REPRINT FROM 
 
 “No Retreat” Number of 
 “All the World” 
 
 / 
 
 'T? . 6 . 6peer- 
 
 The Board of Foreign Missions of the 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 
 156 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 
What Is to Be Done With the 
 Foreign Missions Deficit ? 
 
 The whole Church knows that the 
 Board of Foreign Missions ended the 
 last fiscal year on March 31st with a 
 deficit of $292,150.16. A good part of 
 the Church knows also how the deficit 
 arose. It did not arise from any un- 
 warranted or injudicious expansion of 
 the work. The work was enlarged 
 during the year with the full approval 
 of the Executive Commission and the 
 General Assembly. But it was not 
 unduly enlarged. The increase was only 
 the normal increase which had been 
 made year after year. It presumed no 
 greater rate of increase of gifts than had 
 been made in preceding years. It fell 
 far short of what the work demanded. 
 But the contributions of the year did 
 not equal the necessities and the new 
 year has begun, accordingly, with the 
 largest deficit which the Board has ever 
 known. 
 
 What is to be done with it? The 
 General Assembly considered this ques- 
 tion and appointed a representative com- 
 mittee with the Moderator as Chairman 
 to raise this deficit and, at the sugges- 
 tion of the Foreign Board, to include 
 
also the deficit of the Board of Home 
 ^Missions, which was $137,895.79. 
 
 These deficits must be raised. The 
 work at home is just entering on a new 
 epoch. It should enter it not only with- 
 out encumbrance but with greatly en- 
 larged resources. And the reasons why 
 the deficit on Foreign Missions must be 
 provided are clear and urgent. 
 
 In the first place, there can be NO 
 RETREAT. If the deficit is not 
 specially provided it will have to be met 
 by contracting the work or by halting the 
 advance for several years, which will 
 mean retreat, as the whole world is 
 under movement to-day, and to stand 
 still is to fall back. We cannot do this. 
 
 In the second place, the work repre- 
 sented by the deficit has been done and 
 is still going on. Not only is there need 
 of the $292,000, but in the current fiscal 
 year there must be contributions to 
 prevent the recurrence of the same 
 deficit this year with an increase, for the 
 work for 1914-1915 is a larger work 
 than ever before. Quite apart from the 
 deficit of last year there will have to be 
 an increase in the gifts of the churches 
 and Sunday Schools and Women’s 
 Boards of 60 per cent, over the gifts 
 of last year in order to meet the full 
 needs of the current year. To ensure 
 the provision of this increased amount, 
 the deficit should be raised as an extra 
 effort. 
 
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In the third place, the deficit impends 
 most discouragingly not over the Board 
 but upon the missionaries. There are 
 now 1,226 missionaries from our Church 
 in the Missions abroad. To furnish per- 
 sonal support and living accommoda- 
 tions and the actual necessities of the 
 work for these missionaries requires an 
 average appropriation of $1,012.50 per 
 missionary. To cut this down or to 
 threaten to cut it down is a shadow upon 
 each missionary’s spirit. Let it be 
 remembered that upon this amount the 
 missionaries themselves are maintained, 
 and that in addition they employed 
 5,766 native workers, and conducted 
 1,781 colleges, training schools, medical 
 schools, theological seminaries, high 
 schools, and elementary schools with 
 64,687 pupils, 3,104 Sunday Schools 
 with 154,139 pupils, 173 hospitals and 
 dispensaries with 305,035 patients, and 
 ten presses issuing 95,105,452 pages last 
 year. All this costs less than one-half the 
 annual budget of Columbia University 
 alone. Is it conceivable that this small 
 amount should be reduced by throwing 
 the deficit back upon the missionaries? 
 Surely not by Christians. 
 
 In the fourth place, all the world con- 
 ditions which we face to-day demand 
 that there should be no withdrawal or 
 retrenchment. In Japan the present-day 
 opportunity exceeds any known in past 
 years. The great village population, 
 
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embracing 85 per cent, of the Japanese 
 people, is accessible now. The students 
 are more open than ever before. The 
 leaders of the nation have recognized 
 and declared the nation’s need of religion 
 and have called on Christianity to do 
 its utmost to meet this need. In China 
 the temporal^' readjustment of the 
 republic to benevolently despotic rule, 
 so far from shutting the door of oppor- 
 tunity, has opened it yet wider. 
 Missions have an absolutely free and 
 unabridged field and the crowds who 
 listen in the country' are greater and 
 more interested than ever. The Rev. 
 Du Bois S. Morris writes in a recent 
 letter from Hwai Yuen of his last 
 country trip; 
 
 “As I look back over the trip, the 
 one thing which remains most clearly in 
 my mind is the new eagerness on the 
 part of these many people to listen. I 
 have often been in crowds during my 
 life in China, but never before in such 
 listening crowds, never when there were 
 so many who seemed to come, not 
 because of curiosity, but because they 
 wanted to hear about God. It is a very 
 inspiring memor}’, and a very sobering 
 one, too, for how are we meeting this 
 opportunity? How are we entering into 
 these new doors which God has so 
 wonderfully opened for us ? Perhaps 
 we should meet it with the same prayer 
 that was overheard among the women 
 
 0 
 
in Meng Chen. A room full were try- 
 ing to memorize the Lord’s Prayer. 
 There was much noise and confusion, 
 and one faithful old soul trying in vain 
 to keep up, finally went off to a corner, 
 and she was heard there repeating a 
 little prayer of her own. It was short, 
 and she said it softly, again and again 
 — ‘O Lord, thankful and unworthy.’ ” 
 
 In India the census results just pub- 
 lished have astonished the British 
 Government with their evidence of the 
 spread of Christianity, especially among 
 the village people. 
 
 The total number of Christians in 
 India at the time of the census was 
 3,876,203, or twelve per mile of the 
 population. During the decade since 
 the previous census, the increase was 
 32.6 per cent., and the number of Chris- 
 tains has more than doubled since 1881. 
 The proportional increase is by far the 
 greatest in the Panjab, where there are 
 now three times as many Christians as 
 in 1901 ; in the Central Provinces and 
 Berar the increase is 169 per cent., and 
 in Hyderabad, Assam and the United 
 Provinces the increases are 136, 89, and 
 75 per cent., respectively. Lutherans, 
 chiefly found in Madras and in Behar 
 and Orissa, have increased by 41 per 
 cent., and Methodist adherents are 
 two and a half times as numerous as 
 a decade ago. Presbyterians have 
 achieved even more remarkable results. 
 
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With 181,000 adherents they are more 
 than three times as numerous as in 1901. 
 The Panjab has shown a phenomenal 
 increase among Presbyterians, whose 
 numbers have grown from 5,000 to 
 95,000 in the ten years. 
 
 As to the effect of Christianity on 
 the converts, Mr. Blunt, one of the 
 Census Superintendents, draws attention 
 to the greater cleanliness of dress and 
 habits among converts as compared with 
 the classes from whom they are drawn. 
 "The new convert, maybe, is no better 
 than his predecessors ; but a new genera- 
 tion, the children of the first generation 
 of converts, is now growing up. . . . 
 
 The children of the converts, born in 
 Christianity, are verj' different from 
 their parents ; their grandchildren will 
 be better still. It is this which provides 
 the other side to the black picture so 
 often drawn of the inefficiency of Chris- 
 tian conversion. . . . The Hindu 
 
 fellows of these converts have now to 
 acknowledge, not only that they are in 
 many material ways better off than 
 themselves, but that they are also better 
 men.” The Mysore Superintendent, 
 himself a Hindu, says that mission- 
 aries work mainly among the backward 
 classes, and “that the enlightening 
 influence of Christianity is patent in the 
 higher standard of comfort of the con- 
 verts, and their sober, disciplined, and 
 busy lives.” 
 
In every mission field conditions like 
 these can be discerned. There are 
 difficulties enough and the true fruitage 
 is gathered slowly, but the opportunities 
 are simply boundless. The Qiurch 
 never had anything like them in other 
 days. Dare we neglect or reject them 
 now? 
 
 All these conditions call “No Retreat.” 
 “Clear away the deficit,” they say, “and 
 go forward.” 
 
 A special fund for this purpose was 
 opened before the General Assembly by 
 Mr. Dwight H. Day, Treasurer of the 
 Board of Foreign Missions, 156 Fifth 
 Avenue, New York City, and special 
 gifts are asked for this fund, apart from 
 and in addition to the contributions of 
 churches or individuals to the regular 
 work of all the Boards this year, which 
 must be not only maintained but in- 
 creased. Contributions large and small 
 will be specially acknowledged for the 
 “No Retreat Fund.” This fund is in 
 association with the joint deficit fund 
 of the Home and Foreign Boards 
 handled by Mr. Olin. ^ 
 
 Robert E. Speer. 
 
 Form No. 2228 
 
 December 1, 1914.