Salt Lake Tribune | 1915-10-03 | Page 53 | Prayers for Peace Constantly Raised

PRAYERS FOR PEACE CONSTANTLY RAISED Methodist Missionaries in Japan Discuss Problems in Conference. fecial Cable to The Tribune KARUIZAWA. Japan. Oct. 2 Prayers Pray-ers for the restoration of peace form the principal feature of almost dally services held here by American missionary bodies. It Is the keynote of th summer schools and conferences. At the same time the missionary organizations are studying the means of furthering their evangelistic work In Japan and throughout the whole orient. The Rev. D. &. Sneneer of Xagoya. who delivered an address this week before be-fore the Pan-Methodist conference, urged the missionaries to reach th rural districts. dis-tricts. The rural class, he said, represent 75 per cent of the total population of Japan. This specialized work could not be done by the old methods, he s&ld, nor by workers who did nut understand the special spe-cial field 1 which they were placed. In order to accomplish its duty In Japan, the Methodist mission, nstead of a total of 30 workers uf all grades, should have 220 ordained men. 220 single women. II.-000 II.-000 Japanese evangelists and 440 Bible women, he said. The Methodist missionaries. Dr. Spencer explained, were about 20 per cent of 'be total missionary force In the empire. Figuring the population at 55.0OO.CKiu, the Methodists might be said to he under obligation to evangelize at least 11,000,-00O 11,000,-00O souls. As a matter of fact, the tntHl membership of the Japanese Methodist church In 1915 is 15.157. and this represented repre-sented forty years of effort. He added: Now, I do not suggest that tVse small numbers mean failure. But there is another side to the problem. When wp began our work the Japanese Japa-nese people numbered 36.000,000. Our Methodist task has, therefore, grown from seven to elevn millions. To say nothing of the original 35.000.-000. 35.000.-000. we have never gotten within wire-Jess wire-Jess distance of the increased population popu-lation and, without some' fundamental change for the better, we will never get there. The way out of the difficulty, In his opinion, was to reach the rural communities communi-ties and to fit the methods to the class to be evangelized. "The missionary must be practically helpful. Community Interests In-terests must be started, as local clr-oumstances clr-oumstances permit perhaps heglnning with a kindergarten or other educational measure; or pepds msy be brought. In for the farmers, new kinds of fruit Introduced, Intro-duced, better water supply nr sewers put In and a friendly attitude of helpfulness helpful-ness shown that will bear fruit all down the years."