that has been signed during the last three years by 5,000 of America's brightest young men and women. These student volunteers, as they are called, finding that the idea was getting abroad that their zeal was diminishing, have changed their pledge to, "I will go as a foreign missionary, unless God positively prohibits." 10. Listen to the burning words of Dr. Asahel Grant, who did such glorious work in Persia: I stand ready to go in the face of danger and death to any part of the world under the dominion of the prince of the power of darkness.

"What though I tear away from all the endearments of home, wear out life amid toil and suffering, and find a grave among strangers? Only let me be the means of salvation to some lost sinner who shall meet me in heaven, and I shall bless God for it through all eternity."

11. On one occasion Miss Fidelia Fisk, the faithful and beloved missionary to Persia, had the joy of sitting down to the communion table with ninety-two persons whom she had been the instrument of leading to Christ! 12. When Royal G. Wilder, missionary to India, graduated from college in 1839, he won high honors. He and a classmate, Foote, divided first honors, and, strange to say, they were exactly the same age, having been born on the same day.

He turned from flattering prospects at home to give his life for Christ among the pagans of Asia. Foote, his twin honor man, said to him, "Wilder, why bury yourself among the heathen?"

Foote rose rapidly in his profession; was very successful as a lawyer; amassed wealth; and married a woman of unusual beauty. But in the midst of his prosperity death smote both wife and daughter, and poor Foote blew out his own brains!

Wilder labored in India over thirty years, during which time he preached in more than 3,000 cities, towns, and villages; scattered over 3,000,000 pages of tracts; and gathered into schools over 3,300 scholars.

He died a few years ago, honored, respected, loved, and leaving his wife and a son and daughter all engaged in the same blessed work.

Verily, "whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Springfield, O.

The People of Thibet.

BY W. W. ROCKHILL.

The Thibetan people are well disposed and kind, but they are under the control of the lamas. They have all the riches of the country in their hands, so that no matter how well people are disposed toward you, a word from the lamas is enough to set them against you. The objection of the lamas to the entry of foreigners was that they would seek the treasures of the country. The Chinese government, which exercises a nominal sovereignty over Thibet, will not issue passports to travel there because they cannot afford sufficient protection for

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foreigners. They say that the people are easily excited and they cannot be responsible for them. The Thibetans are very independent, and the few Chinese soldiers are widely scattered. There are localities where the Chinese cannot get any hold, although the province is nominally theirs. The soldiers are in fear and trembling themselves. They do not have their horses or their arms with them, but go up to Tsa Chin Lu once a year, when they are allowed to take their bows and arrows and practice with them.

Lamaism is the prevailing religion. They have a tremendous literature, and reading prayers is their constant employment. They have prayer wheels, some run by water and some by wind, on the tops of the houses. These are filled with prayers, and the fact that they are turned from left to right is the same as reading them, for the words pass before the eyes. If they are turned the other way, however, the effect is bad.

The people engage the lamas to come and read prayers for them. They pay about ten cents a day and give them tea and food. The rich people will give large sums of money for the reading of prayers. As a matter of fact, under the cloak of sanctity the lamas are engaged in all kinds of trading at Tsa Chin Lu. There are no pawnbrokers' shops, which are such an institution in China. The business is in the hands of the lamas, and bands of them scour the country, collecting every thing they can.

Thibet is, I believe, almost the only country where polyandry prevails; that is, where one woman has several husbands, just the opposite from the Mormon system. The custom prevails in eastern Thibet in the agricultural regions. The explanation is that the arable land is very small in amount, and if the sons divided up the estate there would not be enough for them. Accordingly, they share it, and several brothers are usually married to one woman. Being great traders, one or two of them are usually away. The children call one of the

men father and the others they call uncle.

A proof that it is the scarcity of arable lands that causes the practice is found in the fact that it does not exist among the nomadic Thibetans. All the villages are perched upon some inaccessible rock simply because they do not wish to put the village on any ground that can be cultivated. The people live on the barley, which they call somba. They mix it with tea. They have no regular time for meals. Whenever they feel hungry the pot is ready and they make a little of this mixture. Now and then they have a sheep. It is a miserably poor country, and they do not kill much game because they have not the improved fire-arms.

The people have rather clear-cut features, and thin, aquiline noses are quite common. I saw many with curly hair, although some of them wore a false cue. It is quite an item with the Chinese to sell them different colored silks to make these cues.

The girls are extremely pretty, of good color, tolerably tall and straight, and well developed. They are gay, jolly, and laughing, and their dress is picturesque. When

The essence of all that is sacred is comprised by this religion under the name of dKon, mChhog, gSsum-the "Buddha jewel," the "doctrine jewel," and the "priesthood jewel." The first person and the most important of this trinity is the Buddha, and to him the temples are dedicated, each one usually enshrining a huge image representing in a more or less hideous form the great founder of the Buddhist faith. In one of the great temples is the statue of Buddha, thirty feet in height. The posture is sitting, and the countenance is designed to express the complete abstraction which is the aim of the faithful Buddhist. On entering the temple the lower part only of the image is visible, as the head and shoulders pass through a flooring, to which it is necessary to ascend in order to obtain a view of the face. Buddha is not looked upon as a deity who has had aught to do with the origin or creation of the universe; he is merely the founder of the doctrine, the highest saint, though endowed with all the qualities of supreme wisdom, power, virtue, and beauty, which raise him above all others who have ever lived.

One curious device which the Buddhist employs to assist him in his devotions is the celebrated "prayercylinder." In the "Lamaseries," or temples, they resemble small painted barrels turning on vertical axles, and ranged along the wall in rows. Inside each cylinder is a roll of paper some hundred feet long, on which is repeated many thousand times the mystic sentence, "Aum Mani Padme Houm." The words are Sanskrit in origin, and the literal translation would be, "O!— The jewel-lotus-Amen!" Each syllable is, however, supposed to contain a charm of mysterious power; but although scholars learned in Sanskrit have made every effort to discover the occult meaning of the terms, convinced that, from the tenacity with which they have been preserved, and the faith that all Buddhists have in their potency, they must embody some truth of great significance, the mystical sentence has not yet been interpreted, and it is doubtful if it ever will be. The people carry small cylinders about with them, so as to have the paraphernalia of devotion accessible at any moment; but, as if this were not enough, larger cylinders are placed in the neighborhood of streams, and turned by water-power like the wheels of a mill. Outside the villages are also series of long mounds covered with flat stones, and on these the mystic sentence again appears. On the road-side and even in uninhabited wastes these stones amaze the traveler by their frequency. A solution of the problem may, however, be found in the fact that they are engraved by the lamas and sold to the people, who look upon the placing of such stones as an expression of devotion, or perhaps as a votive offering to the saints they worship.

The public services of Lamaism consist chiefly in the recitation of prayers and sacred texts, and the intonation of hymns accompanied by a kind of music which is a chaos of the most inharmonious and deafening sounds of horns, trumpets, and drums of various descripDuring this worship, which takes place three

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times a day, the lamas, summoned by the tolling of a little bell, are seated in two or more rows according to their rank, and on special occasions and holy-days the temples and altars are decorated with symbolical figures, while offerings of tea, flour, milk, butter, and others of a similar nature are made by the worshipers, animal sacrifices or offerings entailing injury to life being forbidden, as in Buddhism. Baptism and confirmation are the two principal sacraments of Lamaism. The former is administered on the third or tenth day after birth, the latter generally when the child can walk and speak. The marriage ceremony is not a religious but a civil act; nevertheless, the lamas know how to turn it to the best advantage, as it is from them that the bride and bridegroom have to learn the auspicious day when it should be performed; nor do they fail to complete the act with prayers and rites, which must be responded to with handsome presents.

ence.

A similar observation applies to the funeral ceremonies. Properly speaking there are none, for Lamaism does not allow the interment of the dead. Persons distinguished by rank, learning, or piety are burned after their death; but the general method of disposing of dead bodies is to expose them in the open air to be devoured by birds and beasts of prey; yet a lama must be present at the moment of death in order to superintend the separation of body and soul, to calm the departing spirit, and to enable it to be re-born into a happy existHe must determine the auspicious place where, and the auspicious day and hour when, the corpse shall be exposed. The most lucrative part of his business, however, is the masses which he has to perform until the soul is released from Yama, the infernal judge, and ready to re-enter into its new existence, the doctrine of metempsychosis being the same in Lamaism as in Buddhism. When so important a person as a lama dies there are various ways of disposing of his body. One is by burning, after which the ashes are collected and put into curiously shaped receptacles called "chortens." These are found in great clusters round the villages, and make them appear from a distance to be much larger than they really are. Should a lama of exceedingly great sanctity die, his ashes are gathered up and mixed with clay, out of which small images are molded, and placed on shelves in some one of the many temples. The number of lamas is very great; there are three degrees, and the superiors possess immense power and influence both in temporal and spiritual matters.-Harper's Weekly.

Prayer-Wheels, or Prayer-Cylinders, of Thibet.

BY SIR MONIER MONIER-WILLIAMS.

The most common prayer used in Thibet is a mere formulary, the constant repetition of which is one of the most amazing instances of the tyranny of superstition to be found in any part of the world.

It consists of the six-syllabled sentence, "Om mani padme Hum." "Om! the jewel in the Lotus! Hum!"

This prayer, or rather mystical sentence, is supposed to have been composed by Padma-pani (Avalokitesvara) and to have reference to his own manifestation as the patron saint of Thibet. It is sometimes called the Mani, or "jewel" prayer; and, if brevity is a valuable quality, its excellence is undeniable, since it consists of merely two Sanskrit words, between two mystical, untranslatable, auspicious ejaculations, Om and Hum.*

Whatever be its origin and meaning, no other prayer used by human beings in any quarter of the globe is repeated so often. Every Thibetan believes it to be a panacea for all evil, a compendium of all knowledge, a treasury of all wisdom, a summary of all religion. If you ask northern Buddhists to give you the reason for this belief, very few are able to give an intelligible reply. But the oftener this mystical formula is repeated, the shorter, it is said, will be an individual's course (gati) through some of the six gatis or courses of being, every one of which involves misery or evil. Or it may be that by repeating it he will be able to escape some of the six existences altogether.

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"One day when they happened to be passing a praying-machine set up near a monastery, they saw two lamas engaged in a violent quarrel; and, as it appeared, all on account of their zeal for their prayers. The fact was, that one lama had come, and, having set the barrel in motion for his own benefit, was retiring modestly and complacently to his own abode, when, happening to turn his head to enjoy the spectacle of the wheel's pious revolutions, he saw the other lama stop it, and set it whirling again for himself. Indignant, of course, at this unwarrantable interference with his own devotions, he ran back, and in his turn put a stop to his rival's piety; and both of them continued this kind of demonstration for some time, till at last, losing patience, they proceeded to menaces, and then to blows, when an old lama came out of a neighboring cell and brought the difficulty to a peaceful termination by himself twirling the prayer-barrel for the benefit of both parties."

On the occasion of my visiting Darjiling, in 1884, I was desirous of judging for myself of the method of using these remarkable instruments of religion. I therefore, soon after my arrival, walked to a Buddhist temple near the town. There I found several large barrel-like cylinders set up close together in a row at the entrance, so that no one might pass in without giv

It need not, therefore, surprise us if these six syllables are murmured morning, noon, and night by every man, woman, and child wherever the Lamistic hierarchy has extended. And, if not repeated by the voice, an incessant stream of repetition, an incessant scattering of the six mystic seeds, is kept going by the hand.

The words are written or printed on roll within roll of paper and inscribed in cylinders, which, when made to revolve, either by educated monks or illiterate laymen, have the same efficacy as if they were actually said or repeated. The revolutions are credited as so much prayer-merit, or, to speak more scientifically, as so much prayer-force, accumulated and stored up for the benefit of the person who revolves them.

The cylinder is generally made of metal, the prayer being engraved on the outside, as well as written on paper and inserted inside. It is held in the right hand and whirled round like a child's toy, by means of a handle in a particular direction (with the sun). If made to revolve the other way, its rotations will be set down to the debtor rather than the creditor side of the owner's account.

It sometimes happens that quarrels arise from rival claims in regard to the use of the prayer-cylinders. In illustration of this an amusing story is told by the French missionaries:

* Om is sometimes translated by Hail! Hum, by Amen! I prefer to treat these as untranslatable ejaculations.

hand might set them all twirling at once. Inside the entrance portico a shriveled and exceptionally hideous old woman was seated on the ground. In her left hand she held a small portable prayer-cylinder, which she kept in perpetual revolution. In her right hand was a cord connected with a huge barrel-like cylinder, which with some exertion she made to rotate on its axis by help of a crank, while she kept muttering "Om mani pamme Hum" (so she pronounced it) with amazing rapidity. In this way she completed at least sixty oral repetitions every minute, without reckoning the infinite number of rotatory repetitions accomplished simultaneously by her two hands. And all this was done with an appearance of apathy and mental vacuity in her withered face which was so distressing and melancholy to behold that the spectacle will never be effaced from my memory. In truth, the venerable dame seemed to be sublimely unconscious that any effort of thought or concentration of either mind or heart was needed to make prayer of any value at all.

And the men of Thibet are quite as much slaves to this superstition as the women. A friend of mine, when staying at Darjiling, had some conversation on serious subjects with an apparently sensible native, and observed with surprise that all the while he was engaged in talking with the Buddhist the latter continued diligently whirling a prayer-cylinder with great velocity. My friend, being unacquainted with Thibetan customs, came away from his colloquy under the impression that Buddhists regard Christians as dangerous lunatics possessed with evil spirits, which require specially active measures in the way of exorcism. It did not occur to