tiful spirit of brotherliness which characterizes Bishop Brent and his force of workers. It may be that we are mistaken in our notions of the best way to secure unity, and that these our brothers in the Episcopalian Church are right. In any case we be brethren, and will work together for the uplifting of a people scattered and peeled by centuries of misrule and oppression.

The United Brethren were first represented here by Rev. E. S. Eby and Rev. Sanford B. Kurtz, who arrived April 1, 1901. Rev. L. O. Burtner arrived later as superintendent of the mission. Owing to differences of judgment as to the occupation of the territory assigned them by the Evangelical Union, and to the determination of Mr. Burtner to reside and labor in Manila, both Mr. Eby and Mr. Kurtz accepted work with the Army and Navy Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association, with which organization they are yet engaged. Mr. Burtner came to Manila, where he has been living for more than two years. No mission work has been begun as yet either in Manila or the assigned field. Mr. Burtner will retire from the field early in 1904. No portion of the entire Archipelago was more ripe for evangelistic effort than the Ilokos provinces, which were given to the United Brethren in the tentative allotment of territory arrived at by the Union. Now practically the entire population has gone over to the Aglipay movement. In Ilokos Norte the Catholic Church holds but three churches and priests in the entire province. Thousands of souls might have been gathered in if the mission had entered vigorously upon the evangelization of the people to whom their representatives were first sent. At present the mission is represented by Rev. H. W. Widdoes, who intends opening work in Manila.

The Disciple Church is represented by Rev. Hermon P. Williams and Rev. W. H. Hanna. They came to the

field in August and December of 1901, Mr. Williams having formerly served in the Islands as chaplain of a volunteer regiment. Mr. Hanna undertook English work in Manila; but at the end of a little more than a year this work was closed, and both workers went to occupy Loag, the capital of Ilokos Norte, in Luzon. They have now been joined by Dr. J. H. Pickett, who comes to undertake medical work.

The Congregational Church is at present represented by but one missionary-Rev. Robert F. Black. He has selected the island of Mindanao as his field of labor, and occupied the city of Davao, on the southern coast. He intends to devote his efforts chiefly to the pagan tribes. In that part of the island there are Atas, Bogobos, Bilanes, Caliganes, Guigangas, Mandayans, Manobos, Tagacoalos, Samales, and Tanguils, aggregating more than fifty thousand people, all wholly uncivilized, having no written language, and, of course, only the crudest ideas of things spiritual. Mr. Black finds an eager welcome for the Scriptures among the Christianized Visayans settled in the Islands. The vast majority of the population of Mindanao is Mohammedan. Among these, mission work will proceed very slowly. They are a bloody and treacherous people, and give little promise of yielding to the efforts of the government either to control them or improve their conditions. It is expected that the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions will soon re-enforce this important work.

The Army and Navy Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association limits its activities to the work among soldiers and sailors. Among these classes its work is most profitable. The delay in starting work among the young civilians in Manila is inexplicable. The present op

portunity for Christian usefulness among these thousands is many-fold greater than among soldiers or sailors.

There seems to be no way for arriving at an arrangement by which Churches which can not undertake work on anything like a large scale shall be induced to confine their efforts to other fields. If this could be arrived at, and this Philippine field be left to four or five of the strong Churches, it would minister to the most rapid and satisfactory accomplishment of that end for which all devoutly pray-the moral and spiritual redemption of the Philippine Islands.

There have been but few instances of a lack of fraternity thus far. In one case a local preacher, who had refused to accept the work given him, and was pouting in his tent, was taken by the representative of another mission, immersed, and later given work. This kind of thing is fatal to missionary fraternity. In the degree in which it is allowed to go on, it defeats all those high ends for which the Evangelical Union stands. It is to be hoped that such a flagrant breach of missionary comity will never occur again, and that in all parts of the field the same spirit of brotherly consideration and unselfishness will prevail which has been the rule from the beginning to the present. "By this shall all men know" that we are Christ's disciples, if we have love and consideration one for another. The missionary who is here in the Philippines primarily to build up a denomination should be immediately recalled. We are here to build up the Kingdom of Righteousness, and only so far as our native Churches hasten this end are they of any real use to Him in whose name we labor.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SOME DIFFICULTIES CONFRONTING MISSION WORK.

In all lands the chief hindrance to the rapid advance of the kingdom of God is the hardness and impenitence of the human heart. Men will not be saved because they love darkness rather than light.

Particular hindrances which affect us here may be limited to three. These are the almost invincible tendency to religious formalism on the part of the people, the vicious example of worldly and godless Americans, and the language barriers which rise between us and those to whom we would minister.

Form and ceremony have been the whole of religion to the Christianized Filipinos so long that it is with the utmost difficulty that the essentially spiritual character of true religion is grasped by the Filipino mind. When he had confessed and knelt at the mass the Filipino Christian had been religious! When the women have said the correct number of paternosters, and crossed themselves at the right times, and counted their beads correctly, and otherwise "gone through" the daily religious program, there was no more consciousness of obligation. The fact that the heart was seething with hatred, or that the lips spoke blasphemies or poured forth torrents of abuse or falsehoods, weighed as the small dust of the balance against the other fact that all the regulations of worship had been strictly complied with. That God demands in

terior purity, and that He will have none of our ceremonies if sin is intrenched in the life, is a notion so foreign to the mind of the Filipino people as a whole, that one of the main difficulties that looms on all our horizons is that of removing this deep-seated notion and supplanting it with the opposite belief. The people are ready to be baptized, to read their Bibles, to unite with our Churches, and to comply with our outward requirements; but in too many cases they are not clearly converted as we understand that term, and their spiritual regeneration must come before their eyes are open to spiritual things. Here is the peril of the rapidly-growing Protestant Churches. If their founders can walk so closely with God, and have so large a measure of the Holy Spirit's presence that the work of conviction for sin can go on among those who are discipled unto Christ, then the work will run with swiftness to all parts of the Islands, and will abide as a permanent regenerating force. Christ gave the condition upon which alone this connection with the Spirit of conviction could be enjoyed by His workers when He said, "And He, when He is come [unto you] will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment." Only as the Spirit comes unto and abides in us who labor in His name will He be a Spirit of conviction in the hearts of the spiritually dead.

Those Churches which are receiving members most rapidly are face to face with this difficulty in a grave form. But it can not but be mightily encouraging to know that the real spiritual life of the native Churches of our own planting, at least (for I can only speak with authority of them), is steadily deepening. Through special services, in camp-meetings, in class-meetings, in personal intercourse, we who labor in the Philippines must confront