Edgar Wallace, the war correspondent of the London _Daily Mail_,
writes in the highest terms of what he saw of the Kongo Balolo
missions. He said in part:
“No battle I have ever witnessed, no prowess of arms, no
exhibition of splendid courage in the face of overwhelming
odds, has inspired me as has the work of these outposts of
Christianity. People who talk glibly of work in the mission
field are apt to associate that work merely with house-to-house
visitations and devotional services and the distribution of
charity. In reality it means all these things plus the building
of the houses one visits, building of the church for the
devotional services, and the inculcation in the native of a
spirit of manliness which renders charity superfluous.
Somebody told me there was difficulty in getting men and women
for the missionary work in Kongoland. Speaking frankly as a man
of the world, I do not wonder. I would not be a missionary in
the Kongo for five thousand pounds a year. That is a worldly
point of view, and it is not a high standpoint. It is a simple
confession that I prefer the “flesh-pots of Egypt” to the
self-sacrifice that the missionary life claims. Yet were I a
good Christian, and were I a missionary hesitating in my choice
of a field, I would say, with _Desdemona_, “I do perceive
here a divine duty.”
(2070)
* * * * *
A singular tribute to missions was that exprest to me by the
editor of a North China newspaper: “Broadly speaking, it is a
fact that the only white man who is in China for China’s good
is the missionary. It never occurs to the average business man
here that he has any obligation to the Chinese. Yet only on that
ground can he justify his presence.”--WILLIAM T. ELLIS,
_Men and Missions_.
(2071)
=Mistaken Spiritual Judgment=--See ILLUSION, SPIRITUAL.