, after its period of juvenility was over. Full of this impression he entered the Brazilian country, or for that matter, South America at large, and began a work of founding missions which astounded his church and the world by its success. Schools and churches sprang up as if by magic, right in the midst of populations wedded to the old Catholic creeds and forms, and the effect of his evangelism is as far reaching as time.
After this he turned his attention to Africa, as a field calling most loudly for civilization and Christianity; and more, as the field best suited to his evangelizing methods. He was elected Bishop of Africa by the General Conference of the Methodist Church, in May, 1884, and sailed for his new and limitless parish in December, 1884. After four years of heroic struggle, with successes which in every way justified his labors and plans, he returned to the United States in April, 1888, and sailed again for Africa in December of the same year, having equipped and sent in advance, November 13, 1888, twenty new missionaries.
His Transit and Building Fund bore the expense, and it was well supplied for the emergency by voluntary contributions from the United States and Canada. Fifteen homes in Africa became a requisite for these Christian workers, together with at least a year’s sustenance. Still the fund failed not, but had to spare for the Bishop’s personal comfort. Thus at one end of the Christian line work inured to the supply of necessities which should lead up to
self-support in the missionary field, and at the other end it shaped for the development of those indigenous resources which should establish independence.
The characteristics of his work, aside from his individual energy, wonderful ingenuity, and magnetic power, are:
(1) Self-supporting Missions. Missionaries are provided with a suitable outfit, have their passage paid, are provided with a home and seeds for planting. They are expected to do the best with the first year’s equipment, and to take such steps as will put them on an independent footing by the second year. This is not more a test of their own industry and efficiency, than an example to the natives to live in peace and adopt civilized means of obtaining a livelihood. It is an invitation to heroic spirits to enter the mission field, and is an earnest of tact and endurance which must prove of infinite value to those with whom they are in contact. It is the nearest approach any church has ever made to the thought, that a spiritual avenue to the heathen, and especially the shrewd African heathen, is most direct when it leads up through his business and work-a-day instincts to his heart.
(2) Native Coöperation. This is best assured by appearing to be on an equality with them. The missionary who is backed by a home exchequer and who is not compelled to resort to ordinary means of subsistence, is apt to grow exclusive and become a source of envy and suspicion. He is far more potential when he is as much one of his people as circumstances will allow, and like them dependent on the ordinary laws of industry for subsistence. There is but little risk in this to the man of energy, skill and health, where climate and soil are favorable for production, and all nature conspires to reward industry. It attracts the natives, secures their confidence and coöperation, and adapts them for the almost unconscious receipt of enlightenment and Christianity. Nothing so disarms them of suspicion, or serves better to silence controversy, than this quiet show of permanent settlement in their midst and the atmosphere of thrifty contentment which surrounds a newly-made mission home and vegetable garden.