2l6 



The Review of Reviews. 



VALUE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Sir Harry Johnston in The East and the IIVx/ 

 reiterates his conviction as to the value to the world 

 of Christian missions. He says :— 



I wibh from every consideration, even the more material ones 

 of commerce, the acquisition of l<nonieclge, the opening-up of 

 unknown countries, and the extension of the best kind of 

 British Kmpire, that we spent not three millions a year, but six, 

 know ing that such a small percentage even of six millions on 

 our annual outgoings would yield us a rich return in every 

 direction, and most of all in the cause of the best and simplest 

 kind of religion ami of that gradual building-up of a con- 

 federation of man which may some day realise the dream of a 

 millennium. 



He wishes that every clergyman, above all every 

 bishop in the Anglican Church, was chosen from out of 

 the ranks of the clergy who had served in foreign parts, 

 and so learned to view home problems with very 

 different eyes. The witness of Sir Harry Johnston 

 to the dynamic effect of Christian missions in the East 

 and Soiith may be laid to heart by the ignorant 

 aspersers of the missionary. Sir Harry says that it 

 was the Protestant missionaries who sowed in India 

 those seeds of education which are producing now 

 such tremendous results : — 



If China is ever to be regenerated and made a powerful as 

 well as a civilised people, it will be by her adopting the one 

 religion wdiich sets us free, Christianity in (I hope) a very 

 simple and elementary form. Though Japan is not officially 

 Christian, the teaching of Christian missionaries has really been 

 the main cause of her re-birth. It is Christianity more than 

 anything else which is saving the Black peoples of .South Africi 

 in their racial competition with the White man. .Such results 

 may not, as I have said before, be pleasing to White men of 

 narrow outlook and racial intolerance. Hut the missionary, 

 often unconsciously, seems to he the agent of some higher 

 power that takes little heed of national or racial limitations, 

 but is aiming as steadily now as it was a million years ago at 

 the perfecting of man. 



ROUSSEAU'S VITAL CONTRIBU- 

 TION. 



Mr. Francis Gribbi.e, writing in the Edinhuigh for 

 Julv on the Rousseau bicentenary, says that Rousseau's 

 writings are vital in that they embody a principle new 

 when he propounded it, which the world will not 

 willingly let go : — 



That principle is, of course, the essential quality of men, the 

 essential artificiality of those dilfercnces between them upon 

 which the "privileges" of " privileged classes ".are based. 

 There are many senses, of course, in wdiich the statement that 

 all men are equal is admitted by all men, unconsciously if not 

 openly, to be aljsurd. Tile mr.jority of men, however, feel that 

 to cite instances of that inequality in reiily tu Rousseau's propo- 

 sition is merely to trifle with words: that there is no natural 

 inequality among men wdiich entitles one class of inen to keep 

 otticr classes of men in social, political, or industrial subjection. 

 That view of equality first laid hold of mankind when Rousseau 

 put it in a book. In spite of reaction piovokcd by excesses, it 

 has gained ground ever since. It was, alternately with national- 

 ism, the insurgent emotion which so soon shook the apparently 

 irresistible power of the Holy Alliance; and, in spite of the 

 many cross-currents in the complicated stream of tendency, we 

 can still trace its influence even in countries which boast of 

 having achieved the results of revolution by gr.adual and orderly 

 development. It explains how the knees of Tories tremble at 

 ihe suggestion that they should " go to the country with the 



House of Lords on their back." It may also explain — thougli 

 it is not in the least likely to be invoked as the explanation — a 

 good deal of the instinctive hostility of labouring men towards 

 Mr. Lloyd George's ingenious and complicated schemes for ear- 

 marking the " employed " as persons who may, at any stage of 

 their lives, be called upon to give a full account of their comings; 

 and goings to the class of "employers," and so re-building 

 privilege upon an illusory basis of socialistic philanthropy. 



INFLUENCE OF MORAVIANS. 



In Cornhill for August, Mr. L. C. Miall traces the 

 curious coil of influence that wound together Wycliffe, 

 Huss, Zinzendorf, Wesley, the Reformation, the 

 Thirty Years' War, and the Methodist Movement. He 

 says : — 



One relic of Czech Lollardry still preserves its identity. The 

 Unitas Fratrum, founded in 1457, once overspread Bohemia 

 and Moravia, but the Jesuits and the Counter-reformatiori 

 destroyed it by sword, fire and banishment. Its direct ecclesi- 

 astical descendant is the Moravian Brotherhood of moiicri'* 

 times, which was re-established in 1727 at Herrnhut in Saxo.ny. 

 Remote and secluded valleys in Dauphine and Piedmont were 

 reached by Bohemian writings ; the Waldenses or Vaudois show 

 the influence (not unmixed) of Wycliffe transmitted through 

 Huss. The Methodist Church in England and America is. 

 another witness to the same influence. Readers of John 

 Wesley's "Journal" know how he sailed to Georgia with over 

 twenty Moravian brethren, spent a month with the Moravian 

 Spangenberg at Savann.-ih, corresponded with Count Zinzendorf, 

 and visited him at Herrnhut. It was the Moravian Peter 

 Bcihler to wdiom he traced his conversion, and it was not until 

 1745 that he cut himself loose from the brotherhood. 



Two hundred ye.ars after the martyrdom of Huss (141 5) the 

 Bohemian or Moravian Brotherhood still maintained its congre- 

 gations and schools. In i6i5 Ferdinand, Archduke of Styria. 

 wdio became Emperor three years later, was crowned King of 

 Bohemia. A Protestant insurrection was the immediate conse- 

 quence, and this, as all readers know, brought on the Thirty 

 ^' ears' War, 



ODDITIES OF JAPANESE MAGIC. 



Folklore for June 30th contains a paper by the late 

 W. G. Aston on Japanese magic, from which a few 

 curiosities may be culled : — 



The art of making a husband and wife live together in harmony. 

 Take the leg-bones of a pigeon which h.as cooed on the filth day 

 of the fifth month, put them in vermilion bags, and hang them, 

 one on the man's left arm, and the other on the woman's right. 

 C)r let them be carried constantly in the sleeve. 



To cure a wife of envy and Jealou.sy. Feed her on boiled 

 nightingales. [.\ Chinese recipe.] 



Uuduliful coniluct in a child, wife, or concubine may be cured 

 by plastering the kitchen furnace with a mixture of earth and 

 dog's liver. 



To make a woman reveal her fickleness. Take earth from the 

 footprint of a horse that has gone in an easterly direction, and 

 hide it in her clothing. 



A lifelong cure for sneezing. Swallow two spoonfuls of an 

 ox's saliva. 



To become beautiful in a week. Crush a wild gourd and 

 dissolve in water in w hich red ochre has been mixed. A^ily 

 every night, ami wash it utT in the morning. 



To cure drunkenness. Mix with the food dew taken from the 

 stump of a bamboo early in the morning. Do this for seven 

 days, and the patient will then suddenly take a dislike to strong 

 drink. This is an exceptionally profound secret. 



To convert a drunkard into a teetotaler. Give him the milk 

 of a white dog mixed with sake. This will cure the most con- 

 firmed funnel. The sweat of a horse mixed with sake wi'l 

 answer equally well. 



