Christian Outreaches to Muslims and Jews

Lilias Trotter and Robert McKilliam

Lilias Trotter and the Algiers Mission Band

Arab riders on camels, frontispiece from March-April 1907 issue of the Algiers Mission Band Journal

The journal of the Algiers Mission Band is a unique record of missionary work in a majority muslim country in the early 20th Century. The journals were written by the Mission’s founder, I. Lilias Trotter, as a means of informing her supporters (mainly in the United Kingdom) using an account of the progress of the work in Algeria. Several copies of the text were duplicated (the early ones were handwritten) and then each copy illustrated with postcards, photographs or some of Lilias Trotter’s paintings and drawings.

Lilias Trotter explained how the journal was intended to be used in 1909:

We have tried for 3 years the plan of an M.S. Journal, each copy to be passed round to a dozen or more addresses. This plan has involved much delay in news reaching the latter ones on the list, & many copies seem to have been lost or mislaid & have never finished their course.

We are now going to try another plan – that of sending every half year an autotyped or cyclostyled copy, each to go a round of 3 or 4 only. The following was begun in January on our new zinc press & being our first experiment then on had many vicissitudes. Before it was half through our dear fellow-worker Laurent Olives, who was working on it, fell ill, & he was taken from us in May. The press needs a man’s strength to work it, and no-one is now available, so we have had to begin again, having recourse to a cyclostyle which has grown a bit cranky, so please overlook both delay & defects this time.

When we meet again in the autumn I shall try to supplement this half-yearly story by a short monthly edition in M.S. for those who follow us closely in prayer. If you would like your name down for this latter, please let me know. Otherwise you will be on the list for copies somewhat like this present one. Please pass them on as indicated on the last page.

I.L.T.

Click here to visit the table of contents for this journal

This digitisation project was carried out in partnership with AWM-Pioneers. A full set of the original journals has been deposited with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the Univesity of London.

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The Morning Star: A Herald of The Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ

The Morning Star: A Herald of The Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ was a monthly magazine which started publication in 1894. Its owner and editor Dr. Robert McKilliam, launched it in response to the widespread interest in the timing of the return of Jesus Christ which arose prior to the end of the nineteenth Century.

The articles take a futurist view of the interpretation of prophecy and many of the contributor’s names are still well known today. They include E.W. Bullinger (author of Figures of Speech in the Bible), David Baron, Alphaeus Wilkes, Friedrich Wilhelm Baedeker [1823-1906], Thomas Newberry, and Robert Anderson (author of Daniel in the Critic’s Den). One that particularly caught my eye was an article by James Hudson-Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, in which he links eschatology with missions. I have OCRed and uploaded this article separately here in order to make it easier to read.

While is would have possible to upload this journal to the TheologicalStudies.org.uk website, which has an extensive section on eschatology, I have decided to host it on the Christian Missions website instead. The reason for this is that the magazine contains a large amount of material on missions to the Jewish people and expresses great concern both for their salvation and for their establishment in their own homeland.

This appears to be an extremely hard-to-find publication and I currently have access only to the first two volumes, from 1894 and 1895.

Click here to visit the table of contents for The Morning Star