THE

Sabbath School Magazine.

NO. I.]

JANUARY 1, 1885.

[VOL. XXXVII.

Sabbath Schools and Foreign Missions.*

By PROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMOND, M.A., F.G.S., F.R.S.E., Glasgow. In trying to collect my thoughts on this subject in the usual way, that is, by collecting the thoughts of others, I have been somewhat bewildered to find that my predecessors in this field, if there are any, have not immortalized their views in print. I hope this arises from my ignorance of the literature of the subject, for the more I think of it, the more I see how much is in it, and how much more might easily be made of it: for the usual preliminary difficulty, of forging the link between the new interest and the persons to be interested, is in this case largely removed by the circumstances of the case. The great problem of the Church regarding the heathen, is how to interest men in Foreign Missions, how to get men in middle life, with their sum of interests already made up, with the romantic driven out of them long ago by the prose of business, to let loose their imagination upon the question at all, to believe that foreign countries exist, that missionaries are real men. But with respect to children, this problem scarcely exists. They are not yet rooted in the environment of any country. It is really only as we grow up that we become provincial. The child is the true cosmopolitan, has the universal mind, and India and Calabar are as real to it as the next parish. The Sabbath school teacher will do well to mark this characteristic, and take advantage of it. Anything which makes foreign countries real is a contribution to the missionary cause. Picture-books of wild animals, missionary adventures and travels, descriptions of the manners and customs of savage racesthese have a most important function in preparing the mind to realize An Address delivered at the Seventeenth Scottish Sabbath School Convention.

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missions. Moreover, these are the most tempting of all themes to a boy or a girl-for there are no more voracious readers of boys' books than girls -so that this preliminary missionary education can be carried on without the possibility of prejudicing the scholar by the dryness of his task. I would go the length of saying that a Sabbath school superintendent might do much worse occasionally than take his whole school to a menagerie; and I think a good paper might be written for next conference on the missionary function of Noah's arks. No man, in fact, has a finer chance in any department of Christain work than the teacher who would interest the young in missions. While every other class of work is handicapped by difficulties of the most hopeless kind, this stands out as an almost solitary exception-an exception which, let me say in passing, would become the rule if men grew into the other aspects of religion in childhood, instead of having to force themselves into them in maturer years. But, wholly apart from the religious nature, there is an appeal in missions to the instincts of the young which affords an enormous leverage to those who would interest children in the missionary's work. Between the spirit of the boy, the wondering adventurous spirit of the boy, and the heroic career of the missionary, there is a natural sympathy; and the question in hand reduces itself mainly to this:-Grant the preparation in the boy, grant the surpassing interest and fascination of the facts, how are we to bring the one in contact with the other? This is really the whole problem. The facts will make all the impression, create all the interest, enlist all the missionaries, if they are only known.

In speaking, then, of the question of missionary information, which we have just seen to be the key to the position, the first and obvious thing to remark is, that the teacher should know the facts. My experience upon this score is that the majority of teachers are densely ignorant of missions. I have lately returned from a visit to one of the best known missions in the world, an ideal mission, which has been before the public in many ways, and whose romantic story, one would think, must have given it a place in the hearts and interests of many. I have been moving among the people most likely to have showed that interest, and yet I have not found more than three persons who could ask an intelligent question about it. I have been asked by intelligent people if I went to Lake Nyassa by the Congo; and a dozen times I have had to change the conversation in despair on being asked if I had seen anything of General Gordon. In trying to interest some political people in London in the Central African slave trade, I find the same hopeless confusion of geography. Some leading members of Parliament never even heard of Lake Nyassa. I think it is a teacher's duty to qualify himself for his work by a knowledge of foreign missions. It is not possible to know the details of all the various fields, but with a general knowledge of all-such as may be obtained from the many recent and admirable manuals on the subject-he might possess such an intimate and special knowledge of one as to understand the general lye of missionary work everywhere, and interpret it intelligently to his class.

With regard, next, to the missionary information which is to be brought under the notice of the Sabbath School, the main thing to attend to, I think, is definiteness. This is the secret on which

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all success depends-definiteness. The ordinary appeal for collections for India, or China, or Lebanon, or the New Hebrides, is comparatively useless. The box goes round as a matter of mere routine, and, as a rule, the child sees no farther than the hole into which it vacantly drops the reluctant copper. In many schools there is no more unintelligent part of the service than the missionary collection, whereas, if wisely managed, it might become one of the brightest interests of the school. Fortunately, of late years there has been a change for the better, but there are still many schools where the passing round of the box is as formal as the calling of the roll, and where the children have no more idea of what a missionary really is than that benighted scholar, of whom you have perhaps heard, who replied to the superintendent's question, What is a missionary? in these words, "A man who goes about collecting money." The proper method, the leading idea of which is definiteness, and which in many schools has worked so well, consists in singling out some specific object, person, or place, and fixing it in the mind as a living interest. I was thunderstruck a few years ago by a very small boy coming to the door with one of these suspicious pass-books in his hand, which the initiated recognise at a glance as a collecting-book. On asking him what he wanted, he gravely replied, "An elephant." I told him I was not to be trifled with. An elephant," he said again. I asked him who sent him. "An elephant," he said. I cross-examined him severely, but nothing would shake the elephant out of him; and after much questioning I elicited that the Sabbath school to which he belonged was negotiating for the purchase of this pachyderm, in order to supply a missionary in India with the means of visiting his flock. Now, I thought that a capital idea. That youngster, I am sure, knows all about Indian missionaries by this time, and I should not wonder if he has already gone to have a ride on his own elephant. Just think what an interest henceforth the whole thing has for him - India! elephants! And the missionary-a man who rides about India on an elephant! Why, the missionary is surrounded with a perfect halo! But of course all missionaries cannot have elephants, and yet it is probably possible to bring home the realities of mission life upon the elephant principle to every Sabbath school. When a new steamboat is wanted for a missionary, half the schools in the country should be asked to put a plate in it. One large school should be asked to supply the funnel, another the compass, a third the screw, a fourth the anchor, others between them should pay the captain's salary, and there should be a competition open to all the mission schools in the country for the post of cabin-boy. If a medicine-chest is wanted for the South Sea Islands, a hundred schools should furnish a bottle each for it; and in many such ways the fact that missions do not exist on paper only will be driven into the mind.

Another application of this elephant principle, of a somewhat higher order, consists in the singling out by a certain school of a certain person in the foreign field—a certain heathen to be taught, a certain native catechist to be maintained, a certain orphan to be educated in some missionary institution. Acting upon this principle, the United Presbyterian Church, after the Indian famine a few years ago, had four or five hundred orphans distributed over the Sabbath schools of this

country. In many cases, the better to interest the home school in their welfare, these orphans received the name of the superintendent, or of the minister, or of the minister's wife, or of some leading teacher. This, by the way, I think a mistake, as well as an error in tasteSiamuka and Chipitula are much more picturesque than Norman Macleod or John Cairns. I know of cases in which these children, whatever they were called, had a really valuable influence with their foster parent. There are many ways, also, in which a wise superintendent can add to the usefulness of such an opportunity, improving upon the fact, widening its range, and making each one in his school personally interested. The day before yesterday, in Liverpool, the superintendent of a well-known Sabbath school told me that, in order to gain the sympathy of every individual under his charge, he adopted the following means:-This school, among other things, keeps an orphan-it only costs four or five pounds at a mission station at Old Calabar. About Christmas time every boy and girl is asked to write a letter to this child of the Sabbath school. Their letters are not actually sent abroad, but all are carefully read, and the leading ideas embodied in a long joint letter, which is duly forwarded. Allusions to an expected reply are then dropped from time to time, and after the lapse of a few months, the travelled-looking letter, with its foreign stamp on the corner, is duly laid upon the table and read aloud amid breathless interest. Among other simple expedients for giving definiteness to the scholars' interests, one might mention such things as the use of good maps and globes, changes from time to time in the mode of taking collections, and also in the method of administering them. Every Sabbath school should be equipped with a good set of maps. These are really indispensable for intelligent teaching in any case, and constant use should be made of them by the missionary speaker. When a band of missionaries starts for the foreign field, the fact should be announced in every school in the Church. The name of the ship in which they are to embark should be told them, also the port of departure; and the route should be traced with the pointer on the map, accompanied by running notes of any remarkable landmarks which will be passed on the way, and the number of days the voyage will occupy. The older scholars might be told to watch the papers for the telegram advertising the arrival of the ship at the foreign port, and begged to communicate the fact to their teachers, and so on through other details. With regard to collections, a school would probably survive if the traditional box was laid on the shelf for a month or two, say at Christmas time, and a neat card for home use put in its place. If the expense of the cards was grudged, the senior girls might make the cards themselves, illuminating them nicely with a text and the collector's name. Or the circulation of the box might even be suspended for a month, and inaugurated again by a collection in silver—anything to break up the routine. Then, when the money has come in, every one in the school should have a say in allocating it. Ĭ have never heard of a whole Sabbath school diet being given up to this purpose, but the experiment is perhaps worth trying at the end of the financial year when the boxes are heavy with coin. Half-a-dozen of the teachers might prime themselves for this occasion with the facts and needs