One hundred years ago only one in ten of the college students in America was a communicant member of the Church; to-day practically every other college student is a member of some church. It is certainly encouraging that fifty per cent. of that small fraction of our population which will furnish an enormous percentage of the leaders are church-members to-day, or five times as large a proportion as a hundred years ago.
The situation in the non-Christian world to-day is summed up, on the basis of the statistics in the chart below, as follows: It took about ninety years to gain the first million converts (1793–1885). The second million were added in twenty-three years (1885–1908). They are now being added at the rate of a million in ten years.
WORLD MISSION PROGRESS
GAIN IN PROTESTANT COMMUNICANTS SINCE 1800 IN THE FOREIGN FIELD
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a single Protestant in Japan, not one in China, only a few in India, and the great non-Christian world was practically closed to the Protestant missionary. Three of the five continents of the world were inaccessible and a large part of a fourth largely untouched.
Protestant Christian work began in Japan in 1859. In 1913 there are 73,000 Protestant communicants,—among them twelve members of the Japanese Parliament. The influence of the Protestant Christians in the Empire is out of all proportion to their comparatively small numbers, because Christianity began with the ruling classes in Japan. There are to-day in that one country more Protestant Christians than there were in all the non-Christian world at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Morrison, the pioneer missionary to China, entered that land in 1807. At the end of thirty-five years of effort there were only six converts; at the end of fifty years there were less than fifty, but to-day, according to the China Year Book, there are 195,905 communicant members of the Protestant churches, and Dr. Timothy Richard has publicly stated that he thinks there are not less than two millions of people in China who accept Christ as Savior, although many of these have not as yet united themselves with the Christian Church. One missionary in North China reported recently that he had seen more Chinese accepting Christ in the last nine months than in the previous nineteen years of his service in China.
In Korea, on Christmas Day, 1887, the first seven men were baptized in secret; now there is a Christian community of 300,000. There has been an average of one convert every hour of the day and night since Protestant missionaries entered Korea. The Korean Christians are an evangelistic, self-sacrificing, Bible-studying, prayer-loving people. The training-classes for Bible study and preparation for Christian work have been wonderful in their attendance and power. One church has developed into five churches in its short history. The members of a single church in Seoul preach the gospel in over a hundred villages in the vicinity of the city. Pingyang was not entered until 1895. At that time it was said of the city that every other house was a wine shop. In the short time since the first missionary entered the city such progress has been made that it is now said of Pingyang that every other house has a Christian in it, and that at least one sixth of the population may be found in the regular church services every Sunday morning. The great challenge presented by Korea is to press the advantage at this point in the far-flung battle line, in confident expectation that Korea will be evangelized in this generation.
India furnishes many thrilling illustrations of the victorious progress of Christianity. On a journey around the world two years ago, a Christian leader saw one church record in the Baptist mission among the Telugus in which there were the names of 19,000 Christian converts. Forty years ago there were not more than a half-dozen Christians in that section of India.