9th July. Ispusrriat missions have done immeuse good in various countries, and they would certainly be beneficial in modern China. Inthe early part of this century, Radama, the first King of Madagascar, requested the London Missionary Society to send him artisans. Among those who went were some iron-smelters. From them the Malagasy learned the art of extracting iron from stone, and when after years of persecution the mission was re-established, and the arts of civilisation were extensively taught to the people, it was found that the mode of smelting iron was one of those which had been retained by the natives, all through the long period of persecution and intellectual darkness which had intervened.
Among those who have strongly advocated industrial missions in China was and is Baron von Richthoven, who in his letter on the provinces of Ché- kiang and Anhui makes the following remark: " Incalculable benefit might be conferred on China by establishing industrial missions in which practical men would teach the inhabitants improvements in agriculture and industrial pursuits." He represents civilisation as preceding Christianity. But in fact that complex being, man, is on the whole always ready for moral instruction and mechanical occupation contemporanoonsly. Education trains all the faculties of men, and it should find both moral and physical occupation for the pupil in a school during parts of the same day. Every good school includes in the curriculum a carpenter's shop, horticulture, gymnastics and those muscular exercises called out-door games, The modern educator sees that the whole of human nature is trained to excellence. His eye watches the pupils in every department, to note who is deficient in this or that talent, and he then aims to stir it into activity by special tasks. To suit a boy for his future life his mind, hands, feet, eyes, and ears all zo through contemporary training. Western civilisation of the Christian type is now being taught to the Chinese in the missions, "They are not by any means instructed in dogma only. The missionary periodic cals and translated works on science shew that the Protestant missionary agency is wide in its scope. So also the schools embrace a very wide currie colum, Dr. Mateer, for example, at Tungchow takes his pupils through a twelve years' course; and some very well skilled mathematicians and electricians have left his school after going through the whole of that course of study. Dr. Nevius also has introduced great improvements in fruit culture in Shantung. These instances in the activity of one of the missions shew what a wide scope
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.