woman, the wife of a man in charge, came out, and informed me that once in four months a missionary from a neighboring city visited the town and held service there, which was attended by two families. Asked if she had ever been to the service of the Methodists, she replied no, she did not belong to that Church; besides, the padre sahib would be angry. Here we have the case of a congregation without a place of worship, and a place of worship without a congregation! Alas! for that Christianity which renders it impossible for those in charge of such a place to proffer it to those [the American Methodists] who could utilize it to good purpose.

Another incident, indicative of the same spirit, is as follows: An Indian pastor, working under the Church of England, once told me that he did not allow any members of his congregation to go to a Nonconformist place of worship, and volunteered certain abstruse reasons which, paraphrased in plain language, meant that he considered his Church alone as entitled to be called Christian. Some years ago, while at Jubbulpore, I asked the native pastor of the Church Missionary Society-as simple-minded and honest a Christian as I have come across-if he was going to hear Bishop Thoburn, of the American Methodist Church, deliver an address. He seemed shocked at such a proposal being made to him, and so far as I could make out he sincerely believed it would be wrong on his part to do so, and also that he would thereby incur the displeasure of the English missionary under whom he was working.

That the native pastor was in error to some extent as to this particular missionary's spirit appears from Mr. Nundy's next sentence: "His face was a picture to look at when I told him afterward that among the congregation I noticed this very missionary, who is now the secretary of the Church Missionary Society at Allahabad."

It is the opinion of Alfred Nundy, expressed in the Contemporary Review, that the American Methodists (the Methodist Episcopalians under the leadership of Bishop Thoburn) are probably destined to take a more prominent part in the evangelization of India than any other denomination.

AN UNEXPECTED SIDE-LIGHT ON MISSIONS.

WE who stay at home do not, as a rule, see missionaries at their best. Most of their noblest action is out of our sight. We see them when they go, young, timid, apprehensive, doubtful, untried, distrustful of themselves, their fitness for the work untested and a matter of uncertainty to them and to us. We see them no more until they return, probably worn with labor in unkindly climates, often broken in health, pale, thin, weak-voiced, and with the remnant of themselves giving but an inadequate

impression of their capability and powers. They appear before our assemblies and speak not at their best in any way, having lost practice by disuse of our language in public speaking, their work having given them no training for addressing such audiences as listen to them here. This description fits not every case, but very many. All the faithful service, the brave doing and patient endurance, which often lie between their timid and trembling departure and their broken and trembling return, is unseen by us. And they do not report it to us. They tell us of the dire plight of the heathen, sunk in darkness and degradation, of the needs of the work and its encouraging promise, of the proved power of the Gospel to transform men of every tribe and tongue, and of the number, faithfulness, and growth of the converts. But they pronounce no eulogy upon themselves. They present us with no picture of their own noble behavior, their self-obliterating generosities, their self-inflicted privations, their courageous facing of hardships and dangers which were the customary commonplaces of their daily lives. They do not glorify themselves, nor pose as heroes, though many of them are. They move our pity for the wretched heathen, they rouse our loyalty to Christ, but make no attempt to elicit applause or admiration for themselves. Large as is the literature of missions in history and biography, the great story as a whole is not told at all on earth; its memorabilia can be found only in the archives of heaven. Thus it happens that due appreciation and full justice fail to be meted out to missionaries. Moreover, and still worse, they suffer unmerited disparagement from reports given by a miscellaneous assortment of travelers who have had only a glimpse of them, many of whom are godless, out of sympathy with religious work, incapable of estimating its value or even of perceiving its effects, and who receive their impressions largely through unchristian merchants from Christian lands, whose unprincipled and often licentious lives in heathen cities compel missionaries to decline association with them, thereby kindling a feeling of resentment in the traders, who manifest their animosity after the fashion of their kind by denouncing the missionaries as self-righteous prigs and hypocrites, and variously misrepresenting their manner of life and their work. Worse still, Christian travelers sometimes visit missionaries and receive their hospitalities, which are made as bountiful as generous hearts, at cost oftentimes of much pinching

self-denial, can procure, and then, having devoured the missionary's carefully husbanded resources, go home to report that missionaries live in luxury. Worst of all, even in the Church unchristian selfishness and sheer stinginess lead some to squirm out of a sense of obligation, and to unharness themselves from the chariot of the King by declaring the futility of foreign missions and disparaging missionaries, as a reason or an excuse for repudiating responsibility for the salvation of the heathen.

The aggregate of injustice toward the bravest and most devoted servants of God and friends of mankind makes it the more obligatory upon truth-loving persons to help redress the balance by setting forth creditable facts which are from time to time thrown up to the surface, and justifies us in assisting to give publicity to a bit of unprocured and unanticipated testimony to the character and services of missionaries which recently floated into literature on the current of an explorer's rehearsal of his experiences. The narrative referred to, while of interest to the world in general and to Christendom in particular, may be said to have a special interest to us of the Methodist Episcopal Church, because the unsolicited testimony contained therein relates to some of our own workers in mission fields, whose work, like that of most missionaries, is so distant, so modest, and so untrumpeted that the Church at large scarcely knows their names. The name and fame of Father Damien, the Roman Catholic apostle to the lepers of the Sandwich Islands, who shared their life until he took their disease and died their death, have gone round the world, and his story thrills the heart of Christendom; but how many know of the Methodist missionary and his wife who exiled themselves to the leper island of Molokai in that same group, and for many years lived among its wretched inhabitants, laboring to mitigate their sufferings and illumine their hopelessness with the Gospel of Him who brought life and immortality to light, warding off from themselves as long as possible by strictest cleanliness the loathsome disease, but constantly facing the probability that some day its portentous sign must appear upon their own pure and innocent bodies?

Our North India Mission Conference occupies the Northwest Provinces east of the Ganges, and the province of Oudh. In the appointments for Kumaon District, in 1897, the Minutes report this assignment, "Bhot: Harkua Wilson, Shadulla Lawrence, Benjamin Marqus." In the report of S. Knowles, presiding

elder of that district, to the Conference session held at Lucknow, January 7-12, 1897, Bishop Thoburn presiding, we read:

I joined my appointment in February last, and after working for a few weeks in Bhabar at the foot of the Haldwani Hills, and then in March organizing the work in Naini Tal for the summer months, I started in a tour to visit Dwarahat and the northeastern part of our Kumaon District.

At Dwarahat we found Brother and Sister Rockey well settled down to their vari. ous forms of mission work. Their three outstations were well manned, their boys' and girls' boarding schools well filled and productive of great good, their hospital and dispensary popular and most useful, and their religious services carried on with vigor and encouraging results. After holding Quarterly Conference we started for Dharchula, in Bhot. It took us seven days, with as many hard marches over giddy heights and through malarious valleys, to reach our station at Dharchula. The way to this place is certainly difficult, but, thanks to the government for good roads and safe bridges, it is not inaccessible. We found Dr. Harkua Wilson, who is in charge of the circuit, Misses Sheldon and Browne with all their helpers, ready to move up two marches beyond to their summer home in Biyas. The Bhotiyas, too, had all moved up from this valley to the heights of more northern Bhot. As we could not accompany our brethren and sisters we contented ourselves with holding our Quarterly Conference and having such meetings as the time allowed. There is an encouraging work among the families of the nomadic traders and villagers in the valleys in the winter, and higher up in Chaudas and Biyas in the summer. Dr. H. Wilson in one direction, and Misses Sheldon and Browne in another, lately made successful though arduous trips into Tibet.

Bhot is the name applied by the natives of India to “that portion of the country which includes Darma, Bias, and Chaudas, and which has for natural boundaries the Kali River to the southeast, separating it from Nepaul and the great Himalayan chain to the northeast, extending from the Lissar Peak in a general direction of about 115°."

Through this northern hill country of India, bordering on Tibet, there passed in May, 1897, Mr. Arthur Henry Savage Landor, a hardy young English explorer of considerable repute as a traveler in remote parts of Korea, Japan, and other parts of the world, being on his way at the time mentioned to attempt an exploration of Tibet, "the sacred land of the Lamas." Landing at Bombay from England early in April, he traveled northward by Bareilly, Naini Tal, Almora, Pithoragarh, Shadgora, Askote, Kalika, and Dharchula, which last place is one of those named by Presiding Elder Knowles's report as officially visited by him, and occupied by Dr. Harkua Wilson with other Methodist Episcopal missionaries. Far up among the lower Himalayas, and on the exposed frontier, the passing explorer found our mission station; and in the magnificent two-volumed octavo

book* which tells of his travels and awful experiences in the hostile land of Tibet he describes this place, gives an account of his reception by our missionaries, and records the inestimable services rendered him by one of them, to whom, in fact, he declares himself indebted for the saving of his life. According to Mr. Landor's description, Dharchula, the largest Shoka winter settlement, situated on a fine stretch of flat land about a hundred feet above the Kali River, "is a village consisting of twelve long rows of roofless houses similar in size and shape. At the extreme limit of the settlement stand four larger buildings. One of these is a daramsalla, or shelter for travelers, and the others are high stone edifices-the school, hospital, and dispensary belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Mission, and under the careful supervision of Miss Sheldon, M.D., Miss Brown, and that wonderful pioneer, Dr. H. Wilson. A bungalow of the same mission is built higher up on the hillside." The explorer gives the following account of his visit to our missionary ladies:

I was received with the utmost courtesy by Miss Sheldon, M.D., and Miss Browne of the Methodist Episcopal Mission. I have in my lifetime met with many missionaries of all creeds in nearly every part of the globe, but never has it been my luck to meet two such charming, open-minded, and really hard-working ladies as those who now so kindly received me. "Come right in, Mr. Landor," said Miss Sheldon with her delightful American accent, and she shook hands with me in good hearty fashion. The natives had praised to me the charity and helpfulness of this lady. I found their praise more than justified. By night or day she would never refuse to help the sick, and her deeds of kindness which became known to me are far too numerous to detail in these pages. Her patience, her kindly manner toward the natives, her good heart, the wonderful cures she wrought among the sick, were items of which these honest mountaineers had everlasting praises to sing. A Shoka was telling me that it was not an uncommon thing for her to give away all her own food supplies and even the clothes from her backcourting discomfort for herself, yet happy in her noble work. With all was com

*In the Forbidden Land. By A. Henry Savage Landor. An account of a journey into Tibet, capture by Tibetan Lamas and soldiers, imprisonment, torture, and ultimate release brought about by Dr. Wilson and the Political Peshkar Karak SingPal: With the Government Inquiry and Report and other official documents by J. Larkin, Esq., deputed by the government of India; and several hundred illustrations. 2 vols., 8vo, pp. 307, 250. New York: Harper & Brothers. Price, cloth, $9. ↑ Martha A. Sheldon, M.D., the daughter of a Congregational minister in Minnesota, was sent out by our Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, and is supported by the New England Branch thereof. Her education as a physician was obtained in the Medical School of Boston University. Miss E. L. M. Browne is a deaconess, trained at Muttra, of whom Miss Sheldon wrote: "She has entered enthusiastically into the work, and in a very short time was able to give Scripture lessons to the Bhotiyas in their own language."