[Sidenote: The Beams of a Living Hope.] “Even so I think of our James, whose only son died. When at the funeral I pressed his hand, with some words of comfort, he said: ‘Only do not suppose that I murmur and complain. All that God does to me, is good and wholesome for me. I shall hereafter find my son again in life eternal.’ So vanish little by little the comfortless wailings of heathenism; the beams of a living hope penetrate the pangs and the terrors of death, as the beams of the sun the clouds of the night. And, as the hopelessness of heathenism is disappearing, so is also its implacability. When Christians contend, and at the Communion I say to them: ‘Give each other your hands’, often they say: ‘Nature is against it; but how can I withstand the graciousness of my Saviour?’ Such words are not seldom heard. And am I not well entitled to hope, that they, as a great gift of my God, warrant a confident hope in the final and glorious victory of the Prince of Life, and of his great and righteous cause?”
[Sidenote: Nias.] On the Island of Nias and in some of the lesser islands, the Rhenish missionaries have been at work since 1865. Here there are about a quarter of a million inhabitants who are racially related to the Bataks. Persisting through many years with but a few baptisms, the missionaries were finally rewarded. There are now thirteen stations with eighteen thousand Christians. The number of inquiries is greatest in those portions of the island where heathenism is the least broken, and the whole island seems to be open to the Gospel.
The Rhenish missionaries have in all in Malaysia Christian communities whose total inhabitants number one hundred and sixty-five thousand, of whom seventy-five thousand are church members. It is a rule of the Rhenish society to exercise the greatest care in baptizing converts so that only those shall be accepted who are worthy and who understand the step which they are taking.
[Sidenote: Java.] The beautiful Island of Java to the Southeast of Sumatra has been called Holland’s treasure house. Though the island has been under Christian control for three centuries the results of mission work do not make a very large showing. The largest of the Protestant Christian societies at work is the German _Neukirchen Mission_ which has eleven principal stations, with twenty-nine workers. Java is inhabited chiefly by Mohammedans who have here a university and who have issued the Koran in the Javanese language. These Mohammedans are more willing to listen to the Gospel teaching than those in many other parts of the world.