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 '^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^^ 
 
 Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. 
 
 BV 2060 .T46 
 
 Thoburn, J. m. 1836-1922 
 
 The Christless nations 
 
THE 
 
 D 
 
 ^. 
 
 ••]r 
 
 Christless Nations 
 
 . THOI 
 
 BISHOP J. M. THOBURN, D.D 
 
 A SERIES OF ADDRESSES ON CHRISTLESS NATIONS AND 
 
 KINDRED SUBJECTS DELIVERED AT SYRACUSE 
 
 UNIVERSITY ON THE GRAVES 
 
 FOUNDATION, 1 89 5 
 
 NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON 
 CINCINNATI: CUANSTON & CURTS 
 
 18<J5 
 
Copyright by 
 
 HUNT & EATON. 
 
 1895. 
 
 Composition, clcctrolyping, 
 printing, and binding by 
 
 Hunt & Eaton, 
 150 Fifth Ave, New York. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 A RETURNED missionary who attempts to 
 speak on the general subject of missions 
 quickly discovers that most of his auditors expect 
 him to give some account of his own special work, 
 or of his personal observations on the mission field, 
 and it may even happen that a hint will be conveyed 
 to him that it would be better to leave to others the 
 discussion of missionary policy and principles and 
 confine himself to his own more legitimate task. 
 In other words, the missionary is expected to be a 
 reporter only, and not aspire to the higher privi- 
 leges of the editor's chair. The following lectures 
 were prepared with a full knowledge of the peculiar 
 standard by which such addresses are judged; but 
 having had not only a long experience abroad, but 
 a very wide view of the missionary situation as it 
 is to-day in the United States, I did not feel at 
 liberty to choose narrow, even though more ])opu- 
 lar, topics. I am profoundly, and even painfully, 
 convinced that the Christians of America do not 
 so much need more information from the mission 
 field as a willingness to obey the commandment 
 of the ascending Saviour, a commandment so long 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 and so grievously neglected. I have no longer any 
 doubt concerning the possibility of victory in the 
 field abroad, but the Church at home is not pre- 
 pared for victory, and has little thought of trying 
 to utilize it when it comes. 
 
 The Christians of the present generation, espe- 
 cially in England and America, are face to face 
 with the most startling responsibility which any 
 Christians have ever borne. They are not meet- 
 ing this responsibility; they do not realize what it 
 means. They should, by all means, gather all 
 possible information concerning the foreign field, 
 but in the meantime let them study their own rela- 
 tion to the work. The present demand upon the 
 home Churches may be considered heavy enough 
 by some, but it is trifling when compared with the 
 demands which will soon come from the other side 
 of the globe. God assures us that our claim upon 
 him, unspeakably great before, becomes still more 
 enhanced after we become his reconciled children. 
 By the same rule our missionary obligations do not 
 cease when the Hindu or the Buddhist becomes 
 a Christian ; they only become permanent. The 
 time is very near when converts will be added in 
 India at the rate of one hundred thousand a year, 
 and twenty-five thousand a year in China. When 
 that time comes Christian sympathy will flow out 
 to those newborn thousands in an ever-widening 
 and ever-deepening current, and the missionary 
 enterprise will assume a new phase undreamed of 
 before. 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 Farseeing Cliristians perceive that America is 
 destined to be, in a broad and yet very true sense 
 of the word, the great missionary nation of the 
 world. It will be her peculiar mission in history 
 to Christianize and elevate all the nations of the 
 earth. The great movement which was inaugu- 
 rated about a century ago will assume immense 
 proportions as the years go by, and fifty years 
 hence will probably be one of the greatest move- 
 ments on the globe. We should study such a 
 movement carefully and prayerfully, and ponder 
 well our own relation to it. If we may venture to 
 hope that God has, in the multitude of his tender 
 mercies, ''winked at" the past inattention and 
 disobedience of his Church in neglecting her com- 
 mission to evangelize the nations, such a hope can 
 hardly be indulged in the future. The providential 
 tokens are too many, the calls are too loud and too 
 constant, the Spirit's promptings are too clear and 
 too universal to permit us to disobey longer with- 
 out incurring guilt before both heaven and earth. 
 
 While the following lectures deal somewhat 
 freely with what might be called the home aspects 
 of the missionary enterprise, the foreign work is by 
 no means passed over in silence. The work is one, 
 and the workers at home and abroad are bound 
 together by inseparable interests. New questions 
 are coming to the surface in the foreign field, some 
 of which are briefly discussed, while cpiestions of 
 policy of long standing receive the attention which 
 they have long merited. 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 Missionary work has its own peculiarities, but 
 after all it does not differ so very widely from 
 ordinary Christian work. It is, for the most part, 
 ordinary Christian work under extraordinary con- 
 ditions. Hence the reader of the following pages 
 may find occasional hints which may possibly be 
 of some value in the ordinary home field. A re- 
 turned missionary who once gave a lecture before 
 the students of a theological seminary was told by 
 one of the professors that his remarks could not 
 have been better adapted to the wants of the 
 students present if prepared with sole reference to 
 their future work in the United States. In the 
 hope that some of God's workers at home and 
 abroad may profit by these hastily prepared lec- 
 tures, the manuscript has been placed at the dis- 
 posal of the authorities of the University. 
 
 Syracuse, N. V., May 2, 1S95. J. M. T. 
 
SYLLABUS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Christles ; Nations 9 
 
 Introductory — Christ still on earth — Found only among 
 his own — Wiiat is the loss of non-Christians? — 
 The influence of Christianity — Ten hundred millions 
 without Christ — Merely nominal work will not do — 
 Bearing Christ to the nations — Our privilege 
 slighted — What is a Christian nation ? 
 
 Missionary Possibilities 41 
 
 Introductory — Careful inquiry needed — The home sit- 
 uation — A startling illustration — A practicable plan — 
 Demand for workers — The world's gates opening — •/ 
 Better plans coming into favor — Power of a Chris- 
 tian minority — Estimating results — Our opportuni- V 
 ties. 
 
 Woman in the Mission Field 75 
 
 Introductory — Woman's era — Woman's missionary so- 
 cieties — The zenana — Quiet progress — A widening 
 sphere — Female evangelists — An anointed leader — 
 Administrative duties — A new sphere — Medical 
 work. 
 
8 SYLLABUS. 
 
 FACE 
 
 Missionary Polity 1 1 1 
 
 Introductory — A missionary constituency needed — 
 The home management — The work I's. the society — 
 Limitations of autliority — The missionary commis- 
 sariat — Planting — Organization — Avoid a narrow 
 policy — Follow up success — Family and national 
 lines. 
 
 Nf.w Testament Missions 145 
 
 Introductory — Roman and British empires — The An- 
 glo-Saxon dispersion — Spiritual standard — Vivifying 
 lifeless communities — The call to service — Men of 
 the people — Meeting an emergency — Changed con- 
 ditions — The teachers of New Testament times — 
 Present-day converts — Flexible organization. 
 
 Wayside Views 181 
 
 Introductory — Missionary devotion — Separation from 
 children — Spiritual life — Confidence needed — The 
 present social crisis — Living links — The instinct of 
 victory. 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
THE CllRISTLESS NATIONS, 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER ADDRESSES. 
 
 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 SOME years ago an elderly minister who 
 wished to devote his latest years to the 
 advocacy of the missionary enterprise asked 
 me what, in my opinion, was the strongest plea 
 for missions which could be presented to in- 
 telligent persons in Christian lands. He had 
 just been surprised and almost startled by 
 hearing me say that it was a mistake to sup- 
 pose that a faithful portrayal of the moral state 
 of heathen nations was the surest way to enlist 
 the sympathy and aid of Christians in America, 
 and he even seemed a little perplexed by my 
 willing testimony in favor of some praiseworthy 
 virtues which I had found among the people 
 of India. It is too often assumed that Paul's 
 terrible arraignment of heathenism as it existed 
 in some parts of the Roman empire, and cs- 
 
12 THE CIIRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 pecially in Rome itself during the first cen- 
 tury, must serve as an accurate description of 
 the moral state of all non-Christian nations in 
 all ages of the world. This, however, is a great 
 mistake ; and even if it were true it would not 
 constitute a healthy basis for an appeal in 
 behalf of an immediate and determined effort 
 to evangelize the world. Various motives 
 might fairly enough be appealed to in such a 
 case and a multitude of facts cited to show 
 how much all nations need the blessings which 
 only the Gospel can bestow ; but if asked to 
 state in few words what it is which makes the 
 condition of the non-Christian nations most 
 deplorable, and at the same time places all 
 Christian nations under the strongest obliga- 
 tions to help them, I should simply say that 
 such nations are, as Paul reminded the Ephe- 
 sian Christians that they had once been, 
 " without Christ." It is not that they have 
 never heard of his name, that they have never 
 felt the influence of what we call Christianity, 
 that they have never been brought into con- 
 tact with Christian institutions or Christian 
 civilization, but that Christ is not personally 
 known to them, is not among them in the 
 sense in which he promised to be with his 
 people for evermore, and that they are deprived 
 of all the unspeakable privileges which those 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 1 3 
 
 who enjoy personal fellowship with him so 
 freely receive. 
 
 CHRIST STILL ON EARTH. 
 
 The personal presence of Jesus Christ among 
 his living disciples is the greatest fact in the 
 religious world to-day. It is not so much a 
 great truth as a great fact, around which the 
 leading truths of the Christian system gather, 
 and on which they must always largely depend 
 when presented to an unbelieving or doubting 
 world. Nothing could have been more ex- 
 plicit than our Saviour's farewell assurance to 
 his disciples that he would be with them 
 always, or than his earlier promise that he 
 would be present in every assembly of his 
 people, even though the number should not 
 exceed two or three. This promised presence 
 was not to be visible, but it was to be none 
 the less personal and real. In his farewell dis- 
 course our Saviour comforted his disciples 
 with the assurance that after a brief separation 
 he would return to them again, and, while in- 
 visible and unknown to the world, would be 
 manifested as a living presence to his own, 
 with whom he would establish a fellowship 
 never to be broken. In harmony with these 
 teachings we find the early Christians familiar 
 with the idea as well as w'ith the experience of 
 
14 THE CIIRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 companionship with the risen Son of God. 
 They did not merely believe on him — they 
 knew him. When Paul was defending his 
 ministry among the Galatian Christians he 
 appealed to the time when it pleased the 
 Father to reveal his Son to his inner conscious- 
 ness, and when, in old age, he was about to 
 depart he was able to say in holy, confident 
 triumph, " I know whom I have believed." 
 He had been stopped in his blind career by 
 this same Jesus on the Damascus highway ; 
 he had seen him in vision in the temple ; had 
 been commissioned by him to go far hence to 
 the Gentiles ; and again, in the tower of Anto- 
 nia, when an infuriated multitude clamored for 
 his blood, this same Jesus had spoken to him 
 and told him how he must yet bear witness in 
 imperial Rome. 
 
 The apostle Paul was an exceptional man, 
 but in knowing his risen Lord and walking in 
 fellowship with him his happy lot was only 
 exceptional in some of its peculiar phases. 
 Millions of living Christians are to-day able to 
 bear witness to a personal knowledge of Jesus 
 Christ. As in the case of Paul this knowledge 
 is sometimes subjective and sometimes object- 
 ive. To most there seems to be a mystical, 
 and yet very clear and personal, manifestation 
 of Christ to the inner consciousness. The 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. I 5 
 
 awakened sinner seeks a Saviour, hears of 
 Jesus, believes the testimony, and emerges into 
 h'ght. His sins vanish, his darkness flees away, 
 and he discovers a newborn love in his heart 
 for the Saviour in whom he has believed. He 
 does not pause to analyze his thoughts, but he 
 is conscious in his heart of hearts that he loves 
 Jesus Christ as a divine Saviour. Very soon, 
 possibly at the same moment, he discovers 
 that he loves God as his heavenly Father. 
 He knows nothing of theology, has never given 
 a thought to the subject of the Trinity, but he 
 opens John's gospel and reads, " If a man love 
 me, he will keep my words: and my Father will 
 love him, and we will come unto him, and make 
 our abode with him." The new disciple finds 
 that the promise given at the beginning has 
 been verified in his own experience. He 
 knows God as his Father and Christ as his 
 Saviour, both being revealed to him by the 
 Holy Spirit. This personal Saviour is some- 
 times recognized as an inner manifestation, 
 made, as it were, in the very holy of holies of 
 the believing heart ; but oftentimes it is more 
 like the outward presence of a companion or 
 guide. The experience of the two brethren 
 walking out to Emmaus at eventide is often 
 repeated in our day. The risen Lord may 
 come as a loving friend, or he may pass on 
 
l6 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 before as a faithful guide, or he may assume 
 the form of a victorious leader; but in every 
 case the distinctive fact which we need to note 
 is that he lives among his own, knows them 
 and is known of them, and through them car- 
 ries forward his great designs concerning the 
 future of the human race. 
 
 FOUND ONLY AMONG HIS OWN. 
 
 Just here, however, we are confronted by a 
 most momentous question. If the world's 
 Messiah is in very deed alive and present in 
 our world, is his presence confined to those 
 regions where his disciples are found ? Is he 
 not the rightful sovereign of all the world, and 
 did he not assure his followers that all power 
 in earth and heaven had been given into his 
 hands? In what sense, then, can we say that 
 whole nations are without Christ? 
 
 As heir to all things in earth and heaven, 
 and as the disposer of human affairs, our 
 Saviour, Christ, is no doubt in this world to- 
 day ; and we do well to reflect that he who 
 walked about among the villages of Galilee is 
 to-day walking about among the nations, dis- 
 posing of crowns and thrones according to his 
 sovereign will, guiding in all the events, great 
 and small, which take place among men, and 
 causing all things to work together so as to 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 1 7 
 
 hasten the consummation of his great purpose- 
 to make all the kingdoms of this world his own. 
 But as the world's Saviour he is found only 
 with his own. We need not pause to ask wliy 
 this is so, but we cannot give too earnest heed 
 to the startling fact that since the day of Pen- 
 tecost Jesus Christ has been made known to 
 the world only through the medium of his own 
 disciples. He may go before them, may pre- 
 pare the way for them, as in the case of Cor- 
 nelius, but the disciple and the Master are 
 inseparable in the ordinary administration of 
 the Master's work. He has chosen us as co- 
 workers with himself, made us his visible repre- 
 sentatives among men, and assured us that we 
 shall do his work if we are careful to do his will 
 and work in his name. The disciples of to-day 
 differ from those who walked in visible fellow- 
 ship with Jesus in Galilee in that tlicy are 
 more highly favored than the first disciples. 
 The latter walked and talked with the Master, 
 shared his power, and at times performed won- 
 derful works in his name ; but they labored 
 under all the limitations which time and place 
 imposed. The Saviour could only be present 
 in one place at a given time, could only minis- 
 ter to one group of disciples, and could only 
 engage in one particular undertaking. But 
 under the present dispensation the Spirit re- 
 
l8 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 veals his personal presence in a million hearts 
 or a million homes at the same moment. 
 There is no limit to his " wheresoever " save 
 the condition that living disciples must com- 
 mand his presence ; but this condition, bound 
 up as it is in his first great commission, is 
 invariable in all climes and all ages. 
 
 We are thus brought face to face with the 
 startling fact that on the disciples of Jesus 
 Christ rests the responsibility of giving Christ 
 to the nations which as yet do not know him ; 
 but before considering the full measure of this 
 responsibility it may be well to take a glance 
 at the condition of those most unfortunate 
 multitudes who belong to what might be called 
 the Christless nations. In losing the knowl- 
 edge and personal presence of Christ what 
 else do these nations lose? What has this 
 presence been worth to us or to the nation to 
 which we belong? 
 
 WHAT IS THE LOSS OF NON-CHRISTIANS? 
 
 In the first place, those who are without 
 Christ lose his personal ministrations. The 
 Jesus who meets his people invisibly to-day is 
 the same Jesus who journeyed with them in 
 visible form in the days of his humanity. 
 There was only one Bethany in Judea, but 
 every village in a Christian land becomes a 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. I9 
 
 Bethany in our more favored day. There was 
 only one Nain in Israel, but the Man of Naza- 
 reth now stands waiting to meet and comfort 
 every funeral procession which wends its 
 mournful way to the village cemetery. That 
 which was exceptional in Gr.lilee has become 
 universal in Christendom. The risen Son of 
 God waits to enter every abode of poverty, to 
 shed light upon every darkened home, to com- 
 fort everyone that mourns, to walk serenely 
 upon the waves of every stormy sea, to rescue 
 every endangered soul, to lift up the fallen, to 
 strengthen the weak, to reclaim the erring, to 
 turn despair into hope, darkness into light, and 
 out from the very shadow of death itself to bring 
 a life radiant with immortal joy. We thus see 
 that the nations have more at stake than a 
 mere question of fact concerning the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ. If Jesus lives at all he lives to 
 minister to the most needy of the human race, 
 and every community which has failed to re- 
 ceive him is daily and hourly losing blessings 
 compared with which every other form of 
 earthly good is but worthless dross. 
 
 In the next place, we are to remember that 
 Christ lives and works among men in the per- 
 son of his disciples. Every true believer bears 
 the name of his Master, and is solemnl)' re- 
 minded that he cannot sain access to God's 
 
20 THE CIIRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 mercy seat in any (jthcr naino. He is made a 
 child of God, a member of the heavenly famil)' 
 in which God is the Father and Jesus Christ 
 the Elder Brother. As such he becomes heir 
 to all that the Elder Brother inherits; he 
 bears his spiritual image, and in an important 
 sense shares his mission. As it was a part of 
 the Master's mission to manifest God, so it 
 became a most important part of tlie disciples' 
 mission to manifest Christ to men ; and as the 
 Master lived to save the perishing, and to 
 minister in every possible way to the wants of 
 those in need, so the disciple, if true to his 
 calling, will ever be found absorbed in doing 
 the same kind of work. For such a life, or 
 rather for such a mission, he receives a special 
 call and a special anointing ; and he goes forth 
 to bear his part on the busy stage of life up- 
 held by the promise that he shall not only do 
 the works of his Master, but even greater 
 works than any which the people of Galilee 
 and Judea ever witnessed. We thus see how 
 it happens that an immense multitude of 
 Christian men are blessing the world by their 
 active work and silent influence to-day. Their 
 presence and their usefulness are owing solely 
 to the fact that Christ is with them. The 
 world does not know and cannot understand 
 how much it owes to these disciples. Each 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 21 
 
 one is a glowing light in the midst of dense 
 darkness. They are truly the salt of the earth, 
 the one conserving element in the midst of 
 corrupting agencies of a thousand kinds. They 
 are the helpers of universal humanity, and 
 many of them show such power in grappling 
 with the powers of evil, such courage in facing 
 danger, such hope in battling against despair, 
 and such divine resources in saving the sinning 
 and the perishing, that even worldly men often 
 feel constrained to admit that they are sup- 
 ported and directed b}- a power and wisdom 
 which must come from above. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 The presence of Christ in a Clnistian nation 
 is still further attested by what is sometimes 
 called the " influence of Christianity," which 
 is but another name for the influence of a 
 personal Christ. There is nothing tangible 
 about this influence, nothing that can be 
 formulated in either figures or words, and 
 yet it is felt everywhere. It is found em- 
 bodied in the spirit of ever}' code of laws 
 in Christendom ; it is exhibited in the con- 
 stantly increasing eleemosynary institutions 
 of all kinds; it pervades the literature of the 
 day ; it animates every reform movement ; it 
 softens the rough hand of war ; it refines and 
 
22 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 ennobles civilization, and, in short, seems to 
 permeate the very atmosphere with a health- 
 ful spirit of life and hope. Childhood be- 
 comes sacred wherever the story of the Babe 
 of Bethlehem is known. Womanhood be- 
 comes ennobled wherever the history of Mary 
 of Bethany, or of Mary of Magdala, or still 
 more of Mary of Bethlehem, has been told. 
 The poor are moved by new aspirations, and 
 humanity seems animated by new hopes. 
 Wherever the name of Jesus Christ has been 
 carried man has learned how to open the 
 prison house of despair and to see light beyond 
 the darkness of the grave. 
 
 This invisible and yet wonderfully pervasive 
 influence has been strikingly illustrated in 
 the astonishing political transformation which 
 Japan has experienced during the past forty 
 years. Alone among all non-Christian peoples 
 the Japanese have freely accepted Christian 
 ideas and, to a great extent, Christian institu- 
 tions, and have thus made a great stride in 
 the direction of Christian civilization, although 
 not yet formally accepting the Christian re- 
 ligion. The result is marvelous beyond any- 
 thing yet witnessed in human history. Of 
 all non-Christian peoples it may be said that, 
 since the beginning of our era, at least, none 
 of them have, without external aid, been able 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 2^ 
 
 to make any advance in the arts of civilization, 
 none have been able to display the slightest 
 inventive genius, and none, except a very small 
 minority, have been able to rise above the low 
 level of grinding poverty. Century after century 
 passes without a single invention, no matter how 
 simple, among one half the human race. Cen- 
 tury after century passes only to witness the 
 gradual but steady and relentless subsidence 
 of the masses of people into utter poverty 
 and wretchedness. Christ among men is not 
 only the hope of immortality to mankind, the 
 eternal pledge of a better life than that of 
 earth, but he is the hope of the industrial 
 world, of the social world, and of the intellec- 
 tual world. Without him the nations have no 
 better future than their dismal past, and all 
 hope of future progress may as well be dis- 
 missed from the thought of the world. In 
 whatever direction we turn we are met with 
 ever-increasing proofs that our world has 
 great and urgent needs which only can be met 
 in the presence of the Saviour of men. 
 
 TEN HUNDRED MILLIONS WITHOUT CHRIST. 
 
 These and other considerations of like 
 character will no doubt bring very vividly be- 
 fore the mind of a Christian believer a sense 
 of the unspeakable loss of those who are born 
 
24 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 and grow up without Christ ; but, after all, tb.e 
 strongest appeal of this kind is that which is 
 made to our own hearts as individual Chris- 
 tians, What is Christ to each of us to-day? 
 What has he been to us since we have per- 
 sonally known him? What was his presence 
 with our parents worth to our childhood? 
 Where and what would we as individuals have 
 been to-day had we never found him ? What 
 would our lives be to-day if Christ were taken 
 out of them ? What vvould this world be to 
 us, what would life be to us, what would our 
 future be, if we were suddenly and completely 
 bereft of our Saviour, Christ ? What would 
 existence be to us if thus bereft ? It would 
 be day bereft of the sun, and night disrobed 
 of stars. To take Christ away from a believer 
 is to take light and joy out of the heart and 
 sweetness and peace out of the life. And }-et 
 this is the lot of uncounted millions of our 
 race. We may say, it is true, that they are 
 unconscious of their loss; but this does not 
 change the facts as God reveals them to us, or 
 lessen our responsibility in the slightest de- 
 gree. 
 
 It has been estimated that there are ten 
 hundred million human beings in the world 
 who, so far from knowing Christ as a per- 
 sonal Saviour, have as yet never even heard 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 -D 
 
 his name. Tcii hundred millions of human 
 beings without Christ ! The very thought of 
 such a multitude of souls groping in darkness 
 is overwhehning; and yet the mind fails to 
 grasp the full import of the words. It has 
 been said that no millionaire ever comprehends 
 the full extent of his wealth after it passes the 
 million-dollar line. The figures express a certain 
 numerical statement, but to the mind there is 
 only an array of figures, an arithmetical ex- 
 pression instead of a clear perception of dis- 
 tributed values. We cannot take in at a 
 glance this vast multitude of Christless men 
 and women ; but we may possibly gain a 
 clearer view of the almost endless throng by 
 looking at them in detail. Let us, for instance, 
 take up a position where all these millions can 
 pass before us with military precision. Let 
 them be formed in ranks with thirty abreast, and 
 let them pass before us with rapid step, so that 
 thirty shall pass every second. I take out my 
 watch and note the ticking away of sixty 
 seconds ; eighteen hundred persons have 
 passed by. I watch the minute hand till sixty 
 minutes are gone; one hundred and eight 
 thousand more have passed. I stand at my 
 post and watch the ceaseless tread of the 
 passing thousands till the sun goes down, till 
 midnight comes, till dawn and sunrise come 
 
26 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 again, and there is never a second's pause. 
 Another day and another night go by ; the 
 days lengthen into weeks ; the thousands have 
 long since become millions ; but there is still 
 no pause. Summer comes, with its sunny 
 days, to find the long procession marching 
 still. The flowers of summer give place to 
 autumn's frosts, and a little later the snow of 
 winter is flying in the air ; but morning, noon, 
 and night we hear the awful tread of the passing 
 multitude. Spring comes round again ; a 
 year has passed, and yet not for one moment 
 has that procession ever paused. " Will that 
 awful footfall never cease?" some one asks. 
 We take a glance out to see how many yet 
 remain, and find seventy-five millions patiently 
 waiting their turn ! That is a faint attempt to 
 grasp the meaning of our words when we speak 
 often hundred million human beings. 
 
 MERELY NOMINAL WORK WILL NOT DO. 
 
 We sometimes hear it said that the great 
 commission to proclaim the Gospel to all 
 nations has been almost completed, and good 
 men and women may be seen even now gath- 
 ering outside the closed gates of Thibet, eager 
 to enter at the earliest possible moment and 
 preach the Gospel to the last remaining nation 
 which has not yet heard its joyful sound. God 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 2/ 
 
 forbid that I should say a word to disparage 
 either the spirit or the work of these earnest 
 men and women, one of the most daring of 
 whom is working under my own superintend- 
 ence ; but as Christians we must not deceive 
 ourselves. Thibet is by no means the only 
 nation to which the Gospel has not been 
 preached. A nation is not reached when one 
 or more men preach in a given place, nor does 
 the mere proclamation of a message of truth 
 constitute the Gospel so long as Christ is not 
 made known to the people. A nation is 
 reached when the people of the nation are 
 reached, and not when a certain territorial 
 line is crossed. I have over and over again 
 found villages within but a few miles of pros- 
 perous mission stations in which not a single 
 person could be found who knew anything of 
 Christ or had even heard his name. The 
 prophets in old time were always most explicit 
 in recording God's precious words of promise, 
 and the preaching which they foretold had 
 nothing of a perfunctory character about it. 
 They looked forward to a time when all 
 kingdoms, and nations, and peoples, and 
 kindreds, and tribes, and languages should re- 
 ceive God's word and serve the coming King; 
 and we dare not limit promises so full of hope 
 to the Church and the world. 
 
2 8 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 We should remember, too, that the word 
 " nation " does not always mean a political 
 division of the world. We may often find 
 nations within nations. India is the oldest of 
 modern mission fields, and yet its tribes and 
 peoples and castes, among whom Christ is 
 still unknown, are numbered by the hundred. 
 It will not do to reckon India as simply one 
 of the nations of the earth, and then calmly to 
 assume that we have done our full measure of 
 duty to her in that the Gospel is proclaimed 
 in many places and in many tongues through- 
 out her extended borders. Only a year ago I 
 had my attention drawn to an extensive re- 
 gion lying to the eastward of the Central Prov- 
 inces, composed, for the most part, of a group 
 of small native States, and said to be wholly 
 destitute of missionary labor. After careful 
 inquiry I asked three experienced missionaries 
 to make a tour of exploration through that 
 part of the country and report the result of 
 their observations. They did their work care- 
 fully and thoroughly, and in due time reported 
 to me that they had found six millions of 
 people to whom no messenger of the risen 
 Saviour had ever gone. The whole region was 
 as destitute of Christian privileges as it had 
 been when Jesus gave the great commission 
 to his apostles ; and among these neglected 
 
THE CIIRISTLESS NATIONS. 29 
 
 millions were petty kingdoms, different tribes, 
 separate castes, and diverse tongues, all in- 
 cluded in the old-time promises, and yet all 
 destitute of the Gospel, which must be carried 
 to the whole human race. A careful search in 
 other lands would no doubt lead to similar dis- 
 coveries. There can be no doubt that the sad 
 fact confronts us that the evangelization of our 
 world, so far from being nearly complete, has 
 hardly passed its initial stage. The mighty 
 task can be done, must be done, and done 
 quickly ; but we must not try to persuade our- 
 selves that it is already nearly complete. 
 
 BEARING CHRIST TO THE NATIONS. 
 
 Having thus briefl)' considered the unspeak- 
 able loss of the earth's teeming millions who 
 are without Christ, let us try for a moment to 
 obtain a clear view of our personal responsi- 
 bility, or, perhaps it would be better to say, 
 of our transcendent privilege, in being com- 
 missioned to convey God's great gift to these 
 destitute nations. It is not that we are to 
 send Bibles across the sea, or that we are to 
 send a certain number of men to preach what 
 is called "the Gospel," but rather that we are 
 placed under a solemn obligation to carry 
 Christ himself to those who know him not. 
 When Jesus fed the multitude it would have 
 3 
 
30 THE CIIRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 been as easy for him to have had the bread 
 conveyed by invisible hands to the hungry 
 people as it was to multiply the loaves ; but a 
 lesson was to be taught to his disciples of all 
 ages, the full significance of which should 
 never be overlooked. The bread had to be 
 distributed by human hands, and the incredu- 
 lous disciples were taught, in a m.anner never 
 to be forgotten, how the divine and the human 
 are made to cooperate in feeding a famished 
 world with the bread of life. The scene upon 
 the grassy hillside was to be reenacted a 
 million times as the ages passed by. Other 
 multitudes were to be found, worn and weary 
 and ready to perish, and other disciples were 
 to go to their help with, not the bread that 
 perisheth, but the living Son of God, the ever- 
 blessed One typified by the ancient manna. 
 
 Some of you still remember how, in the sad 
 days of our civil war, we used to sing Mrs. 
 Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic." As 
 the hymn was printed and reprinted all over 
 the country it so happened that one word be- 
 came involved in doubt, and thus, while some 
 were singing, 
 
 " In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea," 
 
 others would say, 
 
 " In the beauty of the lilies Christ was borne across the sea." 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 3 1 
 
 In a song so highly poetical it is possible to 
 admit either word ; but, whatever the true 
 rendering of the words may have been, we are 
 able in our missionary era, not only in poetic 
 phrase, but in sober prose as well, to conceive 
 of our Saviour being borne on many a bark to 
 distant climes as the companion of devoted 
 messengers who go forth in his name. Every 
 ship which carries a band of missionaries con- 
 tains an invisible pillow for the head of the 
 unseen Master. The timid maiden who leaves 
 her village home in obedience to the Spirit's 
 prompting, and goes forth to teach a few of 
 the world's forsaken outcasts how to find and 
 serve their heavenly Father, bears with her in 
 holy companionship the Saviour of men, the 
 King of all nations, and the Sovereign of all 
 realms. This, and nothing less than this, is 
 what every true missionary is called upon to 
 do, and this is what scores upon scores are 
 actually doing to-day. 
 
 As we think of the character which the mis- 
 sionary's work thus assumes we cease to think 
 of duty ; we almost forget the word and be- 
 come absorbed in the thought of the transcend- 
 ent privilege Avhich is thus set before us. As 
 we would take a physician to the sick or dying, 
 a guide to the belated and v/andering, a com- 
 forter to the sorrowing, a teacher to the igno- 
 
32 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 rant, a friend to the friendless, or a helper to 
 the helpless, so are we commissioned as Chris- 
 tians to go out to every needy tribe and 
 nation, taking with us One who is able and 
 infinitely willing to receive every member of 
 the human race and supply every form of 
 human need. We cannot all go, it is true, but 
 every missionary who goes abroad does so in 
 the name of those who send him, and we all 
 alike are thus permitted to bear a part in the 
 most glorious work which God has ever put 
 within the reach of human beings. Perhaps 
 nothing in all God's plans for the human race 
 is more mysterious than the fact that this un- 
 speakable power, this hallowed privilege, has 
 been intrusted to mortals. Angels celebrated 
 the advent of Jesus to earth, angels ministered 
 to him when among men, angels proclaimed 
 his resurrection, and angels hover around 
 every scene of his active work in our world 
 still ; but not to angels, but to men, is it given 
 to introduce him to the sinning, suffering, and 
 sorrowing children of humanity, and thus 
 achieve the highest possible ministry in which 
 men or angels can engage in a world like ours. 
 
 OUR PRIVILEGE SLIGHTED. 
 
 With such a ministry set before us, a minis- 
 try which angels might covet, with the doors 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 33 
 
 of nearly all nations thrown wide open to in- 
 vite our entry, with the Spirit, the word, and 
 the providence of God alike urging us forward, 
 it would be but reasonable to expect to see a 
 great missionary movement going forward in 
 all Christian lands. There surely ought to be 
 no room for doubt or hesitation here. From 
 the doors of every Christian nation the glad 
 messengers of Christ ought to be seen hasten- 
 ing forth, bearing in their earthen vessels the 
 precious treasure of the divine presence. But 
 when we look around us what do we see? 
 Almost every possible form of Christian work 
 is put forward as a substitute for that which 
 takes precedence of all other obligations. One 
 stands forth to plead for the city "slums" 
 (pardon me for using the word, but it has be- 
 come current, and has no present equivalent), 
 another advocates the claims of our foreign 
 immigrants, a third tells of want and suffering 
 on the frontier, a fourth represents the wants 
 of the illiterate colored population, while a 
 dozen of other voices are heard in behalf of as 
 many other blessed enterprises, all good and 
 deserving in their way and in their proper 
 place ; but no one of them, nor all of them put 
 together, can take precedence of the one 
 great work which our risen and ascended Lord 
 intrusted to his disciples, the supreme and 
 
34 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 paramount duty, binding upon all Christians 
 in all ages, to make him known to those who 
 have no knowledge of him. Christianity is 
 utterly inconsistent with its own claims so 
 long as it fails to comprehend the urgency of 
 its own mission on earth or pauses in its on- 
 ward march to complete details which are hin- 
 dered rather than helped by the mistalccn 
 policy which their promoters adopt. 
 
 It often makes me feel sad and almost faint 
 of heart when I hear intelligent and devoted 
 Christians calmly excuse themselves from any 
 obligation to support the efforts of the Church 
 to evangelize the heathen world. " I think,"' 
 says one, " that I can do more good in this, 
 that, or the other way. I am not very sure 
 about foreign missions. I think my duty lies 
 nearer home." Now, substitute for the term 
 " foreign missions " Jesus Christ, and see how 
 it will sound. Try to realize, even for a mo- 
 ment, what it is to assume that great nations, 
 that hundreds of millions of our fellow-men, 
 can be left century after century without 
 Christ, without a knowledge of God, without 
 a hope of immortality, while we are making 
 desultory efforts to perfect the work which 
 our Saviour in his infinite mercy began in our 
 own land in the days of our fathers — try, I say, 
 to realize what this really means, and soon it 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 35 
 
 will begin to seem as if a veiled spirit of daring 
 atheism vv-ere invading the Church of Christ. 
 No I'orm of unbelief or error is so pernicious 
 as that which is elaborately illustrated in the 
 practical life of Christian men and women. Bet- 
 ter teach and preach the doctrine of a limited 
 atonement than limit the effects of Christ's 
 universal atonement by our deliberate refusal 
 to make liim known to those for whom he 
 died. Better deny the mission of Christ to 
 earth than resolutely to adopt and defend a 
 policy which must, for many long centuries, 
 shut off two thirds of the race from even a 
 knowledge of his name. It cannot be said too 
 often or too emphatically that as Christians we 
 have little to fear from men of Mr. Ingersoll's 
 class. Such men do harm, no doubt; but they 
 avow their purpose, they work openly, and 
 they use no concealed weapons. It is better 
 to deny Christ in express terms than solemnly 
 to avovv' our belief in him and yet practically 
 deny him by discrediting his work, limiting his 
 mission, putting territorial limits to his love, 
 and deliberately and persistently ignoring the 
 terms of his farewell commandment to his 
 apostles, and through them to his disciples of 
 all ages. 
 
 Let no one misunderstand me and suppose 
 that I depreciate Christian work in its many 
 
36 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 ftji'ins in our own and other Christian lands. 
 God forbid that I should for one moment fall 
 into the fatal error of thinking that one good 
 cause can be built up by pulling down another. 
 The work of God on earth assumes a thousand 
 forms, and yet it is one work. To injure it 
 at one point is to injure it at every point ; and 
 it is for this reason we need to give the more 
 earnest heed to God's missionary call upon his 
 people in all parts of the world. This call is 
 in universal terms, it requires immediate obe- 
 dience, it concerns the universal Church of 
 God, and it cannot be disobeyed without caus- 
 ing serious injury to all forms of Christian 
 work to-day. The surest and the best way to 
 promote all forms of Christian work in Chris- 
 tian lands is to give effect to the great com- 
 mission which takes precedence of every other 
 obligation. The best way to help the work at 
 home is to obey God by making Christ known 
 to the nations which sit in darkness. In plead- 
 ing for the Christless nations I am really plead- 
 ing for this city, for this State, for all the 
 States of the Union. 
 
 WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN NATION? 
 
 It will be said, no doubt, as it often is said, 
 that our country is by no means Christianized 
 as yet, and that we are in reality obeying our 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 37 
 
 Saviour's commission so long as we are en- 
 gaged in bringing those who know him not to 
 a personal knowledge of him. This raises the 
 very practical question, What is a Christian 
 nation ? We have seen what is meant by a 
 Christless nation, that is, one in which our 
 Saviour is wholl}' unknown ; but it is not so 
 easy to define in exact terms what it is which 
 entitles a nation to call itself Christian. Time 
 Avill not admit of a full discussion of this ques- 
 tion ; but a few points of contrast will at least 
 enable us to appreciate our advantages. Every 
 man and woman in England and America who 
 wishes to be guided to the world's Saviour can 
 find a willing guide within a few minutes, or, at 
 most, a few hours. Living Christians are met 
 everywhere, and those who are willing and 
 anxious to be led can always find some one 
 who will be glad to lead them to the Saviour, 
 as Philip led Nathanael. It is very different 
 in non-Christian lands. Millions upon millions 
 might ask for such a guide in vain. At the 
 very worst here and there an individual may 
 grope in darkness on our side of the globe, 
 but on the other side we see the sad and 
 startling spectacle of groping nations. 
 
 A few years ago a question was raised among 
 certain missionaries in India concerning the 
 boundaries of their respective mission fields. 
 
38 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 It had been tacitly assumed that when a given 
 field was occupied by one party of workers 
 others should refrain from entering it ; but in 
 some cases misunderstandings occurred, and it 
 became necessary to define the word " occupy." 
 Some contended that if one or more mission- 
 aries established a station in a district contain- 
 ing a million inhabitants they occupied that 
 field and should be left to evangelize the peo- 
 ple in their own time and way ; but others 
 took a very different view and insisted that no 
 occupancy should be respected unless a practi- 
 cal effort was made to plant out-stations at 
 suitable points. In the course of the discus- 
 sion which followed the most liberal proposal 
 that was made was that a field should be con- 
 sidered open so long as provision was not 
 made for placing at least one Christian within 
 ten miles of every home in the district ; or, in 
 other words, the Christian workers should be 
 so distributed among the people that no one 
 need go more than ten miles from his home in 
 order to find one. This proposal, however, 
 did not meet with favor, chiefl}' for the reason 
 that it seemed impossible to make such a pro- 
 vision for any known mission field. It seemed 
 too much to hope that helpers and guides 
 could be placed within reach of the people 
 even if they were disposed to seek them. 
 
THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 39 
 
 But, unfortunatel)^ they are not so disposed. 
 The order of tlie Gospel is that we must go to 
 the lost and perishing, not that we should 
 wait for them to come to us. In times of 
 famine hundreds of thousands of the poor peo- 
 ple in India remain in their village homes and 
 die of hunger, while camps for the free distri- 
 bution of food are established within ten miles 
 of them. Hunger and physical weakness seem 
 to render them incapable of effort and indiffer- 
 ent to their fate, while in the case of many a 
 journey of ten miles from home seems like 
 setting out for a distant and utterly unknown 
 country. If it is so hard to induce those who 
 are ready to die to go away from home to ob- 
 tain bread, what possible use is there in expect- 
 ing those who are perishing for want of the 
 bread of life to go ten miles from home to 
 inquire concerning it ? Now and then we 
 meet with such cases, and as time passes they 
 may become more frcc^uent, but at best they 
 will be e^:ceptional. America and England 
 are but iniperfcctl)' Christianized, it is true, 
 but they have all the elements within them 
 which are needed to complete the v/ork, and in 
 at least a iclative sense they arc now Christian 
 nations; but in contrast with them the con- 
 dition of the most favored of non-Christian 
 lands is such as should move the deepest sym- 
 
40 THE CHRISTLESS NATIONS. 
 
 pathies of everyone who bears the image of 
 Jesus Christ upon his heart. Now, as in the 
 days of our Lord's ministry, it is enough for 
 the disciple that he be as his Master, for the 
 servant that he be as his Lord. The love of 
 Jesus Christ for the human race is world-em- 
 bracing ; let ours be the same. Let us main- 
 tain the same attitude toward this momentous 
 question that he maintains, and the unbelieving 
 world will quickly begin to realize that Chris- 
 tianity is consistent with itself, and that Chris- 
 tians no longer dishonor the sacred name which 
 they bear by refusing or neglecting to make it 
 possible for all nations to crown him as both 
 their Saviour and their Kine. 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 THE present time is opportune for a careful 
 and candid discussion of the practical 
 value of the great missionary movement. The 
 second century of modern missions has recently 
 opened, the sphere of missionary work has 
 been immensely enlarged, young men and 
 women are enlisting for service abroad in con- 
 stantly increasing numbers, and the friends of 
 the cause are becoming more and more impor- 
 tunate in their demands upon the public for 
 pecuniary support. Under such circumstances 
 it is certainly reasonable that we should be 
 asked to show that money given for this cause 
 is not spent for naught ; that young men and 
 women who go to the foreign field do not, or 
 at least need not, toil in vain ; and that suc- 
 cess, in the highest and noblest sense of the 
 word, may be achieved as certainly, and in as 
 large measure, in the mission field as anywhere 
 else in the wide domain of Christian effort. 
 The missionary enterprise occupies very high 
 ground, and after a century of heroic effort it 
 certainly ought to be well able to show by ac- 
 complished results not only that it has achieved 
 
44 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 success in the past, but that it enters upon its 
 second century with greater possibilities within 
 its reach than were dreamed of a century ago. 
 
 CAREFUL INQUIRY NEEDED. 
 
 A statement of the missionary possibiHties 
 which God is now setting before the Church is 
 the more needed in view of the doubts which 
 not a few avowed friends of Christianity 
 have in recent years expressed with reference 
 to the ultimate success of the enterprise. 
 Canon Taylor, of England, may be taken as a 
 fair spokesman of this class, and it must be 
 admitted that he has many followers. His 
 arithmetic is faulty, no doubt ; and yet, when 
 he compares the results thus far achieved with 
 the gigantic task which has been taken in 
 hand, it must be confessed that he makes out 
 a strong case, and there is too much reason to 
 fear that his presentation of the question has 
 created serious misgiving in the minds of many 
 sincere Christians. While admitting that some 
 good is done, that a few idols are thrown away 
 and a few heathen brought to Christ, thousands 
 and hundreds of thousands of intelligent 
 Christians are unable to see any promise of 
 ultimate success in a work of such magnitude. 
 Others, again, with hazy notions of Christianity 
 and without any sympathy for the idea of a 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 45 
 
 common faith for our common humanity, re- 
 gard the missionary enterprise as chimerical, 
 if not worse, and do not dream of its ever 
 making an impression of any importance on 
 the world. Another class of doubters may be 
 found among the supporters of missions them- 
 selves. Many who believe in the duty of 
 sending missionaries to the non-Christian na- 
 tions have yet but little hope or expectation 
 of success in the work. They practically be- 
 lieve that while in this work all things are pos- 
 sible not many things are probable. They do 
 not expect success, and some even think it 
 wrong to look for it. " I have nothing to do 
 with results," is practically the motto of thou- 
 sands who find in these mistaken words a ready 
 excuse for their want of success. The Chris- 
 tian worker has very much to do with the pos- 
 sible results of his labor, and in the great mis- 
 sionary field it is most important that the 
 highest possibilities should be clearly set be- 
 fore hini and kept constantly in vit^w. 
 
 If it should seem to anyone that this is 
 ignoring the rule of faith, or putting sight in 
 the place which faith should occupy, I need 
 only reply that faith should not ignore the 
 ordinary laws /Df human intelligence. Unbelief 
 is blind and works in the dark; but faith has a 
 clear vision and loves the light. It is not the 
 
46 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 work of faith to select a barren field, or to 
 Avork in a wrong way, or to persist in a fruitless 
 task, or to ignore the lessons of the past, or to 
 refuse to see the tokens of the present. It 
 would not have been an evidence of faith, for 
 instance, if the disciples had refused to cast in 
 the net on the right side of the ship, and had 
 persisted in fishing at the spot where they had 
 spent a long night of fruitless toil instead of 
 obeying their Pvlaster and thereby making suc- 
 cess assured. 
 
 The Church of Christ, standing as she does 
 near the threshold of the twentieth century, 
 needs the encouragement which an intelligent 
 survey of her opportunities and possibilities 
 cannot fail to give her. Faith is said to laugh 
 at impossibilities, but this is only v/hen seeing 
 the promise of God. If we would stimulate 
 the faith of the Christian world to-day, and 
 thus prepare the way for a great advance 
 throughout the world ; if, in short, we would 
 make the twentieth century the missionary 
 century of the world's history, we should keep 
 constantly in view the Saviour's great commis- 
 sion to make him knovvn to all the nations, and 
 also constantly call attention to the tokens of 
 his presence in the world's great missionary 
 fields of the present day. There certainly 
 seems to be grave reason to fear that many of 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 47 
 
 the best friends of missions, including not a 
 few leaders, are too easily satisfied with any 
 measure of success, so long as it falls short of 
 actual failure. For instance, one of the latest 
 estimates of the results of the past century of 
 missionary labor places the total number of 
 communicants at 900,000, and adds the expres- 
 sion of a hope that the increase will ere long 
 reach 50,000 a year. Taken by itself, this 
 looks like success ; but when we think of all 
 Christendom being represented in this effort 
 the result appears extremely meager, and it is 
 not strange that many who are familiar with the 
 glowing promises of God feel almost disheart- 
 ened by such an outlook. But no one need 
 feel disheartened. The results are better than 
 they seem, while the possibilities of achieving 
 greater results are within easy reach. 
 
 THE HOME SITUATION. 
 
 In taking a survey of these possibilities it 
 may be best to begin at home. The initial 
 step in the great undertaking is that of select- 
 ing and sending f^rth messengers of Christ to 
 nations and peoples who do not know him ; and 
 it is just here that the enterprise often seem.s 
 the weakest. The volunteers for service are 
 increasing, but a large majority of those who 
 offer are, for various reasons, found disqualified. 
 
48 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 The contributions of the Churches are at best 
 extremely moderate, and bear no proportion 
 to the gigantic work which has been taken in 
 hand. The cost of the work does not diminisli 
 with success, but, on the other hand, increases 
 materially, and to many careful observers it 
 begins to appear as if a deadlock had been 
 reached and further progress rendered impos- 
 sible. As a matter of fact, most of the great 
 missionary societies of the world are able to do 
 little more than hold their own. A majority 
 of them are in debt, and but few signs of 
 elasticity can be found in their finances. 
 Under these circumstances it may seem un- 
 timely to try to show that greater things 
 should be attempted ; but it is for this very 
 reason that I venture to begin at this point. 
 If we consent to accept the present financial 
 status of the leading societies as normal, if we 
 abandon the hope of brighter days and of 
 greatly enlarged resources, we may as well con- 
 fess our failure and abandon all further thought 
 of making Christ known to all the human race. 
 But such a thought cannot be entertained for 
 a single moment. So far from the resources 
 of the Churches having been exhausted, they 
 h.ive hardly been touched. The methods em- 
 ployed in the past may have been found insuf- 
 ficient ; the policy pursued may have been 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 49 
 
 unsound in some particulars; but the ability 
 of the evangelical Churches not only to main- 
 tain the work as it is, but to double it, or even 
 to increase it tenfold, can hardly be questioned. 
 In trying to form an estimate of the financial 
 possibilities of the missionary situation as it is 
 at the present day it is useless to take into 
 consideration the mere ability of the present 
 generation of Christians. If the question were 
 one of ability only the problem would be 
 solved in a second. The Christians of America 
 alone are abundantly able to maintain enough 
 missionary agencies of various kinds to com- 
 plete the evangelization of the world before 
 the close of the next century ; but the practi- 
 cal question before us is not one of ability 
 merely, but of willingness to give and of the 
 best means to adopt in gathering up the offer- 
 ings of God's people. It has been demon- 
 strated over and over again that a tax so light 
 as to be almost nominal laid upon all the evan- 
 gelical Christians in the United States would 
 not only suffice to maintain all the missionary 
 work now in existence, but increase it two, ten, 
 or even twentyfold. It would be easy to se- 
 lect ten professing Christians in the United 
 States on whose productive property a tax of 
 one per cent would yield enough revenue to 
 double all the American missions in the world 
 
50 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 and carry them forward in a stale of high effi- 
 ciency. But statements of this kind, while 
 very suggestive, do not practicahy help us in 
 the present discussion. The missionary cause 
 has never become debtor to any serious extent 
 to men of colossal fortunes. It has from the 
 first been chiefly dependent upon the masses, 
 including the poor and persons of very moder- 
 ate means, and it is to the masses that we 
 must now turn. 
 
 A STARTLING ILLUSTRATION. 
 
 If we take the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 with which we chance to be most familiar, as 
 an illustration, we find a people who profess to 
 believe in the missionary enterprise, whose 
 missionary enthusiasm is easily stirred, and yet 
 whose average annual contributions for each 
 member do not exceed fifty cents per year. 
 Such a discovery is more than disheartening, 
 it is positively alarming. When we remember 
 that many give most liberally, and that at the 
 public collections but few donors give so little 
 as fifty cents, the inference is unavoidable that 
 the majority give absolutely nothing. It may 
 be said, no doubt, that in many families there 
 is only one purse-holder ; but this ought not 
 seriously to affect the average. What, then, is 
 wrong? Where is the blame to be placed ? 
 
 1 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 5 I 
 
 And when the actual is so humiliating what 
 can be said for the possible ? 
 
 For one, I cannot for a moment believe that 
 there is no relief to the present strain. I have 
 mingled with our people from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific, and have never found a congrega- 
 tion indifferent to the missionary enterprise. 
 No other appeal so readily kindles the en- 
 thusiasm of the people, and no other meets 
 with a more liberal response in the shape of 
 freewill offerings. Perhaps more prayers as- 
 cend for the missionaries than for any other 
 body of Christians in the world. The people 
 are not indifferent. They are abundantly able 
 to give twice as much as is now given, and a 
 proposal to double the missionary working 
 force of the Church would meet with an enthu- 
 siastic response. But enthusiasm alone can do 
 very little. It can neither devise nor execute. 
 It may even become a source of weakness if 
 depended on too implicitly. Fifty years ago 
 the plan was adopted by our missionary lead- 
 ers of putting forth special efforts on a special 
 occasion, once a year, in each leading church, 
 and this plan is followed to the present day. 
 Some of the meetings are very notable, and 
 sometimes the collections are princely, but in 
 the long run this policy must fail. It has all 
 the defects of spasmodic effort ; it often creates 
 
52 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 a hurtful reaction ; it accustoms the people to 
 the notion that they cannot do their duty 
 unless acting under the spur of a special stimu- 
 lus ; and it fosters the idea that the missionary 
 cause is dependent on the leading churches 
 and the more wealthy classes. The right 
 policy, the only policy which can permanently 
 succeed, must be one that enlists all the people 
 in support of the cause. 
 
 A PRACTICABLE PLAN. 
 
 For the sake of continuing an illustration 
 with which we chance to be familiar, let us 
 look further at the present missionary situation 
 in the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 
 membership, including probationers, amounts 
 to 2,680,000, but for the sake of easy computa- 
 tion let us put it at 2,500,000. Next let 
 one half of these be deducted as nongivers, 
 such as the very poor, young children, and 
 those members of families in which the bad 
 practice prevails of having one member give 
 for all. We have still left a mighty army, 
 1,250,000 strong. Let us now divide these 
 persons into eight classes, arranged as follows : 
 First, let us set apart 500,000 who can give, at 
 the least, a nickel every month. The aggre- 
 gate gift of this class will be $300,000. Next, 
 let us take 500,000 more who may be expected 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 53 
 
 to give ten cents each every month, and we 
 are surprised to find their aggregate contribu- 
 tion footing up no less than $600,000. In tiie 
 third class let us include those who can easil)' 
 and freely give twenty-five cents a month, or 
 three dollars a year, and let us include in this 
 class 150,000 persons. Their aggregate offering 
 will amount to $450,000. In the fourth class let 
 us put 75,000 persons, and estimate their contri- 
 butions at fifty cents a month, or six dollars a 
 year. The total amounts to $450,000. In the 
 fifth class we put on]}' 15,000 persons, and 
 assign them one dollar a month, or a total of 
 $180,000. The next class is a very small one, 
 only 5,000 persons, giving two dollars and fifty 
 cents each, but making an aggregate of 
 $150,000. The remaining 5,000 are divided 
 into two classes of 2,500 each, giving respect- 
 ively five and ten dollars each, and making an 
 aggregate of $450,000. We have thus the fol- 
 lowing result : 
 
 500,000 at $0.05 each monthly $300,000 
 
 500,000 at .10 each monthly 600,000 
 
 150,000 at .25 each monthly 450,000 
 
 75,000 at .50 each montlily 450,000 
 
 15,000 at 1. 00 each monthly iSo.ooo 
 
 5,000 at 2.50 each monthly 150,000 
 
 2,500 at 5.00 each monthly 150,000 
 
 2,500 at 10.00 each monthly 300,000 
 
 1,250,000 $2,580,000 
 
54 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 These estimates are extremely low, and are 
 only made after one half of the entire member- 
 ship has been set aside as nongivers; but it 
 becomes evident at a glance that if such a scale 
 of giving could be adopted it would double 
 the missionary income of the Church at a 
 stroke, and open the eyes of the Christian 
 world to possibilities of which very few per- 
 sons have ever dreamed. But can such an 
 estimate ever be realized ? Has it any prac- 
 tical value? Is there any reasonable prospect, 
 for instance, that the small sum of five cents a 
 month can ever be collected from a vast multi- 
 tude of five hundred thousand persons scat- 
 tered all over the country ? 
 
 This exact plan may not be found the best 
 in all its details, but I am persuaded that we 
 shall never see a healthy state of missionary 
 finance until a determined and persistent effort 
 is made to enlist the masses of the people in 
 support of the cause, and to collect their offer- 
 ings. It is a well-known maxim that taxes 
 v.ill not collect themselves, and the same is 
 true of benevolent contributions. The average 
 donor will not take the trouble to walk round 
 the corner with his offering, but will pay it 
 cheerfully enough if called upon at home. 
 Just at this point we discover the great need 
 of the hour. It is not givers so much as col- 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 55 
 
 lectors, men and women, and boys and girls, 
 who will undertake the simple task of gather- 
 ing up once a month the stated offerings of a 
 given number of donors. In every church let 
 such a staff of collectors be selected, and not 
 only organized but drilled for the service, and 
 the work will be done. The present plan of 
 assigning the duty to overworked or possibly 
 indifferent pastors, or to perfunctory commit- 
 tees appointed with the tacit understanding 
 that no work shall be exacted from them, can 
 never prove successful. It has been found a 
 mistake to try to lay this responsibility upon 
 the pastors as a merely incidental part of their 
 many duties. The whole machinery should 
 be constructed anew and the responsibility 
 placed in the hands of persons who believe in 
 the missionary enterprise and who feel person- 
 ally called to support it. All this may require 
 a little time, but three or four years ought to 
 suffice to accomplish it. 
 
 DEMAND FOR WORKERS. 
 
 In the next place, let us consider the demand 
 for additional workers. It can no longer be 
 said, at least in an absolute sense, that the 
 laborers are few ; but comparatively they are 
 still very few indeed. In the early days of the 
 missionary movement it was thought necessary 
 
56 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 to send out a man and wife for almost every 
 non-Christian neighborhood ; but that poHcy 
 has been in a Lirge measure given up, and now, 
 in most of our great fields, the missionaries 
 would be more than thankful if they could get 
 one foreign missionary for each half million of 
 the people. But to muster even this slender 
 force would require a very large reinforcement 
 from the home field, so large, indeed, that to 
 many it will seem almost useless to discuss the 
 question. But if the means can be found for a 
 great forward movement in the foreign field it 
 is certain that men and women can be found 
 for every vacant place. They may not be 
 found in a day, or, if found, may not be pre- 
 pared to go abroad on a day's notice ; but they 
 can be enlisted and placed under drill, and can 
 be sent to the front when fully prepared. The 
 difficulty which has usually been experienced 
 in finding young missionaries has been chiefly 
 owing to the haphazard policy which has been 
 pursued of picking up young men at short 
 notice and hurrying them to the front without 
 sufficient preparation. A systematic enlist- 
 ment of young men and women, with a course 
 of training suited to the wants of each candi- 
 date, would not only provide all the workers 
 needed, but would greatly reduce the proba- 
 bilities of failure after reachine the field. 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 5/ 
 
 THE world's gates OPENING. ^ 
 
 Turning now to the foreign field, we reach 
 the point of chief interest in the minds of most 
 persons who are studying the question of mis- 
 sionary possibilities. First of all, let me call 
 your attention to the remarkable manner in 
 which obstacles have been removed out of the 
 way during recent years. Comparatively few 
 persons seem to be aware that, until very recent 
 years, by far the greater part of the world was 
 inaccessible to the Christian missionary. A 
 century and a half ago there was not a spot on 
 the great continent of Asia on which a Protes- 
 tant Christian could set his foot without the 
 consent of rulers nearly every one of whom was 
 hostile to missionary effort in every form. 
 Fifty years ago two thirds of Europe was closed 
 against the evangelical missionary, while vast 
 portions of the world were so little known that 
 no attempt had ever been made to penetrate 
 their depths in search of any possible people 
 who might be ready for the missionary. But 
 during the present generation the doors of the 
 nations have been opening to us in a wonderful 
 way. During the comparatively short period 
 which has elapsed since I became a missionary 
 obstacles of various kinds have been taken out 
 of the way, until now I can look abroad and see 
 
58 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 a way of easy access to seven hundred millions 
 of the human race, all of whom would have 
 been beyond my reach had I desired to go to 
 them in the days of my youth. And this proc- 
 ess-is still going on. High walls are falling 
 into ruins at the quiet approach of Christ's 
 messengers ; remote regions are coming nearer; 
 hostile people are becoming friendly; prejudices 
 are melting away, and thus the opportunities 
 set before us make it possible to accomplish 
 things which would have been considered 
 w holly impossible even as late as the middle 
 of the present century. 
 
 A still more important advantage is found in 
 the more ready access which the missionary 
 has gained to the hearts and minds of the 
 people. For many years after southern and 
 eastern Asia had been thrown open to the 
 missionary the people seemed strangely inac- 
 cessible. In China able men toiled for ten, 
 fifteen, and in some cases twenty years with- 
 out gathering any tangible fruit or seeing any 
 tokens of future success. More than fifty years 
 after William Carey had landed in India the 
 Protestant converts were very few in number, 
 and conversion to Christianity was dreaded by 
 all classes quite as much as the leprosy. The 
 missionary was among the people, and yet he 
 seemed separated from them by an impassable 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 59 
 
 gulf. There seemed to be no possibility of 
 wide success under such conditions, and these 
 conditions seemed to be beyond the possibility 
 of change. But to-day we see a whole world 
 of new possibilities. Only a few years ago the 
 favorite objection to Indian missions was that 
 converts could not be made ; to-day the cry is 
 that the converts are coming in such numbers 
 that in the very nature of the case most of the 
 alleged conversions must be spurious. In both 
 India and China the missionary has won a 
 position where he is in touch with multitudes 
 of the people. Pic may not be in touch with 
 all classes, but it can no longer be said that all 
 classes, high and low alike, hold aloof from 
 him in his character as a religious teacher. 
 More men and women in China can be reached 
 and vv'on in a single day than were formerly 
 secured in a decade. More persons in India 
 are asking for Christian teachers and preachers 
 to-day than were formerly brought into the 
 Christian fold in half a century. Even in the 
 depths of Africa the same religious phenomenon 
 may be observed. Whole tribes and nations 
 of what were rude savages a quarter of a cen- 
 tury ago have been brought under Christian 
 influences and are eagerly entering upon the 
 pathway of Christian progress. These changes 
 iii the attitude of non-Christian peoples are so 
 
60 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 many and so widely extended that they can 
 neither be overlooked nor misunderstood. 
 They indicate changed and changing con- 
 ditions, and, as far as missionary possibilities 
 are concerned, amount almost to a complete 
 revolution. 
 
 BETTER PLANS COMING INTO FAVOR. 
 
 Another feature of the present outlook which 
 is full of encouragement is seen in the charac- 
 ter of the plans which many missionaries are 
 learning to adopt. In spiritual warfare, as in 
 the strife of armies, very much depends on the 
 plan of campaign which is adopted. If no 
 plan is formed, if no systematic method is 
 pursued, if the efforts put forth are desultory 
 and disconnected, and if the field of operations 
 is contracted almost to the verge of absolute 
 insignificance, no great result can be expected, 
 and success on a wide scale cannot be hoped 
 for. In the past very much of the missionary 
 work of the world has been weak in this re- 
 spect. A band of missionaries settle down at 
 some point and begin to work on a very con- 
 tracted scale, hoping at the very utmost to win a 
 few hundred converts, organize a few churches, 
 as nearly as possible on the home model, and 
 thank God for whatever measure of success 
 they meet. The)- plan for little, expect little 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 6 1 
 
 and receive little. Such men arc often the 
 best of good men ; but it is not by such plans 
 that kingdoms arc to be subdued and empires 
 founded. The task to be accomplished is one 
 of gigantic proportions, and plans should be 
 formed for a campaign worthy of the enterprise 
 in hand. This fact is beginning to be realized. 
 In various parts of the world the spectacle can 
 be witnessed of missionary organizations which 
 extend their operations over a nation, a king- 
 dom, or an empire. These organizations may 
 be only in outline now, but provision is made 
 for filling in all vacant places as the years go 
 by, and thus extending the line until every 
 non-Christian agency is confronted by an ac- 
 tive Christian force, working with all the ad- 
 vantages which careful organization, experi- 
 enced leadership, and quenchless zeal can give. 
 Take India, for example, with its nearly three 
 hundred million people. It seems at first 
 glance a hopeless task to attempt the conver- 
 sion of such a multitude; but when we meet 
 Christian young men and women who expect 
 to live till they form part of a militant host of 
 a hundred thousand Christian soldiers all en- 
 listed in India, and all eagerly pressing for- 
 ward with the instinct of victory in their 
 hearts to achieve the spiritual conquest of an 
 empire, their enterprise ceases to seem imprac- 
 5 
 
62 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 ticable, and their campaign at once attracts 
 attention as one of the grandest attempts ever 
 made by a Christian people to overthrow evil 
 and establish good. 
 
 The mention of one hundred thousand pos- 
 sible Christian workers, enlisted, organized, 
 and engaged in actual service in India or 
 China, calls our attention to the fact that 
 God is teaching the present generation of 
 Christians some important lessons in regard to 
 work and workers in the Master's vineyard. 
 The Church is rapidly outgrowing the old-time 
 notion that a few men constituting an order 
 called " the ministry " hold a virtual monopoly 
 in the Christian labor market. One of the 
 most striking developments of the present day 
 is the extraordinary manner in which men and 
 women of all ages and all ranks are coming for- 
 ward to take up Christian work in various 
 forms, both old and new. In this respect most 
 mission fields are in advance of the home fields. 
 Women are frequently employed, and in large 
 numbers. Men of half a dozen different 
 grades are sent out to preach, and scores of 
 unclassified men, some of them but recent 
 converts who cannot read a line, are success- 
 fully at work persuading their kinsmen and 
 neighbors to abandon dumb idols and turn to 
 the living God. If we attempt to Hmit the 
 
MISSIOXARY rOSSIBILITIES. 63 
 
 work in India or China by the conventional 
 notions which prevail in America it may, no 
 doubt, be very long indeed before the spectacle 
 of one hundred thousand workers is witnessed 
 in India; but neither in India nor America is 
 the old notion going to prevail. The Teacher 
 who delivered the great sermon at Jacob's 
 well saw not only the Samaritans of Sychar 
 around him, but no doubt looked down the 
 ages and saw the times in which we live ; and 
 to us as well as to his first disciples was the 
 exhortation addressed to pray the Lord of the 
 harvest to send forth laborers into the whiten- 
 ing harvest fields. The prayers of millions are 
 ascending, and God is answering by raising up 
 men and women for the mighty task set before 
 his people. Only three months ago one of our 
 Annual Conferences in India resolved to put 
 one hundred and fifty young men into school, 
 with a view to training them for their work as 
 Christian workers. Their course of study will 
 extend over only two years, but this will suf- 
 fice for the kind of work which they will be 
 expected to do. There seems to be no diffi- 
 culty in finding the men, and the wives of 
 many of them will study with their husbands. 
 Here in the United States you can hardly re- 
 alize what this means. You can hardly con- 
 ceive, for instance, what it would mean if an 
 
64 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 Annual Conference in the State of New York 
 were to determine to select one hundred and 
 fifty young men and set them apart for a 
 course of theological study extending over two 
 years, with the expectation of having the men 
 collected and the work in actual progress 
 within two or three months. But in the great 
 mission fields of the world the conditions are 
 such that urgency becomes imperative. If the 
 millions are to be reached workers must liter- 
 ally be thrust out among them. If not highly 
 educated they will yet be far in advance of 
 those to whom they go. They cannot learn 
 very much in two years, but the most of them 
 can lay the foundation of an education which 
 will command respect in village communities 
 and fit them for lives of usefulness in their 
 Master's service. 
 
 POWER OF A CHRISTIAN T^IINORITY. 
 
 But the thought will probably occur to you 
 that, after all, one hundred thousand men and 
 women, even if gifted and devoted in the 
 highest sense, will be almost lost to the sight 
 among the millions of such a country as India, 
 and thus the problem of ultimate success will 
 remain almost as far from solution as ever. I 
 trust, however, that no one will make so great 
 a mistake as to forsret that one true Christian 
 
MISSIONARY rOSSIBILITIES. 65 
 
 counts for as much as a hundred persons of 
 any other faith. A tiny httle lamp is more 
 than a match for a large room full of darkness. 
 The Christians in nearly all communities are 
 in a minority, and yet in most matters they 
 give tone and character to the whole commu- 
 nity. Add to this the consideration that in 
 the problem before us the Christian workers 
 are organized and possess all the advantages 
 which organization gives, and it will be seen 
 that the ultimate conversion of India is by no 
 means so improbable or so remote an event as 
 it is usually assumed to be. 
 
 The wholly unexpected and extraordinary 
 result of the war between Japan and China 
 affords a very instructive illustration at this 
 point. China was in almost every respect the 
 stronger of the two combatants at the outset. 
 Her vast population, her great armies, her ex- 
 haustless resources, and the prestige which her 
 position as the leading Asiatic power gave her, 
 all combined to make the world believe that 
 Japan was entering upon a conflict in which 
 success was impossible ; but events have dem- 
 onstrated that success was not only possible but 
 comparatively easy. How are we to account for 
 the success of Japan and the failure of China ? 
 The Japanese were united, had a single pur- 
 pose in view, and above all were organized for 
 
66 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 victory. The Chinese, on the other hand, 
 had a very imperfect organization, had no 
 definite purpose, and, as a people, practically 
 took no part in the struggle. Under such 
 conditions thirty-five million Japanese were 
 equal to four hundred million Chinese. In the 
 impending struggle between Christianity and 
 the non-Christian faiths in India, and to some 
 extent in all non-Christian lands, very similar 
 conditions prevail, and similar results may be 
 anticipated. A small Christian force may 
 always be estimated as fully equal to a very 
 large non-Christian body, especially if the 
 former is truly Christian. I have sometimes 
 even ventured to express the opinion that 
 when the Christians of India amount to 
 a total community of ten millions they will 
 exert more influence and wield more power 
 than the whole non-Christian mass of the 
 population. 
 
 ESTIMATING RESULTS. 
 
 Many good Christians doubt the wisdom of 
 all attempts to estimate the results of Christian 
 labor. They are willing to sow and plant in 
 springtime and to estimate the amount to be 
 gathered in harvest ; but in the spiritual world 
 they shrink from the very thought of calmly 
 sitting down to calculate results in this way. 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 6/ 
 
 To some it seems too mechanical, to others 
 irreverent, while to others it probably appears 
 as too uncertain to be depended on. And yet 
 God encourages us to expect success, and has 
 given us a whole galaxy of promises to 
 strengthen us while we toil. Of all living men 
 the missionary ought to feel most assured of 
 success. He may be mistaken as to details, 
 but his commission is given by One who shall 
 never fail nor be discouraged till judgment is 
 set in the earth ; and this One is his daily com- 
 panion and his victorious leader evermore. 
 Night may cease to distill its dews, but the rich 
 dews of heavenly grace will never cease to re- 
 fresh the spirit of the Christian toiler or fail to 
 water the precious seed which he scatters in 
 human hearts. The wind may cease to blow 
 where it listeth, but the Spirit of God will 
 never cease to attend the steps of the humblest 
 disciple who goes forth as a messenger of Jesus 
 Christ. Storm and tempest, hail and frost, 
 blight and mildew may defeat the plans and 
 mar the hopes of other toilers ; but all things 
 in God's universe, from the starry systems 
 above us to the minute events of our daily lives, 
 move together in harmony with the best possi- 
 ble interests of every work which we carry on 
 in the name of Jesus Christ. With these facts 
 before us, why should we shrink from the 
 
68 MISSIONARY POSSIBILHIES. 
 
 thought of using our confidence as a basis for 
 action ? Why sliould we hesitate to make use 
 of all the elements of certainty Avhich enter into 
 the prosecution of such a work as that which 
 the missionary prosecutes? 
 
 Many years ago a friend in a city in upper 
 India submitted for my inspection a plan for 
 the erection of a large manufacturing establish- 
 ment. All the details had been carefully elabo- 
 rated, and the probable results of the enter- 
 prise were boldly tabulated. In due time a 
 company was formed, capital invested, build- 
 ings erected, and work commenced ; and for 
 more than twenty years the plans elaborated 
 on paper have been successfully illustrated in 
 action. We are not surprised at this, and no 
 one dreams that the first promoter of the en- 
 terprise did an unwise thing in planning for the 
 future. About the same time a Christian 
 worker went to another city in India to lay the 
 foundations of a great Christian enterprise. 
 His working capital consisted almost wholly in 
 the promises of God. He confidently expected 
 success, and began his work as if it were 
 already assured. His enterprise also proved 
 successful, and goes on apace, gaining con- 
 stant headway, to the present day. These two 
 men worked on similar principles, one in the 
 commercial world and the other in the spir- 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 6g 
 
 itual. Did the Christian commit an error in 
 assuming- that one of the children of light 
 might venture to be as wise in his generation 
 as the children of this world? 
 
 OUR OrrORTUNITIES. 
 
 If now we turn to the great missionary- 
 world, look at our possibilities, and form plans 
 accordingly, we can hardly fail to be impressed 
 with the conviction that no men and women 
 since Pentecost have ever enjoyed such oppor- 
 tunities as those which God is setting before 
 his people. Practically there is no limit to the 
 vast field which presents itself to our vision. 
 If we ask for a region in which people may be 
 found who ask for instruction, not in a general 
 sense, but definitely, for the purpose of becom- 
 ing Christians, we may find a score of such dis- 
 tricts in India, a number in China, and other 
 equally hopeful people in the interior of Africa. 
 If the workers could be found ready to receive 
 ihem one hundred thousand candidates for 
 baptism could be enrolled in India alone before 
 the close of the present year. Intelligent ob- 
 servers in China assure me that the outlook in 
 some parts of that empire is rapidly becoming 
 almost equally hopeful. Let it be conceded that 
 these people are very ignorant, very poor, and 
 very weak in moral character ; but the fact 
 
70 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 remains that they are inquiring the way to 
 Christianity, and that thousands of other poor 
 creatures of Hke cliaracter have become genuine 
 Christians. The one conspicuous fact which 
 confronts us is that tens of thousands of peo- 
 ple whom we call heathen wish to become 
 Christians, and are willing and ready to receive 
 instruction at the hands of the Christian mis- 
 sionary. Putting aside all other more distant 
 possibilities, and considering only those regions 
 where willing thousands await our coming, I do 
 not hesitate to sa)- that a forward movement 
 on the part of all the evangelical Churches of 
 Christendom might very easily be made to 
 yield one hundred thousand adult converts 
 every year, or, in other words, might be made 
 to produce as much fruit in nine years as all 
 the missions of the world have done in the 
 past century. 
 
 But the possibilities of the situation do not 
 stop here ; they only begin to unfold them- 
 selves to our view. All experience has taught 
 us that an ingathering of converts may be ex- 
 pected to prepare the way for a still larger 
 number of inquirers. The presence of one 
 hundred thousand converts to-day means the 
 appearance of two hundred thousand inquirers 
 in the near future ; and in this way we may 
 confidently assume that before many years the 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. J I 
 
 great mission fields of the v/orld will present 
 the spectacle of millions of men and women 
 waiting to be received and guided into the way 
 of life. The millions are coming as surely as 
 harvest follows springtime, and we must pre- 
 pare for their coming. Let no one be startled 
 at the thought or tempted to fear that I am 
 yielding to a flight of fancy or led away by an 
 extravagant enthusiasm. This world is to be- 
 come a Christian world ; the powers of hell 
 are to be overthrown, and our Sax'iour, Christ, 
 is to reign in righteousness over all nations. 
 But if such a day ever comes, if kingdoms and 
 nations are to be wrested from the grasp of 
 Satan and given to Christ as his inheritance, 
 there must come a day when Christians shall 
 learn to speak of millions as freely as they now 
 speak of thousands. At tlie present rate of 
 missionary progress a millennium would not 
 suffice to prepare the way for the great millen- 
 nial reign to v.hich we all look forward v.'ith such 
 ardent hope. It is a striking comment on the 
 feeble faith and limited vision of present-day 
 Christians, to note how most of them start as 
 if in alarm at the mere mention of an early in- 
 gathering of millions of redeemed men and 
 women. Christianity must mean this or else 
 stand before the world as a gigantic and con- 
 fessed failure ; and as Christians we owe it to 
 
72 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 the faith which we profess to maintain a se- 
 rene confidence in God and in the great work 
 which he is carrying on among the nations. 
 
 A century hence there will be, possibly, 
 seven hundred million, and certainly five hun- 
 dred million, English-speaking people on the 
 globe, all subject to Christian law, maintaining 
 Christian civilization, and exhibiting a much 
 higher standard of morals than is seen in either 
 England or America to-day. The spirit of 
 Christian law will pervade the statute books 
 and courts of justice of all nations. Religious 
 liberty will have become the unchallenged 
 right of the whole human race. Railways will 
 have penetrated to the most remote corners of 
 the earth. The influence of the Protestant 
 nations will be paramount everywhere, and 
 every other public influence, whether religious 
 or political, will be on the wane. The English 
 language, already a potent factor in many mis- 
 sion fields, will have become the lingua fra^ica 
 of the world, and will assist wonderfully in per- 
 fecting the later stages of the missionary enter- 
 prise. In such an age, with a world so revolu- 
 tionized, and with all the terms of the problem 
 so changed, the final conversion of all nations 
 will no longer seem a far-off vision of a {q.\n en- 
 thusiasts, and the mention of a million converts 
 will no longer startle timid or doubting Chris- 
 
MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. ^ I 
 
 tians. We talk in hesitating tones of the pos- 
 sibihty of seeing a milHon converts now ; but 
 those who will fill our places a century hence 
 will look out upon a scene where not a million 
 converts, but a million workers, appear. 
 
 I am a firm believer in a good time coming, 
 but do not forget that many severe struggles 
 lie between us and the good time for which we 
 hope and pray. But in the meantime let us 
 watch for open doors and hasten to enter them 
 whenever found. It is my firm conviction that 
 the mission fields of the world afford the best op- 
 portunities to the average young man or woman 
 to be found anywhere at the present time. 
 The teacher who searches for months to find 
 employment here can find a thousund children 
 waiting for him on the other side of the globe. 
 The preacher who struggles to hold together a 
 congregation of a few hundred here can find a 
 hundred thousand neglected souls in the mis- 
 sion field. The young writer who strives in 
 vain to gain recognition in the periodical 
 literature of America may go abroad and 
 join in an effort to provide a literature for un- 
 born nations. The hundreds upon hundreds 
 of young people who stand idle in the world's 
 market place might find employment for heart 
 and hand if they could only learn the secret 
 of becoming helpers to universal humanity. 
 
74 MISSIONARY POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 Illustrations of various kinds suggest them- 
 selves, but time forbids. Suffice it to say that 
 the universal Church of Jesus Christ needs to 
 ponder well at the present day the whole 
 question of missionary possibilities. In many 
 cases a very wide gulf separates the possible 
 from the actual, and in few cases are the 
 startling possibilities of the hour appreciated. 
 In these waning years of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury all Christians should unite in a supreme 
 effort to give an impetus to the missionary 
 enterprise which will be felt for long years to 
 come, and which will give a distinctive char- 
 acter to the next century. There is little or 
 no fear of our attempting too much, while 
 there is a constant danger of our contracting 
 the spiritual paralysis which so often results 
 from attempting too little. Nowhere in the 
 missionary world do we see any interest suffer- 
 ing because too much has been attempted, 
 but at a hundred points we see painful em- 
 barrassment because plans are too contracted 
 or support too spasmodic or insufficient. An 
 enterprise which aims at the conversion of a 
 world calls for broad statesmanship, farseeing 
 views, comprehensive plans, and invincible 
 faith; and all these the God of all grace will 
 bestow if his people will obey the great mis- 
 sionary commission which he has given them. 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
WOA1AN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 F an announcement had been made that at 
 this time and place I would dehver a lecture 
 on woman's work in the United States navy, 
 the pubHc would hardly have been more puz- 
 zled to understand my proposed treatment of 
 the subject than tlic Christian public in Eng- 
 land or America w^ould have been if a lecture 
 had been announced fifty years ago on the 
 subject which I wish to present to you this 
 afternoon. 
 
 During the earlier years of the missionary 
 enterprise woman only appears incidentally in 
 connection with the work. Strangely enough, 
 at the outset the wife of the great pioneer of 
 the movement is only mentioned in connection 
 with the fact that she absolutely declined to 
 go with her husband to India, and that the 
 good man's faith was so sorely tested that he 
 had actually concluded to leave her behind 
 him, and was on board the vessel, ready to sail 
 for his distant field, before his wife yielded the 
 point and consented to go with him. There 
 certainly did not seem to be much hope at that 
 critical moment of woman's cooperation in the 
 
78 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 cjreat work about to be inauQ:urated. But this 
 poor afflicted woman was not destined to be- 
 come an exemplar of her sex in subsequent 
 years. On the other hand, Dr. Carey was 
 about to open a door through which hundreds 
 and thousands of Christian women were after- 
 ward to enter and bear a truly noble part in 
 the great work to be accomplished. 
 
 In the very nature of things it was not pos- 
 sible that a work such as was contemplated when 
 the modern missionary enterprise was first pro- 
 jected could be carried on without more or less 
 cooperation from Christian women ; and yet it 
 is surprising that no special attention was given 
 to the subject for so many years. No one 
 dreamed of the possibilities that were all the 
 time in the grasp of the willing hands of many 
 thousands of Christ's best disciples. No one 
 ever thought, even for a moment, of the im- 
 mense reinforcements which were within easy 
 call, and which might have been sent out to 
 aid the workers at the front, who were, and 
 still are, always sorely pressed for help. This 
 is the more strange because constant tokens 
 were given by the Lord of the harvest of what 
 might be accomplished if the cooperation of 
 devoted Christian women could be secured, 
 especially in some departments of the work 
 for which, from the first, the few women in the 
 
WOMAN IX THE MISSION FIELD. 79 
 
 field showed a special aptitude. Many of the 
 wives of the missionaries proved to be women 
 specially gifted for the kind of work which 
 they found, and not a (cw of them acquitted 
 themselves nobly in connection with the work 
 which their husbands were carrying on. Now 
 and then a devoted widow, when left alone in 
 her distant field, chose to remain at her post 
 and carry on the work which her husband had 
 left behind him, and it also happened in a few 
 cases that unmarried ladies were sent out for 
 special departments of the work ; but these 
 cases were so exceptional, and the duties 
 assigned to the workers were so limited, that 
 we now look back with surprise that the lead- 
 ers of those early days were so slow to 
 interpret the providential tokens which God 
 was so constantly giving them. 
 
 The excellent Christian ladies who were per- 
 mitted to bear some slight part in the mission- 
 ary work during the first half of the century 
 had not the opportunities which their sisters 
 who are now in the field enjoy ; and yet we 
 must not depreciate the part which they bore 
 in the great missionary enterprise. They were 
 pioneers. Like faithful watchers proclaiming 
 the coming morning, they went abroad in an 
 age of intense darkness, at a time when few in- 
 telligent Christians in the world comprehended 
 
80 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 the value of woman's work in any sphere, and 
 slowly and patiently did their part in pointing 
 out a better way and holding out the promise 
 of a brighter day. The fullness of time had 
 not come during their lifetime. We all need 
 to comprehend more accurately the meaning 
 of this term, " the fullness of time." We are 
 all too prone to become impatient because we 
 cannot accomplish at once results which we 
 clearly see ought to be accomplished, forget- 
 ting that a thing which is abstractly possible 
 may practically be impossible. The time may 
 not be ripe, or the best agents for accomplish- 
 ing the work may not be ready, or various im- 
 portant interests may need adjustment, or any 
 one of a dozen hindrances may exist of which 
 we know nothing. So far as the present discus- 
 sion is concerned it is enough for us to know 
 that the fullness of time for woman, not only in 
 the mission field, but in many other spheres 
 of action, had not yet come. 
 
 woman's era. 
 
 A new era dawned upon the womanhood of 
 the world a little more than thirty years ago. 
 Tokens of its coming had appeared, no doubt, 
 much earlier ; but ever}'one whose memory 
 runs back to that period can remember how 
 limited the opportunities of womanhood were 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 81 
 
 in every direction. The professions were 
 closed against her, and beyond the use of the 
 needle and domestic service the only avenue 
 of employment which seemed opened to her 
 was that of teacliing. All at once a hundred 
 questions affecting her interests began to be 
 raised ; demands for wider opportunities, for the 
 removal of needless and even stupid restrictions 
 of many kinds, began to be made with an im- 
 portunity which commanded attention, and a 
 steady movement, bearing on its surface not a 
 few features which might justly be included 
 under the term emancipation, set in, and con- 
 tinues to make headway to the present day. 
 Year by year the womanhood of the English- 
 speaking world gained advantages of many 
 kinds, until it began to seem as if a steady ex- 
 pansion of what might be called woman's king- 
 dom had not only set in, but bade fair to become 
 permanent ; that is, the movement which I 
 again venture to call the emancipation of 
 woman from long ages of unsuspected bondage 
 — domestic, social, economic, and even re- 
 ligious — continues to the present day, and is 
 full of hope for the century soon to open. 
 
 Among the many spheres of action which 
 have thus been providentially opened to woman 
 none, in my opinion, affords her a better op- 
 portunity, and none appeals more urgently to 
 
82 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 all those excellences of character which are • 
 peculiar to her, than that which is found in 
 the great mission field of the world. In that 
 field she has practically a boundless sphere of 
 action. She was called to till a ground which, 
 through all historic ages, had remained fallow. 
 She hears a voice appealing to her from millions 
 and hundreds of millions of her own sex, who 
 in all the centuries past have never yet seen a 
 Christian figure cross their pathway, and never 
 heard a voice, from earth or sky, which carried 
 hope to their darkened hearts. Not only in 
 what has been accomplished, but still more in 
 the demands of the present hour, and in the 
 splendid opportunities which the coming years 
 are sure to unfold, may any earnest woman find 
 in the mission field a place in which all her 
 best abilities may find abundant employment. 
 Not many years have passed since the great 
 missionary movement under the direction of 
 Christian women first became a recognized 
 factor in our Christian Churches ; but already 
 enough has been accomplished to prove that 
 those who first took up this peculiar work 
 were not mistaken in their convictions. 
 
 woman's MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. 
 
 It would be very interesting to pause here 
 and tell the story of the origin and progress, 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 83 
 
 thus far, of the many woman's missionary 
 societies now at work in the United States. 
 At tlie beginning many old-time friends of the 
 missionary cause, and man)' conspicuous lead- 
 ers in the various Churches of the country, 
 who had no special connection with missionary 
 matters, looked on with undisguised astonish- 
 ment at a movement which seemed so utterly 
 out of line with all previous action of the 
 Church from the apostles' da)' down to the 
 present time. " What does it mean ? " " Why 
 must we have societies for women ? " " Why 
 not organize a boys' society ? " " Why not 
 have a society for little girls ? " " Why not 
 have an old men's society?" "Cannot the 
 missionary societies now in existence take up 
 this work ? " " Do not these new societies 
 portend mischief in the future?" These and 
 scores of similar questions were asked, some- 
 times in a bantering tone, but more frequently 
 in very sober earnest. The difficulty in the 
 case was that the movement was not under- 
 stood. Very few, even of the most intelligent 
 Christians, know what it is to keep a sharp out- 
 look for what our Saviour called the " day of 
 visitation ;" and hence nearly all new move- 
 ments in the Christian world come with all the 
 force of a surprise to the multitude. If all the 
 Christian public had been carefully watching 
 
84 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 ihc missioiuuy horizon of the world many 
 tcjkcns of the coming change would have been 
 seen for a dozen }'ears before the first woman's 
 missionary society appeared. In almost every 
 mission field a demand for such help as Chris- 
 tian women can give Avas beginning to be felt. 
 New doors were opening and new voices were 
 calling ; new emergencies were appearing upon 
 the horizon. Meanwhile the existing mission- 
 ary societies were not found adapted to the 
 changes of the hour. Their leaders could not 
 comprehend a situation v/hich, in many of its 
 features, was wholly new. It is easy enough 
 now to see that this and that and the other 
 thing should have been done, or might have 
 been done, but the practical matter of fact 
 which we have to consider is that none of 
 these things were done. Men and women 
 seldom do the best ideal thing, but in very 
 many cases the}' do the best possible thing, 
 and in the case before us this appears to have 
 been the course \\hich was follov/ed. It would 
 have been better, probably, if no Vv^oman's 
 society had been organized, and that, instead 
 of a new organization, the old societies had 
 been so modified as to meet the new demand. 
 I say it would probably have been better, but 
 I do not believe it could possibly have been 
 done. The practical fact remains that in the 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 85 
 
 course of a few years every great Protestant 
 Church in England and America found itself 
 provided with a Woman's Foreign Missionar)- 
 Society, fully equipped, with an active mem- 
 bership, a thorough organization, and an abun- 
 dant zeal for the great work v/hich God had set 
 before his anointed handmaidens. 
 
 About a quarter of a century has passed 
 since these missionary societies began to be 
 organized, and it is now time for us to look at 
 their work and see what has been accomplished. 
 As I am better acquainted Avith India than 
 with any other field I shall confine my descrip- 
 tion of the A\ork abroad mainly to the various 
 fields under my own superintendence in India 
 and Malaysia. No doubt an equally interest- 
 ing stor}' could be told in reference to China, 
 Japan, Mexico, or other fields. 
 
 THE ZENANA. 
 
 First of all, let me speak of the zenana. 
 This is the name of a part of the family dwell- 
 ing in which the women are kept in seclusion. 
 It is simply the women's cpiarters in an ordi- 
 nary house belonging to a family of the higher 
 class. You are probably aware that both Hin- 
 doos and I\Iohammedans who are able to afford 
 that st}'le of living keep their wives and 
 daughters in absolute seclusion. A little girl 
 
86 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 is allowed a good deal of liberty until she is 
 about seven or eight years of age, when her 
 face no longer is seen in public. This style of 
 living, however, is much more expensive than 
 the more simple home life of the lower classes, 
 and hence only a minority of the people can 
 afford either to supply the house room or to 
 keep their wives and daughters in idleness. It 
 is a very great mistake to suppose, as very 
 commonly is supposed in this country, that 
 these women and girls are unv/illing captives 
 pining for liberty. In oriental lands, even 
 more than in western countries, fashion is om- 
 nipotent, and the power of social respectability 
 is so potent that almost any unveiled woman 
 in the East would gladly surrender her liberty 
 if she could gain the social promotion which is 
 implied in belonging to the zenana. True 
 enough, the women who are subject to this 
 system are always very glad to get a glimpse 
 of the outdoor world, but only one in a hun- 
 dred would accept the life of unveiled women 
 if they had the opportunity. They would 
 shrink with fear from such a proposal, as if it 
 implied a surrender of moral character. Life 
 in these zenanas is not so unhappy as is often 
 represented, and yet it must, in the nature of 
 things, be a dwarfed life, and in many of its 
 features it can hardly be otherwise than a sad life. 
 
Woman in the mission field. 87 
 
 The first movement in the direction of send- 
 ing lady missionaries to India was in the inter- 
 est of these zenana women. It was known 
 that they had no educational advantages, that 
 they never could hear the sound of the Gospel, 
 that no messenger of Christ could possibly 
 reach them in the ordinary course of events, 
 and hence the thought occurred that if Chris- 
 tian women Avould go to them as teachers a 
 double purpose might be accomplished. The 
 women and girls might be taught to read, and 
 in this way get access not only to Bible truths, 
 but in an important sense to the outer world. 
 At the same time the Christian woman who 
 entered the zenana as a teacher would have 
 the privilege, through the medium of conver- 
 sation, of telling of Christ and his salvation, of 
 heaven, of immortality, and of all that is em- 
 braced in the term Christian hope. An appeal 
 in behalf of the millions of women who are in- 
 mates of the zenanas of India met with a ready 
 response. But God had a much wider field 
 in view than the zenana when he moved his 
 handmaidens to undertake this task. Divine 
 plans are seldom limited to a single field of 
 action. The work was commenced in good 
 faith among the zenana women, and met with 
 immediate and marked success. A single 
 generation has not yet been passed, and those 
 
88 WO.MAX IN THE ^flSSTON FIELD. 
 
 engaged in the Avork now meet with both 
 Hindoo and Mohammedan competitors in con- 
 stantly increasing numbers. These competitors 
 are women who have been educated by the 
 missionary ladies themselves. Schools have 
 been organized and are constantly increasing 
 in number, and those who do not wish to em- 
 ploy missionaries find it quite possible now to 
 get women and girls of their own religion to 
 take up the work. Some missionary ladies 
 feel a little disconcerted v/hen they meet this 
 unexpected rivalry; but I mention it merely 
 as an evidence of their success. We should 
 all rejoice that so recent a movement has 
 already made such marked advances, that 
 those who a few years ago were utterly illiter- 
 ate are now able to compete with educated 
 ladies who have gone halfway round the 
 globe to carry on their missionary work. 
 
 QUIET PROGRESS. 
 
 The success of this work, however, does not 
 end here. While the zenana s}-steni is not 
 abolished in a day, and while some features of 
 the work are less than satisfactory, yet in the 
 larger cities there is undoubtedly quite a steady 
 movement in the directi(,m of the social eman- 
 cipation of woman in India. In man}- little 
 matters the prejudices of ages arc giving way. 
 
V/OMAX IX THE MISSIOX FIELD. 89 
 
 The women and girls are gaining new privi- 
 leges, by inches, it is true, and yet they arc 
 gaining. Those who have longest experience 
 in the country are not anxious to see their 
 progress much more rapid than it is. A few 
 cases of painful failure, resulting from a too 
 rapid change in social conditions, have taught 
 us that all movements of this kind must come, 
 like the springtime, after a long and dreary 
 winter. The flowers of spring cannot be called 
 forth in an hour. There must be days and 
 weeks of light and warmth an.d growth be- 
 fore the time of flowering and fruitage comes 
 round. The work commenced among the 
 zenana W'omen in India is advancing rapidly 
 enough. 
 
 I will here mention a little episode that oc- 
 curred not long ago in connection with our 
 woman's work in a large city in India, premis- 
 ing, however, that we are obliged to be very 
 careful how we make public reference to such 
 incidents. I suppose I enjoy the singular honor 
 of being the first European man who was ever 
 admitted to an assembly composed exclusively 
 of respectable zenana women. The circum- 
 stances were very peculiar. Without a single 
 exception, not one, in an assembly numbering 
 perhaps one hundred and fifty women and girls, 
 and belonging to very respectable families, 
 
90 WOMAN IX THE INIISSION FIELD. 
 
 had ever before been admitted into the pres- 
 ence of a person of the opposite sex, except 
 in the case of fathers, husbands, or brothers. 
 IMany of the women, however, had become 
 somewhat enlightened and viewed the matter 
 sensibly. My age and supposed sanctity made 
 my case somewhat exceptional, and I enjoyed 
 the rare privilege of seeing this respectable as- 
 sembly and spending some time among them 
 without any demonstration of either fear or 
 displeasure on their part ; and I have no doubt 
 that before many years such a privilege will 
 cease to be regarded as in any way extraor- 
 dinary. 
 
 A WIDENING SPHERE. 
 
 I have said that a much wider sphere of 
 action awaited the first lady missionaries than 
 had been anticipated by either themselves or 
 those who sent them. Their attention was 
 quickly drawn to the condition of women gen- 
 erally, and especially to the fact that female 
 education had scarcely yet been recognized at 
 all. When I first went to India, in 1859, I 
 found our mission located in a field containing 
 about seventeen million inhabitants, and among 
 all these millions I do not suppose there were 
 seventeen women and girls who knew how to 
 read. Among such a people it was inevitable 
 that Christian ladies from America should feel 
 
WOMAN IX THE MISSION FIELD. 9 1 
 
 that it was woe unto them if they did not try 
 to give at least an elementary education to 
 these utterly illiterate women. I may here 
 mention that education, like vital Christianity, 
 is in a measure contagious. These ladies knew 
 very well that they could never teach all the 
 women around them, but they also knew that 
 if they could establish schools and in this way 
 get education rooted among the women of the 
 country it would make headway almost of 
 itself. The presence of educated persons is 
 almost sure to create a desire among the un- 
 educated for the higher privileges of those who 
 are able to read and write, and who in conse- 
 quence occupy a more important social position 
 than the ignorant. In addition to this general 
 demand for schools among the people at large 
 a more special demand was found among the 
 Christian converts. At first these converts 
 were few in number, but as they began to in- 
 crease somewhat rapidly it was found abso- 
 lutely necessary to educate their daughters, 
 and hence many ladies who went to India as 
 missionaries have never taken any part in 
 what is now popularly known as zenana work. 
 They have found the demand for the education 
 of the converts so urgent and so constantly 
 increasing that they can give attention to 
 nothing else. Elementary schools for girls 
 
92 AVOMAX IX THE MISSIOX FIELD. 
 
 have been established in literally hundreds of 
 villages and towns, while at central points 
 boarding schools of higher grade have also 
 been established and are increasing both in 
 numbers and efficiency. I cannot in the 
 brief time at my disposal give you more than 
 an outline of this work. Suffice it to say that 
 in tlie field where, as I have just said, we failed 
 to find seventeen women able to read among 
 a population of seventeen million persons 
 we have now not only many schools of a very 
 respectable grade, but have actually established 
 one school at Lucknow on a college basis. 
 Stranger still, so much progress has been made, 
 and so marked has been the change of public 
 sentiment among both Hindus and Moham- 
 medans, that an energetic movement is now on 
 foot in the same city of Lucknow to establish 
 what might be called a rival college, that is, 
 an institution of college grade for women and 
 girls in which no Christianity shall be taught. 
 This, again, I do not regard as in any measure 
 an unfavorable symptom. We should rejoice 
 rather that the general cause is making such 
 satisfactory progress, and for my own part I 
 sincerely wish that the people of India could 
 and would maintain a hundred colleges for 
 women, even if they should as carefully ex- 
 clude every Christian missionary and minister 
 
WOM-AX IX THE MISSION FIELD. 93 
 
 from such institutions as Stephen Giraid did 
 from the college which he founded in Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 FEMALE EVANGELISTS. 
 
 During my long residence in India I have 
 met with many surprises, but perhaps nothing 
 has been more unexpected than the demand 
 which of late years has arisen for evangelistic 
 work among the women. Generations ago the 
 public in England and America were much less 
 familiar with the idea of women evangelists 
 than they have become since ; but that which 
 at best seemed difficult or unusual in the United 
 States would have seemed very nearly impos- 
 sible if proposed at an earlier day in India. 
 The demand for this peculiar kind of work was 
 perceived at a comparatively early day, but the 
 peculiar difficulties of the situation in a coun- 
 try like India prevented most persons from an- 
 ticipating the measure of success which has 
 been achieved since. 
 
 I have already remarked that all women in 
 India are not kept in seclusion. In fact, only a 
 comparatively small minority of them belong 
 to the class known as zenana women ; but, with 
 rare exceptions, it may be said that all women, 
 even including the majority of Christians, are 
 in many respects inaccessible to the ordinary 
 Christian minister. The standard of public 
 
94 WOMAN IX THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 taste does not admit of the free interchange of 
 even ordinary civihties between the sexes to 
 which we are accustomed in the United States. 
 The idea of women being seen in a large as- 
 sembly, seated in public like men, and enjoy- 
 ing all the privileges of the occasion with the 
 same freedom which is accorded to their hus- 
 bands and brothers, is utterly foreign to the 
 standard of taste which has been recognized 
 throughout the empire in all past ages. This 
 accounts for the fact that when missionaries go 
 on itinerating tours they seldom see a woman in 
 their audiences. A very few timid creatures 
 may be seen peering around the corner of a 
 house near by, or looking down from some of 
 the flat roofs in the vicinity, but it is very sel- 
 dom indeed that even half a dozen women can 
 be induced to take their places among the men 
 gathered under a village tree or on some va- 
 cant spot beside one of the village streets. 
 
 The difficulty caused by this timidity be- 
 comes more embarrassing when an attempt is 
 made to correct any errors observed in the do- 
 mestic life of the people. The ordinary mis- 
 sionary has few opportunities for observing life 
 as it really is within the sacred precincts of a 
 village home. No men in the world are more 
 jealous of their homes than the simple peasants 
 of India. Every one of them regards his mud- 
 
WOMAN IX THE MISSION FIELD. 95 
 
 v.alled hut as at once his castle and his temple, 
 and, under ordinary rules, a strange man is not 
 expected to cross its threshold. Christianity 
 may ultimately break do\vn these barriers, but 
 for a generation at least it will be impossible 
 for the missionary so completely to win his way 
 beyond the doorway of the hut as to be able 
 to exert much practical influence among the 
 women within. And even if he were to gain 
 free admission his defective knowledge of the 
 peculiar notions and habits of the women would 
 make him at best a very sorry teacher. It 
 is very different with the lady missionary from 
 England or America who masters the language 
 of the people, and, having gained ready admit- 
 tance to the homes of the people, is quickly 
 able to understand all their peculiar notions 
 and habits, and thus becomes able to correct 
 what is wrong, suggest many little reforms, and 
 inspire the people with better purposes and 
 brighter hopes. 
 
 For some }'ears past it has been abundantly 
 clear to our most faithful missionaries that the 
 question of employing women as evangelists in 
 India is no longer one of expediency, but of 
 absolute necessity. Thousands upon thou- 
 sands of the wives and mothers of our converts 
 are still so deplorably ignorant, and so wedded 
 to many of their former notions and customs, 
 
g6 WOMAN IX THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 that the missionary despairs of building up a 
 healthy Christian community unless something 
 can be done for them. I am happy to be able 
 to testify that very much has been done. Many 
 of our ladies in India have seen and felt for 
 years the necessity for this kind of work, and 
 have given it their best attention. If time per- 
 mitted I might speak of success achieved in 
 many different places, but it will suffice, per- 
 haps, to mention only one conspicuous example 
 of what can be done by brave, earnest, and 
 faithful labor of this kind. 
 
 AN ANOINTED LEADER. 
 
 Miss Phebe Rowe, though born and brought 
 up in India, is well known to many thousands 
 in the United States. She paid a brief visit 
 to this country some years ago, and during her 
 stay made an extraordinary impression upon 
 all who came in contact with her. With an 
 unusual command of the Hindustani language, 
 she is able to reach all classes, using a dialect 
 which is understood by the most ignorant, and 
 which yet does not offend the most fastidious 
 ears by its remarkable simplicity. Miss Rowe 
 seemed to be a person of frail health, and cer- 
 tainly without much power of physical endur- 
 ance ; but, seeing the increasing demand for 
 evangelistic work among the wives of our con- 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 97 
 
 verts, she consented to be set apart for this 
 kind of labor, and in prosecuting it she has de- 
 veloped not only remarkable ability for the 
 work, but has also gained in physical strength, 
 so that her endurance of fatigue, and sometimes 
 of exposure, during her tours in the most try- 
 ing season of the year, have become a wonder 
 to all who knew her. Her chief mission is to 
 the Christians and to the Christian women ; but 
 I must remark in passing that she has long 
 since found, what every such worker must find, 
 that it is utterly impossible for any woman to 
 confine her labors in work of this kind to one 
 sex. If she gains access to the women, and in- 
 fluences them for good, she must in the nature 
 of things also influence their husbands, and it 
 has constantly happened that while speaking 
 to the wife the husband and sons have become 
 interested listeners. Not only this ; it is nearly 
 impossible for a lady with her peculiar gifts to 
 enter any village without meeting some of the 
 most respectable men of the place, and, as her 
 erraiid must always be explained, it becomes 
 inevitable that she will, more or less informally, 
 be found preaching to them. Her singing is 
 listened to with the most extreme delight by 
 all classes, and although the excellent ladies of 
 the Foreign Missionary Society have repeatedly 
 caused it to be understood that they wish only 
 
98 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 to support work among the women, Miss Rowe 
 is constantly illustrating how impossible it is 
 for their directions to be followed. In other 
 words, while trying to be an evangelist among 
 the baptized women in the various Christian 
 communities, she has really become a most 
 useful evangelist among all classes. 
 
 Miss Rowe has associated with her in this 
 work two or three Hindustani women, and as 
 time passes will no doubt find others with like 
 graces and gifts for this same work. I look 
 upon her as a pioneer, as the forerunner of a 
 mighty host. Other women will undoubtedly 
 be raised up and in the providence of God 
 thrust out into this same work. There are 
 peculiar difficulties in connection with such 
 work, especially when the evangelists are na- 
 tives of India; but as time passes our ladies 
 will, no doubt, learn how to overcome these 
 difficulties, as they have scores of other ob- 
 stacles in times gone by. 
 
 There are over one hundred and forty mil- 
 lion women and girls in India. The state- 
 ment will seem incredible, but actually over 
 twenty-two million of these women are 
 widows. Many of these widows are chil- 
 dren of tender age, and yet, if the rules of 
 Hinduism are strictly enforced, their widow- 
 hood is perpetual. They are subjected to many 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 99 
 
 hardships, and must go through hfe beheving 
 that tb.c}' arc the victims of misfortune, that 
 their unhappy lot can never be alleviated in 
 the present world, wliile any thought of a 
 better world to come, if ever presented to their 
 minds at all, can only appear in dim and fading 
 oulline. The mere statement of these facts will 
 suffice to impress upon you the vastness of the 
 mighty work which Christian women have 
 undertaken in India. I could, no doubt, if 
 time permitted, produce quite as strong a case 
 in behalf of the women of China and other 
 non-Christian regions. The hope of the woman- 
 hood of the world is bound up in the progress 
 of Christianity, and to the Christian women of 
 England and America, more than to all other 
 living persons, is committed the sacred trust of 
 making Christianity accomplish its full divine 
 purpose in reaching, enlightening, elevating, 
 and emancipating the hundreds of miUions of 
 women and girls who are to-day sitting in deep 
 mental and spiritual darkness. 
 
 ADMINISTRATIVE DUTIES. 
 
 I vvish now to call your attention to a feature 
 of woman's work in the mission field which has 
 thus far happily attracted little attention. I 
 refer to woman as administrator of missionary, 
 or even ecclesiastical, affairs. I need not say 
 
100 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 that this subject, so far as it affects the United 
 States, has for some jears past been a burning 
 question. It is practically the same question 
 on the other side of the globe, but happily in 
 India this burning question does not burn. It 
 has been calmly dealt with from the first, and 
 privileges have been conceded to our mission- 
 ary ladies which would startle both conserva- 
 tive and liberal men in this country, if they 
 could only perceive how freely the whole ques- 
 tion has been dealt with in the mission field. 
 Indeed, I have often doubted whether in India 
 itself many persons had given serious thought 
 to the subject. When a woman is sent abroad 
 as a missionary, and succeeds in creating 
 Christian agencies of various kinds around her, 
 it follows in the very nature of the case that 
 she must exert more or less authority in direct- 
 ing those who have become subordinate to her. 
 She must, as I have already shown, very often 
 be found talking to mixed assemblies, and 
 sometimes to assemblies of men only; and if 
 her talk is carefully analyzed it will be found 
 to resemble very closely the kind of talk which 
 in America is called preaching. Hence it is 
 that many women who would shrink from the 
 very thought of becoming preachers are prac- 
 tically doing the work of preachers every day 
 of their lives. They are also found in the 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. lOI 
 
 schoolroom, and in the course of events often 
 become, not only teachers, but superintendents 
 of scliools. Their agencies of various kinds 
 expand more and more, until their jurisdiction 
 becomes in many instances a very wide one. 
 Then, when the missionary, or missionaries, in 
 charge of the city, town, or district where the 
 work of this lady is carried on, chance to die, 
 or to be sent out of the country in broken 
 health, it has repeatedly happened that, in the 
 absence of any male missionary, one of the 
 ladies has been obliged to take charge of the 
 work. 
 
 In this way, without intending it, without at 
 all realizing what they are doing, Christian 
 women have over and over again assumed the 
 responsibilit}' of directing the ecclesiastical 
 affairs, not only of a church, but of groups of 
 churches, and while performing these duties as 
 a matter of course they have been obliged to 
 superintend ordained ministers. The question is 
 sometimes hotl}' debated in the United States 
 whether a woman should, under any possible 
 circumstances, be ordained. But while )-ou 
 are debating here, as a somewhat startling 
 matter of fact, Christian women ha\'e practi- 
 cally assumed higher duties and successfully 
 discharged them, not by usurping the peculiar 
 functions of ministerial ordination, but by di- 
 
102 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 recting the men who are ordained. This has 
 been done, and is still being done, without 
 creating any controversy, without exciting any 
 surprise, without raising any comment as to 
 the possible outcome of so extraordinary a pro- 
 ceeding; in other words, as I have already 
 mentioned, we have learned how to deal with 
 this burning question without letting the ques- 
 tion burn. 
 
 To explain this case more fully, I ought to 
 say that among the many ladies who have come 
 to India are some from Australia and a few 
 from the United States, who have been sent 
 out, not as missionaries to women merely, but 
 simply as missionaries to the people. It was 
 probably expected by those who first devised 
 this kind of missionary work that the ladies 
 would carry on their work chiefly by employing 
 natives of the country as teachers and preach- 
 ers. This has been done to some extent, but, 
 as you will have anticipated from what I have 
 already said, it cannot be done very long. In 
 the very nature of the case ladies occupying 
 such a position must assume duties which are 
 ordinarily discharged by bishops, presiding 
 elders, or other high functionaries of the 
 Church. If anyone is alarmed by the picture 
 which I am giving of the manner in which 
 Christian ladies assume responsibility when 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 103 
 
 there seems occasion for it, I may allay the 
 fears of such by sa}'iiig that, so far as I know, 
 the missionar}' ladies of the foreign field are 
 careful to avoid the assumption of an)- duties 
 which pertain to ordained ministers, unless 
 there be very exceptional circumstances to 
 make it necessary. In one case two American 
 ladies arc carrying on a successful work in a 
 remote station, and have converts from time 
 to time who need baptism ; but instead of per- 
 forming this duty themselves they think it 
 more wise, or at least expedient, not to force 
 the question to an issue, even though the}' may 
 have no doubts concerning the validity of such 
 baptism, and hence they have secured the serv- 
 ices of a Hindustani ordained minister, who 
 works under their direction and administers 
 both baptism and the Lord's Supper when 
 occasion calls for it. 
 
 A NEW SPHERE. 
 
 Among the many kinds of labor which the 
 mission field presents not the least promising 
 in coming years will be, I think, the task of 
 providing a Christian literature for the millions 
 of Christians who are to be raised up in Asiatic 
 and other non-Christian countries. We can 
 easily understand how comparatively little 
 attention has been given to this subject in the 
 
104 WOMAN IX THE IMTSSION FIELD. 
 
 past, but it is every }'car becoming more impor- 
 tant, and its demands more imperative, and in 
 all successful missions this kind of work must 
 soon be taken uj^ systematically and prosecuted 
 with all possible vigor. It is a significant fact 
 that the late Miss Tucker, better known in 
 England and America as " A. L. O. E.," the 
 title by Vv'hich she was first introduced to the 
 reading public, after having achieved marked 
 success as a writer in England, became so im- 
 pressed with the necessity for literary work in 
 India that she went out to that country in ad- 
 vanced life and devoted her latest and best 
 years to the preparation of Christian books and 
 periodicals in the Hindustani language. She 
 did other work, it is true, but this was her 
 chief mission, and it proved eminently success- 
 ful. Although obliged to depend upon the 
 services of a translator, slie became able to 
 adapt her style and range of thought to the 
 wants of her readers, and it is perhaps not too 
 much to say that the comparatively few years 
 which she spent in India were worth more, and 
 will be found in the end to have produced more 
 lasting good, than all the labors of her previous 
 life. She worked bravely, and finally died at 
 her post. 
 
 It certainly seems that her example should 
 call attention, in terms not to be misunderstood 
 
WOMAN IX THE MISSION FIELD. 105 
 
 or neglected, to the urgent demand which is 
 making itself felt for a Christian literature for 
 the coming millions of Christians in the empire 
 of India. The Woman's Foreign Missionary 
 Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 deserves mention for having been among the 
 first to perceive the importance of this depart- 
 ment of our work. Some years ago an en- 
 dowment fund of twenty-five thousand dollars 
 was set aside for the special purpose of pub- 
 lishing a series of Christian periodicals specially 
 adapted to the wants of the women of India. 
 A prominent thought in connection with this 
 enterprise was that of making provision for the 
 women in the zenanas, whose range of thought 
 is necessarily narrow, and for whom a special 
 effort of this kind seemed to be needed. Aided 
 by the proceeds of this fund, our missionaries 
 are now publishing monthly periodicals for 
 women in five different languages, and the work 
 has long since ceased to be an experiment. 
 These periodicals have been successful in a 
 marked degree, and every year are gaining a 
 wider field and a more marked success. It af- 
 fords me much pleasure to say that one of the 
 last official acts which I performed before leaving 
 India was that of setting aside Miss Blair, one 
 of our deaconesses, formerly of Painesville, O., 
 for the exclusive duty of performing literary 
 
I06 WOMAN IX THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 work in connection with our publishing house 
 in Calcutta; and I hope to Hvc to set apart at 
 least two such literary workers in connection 
 with each of our four publishing houses in 
 that great field. I have no doubt whatever that 
 before many years shall have passed it will be 
 seen that one of the most important tasks 
 which God has in view for the Christian women 
 who choose a missionary life will be more or 
 less directly in the line of literary work. 
 
 MEDICAL WORK. 
 
 One of the most notable achievements of 
 women in recent years has been the success- 
 ful introduction, not only of medicine, but of 
 the medical profession, among the women of 
 India. Less than a single generation ago 
 there was not even one lady physician among 
 all the hundreds of millions of women in Asia ; 
 and when it is remembered that in most parts 
 of that great continent the women of the higher 
 classes were rigidly secluded, and in conse- 
 quence beyond the reach of ordinary physicians, 
 their deplorable condition can be realized 
 in some degree at least. It was a Christian 
 woman. Miss Clara Swain, M.D., a missionary 
 sent out from your own State of New York, 
 who was signally honored of God by becoming 
 the first person who ever carried intelligent 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. lO/ 
 
 medical relief to the secluded zenana women 
 of India, and thus became the pioneer of what 
 has since become one of the most interestinsf 
 movements of modern times. Miss Swain was 
 quickly followed by others, and after a few years 
 a further great step was taken in advance by 
 opening an informal medical school for women. 
 In due time Lady Dufferin became interested 
 in this great work, the Indian government 
 gave it liberal aid, and the women of India 
 became at once heirs of a new source of relief 
 in sickness and a new and highly honorable 
 avenue to employment in the medical profes- 
 sion. 
 
 What this means to the young women and 
 girls of India I can hardly make you under- 
 stand. I have myself seen twenty young ladies, 
 all daughters of village converts, in attendance 
 at a medical college. These girls had spent 
 their childhood in extreme poverty. Their 
 fathers had been accustomed to earn about 
 two dollars a month and to occupy a very 
 low social position in the village community. 
 But one of these girls on graduation stepped 
 at once into a situation worth twenty-five dol- 
 lars a month, an income which in the eyes of 
 the simple villagers, no doubt, seemed princely. 
 A new career has thus been opened to the 
 womanhood of India, while relief from pain and 
 
I08 WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 Sickness in a hundred forms has been secured 
 for all coming generations to uncounted mil- 
 lions of Indian women. All this is to-day, 
 under God, owing to missionary ladies, and I 
 am glad to be able to testify that more young 
 women are offering their services for medical 
 work abroad than ever before. The door is 
 still wide open to Christian workers of this 
 class, and the great movement has probably 
 only begun. 
 
 I could greatly expand this list of the open- 
 ing fields which God is setting before our 
 Christian women, but time forbids. Suffice it 
 to say that their work in the mission field is 
 only begun. The ladies now abroad are 
 merely the pioneers of the movement. The 
 field is practically boundless. The demands 
 of the present day are increasing constantly, 
 and ten years hence will be more than double 
 what they are at this hour. It is an extraor- 
 dinary fact, and one which is not at all 
 appreciated at its full value, either abroad or 
 at home, that the missionary ladies, in India, at 
 least, already outnumber the men. They are 
 in a majority at every great missionary gather- 
 ing throughout the country ; their number is 
 increasing also more rapidly than that of their 
 brethren, and it becomes more and more cer- 
 tain that with their increase in numbers will 
 
WOMAN IN THE MISSION FIELD. IO9 
 
 come a corresponding expansion of their priv- 
 ileges and responsibilities. The work is so 
 vast, so urgent, its demands are so imperative, 
 that every possible agency must be employed 
 whenever opportunity offers; and hence I 
 look forward confidently to the marshaling of a 
 mighty host of Christian women on every great 
 mission field throughout the world. The oft- 
 quoted words of the psalmist, as correctly 
 rendered in one of the versions of the Old 
 Testament — " God gave the word ; great was 
 the company of the women who published it " — 
 seems likely to have its most marked fulfill- 
 ment in the modern mission field of the world. 
 God has given a word of light and promise for 
 the nations in darkness, and while all men, 
 women, and children will have a portion of 
 the common duty to perform the most striking 
 feature of the m.ighty task will probably be the 
 presence of thousands upon thousands of 
 Christian women, gathered out of all Christian 
 nations, and sent out to the ends of the earth, 
 worthily representing Him to whom the wom- 
 anhood of the race is indebted for the new 
 world of hope and life and liberty into 
 which women everywhere are now so freely 
 entering. 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 MANY years ago, when on a visit to the 
 United States, I was invited to meet a 
 few gentlemen representing one of the evan- 
 gelical denominations of the country and 
 confer with them in reference to a proposal to 
 establish a Christian mission in India or some 
 other foreign land. The Church in question 
 had not as yet taken any part in the great 
 missionary movement, and the intelligent gen- 
 tlemen who met me knew very little about 
 the details of such work. They only under- 
 stood in a general way that they v^'ere to con- 
 sider a proposal to send a few Christian men 
 and women to some non-Christian country to 
 persuade the people to abandon their false 
 faiths and become Christians. At that time 
 my own experience in ihe mission field was 
 extremely limited ; but as I talked with those 
 good men I quickly became impressed with 
 the thought that not only tlie Church which 
 they represented, but all the Churches, had 
 given too little attention to the general subject 
 of missionary polity. Even in missionary cir- 
 
114 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 cles this subject has been overlooked, or, if 
 considered at all, has been confined to the dis- 
 cussion of a few questions of method or to 
 incidental questions of local interest. Even 
 at this late day the average supporter of 
 Christian missions gives little thought to such 
 a subject, and missionaries themselves do not 
 always realize how much they lose and how 
 much they are hampered and hindered in their 
 work, sometimes by the application of a wrong 
 polity and sometimes by the want of any set- 
 tled polity whatever. The experience of a 
 hundred years ought to suffice to settle a great 
 many important questions, and good men who 
 propose to take up new missionary work ought 
 no longer to be found standing where William 
 Carey stood a century ago, with everj'thing to 
 learn and inevitable mistakes and failures 
 awaiting the first advances into untried fields. 
 It is always interesting to watch the first 
 efforts of missionaries in new fields. In most 
 cases the workers are young and without much 
 experience. They are ardent and hopeful, and 
 quite ready to follow any pathway which 
 seems to lead to assured success ; but the av- 
 erage man cannot carve out a new way for 
 himself. The missionary is not gifted above 
 his fellows, and hence it generally happens 
 that he adopts the policy pursued by his near- 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. II 5 
 
 est neighbors, and seems content to follow a 
 routine which has the sanction of usage, even 
 though it may not have received the seal of 
 approved success. His training for missionary 
 work has been defective. The military officer 
 must have very much more than a knowledge 
 of military tactics. His profession has become 
 a science, with certain military principles to be 
 thoroughly mastered and applied as occasion 
 offers in active service. He dare not become 
 a mere imitator. He has read and studied 
 sketches of a hundred campaigns and battles^ 
 and finds their lessons invaluable ; but he dare 
 not follow in all its details any other man's 
 course, however successful it may have been. 
 Surely the missionary ought to study his pro- 
 fession, if I may call it a profession, in the 
 same spirit. It embodies great principles 
 which he ought to master ; it has created a 
 history of which he cannot afford to be igno- 
 rant, and it supplies him with lessons which 
 he will find of great practical value all along 
 the course of his missionary career. 
 
 A MISSIONARY CONSTITUENCY NEEDED. 
 
 The missionary work originates in the home 
 land, and hence it will be best in discussing 
 certain points of missionary polity to begin at 
 the fountain head of the movement. The first 
 
I l6 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 important factor in the movement to claim our 
 attention is the constituency on which the 
 missionary relies for support, both financial 
 and moral. This constituency should not be 
 impersonal in its character or uncertain in its 
 numbers or without organization or definite- 
 ness of purpose. It has become somewhat 
 common of late years to deprecate all attempts 
 to discover donors or to collect subscriptions, 
 under the mistaken notion that our faith will 
 be more conspicuously honored if we never 
 ask human beings for help and trust in God 
 alone for all we need. As an exercise for our 
 faith there may be something to say for this 
 view, but we owe something to those who 
 give as well as to ourselves, and we must con- 
 sider their relation to the work as well as our 
 own. The whole Christian world should be 
 enlisted in support of the missionary enter- 
 prise, and this cannot be done by hidden 
 methods, and even if it could it is more than 
 doubtful if the attempt should be made. 
 When a Christian man or woman assumes an 
 obligation in connection with this work it 
 should be lifelong, and such a person should 
 be placed in a relation to the work which can 
 be depended upon. An intelligent, devoted, 
 and permanent constituency is, under God, 
 the first condition of success in missionary 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. II7 
 
 work. It must be composed of men and 
 women who believe in Christ's commission to 
 the Church, who believe in their own personal 
 call to support the work, who pray for its suc- 
 cess, and who are committed to its support 
 for life. 
 
 When the modern missionary movement 
 commenced it was not generally expected 
 that it would branch out on denominational 
 lines ; but such a result was from the first in- 
 evitable, and no doubt it has been best that it 
 took this course. All Christian organizations 
 inevitably follow the lines on which they are 
 accustomed to move, and it is the part of 
 wisdom quietly to recognize facts of this kind 
 rather than to try to contend against them. 
 In every conflict with the inevitable we are 
 sure to be worsted. As a practical matter of 
 fact all the missionary constituencies of the 
 world are to-day working on denominational 
 lines, or else supported by persons whose more 
 or less peculiar views distinguish them from 
 others and make them denominational in all 
 but name. This makes it less difficult to 
 discover a given constituency and more easy 
 to organize a large body of supporters of the 
 cause, both for praj-er and vigorous efforts to 
 promote the interests of the work. This ad- 
 vantage should never be lost sight of under 
 
Il8 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 any circumstances. The individual is traced 
 to the church to which he belongs, not that he 
 may be concealed within its precincts, but 
 rather brought out into the light and engaged 
 in vigorous efforts to help forward the greatest 
 work of all the ages. 
 
 In the Methodist Episcopal Church an at- 
 tempt has been made to embrace the entire 
 membership in the constituency of the Mis- 
 sionary Society, or, to quote the official phrase- 
 ology, " the support of missions is committed 
 to the churches as such." This is perhaps a 
 move in the direction of the best ideal, but 
 unfortunately an immense constituency of two 
 and a half million Christians cannot be created 
 by any single act of an ecclesiastical body. 
 The ecclesiastical machinery may be put in 
 operation in the interest of a given cause, and 
 in the fullness of time a great Church may 
 become fully committed to the support of an 
 organized effort to evangelize the non-Chris- 
 tian nations; but so far as the immediate pres- 
 ent is concerned the constituency in question 
 is in a large measure only a nominal one. In 
 every part of the country' pastors and congre- 
 gations can be found who practically repudiate 
 all missionary obligations. They may go so 
 far as to allow a formal collection to be taken 
 once a year in the public congregation, but 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. II 9 
 
 this is done under constraint, and sometimes 
 under protest. Leaders of the people are 
 heard protesting against the poHcy of sending 
 money out of the country when it is so lu'gently 
 needed at home. Men and women of this class 
 do not in anyway belong to a missionary con- 
 stituency, and it is a serious mistake to assume 
 that they do. The missionary enterprise de- 
 mands the support of Christian men and 
 women who not only believe in its claims, but 
 who are as devoted to its interests as they are 
 to their own, and who no more think of doubt- 
 ing its success than of giving up their faith in 
 Christ or their hope of heaven. 
 
 In this case it is not desirable to change the 
 policy of the Church, so far as its ultimate ob- 
 ject is concerned, but it is very much to be de- 
 sired that a systematic effort be commenced 
 to enlist and organize an avowed constituency 
 of missionary workers and supporters. This is 
 a crying need in all the Churches. It will not 
 do to depend upon a fluctuating public opin- 
 ion or upon an uncertain enthusiasm. A vast 
 army of missionary supporters is needed, and 
 this army, like every successful army, must be 
 well organized. If five hundred thousand or 
 a million Christians were enrolled as members 
 of a missionary society, all pledged to pay a 
 stated annual contribution, and all obligated 
 
120 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 to support the cause in every time of special 
 emergency, the violent financial ebb and flow 
 which so often cripples the work of our foreign 
 missions would almost wholly cease. It would, 
 of course, require some time and much labor 
 to enlist and organize a vast constituency of 
 this kind, but until this work is taken in hand 
 none of the great missionary societies can make 
 much further progress. There must be organ- 
 ization, and thorough organization, in every 
 work of this kind before success can become 
 either general or permanent. Let every mis- 
 sion in the world be sustained by a well-known, 
 definitely constituted, and well-organized con- 
 stituency, and the working efficienc)' of the 
 foreign missionary body will be doubled in a 
 single year. 
 
 THE HOME MANAGEMENT. 
 
 Having secured a constituency, the next step 
 in the development of missionary work is that 
 of providing for the home management of the 
 various interests connected with it. This is 
 usually done by organizing boards of directors, 
 or managers, with their powers more or less 
 strictly defined, and acting somctinies under 
 the direct authority of a Church, but more fre- 
 cjuently as the governing body of a missionary 
 society. The duties of most of these officials 
 
MISSIONARY rOLITY. 121 
 
 are largely advisory, but a select few — usually 
 limited to a president, treasurer, and one or 
 more secretaries — are intrusted with the prac- 
 tical administration of the financial interests of 
 the mission or missions under their care. So 
 far as the mere statement of polity is con- 
 cerned, a plan of this kind is perhaps as good 
 as any other that could be devised, but when 
 in practical operation its merits or demerits 
 will be found to depend very largely upon the 
 qualifications of the members of the board, and 
 especially upon those intrusted with official 
 duties. It need hardly be said that these per- 
 sons should be unhesitating believers in tlie 
 missionary enterprise and intensely interested 
 in it. They should also be well informed, not 
 only in all that pertains to the general subject, 
 but more especially in all the details of the 
 missions under their care. They should know 
 the history of these missions, the character of 
 the people among whom they are planted, the 
 hindrances and helps to the work, the names 
 and some particulars concerning the mission- 
 aries in the several fields, and they should be 
 acquainted with the progress which the work 
 makes from year to year, and know whether 
 the money which they help to administer is 
 profitably bestowed or not. Unfortunately, 
 however, it is extremely difficult to find two or 
 
122 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 three dozen men who are otherwise qualified 
 to serve on such a board who can be persuaded 
 tliat they have leisure enough to read and study, 
 and if need be travel, in order to qualify them- 
 selves for such a service as this would indicate. 
 The result is that the average member of a 
 board of missions is not expected to know 
 much more than other men concerning mis- 
 sions in general or those of his own society in 
 particular. 
 
 Many years ago I chanced to be in attend- 
 ance in a large ecclesiastical assembly, when a 
 discussion occurred concerning the selection of 
 secretaries for a missionary society. A dozen 
 or more speakers took part, and it was curious 
 to observe how nearly everyone attached the 
 first importance to platform eloquence as a 
 qualification for the post. Power to organize 
 counted for nothing, missionary experience 
 counted for nothing, knowledge of the work 
 counted for nothing, ability in finance counted 
 for nothing, and, worse than all, faith in and 
 devotion to the missionary cause counted for 
 nothing, while popular eloquence counted for 
 everything. It was the virtual recognition of 
 a policy which would have passed over Ulysses 
 S. Grant and put Wendell Phillips at the head 
 of our armies, to the very great peril of the 
 nation. Those who are placed in positions of 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. I23 
 
 greatest influence and authority in connection 
 with missionary affairs should always be chosen 
 with reference to their special qualifications for 
 the peculiar work to be done. When a choice 
 of this kind is made in a great popular assem- 
 bly it is sometimes amusing, and at the same 
 time startling, to observe that among a dozen 
 competitors not more than one or two are per- 
 sons who have ever been known to evince any 
 special interest in the missionary cause or to 
 have any special knowledge of the work which 
 they wish to direct. 
 
 " But how," it may be asked, " can we mend 
 matters? Where can we find men fitted for 
 the duty by reading, study, and observation, 
 and at the same time possessing the natural 
 gifts and missionary grace needed for such po- 
 sitions?" 
 
 Such persons can be found; but if this were 
 impossible it would only remain to choose men 
 for such posts who could and would seek the 
 preparation needed for their duties. I have 
 known members of missionary boards who 
 traveled widely and studied carefully in order 
 to qualify themselves for their duties. I have 
 known a do/xn secretaries who could name 
 every missionary connected with their society, 
 and state with a fair degree of accuracy the 
 condition of affairs in every separate mission 
 
124 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 station in which they had any special interest. 
 In cases of this kind Christian devotion must 
 do its work, as it does elsewhere. Those on 
 whom responsibility rests at home must be as 
 devoted as those who go abroad, and if they 
 would serve their generation faithfully they 
 must qualify themselves for their duties. It is 
 a mournful fact that but few of our ministers 
 are well informed in missionary matters, and, 
 this being so, we need not wonder that more 
 of our laymen do not study missionary litera- 
 ture and keep abreast of the advancing host of 
 missionary workers throughout the world. Let 
 us hope that the days of remissness in this 
 respect are past, and that better counsels will 
 prevail among the leaders of this great move- 
 ment in the future. 
 
 THE WORK versus THE SOCIETY. 
 
 Having thus briefly noticed a few points in 
 connection with the supporting body and 
 home management of missionary agencies, let 
 me in the next place call attention to an impor- 
 tant principle which should ever be kept in full 
 view in the prosecution of the work. It is this : 
 The missionary society exists for the work, and 
 not the work for the society. The temptation 
 to reverse the principle is often very strong, 
 and to those who for long years become accus- 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. \2$ 
 
 tomed to the home perspective it must at times 
 seem as if the interests of the society must in 
 every case be paramount. To such persons it 
 must seem like the case of a stream against its 
 fountain, to put the mission above the society. 
 The fountain is the source of supj)ly, and the 
 stream is so absolutely dependent upon its 
 source that it seems entitled to the first con- 
 sideration in every respect. But in this case 
 the fountain has been created for the stream, 
 and can only justify its existence by securing 
 the welfare of the stream ; and hence, in the 
 ordinary administration of the society's affairs, 
 the work in the field should always be regarded 
 as the paramount interest. This may possibly 
 seem like a hard saying to many of those who 
 are intrusted with the harassing cares and 
 heavy burdens of the home management. 
 Such persons are often sorely tried, are driven 
 to their wits' ends in trying to find money 
 eiiough for the remittances as they fall due, 
 and it may seem not only ungracious but even 
 unjust to remind them that their official 
 interests are, and ever should be, secondary to 
 the welfare of the work in foreign lands. They 
 are struggling to mountain their society, to 
 foster its resources, to replenish its treasury, 
 and to them it must seem at times as if the 
 very existence of the work abroad depended 
 9 
 
126 MISSIOXARY rOI.TTY. 
 
 upon the success of their efforts. But just 
 here the danger h'cs. In their zeal for the 
 society the interests of the work may be sac- 
 rificed. Take, for example, the case of an in- 
 efficient or unsuitable missionary. The best 
 interests of the work demand that he should 
 retire to make way for a better worker, but the 
 representative of the society objects th.it the 
 presence of a returned missionary is dishearten- 
 ing in its influence on the supporters of the 
 work, that it lessens the collections, gives rise 
 to evil surmises, and does harm in other wa\-s. 
 The word is passed along that the missionary 
 in question must remain at his post, whether 
 adapted to the work or not, and as a matter of 
 fact such men have been known to be kept in 
 the service thirty or forty years, not because 
 they were doing a good work, but chiefly be- 
 cause of the mistaken notion that the interests 
 of the society required them to remain abroad. 
 In the meantime better men are kept out of 
 the field, and thousands of dollars are spent, if 
 not wholly for naught, yet certainly without 
 achieving the measure of success that might 
 have been secured. This is only one of a class 
 of illustrations which are very apt to occur 
 in the administration of missionary affairs. 
 As another illustration I may mention an 
 attempt which was made to curtail the privi- 
 
MISSIONARY rOI.ITY. 12/ 
 
 leges of a large number of missionaries for the 
 avowed reason that it would simplify the ad- 
 ministration in the home office and add some- 
 what to the prerogatives of those in authority. 
 In other words, the normal development of a 
 group of foreign missions was held to be of less 
 importance than the efficiency and convenience 
 of an office in a distant city. Had the pro- 
 posal succeeded, the result would probably 
 have proved fatal to a movement which has 
 powerfully influenced some of the most success- 
 ful missions in the world, and which bids fair 
 to serve as an example to other prominent 
 missions in different parts of the globe. 
 
 LIMITATIONS OF AUTHORITY. 
 
 These remarks may suggest the discussion 
 of a broader question, affecting the whole rela- 
 tion of the home management to the active 
 work carried on in the mission field. To what 
 extent should a board, or a secretary, direct 
 the missionaries in their work ? What is the 
 limit of their responsibility? What is the 
 measure of their authority over the individual 
 missionaries ? How far, if at all, should the 
 governing body of a missionary society exercise 
 ecclesiastical functions ? 
 
 These questions do not by any means receive 
 uniform answers in all parts of the missionary 
 
128 MISSIONARY TOLITY. 
 
 world. In some cases ecclesiastical authority 
 is used very freely in all matters, great and 
 small, spiritual and secular. In other cases a 
 clear distinction is recognized between the 
 affairs of the Church and the mission. Then, 
 again, under some missionary societies the 
 authorities in the home office give minute 
 directions in reference to all the details of the 
 work, even in the most distant fields; in other 
 cases a wise discretion is given to the men on 
 the ground, and the general administration of 
 the work is freely committed into their hands. 
 It need hardly be said that the general tend- 
 ency in all mission fields at the present day is 
 in the direction of giving increased responsi- 
 bility to the missionaries who are present on 
 the scene of action, and who must, in the na- 
 ture of the case, be best qualified to meet 
 emergencies as they arise. The tendency, I 
 say, is in this direction, but as yet only a very 
 limited number of foreign missions enjoy that 
 freedom of action which is necessary to insure 
 the highest measure of success. In India, for 
 example, in most missions the rule prevails 
 that all important changes must receive the 
 sanction of authorities on the opposite side of 
 the globe ; and as this sanction can rarely be 
 obtained without a delay of several months 
 the hands of the missionaries are often tied at 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. 1 29 
 
 the very time when prompt and vigorous action 
 is imperatively demanded. This poHcy can 
 only be defended as a temporary necessity in 
 the early days of a mission; but when experi- 
 enced leaders are in the field it is as absurd to 
 require them to refer the disposition of the 
 workers to parties in London or New York as 
 it would be to compel a general on a battle- 
 field to secure the approval of distant civil 
 officers before making a change in the dispo- 
 sition of the forces under his command. 
 
 THE MISSIONARY COMMISSARIAT. 
 
 The relation of a missionary society to a 
 foreign mission is somewhat like that of a com- 
 missariat department to an army in the field. 
 No arm of the common service is more impor- 
 tant, since not only the efficienc}% but in most 
 cases the very existence of the army depends 
 on its successful management ; and yet no 
 army is ever directed in its movements by the 
 commissariat officers. It is the special duty of 
 these officers to relieve those in command of 
 active operations from the ^^■ork and worry 
 which always attend the providing of supplies 
 for a great army, especially when actual war is 
 in progress. This illustration does not, I know, 
 hold good in all respects, but so far as the main 
 principle is concerned it presents the case very 
 
130 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 fairly. It may, for instance, be said that the 
 home authorities have a responsibility in the 
 selection of workers, in sanctioning the expen- 
 diture of funds, and in the general management 
 of finances, quite unlike the duties of commis- 
 sariat officers. This is very true, so far as these 
 duties are concerned, but the main issue is not 
 affected by the admission. The point of the 
 illustration is, so far as active operations in the 
 mission field are concerned, that men on one 
 side of the globe cannot direct other men on 
 the other side of the globe, and that while all 
 belong to the same army, and have the same 
 end in view, the special calling of the one party 
 is to provide the sinews of war, and of the other 
 to go forth to battle and become responsible 
 for operations in the field. 
 
 I do not, however, wish to be understood as 
 objecting to the leaders of missionary societies 
 assuming broader responsibility when occasion 
 serves. One of the most urgent needs of the 
 hour is missionary statesmanship, and nowhere 
 is this need more urgent than in the councils 
 of those who manage the affairs of the great 
 missionary societies of the present day. It 
 has often happened in history that men who 
 could not command armies or sketch cam- 
 paigns could yet see with the eye of genius 
 where great campaigns could be fought, and 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. 131 
 
 could lay their hands on men who could do 
 the work which they themselves could not 
 undertake. The elder Pitt was a statesman 
 of this class. He saw a magnificent chance 
 in North America to wrest a continent from a 
 powerful enemy and give it to his own sover- 
 eign. He selected General Wolfe, and sent 
 him across the sea to undertake the desperate 
 task ; and one of the turning points of the 
 world's history was the result. The mission- 
 ary world of the present day has crying need 
 of statesmen of this class. The present is an 
 age of opportunity. Nations and continents 
 are to be won, and every leader may find a 
 sphere of action if he seeks it. But it is not 
 leadership to contend for the right to adminis- 
 ter details in distant fields, or even to direct 
 operations on a larger scale which belong le- 
 gitimately to those who have created the 
 work, who are present to meet emergencies as 
 they arise, and Avho, in the order of God's 
 providence, must bear the chief responsibility 
 in coming years. 
 
 PLANTING. 
 
 Having thus noticed some features of the 
 polity which should be adopted in the home 
 management of missionary work, let us now 
 look abroad and see how the case stands with 
 
132 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 those intrusted with the moinentous respon- 
 sibility of planting Christianity and Christian 
 institutions in lands where Christ is not known. 
 I have used the word " planting " advisedly. 
 If anyone were to ask me to state a general 
 rule or principle for the guidance of a young 
 missionary I should answer in a single word, 
 Plant. We hear much of sowing, and the 
 term is scriptural enough ; but there is rea- 
 son to fear that upon the lips of many it is 
 used chiefly with reference to work which is 
 not expected to produce any visible result. 
 But surely no part of the parable of the sower 
 was intended to teach any such lesson. The 
 word " plant " is perhaps less liable to be mis- 
 understood, since it always conveys the idea 
 of something having life placed under condi- 
 tions which will promote its growth. In the 
 earlier years of my missionary service I was 
 once struck by a remark made concerning a 
 brother worker. " Everything he has started," 
 it was said, " is still going on and doing a good 
 work." The worker in question had learned 
 the secret of putting vitality into his work and 
 placing it under conditions which insured its 
 growth and prosperity. Unfortunately, this is 
 more than can be said of a great deal of the 
 work done in mission fields. Some good men 
 seem to be perfectly content to spend their 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. I 33 
 
 years in routine work, persuading tlienisclves 
 that the}' are sowing seed for future harvests; 
 but they estabh"sh nothing, they organize 
 nothing, they plant nothing. The worker wlio 
 can found a Httle viUage school and put it on 
 a basis which gives promise of permanency 
 has learned the secret of planting in the mis- 
 sionary sense of the word. The mnn wlio or- 
 ganizes a little church is dealing with materi- 
 als which bear the stamp of immortality upon 
 them, and should aim to plant for all the years 
 and ages to come. The band of missionaries 
 who are associated together in a mission should 
 make it their aim to create an organization 
 which will live and grow throurjh all comincr 
 time. They should remember that the)' can- 
 not hope to remain forever at their posts, nor 
 can Christians in the home land continue 
 always to send out missionaries like thenu i.]ves, 
 and hence they should strive earnestl\- and 
 constantly to plant, not onl)- churches, but all 
 manner of Christian institutions, in the country 
 of their sojourn. 
 
 In making appropriations this principle 
 should be carefully recognized. Everything 
 which gives promise of permanency should be 
 generously fostered and encouraged. Wher- 
 ever a scliool can be made self-supporting, 
 that is, put in a position which will enable it 
 
134 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 to pay its own way in the future, it should at 
 once be equipped for a career of permanent 
 usefuhiess. Wherever a church can be made 
 both self supporting and self-propagating it 
 should at once be assisted to gain so desirable 
 a position. Every mission field should be 
 dotted over with living and growing agencies, 
 firmly rooted in the soil and giving promise 
 of indefinite years of useful service. 
 
 ORGANIZATION. 
 
 If life and growth arc necessary to health- 
 ful missionary work it must be remembered 
 that organization is a law of both, and hence 
 provision should always be made for effecting 
 this at as early a day as possible, and for per- 
 fecting it from time to time so as to keep pace 
 with the progress of the work. There can be 
 no doubt that this condition of healthful prog- 
 ress has been greatly overlooked in the past. 
 Many good men betray a certain kind of im- 
 patience at the very mention of the word, 
 thinking, very naturally too, that raw converts 
 from heathenism cannot be prepared for the 
 intricate duties and weighty responsibilities 
 which are usually associated with the word 
 " organization." But laws of growth must be 
 respected, no matter what the intellectual plane 
 of the parties concerned may be, and organiza- 
 
MISSIONARY PULITV. 135 
 
 tioii should never be ignored in the mission field. 
 It is much simpler and less inconvenient, no 
 doubt, for the missionary to regard his converts 
 as so many children, and to govern them pater- 
 nally by a free exercise of personal authority ; 
 but no missionary should ever venture to try an 
 experiment of this kind. If the plan of organi- 
 zation in use is too complex make it more sim- 
 ple. At every hazard let the machinery em- 
 ployed be made flexible enough to be adaptable 
 to any and every contingency which may arise. 
 Lay responsibility upon the people, and teach 
 them how to share it among them. Let every 
 little church be organized and drilled, and never, 
 under any possible circumstances, let a Chris- 
 tian community be left to drift about, the play 
 of circumstances, or possibly the victim of pas- 
 sions, with no provision made for adjusting 
 differences or preserving peace. Blunders 
 will occur, ludicrous and sometimes painful 
 errors will be committed, but the fact remains 
 unchanged that every healthy and growing 
 body needs organization, and cannot prosper 
 v.'ithout it. 
 
 I feel like adding one more word : In organ- 
 izing let the work be done on broad lines. 
 Without Avishing to discuss questions of eccle- 
 siastical polity, I nevertheless cannot let the 
 subject drop without saying that a mission in 
 
136 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 a non-Christian land is wondciTully strength- 
 ened by holding a connection more or less 
 direct with other missions of like character 
 engaged in the same work and laboring under 
 similar conditions. Even where the Congre- 
 gational form of government prevails a formal 
 union of allied forces for m.issionary purposes 
 cannot fail to exercise a profound and bene- 
 ficial influence upon the workers and the work. 
 It would be better, however, if the bond of 
 union could be closer and more permanent. 
 In the case of the field in which my own lot is 
 now cast it has been found that a widespread 
 organization, one that has assumed almost 
 imperial proportions, has profoundly affected 
 the mass of our Indian preachers, has inspired 
 them with high ambition to do great things 
 for God, and has impressed them with a deep 
 conviction of the unspeakable responsibility 
 which God has laid upon them. The non- 
 Christian world is big enough, and the open 
 fields are numerous enough, to afford ample 
 scope for scores of great organizations aiming 
 at the conversion of tens of millions, and pre- 
 senting before the e}'es of the young mission- 
 ary fields of action far transcending, both in 
 extent and in richness of opportunity, any 
 other spheres of labor to be found on the 
 globe. 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. I 37 
 
 AVOID A NARROW POLICY. 
 
 In hiving down a plan of operations in a 
 foreign field care should be taken not to 
 choose a policy too narrow for the free exer- 
 cise of the varied gifts of a body of workers, 
 or for the varied interests of the people who 
 are expected to become Christians. It is not 
 well, for instance, to make a mission exclu- 
 sively educational, or exclusively evangelistic, 
 or industrial, or medical. It is always well 
 enough for a missionary to be a man of one 
 work, but that one work will inevitably be 
 found to connect itself with a variety of inter- 
 ests. Whatever belongs to the convert ought 
 to be of interest to the missionary. The edu- 
 cation of the children, the spiritual care of 
 the parents, the creation of Christian homes, 
 the removal of crushing debts, the uplifting of 
 the people into a better social life, the promo- 
 tion of a score of social and moral reforms — 
 these and other kindred questions must con- 
 cern every faithful missionary, and should be 
 accepted without misgiving and without hesita- 
 tion. A literature will have to be created for 
 the people, education will of necessity rise 
 from the most elementary beginnings to the 
 level reached in Christian lands, rude industries 
 will be found giving place to more advanced 
 
138 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 methods of manufacture and trade ; and in all 
 these changes the missionary will be expected 
 to be the helper, and to some extent the di- 
 rector, of the people. He cannot afford to be 
 a narrow man or to confine himself to a narrow 
 line of work, and no attempt should be made 
 to impose such a policy upon him. 
 
 It is sometimes wise to send out workers for 
 special classes, as, for instance, to the educated 
 young men of the great cities in India, or to the 
 women in zenanas ; but as a general rule it will 
 be found best to instruct every missionary to go 
 to tlic people to whom he finds most ready 
 access. It does not matter very much what 
 particular class he reaches, provided he finds 
 access to masses of the people. One convert 
 may prove more influential than another, but 
 no country has ever been Christianized by 
 gathering out from the mass a select few as 
 converts and using them as connecting links 
 between the missionary and the people at 
 large. Christianity is cmph;itically the religion 
 of the people, and if there is one thing we may 
 do in absolute confidence and safety it is to 
 go to willing masses of human beings any- 
 where in the wide world and commend to 
 them the religion of Jesus Christ. We may be 
 led to the most common of the common people, 
 but this matters nothing. Those who win the 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. I 39 
 
 common people will in the end win the nation. 
 There is a wonderful power in the movements 
 of great bodies of men. They may be lowly 
 and even despised, but as they steadily move 
 in a given direction other bodies of men not 
 far removed from them in social position will 
 begin to feel a similar impulse, and soon a de- 
 cisive movement will be perceived, deepening 
 and widening as it extends, and giving promise 
 of continued progress for years and years to 
 come. The missionary who shrinks from con- 
 tact with the lov/ly multitude is not really pre- 
 pared for wide success, and it may be accepted 
 as certain beyond all peradventure that he will 
 not achieve it. 
 
 FOLLOW UP SUCCESS. 
 
 It has often seemed to me that both the 
 missionaries in the field and the authorities at 
 home are prone to overlook the importance of 
 following up, with all possible vigor, any marked 
 success which is won. In this work, as in ac- 
 tive warfare, a victory cannot be lightly thrown 
 away. It must be followed up with all possi- 
 ble energy and made to serve as the pathway 
 to other and greater victories. If need be, other 
 enterprises should be held in abeyance for a 
 time and all possible forces brought to bear 
 upon the point where the enemy is yielding 
 
140 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 and his lines breaking. If this vast world of 
 ours is ever to become a Christian world our 
 militant hosts at the front must not only learn 
 the meaning of the word victory, but they 
 must learn how to win victories and grow 
 familiar with the experience. Unfortunately, 
 however, we do not always see this policy pur- 
 sued. It is an extraordinary, and, I might add, 
 an almost incredible, fact that it is often much 
 more difficult to obtain aid for a work which 
 is manifestly succeeding than for one which 
 gives only a remote hope of final success. If a 
 certain work is said to be very inexpensive 
 the chances are very great that it will be re- 
 garded as of little value. If, in like manner, it 
 is said to be successful it is quietly assumed 
 that it is in a prosperous condition and does 
 not need help. On the other hand, when a 
 large sum of money is asked for an enterprise 
 which gives only a remote, and perhaps indi- 
 rect, promise of success its value is rated at a 
 high figure, and help is bestowed upon it with- 
 out hesitation. 
 
 We may in this way account for what often 
 seems a strange anomaly in missionary adminis- 
 tration ; but the explanation does not lessen 
 the gravity of the error in question. The time 
 has come for us carefully and prayerfully to 
 consider what I shall venture to call the possi- 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY, I41 
 
 bilities of victory. i\ sini^le vict(jiy vigorously 
 followed up can be made equal to ten other 
 victories on the morrow of the day of battle. 
 The less the expense the greater is the value of 
 the work. The slender supply of barley loaves 
 on a memorable occasion did not lessen the 
 value of the great feast which made the occasion 
 historical. Had a royal banquet been spread 
 for the hungry people at great expense and 
 with an immense amount of labor and trouble 
 the event would never have been heard of 
 again. Strangely enough, we all learn most 
 slowly our simplest lessons, and one of these 
 lessons which God's militant people have as 
 yet failed to master is that a victory on a 
 mission field, promptly and vigorously followed 
 up, is the most important and usually the 
 least expensive work in which missionaries can 
 engage. 
 
 FAMILY AND NATIONAL LINES. 
 
 In noting the progress of the work in India 
 our missionaries in that country have repeatedly 
 called attention to the importance of following 
 caste and family lines. Society in India is so 
 stratified, and family tics are so carefully recog- 
 nized, that the missionaries find it well worth 
 their while to take advantage of the influence 
 which can often be gained through the attach- 
 10 
 
142 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 ments of kindred or the respect of fellow-caste 
 men. In doing this they no doubt act wisely, 
 but the principle underlying their action has a 
 much wider application. Beyond the family 
 and the caste is the nation, and when we be- 
 gin to build up new Church organizations it 
 will be found not only the best, but in the 
 end the only possible, policy to recognize na- 
 tional ties and to build on national lines. This 
 does not mean that there must be an absolute 
 rupture of the ecclesiastical ties which bind 
 Christians of different countries together, but 
 in all that pertains to the administration of the 
 affairs of the Church the principle of national 
 autonomy should be fully recognized. This 
 need not in the slightest degree interfere with 
 the question of intercommunion. We may all 
 remain members of one Church and yet have 
 an ecclesiastical system so flexible that the 
 framework of the Church shall be constructed 
 on national lines and the people within the 
 bounds of each nation or empire left at perfect 
 liberty to move and act in harmony with the 
 traditions and national instincts of the people. 
 Every step in the direction of such a consum- 
 mation is a step wisely taken, and we have 
 now reached a stage in our missionary prog- 
 ress where the general principle should be for- 
 mally adopted and placed among the things 
 
MISSIONARY POLITY. 1 43 
 
 which are settled beyond the need of further 
 discussion. 
 
 The subject chosen for this lecture is one 
 which suggests so many practical questions 
 and covers such broad ground that its discus- 
 sion might be extended almost indefinitely; 
 but suffice it to say, in conclusion, that mis- 
 sionaries at the front should be given a wide 
 discretion in the face of new emergencies, and 
 that they should be courageous enough to ven- 
 ture upon new courses of action when a clear 
 case of emergency arises. But they should pa- 
 tiently wait upon God, and never make haste 
 to anticipate a new departure. A missionary 
 in quest of an emergency is usually a danger- 
 ous man. But, on the other hand, those who 
 refuse to recognize changed conditions, who 
 cannot perceive the hand of Providence, who 
 pervert every temporary or local rule into a 
 letter which killeth, become obstructive instead 
 of helpful, and hinder growth instead of pro- 
 moting it. As the great movement goes for- 
 ward no doubt some very unlooked-for devel- 
 opments will present themselves ; but we may 
 well assure ourselves that God will keep men 
 at the front who will prove equal to the de- 
 mands of every crisis, and that no great 
 disaster will be permitted to befall a cause 
 around which cluster the best interests, not 
 
144 MISSIONARY POLITY. 
 
 only of the Church of Christ, but of the hu- 
 man race. 
 
 The importance of giving more attention to 
 questions of missionary polity becomes the 
 most apparent when we consider tlie immense 
 expansion of all missionary interests, both at 
 home and abroad, which may be anticipated 
 with absolute certainty in the not very distant 
 future. Many of those present in this audience 
 will live to see missionary societies with an an- 
 nual revenue of ten million dollars or more. 
 They will live to see such societies each main- 
 taining two or three thousand American mis- 
 sionaries in foreign lands, with indigenous 
 forces amounting to perhaps fifty thousand for 
 each such great society. They will live to see 
 the day when a million converts will be re- 
 ported in a single year, and when schools and 
 colleges, hospitals and presses, and civilizing 
 agencies of many kinds will be constantly 
 springing into existence in all the ends of the 
 earth. In the face of such startling contingen- 
 cies we of the present day cannot afford to 
 leave to our successors a careless, shortsighted 
 policy of mere drift. God expects us to hold 
 the helm as the bark which carries us moves 
 on its way, and we should not only recognize 
 our duty, but be keenly alive to all that such a 
 comprehensive obligation implies. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 THE modern missionary enterprise is both 
 new and old. It is new in that it dates 
 its origin only a century back; and it is old in 
 that it justly claims identity with the great 
 work authorized by our Saviour and inaugu- 
 rated by his apostles — the evangelization of all 
 nations. It is, in fact, the resumption of a 
 great work which had in a large measure been 
 discontinued, and hence we very naturally turn 
 to New Testament precedents when anxious to 
 determine the best course to be pursued in the 
 prosecution of the work at the present day. 
 In all missionary discussions it is extremely 
 common to hear appeals made to the prece- 
 dents established by apostolic authority, or to 
 the policy adopted throughout the Christian 
 Churches of the world in the early days of Chris- 
 tianity. Some of these appeals are wisely 
 taken, but in other cases the precedents are 
 not so clearly applicable to the present era. 
 In some important respects primitive Chris- 
 tianity occupied different ground, and was 
 charged with a different mission from that in- 
 trusted to the Church of the present day ; and 
 
148 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 iii order cicail}' to understand how far we are 
 to be governed by New Testament precedents, 
 these points of difference must be carefully 
 noted. 
 
 First of all, Ave remember that while the 
 Christians of the first century, like those of our 
 day, had a full share in the commission to evan- 
 gelize the M'orld, ihey had a still higher com- 
 mission, to inaugurate a new dispensation and 
 to establish a new religion among men. They 
 became the medium of a new revelation of 
 God's will to the race, and hence were privi- 
 leged in some respects be}'ond any of the gen- 
 erations which have succeeded them. The 
 gift of miracles belongs to that era, for the sim- 
 ple reason that the great work of completing 
 God's revelation had been committed to them. 
 It is a great mistake to assume, as is so often 
 done, that the power to work miracles belongs 
 to the whole of the Old Testament dispensa-' 
 tion. So far from it, as far as the records show, 
 it was only when one or more pages were to be 
 added to God's revealed word, and notably 
 when a higher dispensation was to be intro- 
 duced, that the gift of miracles was freely be- 
 stowed upon God's servants. Sometimes cen- 
 turies elapsed without any display of such a 
 gift. With the completion of the New Testa- 
 ment this gift seems to have permanently dis- 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. I49 
 
 appeared, and we have no reason to expect its 
 reappearance. The supernatural remains, but 
 the strictly miraculous no longer appears. The 
 gift of prophecy in its New Testament sense 
 remains, but the old prophets, who announced 
 changes of dispensations and who added burn- 
 ing pages to God's inspired word, will no more 
 appear among men. No new religion is to be 
 established, no new revelation given, no new dis- 
 pensation ushered in, and hence we cannot ap- 
 peal to any precedents which were dependent 
 on the exceptional character of the apostolicage. 
 I trust that no one will misunderstand me 
 at this point. While maintaining that certain 
 gifts do not belong to the present age, and that 
 the peculiar mission of the first Christians was 
 not only to propagate Christianity, but also to 
 establish it as a living faith among men, I do 
 not for a moment wish to intimate that we are 
 less highly favored than the early Christians 
 were, or that success in winning souls is a more 
 difficult task than it was in the New Testament 
 times. The two eras differ, but the balance of 
 advantage is unquestionably with us of the 
 present generation. No living man can repeat 
 the miracles of Peter or Paul, but thousands 
 can do greater things in pulling down Satan's 
 stronghold and building up the kingdom of 
 Christ among men. No living man can find a 
 
150 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 Patmos from which to gaze upon the subhme 
 visions which John beheld, but thousands of 
 modern disciples are so illuminated by the 
 Spirit that the whole earth becomes their Pat- 
 mos, and life is to them one long vision of the 
 tearless and deathless world toward which they 
 are journeying. We of the present day need 
 no miracle-working power; we need not even 
 one additional page of revelation ; and we are 
 fully equipped, so far as God's provision is con- 
 cerned, for whatever duties and responsibilities 
 await us in life. 
 
 But v/hile we are careful to remember the 
 points of difference between the first and the 
 present era of Christianity, v/e may at the same 
 time find many points of sameness between 
 them, and I trust be able to draw some valu- 
 able lessons from the first pioneers of evangeli- 
 zation. Some features of the work in New 
 Testament times must belong to a healthy con- 
 dition of missionary work in all ages ; and a 
 careful study of these special features cannot 
 fail to supply us with timely lessons for the 
 mission fields of the present day. 
 
 ROMAN AND BRITISH EMPIRES. 
 
 Before proceeding to notice those features 
 of New Testament missions which most interest 
 us at the present time, I wish briefly to call your 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 15I 
 
 attention to a remarkable providential develop- 
 ment in the political world which corresponds in 
 a striking manner to the influence of the Roman 
 empire at the beginning of the Christian era. 
 It has often been pointed out that, while 
 steadily hostile to the new faith, the Roman 
 power was on the whole favorable to the rapid 
 and wide extension of the Christian religion. 
 The general influence of such a power was 
 favorable in many ways. It opened up wide 
 regions which would otherwise have been un- 
 known. It broke down barriers which would 
 otherwise have been impassable ; it built great 
 highways to connect the nations; it gave the 
 great Roman world a knowledge of two copious 
 and flexible languages, one of which became 
 the vehicle of political, and the other of reli- 
 gious, ideas. It tolerated superstition, and yet 
 dealt rude blows upon many superstitious no- 
 tions. It prepared the way for a widespread 
 movement such as the new religion was des- 
 tined to become, and thus, even when bitterly 
 persecuting Christianity, unconsciously pre- 
 pared a way for it. 
 
 The British empire is to one half the modern 
 world what the Roman empire was to Europe 
 and all the Mediterranean basin at the birth of 
 Christianity. It covers three times as much 
 territory and includes three times as many 
 
152 NEW TESTA]\IENT MISSIONS. 
 
 people as the Roman empire did in the time 
 of its greatest power; but, unHke Rome, Eng- 
 land has long since ceased to oppose the mis- 
 sionary enterprise, and wherever her flag waves 
 the Christian missionary feels secure beneath 
 its folds. Nothing in the whole range of mod- 
 ern history is more remarkable than the man- 
 ner in which this great empire has grown up to 
 its present colossal proportions, and no one who 
 believes in the conversion of the human race 
 can doubt that a wisdom higher than that of 
 man and a power greater than that of human 
 arms have planned its framework and raised it 
 to its present commanding position, not only 
 that it might become a great civilizing agenc}', 
 but that it should especially prepare the way 
 for a great missionary era. And not only is 
 this great empire thus preparing the mission- 
 ary's way, but nearly all the European powers 
 are now beginning to take a part in a similar 
 movement. It is true that no other power is 
 so well fitted to deal with missionary interests, 
 but we have now reached a point in the prog- 
 ress of the world when religious liberty may be 
 regarded as the law of all nations pretending 
 to maintain a high standard of civilization, and 
 hence few, if any, European powers will here- 
 after oppose the missionary movement. The 
 extension of European power in Africa means, 
 
NEW TESTAMENT IMISSIONS. I 53 
 
 for four fifths of the continent, rehgious Hberty 
 t(j the convert and personal protection to the 
 missionary. Wc thus sec the modern mission- 
 ary placed in the enjoyment of the same po- 
 litical advantages A\hich the first Christians 
 enjoyed, without the many serious hindrances 
 which were inseparable from the presence of a 
 hostile political power. 
 
 THE ANGLO-SAXON DISPERSION. 
 
 We are all acquainted with the extraordinary 
 dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the 
 Roman world at the time that Christianity 
 began its outward movement. In every city 
 was a Jewish colony, and, although the majority 
 of these people greeted the first missionaries 
 with fierce opposition, yet none the less did 
 the more worthy members of the community 
 lend valuable aid in procuring them an audience 
 and thus becoming a connecting link between 
 the strangers and the heathen communities. 
 No one can doubt that God's hand directed 
 the movement of these self-exiled Jews so as 
 to make them serve an important purpose as 
 intermediaries between the early Christians 
 and the outer world. But if wc see a provi- 
 dence in this ancient dispersion of the Hebrew 
 people, how much more ought we to recognize 
 a divine purpose in the much more extraordi> 
 
154 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 nary dispersion of the English-speaking people 
 throughout the whole world at the present 
 time? Not only in the colonies and great de- 
 pendencies of England, but in all other places, 
 in every great city, in every newly opened 
 region, along every civilized coast, in every 
 great resort of pleasure, these people are found 
 in constantly increasing numbers. In many 
 places they do not lead lives which are helpful 
 to the missionary, and not infrequently it 
 happens that a feeling of hostility grows up 
 between the missionaries and their secular 
 neighbors. This is much to be regretted, and 
 is by no means necessary in every case. The 
 English-speaking communities can often be 
 transformed into valuable auxiliaries to the 
 missionary, and in every case their spiritual 
 welfare should be sought with unquestioning 
 earnestness. God has put them where they 
 are, and they are not to be neglected. In our 
 own work in India the limited attention be- 
 stowed upon these people has been richly re- 
 paid, and in other parts of the world it is nearly 
 certain that like efforts would produce like 
 results. It is certain that the Anglo-Saxon 
 dispersion of the present day will go on increas- 
 ing through the coming century ; and since the 
 influence of these people must tell for good or 
 ill in every land, it should be accepted as a 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. I 55 
 
 part of the general missionary work to be done 
 that they should be sought out in every place 
 and in every possible way, and not only brought 
 to Christ, but transformed into missionary 
 auxiliaries. In recognizing these people and 
 in seeking their spiritual good we shall surely 
 be following the example of the missionaries 
 of the New Testament era, with a much better 
 prospect of success than Barnabas and Saul 
 enjoyed in their efforts for their countrymen 
 while pursuing their great missionary work. 
 
 SPIRITUAL STANDARD. 
 
 Turning now to the more direct lessons 
 which the modern missionary can learn from 
 the workers of the New Testament era let us 
 notice, first of all, the high spiritual standard 
 which was not only set up in the beginning, 
 but maintained throughout at least the age of 
 the apostles and their associates. I do not 
 refer to the miraculous element in any of its 
 manifestations, but rather to the presence of 
 an active spiritual life in the several churches, 
 a life so distinct from any other animating 
 principle known in the society of that day as 
 to impress those who were brought under its 
 influence with a conviction of its divine origin. 
 This life was nothing less than the presence 
 of the Holy Spirit, dwelling in his fullness in 
 
156 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 believing hearts, and creating those outward 
 manifestations which mark out vital Christian- 
 ity as distinct from all other religious sys- 
 tems and forms known among men. It was 
 the vital element in Pentecost reproduced in 
 other places, and so exhibited to the body of 
 believers everywhere as to indicate God's plan 
 and purpose to make his Church, in all places 
 and all ages, a reproduction of the living and 
 energetic Church of the original Pentecost. 
 I do not mean that every church organized by 
 Paul and his associates was an exact copy of 
 the first organization in Jerusalem previous to 
 the death of Stephen ; but it would seem that 
 in every place the standard set up was that of 
 the original Pentecost. In the house of Cor- 
 nelius at Ephesus, and even in Samaria, we 
 have circumstantial accounts of the descent 
 of the Spirit upon believers in the pentecostal 
 measure, and from a hundred incidental re- 
 marks it becomes perfectly clear that this 
 spiritual standard was well known everywhere, 
 and recognized as the ordinary privilege as 
 well as the rule of life to be adopted by the 
 whole body of Christian workers. In many 
 places a much lower standard was no doubt 
 tolerated, but the better rule Avas well known, 
 and no doubt illustrated in the lives and la- 
 bors of multitudes of the early Christians. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 57 
 
 The modern missionary should be not 
 merely a pious and devoted man, but one who 
 has the " spiritual mind," who walks in the 
 Spirit, and not only teaches correct doctrine 
 concerning the person and offices of the Holy 
 Ghost, but has proved in his own person that 
 living mortals can and do become the temples 
 of the living God. The standing miracle of 
 Christianity is the presence of the Holy Spirit 
 in the hearts of believers. The missionary who 
 has ceased to expect the reappearance of the 
 old time miracles is the last man living to 
 venture to dispense with this gift of the 
 Spirit, which makes life one long miracle and 
 clothes the believer with privileges and powers 
 which pertain not merely to the miraculous 
 but even to the divine. The world can recog- 
 nize the presence of a hidden power in the 
 possessor of such a gift, and it was this indwell- 
 ing Spirit of whom Jesus spoke when he 
 promised that special power should be given 
 to those of all ages who should become his 
 accredited witnesses. 
 
 VIVIFYING LIFELESS COMMUNITIES. 
 
 In the modern mission field it often happens 
 
 that a large Christian community is found 
 
 apparently destitute, or almost destitute, of 
 
 all manifestations of spiritual life. Those who 
 
 U 
 
158 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 have to deal with such communities are often 
 discouraged and distressed because all their 
 efforts to lift them to a higher plane seem to 
 fail. In such cases regret is often expressed 
 that such unworth}^ persons were ever bap- 
 tized. All efforts to do them good seemed to 
 prove fruitless. What is to be done in such 
 cases? There is hope in every such case if 
 only what I might call a little Pentecost can 
 be introduced at some one point among the 
 people. The average standard may be de- 
 plorably low, but if the New Testament stand- 
 ard is also there the condition of such a 
 community is by no means hopeless. Just at 
 this point we find the secret of the extraordi- 
 nary power of the early Christian leaders. 
 Some of the communities were deplorably 
 imperfect, but none of them were wholly 
 formal. An element of life was found ever}-- 
 where, and this made it possible to contend 
 against evil and to lead the people into a bet- 
 ter and more spiritual life. 
 
 So far as Christian history teaches us there 
 is only one way of introducing this spiritual 
 life into a community. It must be done by 
 living messengers of Christ. The modern 
 missionary, like those of the first generation, 
 should be anointed for this work, and should 
 know by a personal experience what the in- 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. I 59 
 
 dwelling of the Spirit in the heart really means. 
 He is one of those who must ever be like a 
 city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. 
 Hundreds and thousands will watch him and 
 imitate him. He can stand upon his height and 
 beckon to those below to come up to him, but 
 he cannot stand below and induce anyone to 
 go up alone. The standard of Barnabas and 
 Paul, of Peter and John, should be his stand- 
 ard. The world can never be made either to 
 fear or respect a lower one. If he will walk in 
 the Spirit, be clothed with the power of the 
 Spirit, and demonstrate by the example of a 
 quiet, simple, and holy life that he lives in 
 touch with the invisible world, and that he is 
 endued with a stixngth which is more than 
 mortal, men and Vvomcn will be arrested by 
 his words and led by him into the light and 
 freedom of anew and better life. The mission 
 fields of to-day need this New Testament 
 standard of spiritual life and power. The 
 Churches of Christendom need it, and the hope 
 of the future is dependent upon its recognition 
 and acceptance everywhere. 
 
 THE C.\LL TO SERVICE. 
 
 Another lesson can be learned in the stud\" 
 of primitive missions by observing the general 
 character of the workers employed. I have 
 
l6o NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 spoken of their spiritual equipment, but they 
 possessed other quaHfications which pecuh'arly 
 fitted them for their work. Foremost among 
 these I would put the c.ill to service which 
 they received. This would seem to have been 
 as clear and unmistakable as the prior call to 
 discipleship. It is strikingly illustrated in the 
 case of Barnabas and Paul at Antioch, but not 
 in that instance alone. The Book of Acts 
 abounds in illustrations of the fact that the 
 call and guidance of the Spirit were similarly 
 recognized in the apostolic days, not only in 
 what might be called missionary work, but 
 in every department of Christian labor and 
 duty. Nor was this dependence upon the 
 Holy Spirit intended to be an exceptional 
 privilege of that exceptional age. God still 
 calls and sends forth his messengers, and the 
 modern missionary of all men should be a man 
 sent from God. He should go to his distant 
 field with a clear and settled conviction that he 
 is a messenger of God, an ambassador of Jesus 
 Christ, and that he has no more right to diso- 
 bey his calling than he has to wreck his soul 
 by abandoning the service of God and going 
 into the ways of sin and death. 
 
 There is a twofold danger to be guarded 
 against at this point. On the one hand, 
 some who are called of God to missionary 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. l6l 
 
 service may close their ears to the divine voice 
 and shut their eyes to the divine tokens by 
 which they would otherwise be guided into the 
 mission field. On the other hand, there is a 
 growing impression among a certain class of 
 young men that in at least some mission fields 
 a comfortable domestic life, and a not very 
 exacting service, awaits the missionary; and 
 the work is accepted as upon the whole more 
 desirable than a home pastorate, especially 
 with its uncertainties in the case of those 
 whose pulpit gifts are moderate. May the 
 God of all mercies forever spare us from the 
 presence of men and women who are induced 
 to enter the foreign field from such considera- 
 tions as these ! A perfunctory missionary, one 
 who performs a certain routine of duty because 
 it chances to fall to his lot, but whose soul is 
 stirred by no sense of a hallowed call to duty, 
 whose heart glows with no love for the work 
 assigned to him, whose ear is deaf to the Spirit's 
 whispers, and whose eye is blind to the sweet 
 tokens by which our loving Father so often 
 guides his children, is out of place in the mis. 
 sion field, and in many cases his influence will 
 be found adverse to the best interests of the 
 Avork. He may be a good man, in the ordi- 
 nary sense of the word good, but he is out of 
 place, and, however little he may intend it, he 
 
l62 NEW TESTAMENT >.IISSIONS. 
 
 will often be found to fail in times of peculiar 
 peril, and thus brin<T lasting injury to the cause 
 which he is expected to serve. 
 
 MEN OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 It is further worthy of note that the mission- 
 aries of the New Testament era were men 
 of the people. They were accused by their 
 enemies of being " ignorant and unlearned ; " 
 but this does not seem to have been true in 
 any proper sense of the words employed. 
 They were not professional teachers of re- 
 ligion ; they liad not studied in the professional 
 schools of the day ; they did not conform to 
 the popular standards observed by the religious 
 conventionalism of that age ; but they fully 
 and faithfully represented the mass of the 
 people among wdiom they lived, and in doing 
 so illustrated one of the most important 
 qualifications which a missionary can possess. 
 The missionary who leaves his native land to 
 become a dweller among a people who are 
 alien to him both by race and language, must 
 at best labor under a great disadvantage in 
 this respect ; but he can do much to lessen it. 
 During my first year in India a friend said to 
 me, " If you want to enjoy the confidence of 
 these people you must learn to give the soft 
 sound to your t's and d's." His meaning was 
 
NEW testa:\ient missions. 163 
 
 that I must not only Icani their language, but 
 learn to speak it as they did, and especially to 
 avoid those peculiarities which mark the 
 speech of foreigners. Every missionary should 
 study not only to master the language of the 
 people among whom he lives, but to enter 
 into their life, to acquaint himself with their 
 v/orks of thought, their social organization, 
 their fears and prejudices, their likes and dis- 
 likes, and above all to enter into their sym- 
 pathies and make their interests his own. 
 
 But the New Testament does not reveal to 
 us the character and work of what we call the 
 foreign missionary so much as that of the men 
 raised up in the field, or, to borrow a modern 
 term, of the " native preachers." So far as can be 
 gleaned from the very brief record of the times 
 it would seem that these men were, in the 
 main, representatives of the common people. 
 They belonged to no priestly order, they repre- 
 sented no caste, they were pupils of no school 
 of philosophy, science, or religion. They were 
 inducted into their work in the most informal 
 manner. So far as can be learned it would 
 seem that they simply grew into it, and when 
 a special post of duty was vacant a man who 
 had already proved his fitness for the duties 
 required was put into the vacant post. 
 
 In every mission field to-day there is a cry for 
 
l64 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 " a native ministry." This is perfectly intelligi- 
 ble and reasonable. Aliens and strangers can- 
 not permanently be kept in charge of a work 
 which must sooner or later move forward on 
 national lines. But I am every year becoming 
 more impressed that very many friends of mis- 
 sions have a very wrong ideal before their 
 minds when the}' talk of a native ministry. 
 They are thinking of an imitation of the min- 
 istry they have known in the home land, and 
 are forgetting that a ministry adapted to the 
 people must be of the people, and hence be 
 kept in touch ^^•ith the people. It is very easy 
 to take young men from the ranks of the com- 
 mon people, and so train them that in the 
 course of a few years they will become per- 
 manently separated from the community in 
 which they were born and brought up. The 
 priest, as a general rule, receives this kind of 
 training ; but the prophet ceases to be a 
 prophet the moment he allows himself to be- 
 come isolated from the mass of his fellowmen. 
 When we talk of training men for the minis- 
 try we are apt to forget that the word " train- 
 ing " is a very flexible term. In one case it 
 has one meaning, and in another case another 
 and very different meaning. A young man may 
 be thoroughly drilled in Hebrew and Greek, 
 in theology and philosophy, in logic and rhet- 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 65 
 
 oric, in literature and science, and yet not 
 know how to preach or even have an intelh'gent 
 idea of what preaching really means. He is 
 trained, but not to do the work of a preacher. 
 Other men who occupy pulpits, and who per- 
 haps have acquired fame as preachers, can dis- 
 course eloquently in the pulpit, but they cannot 
 preach. They do not know what it is to receive 
 a message from God to be delivered to men ; 
 they do not understand what is meant by the 
 anointing of the Spirit, and they do not ex- 
 pect to be owned of God in the conversion of 
 sinners or in the overthrow of wickedness. 
 They are pulpit orators, but not anointed 
 preachers. They are gifted men, but have been 
 badly trained. This could never have been said 
 of either the leaders or the general body of the 
 workers in New Testament times. The mis- 
 sionaries of the period were men who knew 
 their work, whatever else they did not know ; 
 and in the mission fields of to-day the lesson 
 which their example teaches should not be 
 overlooked. 
 
 MEETING AN EMERGENCY. 
 
 In recent years our own missionaries in In- 
 dia have been brought face to face with this 
 question under somewhat extraordinary cir- 
 cumstances. At a time when every native 
 
1 66 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 preacher and teacher was ah-eady fully em- 
 ployed, a large influx of utterly untaught new 
 converts began to appear on the scene. These 
 converts required teaching, and could not be 
 neglected. To leave them untaught would 
 have been tantamount to insuring their early 
 defection from the Christian ranks. Trained 
 workers there were absolutely none. One ap- 
 parently desperate expedient presented itself, 
 and this was quickly and resolutely adopted. 
 A selection from the ranks of the raw con- 
 verts was made, and a number of men were 
 set apart to be trained in the work. Many 
 objections could easily have been made to this 
 course, but what other course was open to the 
 perplexed and anxious missionaries? The ex- 
 periment was tried, and while the result has 
 not been altogether satisfactory, it has yet 
 been infinitely better than failure. At the 
 present time several hundred of these almost 
 illiterate men are successfully working for God 
 among a class of their countrymen belonging 
 to their own social rank, and peculiarly acces- 
 sible to teachers who were not long ago their 
 own neighbors and associates. When speaking 
 of these men and their present responsibilities, 
 I am often struck by the surprise and even 
 alarm which many good people manifest as 
 they hear of men who can barely read doing 
 
NEW testame:xt xMissions. 167 
 
 the v/ork of Christian preacliers. Very mar.y 
 seem ahnost shocked at the mere mention of 
 such a thing, and make no hesitation in pre- 
 dicting failure, if not, indeed, worse than failure, 
 as the sure result of so unwise a course. But, 
 after all, are these men necessarily so very un- 
 fit for their work? They do not know much 
 which is taught in the theological schools, but 
 they do know their own people ; they know 
 their range of thought, the peculiar character 
 of their religious notions, the prejudices and 
 fears which oppress them, the dangers which 
 lie across their pathwa}', and the sins which 
 most easily beset them. The}' can interpret 
 new ideas to the people as no outsider can, 
 and they can influence and lead the people as 
 no other living man can do. If the test of fit- 
 ness for the work is success in work, then these 
 men may well present very fair credentials as 
 accredited laborers in the vineyard of their 
 Master. 
 
 It is a striking comment on the ease with 
 which men may be educated above their work, 
 that already we find young preachers in India 
 who shrink from visiting their own relatives. 
 They have started out from the lowest social 
 level, have become educated, and in a measure 
 refined, have gained recognition in the social 
 world from persons of high standing ; and now 
 
1 68 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 they do not wish to be seen among their own 
 kindred or perhaps to cross the threshold of 
 the mud-walled hut in which they were born 
 and reared. You need not, it is true, go to 
 far-off India to find illustrations of this kind. 
 The ineffable meanness which makes men and 
 women hide themselves from their own flcsli 
 very often displays itself in fashionable society ; 
 but it is nowhere so utterly out of place as 
 when seen in the case of a Christian preacher, 
 and it is a startling fact that this unmanly 
 pride is sometimes the result of a supposed 
 " training " for the Christian ministry. This 
 result does not always, or even often, oc- 
 cur, but the lesson to be learned is none the 
 less important. Even where the preacher 
 does not demean himself to this extent, it too 
 often happens, in both home and foreign fields, 
 that he becomes wholly unfitted for successful 
 work among the people to whom he himself 
 belongs, and becomes as permanently separated 
 from them as if they lived on another planet. 
 
 CHANGED CONDITIONS. 
 
 P^'om the workers let us now pass on to 
 consider the work of the missionary in those 
 far-off New Testament days. Modern educa- 
 tion, with all that the term implies, had not 
 then been dreamed of, and hence there was 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 69 
 
 no educational work in the popular sense of 
 the word. No schoolhouses had to be built, 
 no text-books prepared, no manuals, maps, or 
 school apparatus of any kind had to be pro- 
 vided. The Sunday school had not yet been 
 born. The printing press was unknown. The 
 civilization of the field of operations was the 
 highest and best on the globe, and the mis- 
 sionaries had neither the knowledge nor the 
 skill, even if they had possessed the inclination, 
 to introduce industrial enterprises or to teach 
 their converts the elements of a new civiliza- 
 tion. In short, the work in those days was 
 confined within very narrow bounds, and can 
 be easily defined. It was simply the task of 
 inducing men and women to accept Jesus 
 Christ as a personal Saviour, and then teaching 
 them carefully how to walk in the good \v;iy 
 and accomplish the righteous will of God. In 
 other words, the early ciisciples devoted them- 
 selves to making converts, organizing churches, 
 and building up the body of believers in the 
 most holy faith of the Gospel. 
 
 One feature of this work demands our spe- 
 cial attention. While it is true that no school- 
 master was to be found among the mission- 
 aries, the teacher, in the New Testament sense 
 of the word, was found everywhere, and on 
 him rested a very grave responsibility. Teach- 
 
I/O NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 ing was one of tlie permanent gifts bestowed 
 upon the Church at Pentecost, and its exercise 
 is absokitcly necessary to the healthy develop- 
 ment of every Christian community. In the 
 apostolic day we read of this work being done 
 from house to house and being extended to 
 every man. There is a kind of personal in- 
 struction which can only be done by personal 
 contact of man with man. No course of lec- 
 tures, no Bible lessons, no catechetical instruc- 
 tions can take the place of it. God has from 
 the beginning made special provision for the 
 preservation and exercise of this gift in the 
 Church, but, like other gifts more precious than 
 gold that perisheth, it has for the most part 
 been sadly neglected in the past. Where it 
 has been recognized and honored it has uni- 
 formly proved unspeakably valuable, especially 
 to converts in the early days of their service. 
 Its neglect in most cases by the modern Church 
 is simply amazing, and, in the face of the ample 
 provision which God has made for its exercise 
 and the clear expression of his will concerning 
 this neglect, seems little short of criminal. 
 
 THE TEACHERS OF NEW TESTAMENT TIMES. 
 
 The missionaries of our day would do well 
 to consider carefully the practical bearings 
 of this subject. Wherever converts begin 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 171 
 
 to be nuiTibered by the thousand, the de- 
 mand for the anointed teacher after the 
 New Testament pattern becomes exceed- 
 ingly urgent. The teacher in the schooh-oom 
 has his work, and it is most important; but 
 this is not the kind of work to which I refer. 
 The pastor has his duties, and very often the 
 gift to teach is found among the other gifts 
 which a faithful pastor receives. But all the 
 school-teachers and pastors combined cannot 
 meet the demand for spiritual instruction 
 which inust arise when large numbers of 
 people begin to turn from idols to the living 
 God. They must be taught liow to pray, how 
 to sing God's praises, how to believe, how to 
 order a Christian household, the nature of 
 temptation and how to resist it, how to deal 
 with tlie erring, how to seek the wanderer, and 
 how, by careful living, to adorn the Christian 
 life in this world and prepare for life with God 
 in the world to come. These converts at the 
 outset know almost nothing, and it is only by 
 line upon line and precept upon precept that 
 they can be kept in the right v/ay and led to 
 consistent lives spent in the service of God. 
 
 The exigencies of our work in India during 
 the past few years have compelled me to think 
 much on this subject. All our missionaries 
 and native preachers and teachers combined 
 
172 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 cannot successfully impart this kind of teaching 
 to the multitudes who are flocking around us, 
 and those who understand the situation best 
 are at times almost appalled by the daily in- 
 creasing magnitude of the problem which con- 
 fronts us. 
 
 In this emergency we can find most light by 
 the example of the Christians of the New 
 Testament era. The gift of teaching was not 
 confined to a select few, and probably was be- 
 stowed upon very considerable numbers of the 
 people. It is more than probable that while 
 the great distinctive truths of the new faith 
 were announced in public discourses, the de- 
 tails, both of doctrine and of practice, were 
 left to the large number of anointed teachers 
 who were raised up for this special work by the 
 direct setting apart of the Holy Spirit. Even 
 in our day we may often see illustrations of 
 this kind of service in Christian lands, espe- 
 cially in connection with revival movements. 
 Men and women who occupy no official posi- 
 tions, and lay claim to no special aptitude for 
 Christian work, arc often successful to a re- 
 markable degree in helping Inquirers and con- 
 verts over their difficulties, and in making 
 straight the many crooked places which such 
 beginners always meet at the outset of their 
 new life. If it be said that as a Ereneral rule 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 73 
 
 such gifted persons are not often met with in 
 modern congregations, it may suffice to reply 
 that God usually bestows his gifts upon those 
 who seek them, and especially upon those who 
 are worthy to receive them. Let the want be 
 recognized, and God's provision for its supply 
 duly appreciated, and we may confidently ex- 
 pect this New Testament gift to reappear in 
 our modern Christian circles as certainly, and 
 in as full measure, as in apostolic times. If 
 this can be successfully done in the case of a 
 great movement like that which is now taking 
 place in India, it will add immeasurably to the 
 possibilities of the missionary world. If the 
 common believers, or any considerable number 
 of them, can be enlisted in the blessed service 
 of caring for poor feeble converts, and halting, 
 doubting inquirers, meeting them all as they 
 come, and directing their first efforts to adopt 
 the Christian faith and the Christian life, it will 
 become possible for us to receive thousands and 
 tens of thousands of the people without fear 
 of any adverse consequences to the Christian 
 community or any danger to the converts 
 themselves. 
 
 PRESENT-DAY CONVERTS. 
 
 This last remark suggests another topic. 
 What is the general character of modern con. 
 13 
 
174 ^'EW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 verts, especially as compared with those of the 
 early Church ? Do the present-day con- 
 verts come up to the New Testament standard, 
 even in a moderate degree? Do not mission- 
 aries themselves mourn over their low spiritual 
 state ? And is it not perfectly evident that the 
 best of them can hardly be named in the same 
 connection with the noble communities of 
 devoted Christian men and women who were 
 raised up under the preaching of the apostles 
 and their associates? 
 
 Before attempting to answer these questions, 
 I must beg to be allowed to say a few words 
 about the moral and spiritual status of the first 
 Christians. The popular idea undoubtedly is 
 that the first generation of Christians presented 
 beyond question the best type of Christian life 
 and character which the world has yet seen ; 
 but there can be little doubt that the popular 
 impression on this subject is wholly a mistaken 
 one. In the first place, we must remember that 
 for some years the first Christians strictly main- 
 tained their adherence to the laws and customs 
 of Judaism. No Brahman of the present day 
 is more scrupulous in observing the rules of his 
 caste than were the first saints at Jerusalem in 
 conforming to laws and prejudices which would 
 not now be tolerated in any Christian Church 
 in the world. In the next place, the standard 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 75 
 
 of moral conduct which was officially adopted 
 at the suggestion of James, when presiding 
 over the council at Jerusalem, was by no means 
 a high standard, and the exactions which it 
 demanded of the Gentile converts were of the 
 lightest character. In the brief list of restric- 
 tions mentioned by James on that memorable 
 occasion we find no reference to Sabbath ob- 
 servance, either Jewish or Christian. Gross 
 sin and repulsive food were forbidden, but no 
 mention was made of various matters which 
 are now considered of the utmost importance. 
 It is evident, too, that the average Christians of 
 that day had a very fair share of the infirmities 
 which so often disfigure the lives of our modern 
 Christians. The pure and holy men and women 
 of whom we hear the most were not in the ma- 
 jority, but, as always happens in our world, tlie 
 lives of the preeminently good have survived 
 in history, while the unworthy have been for- 
 gotten. 
 
 The modern convert is not always an exem- 
 plary man, but some exemplary men may be 
 found in every comiiumity of converts. Some — 
 I am thankful to be able to say many — are 
 more than exemplary ; they are holy in life, 
 devoted in spirit, and full of zeal for God and 
 immortal souls. The leaven of moral and spir- 
 itual progress is at work in these communities, 
 
176 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 and if the converts are not all model Chris- 
 tians, they are at least steadily improving in 
 the elements which make up a good Christian 
 character. It is quite common to find among 
 them a hankering after former practices, and 
 the modern missionary often lias to repeat the 
 admonition of John to his spiritual children, to 
 keep themselves from idols. Some Christian 
 duties are learned slowly and observed very 
 imperfectly. Chief among these is the law of 
 Sabbath rest. Unlike most of the other com- 
 mandments of the Decalogue, the obligation 
 of the Sabbath is wholly dependent on a spe- 
 cial commandment. It is not written on the 
 heart by the Spirit previous to hearing the 
 commandment. Every idolater knows that it 
 is wrong to kill, steal, bear false witness, com- 
 mit adultery, covet, or dishonor parents ; but 
 no one knows until taught that it is a duty to 
 keep every seventh day holy. The natural re- 
 sult is that most converts, especially those who 
 live in the midst of vast non-Christian com- 
 munities, learn the duty of Sabbath observ- 
 ance very slowly, and it is more than prob- 
 able that in this respect they are walking in 
 the footsteps of the early Christians. During 
 a whole generation of the first converts the 
 practice of Sabbath observance was by no means 
 uniform. Some observed Saturday and others 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 77 
 
 Sunday, while others again observed both 
 days. The majority were either slaves or per- 
 sons so connected with non-Christian parties 
 as to be under a measure of compulsion, and 
 hence no attempt was made by them to ob- 
 serve any day. For many years to come a 
 similar laxity must be tolerated in non-Chris- 
 tian countries. Millions are so bound to the 
 soil, or so obligated to the village communi- 
 ties that they are not at liberty, and for many 
 long years will not be at liberty, to conform to 
 outward rules of living which have been uni- 
 versally recognized in Christian lands for many 
 long centuries. 
 
 In all discussions of this kind we should re- 
 member that mere conventionalism is often 
 confounded with Christianity. In England and 
 America certain notions prevail with reference 
 to public worship which seem inseparable from 
 Christianity itself, but which in fact have very 
 little to do with it. Usage quickly gives sanc- 
 tity to a mere custom which chances to be as- 
 sociated with religion ; and it thus happens that 
 recent converts from heathenism are often 
 judged severely for their ignorance of Chris- 
 tianity when, as a matter of fact, they are only 
 ignorant of the religious conventionalities of 
 the day. An ordinary Sunday service in a 
 fashionable modern church bears but a very 
 
178 NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 
 
 slight resemblance to the Lord's Day worship 
 of the Christians of the first century. The 
 average converts in India and China have many 
 things to learn from their English and Ameri- 
 can brethren ; but there are some things which 
 they might profitably teach these same breth- 
 ren, and thereby minister, in some little de- 
 gree at least, to their edification. 
 
 FLEXIBLE ORGANIZATION. 
 
 In conclusion, let me call your attention to 
 the fact that in the missions of the New Testa- 
 ment era the law of normal progress was al- 
 lowed to have free progress, and the rule of 
 one day did not necessarily become the law of 
 all succeeding days. The work was always re- 
 garded as greater than the methods, and the 
 leaders advanced step by step as the provi- 
 dential indications of the time pointed out the 
 way. The missionaries of the present day 
 must do likewise. Some things cannot be 
 changed, for the simple reason that they are 
 forever right ; but in a multitude of other mat- 
 ters the law of Christian liberty must be rec- 
 ognized to its fullest extent. The Christian 
 workers of the world have learned much, but 
 as the ages pass by other lessons will have 
 to be learned and other methods introduced 
 in the ever-multiplying fields throughout the 
 
NEW TESTAMENT MISSIONS. 1 79 
 
 world. We should thank God for the many- 
 New Testament precedents which are guiding 
 us to-day ; but among them all no one is more 
 to be prized than the conspicuous liberty which 
 was given to adopt new methods in the face of 
 new emergencies. In this liberty all Christian 
 workers should be careful to stand fast. 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 IT has fallen to my lot during recent years to 
 be, not exactly a wanderer on the face of 
 the earth, and yet one who is familiar with the 
 full meaning of the phrase, "In journeyings 
 oft." From January to December there is no 
 respite from the calls which come to me from 
 both sides of the globe, although happily there 
 is abundant variety in the path along which I 
 pursue my way, with new scenes constantly 
 presenting themselves to the view and new 
 lessons constantly impressing themselves on 
 both mind and heart. Many of the impres- 
 sions thus made are abiding. A brief glimpse 
 of a peculiar situation, or of special features 
 pertaining to an otherwise ordinary work which 
 a hurried wayfarer may sometimes catch on 
 his journey, is often of unspeakable value in 
 after years. 
 
 Thirty-six years ago this present month I 
 left my native land to become a foreign mis- 
 sionary, and in the course of the long years 
 which have since passed I have had many op- 
 portunities for observing various features of 
 
1 84 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 the work both at home and abroad, and very 
 naturally have become deeply impressed by 
 much of what I have seen and heard, especially 
 in recent years. Instead of selecting a special 
 subject for this closing lecture of the series, it 
 has occurred to me that it might be well to 
 call your attention to a few of these wayside 
 views, that is, to observations constantly made 
 in the ordinary course of my missionary life. 
 
 MISSIONARY DEVOTION. 
 
 First, and perhaps most important of all, I 
 may say that the experience of each succeed- 
 ing year has impressed me more and more with 
 the importance of maintaining a high standard 
 of missionary devotion, both in the Church at 
 homeland among the missionaries abroad. I 
 do not wish to reflect in the faintest measure 
 on missionaries who have, for reasons sufficient 
 to themselves, permanently returned to their 
 native land. In the very nature of the case it 
 must often happen that good and devoted men 
 and women will be obliged to change their 
 plans for life, and we may easil}' conceive of 
 circumstances under which it becomes as clearly 
 one's duty to give up the foreign field as it 
 seemed in the first place to accept the call to 
 it. Still, I have often been unable to conceal 
 from myself the fact that many who bear the 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. I 85 
 
 title of missionary fail to understand the full 
 meaning of devotion to the country or the 
 work to which they are sent. Such lack of de- 
 votion may be found in the field as well as out 
 of it ; and it sometimes happens that the man 
 and wife who sorrowfully turn their footsteps 
 homeward have more real love and devotion to 
 its interests than another couple who content- 
 edly remain at their post of duty. 
 
 In any ordinary mission field a class of Vv'ork- 
 ers will be found who, not in name merely, but 
 in very deed, belong to the country to which 
 they have been sent. They make its interests 
 their own, and they have no interests of their 
 own apart from the work to which they have 
 given their lives. They may be depended upon 
 in all possible circumstances. Tlie value of 
 such workers is beyond all price. Devotion in 
 the case of such persons has a practical mean- 
 ing, which constantly reminds us of the quality 
 of that virtue as represented in the New Testa- 
 ment. There may be a great deal of religious 
 feeling, and the recognition of a very high 
 ideal, without a practical manifestation of 
 Christian devotion in the New Testament sense 
 of the word. In the mission field abroad we 
 feel the need of men and women who belong 
 to the country of their adoption — men and 
 women who live for the work to which they 
 
lS6 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 profess to ha\"e gi\'cn their lives, and who are 
 prepared to sacrifice any interest, including hfe 
 itself, if their work seems to demand it. Such 
 persons do not live in a country merely — they 
 are wedded to it, they live for it, and would 
 count it a privilege rather than a misfortune 
 to be permitted to find their graves beneath its 
 soil. 
 
 It happens, perhaps, to every missionary 
 during the earlier years of his service that he 
 encounters temptations to leave his work and 
 accept inviting positions in his native land. 
 These temptations sometimes become the more 
 alluring because connected with positions in 
 which he will still seem to be serving the cause 
 which he has at heart, or his private affairs may 
 become so complicated that, under the circum. 
 stances in which he is placed, a return to his 
 native land will seem to him justifiable. If all 
 missionaries, especially those who possess gifts 
 which would fit them for service at home, were 
 to speak frankly they would tell of periods in 
 their lives when they have encountered such 
 temptations, and perhaps have only overcome 
 them after a struggle ; and it is perhaps owing 
 to the fact that all do not succeed in putting 
 the temptation behind them that, from time to 
 time, men well adapted to the service are al- 
 lured away. I need hardly say that in nearly 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 1 8/ 
 
 every such case one of the greatest possible 
 mistakes which a man can make is committed, 
 and every young missionary who goes abroad 
 should settle the question in his heart that 
 nothing but a call as imperative as that which 
 puts him in the work shall ever turn him out 
 of it. When he accepts the call he should de- 
 vote himself so unquestioningly to the cause to 
 which he gives his life that it will be useless 
 for man or devil to try to entice him away from 
 his post of duty. 
 
 SEPARATION FROM CHILDREN. 
 
 There is one phase of missionary life which 
 in hundreds of cases puts this devotion to a 
 test of unusual severity, and makes the tempta- 
 tion something more than can be expressed in 
 ordinary language. In nearly all tropical mis- 
 sion fields it is found necessary for the best in- 
 terests of the children of missionaries that they 
 be sent back to the home land of their parents, 
 not only to secure the advantages of an or- 
 dinary education, but also to develop their 
 physical strength and enable them to reap the 
 many advantages which are secured from grow- 
 ing up in the midst of an intelligent Christian 
 community. Daily contact with the unfavor- 
 able associations in the midst of which they are 
 placed in a non-Christian land can hardly be 
 
l88 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 Otherwise than hurtful, even though the moral 
 and rehgious character of the child be carefully- 
 guarded by the most watchful of parents. In 
 some cases, under exceptional circumstances, 
 children have grown up in these tropical fields 
 without seriously deteriorating in their health 
 or morals ; but, as a general rule, parents who 
 wish to secure the highest possible advantages 
 for their children — and all Christian parents 
 should so wish^ — will feel it well, sooner or 
 later, to send those who are as dear to them as 
 life itself to the other side of the globe for a 
 separation which sometimes lasts for many long 
 and weary years. When we speak of mission- 
 ary trials, this is perhaps the most severe that 
 can be named. To the children themselves it 
 often seems morally wrong to banish them 
 thus from what to them seems home. Many 
 good people in England and America are led 
 to question the wisdom of this course. Not 
 understanding the peculiar circumstances of the 
 case they hastily assume the ground that 
 vi^herever parents live children ought to live, 
 and that if the young people grow up in the 
 land of their adoption they will be the better 
 fitted for usefulness among the people for whom 
 they should labor after their parents have gone 
 to their reward. That view will do ideally, but 
 in practical life it will fail in nine cases out of 
 
V.'AVSIDE VIEWS. 1 89 
 
 ten. Missionary parents, no more than other 
 parents, can decide in advance whether their 
 children will be adapted for the work in which 
 ihey themselves are engaged. The children 
 may have no taste or aptitude for such work, 
 and even if they do it may not follow that 
 spending childhood and youth in the midst of 
 such associations is the best way for qualifying 
 them for the highest usefulness in coming 
 years. Very many missionaries iind themselves 
 sooner or later brought face to face with our 
 Saviour's seemingly harsh condition, that those 
 who would follow him obediently as disciples 
 must be willing to forsake all things, including 
 children ; but there is, after all, less of hard- 
 ness or harshness in this than appears on the 
 surface. 
 
 In the first place, it rarely happens that the 
 son or daughter of a missionary makes ship- 
 wreck of morals or fails to do well in a general 
 sense in after life. I cannot recall a single in- 
 stance of children who have been thus sent 
 away from home by missionary parents who 
 afterward did badly. There may, of course, 
 have been a few such cases ; but in all these 
 years during which I have been brought into 
 contact with missionary families in England, 
 Germany, and the United States I have failed 
 to find a single example of the kind. On the 
 13 
 
IQO WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 other hand, I am of the opinion that special 
 blessings attend both parent and child in such 
 cases, and that, perhaps, instead of being the 
 most unfortunate children in the world, these 
 young people are among the most favored. 
 We cannot but feel for them, and I only men- 
 tion the subject in order to let everyone who 
 contemplates the missionary life have the try- 
 ing duty placed b«fore his mind in advance, 
 lest, when the time of trial comes, he may be 
 tempted to forsake his post — as not a few mis- 
 sionaries have done — in accordance with the 
 idea that the claims of his children release him 
 from the higher obligations which he assumes 
 when, in obedience to God's call, he devotes 
 his life to missionary service. 
 
 While commending a high standard of de- 
 A'otion to all friends of missions at home and 
 abroad, I must not omit to give a word of cau- 
 tion as to the quality of the devotion needed. 
 One of the wayside views which has aroused 
 my attention has been that not a few devoted 
 Christian men and women, all of them pure 
 and good, who have faith to attempt great 
 things, but who fail to see the importance of 
 maintaining an intelligent devotion. Christian 
 devotion should never be blind. Every mis- 
 sionary should remember that among the many 
 STood Gifts of God to his children is that of 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. I9I 
 
 common sense, and no possible measure of de- 
 votion or piety can justify the neglect of this 
 gift which all Christians, even more than oth- 
 ers, constantly need. Both at home and abroad 
 this practical truth is sometimes forgotten. In 
 view of what I have witnessed, "at sundry 
 times and in divers places," I feci constrained 
 to say that too many very earnest people 
 allow themselves to be seriously misled by 
 neglecting the exercise of sanctified common 
 sense. It is not wise, it is not right to send a 
 party of young missionaries into pestilential 
 regions before anyone has explored the coun- 
 try and before a suitable place has been found 
 for a settlement. It is not wise, and it cer- 
 tainly is not prudent to send out large parties 
 of untried persons, sometimes married and 
 sometimes single, with little or no culture, lit- 
 tle or no experience of life, and with supreme 
 devotion as the one towering virtue which is 
 expected to hide a multitude of shortcomings. 
 It is not right to send abroad men and women 
 who manifestly will never be able to acquire 
 new languages or do any part of the practical 
 work of a missionary. It is not right to send 
 out young people who have never lived b\' 
 " faith alone " to found so-called " faith mis- 
 sions." There is no real devotion whatever 
 in deliberate folly; and some missionar}' expe- 
 
192 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 ditions have been so unwisely planned as to 
 make it seem that wisdom had been thrown 
 to the winds and devotion made a synonym 
 for rashness or blind presumption. The mis- 
 sion field is the last place in the world in which 
 such a spirit ought to be displayed, and those 
 on whom responsibility rests should carefully 
 avoid even the appearance of a disregard of 
 ordinary prudence. 
 
 SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 While speaking of missionary devotion, I 
 wish to add a word concerning what, perhaps, 
 may be regarded as only one phase of the sub- 
 ject. I mean the importance of maintaining a 
 deeply spiritual life. In a successful mission- 
 ary field foreign workers soon discover that 
 they do not by any means possess a monopoly 
 of Christian devotion or of spiritual life, but at 
 the same time they will sooner or later find 
 that the standard of holy living among their 
 converts depends very much upon their own 
 example. I never feel any serious misgivings 
 concerning the ultimate standard of living 
 which will be adopted by our converts so long- 
 as at one or more points we arc successful in 
 maintaining a standard of spiritual life which 
 approaches more or less nearly that set up in 
 the New Testament. A very few Christians 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 1 93 
 
 of deep piet}', and whose devotion is not mere!}' 
 formal, but spontaneous and real, never fail 
 powerfully to affect the others with whom they 
 are associated ; and, as might be expected, this 
 becomes more marked in the case of those 
 who naturally look up to them as their leaders. 
 Hence all foreign missionaries should be men 
 and women who know what it is to experience 
 in their own hearts and lives the power of the 
 truths which they teach. They should never 
 go abroad with unsettled doubts or with a 
 Christianity which is in all its main features 
 purely intellectual. Of all living men the mis- 
 sionary, who stands in the midst of people 
 who do not even bear the Christian name, needs 
 to be able to say, "I know" — needs to 
 know whom he believes and what he believes. 
 It is not only discouraging, but positive!}' 
 p;'.iiiful to hear a man or woman who has left 
 home and friends and country, and gone to the 
 ends of the earth as a messenger of Christ, 
 calmly express doubt concerning the possi- 
 bility of recognizing a spiritual work in the 
 heart. Those who go abroad as messengers 
 of the risen Son of God should be able to tes- 
 tify, not merely that they believe in him, but 
 that they know him, that they are his messen- 
 gers, and that they know how to lead those to 
 him who need his help. 
 
194 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 It has often been impressed upon me that 
 there is a painful want of intelHgent consecra- 
 tion on the part of those who support mission- 
 ary work at home. It is easy enough to find 
 persons who have a clear enough conception 
 of what consecration should mean to the mis- 
 sionary in the foreign field, but it is a rare 
 thing indeed to meet with one who has ever 
 attempted to apply the same rule to himself 
 which he thinks should in every case be ap- 
 plied to his brother who goes abroad. Conse- 
 cration is a term which means, or should mean, 
 the same thing when applied to all human be- 
 ings. It may lead to a given course of conduct 
 in the case of one and to a very different course 
 in the case of another ; but the motive power in 
 each case should be the same. If I as a foreign 
 missionary am expected to give up all things 
 for the interests of the work, to count home 
 and treasure and ease and personal comfort as 
 nothing when the interests of the work are at 
 stake, my brother in the United States who 
 unhesitatingly assigns this standard of duty to 
 me should be governed by a spirit precisely 
 similar. He may not be called upon to give 
 up the things that I may be required to for- 
 sake, but his devotion should be as complete, 
 and whatever he is required to do should be 
 done as cheerfully and with as little question 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 1 95 
 
 as if l)e were a missionary in China or Africa. 
 It is utterly discouraging, however, and pain- 
 fully disheartening to find tliat the very idea 
 of such a missionary devotion in the home land 
 is scarcely recognized. Here and tliere a good 
 man can be found who has consecrated all that 
 he has and all that he expects to receive to this 
 sacred cause. Butsuch cases are very rare indeed. 
 So far from it, devotion to the missionary cause 
 is usually accepted as meaning at the utmost a 
 willingness to give once a year a liberal sum in 
 aid of the work. It is an almost unheard-of thing 
 for a rich man to give son or daughter, much 
 less to give himself, for the work for which our 
 Saviour gave life and all things else. Our 
 best people are strangely prone to forget that 
 the missionary cause represents the salvation 
 of the human race. It cannot possibly mean 
 less than this, and v.hen we use the term de- 
 votion in connection with it we should always 
 remember that the only devotion that can pos- 
 sibly enable the disciples of Christ to accom- 
 plish their gigantic task is one which bears 
 the impress of the Master himself — a devotion, 
 in other words, which embraces life, with all 
 that the term implies. 
 
 I need hardly say that even among our best 
 Christians in these United States such devo- 
 tion has not yet been realized to any apprecia- 
 
196 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 Lie extent. Great Churches may be found 
 the measure of whose practical devotion is 
 represented by an average gift of from fifty 
 cents to a dollar a year for each believing 
 Christian. There is no sacrifice in connection 
 with it, no earnest striving in either prayer or 
 labor, in aid of the cause. Money is poured 
 out like water by thousands of prosperous 
 Christians to build palaces in which to live, to 
 maintain a style \\hich pertains strictly to a 
 world that is perishing, while nations are sit- 
 ting in darkness, while millions are living in 
 utter want and dying without a ray of hope 
 upon their future. There is something about 
 this state of things which is more than surpris- 
 ing ; it is positively alarming ; and all earnest 
 Christians should awaken to the realization of 
 the fact that Christianity itself is made a huge 
 inconsistency before the world while such a 
 state of things is permitted to continue. 
 
 CONFIDENCE NEEDED. 
 
 I have noted, too, from time to time, as I 
 have been going up and down among the home 
 churches, that there is a lamentable want of 
 confidence in this enterprise as a special work 
 given by God to all his people. This form of 
 unbelief is not often formulated in words, and 
 yet it manifests itself constantly in indirect 
 
\YAYSIDE VIEWS. IQ/ 
 
 forms. In a general way Christians are willing 
 enough to concede that in the beginning a 
 commission was given to the early Christians 
 to evangelize all nations, but it is not accepted 
 generally as a fact that God, in these latter 
 days, is by his Holy Spirit summoning his peo- 
 ple anew to take up a long-neglected duty and 
 complete the task which was begun by the 
 immediate followers of our Saviour. This want 
 of confidence in the work very naturally pro- 
 duces something like a sjjiritual paralysis, which 
 hinders all earnest efforts for a grand advance 
 along all the lines of missionary endeavor 
 throughout the world. One of the first things 
 to be done by the promoters of this enterprise 
 is to insist more and more strenuously that this 
 great question should be settled once for all. 
 Let the leaders of religious thought among us 
 take it up ; let all those in high ecclesiastical 
 positions give it their immediate attention ; 
 and especially let all leaders of the missionar}' 
 enterprise unshrinkingly press it upon the at- 
 tention of the people that Jesus Christ, who 
 still lives and walks in the midst of the churches 
 as of old, is summoning everyone who bears 
 his name to an immediate prosecution of this 
 gigantic task. People generally cannot be ex- 
 pected to believe with any measure of confi- 
 dence until a crreat truth is set before them 
 
198 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 which challeiif^^es their faith. Their want of 
 confidence in the work is largely owing to the 
 fact that a missionary gospel has not been 
 preached to them. The heart of any sincere 
 Christian is prepared to believe, and finds no 
 pleasure in withholding confidence from any- 
 thing that is good ; but God's rule under the 
 gospel dispensation is that all great truths 
 shall be set before the heart and mind of the 
 believer, in order that an intelligent faith may 
 find an opportunity for its exercise. I do not, 
 therefore, feel like upbraiding our Christian peo- 
 ple for want of confidence in this call, but 
 would rather chide their leaders for not put- 
 ting the call distinctly before the Church. Our 
 preachers are neglecting their duty, our great 
 leaders have failed to realize their responsi- 
 bility, and those to whom we naturally look as 
 our missionary leaders have failed to impress it 
 upon the public that Christ himself is speaking, 
 is speaking now, and is calling in a voice which 
 he would have all his people upon the globe 
 recognize and obey, summoning them to one 
 united, stupendous effort to bring all the na- 
 tions into his fold. 
 
 THE PRESENT SOCIAL CRISIS. 
 
 A plausible objection to foreign mission work 
 at this particular time is sometimes made by 
 
Wayside views. 199 
 
 tliose ^^'ho see aiul feel deeply the crisis which 
 is upon the Christian Church in the United 
 States, and, indeed, in all Christian countries, 
 in connection with the extraordinary develop- 
 ment of city life. It is a phenomenon hereto- 
 fore unknown in the world that in all parts of 
 Christendom, and even to some extent in India, 
 millions of people are flocking out of the coun- 
 try into the great cities. With this concentra- 
 tion of population in the great cities new con- 
 ditions have arisen, and new questions have 
 been started, and symptoms of new movements 
 are appearing, some of which are causing grave 
 alarm in the minds of our most thoughtful 
 people. On the surface it looks as if our Chris- 
 tian Churches were not able and were not go- 
 ing to be able to grapple with the extraordi- 
 nary issues which have thus unexpectedly been 
 thrust upon them. Multitudes of people are 
 found who cannot speak our language, and in 
 the midst of the polj'glot tongues of the peo- 
 ple the old-time preacher of the Gospel is made 
 to feel a sense of weakness to which he was 
 formerly wholly unaccustomed. In one well- 
 known mission in New York not less than nine 
 nationalities were found represented a week or 
 two ago. Many of these people could under- 
 stand very little English ; and in the midst of 
 such a community it must have seemed to the 
 
200 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 workers as if the most urgent phase of mission- 
 ary work to be found on the face of the globe 
 was that which met them in the midst of that 
 great city. 
 
 We can hardly conceal from ourselves the 
 fact that some grave dangers seem to threaten 
 our civilization. The clamor of the multitude 
 of the unemployed is becoming louder every 
 year. Unwise and even reckless attempts may 
 be made at any time to revolutionize society as 
 it now exists. I have no time to discuss the 
 ultimate bearings of such questions, but merely 
 call your attention to them as powerfully af- 
 fecting the views of some of our best people 
 concerning the missionary work. " Whatever 
 may have been true in the past," they say, " the 
 situation has become so changed that we can 
 no longer see the urgency of work in foreign 
 lands, and must give our time and our treasure 
 to this work which God has placed at our 
 doors." I can see clearly and feel deeply the 
 force of such remarks, and perhaps it will sur- 
 prise you if I say that as a foreign missionary I 
 see these things more clearly and feel them 
 more deeply than those who, living in our 
 great cities, confront these grave questions in 
 America. I do not see, however, the force of 
 the objection, but, on the other hand, feel 
 deeply that the best way to meet tb.e problem 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 20I 
 
 which confronts you here is to accept the prior 
 commission which was given at the beginning of 
 our era, and which included all these questions 
 which are causing alarm among you here in 
 America. 
 
 When tempted to yield to discouragement 
 and even despair in the face of the grave diffi- 
 culties to which I allude, you should always 
 remember that God has never yet been taken 
 by surprise. All the terms of this great prob- 
 lem have been seen from the beginning, and 
 when our Saviour ascended on high and poured 
 out his Spirit at Pentecost he included in the 
 permanent gift of the Spirit a full provision 
 for the emergency which is upon you at this 
 present hour. There is nothing in the present 
 situation that need alarm anyone, but there are 
 many things which undoubtedly call for close 
 investigation, for earnest prayer, for increased 
 devotion, for greater courage, and for more 
 determined effort to meet each emergency as 
 it arises. Our friends in the great cities should 
 also remember that no policy could prove 
 more fatal at the present crisis than to issue a 
 summons calling in men from the outposts, 
 closing up our widely extended lines, and as- 
 suming what would practically be a defensive 
 attitude in the face of the enemy. If we were 
 to postpone our foreign missionary work until 
 
202 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 the emergency shall have been met at home, it 
 would be tantamount to the case of a great 
 army in the country of an enemy suddenly 
 taking refuge in a few great cities, fortifying 
 their positions, and ordering a cessation of ag- 
 gressive warfare at every point until the safety 
 of the cities had been secured. 
 
 You cannot afford here in America to as- 
 sume a defensive position. In New York, 
 Chicago, or any other great city you are on the 
 winning side, and must maintain an offensive 
 attitude. Christianity was never intended to 
 assume a defensive attitude ; her normal atti- 
 tude is that of the offensive, and you would 
 simply paralyze our militant forces in the 
 United States if you gave notice to the world 
 that you were no longer able to maintain your 
 ordinary operations among the nations. 
 
 You should also remember that in Christian 
 service obedience to God is a law not only 
 of spiritual life, but a condition of spiritual 
 strength. The first great question to be set- 
 tled is, What has God commanded us in refer- 
 ence to this duty ? Is it true that through the 
 centuries that great command has been con- 
 stantly held up before our eyes, as clearly as 
 if written in letters of fire across the sky, to 
 make Christ known to all the nations of the 
 world ? If we admit that this is true, then it 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 203 
 
 is gross and glaring disobedience for us even 
 to propose to disobey the command. Diso- 
 bedience means weakness. I look upon the 
 proposal to give a subordinate part to the for- 
 eign missionary enterprise for a generation or 
 two with undisguised alarm. It is tantamount 
 to a deliberate proposal to resign ourselves to 
 a state of spiritual paralysis. It means defeat, 
 disaster, and humiliation. The idea is, no 
 doubt, that there will be more hope for our 
 great cities if everything is concentrated here; 
 but this hope will prove utterly delusive. The 
 only way of safety is God's way; and God has 
 indicated his way so clearly that everyone who 
 runs may read. 
 
 INIy friends in this country in talking with 
 me concerning the aspect of society at the 
 present time, nearl)' always take it for granted 
 that a missionary returned from the other side 
 of the globe must be wholly unacquainted with 
 the new condition of things in the social life 
 of the United States. It never seems to occur 
 to them that the same troubles which are be- 
 ginning to appear so portentous in the United 
 States, and especially in the great cities, are 
 found in active existence in India, and even in 
 a more accentuated form than has yet been 
 reached in America. In some respects the 
 condition of the masses in India is more alarm- 
 
204 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 ing than anything yet seen in America. In 
 deed, the same questions which are attracting 
 so much attention here have long been felt in 
 every Asiatic country. The poverty of the 
 masses in India and China is so extreme that 
 the comparative poverty in London and New 
 York can luirdly be mentioned in the same 
 connection, except by way of contrast. Re- 
 turning from my mission field a year ago, my 
 attention was drawn to an assembly of two or 
 three thousand workmen in the city of Cleve- 
 land, and I felt not only concerned but almost 
 distressed when I looked at them and remem- 
 bered that for the first time in my life I had 
 seen a large number of unemployed men in an 
 American city who v/ere out of money and 
 apparently out of work and reduced to the 
 verge of positive want. My mind was relieved, 
 however, when I learned on inquiry that these 
 men and their families were not starving, but 
 that they were unwilling to work for so little 
 as a dollar a day ! I remembered that in the 
 country which I had just left it was perfectly 
 feasible to engage a thousand men to work as 
 ordinary laborers for a salary of two dollars a 
 month. The mere statement of this fact will 
 suffice to show you how much more real in- 
 dustrial and social troubles are in India than 
 in England or the United States. 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 205 
 
 But it is not poverty alone that we have to 
 contend with in the great Asiatic countries ; 
 the people are helpless, and, indeed, it is to 
 this fact that our only security is due. They 
 are not capable of putting forth such acts of 
 violence as the unemployed classes are found 
 attempting to do in Western regions. I have 
 seen not only poverty but famine and death 
 stalking abroad through the land. I have 
 lived in the midst of war and pestilence and 
 famine ; but if given my choice I would at any 
 time accept both war and pestilence in prefer- 
 ence to the awful scourge which famine, even 
 in its lightest phases, never fails to inflict. At 
 this very time many of our statesmen in India 
 are perplexed with the question of redundancy 
 of population. I could take you, if there, 
 through districts of country where a thousand 
 people live upon every square mile of land ; 
 and this enormous population is not reckoned 
 by counting in large cities with hundreds of 
 thousands of inhabitants, but consists simply 
 of the rural population living in small mud- 
 walled villages. 
 
 As famines are more and more prevented 
 by the distribution of grain along the lines of 
 railways and canals, and as sanitary measures 
 of various kinds are introduced among the 
 people, the ratio of increase is steadily rising, 
 U 
 
206 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 and statesmen begin to ask what the end will 
 be. How are these vast multitudes who are 
 almost starving now to be fed in the next 
 generation ? What will India do when her 
 population rises, as it bids fair to rise, to five 
 hundred million ? These questions confront 
 the missionary, and appeal to him for solution 
 more imperatively than to any other person. 
 You must not for a moment allow yourselves 
 to think that we have no troubles abroad, no 
 problems to solve, no difficult questions to an- 
 swer, and no dangers threatening both the 
 stability of society and the success of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 So far from feeling alarm in view of these 
 apparently dangerous issues I look upon them 
 with serene confidence in God, and without a 
 shadow of misgiving as to the ultimate result 
 of present agitations. If Christianity cannot 
 deal successfully with such social disturbances 
 as these it will stand a confessed failure before 
 the world. It was just for the settlement of such 
 questions that Christ came to earth. We 
 hardly know what we mean when we say he 
 came to save men, and tacitly attach so narrow 
 an interpretation to the word "save" as to 
 limit its meaning and limit the possibilities 
 which otherwise would be within easy grasp 
 of his disciples of the present generation. I 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 20/ 
 
 have believed for some years that it will be 
 given to the Christian missionaries of the 
 world to solve some of the most portentous 
 social questions of the present day. So far 
 from waiting till you settle all these issues in 
 Europe and America we propose to move on 
 steadily, and with God's help to contribute our 
 share toward the introduction of a basis of so- 
 ciety which will be adapted to the condition 
 of men and women in all the nations, and which 
 will make it possible for the human race to live 
 in peace, quietness, and happiness throughout 
 the whole length and breadth of our wide 
 earth. 
 
 LIVING LINKS. 
 I have been deeply impressed by an observa- 
 tion made in many parts of the country of the 
 interest which missionary donors feel in the 
 destination of the money which they give for 
 the work. It is often said that Christians give 
 from principle, and should have such confi- 
 dence in those who are responsible for the 
 work that they will be willing to forego the 
 desire for further information concerning the 
 use to which their gifts are applied, and deny 
 themselves the gratification of what seems to 
 be little more than a natural curiosity on the 
 subject. It is very easy to present such a viev/ 
 and to defend it ; but in this, as in many other 
 
208 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 cases, we are obliged to accept facts as we find 
 them. It is just possible that all Christians 
 should be so disinterested as to feel no personal 
 concern in a matter of this kind ; but, as a 
 matter of fact, they are not ; and for one I 
 strongly incline to the belief that it is some- 
 thing better than mere curiosity which creates 
 a desire on the part of so many to follow their 
 offerings with their prayers, and watch care- 
 fully the development of the work which they 
 set on foot in distant lands. Undoubtedly, as 
 a matter of fact, it is found much more easy to 
 induce ordinary persons to give for a specific 
 object than simply to give in response to a 
 general appeal. We are all so constituted that 
 our sympathies can only be drawn out by 
 examples which we can comprehend, and which 
 are so brought before the mind that we can 
 appreciate the exact bearings of each case. 
 More than that, it is perfectly reasonable that 
 a benevolent person should have a desire to 
 found some special work and watch its de- 
 velopment just as he would plant a tree and 
 watch over its growth from year to year. 
 Hence, for some years past I have not hesi- 
 tated to make special appeals, both to the 
 public and to individuals, inviting them to 
 support special objects. One becomes respon- 
 sible for the maintenance of a school, another 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 209 
 
 for the educalioii of a given number of bo}-s 
 and girls, a third for the education of one or 
 more theological students, a fourth for the 
 support of one or more preachers, a fifth for 
 the erection of a chapel or other building, 
 while in rare instances persons assume greater 
 responsibilities and become permanent sup- 
 porters of a missionary family. 
 
 This policy has been happily named, by Dr. 
 Pierson, I think, " Living Links." It is of the 
 utmost importance that the supporters of mis- 
 sions should be linked to the work abroad, and 
 no bond will be found so enduring as that 
 which unites a living donor to the living object 
 of his beneficence, whose home is in some dis- 
 tant land. So very few can go there that it 
 becomes the more desirable that all who can 
 possibly do so should strive to support substi- 
 tutes, so that the Christian in America, who 
 would gladly spend his days in the foreign 
 field if it were within the range of possibility, 
 is enabled to comfort his heart with the 
 thought that although not there in person he 
 is represented by one who can speak the lan- 
 guage more fluently, who knows the people 
 more perfectly, and who can not only worthily 
 represent him, but perhaps accomplish more 
 than he could by going there in person. 
 After giving some personal attention to this 
 
2IO WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 subject I have become persuaded that very 
 e^reat possibilities are opened up by the adop- 
 tion of such a pohcy. All our leading churches 
 should make haste to embrace the privilege of 
 being represented abroad, not by some obscure 
 native preacher who lives on the salary of four 
 or five dollars a month, but by a missionary 
 family sent out from the United States. In 
 the instances in which this has been done the 
 result has been eminently satisfactory. Within 
 the bounds of the mission field we have now 
 a number of American missionaries who are 
 supported by single congregations in this 
 country; and in every case the church which 
 supports a missionary, so far from lessening its 
 contributions in consequence, has actually in- 
 creased them. 
 
 I believe unhesitatingly in the policy, and if 
 it were in my power I should rejoice to see a 
 hundred of our churches, or perhaps in some 
 cases two or three churches combined, assum- 
 ing the support of men and women abroad, 
 with whom they can be kept in constant cor- 
 respondence, and through whom they may be 
 able to get stores of information which they 
 could never find in any other way. The gen- 
 eral adoption of such a policy would give a 
 little trouble, it is true. It would add to the 
 difficulties of our accountants, and add to the 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 211 
 
 labors of those who would be intrusted with 
 the correspondence necessary for the success- 
 ful working of such a plan. But what is labor 
 for if it cannot be applied to a noble purpose 
 such as this? It would be economy, from a 
 financial point of view, and it would be a bless- 
 ing to those who are responsible for the work 
 both at home and abroad. 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF VICTORY. 
 
 If time would only permit me I would 
 mention one other impression which has been 
 made upon me in my coming and going, both 
 in India and the United States. I refer to the 
 despondent tone in which many representa- 
 tives of the cause allow themselves to speak 
 of our missionary work and its prospects. 
 Not long ago I met a very intelligent gentle- 
 man on an ocean steamer, who expressed some 
 surprise to me at the cheerful tone which I 
 had adopted in a brief address given to the 
 passengers on missionary work in India. He 
 said that he was greatly gratified to learn that 
 there were missionaries abroad who were not 
 only cheerful and hopeful, but positively 
 buoyant and sanguine while prosecuting a 
 work of so great difficulties. He went on to 
 say that in many places he had attended mis- 
 sionary meetings and had almost uniformly 
 
2 12 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 found them extremely gloomy occasions. To 
 borrow his own expressiv^e phrase, " The very 
 atmosphere of the place seemed blue as 
 indigo." Instead of a missionary meeting 
 the people seemed to him to have come to- 
 gether to talk of the wickedness of the world, 
 the badness of human nature, the certainty 
 that things generally were going to the bad, 
 and constantly increasing evidence of the 
 world's depravity, and, without formulating 
 their feeling in so many words, practically im- 
 pressing upon those present the idea that the 
 great missionary task of the age was hopeless, 
 so far as its ultimate success was concerned. 
 
 I had no difficulty in understanding what 
 this gentleman meant, although he expressed 
 lumself perhaps in more vigorous language 
 than I should have liked to employ. Un- 
 doubtedly there is such a spirit abroad in 
 the Christian world. I do not care to inquire 
 concerning its origin, but we are confronted by 
 the melancholy fact that too many of the 
 friends of missions have ceased to believe in 
 victory. I have read the New Testament with 
 some care these many years, I have searched 
 through and through its pages for light to 
 guide me in the difficult work in which I am 
 personally engaged, but up to the present 
 time I have utterly failed to find any trace of 
 
WAYSIDE VIEWS. 213 
 
 the gospel of despair. I have searched in vahi 
 for any indication that there is no hope of vic- 
 tory in the work which God has given me. On 
 the other hand, I cannot but beheve that the 
 Saviour, whose I am and whom I serve, is for- 
 ever a victor. Satan's head has long ages ago 
 been bruised beneath his victorious feet ; and 
 as we are heirs to all that belongs to him we 
 are heirs to his victory. Hence we who are at 
 the front have no other thought than that of 
 winning the battle in which we are engaged. 
 We never expect to lower the banner \\hich 
 has been placed in our hands; and as the 
 years and ages pass along we confidentl}' 
 expect the strongholds of sin, one after an- 
 other, to be beaten down and temples of right- 
 eousness to rise upon the right hand and the 
 left, until at last not only the great empire in 
 which we chance to live, but all the kingdoms 
 of this earth shall become the kingdoms of our 
 Lord and of his Christ. We accept the task 
 which has been given us as one embracing 
 nothing less than this. If this view is correct, 
 and if this is the spirit in which we ought to 
 work, the Church at home should manifest the 
 same spirit and present her gifts with a holy 
 enthusiasm and unquestioning faith in the 
 final result which is to be secured. I cannot, 
 however, shut my eyes to the fact that a de- 
 
214 WAYSIDE VIEWS. 
 
 spoiidency very much like that described by 
 my friend on the steamer is pervading too 
 many of our Christian communities in England 
 and the United States. The missionary ban- 
 ner seems to me to be drooping in many places ; 
 the missionary songs seem to be losing their 
 joyous fervor, and the missionary prayers 
 which ascend to the throne of grace do not 
 seem to be offered with full confidence that the 
 thing asked for shall surely be granted. 
 
 The time has come, and more than come, 
 for a more hopeful proclamation of the great 
 missionary gospel which God has given his 
 people, and which he has set more clearly than 
 ever before them during the closing years of 
 this eventful century. Ours is a gospel of 
 hope, a gospel of life, a gospel of light, and a 
 gospel of holy triumph. Let us accept it as 
 such, let us offer it to the world as such, and 
 let us proclaim it with a confidence which shall 
 exclude the faintest shadow of doubt from our 
 hearts and minds. If we go to work in this 
 spirit, and if we faithfully lift up a standard to the 
 people which shall be worthy of the best tradi- 
 tions of the New Testament era, the greatest 
 works which have been witnessed since the day 
 of Pentecost will appear on the right and the 
 left throughout the whole length and breadth 
 of the great Christendom of the present day. 
 
Date Due 
 
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 JUN T n 
 
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 f) 
 
 PRINTED 
 
 IN U. S. A. 
 
 
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