Southern Christian Advocate

THE METHODIST CHURCH A MISSIONARY CHURCH.

With the presentation of facts connected with its foundation in America, we may avail ourselves of the services of a writer in Zion's Herald, to show its missionary character. The excellent brother, whose statements follow, is a most industrious man, and has by his contribution to the cause of missions, conferred a lasting benefit upon the Church. He holds the following language in relation to the position of the Methodist Church among the Lord's host, in the cause of missions:--

1 The numerical strength of Methodist agency in the Foreign Missionary work.-- Of the thirty-two Foreign Missionary Societies, six belong to the leading sections of Methodism,--the British Wesleyans, the Primitive Methodists, the Association, and New Connexion Methodists, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church. These sustain nine hundred ordained missionaries in the foreign field. The missionaries are aided in their work by a staff of "assistants," (as local preachers, catechists, interpreters school-teachers, &c.,) to the number of 8,226. Under the pastoral care of these missionaries there are 165,972 Church members, with 101,742 scholars. On those foreign stations we have also seven institutions for training a native ministry, and eleven printing establishments. The amount subscribed for the support of these agencies last year was $684,453.

A glance at the "Compendium." ("A Compendium of the Missionary Institutions of Evangelical Christendom," by Rev. William Butler,) will show that the total strength of the evangelical foreign missionary enterprise is 2,945 missionaries, 11,807 assistants 333,604 Church members, 31 native institutions, 40 printing establishments, and the sum subscribed last year for the support of all those agencies was $3,201,419.

A comparison of these figures therefore shows that the Methodists have nearly one-third of all the foreign missionaries in the field; about one half of the Church Members and scholars: and one fourth of the printing establishments and native institutions; and also that we sustained our work last year on about one fifth of the whole income. Such is our position in relation to the entire work, and to the other parties who are bearing an honourable part in it.

2 The languages used by the Methodist missionaries. Our first missions were to populations speaking English, then to Africans, then to the Asiatics, afterward to the Australian and Polynesian. At the present time our nine hundred missionaries and their three thousand "assistants," are preaching the gospel, singing our hymns, and expressing their religious feelings in their class-meetings and love-feasts, in the following thirty-two different languages? in the English, the Welsh, the Irish, the French, the Spanish, the Swedish, the Norwegian, the German, the Chinese, the Singhalese, the Tamil, the Portuguese, the Bengalee, the Canarese. Tongan, the New-Zealand the Yoruba, the Feejeean, the Accra, the Caffir, the Basa, the Sesuto, the Grebo, the Sichuana, and the Dutch with the Cree, the Chipewayan, and three or four other Indian dialects.

Some six or seven of these are used through the medium of an "Interpreter,"
but the rest have all been mastered by the missionaries, and are the medium of instruction. Many have been for the first time reduced to a written form by the missionaries, and grammars and dictionaries compiled, and into them all the Holy Scriptures are translated, and have been placed in the hands of the people. Miss. Adv.