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MAKING MEDICAL MISSIONARIES A Notable College Where Students are Trained to Heal the Sick in Foreign Lands. By GEORGE T. B. DAVIS. URING a day recently spent at Battle Creek, Michigan, I found located there one of the most unique and far-reach ing institutions in the Christian World. It is a fully equipped college for the training of men and women to go forth into foreign fields, and like the Master, “cure the sick” and “preach the Gospel of the Kingdom.” D The school is called The American Medical Mis sionary College. Already twenty-six of its students are practicing and preaching the gospel in China, Japan, India, Russia, Persia, Turkey, Germany, South Africa, Mexico and New Zealand. It is non sectarian and is committed to no medical dogma. It gives the best medical training to its students, and then they go out under any denominational board to any field in the world. The course is four years, and through the generosity of Christian friends the expenses are reduced to a minimum. Board and room are given the students at $3 per week or less, and the total other expenses do not exceed $135 per year. Even this expense may be greatly lessened as a student may earn his board and room by working three and a half hours a day. It was an astonishment and a pleasure to me to find this remarkable school, of which I had heard very little, having an equipment of a large recita tion hall, two dormitories and several smaller build ings at Battle Creek while at Chicago is located the most up-to-date medical dispensary in the city. The students are thus not merely trained in the theory of medicine, but are given a umber of months of practical training during the four years’ course. No one can estimate the far-reaching effects of this institution as its graduates go to the farthest bounds of the earth healing the sick and preach ing Christ. It is the medical missionary who paves the way for the teaching and preaching missiona ries. It may not be generally known that in many of the great heathen lands the doors were flung open to missionaries through the efforts of the mis sionary doctor who had gone there as a pioneer at the risk of his life. Dr. Stephen Smith of New York City, in a com mencement address to the graduates of the college, pictures graphically some of the striking achieve ment of medical missionaries. He says in part: Curative Christianity. “England’s first foothold in India was the fee which Dr. Boughton placed upon his services for the cure of a native princess of Delhi. ‘Let my na tion trade with yours,’ was the surgeon’s reply to the question as to his fee. 4 Be it so,’ said the mogul, who immediately ordered the harborage of British ships. “ ‘What do you most fear in Western civiliza tion?’ was a question to the famous Chinese states man, Li Hung Chang, on his visit to this country. ‘I do not fear your commerce, nor your armies, nor your navies, but I do fear your medical missiona ries,’ was his prompt and emphatic reply. In ex planation of his statement, it was learned that the wife of a statesman had been cured by a medical missionary woman after the native physician had failed. So great was the gratitude of the wife, and so completely had the physician won her con fidence, that she appropriated a large sum to build a hospital, and introduced the physician to the fam ilies of the nobility. “China herself was opened to the commerce of the world by Dr. Peter Parker, an American medi cal missionary, and hence the current saying, ‘Dr. Parker opened China with the point of the lancet.’ In a similar manner Japan was opened to Chris tian missions by Dr. J. C. Hepburn of New York. So opposed were the natives to missionaries that hired assassins lay in wait for him until he was called by the local authorities to amputate the arm of a man. The success of the operation and the manifest sympathy and kindness of the missionary surgeon The Golden Age for September 27, 1906. allayed all opposition. Patients flocked to his house, and he was able not only to lay the foun dations of scientific medicine in that most interest ing of Oriental countries, but to complete a trans lation of the Bible and to prepare a dictionary of its language. Today this venerable missionary, liv ing in retirement in this country, is revered by the Japanese as a great public benefactor. The Work of Dr. N. H. Allen. “Korea was a hermit empire, and Christian mis sionaries were strictly forbidden to enter it until 1884. In that year Dr. N. 11. Allen was transferred from China to the United States legation to Japan as a physician, the United States Minister, General Foote, not knowing that he was a missionary. A riot soon afterward occurred in which a prince, a nephew of the queen and next to the emperoi in rank, was severely wounded. Dr. Allen ventured out alone, crossed the city in the face of grave dangers, and took charge of the prince, whose wounds had already been filled with wax. So mani festly skilful was his treatment, and so prompt the recovery of the royal patient, that Dr. Allen was requested to attend professionally the emperor and the royal family. From Dr. Allen the emperor learned the great importance of a general govern ment hospital whereupon he proceeded to establish it, and when it was completed, he placed Dr. Al len at its head. It was a year or more before it was known that Dr. Allen and his assistants were missionaries, but so completely had they won the confidence of the authorities and the people that no opposition was raised to them and their work. Out of that simple professional act, very heroic in its execution, has developed a large and fertile field for the missionary work, among an interesting and promising people, and the pioneer, Dr. Allen, has been elevated to the position of United States Min ister. “Persia was opened to missions by Dr. Asahal Grant, followed by Dr. Cochran. Patients thronged from all parts to see Dr. Grant; many were carried by friends five days’ journey. Nestorians came from the mountains; Kurdish chiefs came from Amadia and beyond. Princes of the royal family, governors of provinces, and many of the Persian nobility were among his daily patients. “Rev. Dr. Hunter Corbett says: ‘All mission aries in China agree * * * that one of the greatest obstacles in preaching to the heathen is the prejudice and suspicion which is everywhere en countered, and the medical missionary has a power possessed by no other agency to overcome this dif ficulty. In some cases, every attempt to get a hold in a new city failed, until the medical missionary first won the confidence of the people by healing. The preacher, known to be a friend to the doctor, then met with a welcome.’ “In Central Africa Dr. Southon removed a pain ful tumor from the arm of a king, and so successful was the operation, under chloroform, that the king begged him to remain in his kingdom, saying: ‘ The country is before you, choose where.you will; it is all yours.’ This was the beginning of a large and flourishing Christian mission. “These illustrations of the power of the medical art to prepare the way for the successful preaching of the gospel among all classes and conditions of people can be indefinitely multiplied. In Syria, in the New Hebrides, in Africa, everywhere that the missionary has attempted to spread the good news, the physician, when present, has been the most suc cessful pioneer. Dr. Moffatt estimated the mission ary physician as equivalent to two ordinary mission aries. Dr. Paton of the New Hebrides, was so im pressed with the success of the medical missionary among the natives of that island that he advised that hereafter every missionary should study medi cine as a part of his equipment.” Medical Colleges for Missionaries. In few of these glorious triumphs of medical mis sions, it is only strange that the Chiistian world should have been so long in realizing their impor tance, and in building colleges for theft- training. For a time it was attempted to send the pros pective missionaries to the ordinary medical col leges to be trained, but the spiritual environment was about the worst possible instead of the best possible in the first place; and secondly, the train ing was not sufficiently complete to meet the de mands made upon a doctor in a heathen land. The man who founded the American Medical Missionary College declares that the recent opening up of dark heathen lands to missions is a loud call to Christian men and women to go in and possess Them for Christ. They state that “the rapid open ing up within recent years of vast areas of the uncivilized portions of the earth, with their uncount ed millions reaching out for knowledge and for spir itual and physical help to their more fortunate fel low beings living under the light and blessing of Christian civilization, is a loud call to men and women possessed of the spirit of self-sacrifice and Christian altruism, together with the professional skill and insight of the trained physician, to render pioneer service in the transformation of these mil lions of men and women, made like ourselves in the image of God, b it debased by ignorance, enslaved by superstition, and crushed to earth by the bur densome delusions of idol worship, into enlightened Christian communities. The experience of a century of Christian missionary work in heathen lands has amply demonstrated that the medical missionary is the most powerful of all agencies in lifting up the depressed masses of heathenism to the level of Christian manhood and womanhood. Any reader who may feel a call to devote himself or herself to this form of Christian service should write at once to Dr. J. 11. Kellogg, President, Bat tle Creek, Michigan, and full particulars will be promptly forwarded. It is the hope and prayer of the writer that a number who read this article may be led to go to this college and then “heal the sick” and “preach Christ” in far distant lands, and thus help mightily to advance God’s Kingdom upon earth. Love and Beauty. By MARGARET SMITH GRAHAM. Love and beauty, how they blend, Mix and mingle to the end! All the flowers as they nod, Shed perfume that breathes of God. Birds are singing on the wing, Beauty is in ev’rything, If we only look to see— Come, my love, and dwell with me. Sorrow plays her own sad part, In minor chords upon each heart; Beauty tiptoes softly in; Builds up faith to purge out sin. Joy keeps pace at standard time, To the love that is sublime, And the soul’s unfettered, free—- Come, my love, and dwell with me. All along the noisy brook, Beauty peeps from ev’ry nook; Birds and bees and butterflies— All is love, it never dies. And an open sesame ’tis To the best, for we are His, Sum the total up and see— Come, my love, and dwell with me. The Rev. Thomas Spurgeon maintains the same attitude toward the British Baptist Union as his father. He is not a member of it and has recently declared his purpose to remain outside of it as long as the present state of matters continues. 3 upon