58 



The Review of Reviews. 



MR. BRYCE ON FOREIGN MISSIONS. 



In the new International Review of Missions the 

 Right Hon. James Bryce gives the impressions of a 

 traveller among the non Christian races. He declares 

 that no traveller of an observant eye and an impartial 

 mmd can fail to be struck by the immense improve- 

 ment which missionaries have wrought in the condition 

 of the non-Christian races, and which often is quite 

 irrespective of the number of converts who have been 

 formed into Christian congregations. Even where 

 nominal converts are far from rising to the Christian 

 ethical standard the gain is great, and seems likely to 

 be permanent. 



THE ACTION OF GOVERNMENTS — IMPROVING. 



Nevertheless, he asks, why is it that when Chris- 

 tianity was able to overspread and conquer the world 

 against all the forces of imperial persecution in the 

 first four centuries after it had appeared, its progress 

 in the last four centuries, with all the impulse of 

 civilisation behind, should be still in many quarters 

 so slow, and the result so far from perfect? Mr. 

 . Bryce answers that missions are not the only form in 

 which the contact of advanced and backward races 

 has taken place. Everywhere the native has suffered ; 

 the white adventurer or trader treated him as though 

 he had no rights. White Governments are now more 

 disposed to protect the inhabitants. The British 

 Government and that of the United States have for a 

 long time been trying to do their very best to prevent 

 these oppressions. " In India perfect justice is dealt 

 out." The United States is no less anxious to secure 

 the completely fair and just treatment of its natives 

 in the Philippines. One of the most important 

 things which both Governments can do is to Ifeep 

 strong drink from the races. 



THE ACTION OF PRIVATE WHITES— BAD. 



But in spite of all that Governments can do, the 

 action of private white men often disgraces their 

 Christian name, and so hinders or retards the good 

 work of missionaries and Governments. " The work 

 of bearing the white men's burdens too often takes 

 the form of filling the white man's pocket." " Thought- 

 ful men from non-Christian countries will sometimes 

 tell us that they and their fellow-countrymen have, 

 when drawn towards Christianity, been repelled by 

 seeing how little influence it has over the conduct of 

 its nominal adherents." 



Mr. Bryce enforces the necessity for the most con- 

 stant and strenuous vigilance on the part of Govern- 

 ments to help the natives, and to repress every 

 attempt to exploit them, and the duty of public 

 opinion to support Governments in so doing. 



THE PRESENT WORLD-CRISIS. 



Mr. Bryce declares the age in which we are now 

 living is perhaps the most critical moment that has 

 ever been in the history of the non-Christian 

 nations : — 



Our material civilisation is permeating every part of the 

 earth, and telling, as it never told before, upon every one of 



the non-Christian peoples. In another fifty y-prs that which 

 we call our civilisation will have overspread the earth and 

 extinguished the native customs and organisations of the savage 

 and semi-civilised peoples. They are being exploited as they 

 never were before, and the means of transportation by land and 

 sea which have penetrated among them have brought foreigners 

 everywhere, and are completely breaking up and destroying not 

 only the material conditions of their life, but also their ideas and 

 beliefs and worships, their ancient customs and all that is asso- 

 ciated with these customs and beliefs. Their morality, such as 

 it was, with all its tolerance of vices and all its degrading 

 practices, was, nevertheless, for some purposes, a sanction 

 which did restrain them and which elevated their notions and 

 directed their actions for some good purposes. All of this is 

 crumbling away and disappearing, perishing under the shock 

 and impact of the stronger civilisation which the European 

 peoples have brought with them. Unless the backward races 

 receive some new moral basis of life, some beliefs and precepts 

 by which they can live, something to control their Ijad impulses 

 and help them to form'worthy conceptions of life and work, 

 their last state will be worse than the first. 



We are bound, Mr. Bryce goes ort to say, since we 

 have destroyed the old things, to replace them by 

 new things of a better kind, both by example as well 

 as by precept. "-There is needed a revival of the 

 true spirit of the Gospel among Christian nations, in 

 order that they should fulfil their Christian obliga- 

 tions to those who are passing under their control and 

 influence." Let the Gospel of Christ come to the 

 non-Christian nations, not as a crushing force in the 

 hands of their destroyers and exploiters, but as a 

 beneficent power to make them feel and believe that 

 we and they are all the children of one Father in 

 heaven. 



HEINRICH VON KLEIST. 



A FEW weeks ago Germany commemorated a tragic 

 event, the centenary of the death of Heinrich von 

 Kleist. Writing in the Reime des Deux Mondcs of 

 December 15th M. T. de Wyzewa recalls the circum- 

 stances of the poet's death. At the age of thirty-four 

 he was asked by a young friend, Henriette Vogel, 

 who was suffering from a torturing disease, to put an 

 end to her miseries, and he promised to render her 

 this service. And on November 21st, 181 1, "as a 

 man who keeps his word," he shot her and afterwards 

 shot himself. With his morbid tendencies and the 

 adversities against which he had to fight the cause of 

 his suicide has generally been assumed to have been 

 despair; but M. de Wy/.cwa takes a different view. 

 He is of opinion that it was not so much despair as 

 the desire to do something sensational, audacious, 

 and romantic, far surpassing the most astonishing 

 incidents in any of his dramatic creations. Duriiig 

 his lifetime Kleist's dramas failed to achieve success. 

 Many of them suffer from the abnormal " intcllec- 

 tualism" of their author and are strangely lacking in 

 " poetry," notwithstanding the elegance of the verse. 

 On the other hand, everyone agrees that they are 

 admirable in invention and dramatic force, and are 

 the most " real " and the most " tragic " to be found 

 in German drama. 



