the energies of Stapp are consumed in caring for the
school; Ginsburg is forced to give his attention to
the nurturing of the thirty-five churches and of evangelizing
as far as his strength will go. In the State
beyond them, going down the coast, stands L. M. Reno,
in the State of Espirito Santo. In the populous
State of Rio, in which is located the capital city
with its 1,000,000 inhabitants, we have Entzminger,
Shepard, Langston, Maddox, Cannada, Christie, Taylor
and Crosland. Entzminger, in addition to conducting
the publishing house, must also conduct the mission
operations in Nictheroy, a city of 40,000; Shepard,
Taylor and Langston have placed upon their shoulders
the tremendous responsibility of conducting the college
and seminary; Cannada must give his energies to the
Flumenense School for Boys, leaving only Maddox, Christie
and Crosland at liberty to do the wider evangelistic
work and care for the many churches which the success
of their labors have thrust upon them. Crosland
has been transferred recently to Bello Horizonte,
in the great State of Minas Geraes. Farther South,
in Sao Paulo, the richest and most progressive State
in the country, are Bagby, Deter and Edwards, Misses
Carroll, Thomas and Grove. Bagby and wife and
the young ladies just mentioned devote their time
to the school, leaving only two to man a field which,
because of its splendid railroad facilities, has in
it scores of inviting locations for successful work.
In Paranagua in the next State to the South, have
been located recently R. E. Pettigrew and wife.
Far down to the South in Rio Grande do Sul, a State
as large as Tennessee and Kentucky combined, stands
a single sentinel in the person of A. L. Dunstan.
What a battle line for twenty men to maintain!
It is more than 4,000 miles in length. If you
should place these men in line across our Southern
territory, locating the first one in Baltimore, you
would travel 100 miles before you reach the second,
100 miles before you reach the third, 100 miles to
the fourth, and in going toward the Southwest, you
would reach the twentieth man in El Paso, Tex.
Whereas, if you were to draw up the Baptist ministers
enrolled in the Southern Baptist Convention territory
along the same line and pass down it to make the count,
by the time you had reached El Paso you would have
passed 8,000 men, for they would have been placed
just one-fourth of a mile apart.
Why do we need 400 ministers in this country to one in Brazil? Is it possible that we will grudgingly cling to our 8,000 ministers and decline to give even eight to reinforce our little handful in Brazil? Such a division of forces can neither be fair nor faithful.