oard to produce Sunday School and other
literature, a Home Mission Board to develop the missionary work in the
bounds of Brazil, and a Foreign Mission Board, which conducts foreign
mission operations in Chill and Portugal. While their country is so
needy, they believe in the principle of foreign missions so thoroughly
that they gave last year for foreign missions as much per capita as did
the churches in the bounds of the Southern Baptist Convention. One
night during the Convention, I addressed them upon the subject of
foreign missions, and after I had finished speaking one of the
missionaries came forward and said he had thought that in as much as he
had given his life to foreign mission work, he was not under any
special obligation to contribute money to this cause, but now he saw
his error and proposed to give as a means of grace and in order to
discharge his duty to the larger cause.

What a privilege it was to attend this Convention! All of us took our
meals at the Girls' College and by this arrangement we had a most
delightful time socially. It is a fine body full of good cheer, hope,
faith, courage, consecration. To come to know them--missionaries and
native Christians alike--is to enter into fellowship with some of the
choicest and most indomitable spirits that have ever adorned the
Kingdom of our Lord.

CHAPTER V.

THE GOSPEL WITHHELD.

When I went to South America I decided that I would spend little time
upon the material aspects of the trip, but would, on the other hand,
attempt to arrive at an understanding of the religious conditions and
needs of the people. I consider that the religious needs are the
abiding and vital interests of any people.

I knew also that Brazil is counted as being a Roman Catholic country
and the consideration at once arose in connection with this fact as to
whether this religion affected the life and thought of the people
sufficiently to satisfy their religious needs. If it does, then let us
be honest enough to recognize it, and if it does not, let us be
courageous enough to assume our responsibility towards it for we must
hold that the great justification for missionary effort is the
evangelical and not the polemical one. If there is no greater reason
for our entering a country than for the purpose of fighting the
Catholics, then I, for one, am frank to say that I do not think we
ought to spend our energies in any such field. The question for us to
settle is whether