taking away your legs, and making you unfit to walk?' They could only answer: 'Matuud, matuud ang imong polong.' (True, true is your word.) As a result the people have become independent and self-supporting. They have the largest church in the province, they have maintained a good school for several years.

"One year their village was swept by a jungle fire, and houses, rice, and fine chapel were burned. The other churches in the association raised money enough to pay wages to the carpenters who should build a new chapel, while the unfortunate people should be building their own homes again. But the Bingawan people had learned to walk on their own legs. They would not take the money, but devoted it to missions and built their own chapel first, living in the meantime in sheds made of banana leaves and poles. Then they put up their own homes."

Rev. Briggs of the Baptist Mission writes that at the beginning he paid one man to preach in Visayan, but this caused some friction with the unpaid men, and a basis of strictly non-payment of salaries by the Mission was adopted in 1911. Seven volunteer workers were in that year receiving nothing from the Mission, "excepting their annual poll-tax, an occasional suit of clothes, a little rice, amounting to less than twelve pesos annually, and further help in times of great need. They were expected to earn their own living." Congregations too must build their own chapels, maintain their own services, and contribute regularly to a propaganda fund. "The result is that twenty-two of the twenty-three churches have built and kept in repair good bamboo chapels, have maintained services ranging from one to seven times a week; have contributed regularly to the fund for a local religious paper, and have given to propaganda fund. But they have not kept the same pace in providing for their pastor. The supply of acceptable workers has not kept up with the growth of the work.”

The Zamorista Church in the vicinity of Manila is not strong enough to support all of its pastors, and some of them work during the week for a living. While the consecration of men like one young pastor who not only earns his living

but pays twenty-five pesos per month toward his church, is very touching, the results upon his congregation certainly are not as good as they would be if he could give his entire week to serving them.

The verdict of Dr. Cottingham on this subject seems thoroughly sound: "Not many ministers go into secular work from choice. Only the man does so who has not had adequate support and who feels that the only hope for him and his family is to go into other business. Invariably it spells failure for the worker. Let a preacher start a tailor shop and immediately the support from the people ceases. I know a little church that four years ago paid a monthly support of thirty pesos. Now it pays nothing to the same man. He went into the embroidery business. Embroidery is now dead, his people are untaught in giving, he is out of work and will soon be out of the ministry. He has put the church back several years and in the end has lost his respect for the church and the members do not love and honor him.

"In contrast we know another man appointed to a new town. A week after he arrived he wrote saying, 'I fear I will starve. We have no members here, no church and no support. Where shall I get my board and clothes? May I take work in the factory and preach at night?' We replied by sending him ten pesos and asking him to work and pray and organize. God gave him a revival and plenty of support from that day. He has organized two new congregations this year and gotten all his needs from his new converts; he has carefully tithed and has paid more for home missions than any man in the work. God has honored him and the people love him. None of which would now be true had he taken the place in the mill and preached at night.

"Secular work is impossible for the man called of God."

CHAPTER XV

FILIPINO MISSIONARIES

Heroes do not find their reward in the applause of men. If they did, this would be an unjust world, for a great majority of the world's heroes are unknown. Unless something spectacular occurs to excite men's imaginations, they allow heroes to live and die in their midst scarcely noticed.

Such men are now at work on the frontiers of the Philippines, facing enormous difficulties with divine courage. The very act of entering the Christian ministry under conditions such as these is in itself heroic. Every man who does so courts hardships, persecutions, insoluble problems, exasperating misunderstandings, and maddening misrepresentations.

Now and then the limelight falls upon one of these men and he is given the appreciation which all of them deserve. A volume some day may be written which will thrill the nation. For the present we must confine ourselves to tales of a few typical Filipino pastors, as told by appreciative missionaries.

To Rev. C. W. Briggs we are indebted for the story of Miguel Gillergom. When twenty-four years old Miguel was employed in the Iloilo mission press, as an apprentice, receiving no pay excepting his rice.

He joined the church and soon after asked if he might not accompany one of the evangelists on a preaching tour. He preached so well on that trip that he was called by the congregation at Tina to become its pastor. "No one except a Filipino could so quickly become a leader of Christians of several years' experience," says Mr. Briggs. "The secret in Miguel's case was that he had studied the New Testament long into the night with the head printer during the months they lived together, and was wonderfully quick, as so many

Filipinos are, in adapting it to his own people." At his own request Miguel was sent to a frontier village at the very edge of the mountains among the peasantry who had already become Protestants.

This district was a lurking place for bandits-men who did not hesitate to commit murder for a little pillage. "One day a band of some half dozen of these cut-throats, fully armed, stormed into the chapel while Miguel was preaching. He faced them with a spirit worthy of an apostle, and preached so strongly about the judgment and punishment to come that the leader of the band, a cool, hard-headed man of fifty years of age-with many a bloody deed to his record, and a reward of four hundred pesos offered by the government for his capture, dead or alive-fell on his knees in tears and cried out for salvation. This man, with his entire band of outlaws, has since reformed and he is now permitted by the government to live unmolested so long as he shall lead an honorable life."

On another occasion Miguel was not so successful. One morning twenty armed men, fanatical enemies of Protestantism, sacked the barrio. They bound the young preacher, robbed him of the last thread of his clothing, and took his New Testament and song books, and everything he possessed. They led him outside the chapel, put a knife to his throat, and told him they were going to end his preaching. Miguel showed not the least sign of fear, but preached to them about hell fire until they began to tremble. They finally went away, leaving him in bonds until his friends came and set him free. Mysterious letters kept coming, threatening his life if he did not leave the mountains forever. . . . But he is there today. He receives no pay for his services. His members supply his food, and the missionary keeps him in clothes, which cost less than ten dollars a year. "He has no family and leads a chaste life. None of his time and strength are wasted in the follies that are quite common here as in other countries. He treats all women with honor, but none with special favor. When he forgets himself in a sermon, and his strong manly

voice rings with his message, all who hear know that it is not Miguel, but God, who is talking."

Rev. H. W. Widdoes gives us the following account of a great missionary to the Kalingas :

"About 1908 a tall young man by the name of Juan Leones met me on the river-bank at Bauang and asked to be baptized by immersion. We went up the river a little from the crossing and there he pledged his allegiance to Jesus Christ. His father was a wealthy and wicked man and at the same time a fanatical Romanist. He promptly disinherited the boy and cut off all his allowance for general expenses, and for an education. The young man became an ardent witness for Christ and the next year was sent as a teacher to the Igorot town of Sigay away back in the mountains. Here he soon had over one hundred children in his schools. His deep experience of God soon won others and many were baptized that year. Now all the people of Sigay are Christians and one of our best though poorest churches is the fruit of that young man's Christian life. Through our help and the loyal cooperation of his wife he became a prize student in the seminary and graduated with honor. He served several circuits in the lowlands but he was always thinking of the regions beyond. In October, 1919, he was appointed by the Filipino Missionary Society to go away back into the interior to work among the little-known Kalinga people. After some months of earnest effort one of the influential leaders of the Kalingas was converted. In the first two years there were about twenty converts. During last April and May over one hundred and forty converts were reported from his field. His work is stirring the hearts of the Filipino brethren in all our churches."

Wenceslao Lime studied in the Industrial School at Jaro. With soul aflame he taught the Bible from house to house. When the news reached Jaro that the great robber band in the southern part of Negros had surrendered, the missionaries chose Wenceslao as the man to carry them the Gospel. No man ever faced danger more fearlessly. The robbers were at