Prof. Harlan P. Beach, in an address before the Fifth International
convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for foreign missions on
the subject “Efficiency is limited and the kingdom is retarded by
violating reasonable standards of taste or propriety,” said:
In speaking on this subject, I can show its importance, perhaps,
by an incident which happened about twenty years ago near
Peking. One night I heard a loud knocking at the outer gate of
our compound. The gatekeeper went out and was astonished to
see a dust-laden, wobegone new missionary. He had arrived at
Tientsin, his station, about four days before. He found himself
in a new community, where he could not get his bearings, and
had come to our station to learn what to do from two of our
prominent missionaries. I was glad to meet the newcomer, but
I said, “Why did you arrive so late?” “Well,” he replied, “I
couldn’t help it.” I looked at his cart; he had three mules
attached to it tandem by a great tangle of ropes. He added: “The
trouble is, I had hardly gotten started from Tientsin when this
front mule, who is young, took a notion that he would desert the
beaten track. He left the roadway suddenly before the carter
could prevent it and made a dash straight for a china-shop.
There was a terrific crash. The ropes got caught between the
legs of the second mule and dragged him over into a great lot of
jars which went to pieces, and even the wheel-mule, hemmed in by
the vast timbers that do duty as shafts in China, yielding to
the shock, crashed into the china-shop.” It took a long time to
get that difficulty righted, and hence he was late.
This incident illustrates my subject in six respects: (1)
Missionaries, like those mules, make many breaks; (2) they
usually make them at the start; (3) the breaks are generally
due to ignorance, or to wilfulness; (4) the work of missions
is retarded greatly by these mistakes, just as my friend was
delayed until late that night; (5) mistakes of missionaries
involve their associates, as the action of this frisky front
mule brought the whole outfit into disrepute; (6) what is most
important of all, they bring loss to superiors. Those mules were
mere animals, but there was a carter there and also my friend,
who was anxious to hasten the coming of the kingdom that he
took the trip at great inconvenience for that very purpose. Tho
we missionaries are only rarely mules, we are all and always
servants of a great Master, and are retarding His cause and
bringing reproach upon His name and upon the Church of God, if
we are guilty of such breaches of etiquette as are suggested by
this parable.
(2045)