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The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 164

Concordia Seminary Library, St. Louis (scholar.csl.edu/lutheran_pioneer/47)

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

164

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

occupy the highest social scale and are practically
all nominal Christians. Of course, there are also
here many Chinese, and, as elsewhere, they have
by dint of industry and thrift succeeded in captur-
ing the bulk of trade in the islands.

For hundreds of years the Philippines were a
Spanish possession, but in 1898 they passed into
the hands of our country. While Spain did some-
thing to civilize the islands during the years of its
occupancy, they were upon a very low intellectual,

of the people might be, just so they outwardly
acknowledged allegiance to Rome and paid the
exacted fees for the performance of religious rites.
If reports may be trusted, — and they bear all the
earmarks of reliability, the Roman Church had
put a galling yoke upon the necks of the Filipinos,
while its priests made their vows of celibacy a
mockery and set before their people a shocking
example of sexual immorality.

With the American occupation the doors were

Lutheran Missionary and Group of Baptized Australian Aborigines.

moral, and religious level when the American occu-
pation began. It is no exaggeration to say that
more has been done during the twenty-seven years
that America has possessed the Philippines to ad-
vance the temporal, intellectual, and moral welfare
of the people than was done during the four cen-
turies that they were owned by Spain.

Christian Missions.

While under Spanish rule the largest part of
the population of the Philippines was nominally
Christian, the Roman priests and friars do not seem
to have cared what the moral or religious principles

opened to the missionary operations of Protestant
churches, and surely there was every reason for
their prompt action in the light of what has just
been said. The Presbyterians were first on the
field, though they were soon followed by the
Methodists, Baptists, and others.

The success has been most gratifying from the
very beginning, and the various Protestant churches
have gained almost a million adherents. The total
foreign missionary staff numbers nearly 300, while
the native staff comprises, all in all, almost 28,000
workers of all kinds. Of course, many parts of the
islands have as yet not been reached by the message