MISSION WORK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 135, 5 December 1938, Page 11

MISSION WORK

APPEAL FROM THE CHURCHES

The Advent season has associated with its solemnity the need of continued help to missions all over the world, and this was again stressed at St. Michael's Anglican Church, Kelburn, yesterday, when the Vicar, the Rev. G. McKenzie, made special reference to medical missions, their growth in various countries, and the remarkable work they- are doing for the coloured people in foreign lands. The brief statistics he quoted were most enlightening.

Mr. McKenzie said that 1858 must be considered the "annus mirabilis" in the history o,f missions, for in that year there was a wonderful advance. Then followed a spread to all the countries and the Orient, when even Japan opened her doors to missionaries, and she was followed by China, India, and Africa, the last-named work being due largely to the genius of David Livingstone.

Previous to this movement, the great galvanising influence in earlier centuries had been the work of St. Francis of Assisi, and later it was the evangelising work of John Wesley. There were now 144 dioceses overseas in the British Empire and this fittingly followed out the ideal of the Church that one of its main functions was evangelistic and that, if the peoples outside were forgotten, the Church was failing in its duty.

The preacher referred to the medical men who had made the care of the native people their life's work. In British India, he said, there were now 256 fully-equipped mission hospitals, in Chf.ia 350, and large numbers in Africa and other countries. A feature of the whole mission field was the fact that native clergy and lay readers and hospital assistants did a very large part of the work.

In conclusion, Mr. McKenzie said that it was wrong to sound a note of pessimism in missions when one recalled the great advance made in all spheres by the missions and the various religious bodies. In spite of difficulties to be overcome, there was every reason to have bright hopes for the future.