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 HOME ORGANIZATION. 
 
 Paper read^ by request, at a Conference of Clerical and Lay 
 Members and Friends of the Society for the Propagation 
 OF THE Gospel in Foreign Parts, held at Newcastle-on- 
 Tyne on December 6th, 1880, under the Presidency of the 
 Venerable the Archdeacon of Northumberland, by 
 the Secretary of the Society. 
 
 Printed for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
 
 IN Foreign Parts, and may be had at the Office, 
 
 19, Delahay Street, S.W. 
 
 Price Twopence,
 
 LONDON : 
 
 R. Clay, Sons, and Taylok 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL.
 
 HOME ORGANIZATION 
 
 Every one who knows what human nature is will admit the 
 necessity of an organization, as complete as it can be made, for 
 stimulating charity and for collecting the offerings of the people, 
 wherever a continuous work on a large scale is to be carried on. 
 There are some persons whose bounty flows forth spontaneously, like 
 the spring of water on the hill-side, but if more plentiful supplies are 
 demanded we have to sink a well and to fix machinery for raising 
 the water which is needed, and the lower we go, and the harder the 
 soil which we pierce, the greater is the cost of raising. Thus it is that in 
 raising money from the whole Church, directly we go beyond the 
 comparatively small stratum of persons who recognize the duty of 
 giving the tithe of their substance, directly the cost of gathering their 
 offerings increases. 
 
 " I am amazed," said Lord Salisbury at the annual meeting of 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1869, "at the 
 extent of English charity, but I am still more amazed at the 
 enormous machinery required to bring that charity into action. Few 
 people seem to think it their duty to themselves and to their God to 
 offer their charity without the importunity of the present day. We 
 ought to support such a Society as this spontaneously." 
 
 But, alas ! people do not give without this " enormous machinery " 
 being put in motion, and the competition for the alms of the faithful 
 is so great that the Society or Organization that will not avail itself of 
 this machinery must be content to go to the wall. The problem is, At 
 what point will the cost of raising money become too great to be 
 justified ? I have heard of church builders, before the art now known 
 as " circularising " was much practised, spending fifteen shillings to 
 raise a pound. This is of course unjustifiable ; but for the purposes
 
 4 Home Organizatio?!. 
 
 of Missionary work we are not so tempted, for we have an agency 
 ready at hand, at once not only cheap, but the only agency which we 
 can rightly use. It is the parochial system. If the laity are to be 
 possessed by a Missionary spirit, we must look to the clergy to give 
 it to them. " The standard of reverence in a congregation," said an 
 eminent statesman, " must be the standard to which the minister has 
 attained : individuals may occasionally surpass him, but never the whole 
 congregation." And what is true of reverence is true of Missionary 
 zeal. 1 shall speak very plainly, believing that this is a gathering 
 of earnest men, come together to consider how defects are to be 
 repaired, and willing to hear plain words and not to be offended at 
 them. We look in vain for large offerings from a parish whose pastor 
 does not make Missionary teaching a part of his ministerial work. 
 On this subject I would crave your attention to a letter of the Ven. 
 Archdeacon Huxtable, recently published by the Society, in which is 
 shown what has been done in forty years in a small rural parish. 
 
 People naturally think that the subject is of small importance 
 when Missions are brought before a congregation only once in the 
 year, and then by a strange preacher ; when their parish priest 
 devotes neither time nor study to it, perhaps even avails himself of 
 the occasion of the visit of a deputation to take what he is no doubt 
 justified in calling a ''well-earned hoHday." 
 
 It is calculated that at least one-fourth of the parishes in England 
 are absent from the subscription lists of all Missionary Societies 
 whatsoever, and in a large proportion of those which are not thus 
 unfruitful the cause of Missions is brought before the people, not 
 by their own parish priest, but by strangers, at an expense which 
 seriously lessens the available offerings which are made. 
 
 Do the clergy realise the cost of that system whereby they consider 
 that they are conferring a favour on a Society or its representative if 
 they allow a stranger to occupy their pulpits and to plead with their 
 people on behalf of Missions ? Again competition comes in : the 
 Society which has the offer of a pulpit is aware that, if it refuses, 
 other organizations will accept, and so an endeavour is made to send 
 a preacher, often possessing no special knowledge, sometimes jaded 
 with perpetually telling the same stories or plying the same arguments, 
 and generally sure to be severely criticised. 
 
 Is it too much to expect that the clergy should acquaint them- 
 selves, not indeed with the grounds on which the duty of Missionary 
 work is based, for these they of course know, as being part of the Holy 
 
 O
 
 Home Organization. 5 
 
 Scriptures, but with the details of modern Missionary work ? The 
 sources of information are only too abundant : and less effort is 
 required to master the facts of the Church's warfare and aggressions 
 on the kingdom of darkness than is given by almost every man who 
 reads a daily paper to mastering the details of the campaigns in 
 which from time to time our own or foreign armies are engaged. 
 
 Knowledge of this kind is always possessed by Nonconformists : you 
 will rarely speak on Missionary subjects to a Dissenter and not find 
 him perfectly well acquainted with the doings of John Elliot, of Carey, 
 of Judson, of Moffat and of Livingstone, as well as with contemporary 
 Missionary work ; and yet how often have I attended meetings of the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and found clergyman after 
 clergyman getting up at the request of the chairman, and in almost 
 the same stereotyped phrases, which have probably done duty on 
 many similar occasions, expressing to his dear friends the pleasure 
 which it gives him to meet them once more on the platform of 
 this excellent Society, and ingenuously adding that he knew nothing 
 whatever of the subject which had brought them together, and would 
 no longer stand between them and the deputation, who would give 
 them, he was sure, " much interesting information." Now why should 
 these worthy men go on, year after year, confessing that they never 
 followed their brethren to the field, nor cared to inform themselves 
 of the fortunes of the host of the Lord who were leagued against the 
 strongholds of heathenism ? Interest, which is professed to be taken in 
 a work of which nothing is known, must very soon become per- 
 functory. Whereas, let a man once master the story of Missionary- 
 work and policy, not limiting his reading to selected and highly 
 coloured adventures which represent the Missionary's life as a series 
 of picnics more or less romantic ; once let a man grasp how the 
 Colonial Church has grown, and has leavened with Divine life the 
 otherwise godless colonization of Great Britain ; let a man learn how 
 the Colonial Episcopate has within the last forty years covered the 
 world with a network of apostolic organization — and he will not be 
 slow to feel and to stir up in his people a warm interest in the work 
 as the noblest work for God which men can be called upon to do. 
 His parish will respond to him, and every effort made for work abroad 
 will be repaid manyfold in increased spiritual life at home. I know 
 not a few cases in which very poor parishes do, absolutely and not 
 relatively, a great deal more for God and the Church than wealthy 
 congregations who are without the stimulus of a Mission-loving
 
 6 Ho77ie Organization. 
 
 pastor, and the standard of Missionary zeal is no unfair gauge of the 
 spiritual life of a parish or an individual. 
 
 To the Clergy, then, we must look, not merely that every parish 
 shall have its organization for Missions, but that such organizations 
 shall be based on devotion to God and on the spirit of the prayer, 
 "Thy kingdom come"; and then, while no unworthy methods of 
 getting money at any price are resorted to, all lawful machinery 
 will be freely used, the whole parish divided among persons willing 
 to become collectors. Missionary boxes in every house whose inmates 
 are willing thus to lay up in store their weekly devotions, and care 
 taken that all shall give on a worthy scale of Christian consistency, 
 the poor of their penury, and the wealthy on a system which ignores 
 the conventional annual guinea. 
 
 We cannot venture to say that the Church of England has yet 
 performed her duty in Missionary work ; no, not if her contributions 
 were doubled would she do so. It is calculated that the gross total 
 given to all foreign Missionary work by Church people approaches 
 half a million annually, and exceeds, but only to a trifling extent, 
 the contribution of Protestant Nonconformists. This is not justified 
 by the respective numbers, and still less by the wealth of the two 
 sections of our people, especially when we remember how large are the 
 endowments of the Church, and that Dissenters have almost entirely 
 to provide for their worship on the voluntary system ; but it is to be 
 accounted for by the fact that Missions are recognized by Dissenters 
 as an essential part of their religion, and I may add, as one who for 
 some years had a parish in Cornwall, where the people were almost 
 to a man hereditary Dissenters, that I never spoke about Missions to 
 a Wesleyan without meeting with cordial sympathy, which often was 
 expressed in gifts of money. 
 
 Parochial organization implies, of course, diocesan organization, 
 and as Missionary zeal grows among the parochial clergy, so we 
 may expect that the subject will be treated in every Episcopal 
 charge and be discussed in every diocesan conference, as I am 
 happy to think was the case at the conferences lately held at York 
 and at Truro. I may add that the Society for the Propagation of 
 the Gospel has done what it could to bring the country into close 
 relation with the head office. It has invited the incorporated mem- 
 bers in each diocese to elect two representatives, and at the present 
 time every English diocese except London has two members, chosen 
 by their fellows, who have seats at the Standing Committee.
 
 Home Organization. 7 
 
 2. It may seem ungracious and inconsistent, after thus advocating 
 the extension of Missionary Organization, to deprecate the exuber- 
 ance with which in some quarters it has already been developed, but 
 in truth we suffer sometimes as much from indiscreet and undirected 
 zeal as we do from apathy, and at the present moment we want a 
 Charity Organization Society rightly to guide our Missionary charity 
 as much as we do to economise the relief which is given to the 
 beggars who in so many ways storm our sympathies. This brings 
 me to the question of what are called Special Funds. 
 
 It has been my lot often to hear Missionary societies condemned 
 as abnormal and unecclesiastical and the like : I have never been 
 disturbed by such criticisms, because I have felt that they had no 
 reference to the Society to whose service the best years of my life 
 are given, which was called into existence by the joint action of the 
 Southern Convocation and of the Crown of England. But it has 
 struck me as inconsistent when I have observed the very men who 
 have thus vilipended established societies foremost in starting, simply 
 by their own independent action, other Missionary organizations, 
 under the name of associations or guilds or confraternities, and 
 of whose abnormal or unecclesiastical position we hear nothing. 
 Canon Scott Robertson in his statistical account of Missionary work 
 gives twenty-one Missionary associations in connection with the 
 Church of England : but this is a very inadequate statement. 
 Almost every colonial bishop, almost every archdeacon, and I 
 nearly said almost every Missionary, now starts his own special fund. 
 The Church Missionary Society, wise in its generation and being able 
 to exercise firm discipline among its supporters and agents, has 
 nothing to do with any funds which are not at the disposal of the 
 Committee of the Society. The Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel, consistent with its professions of toleration, and anxious 
 to be always the natural head-quarters or agency of the Church 
 abroad, allows its office to be the banker for every Missionary who 
 is connected with it, and also encourages allied or independent asso- 
 ciations to make use of its Office and Treasurers as honorary bankers. 
 In 1879 there were 207 separate funds thus managed without charge 
 by the Society, and a total sum of 35,000/. was received and remitted, 
 without a farthing of cost to the donors or to the recipients. 
 
 These funds are of two kinds : (a) the larger associations which 
 have their representatives all over the country ; (/?) the funds which 
 are raised in answer to the appeal of individual Missionaries.
 
 8 Home Orsranization. 
 
 a The larger associations vary just in proportion to the personal 
 influence of the presence of the bishop whose diocese is specially- 
 assisted. A bishop entrusted with the charge of a new diocese goes 
 over England in the busy months which follow on his consecration ; 
 he is received everywhere with enthusiasm, churches are freely placed 
 at his disposal — for insatiable is the desire of our brethren to see 
 bishops in their pulpits — and in due course he goes on his way com- 
 forted by the thought that he leaves behind him friends who will see 
 that he is kept supplied with funds ; but his back is hardly turned 
 before the zeal of his supporters cools, and he realises the truth of the 
 adage, " Out of sight out of 77ii7idy Hence he has barely set his plans 
 in motion before he has to return home and revive by his presence 
 the flagging zeal of his friends. One bishop, whose special organiza- 
 tion has been on a very large scale, has thus in an episcopate of 
 twenty-one years been absent from his diocese for more than six 
 years, or nearly one-third of his episcopate. His Special Fund has 
 ranged from nearly 7,000/. in a year when he has been himself in 
 England, to something like zero when he has been engaged at his 
 proper work. Another bishop, who has covered England with a very 
 well organized agency, has been absent from his diocese for a large 
 proportion of his shorter episcopate ; he returned to his diocese last 
 year after more than twelve months absence, and I see that the affairs 
 of his association compel him to come to this country again at 
 Christmas next. Very recently a West Indian bishop told me that 
 he expected to have to spend every fifth year in England, unless he 
 would see his work fail for lack of funds. 
 
 Surely we who lay great stress on the value of a bishop's presence 
 at the head of his clergy must deplore the cost at which such an 
 organization is kept up, the cost not merely of jP^ s, d., but of a 
 dispirited clergy abroad, and a wearing away of the strength and 
 energy of the bishop in the depressing work of begging and platform 
 speaking, and an alienation of the episcopal income, which was not 
 given to support a wandering deputation at home. 
 
 If any one cares to see what is the fate of a Special Fund which is 
 not nursed by the frequent visits of the bishop to England, I commend 
 to his consideration a letter recently addressed by the Bishop 0/ 
 Honolulu to the Chairman of his Special Committee. Few Missions 
 have ever been started with more enthusiasm or had the benefit of 
 more influential committees than that which was planted nearly twenty 
 years ago in Hawaii. Certainly the present Bishop, whose patient
 
 Home Organization. 9 
 
 toil for the last nine years has been most exemplary, has done'nothing 
 which should cool this enthusiasm ; but, unfortunately for his finances, 
 he has remained at his post, patiently gathering into the fold the 
 decaying remnants of a race which is dwindling away by its inherent 
 weakness and vice : but almost more rapid than the speed with 
 which the Kanaka race is dwindling away has been the rate at which 
 the sympathy of the supporters of the Mission which was to re- 
 generate them, has died out, so that, as the Bishop shews, only two 
 members of the very influential committee are on the list of sub- 
 scribers; the Special Fund which was to support the Bishop and 
 his clergy is in the Bishop's debt to the amount of 1,000/., and but 
 for the aid of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel the 
 Bishop declares that the whole Mission would long ago have been 
 a fiasco. 
 
 It is the fate of all Special Funds sooner or later to fall back on 
 the General Fund of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 
 The Borneo Mission Fund collapsed in five years, and for the last 
 thirty years has been entirely maintained by the Society for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel ; and if others have not wholly collapsed it is 
 because the Society has come to the rescue, and in almost every case 
 borne the chief part of the burden. 
 
 There are, of course, cases in which a special organization is 
 desirable ; I mean when it is the outcome of the zeal of some influen- 
 tial community who have the ability to undertake independent work. 
 Such an organization was the Universities Mission to Central Africa. 
 The four learned bodies which undertook that noble venture of faith 
 were quite capable of maintaining it; but as a matter of fact the 
 actual assistance given by Oxford and Cambridge (for Dublin and 
 Durham early withdrew from it, although the latter has resumed its 
 connection with it) is very insignificant, and at one time was almost 
 nil; and it is also a fact that at one period no member of either of 
 these Universities was on the Mission Staff, and that the remarkable 
 man now at the head of it is a graduate of London. The Home 
 Organization is now admirably worked, but on the basis of an in- 
 dependent Missionary Society appealing in common with others to the 
 whole Church ; and in 1879 out of a gross income of 5,753/. less than 
 700/. was contributed by Oxford and Cambridge. The recent effort 
 of Cambridge at Delhi is in all respects a noble one, and its pro- 
 moters shewed practical wisdom in allying themselves with the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and strengthening by
 
 ( 
 
 lo Home Organization. 
 
 the able representatives whom they have sent forth the old Mission 
 of the Society at Delhi, rich with the traditions of the martyrs of the 
 mutiny, and now full of immediate promise. As an Oxford man 
 myself I regret that the Mission which that University is sending to 
 Calcutta declined to be assisted by the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel, and is now appealing outside the University, and is 
 become, in fact, another Missionary claimant on the alms of the 
 whole Church. 
 
 The clergy, especially those who have not informed themselves of 
 the details of Missionary work, often prefer to bring before their people 
 only some particular Mission to which all their efforts are limited. 
 It is impossible, they say, to stir up interest in a Society, it is too large, 
 too extended ; but in one Mission it is easy to take interest. Might 
 it not be urged, with equal truth, that the Communion of Saints is too 
 vast an idea for us to comprehend, and that our own family or our own 
 \ parish is a more adequate scope for our faculties and our sympathy? 
 \ Let me remind these advocates of the maxim TrAeov ^/xto-i; TravTo? 
 \ that the very Mission which is to them the centre and circumference 
 I of their sympathy would never exist but for the assistance which is 
 I given to it by the larger association in which they can take no 
 I interest; and that while they patronise this or that Diocese, generally 
 I because the prevailing theological tone of its clergy symbolises 
 % with their own views, they are setting before their people a very 
 \ mutilated model, a very distorted picture of the vast work to which 
 the whole Church is committed. 
 
 ^ The appeals which are made by individual Missionaries some- 
 times in newspapers, but more frequently in the pages of Missionary 
 magazines, which depend for their very existence on such appeals, 
 may generally be left unansv/ered. Such appeals never state what 
 has been done ; they consist of peremptory demands for immediate 
 assistance, and assume (a very large assumption indeed) that readers 
 are already acquainted with what has been and is being done by exist- 
 ing organizations in that particular Mission and for the particular 
 claimant. I am told, on competent and indisputable authority, that 
 only on this system of suppressio veri can such a periodical be con- 
 ducted, and that the intelligence and sagacity of the readers may 
 well be trusted to find out the whole truth of every case that comes 
 before them. If they were invited to do so I should not complain, 
 but they never are, and half or fractional truths are put before them 
 as tliough they were the whole.
 
 Home Organizatioft. 1 1 
 
 The best Missionaries are not generally the greatest adepts in the 
 art of writing what may be called *' Special Correspondents' English.'* 
 The temptation to write exaggerated appeals is one into which many 
 a Missionary has fallen, and from which, when it has once proved 
 successful, he rarely extricates himself. His letters are read not only 
 by sympathizers in England, but by critics in the land which is the 
 scene of his work, and the difference between the reality and the 
 word-picture is readily detected, and does not add to the influence 
 of the writer. 
 
 I am aware that it is often said that more money can be obtained 
 by special appeals for particular works than for the cause in the 
 abstract. No doubt this is true ; more money can be obtained by 
 the low and degrading artifices of a fancy fair, with its Wizards' 
 Caves and its Lovers' Post Offices, than by the Offertory or by 
 honest self-sacrifice, which looks for nothing in return but the 
 reward of an acquitted conscience ; but Mission work has not yet 
 sunk so low as to make " rem^ quocunque mode rem " its motto ; and 
 I will add that these funds are in some cases never audited, that no 
 account of the details of their expenditure is given, that they are 
 spent on no fixed principle, and therefore not economically, and 
 are often applied to objects which Societies, with their greater ex- 
 perience and sense of responsibility to subscribers, would not assist. 
 
 Those who know the condition and needs of particular Missions 
 and Missionaries are sometimes filled with indignation at the appeals 
 which they see made, and the success which rev>^ards them. Indis- 
 criminating and mere fleeting sympathy is generated, and money is 
 freely given to a Mission which perhaps is already adequately sup- 
 ported by a society in England, or which ought to be maintained by 
 people on the spot. What Bishop WiUis calls '' Lion Stories " are 
 good decoys, and the misfortune is that the almsgiving public thinks 
 itself quite competent to decide on the excellence and merits of 
 every claim which comes before them. 
 
 Thus a parish thinks it " so interesting " to maintain a native 
 deacon who can live very well on 20/. per annum ; but such a gift 
 infringes a canon of all good Missionary procedure, which, looking 
 to the future, demands that from the first every native pastor 
 shall be maintained, partially at least, by his own people, as being 
 the only way in which an indigenous ministry is possible ; 20/. 
 per annum to a Society which is concerned with work that may be 
 called world-wide, is far beyond the capacity of the particular parish.
 
 1 2 Home Organization. 
 
 but 20/. for a black deacon, which shall at the same time retard for 
 a generation the growth of a native Church, is readily given. 
 
 So in the colonies, a clergyman possessing a facile pen and a lively 
 imagination finds it much easier to write a pictorial letter to a 
 Missionary magazine in England than to press on his colonial 
 congregation the duty of maintaining their own Church ; the necessity 
 for such appeals rarely exists, as home societies are able to nurse 
 colonial dioceses and parishes until they can, or ought to be able 
 to, stand alone. The people who are led away captive by a graphic 
 appeal from a British colony never take the trouble to investigate 
 the conditions of that colony : its age, the amount of assistance 
 which it has received or is now receiving from England or from the 
 State, its population, the excess of its exports over its imports, and 
 many other things which are carefully considered by a Society before 
 making its grants. 
 
 Therefore my counsel is to support Missions in the block — on 
 principle — as unto the Lord, and not under the influence of senti- 
 mental appeals. A large gross total is not the greatest or highest 
 good ; the spirit which dictates the motive and the measure of our 
 alms will make those gifts fruitful or unfruitful, precious offerings 
 in God's sight, or silly satisfactions of our own weak sympathies. 
 
 3. And this touches on the question of Missionary publications. 
 They are said to be dull. The indictment may often be true, but 
 I think that as a rule they are only dull to those who have no 
 antecedent interest in the matters of which they treat. I suppose 
 that few men have .written so much on Missionary topics as, 
 anonymously or otherwise, I have myself written. Some things to 
 which I have never subscribed my name have been noticed with 
 commendation, and have been declared to have been useful, &c. ; 
 certainly they were free from all exaggerated sentimentalism ; but 
 I say that it will be impossible so to edit a Missionary magazine 
 which is the organ of a Society, as that it shall compete with the 
 irresponsible periodical which is not liable to be called to account 
 by subscribers and members. As a rule the former will be more 
 exact, will have better and fuller information, but will be less 
 rhetorical ; and my advice to persons who Hke in their Missionary 
 reading to sup full of adventures and horrors, is to oppose to them 
 a wholesome incredulity, and to think twice or even thrice before 
 they open their cheque-books. 
 
 H. W. TUCKER.
 
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