Transcriber's Note: In order to maintain appropriate line length, some
tables have been transposed, i.e. rows are columns and vice versa.
MISSIONARY SURVEY AS AN AID TO INTELLIGENT CO-OPERATION
IN FOREIGN MISSIONS
BY
ROLAND ALLEN, M.A.
SOMETIME S.P.G. MISSIONARY IN NORTH CHINA
AUTHOR OF "MISSIONARY METHODS, ST. PAUL'S OR OURS," ETC.
AND
THOMAS COCHRANE, M.B., C.M.
LATE PRINCIPAL OF UNION MEDICAL COLLEGE, PEKING, AND HON. SECRETARY
OF THE LAYMEN'S MOVEMENT, LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY
1920
PREFACE.
This book, written by Mr. Allen, bears both our names because we studied
the material together, and settled what should be included and what
excluded. We discussed and disputed, and finally found ourselves in
complete agreement. We therefore decided to issue the book in our joint
names, on the understanding that I should be allowed to disclaim the
credit for writing it. But the book would never have been written at all
save for the inspiration and help of Mr. S.J.W. Clark, who, in his
travels in nearly every mission field, has brought an unusually acute
mind, trained by a long business experience, to bear upon mission
problems, and has done more hard thinking on the question of survey than
any man we know.
Let anyone who doubts the need for survey study the present distribution
of missionary forces. He will find little evidence of any plan or
method. In one region of the world there are about four hundred and
fifty missionaries to a population of three millions, while in another
area with more than double the number of people, there are only about
twenty missionaries.
After travelling in the latter region I asked one of the senior workers
what in his opinion would be a large enough foreign staff, and he
indicated quite a moderate addition to the existing force. Suppose I had
suggested a total of a hundred missionaries, he would have declared the
number far too large. Perhaps he was too modest in his demands.
Conditions in one area differ from those in another. But such a wide
difference in distribution and in demands makes the need of survey to
ascertain facts and conditions absolutely imperative, especially when we
remember that to the force of four hundred and fifty in the territory
with the smaller population, missionaries will probably continue to be
added and unevangelised regions will have to wait.
After surveying one of the better staffed divisions of the mission
field, a missionary declared that not more missionaries were needed, but
a more effective use of the force at work; and fortunately in that
particular field central direction is beginning to secure that end. But
usually there is no central direction and no comparison of plans between
neighbouring missions on the field, although several missions may be
located in the same town or city; and two Mission Houses in London may
be almost next door neighbours, and may have missions in the same city
in the Far East, and may yet be entirely ignorant of each other's plans
for work in that city. They might be rival businesses guarding trade
secrets! Hence it is not strange that when late in the day a survey of a
city in China is made in which there are about two hundred missionaries,
it is found that not one of them is giving full time to evangelistic
work! Across the city of Tokyo a line could be drawn west of which all
the foreign workers live, while east of it there are nine hundred and
sixty thousand people without a single resident missionary!
But not only is intermission planning, based on survey, sadly lacking;
few missions have thoroughly surveyed their own fields and their own
work, and fewer still have surveyed them in relation to the work of
others. The result is that policies are adopted and staffs increased in
a way which--for all administrators know to the contrary--may be adding
weight where it should be diminished, and may be piling up expenditure
in the wrong place.
It should be pointed out, however, that survey is beginning to come into
its own. It is being more and more realised that it should be the basis
of all co-operative work, and the survey of China now nearing completion
places that country in a premier position as far as a foundation for
wise building is concerned. Recently in London, neighbouring Mission
Houses have been getting into touch with each other, and the Conference
of British Missionary Societies and the analogous body in America have
made conference between missions frequent and fruitful. But there is a
long way yet to travel before we can have that comprehensive planning
which the present world situation imperatively and urgently demands.
But just as neighbouring missions should get to know about each other's
work and plans in order that funds may be spent most effectively; so a
world survey is necessary if the command of Christ is to be adequately
obeyed. The unit is the world, and survey in patches may misdirect money
which would have been spent differently if the whole need had been
before the eyes of those who are charged with the responsibility of
administration.
We make bold to affirm that no Society can be sure that it is spending
the money entrusted to it wisely unless it has a satisfactory system of
survey in operation, a system which takes account not only of its own
work but also of the work of others. We go further and say that the
chances are the money is _not_ bringing the maximum return. When world
need is so vast it is time to challenge a reasoned contradiction of this
assertion. If each Society did what in justice to its constituency it
ought to do, a survey of an area such as a province or a country would
be an easy task, and a survey of the world would be neither difficult
nor expensive, and after all, until we know the whole, we cannot
intelligently administer the part.
The missionary enterprise waits for the men who will take the
comprehensive view and become leaders in the greatest and most
fundamental task of all time. Until these leaders appear, mission work,
for those who seek to understand it as a world enterprise, will, as a
layman said recently, remain worse than a jigsaw puzzle!
THOS. COCHRANE.
ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A DOMINANT PURPOSE.
The modern demand for intelligent co-operation
The same demand in relation to Foreign Missions
The need for a definition of purpose
The failure of our present reports in this respect
Is definition of purpose desirable?
It is necessary for formulation of policy
Societies with limited incomes cannot afford to pursue every good
object
The admission of diverse purposes has blurred the purpose of Medical
Missions
The admission of diverse purposes has confused the administration
of Educational Missions
The admission of diverse purposes has distracted Evangelistic
Missions
Hence the absence of unity in the work
Hence the tendency to support details rather than the whole
The need for a dominant purpose and expression of relations
The need for a statement of factors which govern action
The need for a missionary survey which expresses the facts in
relation
This demand is not unreasonable
CHAPTER II.
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.
1. All survey is properly governed by the purpose for which it is
made
The purpose decides what is to be included, what excluded
A scientific survey is a survey of selected factors
This is not to be confused with the collection of facts to prove a
theory
The collection of facts is independent of the conclusions which may
be drawn
2. The survey proposed is a missionary survey
The difference between medical and educational surveys and missionary
survey
3. The survey proposed is designed to embrace the work of all
Societies
4. Definition of aim necessarily suggests a policy
We have not hesitated to set out that policy
We make criticism easy
5. Survey should provide facts in relation to an aim, so as to guide
action
6. Twofold aspect of survey--survey of state, survey of position
Survey is therefore a continual process
7. Possible objections to method proposed--
(i) The information asked for statistical
All business and organised effort is based on statistics
Every Society publishes statistics
(ii) The admission of estimates
The value of estimates
(iii) The difficulty of many small tables
Why burden the missionary with the working out of proportions?
The tables should assist the missionary in charge
(iv) The objection that we cannot obtain all the information
Partial knowledge the guide of all human action
(v) The tables contain items at present unknown
CHAPTER III.
SURVEY OF THE STATION AND ITS DISTRICT.
The Work to be Done, and the Force to Do it.
We begin with survey of the station and its district
If the station exists to establish the Church in a definite area then
we can survey on a territorial basis
The definition of the area involves a policy
I. When the area is defined we can distinguish work done and work to
be done, in terms of cities, towns, and villages; in terms of
population
The meaning of "Christian constituency"
The reasons for adopting it
Example of table, and of the impression produced by it
Example of value of proportions
Tables of proportions
The difficulty of procuring this information
The value of the labour expended in procuring it
II. The force at work
The permanent and transitory elements
(a) The foreign force
The use of merely quantitative expressions
Such tables essential for deciding questions of reinforcement
(b) The native force
Reasons for putting total Christian constituency in the first place
The Communicants. The paid workers. The unpaid workers
The difficulty in this classification
The interest of these tables lies in the proportions
Summary
But we need to know something of capacity of the native force
(1) Proportion of Communicants
The importance of this proportion in itself
In relation to the work to be done
(2) Proportion of paid workers to Christian constituency and to
Communicants
The difficulty of appreciating the meaning of this proportion
It must be checked by (a) the proportion of unpaid voluntary workers
(b) The standard of wealth
(3) The contribution to missionary work in labour and money
(4) The literacy of the Christian constituency
The importance of widespread knowledge of the Bible
The importance of Christians having a wider knowledge than their
heathen neighbours
CHAPTER IV.
THE EMPHASIS LAID UPON DIFFERENT TYPES OF WORK.
I. Work amongst men and women respectively
We first distinguish men, wives, and single women among the Foreign
Missionaries
The reasons for applying the distinction between men and women to the
Native Force
II. The different classes in the population chiefly reached by the
mission
III The different races and religions
Emphasis upon one class or race or religion is no proper basis for
adverse criticism of the mission
IV. The emphasis laid on evangelistic, medical, and educational work
respectively
The difficulty of distinguishing medical, educational, and
evangelistic missionaries
The reason why grades need not here be distinguished
V. Sunday Schools--
The diverse character of Sunday Schools
The table proposed
CHAPTER V.
THE MEDICAL WORK IN THE STATION DISTRICT.
The tendency to treat medical and educational work as distinct from
evangelistic
Medical and educational boards and their surveys
The difficulty of determining the aim of the medical mission
First of medical missions as designed to meet a distinct medical need
Two tables designed to present the medical force in relation to area
and population
The necessity of considering non-missionary medical work in this
connection
The extent of the work done in the year
Then of the medical mission as designed to assist evangelistic work
(i) The extent to which evangelists work with the medicals
Caution as regards the use of this table
(ii) The extent to which medicals assist the evangelists outside the
institutions
(iii) The extent to which the evangelistic influence of the hospital
can be traced
CHAPTER VI.
EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE STATION DISTRICT.
The difficulty of determining the aim of educational missions
The difficulty presented by different grades and standards
The reason for excluding Colleges and Normal Schools at this stage
First of the educational mission as designed to meet a distinct
educational need
Two tables designed to present the educational work in relation to
area and population
The necessity of considering non-missionary educational work
The existence of non-missionary schools may either increase the need
for missionary schools or decrease it
The extent to which education is provided for the better educated and
the more illiterate
The extent to which education is provided for boys and girls, for
Christian and non-Christian scholars
The extent to which mission schools receive Government grants throws
light on their character and purpose
The extent to which education is provided for illiterate adults
The importance of this
The importance of the distinction between Christians and
non-Christians in this table
Then of the educational mission as designed to assist evangelistic
work
(i) The extent to which evangelists work with the educationalists in
schools
Caution needed in the use of this table
(ii) The extent to which educationalists work with evangelists
outside schools
The importance of the work done by educationalists outside the
schools
(iii) The immediate evangelistic results of education given
The difficulty
The table proposed
The support given by the Natives to medical and educational work
CHAPTER VII.
CO-OPERATION.
The importance of the relation between the different parts of the
mission
The relations already expressed in earlier tables
The chief difficulty lies in the relationship between medicals
and educationalists
The importance of medical work in schools
The table showing the work of medicals in connection with schools
The importance of educational work in hospitals
The table showing the work of educationalists in hospitals
Summary of co-operation between evangelists, medicals, and
educationalists
CHAPTER VIII.
THE NATIVE CHURCH.
The end of the station, a Native Church
This end a condition into which the Church must be
growing
Survey must therefore deal with the Native Church
The reason for beginning with self-support
The meaning of self-supporting Churches
In rare cases it means independence of external support
In most cases it means attainment of an arbitrary standard
In most cases it does not represent the power of the people to supply
their own needs
In most cases it is not sure evidence of growing liberality
Nevertheless we must begin by considering the self-supporting
Churches
We ask for proportion of self-supporting Churches
This will not reveal the power of the Churches to stand alone
We inquire then the proportion of inquirers in self-supporting
Churches
We inquire then the proportion of unpaid workers in self-supporting
Churches
Where self-supporting Churches are not recognised we inquire--
(i) Power of Christians to conduct their own services
(ii) Power to order Church government
(iii) Power to provide expenses of Church organisation
CHAPTER IX.
SURVEY OF DISTRICTS WHERE TWO OR MORE SOCIETIES ARE AT WORK.
SURVEY OF MISSIONS WITH NO DEFINED DISTRICTS.
I. The possibility of united survey by missionaries of two or more
Societies
The evil of ignoring the work of others
Survey is concerned with facts not with ecclesiastical prejudices
The difficulty of obtaining the facts
The use of estimates
II. The mission which has no defined district--A
general expression of the purpose of such a mission
In its widest terms survey of the work of such a mission would
involve survey of the whole state of society
In its narrower terms it is survey of a mission establishing a Church
In this case most of the preceding tables could be used, omitting
proportions to area and population
Then we could see force at work
Then we could see forms of work
Then we could place the mission in a survey of the Country
CHAPTER X.
SURVEY OF THE WORK IN A PROVINCE.
The mission station is not an isolated unit
The relationship of station with station is recognised
So the relationship of all missions in a country is recognised
We can then consider the work of a mission station in relation to all
mission work done in the Province or Country
Considered in relation to the larger area, impressions produced by
the earlier tables may have to be revised
The first necessity is to gain a view of the whole work in the
Country
The difficulty presented by capitals and other large cities
I. The items proposed as necessary for such a general view--
(1) The work to be done; a bare quantitative expression in terms of
population, perhaps also in terms of cities, towns, and villages
unoccupied
This expression ought not to suggest that the work to be done is to
be done by the foreigners
(2) The Foreign Force at work in relation to the work to be done is
larger than that presented by returns from all mission stations
The Native Force also is more than the sum of the station district
returns
(3) Different forms of work; one table revealing proportion of
Missionaries, Native Workers, Foreign Funds, and Native
Contributions employed in different forms of work
One table of results
A serious flaw in this table
(4) The extent to which different classes, etc., are reached. One
table including the station returns with the addition of special
missions which work among special classes in the whole Province or
Country
(5) Self-support. One table showing the relation of the native
contribution to the total salaries of all paid native evangelistic
workers
II. To this must be added tables of students in training for
different forms of mission work
First the relative proportion of students in training for different
types of work
Then of each more particularly--
(1) Evangelistic
Confusion of nomenclature prevents more than a rough classification
(2) Educational: divided roughly into four classes
(3) Medical: divided into three classes
These tables are prophetic of line of advance in the near future
The question of perseverance
III. Then the Educational Institutions excluded from the district
survey must be added to the sum of the station returns to show the
relation of the educational work to the population of the larger
area
The importance of the relation of the higher to the lower grade
institutions
The educational work of non-missionary agencies must also be
considered
IV. Medical work needs only the addition of provincial hospitals and
non-missionary medical work
V. Two other subjects claim attention here, literature and industrial
work
The difficulty of dealing with literature. It needs special treatment
Two brief tables suggested
The difficulty of dealing with industrial work still greater
For industrial missions, other than those which are really
educational, we suggest three tables
VI. Union work
CHAPTER XI.
THE RELATION OF THE STATION TO THE WORLD.
A world-wide work can only be conducted on world-wide principles
These world-wide principles must govern the work in every part,
however small
No country, however large, can be an isolated unit from missionary
point of view
How shall we gain a view of this large whole?
We suggest that four tables would suffice for our purpose:--
(1) A table showing the force at work in relation to
population
(2) A table designed to reveal something of the
character and power of the force
(3) A table showing the relative strength expended in evangelistic,
medical, and educational work
(4) A table showing the extent to which the native Christians support
existing work
This is only a tentative suggestion proposed to invite criticism
CHAPTER I.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A DOMINANT PURPOSE.
It is a marked characteristic of our age that every appeal for an
expression of energy should be an intellectual appeal. Emotional appeals
are of course made, and made with tremendous force, but, with the
emotional appeal, an emphasis is laid to-day upon the intellectual
apprehension of the meaning of the effort demanded which is something
quite new to us. Soldiers in the ranks have the objective of their
attack explained to them, and this explanation has a great influence
over the character and quality of the effort which they put forth.
Labourers demand and expect every day a larger and fuller understanding
of the meaning of the work which they are asked to perform. They need to
enjoy the intellectual apprehension of the larger aspects of the work,
and the relation of their own detailed operations to those larger
aspects; and it is commonly recognised that the understanding of the
meaning and purpose of the detail upon which each operative may be
engaged is a most powerful incentive to good work. In the past leaders
relied more upon implicit, unreasoning obedience, supported often by
affection for the leader's own character, and profound trust in his
wisdom, and a general hope of advantage for each individual who carried
out orders unhesitatingly and exactly; but they did not think it
necessary, or even desirable, that the common workers should understand
their plans and act in intelligent co-operation with them: to-day,
intelligent co-operation is prized as it has never been prized before,
and its value is realised as it has never been realised before.
If this is true in the world of arms, of labour, of commerce, it is
equally true in the world of foreign missions. The common worker, the
subscriber, the daily labourer, is beginning to demand that he shall be
allowed to take an intelligent part in the work, and missionary leaders
are beginning to see the importance of securing intelligent
co-operation. In the past the appeal has been rather to blind obedience,
and immense stress has been laid upon the "command"; the appeal has been
to the emotions, and love for Christ, love for the souls of men, hope
of eternal blessings, hope of the coming of the Kingdom, and (for
direction of the work) trust in the wisdom of great missionary leaders
or committees, have been thought sufficient to inspire all to put forth
their best efforts; but to-day, as in the labour world, as in commerce,
as in the army, so in the world of missions, the intellect is taking a
new place. Men want to understand why and how their work assists towards
the attainment of the goal, they want to know what they are doing, they
want to understand the plan and to see their work influencing the
accomplishment of the plan.
It is no doubt true that the demand for intelligent co-operation, both
on the part of the subscribers and workers on the one side and of the
great leaders and boards of directors on the other, is at present
slight, weak, uncertain and hesitating; but it is already beginning to
make itself felt, and must increase. Certainly it is true that the
support of a very large body of men is lost because they have never yet
been able to understand the work of foreign missions. They are
accustomed in their daily business to "know what they are driving at,"
and to relate their action to definite ends; and they have not seen
foreign missions directed to the attainment of definite ends. They have
not seen in them any clear dominant purpose to which they could relate
the manifold activities of the missionaries whom they were asked to
support; and they cannot give to the vague and chaotic that support
which they might give to work which they saw clearly to be directed to
the attainment of a great goal which they desired by a policy which they
understood. The attitude of these men is the attitude of those who await
an intelligent appeal to their intelligence.
For a true understanding of foreign missions it is necessary first that
their aim and object should be clearly defined. Without such a
definition intelligent co-operation is impossible. Unless the objective
is understood men cannot estimate the value of their work. They cannot
trace progress unless they can see clearly the end to be attained; they
cannot zealously support action unless they are persuaded that the
action is truly designed to attain the defined end. There may indeed be
many subordinate objects, and men may be asked to work for the
attainment of any one of these, but there ought to be one final end and
purpose which governs all, and intelligent co-operation involves the
appreciation of the relation between the subordinate and the final end.
Consequently if many objects are set before us, as they are in our
foreign missions, it is essential that these many purposes and objects
should be presented to us not simply as ends to be attained, but in
their relation to one another and in their relation to the final end
which the directors of our missions have clearly before their eyes.
Now it is just at this point that we fail to attain satisfaction. All
societies publish reports and statistics, but the reports and statistics
do not provide us with any clear and intelligible account of progress
towards any definite end. They seem rather designed to attract and to
appeal to our sympathy than to satisfy our intelligence. They set before
us all kinds of work unrelated, indefinite, changeable, and changing
from year to year, as though the compilers selected from the letters of
missionaries any striking statements which they thought would attract
support in themselves and by themselves. No goal is set before us, and
the progress towards that goal steadily traced from year to year; still
less is the relation between the different methods and means employed to
attain each subordinate objective expressed so that we can see, not
only what progress each is making towards its own immediate end, but
what is the effective value of all together towards the attainment of a
final end to which they all contribute.
But would not the definition of one great end or purpose hinder us? Are
not all the great ends which we set before ourselves indefinite enough
to include a host of different and mutually separate and even
occasionally incompatible subsidiary objects, aims, and methods? Would
not the rigid definition of the aim of our foreign missions, by
excluding a great many legitimate aims and methods, weaken and beggar
our missions, which are strong in proportion as they admit all sorts of
different aims and methods? There are men who speak and act as if they
thought so, and in consequence welcome as a proper part of the
missionary programme all Christian, social, and political activities.
_Anything_, they think, which makes for the amelioration of life,
_everything_ which tends to enlighten and uplift the bodies, the souls,
and the minds of men, is a proper object for the missionary to pursue,
and the missionary should assist every movement towards a higher life in
the heathen community as well as in the Christian, and should introduce
every method and plan, industrial, social, or political, literary, or
artistic, which tends to ennoble the life of men. It may be so. It may
be true that the introduction of everything which tends to uplift and
enlighten is a proper object for missionary activity, but we venture to
argue not all at once, in the same place, nor even any one of them at
the whim of any missionary at any time, anywhere. Nor all in the same
order. There is a more and a less important. And we do urge that if we
are to take an intelligent part in foreign missions and to give those
missions intelligent support, we must know what is the more important
and what the less. We are told that the duty of the foreign mission is
to bring all nations into the obedience of Christ, and that "all the
nations" means all the people of all the nations, and all the
capacities, powers, and activities of all the people of all the nations,
individually and collectively, and that any work which tends to bring
any part of the collective action of any non-Christian people under the
direction of Christian principles is, therefore, the proper work of the
missionary, and that the most important is the particular social,
industrial, or political scheme which the missionary who is addressing
us believes to be the pressing need of the moment in his district.
So long as foreign missions are presented to us in that way, so long as
any mission may serve any purpose, we cannot possibly take any
intelligent share in foreign missions as a whole. We are lost. We cannot
co-ordinate in thought the activities of the missions, as we see plainly
that they are not co-ordinated in action in the field itself. And it is
practically impossible for us to imagine that the missions are directed
on any thought-out policy, because a policy seems to involve necessarily
the sub-ordination of the aim deemed to be less important to another
which is deemed to be more important, and the less or the more must
depend, not upon personal predilections, but upon closeness of relation
to some one dominant idea; and, therefore, the definition of the
dominant idea is the first necessity for the establishment of a
reasonable missionary policy.
To some minds the idea of a policy in connection with missions seems to
be abhorrent; but can a society with an income of something between half
and a quarter of a million pounds, or even less, afford to aim at every
type and form of missionary activity? Is it not necessary that it
should know and express to itself, to its missionaries, and to its
supporters what forms of activity it deems essential, what less
important, what aims it will pursue with all its strength, and what it
will refuse to pursue at all? It cannot afford to pursue every good or
desirable object which it may meet in its course. It must have a
dominant purpose which really controls its operations, and forces it to
set aside some great and noble actions because they are not so closely
related to the dominant purpose as some other.
A society with the limited resources which most of us lament cannot do
everything. In medicine it cannot afford to aim at a strictly
evangelistic use of its medical missions and at a use which is not
strictly evangelistic. We hear men talk sometimes as if it were the
business of a missionary society to undertake the task of healing the
physical afflictions of the people almost in the same sense as it is the
business of a missionary society to seek to heal their souls. We hear
them talk sometimes as if it was the duty of a missionary society to
supplant the native medical practice by western medical science as
surely as it is their business to supplant idolatry by the preaching of
Christ. And the tolerance of these ideas has certainly influenced the
direction of missions. The evangelistic value of medical missions has
not been the one dominant directing principle in their administration,
and the consequences have been confusion of aim and waste of power. Nor
has any other dominant purpose taken control; no other purpose,
philanthropic, social, or economic, ever will take control so long as
the vast majority of the supporters of foreign missions are people whose
one real desire is the salvation of men in Christ. But the admission of
another purpose has blurred the aim.
Because they have been pioneers in education, missions earn large praise
and not in-considerable support from governors and philanthropists; but
they have sometimes paid for these praises and grants dearly in
confusion of aim. Many of them started with the intention of relating
their educational work very closely to their evangelistic work; but
because the evangelistic idea was not dominant, a government grant
sometimes led the educational mission far from its first objective.
Similarly, the establishment of great educational institutions altered
the whole policy of a mission over very large areas, because no dominant
purpose controlled the action of the mission authorities. The
institutions demanded such large support, financial and personal, that
when once they had been founded they tended to draw into themselves a
very large proportion of the best men who joined the mission. In this
way a great educational institution has often altered the policy of a
mission to an extent which its original founders never anticipated, and
a mission which was designed primarily to be an evangelistic mission has
been compelled not only to check advance, but even to withdraw its
evangelistic workers and to close its outstations. But that was not the
intention of the founders of the institution. The difficulty arose
because there was no dominant purpose which governed the direction of
the mission. There was no purpose so strong and clear that it could
prevent the foundation of, or close when founded, an institution which
was leading it far from its primary object.
Again it is notorious that what we call the work of the evangelistic
missionary is so manifold and variegated that it includes every kind of
activity, every sort of social and economic reform. Our evangelistic
missionaries are busy about everything, from itinerant preaching to the
establishment of banks and asylums. Can we afford it? What purpose is
dominant, what aim really governs the policy of those who send out
evangelistic missionaries? What decides the form of their work and the
method by which they pursue it? It is hard to guess, it is hard to
discover, it is hard to understand.
Now when our missions are presented to us and we are asked to support
them on all sorts of grounds, as though a society with its slight funds
could really successfully practise every kind of philanthropic work, we
begin to doubt whether it can really be wisely guided. Each mission
station, each institution, seems to be an isolated fragment. The
missionary in charge often appeals to us as an exceedingly good and able
man, and we support him, and we support the society which sends him and
others like him. And we call this the support of foreign missions; but
foreign missions as a unity we do not support because we can see no
unity. The directors of foreign missions appear not to have hitched
their wagon to a star, but rather to all the visible stars, and we
cannot tell whither they are going. So we fall back on the individual
missionary, or the isolated mission which at any rate for the moment
seems to have an intelligible objective.
Hence the common conception of missionary work as small. We look at the
parts, and the smallest parts, because our minds instinctively seek a
unity, and only in the parts do we find a unity, nor there often, unless
we concentrate our attention on one aspect of the work. But by thinking
of foreign missions in this small way and speaking of them in this small
way, we alienate men who are accustomed to think in large terms of large
undertakings designed on large policies.
What we need to-day is to understand foreign missions as a whole. We
want to take an intelligent part in them viewed as a unity. We want to
know what is the grand objective and how the parts are related to that
end. We do not want merely to support this mission because this
missionary appeals to us; we want to know what dominant purpose governs
the activities of the different societies, directs, and controls them,
deciding what work good and excellent in itself the mission cannot
afford to undertake, what it can and must do with the means at its
disposal in order to attain an end which it has deliberately adopted.
We need more, we need to know on what principles the missionaries are
sent here or there. We need to know what facts must be taken into
consideration before any mission, evangelistic, educational, or medical,
is planted in any place, what facts decide the question whether work is
begun, or reinforcements sent, to this place rather than to that. It is
not enough to be assured that there is a need. There is need everywhere.
We cannot supply all need; but we can have some settled and clear
judgment what facts ought to weigh with us, what information we must
possess before we can decide properly whether the claim of this place is
more urgent than the claim of that. We ought to have same basis of
comparison. The mere appeal of an earnest and devoted man, the mere
clamour of a body of men, the mere insistence of a persevering man, is
not sufficient to guide us aright. The mere offer of some supporter to
provide a building ought not to suffice. Acceptance of the offer may
alter the whole balance and character of the mission. We ought to know
what facts must be considered and how.
We need therefore a reasoned statement of the work of our foreign
missions expressed as a unity, which sets forth the work actually done
in different departments showing their relation one to another and the
relation of all to a dominant object. In other words, what we need is a
survey of the missionary situation in the world in terms of these
relationships.
It may be said that such a claim is outrageous and impossible; but we
are persuaded that with our present enlightenment, with the means of
knowledge which we now possess, we could, if we thought it worth while,
lay our hands on the necessary information. Our firm conviction is that,
if we did that, and set out the results of our examination in a form
intelligible to thoughtful laymen, we should obtain the support of a
great number of men to whom foreign missions at present appear as
nothing but the ill-organised, fragmentary and indefinite efforts of
pious people to propagate their peculiar schemes for the betterment of
humanity. Without some such statement we do not know how anyone can take
an intelligent, though he may take a sentimental, interest in foreign
missions.