Title: Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions
Author: Roland Allen
Thomas Cochrane
Release date: September 3, 2004 [eBook #13360]
Most recently updated: December 18, 2020
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Produced by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
Transcriber's Note: In order to maintain appropriate line length, some tables have been transposed, i.e. rows are columns and vice versa.
1920
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!
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
1. We need a survey of the missionary situation in the world which will express the facts in terms of the relationships between the different missionary activities and between them all in relation to a dominant idea or purpose. Such a survey is strictly scientific. All scientific survey is properly governed by the end or purpose for which it is made.
It is this purpose or end which decides what is to be included and what is to be excluded from the survey. If, for instance, we are making a survey of the acoustic properties of church buildings in England, it is not scientific to introduce questions as to the character of the gospel preached in them. A scientific survey is not necessarily a collection of all possible information about any people or country; that is an encyclopaedia; a scientific survey is a survey of those facts only which throw light on the business in hand. A scientific survey of foreign missions ought not then necessarily to look at the work carried on from "every point of view". The point of view must be defined, the end to be served defined, and then only those factors which throw light upon that end have any place in a scientific survey. We cannot be too clear about this, because in survey of a work so vast and so many sided as foreign missions we might easily include every human activity, unless we defined beforehand the end to be served and selected carefully only the appropriate factors. Carefully defined, missionary survey is not the unwieldy, amorphous thing which people often imagine. There is indeed a dangerous type of survey which starting with a hypothesis proceeds to prove it by collecting any facts which seem to support it to the neglect of all other facts which might disprove it. The procedure advocated here is the adoption of a definite and acknowledged purpose for which the survey is to be made and the collection of all the facts which bear upon the subject in hand. The facts are selected, but they are selected not by the prejudices or partiality of the surveyor, but by their own innate and inherent relationship to the subject.
A scientific survey can only be a collection of facts; but inferences will certainly be drawn from the facts which will direct the policy of those who administer foreign missionary societies. The drawing of these inferences from the material collected must be carefully distinguished from the collection of the material (i.e. the making of the survey). The latter precedes the former and is independent of it. Inferences hastily drawn, or prematurely adopted, would only tend to discredit missionary survey as a means to the attainment of truth. The adoption of a hypothesis and the making of a survey in order to prove it by a careful selection and manipulation of facts would not discredit survey as a means to the attainment of truth; it would only discredit and debase the moral character of the man who made such a survey.
2. The survey here treated of is missionary survey, that is to say, it treats of missions and is governed by a missionary purpose. And it is a survey of Christian missions; therefore it is governed by the purpose of spreading the knowledge of Christ. This statement is of great importance and needs to be carefully conned before it is accepted, because by it missionary survey will be distinguished from all other survey. For instance, medical boards survey medical institutions. Their sole concern is whether those institutions are well found and efficient.[1] But when a missionary surveys a missionary hospital (if the principle which we propound is accepted), he surveys it not qua medical establishment but qua missionary utensil. The object is not to find out the medical efficiency of the hospital, but its missionary effectiveness. It may be answered that a medically inefficient hospital cannot be truly effective from a missionary point of view. That may be true; but it is not certainly true. Whether it is true or not, that does not alter the fact that an efficient medical establishment is not necessarily effective from a missionary point of view; it is not necessarily either missionary or Christian at all. Then to survey medical missions simply as medical institutions is to ignore their real significance. Missionary survey must relate the information asked for to the missionary purpose; and unless it is so related the survey is a medical survey, not a missionary survey. The same holds good of educational work, and of pastoral work.
[Footnote 1: We could produce surveys of medical and educational mission work which are essentially of this character, dealing solely with medical and educational efficiency.]
3. The survey here proposed is designed for all societies so far as the societies can be persuaded to supply the information. It would perhaps be more simple to provide statistical returns for one society of which the ecclesiastical organisation is known and the ecclesiastical terms used consequently fixed. But survey of the work of a society, invaluable and necessary as that is for a society, is not sufficient by itself. It is essential to-day that we should be able to place our work in the world in relation to all the missionary work done. We can no longer afford to ignore the work of others and to plan our missions as though other missions did not exist. As we try to point out from time to time no society can act rightly in ignorance of another's work. Therefore we have attempted to design a survey which would show what is the work of any mission in such a form that its work can be related in some sort to the missionary work of all, and not only to the other missions of its own society.
4. Seeing that all survey is scientifically governed by the object for which it is made, it is essential that in a survey such as we propose the end for which it is made should be stated in each case as clearly and definitely as possible. This involves often such a definition of the end as implies a certain missionary policy. Realising this, we have not hesitated to set forth the policy implied in the terms which we use and the questions which we ask.[1] We are well aware that this lays us open to attack from men who may question the policy and dispute the value of the survey. It would be far more easy to set down simply the facts which we think any true survey should contain, leaving them unrelated to one another, so that no one could tell exactly what we were driving at. This is the common plan. Men say they want to know the facts of the missionary situation, any facts, all facts, indiscriminately, and they draw up a list of all the facts that they can think of and issue a questionnaire which leaves the compiler of the answers in complete ignorance concerning the purpose of the questions. Such heaps of information might be used anyhow if they were really complete; but in fact since they have not been designed for any definite use they are generally deficient for any definite use, and remain mere masses of information on which no true judgments can be based. So far from revealing the missionary situation they obscure it. We have, therefore, taken the risk of explaining why we want each piece of information, how we think it might be used, and have drawn our tables in such a form that it is actually seen at work. By so doing we open the door at once, both for intelligent co-operation and intelligent opposition. We frankly make criticism easy; we invite it; for we believe that frank criticism on the basis of agreed facts is extremely fruitful.
[Footnote 1: It does not follow that we approve the policy implied.]
We may well acknowledge that the aim which above all others has appealed to us is the aim of the establishment in the world of a Christian Church, native, indigenous, living, self-supporting, self-governing, self-extending, independent of foreign aid. That has no doubt coloured our work and will perhaps render it less acceptable to some; for the facts which must be included in a survey which accepts that aim are precisely the facts which societies do not now tabulate and are often estimated with some difficulty.
But though this thought has inevitably governed our conception of survey and we have made no attempt to conceal it, we have nevertheless tried to avoid the danger of selecting for survey only those facts which might serve to support a theory of the method by which that aim is to be attained; and we have kept in our minds constantly the needs of men whose idea of the aim of foreign missions differs from our own.
5. Missionary survey must justify itself by assisting definitely and clearly those who make it and those who have to direct and support missionary work in all parts of the world. The first question which we ought to answer in every case where our help is asked is this: "What do we want to do? What is our purpose in doing anything at all here?" The second question is: "What must we know to enable us to act discreetly and wisely in this case? What facts are properly to be taken into account in this matter?" The first question is the question of aim, the second is the question of relation. Suppose we say that we want to send our missionaries where they are most needed, what information must we have to direct us? First we must know what we mean by need, what kind of need we are to put first in our thoughts; that is the question of definition of aim. Then, how shall we decide where that need is greatest at the present time, for us, that is, within our possibility of active assistance; that is the question of relation. The facts of need as we define it must be related and compared. The survey of which we speak as necessary for an intelligent understanding of foreign missions must provide these facts in a form easily grasped and understood and compared for different countries and districts, so that those who direct action and those who support the action may be able to do so with reason, not being guided merely by the most influential voice or the loudest shout.
6. To serve this purpose survey must have twofold aspect. It must be a review of the present state of the work, it must also be a review of the present position of the work. It is a review of the state of the work, the stations, the converts, the Church; it is a review of the position, the progress made compared with the work to be done. But the state varies, the position changes, and action must be taken continually.
The survey, therefore, should be not simply a single act but a continual process. Mission work is not a task which can be undertaken and finished on a predetermined plan, like the construction of a railway. It is a task the conditions of which vary from time to time, and consequently plans and policies and methods must vary, and this variation can only be rational if it is determined by recognition of the changing circumstances, and the change of circumstances can only be understood and appreciated if the survey of missions is a continuous process kept constantly up to date. It is a form of mission history in which the omission of a few years may break the connection of the whole narrative.
7. (i) It may perhaps cause surprise to some that the information for which we ask is mainly such as can be expressed in a statistical form. But the fact remains that all statesmanship (and foreign missions involve large elements of statesmanship), and all organised effort (and foreign missions are highly organised), is in the world always based either upon carefully compiled statistics, or upon guess work; and that the business which is directed by guess work does not enjoy the same confidence as the business which is directed by knowledge derived from carefully compiled statistics.
Take, for example, this extract from a letter written by a firm in the
United States of America which deals with candy securities:—
The candy business, the history of which shows a remarkable record of freedom from failure, is to-day enjoying unparalleled prosperity, and there is every reason to believe that the present high earnings of all the large candy concerns in the United States will continue indefinitely. Those fortunate enough to hold shares in well-established candy manufacturing concerns may expect, therefore, to enjoy larger earnings than could reasonably be expected from funds placed in most other enterprises. Prohibition is proving a tremendous factor in increasing candy sales. Best estimates show that the American public is now spending between $800,000,000 and $1,000,000,000 annually for candy. —— & Co. are specialists in the candy and sugar securities. We maintain a statistical department, and endeavour to furnish information concerning all of the prominent issues based on these industries. You are invited to avail yourself of this service, and if you are interested in any candy or sugar stock, we will be pleased to have you confer with us. This department now has in preparation an analysis of the candy and sugar situation as it exists to-day in the United States. Interesting data is also being collected from most reliable sources, giving figures and statistics for the world. The number of copies which we are preparing for general distribution is limited. If you will sign the enclosed card, and return it to us, we will take pleasure in extending to you the courtesy of a copy of this analysis free of charge.
When individuals work individually, for themselves, as they please, statistics are only necessary for the onlooker who wants to compare individual effort with individual effort; the individuals who want to make no comparison of their own work with that of others, nor to keep any record of the progress of their work, need keep no statistics; but societies always want to keep a record of their work, and that record must be largely statistical.
It is vain to attack statistics to-day. Every society publishes statistical sheets. Every society by publishing them shows that it recognises the value of statistics. The difficulty to-day is not that the societies do not publish statistics, but that the statistics which they publish are not related to any aim or purpose, and do not include factors or standards which enable us to measure progress.
(ii) It may also cause surprise that we ask for estimates in some cases where exact information is not immediately accessible. It may be said that statistics are misleading, but estimates are hopelessly misleading: let us have correct figures or none. That attitude is easily understood, but under the circumstances it is vain. "Correct figures," that is, meticulously exact figures, are unattainable. An estimate is in nearly all matters of daily life and business the basis, and rightly the basis, of our action. It will be noticed that in that letter which we quoted above concerning the statistics of the candy trade in the United States of America, estimates had a place, and foreign missions involve matters about which "correct figures" are more difficult to obtain than the candy business. An estimate carefully made and understood, a deliberate statement expressed in round numbers, is not unscientific: it is only unscientific to mistake such figures for what they do not profess to be. When men object that the figures are not exact, if the figures do not profess to be exact, it is the objector who is unscientific, not the statistics.
Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that the admission of estimates and round figures does open the door to serious error. Men will be tempted to mistake an estimate for a guess. An estimate is a statement for which reasons can be given, a guess is—a mere guess. The great safeguard against guesses, as against all slipshod statistical entries, is the assurance that the statements made will be used. At present missionary statistics are untrustworthy mainly because so few people use them, and consequently those who supply them do not feel the need of revising them carefully.
Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that the field for estimate in statistics of the kind proposed is limited; it only embraces figures for which exact totals are unobtainable, for instance, area, population, and figures of societies which refuse to give statistics, etc., and in every case precision in these statistics is not of vital importance.
(iii) The main difference between our tables and those of others is that we make them very small and express in each a relation. The figures supplied by the societies in their reports are seldom related to anything; they are mere bundles of sticks; we suggest the introduction of a relation into every table which gives to each figure a significance which by itself it does not possess. In our tables every figure is set to work. Our idea of missionary statistics demands that they should be a basis for action. We think that it is waste of time to collect statistics from which no conclusion can be certainly drawn both by the compiler and the reader—a conclusion which ought to be suggestive when taken alone by itself, and, when considered in relation to the conclusions suggested by similar tables, compelling.
But it may be said that we are adding to the already overwhelming burden of accounts and reports over which missionaries toil to the great detriment of their proper work. The tables in this book are arranged apparently for the worker on the spot as well as for the intelligent supporter and director at home; why multiply tables and trouble the missionary with the sums of proportion? Why not ask the man there simply to give the necessary facts and then let the man at home work out for special purposes the various relations? The answer is simple: we ourselves have been asked to fill up long schedules of unrelated facts; and we know that the labour is intolerable. The supply of unrelated, meaningless facts dulls and wearies the brain. Few men can do the work with pleasure or profit, and consequently the schedules are often filled up, not indeed with deliberate carelessness, but with that heavy painfulness which, taking no interest in the work, often produces as pitiful a result as downright carelessness. "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn" is a maxim which has a great application here. The man who provides the information should be the first to profit by it and to be interested in it. The first man to criticise these tables should be the missionary who fills them up on the spot; and his most valuable criticism might be a demonstration that the last column in a table was futile; that the table led him to no conclusions and suggested no remarks. That column of conclusions and remarks we hold to be the most precious of them all. We would have no man supply meaningless information. Only, we believe, when the information is of vital importance and interest to the man who supplies it will it be supplied carefully, correctly, willingly, and above all, intelligently. We venture to hope that our tables may be one step towards the day when the supply of statistical information by the missionary will cease to be mere drudgery.
(iv) Seeing that the missionary task is essentially world-wide, it is obvious that a world-wide work cannot be properly directed without a world-wide view. Now, missionary survey is in its infancy, and in most parts of the world it has yet to be begun. A full and complete missionary survey of the whole world would necessarily be a considerable undertaking, for many important facts could not be easily or quickly collected. There is then a strong tendency for men to argue that, since all the facts desirable cannot be known at once without much time and expense, it is futile and dangerous to collect those facts which can be collected speedily without great expense. A little knowledge, they say, is a dangerous thing … let us remain ignorant.
We would venture to suggest that a little knowledge is only dangerous when it is mistaken for much knowledge; that it is far better to act on knowledge which can be obtained than to act in total ignorance, blindly. Where we must act it is our duty to know all that we can know, and if, because we cannot collect all the information that we should wish to possess, we refuse to collect that information which we can obtain, because we realise that it will be incomplete, we commit a serious moral and intellectual crime. If we can know only one factor out of one hundred, we offend if we refuse to know that one. We must act. We have no right to shut our eyes to knowledge which ought to guide our action because we are aware that action taken on that one factor will be insufficiently guided. The one factor is an important one and must influence our action, and would influence our action if we knew all the other factors. We ought to allow it to influence our action even in ignorance of the other factors.
In daily life we habitually act on partial knowledge, and we should think that man mad who urged us to refuse to be guided by our partial knowledge until our knowledge was complete; we should think a man mad who, being under necessity to act, refused to know what he could know, because he was aware that fuller knowledge might lead him to modify his action. Now missionaries and missionary societies are acting and must act, and the refusal to collect the information which they can obtain is as culpable as the ignorance of a man who refuses to attend to the one word "poison" printed on the label of a bottle which he can read, because he cannot read the name of the stuff written on the label.
Yet it is very commonly argued that unless survey can be made complete, unless, that is, every factor which we can think of as exercising an influence on our action is duly weighed, it is futile to survey the larger, commoner, and more easily accessible factors. This objection recurs again and again, and unless it can be put out of the way it must prejudice missionary survey. It would be wise, it would be right, to collect information on only one point, if that were all that we could do. It would be better than to rest content with total ignorance. Nevertheless, when anyone collects with care statistics on any particular point, he is certain to meet the objection that his labour ought to be ignored because he has not collected information about something else. As if total ignorance were preferable to partial knowledge! Is there any answer to the argument, that "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise," when supported by "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," other than Dr. Arnold's maxim, "Where it is our duty to act it is also our duty to learn"?
(v) We have not been careful to avoid asking for details of which we are well aware that the statistics do not now exist. We have thought it our duty rather to point out the information necessary for arriving at right conclusions than to mislead our readers by pretending that it is possible to form judgments and act properly without taking the trouble to collect information which is really necessary. This is no contradiction of the argument which we set forth that partial information is better than none, but it does warn the surveyor that blanks in the forms leave him not fully equipped, and that steps ought to be taken to secure information without which his conclusions are uncertain.
Missionary work is presented to us here at home mainly at two points; the one, work at a mission station, the other, the condition and needs of a country or of a continent. In the one case we hear a great deal about the missionary's life and work; in the other we hear about great problems, religious, moral, social, and very little about the facts of the work.
We propose to begin with the mission station and to set down the information which we need, in order that we may take an intelligent interest in the work at the station, viewed by itself, as progress is made towards the immediate object of its existence; and then we propose to look at it in relation to other stations in the province or country, both comparatively to see how they differ, and as parts of a whole, to see what is the position of the Church in the province or country, and what place each station occupies in the work done in the larger whole.
When we look at the mission station viewed by itself, the first question which we ask is: Has the station any defined area, district, or parish, connected with it in which it is the business of the missionaries to preach the Gospel and establish the Church? If the answer to that question is, "Yes, it has," and that answer would very commonly be given, then at once we get our feet on firm ground. We can start our survey on a territorial basis; and with a common territorial basis we can immediately compare the work of one station with that done at another station. We have further a terminus ad quem, and in our survey we can tell whether progress is in that direction and how rapid it is.
We can do this, because the definition of a parish or district implies the recognition on the part of those who define the parish or district, of the purpose, if not the duty, of preaching the Gospel and establishing the Church in the area of that parish or district. The mere definition of the area, therefore, implies a policy for the mission which defines the area and for the station for which the area is defined. For such a station, therefore, we design our first survey, the object of the survey being to discover how far the work of the station is succeeding in performing the task which it obviously undertook when it accepted the definition of area.
1. We begin then by surveying the position of the work in the station district extensively: we ask—What is the relation between the work done and the work remaining to be done? We ask this question in two forms; first, in terms of the cities, towns, and villages which lie in the station area, and secondly, in terms of population. We ask the question in this double form because we believe that by this means the surveyor will obtain a clear view of the situation and will be able easily to see what has been done in relation to the work yet to be done, and it is the relation of those two that is most illuminating. If these tables were constantly revised the progress of the work could be traced from year to year easily and helpfully. Put side by side they illuminate each other, and each affords a check upon the other. Progress in numbers in proportion to population and progress in the number of places occupied should often properly advance side by side. Progress in numbers in proportion to population without any increase in the number of places occupied may often occur; progress in the number of places occupied without a corresponding increase of the Christian population in proportion to the non-Christian population may also occur, and each must give the missionary food for thought. The tables are simple, dealing with bare numerical proportions:—
—————————————————————————————————-
| | | Number of| Number of |
| | Date of | Occupied | Unoccupied| Work to
District.| Area.| Foundation| Cities, | Cities, | be Done.
| | of Station.| Towns, | Towns, |
| | | Villages.| Villages. |
—————————————————————————————————-
| | | | |
_________|_______|_____________|___________|____________|__________
By "occupied" we mean places where there are resident Christians, few or many.
—————————————————————————————————— Total | Total | Total |Work to | Remarks Population.| Christian | Non-Christian | be Done. | and | Constituency. | Constituency. | |Conclusions. —————————————————————————————————— | | | | ___________|_______________|________________|__________|____________
By Christian Constituency we mean the total number of people who call themselves Christian in the area in question. They may not be baptised, they may be mere inquirers or hearers; but if asked their religion they would call themselves Christians rather than anything else.
The reasons why we adopt this extremely wide expression are: (1) Some societies, whose members are undeniably Christian in morals and thought, do not baptise adults; many societies do not baptise infants; yet these unbaptised people are certainly not heathen; they certainly do not belong to any other religious organisation than the Christian. Again, some societies baptise very much more freely than others, and count as members large numbers of people whom other societies would consider to be in the position of inquirers or hearers. Consequently any just comparison between different areas in which different societies are working is impossible unless a very wide expression is employed, and a very wide interpretation given to it.
(2) The Christian cause, both for good and evil, is largely influenced by the existence of these unbaptised. They are called Christian, they are considered to be such by their heathen neighbours, they suffer persecution often with the other Christians when any outbreak occurs. Their numbers and conduct exercise a wide influence in the society in which they live, for or against the progress of the Christian faith.
(3) The attitude of these people to the Christian missionary is quite different from that of the heathen. They acknowledge Christ as the one Divine Teacher and Lord. The missionary cannot count them as belonging to the heathen; he cannot approach them as the teacher of a new religion. He must approach them as an exponent of the religion which they already profess. However inadequate and confused their ideas about Christian theology and practice may be, they expect to receive from a Christian teacher instruction in their own religion, and that religion is a religion common to him and to them. Consequently to omit them from the Christian constituency is to do an injustice to them, and to misrepresent the true facts of the case.
(4) In many areas two or more societies are at work and their conception of the qualifications for the name of Christian differ. In a survey each society is tempted to ignore the members of the other, and to reckon as Christians only those who fulfil the conditions which are applied by the one society. So certain Protestant societies ignore all Roman Catholics; but that for the reasons already stated is most misleading, for when persecution arises Protestants and Roman Catholics alike suffer for the Name of Christ. Whatever the members of another society may be, they are certainly not heathen; the heathen deny them. Consequently they cannot properly be counted with the heathen by any surveyor who wishes to present the facts.
For these reasons we have been compelled to adopt a very wide expression, and the expression used by the China Continuation Committee seemed to be sufficiently elastic to serve our purpose. Nevertheless, to avoid error as far as possible, when we institute comparisons between Christian and non-Christian population, we introduce side by side with the total Christian Constituency the total Communicants (or Full Members), which is a valuable check.
Take then an example. The figures here given are obviously not the figures of a station area; they are figures for a province; but they serve to illustrate the point. We cannot fill up the area table; we can only supply figures for the population.
————————————————————
Population. : Total : Total Non-
: Christians. : Christians.
————————————————————
32,571,000 : 534,238 : 2,036,762
————————————————————
Now, here of the 534,238 Christians 500,655 are Roman Catholics, the Protestants numbering 33,583. The Roman Catholics in this area began work about 300 years earlier than the Protestants. Are we to eliminate them?
Are all these 33,583 Protestants more worthy of the name of Christian than some of the Roman Catholics? Or shall we eliminate some of the 33,583? If so, how many, and on what grounds? Is not the denial of the Name to those who claim to be servants of Christ absurd? Are there not enough non-Christians to be converted?
Suppose the Roman Catholic figures to be an estimate. Is it not plain that in dealing with considerable areas estimates may be useful though faulty? How little difference in the work to be done does an error in that estimate make? Knock off or add on 50,000 and is the work to be done seriously affected? It is true that in some calculations an error of that magnitude might mislead us somewhat, but hardly enough to vitiate our whole view of the situation, especially if we carefully check our conclusions by the results of other tables given later.
At the first glance these figures produce the impression that very little has been done. In the beginning, and that was many years ago, there were over 32 million non-Christians; there are over 32 million to-day. But let us look at proportions and see what a different impression is produced.
—————————————————————————————-
Population. : Total : Total Non- : Proportion
: Christians. : Christians. : of Christians to
: : : Non-Christians.
—————————————————————————————-
32,571,000 : 534,238 : 32,036,762 : 1 to 60
—————————————————————————————-
One Christian to every sixty non-Christians gives us a totally different impression. We begin to feel that if only the Christians awoke to their duty they could influence the whole population profoundly. That is precisely the effect produced upon the Christians by a missionary survey undertaken with them, and understood by them; they begin to see the immensity of the work to be done, they begin to see that it can be done.
There should properly then here be two tables parallel to the first two.
Thus:—
——————————————————————————————————-
| Number of | Number of | |
| Occupied | Unoccupied | Proportion of |Remarks
Area. | Cities, Towns, | Cities, Towns, | Occupied to |and
| Villages. | Villages. | Unoccupied. |Conclusions.
———|————————|————————|———————-|——————
| | | |
______|________________|________________|_______________|____________
——————————————————————————————————— Total | Total | Total Non- | Proportion of | Remarks Population. | Christian | Christian | Christian to | and | Population. | Population. | Non-Christian. |Conclusions. ——————|——————-|——————-|————————|—————— | | | | ____________|_____________|_____________|________________|____________
Observe what light is thrown upon a district by the mere juxtaposition of those few facts. I think those two tables alone should suffice to prove that a survey which regarded only a very few factors might be of immense service, if those who used it kept clearly before them its partial character and did not allow themselves to treat it as complete.
But, unfortunately, these first facts which we have desired are, like other facts of importance, procured only with difficulty and toil. In order to fill up the preceding tables the missionary surveyor must be able to state what is the area and what the population in the station district. But some could not supply that information. Its acquisition might involve a journey of many months given up to careful examination and inquiry. It is no small demand to make. In many cases a reasoned estimate is indeed the only possible statement; but as we have already argued careful estimates are invaluable, and where a census does not exist they give us for the time something to work upon.
Where the physical survey can be undertaken it is most illuminating work, illuminating both to the missionaries and to their native helpers, who often gain an entirely new view of their work and its possibilities from such personal examination. Testimony to the value of this experience is growing daily in weight and volume.
This physical survey would naturally result in the production of a map of the area in which the cities, towns, and villages in the station district were marked with notes on their character from the missionary point of view. In this map all places where Christians resided, where there were Christian congregations, churches, preaching places, schools, hospitals, dispensaries, etc., would be marked. It would be a pictorial presentation of the facts so far as they were capable of expression in map form.
But whether in map form or in statistical form, the area and the population for which the mission is working must be expressed either by exact figures or by estimates if we are to trace progress.
If these tables were kept over a number of years, the missionaries on the spot and directors and inquirers at home would be able to see what progress was being made towards fulfilling the obligation implied by the definition of the station area or district, and what that obligation involved.
II. When we know the work to be done we turn to the consideration of the force available. This force consists of permanent and more or less temporary members. Some will in all human probability remain in the place till they die; they are of it, they belong to it; others will probably depart elsewhere; they are not of the place; they speak of home as far away; they are liable to removal; sickness which does not kill them takes them away; the call of friends or business carries them back to their own land; they are strangers all their days in the mission district. Nevertheless, they are generally the moving, active force; upon them progress seems to depend. It is strange, but it is true generally: the permanent is the passive element, the impermanent is the active. Here we simply state the fact to excuse or condemn the placing of the missionary force first in our tables. First it is to-day.
We need then a table of the foreign missionary force. In its form it will be a mere statement of proportions. The proportions are essential in order to make comparison between one area and another possible; and comparison is the sweet savour of survey. We cannot compare the work of three men labouring among an unstated population with the work of two other men working in an unstated population; the moment that the proportions are worked out the cases can be compared. But some men detest this purely quantitative comparison. They insist, and rightly, that there is no true equality in the comparison. One man differs from another man and his work differs from the work of the other man: over large areas it is often the work of one man among many which really saves the situation. It is quite true. In the last resort survey becomes survey of personalities. But in a survey of the kind which we propose, survey of personalities is impossible and most undesirable.
The survey proposed cannot deal with personalities, but that does not invalidate the importance of the information asked for. Such forms received from many different stations would certainly throw light on the serious question of reinforcement. It is of course obvious that reinforcements could not be allotted rightly on such slight evidence as the proportion of missionaries to the population of a district. The question is not whether reinforcements could be allotted on this factor alone; but whether they could be allotted rightly in ignorance of it. Taken in conjunction with the preceding and following tables, this table would reveal something that we may call need in a purely quantitative expression, and comparative need should certainly influence the allotment of reinforcements. Though the statement of need in this table is indeed utterly insufficient by itself, it is nevertheless true that no statement of comparative need which ignored the proportions here set out would be satisfactory. This quantitative expression is not sufficient; but no statement is sufficient without it, and, as often, so here, it is the proportion rather than the actual figures which make comparison possible:—
——————————————————————————————————-
| | Total |Proportion |Proportion | Remarks
District.|Popula- | Foreign | to | of Women | and
| tion. |Missionaries.|Population.| to |Conclusions.
| | | |Population.|
————-|————|——————-|—————-|—————-|——————
| | | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
We turn now to the permanent Christian force in the district. We want to know what is the force. We ask, therefore, that the total Christian constituency may be accepted as the first expression of the native force. The progress of the Gospel is most seriously affected by the whole number of those who in any sense call themselves Christians. They are the force in the place which influences the heathen for or against it. It is of the utmost importance that they should be reckoned first, and treated first, as the force which above all others works slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, but mightily. The whole body of those who profess and call themselves Christians should be put in the very first place.
Then the communicants (or full members) are commonly the body to which all turn for voluntary zealous effort. The communicants are the strength of the Church. We compare them next with the work to be done. Then the paid workers. Then the voluntary unpaid workers, recognised as such.
The difficulty of calculating the unpaid voluntary workers is indeed very great. We know of no definition which would serve to give any uniformity to returns made by different missions. We recognise that different missions would make the returns on different bases. We earnestly desire a common definition, which all might accept. But under existing circumstances it seems impossible to find one. Nevertheless, without some statement of the number of voluntary workers, we are, as we shall see, in grave danger of misjudging the situation and wronging our missionaries and the native Christians. For the time then we suggest that it would be far better to accept the returns given to us by the missionaries on their own basis, asking them to append a note to the return explaining how they calculated their voluntary force. We should then have the following table:—
The Native Force.
(a) The Christian Constituency.
—————————————————————————————————- District. |Population. |Christian |Proportion to |Remarks and | |Constituency |Non-Christian |Conclusions. | | |Population. | —————————————————————————————————- | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
(b) The Communicants or Full Members.
——————————————————————————————————- District. | Population. | Communicants. | Proportion to | Remarks and | | | Non-Christian | Conclusions | | | Population. | ——————————————————————————————————- | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
(c) The Paid Workers.
——————————————————————————————————- District. | Population. | Paid Workers. | Proportion to | Remarks and | | | Non-Christian | Conclusions | | | Population. | ——————————————————————————————————- | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
(d) The Unpaid Workers.
————————————————————————————————- District. | Population. | Unpaid | Proportion to | Remarks and | | Workers. | Non-Christian | Conclusions. | | | Population. | ————————————————————————————————- | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
Here again it is the proportions which are illuminating and enable comparisons of different areas to be made. The bare figures of the number of Christians and communicants and workers by themselves would tell us very little; only when we have them related to a common factor do we get any real light.
Let us now sum up our inquiry thus far.
+———————————————————————————-+——-+ Work to be Done: Non-Christian Population. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Untouched, Unoccupied Villages. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Foreign Force Compared with Work to be Done. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Native Force Compared with Work to be Done. | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Christian Constituency. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Communicants. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Paid Workers. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Unpaid Voluntary Workers. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+
If these tables were kept over a series of years, the progress of the force in relation to the work to be done would be most interestingly revealed.
But in estimating the Christian force in the district we need to know more than its number; we need to know so much of its character as statistical tables can show.
One Christian to every 129 heathen may mean much or little. It might mean that the day when the Christian force would be the controlling force in the area was close at hand. That would depend largely upon the capacity of the Christians, their education, their zeal. The tables which we now suggest are designed to reveal, so far as tables can reveal, the truth in these matters.
We begin then with the proportion of communicants in the Christian constituency. If we take the last table and, instead of considering the proportion of the communicants to the non-Christian population, consider the proportion of communicants to the Christian constituency, we gain a very different view. We gain then an idea of the character of the Christians. Instead of an idea of the size of the force at work we receive an impression of the quality of the force. Even one who lays little stress on the value and necessity of sacraments would not deny that he would expect more from a Church of 1000 in which 500 were communicants than he would from a Church of 1000 of which only 100 were communicants. He might deny that his expectation was based upon any faith in the virtue of sacraments, but he would acknowledge the fact that in our experience the Church which possesses large numbers of communicants is generally stronger than the Church which possesses a small number. The comparison of the number of communicants in relation to the number of the total Christian constituency does properly produce an impression of the strength of the Christian body.
If we can fill up the table
——————————————————————————————————-
District.| Total. | Communicants | Proportion of | Remarks and
| Christian | or Full | Communicants | Conclusions
| Constituency.| Members. | to Christian |
| | | Constituency. |
——————————————————————————————————-
| | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
we gain an impression of the strength of the Church. But it is important to observe that it is only in relation to the earlier tables, which set out the force in relation to the work to be done, that this impression of strength is of immediate importance to us. We are dealing with a missionary survey, a survey concerned with the propagation of the Gospel. The mere strength of the Church, unrelated to any work in which the strength is to be employed, is a very different matter. We might take pleasure in the sight of it. We might congratulate ourselves and the missionaries on the beauty of the strength revealed, but not until it is related to work to be done does strength appear in its true glory. We find in nearly all missionary statistics the number of communicants and converts set forth, and we often wonder what for. It cannot be that we may glory in our conquests and say: See how many converts and communicants we have made! But, unrelated to any task to be done, that is all that appears. Therefore we have instituted this comparison here, in close relation to the earlier tables, that we may know what is the force on the spot at work in the area defined.
Next, the proportion of Paid Workers in proportion to the number of the Christian constituency and the communicants is a most illuminating factor. By itself it is a difficult factor to appreciate rightly. Suppose we find, as we do sometimes find, that one out of every ten communicants is a paid worker. That may imply that the proportion of rice Christians is very high, or it may imply a high standard of zeal, very many of the converts being able and willing to devote themselves to Christian work and at the same time too poor to be able to support themselves without pay. This proportion, therefore, should be carefully checked by a table which shows the proportion of unpaid workers and another which shows the standard of wealth. But commonly we are given the number of paid workers, and given neither the number of unpaid voluntary workers, nor the standard of wealth, and therefore the danger of reading amiss the number of paid workers is great. We have already explained the difficulty of obtaining exact figures, or even estimates, of the number of voluntary unpaid workers, but a mere glance at the proportion of paid workers to communicants should be enough to persuade any man who desires to judge our work fairly of the necessity for such a table as we now suggest.
——————————————————————————————————-
District.| Paid | Proportion | Proportion of | Remarks and
| Workers. | of Paid Workers | Paid Workers | Conclusions
| | to Christian | to |
| | Constituency. | Communicants. |
——————————————————————————————————-
| | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
——————————————————————————————————-
District.| Unpaid |Proportion |Proportion of | Remarks and
| Workers. |of Unpaid Workers|Unpaid Workers | Conclusions
| |to Christian |to |
| |Constituency. |Communicants. |
——————————————————————————————————-
| | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
——————————————————————————————————-
| | Proportion of Christian |
| | Constituency. According |
| | to Local Standard. |
——————————————————————————————————-
District.| Christian | Well | Poor | In | Remarks and
| Constituency. | to do. | | Poverty | Conclusions
| | | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
| | | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
There is indeed a way of judging the zeal of native Christians for the propagation of the Gospel very popular among missionaries, the way of tabulating and comparing the amount which they subscribe for missionary work. Obviously this method is the form most natural to us, but it is one of the worst conceivable. When a Christian congregation lives surrounded by heathen, for it to learn to satisfy the divine spirit of missions by putting money into a box, is most dangerous. The zeal of Christians for the spread of the Gospel ought always to be expressed first in active personal service. We should prefer to omit any question as to the amount subscribed for missionary work far off. We believe it to be a most delusive and deluding test. It deceives the giver, it deceives the inquirer. We should prefer to inquire the number of hearers or inquirers brought to the Church by the undirected effort of the Church members, or the number of Church members who go out to teach or preach in their neighbourhood, or perhaps best of all, the number of little Christian congregations which as a body are actively engaged in evangelising their neighbours. But we admit missionary contributions as an additional question
——————————————————————————————————- Christian |Inquirers |Congregations| Amount | Remarks and Constituency.|brought in |Evangelising | Subscribed | Conclusions |by Native |their | for Missionary | |Christians.|Neighbours. | Purposes. | ——————————————————————————————————- | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
That a Church must be instructed and instruct its children all are agreed: where men differ is with respect to the manner of the teaching. On the one side are those who would safeguard the faith by committing the teaching of it to a small body of carefully trained men, the clergy, whilst the majority of the Christians, the laity, remain unlearned and accept what is taught by the trained official teachers: on the other side are those who would boldly commit the faith to all, opening to all the door of learning. The one party would preserve the faith in the hands of a select few, the other would put the Bible into every man's hands. It is an old controversy; but we suppose nearly all those for whom we write are of the second party, men who would gladly see every Christian able to read the Bible and to base his religious life upon it. We stand for the open Bible; we believe that the Christian Church in every country will progress and develop strongly if it is based on a widespread knowledge of Holy Writ, and we are prepared to believe that a capacity to read the Bible is a sure sign of health in any Christian Church. The test of literacy commonly adopted in our missions is the capacity to read the Holy Gospels: we accept that gladly and confidently.
Furthermore, the influence of the Christian Church in the country will largely depend upon the extent to which the Christians are better able to read and understand literary expression than their heathen neighbours.
We want then to know the literacy of the Christian community as compared with the literacy of the non-Christian population from which it springs, and, if possible, a little more than that—what proportion of the Christians have had a sufficient education to enable them not only to satisfy the very slight demands of a literary test, but to have some wider knowledge with which to improve their own position and to enlighten others.
The table which results is as follows:—
——————————————————————————————————- Non-Chris-|Propor- |Total |Propor- |Proportion | Remarks and tian |tion of |Christian |tion of |of Christians | Conclusions. Popula- |Liter- |Consti- |Liter- |of Higher | tion. |ates. |tuency. |ates. |Education. | ——————————————————————————————————- | | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
In this table we touch one of the points on which exact figures are often inaccessible and an estimate must be made. An estimate which is recognised as an estimate is not misleading, and, if it is carefully made and based on evidence understood, is generally most useful, only estimates carelessly made and mistaken for precise and accurate statements of fact are misleading.
These tables would, we suggest, suffice to give us a fairly clear idea of the strength of the force at work, especially if they are taken in conjunction with the tables which we suggest under the heading of the Native Church in Chapter VIII. where we deal particularly with organisation.
We ought now to be able to form some idea of the work to be done and of the force to do it. We know in quantitative terms the work to be done, we know the relative force of missionaries, we know the relative strength of the native Christian constituency, its communicants, its workers, its education, its wealth, in relation to the work to be done.
We have now to consider how the force is directed, along what lines it is applied, and how its efforts are co-ordinated.
When we know the area and the force at work in it, we must next consider how this force is applied. We need to know in what proportion it works amongst men and women, how far different classes of the population are reached by it, and what emphasis is placed upon different forms of work, evangelistic, medical, and educational. We propose then four tables which will help us to understand these things.
First, we inquire into the relative strength of the force in relation to work among men and women. In the foreign missionary force we distinguish men, wives, and single women; in the native force we distinguish only men and women; because marriage generally affects the character of the foreigner's work more than it affects the character of the work done by the native Christians who live in their own homes among their own people.
—————————————————————————————————— | | | Single | | | | Women and | Remarks and | Men | Wives| Widows | Conclusions ——————————————————————————————————- Foreign missionaries. | | | | ——————————————————————————————————- | Women Christian constituency | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Communicants. | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Native workers (paid) | | | ——————————————————————————————————
Since it is generally agreed that men in the main appeal to men, and women to women, that table should tell us roughly what is the force at work in relation to men and women; and any mistake in that supposition will be checked by the statistics for the Christian constituency, which serve a double purpose. The statistics of the Christian constituency show us not only an important part of the Christian force at work in relation to the men and women of the non-Christian population; but in relation to the foreigners and the native workers they also help us to see how far the idea that men appeal to men and women to women, is in fact a good working rule.
Next it is desirable to know to what classes the mission especially appeals. Here we shall probably have to accept estimates, sometimes rough estimates, for part at least of the information desirable; in some cases the table may be impossible; in some it may be most useful. The table which we suggest is:—
——————————————————————————————————— In the Population of Station District— _____________________________________________________________________ Per Cent.|Per Cent.|Per Cent. |Per Cent.| Per Cent.| Remarks Students.|Officials|Agricultural |Traders. |Labourers,| and | |Small Holders.| |Craftsmen.| Conclusions. ——————————————————————————————————- | | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
In the Christian Constituency—
_____________________________________________________________________ Per Cent.|Per Cent.|Per Cent. |Per Cent.| Per Cent.| Remarks Students.|Officials|Agricultural |Traders. |Labourers,| and | |Small Holders.| |Craftsmen.| Conclusions. ——————————————————————————————————- | | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
If that table could be filled up it would show at a glance what class of the people was reached most easily and fully, and whether any were unduly neglected.
Then, in many station areas there are divergencies of race and religion, and it is important to know how far the mission is reaching each of these. In some areas, for instance, large numbers of converts are made from the pagan population whilst a Moslem population in the area is practically untouched; in some nearly all the converts are made from one caste out of many. That is no reason for adverse criticism of the mission: it may be, and often is, a reason for striking harder at the point on which the work is now most successful; but it is a fact which throws great light on the nature of the work done and upon the character of the Church which is rising in the area, and therefore cannot be ignored. We append then a table to reveal this:—
—————————————————————————————————— | Area of Races, Castes, | Remarks and | Religions, etc. | Conclusions | | Proportion of Population | | —————————————————————————————————— Proportion of Christian | | Constituency derived from| | ——————————————————————————————————
We cannot possibly supply the table complete for all areas in the world. We suggest that such a table kept up to date would reveal not only facts useful to illustrate the progress of the Christian faith, but also to show the progress of aggressive non-Christian religions such as Mohammedanism.
Then we want to know what is the emphasis put on different forms of missionary work, evangelistic, medical, educational. Here we come to a difficulty. Medical missionaries, thank God, do evangelistic work, and so do educational missionaries, and one day we shall learn that the evangelistic missionary, technically so called, is doing a most important educational work, and often truly medical, healing work. The division is a technical one and missionary-hearted men begin to resent it; they are all evangelic in their work, if not technically evangelistic, and the division seems unreal, unnatural, untrue. It would be a sad day for our missions if medical and educational missionaries ceased to be at heart evangelists, and were content to leave evangelistic work to others. Nevertheless, the technical distinction is a real one and must be expressed. Some men express their evangelistic fervour naturally and providentially in medical form, others in scholastic, others in teaching, preaching, and organising of the converts and the hearers. But how shall we divide them? The best plan seems to be to put each man into that category in which he spends most of his time, and in cases of doubt to use fractions, e.g. a doctor may be as keen an evangelist and may preach and strive to convert his patients as eagerly as his colleague who is called an evangelistic missionary. An evangelistic missionary is perhaps a doctor by training or experience, and heals the sick as eagerly as his colleague who is called a medical missionary. Each is unwilling to be catalogued in one column only. He feels, and feels rightly, that that single figure belies the facts. The evangelistic missionary may be the only doctor in the whole area who really understands the use of western drugs and implements, the doctor may be the only evangelist in the whole area who really knows how to preach the Gospel in language which the people can understand. Clearly, in such cases the only possible thing to do is to use a fraction, though the inner truth might be more easily expressed by figures which represented that one man as two or three.
The table then is as follows:—
—————————————————————————————————- Missionaries. | Paid | Amount of| Amount of | Total | Remarks | Native | Foreign | Native | Funds | and | Workers| Funds | Funds | including | Con- | | Spent | Spent | Government| clusions | | on: [1] | on: [2] | Grants. | —————————————————————————————————— Evangelistic | | | | | —————————————————————————————————— Medical. | | | | | —————————————————————————————————— Educational | | | | | —————————————————————————————————— Other Forms | | | | | of Work. | | | | | ——————————————————————————————————
[Footnote 1: All funds derived from foreigners except Government grants.]
[Footnote 2: Including fees and contributions.]
It will be observed that this table is designed, like all the others, to serve primarily one single purpose. Since that purpose is to show the relative weight thrown by the mission and the Christians into different forms of evangelistic expression, all missionaries, all native workers, all funds mainly occupied in each form are lumped together. There is no need at this stage to distinguish doctors from nurses, or Bible-women from pastors or priests.
From these tables we should hope to gain a general idea of the direction of the force at work.
We thrust in here an inquiry concerning a form of work upon which many missions lay great stress. It is exceedingly difficult to classify. It is not certainly evangelistic work, though it is commonly organised by evangelistic workers; it is not educational in the sense that educational missionaries accept it as a definitely recognised part of their work, though educational methods are employed and it often has a distinctly educational purpose. It is sometimes a form of Sunday service almost akin to a Church service. It is often a form of children's school where the religious teaching given, or neglected, during the week in the day school is supplemented: it is sometimes a form of elementary school for adults, Christian, or inquirers: it is a form of Bible school for adult Christian workers. It is a method of propaganda for the conversion of heathen children or adults. It is a form of work where untrained Christian voluntary workers find opportunity for expressing their religious zeal; it is a form of work in which experts in certain types of elementary religious teaching revel. It is educational work carried on by those who are not technically educationalists: it is evangelistic work carried on by those who are not technically evangelists.
What sort of information then are we to seek concerning it? It is so important that it cannot be omitted; it is so widespread that it almost demands special consideration; it is so protean that tables designed to reveal all its aspects and values would be with difficulty designed, and tediously minute. From the point of view of this survey it would be futile to ask, as most of the societies ask, simply for the number of Sunday schools, the number of teachers, and the number of scholars. From those bare numbers we can gain no information which really enlightens us. We want to know what the Sunday schools exist for, and whether they are accomplishing the object of their existence. But we cannot define, nor even enumerate all the objects. We therefore arbitrarily select three which are directly related to the establishment of a native Church, and make one table serve. We inquire: (1) How they are related to the Christian constituency; from this we hope to learn the extent to which Sunday schools are a part of the Church life. (2) How the teachers are related to the communicants (or full members); from this we hope to learn the extent to which the voluntary effort of the communicants finds expression in this work. (3) How the scholars are related to baptisms and confirmations (or admission as full members); from this we hope to learn to what extent the Sunday-schools are a recruiting ground for the Church.
The table then is as follows:—
+———————————————————————————-+——-+ District | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Number of Sunday Schools. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Sunday Schools to Christian Constituency. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Sunday School Teachers. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Communicants. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Sunday School Scholars. (M./F.) | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Sunday School Scholars | | Baptised in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Scholars Confirmed | | or Admitted Full Members in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Remarks and Conclusions. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+
Thus far of the force in its general aspect. When we turn to closer consideration of the medical and educational work we meet with a difficulty. Medical and educational work, as we have already pointed out, often, if not generally, have a definitely evangelistic character, but each, nevertheless, appears to be designed to meet a special need of the Church and people. There is a strong tendency in thought, and often in speech, to emphasise this special need and to make it a distinct, separate need. Herein lies a danger. Medical missions are sometimes urged upon our attention as though they were founded to meet a medical need of the people, as if it were the recognised and accepted duty of missionary societies and of missionaries to supplant the native medical practice by western scientific methods as certainly and fully as it is their recognised and accepted duty to supplant native religion by the faith of Christ. But that we for our part emphatically deny. The one may be a philanthropic duty; the other certainly is a religious duty. Consequently we deny that there is a medical need which it is the duty of missionaries to supply in the sense in which we affirm that there is a religious need which it is the duty of missionaries to supply. Medical missions are, and ought to be, evangelistic in their aim, mere handmaids[1] of evangelism. Similarly we deny a separate and distinct educational need which it is the duty of missionary societies to supply. The missionary societies ought not to take upon themselves the supply of every need. We think the Christian Church is misled when it allows the medical need of a country to be presented as a distinct need which it is the duty of missionaries to meet, and when it allows the ignorance of a country to be presented as a distinct need which it is the duty of missionaries to meet. From such a presentation educational missions become detached, medical missions become detached, each designed to meet a distinct and separate need of the people.
[Footnote 1: If any reader experiences a revulsion at this expression, he will know at once what we mean when we say that a distinction has been drawn between evangelistic, medical, and educational missions as though they were three co-equal and separate things. They are not co-equal and they ought not to be separate. Education does not necessarily reveal Christ, medical science does not necessarily reveal Christ, only as education and medicine assist the revelation of Christ are they proper subjects for Christian missionary enterprise, that is, only when they are clearly and unmistakably subordinate to an evangelistic purpose. Of course we do not undervalue medical and educational efficiency: efficiency should increase evangelistic power.]
One result of the sharp distinction which is drawn between medical and educational and evangelistic work is that in some countries there are distinct medical and educational associations which collect information about the state of medical and educational missions in the country, dealing with these missionary activities most prominently, if not wholly, from the point of view of medical and educational efficiency. These associations issue questionnaires and publish reports often more full, detailed, and carefully compiled than any evangelistic reports. Consequently it is peculiarly dangerous for a layman unacquainted with the working of these associations to trespass upon their preserves. These departmental surveys should be treated separately by experts. Nevertheless, since we are dealing with the work of the station in its area, and this work includes often medical and educational work, we cannot pass over it with no more than the general treatment which we have hitherto given. We need to know what is the medical and what the educational work carried on at the station, when these are viewed, as they are viewed, separately, as distinct expressions of missionary zeal.
Dealing first with medical missions we suppose that the question might be put in this form, What are the medical missionary resources available in the district in relation to the need which it is proposed to meet?
Here again there arises the difficulty that there is no common agreement as to the purpose of the medical work of the missionary societies. What are the doctors there for? What does the hospital exist to do? Who can tell? So diverse are the ideas of different men on this subject, so little thought out, that a man of unusual experience told us that he had met few missionary doctors who could answer the question: "On the basis of what facts ought the question of the establishment of a hospital to be decided?" Few could tell him whether in sending doctors the missionary societies ought to consider the duty of caring for the health of their missionaries first or last. Few could tell him whether the care of the health of the children in schools and institutions was the first duty, or the last, or any duty at all, of the medical missionary. Yet obviously, those two points if they were once admitted would influence largely the location of doctors and hospitals. Again, we hear it argued that missionary societies ought to establish medical schools, hospitals, and institutions of the finest possible type in order to show how the thing really ought to be done, to demonstrate the very best example of western medical work, and to train natives to a western efficiency. That would not only influence the location of doctors and hospitals, it would also affect the character of the buildings and would demand a special type of medical missionary. Or again, we hear it argued that medical missions are the point of the missionary sword; but if it is the point of the sword then it ought to be in front of the blade. That, too, would direct the location of the doctors and hospitals. It would also affect the character of the building unless the missionary sword is to become an immovable object, which having once cleft a rock remains fast in the breach until a God-sent hero, like King Arthur, appears to pull it out and set it to work again. We cannot state all the different aims. They are not simple and formulated; they are complex and confused. Very often the establishment of a medical mission turns upon no more thorough examination of the facts of the situation than the conviction of a capable missionary that there is need for medical work in his district, and that he must supply it if he can, and that he must persevere in appeals till he can supply it. When a man asks: "On the basis of what facts ought this or that to be done in the mission field?" he has got a long way into the complexity of the problem, and the need for survey, if a society is to act with wisdom, is already apparent to him. But most men in the past have acted simply, without much argument: they said, "Here is a need; I can supply it," and the societies were the feeders of such men. Naturally. So one hospital and a doctor was the point of a sword which in twenty years' time was stuck fast in the rock; and then the hospital was enlarged and became a medical school under the fervent direction of a doctor who was a natural teacher; and then it became an institution, and then part of a college. And in all this there may have been no definite policy, any more than there was any definite policy in the guidance of its twin brother, which, instead of changing its character, remained what it had always been, the point of a sword, only buried in a rock, competing feebly with a Government institution. When one writes of mixed motives, and mixed policies, and mixed methods, it is natural to use mixed metaphors.
But to return to our point. It is not easy to say what some hospitals are there for. If we knew, we could at least formulate tables to set out the progress which they have made towards the object proposed. That would be reasonable survey as we have defined it. To collect all possible information concerning all the things which the doctor or hospital might do, or may be doing, unrelated to any end, is to collect a mass of information which we cannot use; and that we have declined to do. What course then can we pursue? We propose first to accept the notion that the medical mission is there to supply a medical need of the people, and to consider how far it does that; and then to look at the medical work at the station as definitely designed to assist the evangelisation of the people, as evangelistic in its purpose. We have, therefore, designed a double set of tables to serve these two purposes.
First, tables to show the medical work in relation to the presumed need of the district for western medicine.
Here, as before for evangelistic work, so now for medical, we have expressed the relation between the medical work and the district in terms both of area and population in order that each table may be a check upon the other. Thus:—
(i) In terms of area.
——————————————————————————————————
| |Number of| | | |
| |Qualified|Number of |Number of |Number of|Number of
| |Medicals.|Assistants.|Hospitals.| Nurses. |Dispens-
| | | | | |aries.
District.|Area.|————-|—————-|—————|————-|————-
| | M. | F. | M. | F. |For | For | M. | F. |
| | | | | |men |women| | |
————-|——-|——|——|——-|——-|——|——-|——|——|————-
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
——————————————————————————————————
| | | | | | | | | |
_________|_____|____|____|_____|_____|____|_____|____|____|__________
(ii) In terms of population.
——————————————————————— District. |Population. | ——————————————————————-| Proportion of | | | Medicals to | | | Population. | | | ——————————————————————— Proportion of | | | Assistants to | | | Population. | | | ——————————————————————— Proportion of | | | Nurses to | | | Population. | | | ——————————————————————— Proportion of | | | Beds to | | | Population. | | | ——————————————————————— Proportion of | | | Dispensaries to | | | Population. | | | ———————————————————————
It will be observed that in this second table the items are not identical with those in the preceding table. In the place of hospitals we have beds; because in relation to the area the thing of importance is the number of the hospitals; but in relation to population the thing of importance is the number of beds available. Two hospitals in a single area are probably not in the same place and imply more widespread influence; but if each has twenty beds, in proportion to population it is of no importance whether the forty beds are in one place or two: forty in-patients fill the beds.
But in medical work, when we are considering the need of the district, another factor of importance often enters. The medicals of the mission are often not the only men meeting that need. There are often others, Government officials, or private practitioners, who, from the point of view of medical practice, are doing the same work. The medical need of a district where the missionary doctor is the only exponent of western medicine is not the same as that of the district where he is competing with Government or private doctors fully trained as he is. Consequently it is essential in order to understand the position that we should know what other, non-missionary, medical assistance is available, and we need the following table:—
——————————————————————————————————-
|Hospitals.|Qualified|Assistants.|Nurses.|Dispensaries.|Beds.
| |Practi- | | | |
tioners. | | | |
————|—————|————-|—————-|———-|——————-|—-
| | | | | |
Mission-| | | | | |
ary| ____ | ____ | ____ | ____ | ____ | ___
——————————————————————————————————
| | | | | |
Non- | | | | | |
Mission-| | | | | |
ary| ____ | ____ | ____ | ____ | ____ | ___
| | | | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
If any surveyor finds it difficult to fill in such a table, he must make an estimate, but he ought to realise that a table of the kind is a necessary part of any appeal for increased support; for support cannot be reasonably given to his work on the ground of this medical need unless these facts are known. Of course that does not mean that support ought to be given or withheld solely on the statistics so provided. There may be a thousand reasons for strengthening and enlarging work where this table would suggest less need; but no support should be given in ignorance of these facts.
Then we need tables to reveal, as far as such tables can reveal anything, the extent of the medical mission work done in the year.
——————————————————————————————————
District|Area|Popul-|Hospital |Dispensary,|Total|Propor- |Remarks
| |ation |Patients in|Patients in|Pat- |tion of |and
| | |Year |Year |ients|Patients |Conclu-
| | | | | |to Popul-|sions
| | | | | |ation |
——————————————————————————————————-
| | | | | | |
| | |M.|F.|Child|M.|F.|Child| | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
| | | | | | | | | | |
________|____|______|__|__|_____|__|__|_____|_____|_________|________
Turning then from the medical need to be met, we proposed to inquire into the medical work as an evangelistic agency. This inquiry is hard to formulate; but we suggest that the three tables appended, taken in conjunction with the preceding, would throw certain light on this question, and would help towards a true understanding.
First, we inquire into the relative extent to which the medical workers make use of the assistance of evangelistic workers. This table would not reveal the evangelistic influence of the hospital. On the one hand, there is sometimes a tendency for the medical men and women to do medical work exclusively, and to leave all religious work to the evangelistic workers, and to give way to the temptation to imagine that if evangelistic workers read or preach in the waiting-room and visit the patients, the medicals can be satisfied that they have done their duty as medical missionaries. On the other hand, a medical who does his medical work in the Spirit, who speaks to and prays with his patients, exercises an evangelistic influence wider and deeper than that of many of the evangelistic workers directly so called, and in such a case the fact that the evangelistic workers are apparently lacking in the hospital does not at all show that the medical work is not a strong evangelistic force. But any danger of misguidance which might arise if this table stood alone must be counteracted by the other tables; for the three can be taken together. And when this allowance has been made the table is useful with the others, and lights one side of the question before us.
——————————————————————————————————- | Hospitals | Dispensaries | | (Where these | | are not attached to | | hospitals) ————————————-+———————+—————————————— Number of Medicals | | on Staff.[1] | | ————————————-+———————+—————————————— Proportion to Patients. | | ————————————-+———————+—————————————— Number of Evangelistic | | Workers on Staff.[1] | | ————————————-+———————+—————————————— Proportion to Patients. | | ————————————-+———————+—————————————— Remarks and Conclusions. | | ————————————-+———————+——————————————
[Footnote 1: By "on staff" we mean regularly attached to, or regularly visiting.]
When we have seen the extent to which the medicals use the evangelistic workers in their institutions, we need to know the extent to which the medicals assist the evangelistic workers outside the institutions. We put this in the form of a table designed to reveal the extent to which the medicals assist in evangelistic tours, helping the evangelistic workers on tour, either by healing the sick on the spot, or by sending them to the hospitals, or by preaching, or in all these ways.
—————————————————————————————————- Number of |Number of |Number of |Number of |Number of |Remarks Evange- |Evangelistic|Medicals |Days spent by|Days spent|and listic |Workers |Assisting.|Evangelistic |by |Conclu- Tours. |Assisting. | |Workers. |Medicals. |sions. —————|——————|—————|——————-|—————|———- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | —————————————————————————————————- | | | | | __________|____________|__________|_____________|__________|_______
Finally, we inquire how far the direct evangelistic influence of the hospitals and dispensaries can be traced. We might at first suppose that this could be done by asking the number of inquirers enrolled as a direct consequence of attendance at hospitals and dispensaries; but it is not surprising that patients are willing to enrol their names as inquirers simply to please the doctors or nurses, without any intention of pursuing the matter further when they leave the hospital; and consequently such a question by itself might be very misleading. We therefore add two further questions, the first, what number of communicants trace their conversion to their visits to hospitals or dispensaries, the second, what number of places have been opened to Christian teachers and preachers by the influence of doctors and patients. Some missionary doctors are much interested in this inquiry, and we all might well be interested in it. The answers would be a most important contribution to our study, and might go far to justify medical missions as an evangelistic agency.
+———————————————————————————-+——-+ Number of Inquirers Enrolled in the Year as a Direct | | Consequence of Attendance at Hospitals and Dispensaries.| | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Total Inquirers. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Enrolled in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Number of Communicants Derived from Attendance | | at Hospitals and Dispensaries in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Communicants Enrolled in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Number of Places Opened to Christian Teachers through | | the Influence of Doctors or Patients in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Proportion of Total Places Opened in the Year. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+ Conclusions and Remarks. | | +———————————————————————————-+——-+
The difficulty of providing tables for the survey of educational work is as great as that of finding tables for medical work, and for the same reasons. There is the same separateness, the same diversity of immediate aim, the same alteration of character, the same uncertainty of policy.
Educational missions have been designed to convert the young whilst they were yet pliable, to influence the growing generation in order to prepare for a great advance of Christianity later, to Christianise society, to educate young Christians in a Christian atmosphere, to prepare leaders for the Christian Church, to elevate an ignorant and illiterate Christian Church. All these various objects have been set before us as the reasons for the establishment of schools, both separately, each in different circumstances, and unitedly, all at the same time, as though one school could fulfil all these different purposes without any confusion. At one and the same moment Christian children were to be educated in a Christian atmosphere, and non-Christian children in large numbers were admitted, and non-Christian teachers employed. At the same time non-Christian children were to be converted and not converted, but filled with Christian ideas.
All these aims and objects are confusedly set forth, each as its turn comes round, as the immediate aim of our educational missions; but the attempt to draw tables for a survey which shall embrace impartially all these objects is enough to satisfy the inquirer that they are not easily combined into one. We propose, therefore, in this bewildering maze of mixed purposes and ideas, to follow the line which seemed possible in the case of medical missions—to accept the idea that there is an educational need of the people which it is the business of the educational mission to meet so far as it can; and then to add a further inquiry concerning the direct evangelistic influence of the educational mission, and its relation to the evangelistic and medical work.
But in educational mission survey there is an added difficulty which arises from the fact that scholastic education is divided into many grades, and this division has no common standard in different countries, sometimes not even in the same country. We, then, who are seeking light not from one country only but from all, are compelled to simplify these grade distinctions as much as possible, and to accept the local definitions. This does not really invalidate comparisons between different areas so seriously as we might at the first glance be tempted to expect. There is in every country a grade which is primary; there is a secondary, or middle, or high school; there is a normal, or college, or arts course. The primary in one country may run into higher primary and be at its best far in advance of the primary in another country; and so far the two are incomparable; but, nevertheless, this primary grade is the lowest grade in each country, and if the inquiry is, what number of pupils are taught in this local first grade, then the comparison is admissible. Similarly of the second grade and the third. If the inquiry is understood to imply no more than it states, and no conclusion is drawn as to the relative stage or merits of the education in the two countries in relation to one another, it may justly be argued that the primary pupils in one country stand in relation to the illiterate and more highly educated pupils in their own country in a similar position to that in which the primary pupils in another country stand to the illiterate and more highly educated pupils in their own country; though the primary pupils in the one may be far more advanced than the primary pupils in the other. On this basis a possible comparison can be made.
But since colleges and normal schools generally serve a larger area than the station district, these are reserved for provincial survey, and the present tables deal with nothing above the secondary, or middle, or high school. In the station district area the matter of chief importance is the extent to which the need of the district for primary and secondary education is met, and the proportion in which the needs of the many and the few are met.
Of course where the surveyor has before him more elaborate tables prepared for some board, he can serve all purposes best by keeping those tables carefully and sending copies of them to those who may be interested. Our hasty division into primary and higher than primary is only designed to save trouble in those districts where no elaborate distinctions and definitions have been made. If it is desirable for purposes of comparison to reduce tables from different parts of the world to a common basis, so long as the tables supplied from any part do not contain less than the tables here suggested, the comparison can easily be made, for what it is worth.
We begin then with the educational work done in the station district as designed to meet a distinct educational need. The first tables, therefore, correspond to the first evangelistic and medical tables and set forth the quantitative extent of the educational work in relation to the area and to the population.
_______________________________________________________________
| | | Number of |
| | Number of | Secondary or | Remarks and
District.| Area.| Primary Schools.| Middle or | Conclusions.
| | | High Schools.|
_________|______|_________________|______________|_____________
| | | |
| | | |
_________|______|_________________|______________|_____________
————-|———|————————-|———————|———————
_________________________________________________________________
| | | Propor-| | Propor-|
| | Number | tion | Number | tion |
| Popula-| of | to | of | to | Re-
District.| tion. | Primary | Popula-| Higher | Popula-|marks.
| | Teachers.| tion. | Teachers.| tion. |
_________|________|__________|________|__________|________|______
| | | | | |
_________|________|__________|________|__________|________|_______
Here it will be noted that whereas in the area it is the number of schools which is considered, in relation to population it is the number of teachers, because in the area the point of importance is the accessibility of the schools; whilst in relation to the population it is the number of teachers which reveals to what extent the population is served.
Then similar reasons to those which led us to take into account the non-missionary medical assistance in the area force us to consider the non-missionary education. If we are to consider scholastic education as a need of the people at all, we must acknowledge that the presence of Government or private schools makes a great difference to the situation, and if an appeal for medical missions ought to be affected by the presence or absence of non-missionary medical assistance, equally ought an appeal for educational missions in any area to be affected by the presence or absence of non-missionary educational facilities.
It may be true that if the aim of educational missions were defined as the provision of educational facilities under Christian influence, the presence of non-Christian educational facilities, in proportion to their magnitude, might be a challenge to Christians to increase theirs. On this basis the mission would deliberately compete with Government schools where Government schools were strongest. But if the mission is designed to supply a liberal education for Christians, the presence of Government schools does not necessarily induce competition. We might well ponder the question put by a Christian convert in India, when discussing the use of educational missions by the missionary societies: "Hindus," he said, "are not deterred from sending their children to Christian schools by the fear that they will cease to be Hindus, and do the societies think so little of our religion that they are afraid that our children would cease to be Christians if they attended a Government school?" Whatever answer we give to that question, in either case the existence of non-Christian schools is a serious and important factor in the situation.
We therefore inquire into the non-missionary educational work done in the area. We are well aware that in many cases the surveyor will find it difficult to supply the required information, and may be driven to make an estimate; but the information ought to be provided for any true and just administration of educational mission funds, and estimates must be here regarded as at the best a poor substitute, though under existing circumstances perhaps a necessary one.
_____________________________________________________________________
| | |
| | |Propor- | Higher | | Propor- |
|Primary| |tion of | or |Teach-| tion of |Re-
|Schools|Teachers|Teachers| Second-| ers. | Teachers|marks.
| | |to Popu-| ary | | to Popu-|
| | |lation. |Schools.| | lation. |
——————————————————————————————————-
Missionary| — | — | — | — | — | — | —
——————————————————————————————————-
Non- | | | | | | |
Missionary| — | — | — | — | — | — | —
——————————————————————————————————-
Then we need to consider the extent to which the educational efforts of the mission are used to meet the needs of the better educated and of the more ignorant. This will be revealed by the average attendance in the different classes of schools.
——————————————————————————————————- Total | | |Propor-| | | Propor-| Re- Scholars| | |tion of| | | tion of|marks in |Primary |Scholars|Total |Secondary| Scho- | Total | and Mission |Schools.| | Scho-| Schools.| lars.| Scho- |Conclu- Schools.| | |lars. | | | lars. | sions. ——————————————————————————————————- | | | | | | | ________|________|________|_______|_________|_______|________|_______
Then we must inquire into the proportion in which the education given in the schools is given to boys and to girls. This is peculiarly important in considering the influence of school education upon the rising generation of Christians, since well-taught girls make intelligent and helpful wives and mothers, and this tends enormously to the advancement of the Christian community. And the same truth applies to the non-Christian population.
| Mission | Mission |Remarks and |Primary Schools.| Secondary Schools.| Conclusions. ————————-+————————+————————————————— | Boys. | Girls. | Boys. | Girls. | ————————-+———-+————+—————————-+——————— Christian or | | | | | From | | | | | Christian homes. | | | | | ————————-+———-+————+———-+—————-+——————— Non-Christian | | | | | ————————-+———-+————+———-+—————-+
Here we divided Christians from non-Christians, and thus the table serves a double purpose. It tells us the division of the scholars by sex and also by faith. It throws light upon the condition of the Christian community and upon the extent to which mission school education is given to Christians and non-Christians.
One other point must be considered in connection with mission schools because it throws great light upon the character of the schools and their purpose. It is the extent to which the educational mission receives Government support. If there is any doubt as to the dominant aim and purpose of a school, the fact that it receives Government aid reveals at once that in the eyes of the Government it stands for the general enlightenment of the population rather than for any direct evangelisation. The dominant aim of the Government is general enlightenment, and the Government gives no grant without some sort of control. If then a school receives a Government grant the dominant idea of general enlightenment will certainly exercise great influence over its direction. Consequently, if we know what proportion of the schools in any mission receive a Government grant, we have at least some guidance as to the extent to which the mission accepts the aim of general enlightenment. We have also some assurance that the schools reach the Government standard of efficiency in the teaching of secular subjects.
——————————————————————————————————- Primary | Proportion | Higher | Proportion | Remarks Schools | Receiving | Schools. | Receiving | and | Government | | Government | Conclusions. | Grant, if any. | | Grant. | ——————————————————————————————————- | | | | ________|________________|__________|____________|___________________
Hitherto we have dealt only with schools in which the pupils are probably for the most part children; but in some countries the mission makes a great effort to enlighten the illiterate adults, especially the illiterate adult Christians, and thus, as in China, missionaries propagate simplified systems of writing the language, or in other countries have reduced to writing, languages which possessed no script.
We have already set out the reason why this appeals especially to Protestant missionaries. The reading of the Bible is a keystone in their evangelistic system, and with them Christianity and reading go hand in hand. We must then make room in our survey for a movement so profound, so widespread, and so vitally important, and a movement of this character deserves and demands a separate table. It cannot be confounded with the establishment of ordinary primary schools. It is essential that we should inquire what education is given to the illiterate adults of the area; and we must inquire in what proportion this teaching is given to Christians and non-Christians, because this proportion is very significant. The teaching of reading to the illiterate is by some missionaries viewed as a means preparatory to the preaching of the gospel, a gift to be given as widely as possible, in the belief that the more who can read, the better will be the hearing given to the preachers of Christ; by others the teaching is given rather to illiterate inquirers and converts, and it is given to them as a definitely Christian gift for the edification of the individual and of the Church.
By the one this teaching would be classed with the general work of Christian educational missions for the whole community, the meeting of the general intellectual need of the district; by the other it would be classed as a part of the work done by the educational mission for the enlightenment of the Church, the meeting of a need of the Church. By the one it would be classed with the tables which deal with the relation of the educational to the evangelistic work; by the other with the tables which deal with the educational work viewed as meeting a special need. The table suggested is:—
————————————————————————————+———| Population. | | ————————————————————————————+———| Illiterate Population. | | ————————————————————————————+———| Number of Teachers of Illiterate Adults. | | ————————————————————————————+———| Number of Illiterate Adult Scholars. | ————————————————————————————+———| Christian. | | ————————————————————————————+———| Non-Christian | | ————————————————————————————+———| Proportion of Illiterate Population. | ————————————————————————————+———| Proportion of Teachers to Illiterate Population. | | ————————————————————————————+———| Remarks and Conclusions. | | ————————————————————————————+———|
This table leads us naturally to consider the educational work done in the station area from an evangelistic point of view. We must inquire then into the extent to which evangelistic missionaries assist in the schools, and educational missionaries assist in evangelistic work, and the evangelistic results so far as they can be traced of the work in schools.
We ask first the extent to which educationalists employ the services of evangelistic workers in their schools and institutions. As we pointed out in dealing with the relation between medical and evangelistic work, so here we would insist that this particular table is not by itself a good guide. There is a serious danger in an institution, whether medical or educational, of dividing the work in this way. We have already asserted our conviction that medical missionaries should be evangelistic, and educational missionaries evangelistic also. But when evangelistic workers distinctly so called are on the staff of hospitals or schools, there is a danger lest the medicals and the educationalists should consider themselves absolved from personal effort by the occasional presence of an evangelist. "Let him do the religious preaching, and let me do the secular teaching. Preaching is his job, teaching is mine." Thus a division is created which reacts seriously upon the work of both. The pupils learn to distinguish the one work from the other, as separate and distinct departments. They prefer the one, they are bored by the other. No man can serve two masters; and if the religious teaching is plainly in the hands of one teacher and the secular teaching plainly in the hands of the other, they will tend to think that they can hold to the one and despise the other. This we say is a danger, but it is not an unavoidable danger. Only we must not judge that an institution is doing good evangelistic work because evangelistic services are held in it. The table is as follows:—
—————————————————————————————————-
Schools. | Number of Schools | Proportion of Schools | Remarks and
| Regularly Visited | Visited by | Conclusions.
| by Evangelists. | Evangelists. |
| | |
—————————————————————————————————-
| | |
_________|___________________|_______________________|____________
Then there is a most important work which the educational evangelist does, or might do, outside the school. Perhaps we ought to explain this; for many supporters of missions are unfamiliar with the idea. They think of the work of educational missionaries as necessarily bound up with schools and institutions. A teacher without a school, or outside a school, seems to them rather like a gunner without a gun. If an educational missionary goes on an evangelistic tour it is, they think, as an evangelist that he goes, not as an educationalist. Yet, if we understood the work of an evangelistic educationalist, we should not think it strange to meet an educational missionary on tour, doing evangelistic educational work. Evangelistic work is educational to the core, and it leads to educational results. No evangelistic work amongst an illiterate, or a literate, people can be really complete, if it does not lead at once to the organisation of education amongst the converts and hearers. The illiterate must be taught to read the Gospels, and it demands an expert in the teaching of illiterates to direct their studies; the illiterate and the literate converts alike must be taught to transform that education which they all give daily to their children, whether in the home or in a school, into Christian education, and this too demands the attention of a skilled educationalist. This work is invaluable and most exciting and interesting work, and must produce results which, for the establishment of the Church, are almost incalculably important. As then for the medical missionaries, so for the educationalists we ask:—
——————+——————+———————-+——————-+——————
Evangelistic| Number of | Number of | Number of |Conclusions
Tours. |Evangelistic|Educationalists|Days Spent by|and Remarks.
| Workers. | Assisting. | Evangelists |
| | | on Tour. |
——————+——————+———————-+——————-+——————
| | | |
——————+——————+———————-+——————-+——————
When we turn to the immediate evangelistic results of the education given in the station district, we labour under difficulties even greater than those which we met when we tried to formulate tables to reveal the extent to which medical missions were effective as an evangelistic agency.
The difficulty lies in the fact that the educational missionaries who set before themselves as the aim of their work a far distant goal to be attained by the cumulative effect of Christian influence brought to bear upon generation after generation of children who do not themselves become Christians, naturally resent a table which seems to demand a present, immediate, result in the tabulation of baptisms, and we fear that the other tables will hardly reconcile them, because we are afraid that few educational missionaries have yet learned to understand what a vast and important and absorbingly interesting work the education of the converts outside the schools affords. Consequently we shiver when we think of the reception which these tables are likely to receive at the hands of some of our friends in foreign countries, and our ears tingle in anticipation.
Nevertheless, if we are to be told, and to act on the hearing, that Christian schools are founded because it is easier to convert the young than the old, and the twig can be bent while the tree resists till it breaks, we must inquire how far this saying is justified by experience. A survey which neglected the factors which throw light upon it would be a partial and unjust one.
Hence we ask first—
——————————————————————————————————- | Scholars | Baptism | Baptism | Confirmation | Remarks | | of | of | or Admission | and | | Scholars | Parents | as Full | Conclusions | | | | Members | ——————————————————————————————————- Primary | | | | | Schools | | | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Secondary| | | | | Schools | | | | | ——————————————————————————————————-
and secondly—
———————————————————————————————— Number of Places Opened to | | Remarks Christian Teachers by the | Proportion of Total | and Influence of Scholars. | Places Occupied. | Conclusions. ———————————————————————————————— | | ___________________________|_____________________|______________
These two tables will give us some idea of the direct influence of the educational mission as an evangelistic force.
Some are anxious to know what support the educational and medical work call forth from the natives for whom these are set in hand. They want this information, we suppose, as a help towards an understanding of the influence exercised by these different forms of work. If the natives support them generously then they have obviously been impressed by them favourably. And perhaps the extent of native support may suggest the measure to which our work as medical and educational missionaries is approaching a successful end.
We therefore include a table identical for medical and educational workers:—
——————————————————————————————————- | Total | Total | Total Native | Volunteers | Expense | Foreign | Contribution | for | of Work in | Contribution. | Fees and | Training. | Station | | Donations. | | Area. | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Medical | —— | —— | —— | —— ——————|——————|———————-|———————|—————— Educational | —— | —— | —— | —— ——————————————————————————————————-
We have now surveyed the evangelistic, medical, and educational work in the station district, viewed separately. It remains to unify the results, that we may get, if possible, a definite conception of the whole. The effectiveness of the mission machinery largely depends upon the relation of these parts to one another. The mission ought not to be three separate things but one thing; for the impression produced upon the non-Christian population is the result of the combination of all the various forms in which the one missionary spirit expresses itself. The spirit which produces them all is one, and it is that one spirit which influences and converts the heathen.
Now we already know the proportion in which workers and funds are divided between the three branches (p. 68). We already know something of the work done by evangelists in hospitals (p. 83), and by doctors in evangelistic tours (p. 84); and of the extent to which the work in the hospitals opens up the way for evangelists (p. 85). We already know something of the work done by evangelists in schools (p. 99), and of the evangelistic influence of the educational work (p. 102, 103), and of the extent to which educationalists assist in evangelistic tours (p. 101).
If then we now add tables to show the help given by the medicals in the schools and the work done by the educationalists in the hospitals we shall be able to gain a fairly complete idea of the co-operation between the three branches.
But it is just at this point, the relation between the medical and educational work, that we shall probably find most difficulty. This relationship has not been carefully thought out in the past, and co-operation between medicals and educationalists is, we fancy, somewhat rare. Few men could tell us exactly what policy is followed, or ought to be followed. This is partly due to that confusion of purpose of which we spoke in the first chapter, a confusion which obscures and confounds our medical and educational missions. If both medical and educational missions had had one common dominant purpose, the relation between them would have been more easily seen; but since they were separated in thought, each having its own particular and separate objects to pursue, they naturally worked along parallel lines and consequently did not meet. If they had had one common dominant object they would have met. But generally speaking there is no clear understanding whether the medical mission has any definite relation to the educational mission, or the educational mission to the medical.
On the medical side, it is not clearly understood whether it is the first duty, or the last duty, of medicals to attend to the children whom we gather together in such large numbers, whether the medicals ought to inspect all the children, whether they ought to be at hand to treat children who are obviously sick, whether these considerations ought to influence the location of the hospital, or of the place of residence of the medical missionaries, or whether this work, if they really gave much time to it, should be considered as withdrawing them from their proper work. Consequently, the health of the children in mission schools has often suffered, and the work of the school been hindered. In one school something approaching to a revolution was produced by the constant care and attention of a doctor. Phthisis, which had been a continual source of trouble and weakness, was reduced considerably, and the whole work and tone of the school improved enormously. If medical missionaries and educational missionaries always realised that they were engaged in a common work, this experience would be almost universal.
In our tables we cannot possibly enter into any details. The work of medicals in schools cannot be exactly stated, it varies greatly in extent and character; but it would, we suppose, always include attention to the health of the children and consultation with the teachers, both about the welfare of the school as a whole and of the care of individual pupils. It might also include lectures in hygiene and kindred topics, sanitation of buildings, and other assistance too varied to specify.
The table can only include visits and inspection of pupils.
————————————————————————————————-
Total | Number | Total | Number | Remarks
Number | Regularly | Number | Regularly | and
of Schools. | Visited by | of | Inspected. | Conclusions.
| Medicals. | Scholars. | |
————————————————————————————————-
| | | |
| | | |
————————————————————————————————-
The relation of the educational mission to the medical has not been thought out any more carefully. There is in hospitals an opportunity of extraordinary importance, a field of great fruitfulness which is largely neglected. If the hospital is a missionary hospital, founded to heal the souls as well as the bodies of men, ought not the patients in them to be taught as well as medically treated? Have they any claim upon the care of educational missionaries? Have the educational missionaries any duty in hospitals? Very few, we think, have given much attention to these questions: no society, so far as we know, has followed any definite policy in regard to them. A single instance will reveal how important they may be. A doctor who was deeply interested in the teaching of Chinese illiterates took steps to have the illiterate convalescents in his hospital taught to read. The average time which these patients spent in the hospital was three weeks, and in that time they could learn to read the Gospels in simplified script fluently. They thus left the hospital not only healed in body, but with a new interest in life, and a considerable knowledge of Christian truth, and a power to advance in it, and a power also to instruct others. In a hospital for Chinese coolies in France this doctor taught one patient to read the Gospel. The patient was then removed to another hospital where he taught no less than forty of his fellow-patients to read. If such results can be obtained, it would be well to consider whether we are making full use of the opportunities afforded by the gathering of large numbers of patients into hospitals all over the world. Illiterates are not the only people who might profit by Christian teaching, classes for literates might be equally valuable. Large numbers might leave our hospitals with a considerable knowledge of Christian truth, and a new interest in life, with power to advance and to teach others, if they were systematically taught. In one missionary hospital regular courses were given on Christian Evidences, and courses on the education of children might well be given to parents in hospitals.
Here again a table cannot reveal the type and character of the work done: it can only tabulate visits. The work would include the teaching of illiterates to read, and instructing convalescents of higher education either in classes or individually.
——————————————————————————————————-
Total | Number | Total | Number | Remarks
Number of | Regularly | Number of | of | and
Hospitals. | Visited by | Patients. | Scholars | Conclusions.
| Educationalists. | | Taught. |
——————————————————————————————————-
| | | |
| | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
We might now sum up this branch of our inquiry thus:—
——————————————————————————————————- | Foreign | Native |Assisting|Assisting|Assisting|Remarks | Mission | Assist | in |in |in | and | -aries. | ants. | Evangel-|Hosp- |Schools. |Conclusions. | | | istic |itals. | | | | | Tours. | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Evange-| | | | | | listic | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— ——————————————————————————————————- Medical| —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— ——————————————————————————————————- Educa | | | | | | -tional| —— | —— | —— | —— | —— | —— ——————————————————————————————————-
Then we shall surely have some idea of the extent to which the whole force works together towards one end.
In the Introduction we pointed out that the end for which the work surveyed is undertaken ought to govern the survey of the work. Now we are constantly told that the end for which the station is founded is the establishment of a Christian Church in the district so strongly that if the station with its foreign staff disappeared, the Church would remain and bring up each generation in the Christian Faith.
This proposal sets before us a real end for the mission station. It suggests a point at which the station will have done its work; the mission would then have no more place in those parts. The station has thus an end, not only in the sense that it has an object at which it aims, but a point at which it ceases. But this end is not simply a point in the far distant future; it is a condition, or state of the Church in the district, into which it must be growing. Then the growth of the native Church is more important than the growth of the mission, and all things should be directed primarily to that end, so that as the native Church waxed the mission should wane, and thus the end should be reached naturally and easily and not by a catastrophe. If that is the end, then the survey of the station and its district cannot fail to take the form of an inquiry how far progress in this direction has been made.
Since our ideas of missionary work are wrapped up with the establishment of mission stations and consequently with the purchase of land and buildings, since we rely almost wholly upon paid workers for the prosecution of the work, since we employ most expensive methods of propaganda, such as the establishment of great medical and educational institutions, since our societies at home are almost wholly absorbed in the effort to procure funds to pay for all these things, it is not surprising that money takes a supremely important position in our thought of all missionary work. Consequently, when we think of the growth of the native Church in power to carry on the work which we have begun we naturally think first of self-support.
Self-support is now one of the most common missionary catchwords. We hear it on every platform at home; we hear it in the mouths of large numbers of our converts abroad. There exist in the mission field large numbers of what are called "self-supporting churches". Our missionaries often set this self-support before their converts as a status of honour, and offer them encouragements of various kinds to induce them to become self-supporting as soon as possible. At home, if we ask concerning the progress of the native Church, they often answer us by telling us the numbers of these self-supporting churches.
What then is meant by a self-supporting Church? We might naturally suppose that a self-supporting Church was a Church which was independent of external support; we might suppose that it could maintain itself without any assistance from mission funds; we might suppose that, when a Church became self-supporting, the mission, so far as finance was concerned, could withdraw and move to some fresh place. That is sometimes the case, but very rarely. We know, for instance, a case where fourteen Christians in a small town provided their own chapel and its furnishing and upkeep, and all subsidiary expenses without any assistance. They had no paid ministers and therefore no salaries to pay. They were from the very beginning entirely self-supporting, and the missionary could, and did, leave them and go to others who needed him more. But in this case there was no mission compound, no elaborate system of mission education, and no mission fund from which the chapel could be built and a pastor provided, before the converts were ready to provide these things for themselves.
Most commonly the mission does all these things, and then self-support does not necessarily imply independence of foreign support. We have met native Christians who assured us in one breath that they were members of a self-supporting Church and that their Church did not receive its fair share of mission funds. Self-support does not necessarily mean independence of external pecuniary aid.
What then does the status of a self-supporting Church imply? Nothing certain, but just what the society, or the missionary, chooses. Take a case. In a newly opened outstation the converts subscribed $5 Mexican, a head, per annum. The missionary in charge of the district estimated that $500 per annum would pay the rent and upkeep of the chapel, and the salary of the pastor. Therefore he calculated that when the membership of the chapel reached 100, the congregation would be self-supporting. But if a school were founded and fees paid, then the day of self-support would be very far off.
Hence it is obvious that self-support is an arbitrary standard fixed on no certain grounds; and progress towards self-support is simply a progress towards a line which the foreigner prescribes. Just as each father among us here in England, according to his class and standard of living, fixes a standard for his son, saying, "When he earns so much he will be able to maintain himself," so the society, or the individual missionary, fixes the standard for converts. In this case, the foreigner insisted on the salary for the pastor, he created the building, its ornaments and expenses; and where this is done the day of self-support must be more or less delayed. More or less, for what one man considers abundant another thinks hardly decent, simply because each has learnt in a different school different ideas of what is necessary or desirable. Consequently one man makes the day of self-support easy of attainment, another loudly proclaims that his people are so poor that they cannot possibly be expected to provide for themselves.
Furthermore, we must observe that in the first case the converts arrived speedily at self-support because the foreign missionary never for a moment allowed them to be anything else, whilst in the second the missionary provided what he thought necessary until such time as the Church was sufficiently wealthy to pay for it. The one Church decided for itself what it needed, and what it needed it took the necessary steps to supply: the other accepted what was given to it and was asked to subscribe more and more to pay for it. But when the provision is first made largely from some more or less mysterious foreign source, the converts will never subscribe to a fund so organised as they will to a fund which they raise and administer themselves to supply what they themselves want, and cannot have unless they provide the necessary money to get it. Self-support then, as the word is most commonly used, means anything but genuine self-support, and does not represent the power of the people to supply their needs. It means only the subscription of money sufficient to pay for certain things which are more or less arbitrarily fixed by the missionary or his society.
Neither is it any sure evidence of the zeal and liberality of the Church which is called self-supporting. The existence of self-supporting churches is indeed sometimes used as an argument to show that the Church is growing in this Christian virtue. But this is largely deceptive. The existence of self-supporting churches does not necessarily prove Christian liberality. Take the case which we quoted above where the Christians subscribed $5 a head. It was said that when they numbered 100 members they would be self-supporting. But, if they still subscribed $5 a head, there would be no more liberality in the Church of 100, which was self-supporting, than in the Church of ten, which was not self-supporting. There might be more, if the ninety members added were very poor; there might be less if one wealthy man joined the Church. Since the status of a self-supporting Church is one of honour and privilege, the members might even be tempted to admit an unworthy member who was well off in the hope that his subscriptions might aid them to attain that glorious position without much self-denial or effort on their own part.
Moreover, the collection of money is a highly developed art. It is extraordinary what pressure men can bring to bear upon converts to induce them to subscribe, so that the contribution is in many cases little different from the payment of a tax. It is truly amazing to read how many forms of appeals and fees can be invented to collect money from more or less unwilling givers.[1] We cannot then accept the existence of self-supporting churches as an evidence of liberality, nor base our calculation on the sum subscribed for the upkeep of such churches.
[Footnote 1: This is a list of the means employed to raise money by one missionary in order to assist the people in his district to arrive at self-support:—
(1) Sunday collections. (2) Share of first fruits (crop seasons). (3) Monthly membership family assessment. (4) Special missionary or harvest thanksgiving (twice a year). (5) Pinch of rice at every meal as thanksgiving (women's share). (6) Box in houses for prayer meetings, etc. (7) Church box. (8) Dedication of special pepper or cocoa-nut trees for church repair. (9) Bible society collections. (10) Hospital collection. (11) Baptism offerings. (12) Marriage offerings. (13) Lord's Supper offerings. (14) Special gifts for church building or equipment.
It is not surprising that he adds that he is told that some of the new converts have gone back because they see the regularity and frequency of giving.]
Nevertheless, seeing that self-supporting churches are widely recognised, let us begin with these and seek to find out what information a table of inquiry might supply. We should ask first for the number of self-supporting churches in relation to (a) the number of communicants (or full members) in the district, and (b) the number of Christian Churches organised, but not self-supporting. By an organised Church we understand a body of Christians in any place who hold regular religious services, and may send delegates to any council which may exist for the whole station district.
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Communicants.|Proportion of |Organised|Proportion of |Remarks
|Communicants |Churches.|Organised |and
|connected with | |Churches |Conclusions.
|Self-supporting| |Self-supporting.|
|Churches. | | |
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| | | |
_____________|_______________|_________|________________|____________
From this we should learn briefly, and as a starting-point, the proportion of the self-supporting churches, and that might help us to understand the progress made towards self-support as it is understood in the district, and enable us to compare it with that of other districts. But this by itself would not be of any great value in assisting us to understand what progress had been made towards the establishment of a Church which could stand alone, if the station with its foreign staff were withdrawn. No Church which does not advance can stand, and the mere attainment of this arbitrary standard does not necessarily prove capacity to advance or to stand. The effort to attain it sometimes leads the converts to concentrate their attention upon themselves. They set self-support before their eyes as an end to be attained for their own sake. It has consequently sometimes happened that native churches, established on this self-supporting basis, have become self-absorbed, self-seeking. They have so looked on their own things that they have tended to lose sight of the things of others. They have become, like many little Christian communities at home, so entangled in the effort to maintain their own dignity, their own services, their own progress in outward prosperity, that they have forgotten the real purpose of their existence, and, instead of becoming centres of light and attraction and active zeal for the spread of the gospel, have degenerated into self-contained units indulging a self-satisfied pride in the glorious position to which they have attained as self-supporting churches. The history of some churches on the West Coast of Africa and in South India suggests the need for such a warning, and urges us to pursue the inquiry further.
We should inquire, then, what number of inquirers, adherents, hearers, catechumens, etc., are seeking entrance into the Church in connection with the self-supporting churches as compared with the total number of such inquirers, adherents, etc., in the district and compared with the number of communicants in connection with those churches.
————————————————————————————-|——-| In District (excluding Self-supporting Churches). | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Communicants. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Inquirers and Adherents. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Proportion of Inquirers to Communicants. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| In Self-supporting Churches. | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Communicants. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Inquirers and Adherents. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Proportion of Inquirers to Communicants. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Remarks and Conclusions. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-|
Such a table should, we think, prove illuminating as revealing the influence and zeal of the members of the self-supporting churches.
A further light on this subject might be gained by comparing the number of unpaid workers connected with the self-supporting churches with the number of such workers in the whole district, excluding the self-supporting churches.
————————————————————————————-|——-| In District (excluding Self-supporting Churches). | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Communicants. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Unpaid Workers. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Proportion of Unpaid Workers to Communicants. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| In Self-supporting Churches. | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Communicants. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Unpaid Workers. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Proportion of Unpaid Workers to Communicants. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Remarks and Conclusions. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-|
This would supplement the previous table and tend to correct any mistakes to which it might give rise.
Thus far of the missions which recognise self-supporting churches. As for the mission districts in which no such distinctions have been made, all that I think we need to do is to recall the tables which we made when considering the native force (p. 54 sqq.), and to supplement them with tables designed to reveal (1) the power of the Christians to conduct their own religious services independently of the foreigner; (2) their power to direct their own Church government; (3) their power to supply the material needs of their organisation according to the ideas which they have received and hold.
With regard to the first question, all that we need to know is what proportion of the Christians are in a position to carry on their own religious life independently of foreign help. In the Anglican Communion that involves the presence of a duly ordained priest: in some societies which deny the necessity of ordination, yet give a position not unlike that of the priest to their ordained men, it would involve the presence of a pastor. Others deny the necessity or advantage of any ordained ministers. Under these circumstances we cannot use accepted ecclesiastical terms; but by capacity for conducting their own religious services we must certainly at least mean capacity to perform all necessary religious rites, and that, for Anglicans at any rate, must include Baptism and Holy Communion. Suppose then that we accepted the "organised churches" as a basis and inquired what proportion of these organised churches could, and did, perform all necessary religious rites, we should indeed omit the floating and isolated members of the unorganised Christian community which in some districts might be very large, but we should nevertheless, we hope, get a definite and common basis which would really give us some light on this difficult but important problem, and if we added a question as to the proportion of the Christian constituency connected with these organised churches we should have some check upon a serious misunderstanding.
————————————————————————————-|——-| Number of Organised Churches. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Proportion of Christian Constituency | | Connected with these. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Number of Churches Capable of Performing all | | Necessary Religious Rites without External Assistance. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Proportion of these to Number of Organised Churches. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Remarks and Conclusions. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-|
The second question is, How far the Church in the district can direct its own life and order its own government. The difficulty here arises from the very diverse forms of Church government which have been taught to the natives by their foreign teachers, some of them late and difficult representative systems, not easily grasped even by educated men. Is there then any general question which will suffice to throw light on this problem, where the people are in the midst of the process of learning an unfamiliar form of government?
Were very simple and almost universal ideas always followed, as for instance in episcopacy, which naturally adapts itself to the simplest and most common conceptions and experiences of men, in that the bishop is closely related in idea to the father of the family, or the head man of a village, or the governor of a province, or a chief of a tribe, or an autocratic emperor, or a constitutional monarch, according to the notions and experience of the people—so that a bishop is as easily understood by a nomad family, or a village community, as by a democratic nation, according to its stage of development, and if native bishops were universal, as they are not, the problem would be comparatively simple. Indeed then we need scarcely ask the question at all. Either patriarchal episcopacy, or monarchical episcopacy, or constitutional episcopacy all men can understand, whether the bishop is elected by his people, or appointed by his predecessor, or by his fellows, or both elected by his people and confirmed by his fellows—such things all men can understand and maintain, each the form suited to their own stage. But constitutional episcopacy when the people are at the patriarchal stage of development, or republicanism when the people are at the monarchical stage, they cannot understand, until they have learnt to understand it by long and slow experience. But many of the systems introduced by us are the latest and most advanced systems. How then can we discover to what extent the Christians have mastered them? We can find no question which solves this problem. We can only suggest the bare questions, what proportion of the people take a proper and active part in the system of Church government under which they live; and what proportion of the congregations take an active part as congregations in that system of Church government.
————————————————————————————-|——-| Number of Christians who take any part in Church | | Government by Vote or Voice. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Proportion of Total Christian Constituency | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Number of Congregations who take a share as | | Congregations in Church Government. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Proportion of Christian Congregations. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Remarks and Conclusions. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-|
By the first question we understand the number of Christians who vote or speak or act in any way, either personally or by electing representatives, in the direction of the common action of the whole Christian community viewed as a unity; by the second question we understand the number of congregations which are represented at any council higher than the council of their own congregation.
We think these questions most unsatisfactory, but we can devise no others. We have no doubt that, if all the foreigners disappeared suddenly, the native Christians would either perish or would speedily adopt a form of Church government which they understood. The whole necessity for these questions arises from the fact that we have foisted upon them foreign systems and are uncertain to what extent they have really grasped them. The consequence is that when we think of a Church capable of standing alone we are in doubt. We do not feel certain that the converts could carry on their government; and some of us think a change in the form of Church government as serious a matter as the change from Paganism to Christianity: it is an excommunicating matter. Inevitably then in an inquiry such as ours we must try to discover how far the people are advanced in the understanding of the organisation which they have been taught. Until they are quite sound in this faith and fully trained in this system, whether it is a circuit or a presbytery or a democratic episcopacy, or a papacy, they cannot possibly stand alone. Who would dare to suggest such a revolutionary idea! Why, they might adopt a native governmental system—something which they understood at once, quite easily, and then where should we be? We know how to administer the system in which we were brought up: it is better that they should learn that.
Finally we make an inquiry concerning the power of the Christians to supply the material needs of their religious organisation. We want to know to what extent they are really dependent on foreign funds, and to what extent they can stand alone financially.
It is tempting to imagine that we can discover this by a mere calculation of the total expenditure on all work carried on in the district and comparing this either with the number of Christians and their relative wealth or poverty, or simply with the contribution which they actually make, concluding that the difference between their contribution, or their estimated power to give, and the cost of the work carried on in the area is the difference between their power to supply their needs and their real needs. But foreign funds are largely spent upon things which, however excellent they may be in themselves, are not really necessary for the religious life of the Christians, such as missionaries' salaries, high schools, colleges, medical institutions, and expensive buildings. Consequently to know the total expenditure in the area is not to know the necessary expenditure. The native Church might maintain its life and conquer the whole district without spending in actual money a tithe of that which we spend on providing the people with medicine and education and buildings and foreign missionaries.
Yet the question cannot be avoided. Missionaries all over the world carefully count every penny which the converts subscribe, and search diligently for some new method of doubling it, in order to lead their converts towards the goal of self-support. What that goal is we do not know. We cannot tell how far the Christians can supply their own needs, if we do not know what the needs really are. And that we do not know. In a certain very real sense Christians can always provide what is necessary for their religious life. They could all always be self-supporting, if we did not invent needs and insist upon them; and what we insist upon depends entirely upon the school in which we were brought up. The standard set, as we have already explained, is purely arbitrary.
Under these circumstances how can we express the position of the native Church with any approximation to truth? We can only suggest that these arbitrary standards should be accepted, and ask that they should be defined in every case. We should ask the missionaries, or the societies, to estimate the amount required to supply that minimum upon which they insist. If we did that, remembering always that the estimate made must be doubtful and arbitrary, and that the native contribution, whilst comparatively large funds are regularly supplied from a foreign source, will never represent the power of the Christian community to supply its own needs, we should at least have some standard by which we might estimate the position of the Christian Church in the country, and its progress. We suggest then that three items should be included in the table: (1) the total expense of carrying on all the work in the station district, whether the funds were provided from foreign or native sources; (2) the amount estimated to cover the necessary expenses of the native Christian Church; and (3) the amount subscribed by the native Christian community. We think these three items taken together would help us to understand the situation.
————————————————————————————-|——-| Total Expense of Church and Mission in the Area | | per Head of Christian Constituency. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Amount Estimated to Cover all Necessary Expenses of the | | Native Christian Constituency per Head. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Amount Subscribed for all Purposes by the Native | | Christian Constituency per Head. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-| Remarks and Conclusions. | | ————————————————————————————-|——-|
We have now, we hope, some light on the question how far we are really succeeding in attaining a purpose which we hear constantly proclaimed, as if it were indeed a governing object of our work, the creation of an independent native Church.
I. Districts in which Two or more Societies are at Work.
Hitherto we have taken for granted that only one missionary society is at work in the district and that the survey is therefore simple; but in many mission station districts some other society is also at work. Occasionally the district of one station overlaps part of the district of a station of another society. In many districts Roman Catholics are at work, and certain forms of their work cannot be ignored, and no form of their work ought to be ignored in surveying the district.
If two missions sent by different societies are at work in the same district then, it would be an immense advantage if the survey of the district could be made a joint production. Union for study is often possible, when union in work is impossible, and the common understanding of the situation is most useful.
But if that is impossible, then each society must survey the whole district, and, what an immense amount of labour would be wasted in the preliminary survey, the physical toil of travelling over the country to see the villages and towns, which must be seen to be known, and must be known to reveal the secret of the task which the mission is founded to fulfil, that labour is known only to one who has undertaken such a task, and will soon be known to anyone who starts out conscientiously to survey any district. But it is helpful and illuminating labour, and it would be far better that the heads of two missions should survey the whole of the same district separately than that neither should survey any of it. If both feel that in any real sense that is "their district," then they ought both to survey it all; for to call a district mine which I have not even surveyed and do not know even by sight is absurd; but it would lighten their labour and help their mutual understanding if they surveyed it together.
If a part of the district overlaps part of another mission district, that part should be surveyed together if possible, or if that is not possible, by each separately.
In this survey the work of no Christian society, however remote ecclesiastically or theologically from the surveyor's point of view, should be omitted. Ignorance of the work done by others is the worst possible form of separation. There is a sense in which it is true that the more remote the ecclesiastical position of another is from our own, the more near we are to definite opposition, the more important it is that we should know what his work is. We may find in it so much to admire that our annoyance at what seem to us his ecclesiastical absurdities may be softened. If we survey the district together we shall perhaps find there is room for both, even if we each start with the persuasion that there is no room for the other anywhere in the world.
On no account must we fail to consider another's work. In educational or medical work we must recognise that a school or a hospital which exists, by whomsoever created, in the district makes a difference to the situation. To deal with the district as if that school or hospital did not exist is to deal with an imaginary district, not with the real one; and no one supposes that there is any advantage in dealing with things that are what they are as if they were something else.
We have observed a certain tendency to recognise this truth in the matter of education and medicine, and to introduce into survey proposals a note, when the educational and medical tables were reached, to remind the surveyor that the educational and medical work of some society of which he is afraid, or from which he thinks himself widely separated, as extreme Protestants from Roman Catholics, must not be ignored; but in the evangelistic and Church tables no such note is inserted. This is, we suppose, a tacit acceptance of the idea that the opposite party's evangelical and church building work can be ignored with trifling loss—that to ignore it does not much matter. But if a man is surveying what he calls habitually "his" district, he is surveying it presumably to get at the facts, and one of the most important facts which he needs to know is how far the preaching of Christ has extended and where Christian churches have been established. Unless then he is prepared to deny the name of Christ to the opposite party (and that is a very serious thing to do), he cannot ignore their churches. The people claim to be Christians and declare that they believe in Christ. If the surveyor without further inquiry rejects them because they belong to a society which he does not like, that may be an exhibition of ecclesiastical zeal, but it is not the science of surveying.
Whatever he may think of them, as a surveyor he has no right to ignore them. He is surveying "his district". There are in it so many persons of various religious belief, amongst them his own converts and these Christians of the opposite party. He perhaps refuses to recognise the latter as Christians; but they are undoubtedly neither Moslems nor Confucianists, nor Buddhists, nor Hindoos, nor do they belong to any of the non-Christian religions. He cannot ignore them. He must take count of them. Therefore if in a district the Protestant and the Roman Catholic cannot survey together, the Protestant who does survey must carefully consider the facts before his face, and endeavour to find out what the facts really are as well as he possibly can. The facts are that Roman Catholics are working in what he calls "his district"; the facts are that there are churches here, and here, and here, and people who call themselves Christians so many, and that the heathen population is by so many less. And there are so many mission priests, and they win converts, and the converts won by them cease to be heathen, for they are sometimes persecuted by their heathen neighbours, even as his own converts are persecuted.
Happily all leading surveyors are realising these obvious facts and are now taking these things into serious account; but it is still necessary to insist on their importance.
In these tables, when other missions are at work in the district, all that is necessary is to add one column of the work of the other missions so far as it is known, or can be ascertained. We are well aware that that easy phrase covers in many cases great practical difficulty. Here is one of the places where estimates may be inevitable. If they are inevitable, they should be estimates, not guesses, and a note should be made of the process by which they were reached. The difference between an estimate and a guess is that an estimate is the result of a definite train of reasoned calculation and a guess is not. For an estimate reasons can be given, for a guess none other than—it occurred to me.
II. The Mission which has no Defined District.
We believe that the vast majority of missions accept a territorial district; but there are missions where the station district has not and cannot be defined.
The idea of the mission is not territorial. The object proposed is not to cover any area with mission stations, nor to establish in every town and village a church or chapel, but to create at a centre a Church of living sons trained and educated by many years, perhaps generations, of care to become the centre of a movement which may cover the whole country; or it may be to influence movements which arise in the religious, political, or social life of the people, and to direct these into Christian channels. In such cases a territorial foundation is impossible. The mission exists in the midst of a people and influences the people; it makes converts, it establishes them in the faith, it cares for them in mind and body, it prepares them to set the moral and religious standard for any Church of the future. It is not concerned directly with the widest possible preaching of the Gospel. When the native Christians whom it is painfully and slowly educating and training come to maturity they will spread the Gospel throughout the length and breadth of the land. It is not, we are told, the business of the Foreign Mission to preach the Gospel in every village of a defined area nor to make itself responsible for such preaching directly: it should give to converts in every country the highest and best and fullest teaching of Christian civilisation, in order that by so doing it may show to all the people of the country an example, by which they may be attracted and influenced. If we take the widest expression of such mission activity we find that to estimate the true value of such work we should be compelled to survey not only the mission and its activities but the social, moral, material, and spiritual state of the people among whom the mission was planted, and seek for signs of a change which we could trace with some certainty to the influence of the mission. That would be a stupendous and most intricate undertaking. Where innumerable forces are at work such as are implied in the impact of western civilisation upon the peoples of the East, or of Africa, it would be extremely difficult to state the exact impression made by the mission, even if we could survey the whole state of the people at regular and definite periods. We do not for a moment doubt that all Christian missions do exercise an influence of this wide and far-reaching character, and from time to time we can see results which clearly spring from it, but we cannot think it wise to set out this vague influence as the primary purpose of a mission. We believe that the Christian missions which aim directly and primarily at the conversion of men and the establishment of a living native Church produce this fruit by the way.
If, however, we take the narrower expressions in the statement of aim which we have set out above, we find in it the purpose of establishing a Church, but the establishment is viewed as the result of a long and elaborate training and cultivation of a comparatively small body of Christians, rather than as the immediate result of widespread work. In such a case we ought to be able to trace progress and to place these missions in a common scheme.
The early tables of work to be done and of the force in relation to that work on a territorial basis certainly fail. The leaders of the mission have not the information and do not want it, but they could almost certainly provide the facts concerning the force at work contained in the tables without the proportions for the district, and they would perhaps be able to fill up most of the other tables omitting proportions to area and population.
Now if they did that we should be able to see the force at work and the type of work in which the mission was strongest and weakest, and the relation of the different types of work to each other, though it is probable that the tables dealing with the native Church as distinct from the Mission would not be filled up. With that information we could almost certainly define more or less exactly the place of the mission in a large area such as the province, or the country; for in dealing with the province or the country we must necessarily mass figures, and we have there a known, or estimated, area and population, to use as a basis for calculation of proportions and comparison, and we are aiming at placing each mission in a larger whole and trying to see what part each takes in the performance of a great work which is world wide in its scope. If the missions then which decline a territorial basis for their work would fill up those tables which reveal the nature of their work and the force engaged in it we should be able to advance to the next stage. This is what we meant when at an earlier stage we remarked that we had drawn our tables to serve a definite purpose, but that we had not ignored the case of the man whose idea of the purpose of a mission differed from our own.
In few parts of the world is a mission station really an isolated unit. In most of the countries to which we go there are many stations of many different missions, all aiming more or less definitely at the establishment of a native Church, whatever their conception of the Church may be. In the vast majority of cases these stations have some relationship to one another. The definition of districts for the mission stations is commonly recognised, and in planning new work directors of missions frequently allow themselves to be influenced, in some way and in some degree, by the position of existing mission stations. There are also in some parts of the world bodies composed of leading members of many of the missions that work in the country, who meet to consider the progress of the Christian faith in the province or the country as a whole, and deliberately plan their work with some consideration of the position and character of the work done by the others. Now in all this there is a manifest approach to the idea that mission work in the country or province is a common work, and that the various missions engaged in it are not antagonists, but allies. It is certainly true that we are far from having reached the stage of a common direction and a real unification of work Rivalry and antagonism are still rampant, but the recognition of the fact that we must consider the position and character of other missions in directing our own is a most important advance; and it implies that we ought, in some measure at least, to be able to express the work of any mission station in relation to all the mission work done in the province or country, and to understand, at any rate in some degree, what place it takes in the mission work in the province viewed as a whole. It is true that a great many missionaries would refuse to admit that the recognition of other stations in the planting of our own is an acknowledgment of the unity of our work; but whether they acknowledge it, or whether they do not, it is so, and we for our part recognise it with thankfulness and look forward to a day when missions will not only recognise others by avoiding them, but by planning missions deliberately to assist each other. For that seems to us the necessary conclusion. The moment we recognise a station as a Christian mission station which we must not disturb, we have gone a long way towards recognising it as a mission station which our own must not only not disturb, but must complement; and when we know that one mission must complement another we are really not far removed from establishing our missions with common consultation each to supply what is lacking to the other.
Holding this view, we desire to discover what place each mission station occupies when we take a wider view and survey the province or country. Here we shall be able to adjust many apparent inequalities in the mission stations viewed by themselves. From our previous survey of the mission stations one by one we may have got the impression that some of them as mission stations designed for work in a district were very ill-balanced. The medical work, or institutional work of some kind, may have seemed to be out of all proportion to the other forms of the work, and this impression may remain when we view the province. But on the other hand it may be seriously modified; because when we review the work of the province as a whole, we may find that the institutional work of the province as a whole is out of proportion to the evangelistic work, and in that case we should think the disproportion at the station more serious. On the other hand we might find the institutional work in the province inadequate, and in that case the emphasis which seemed undue in the one place, and may really be improper in that one place, nevertheless, in view of the situation in the whole province, may be shown to be reasonable in relation to the whole province. How then can we gather together the returns from all the stations so as to present a view of the work in the province? For that is the first thing. We cannot put the station into its proper place in the province until we have a view of the work in the province treated as a unity.
In provinces, large cities and towns, which are not reckoned as part of any mission station district, have to be taken into account. These large cities, capitals of provinces, countries, or empires, need special consideration, and must often be surveyed separately. They are centres in which many societies have their head-quarters, and many missionaries live, yet the work done in them is not always so impressive or extensive as the numbers of missionaries might suggest: occasionally the missionaries are all congregated in one quarter of the city, and large portions are practically untouched. In them, too, are sometimes large city congregations, self-supporting indeed and self-governing, but sucking into themselves all the more vigorous elements of the Christian community and employing them within a somewhat narrow circle. The problem of the evangelisation of these cities is a very serious one.
We suggest that these great cities might be treated either as one district or as several, and that they ought to be surveyed systematically by a body representative of all the missions in each city. If a proper survey were made and the facts tabulated, the statistical tables would be similar to those for the station district, and we could use them to complete a survey of the work done in the province treated as a unity.
But to view the work in the province as a unity we do not need all the detail of the station districts, indeed we should only find the multiplication of detail confusing. To gain a general view of work in a large area such as a province or a small country we must first of all select those features which are common to all the parts and vitally important. We venture to suggest that the important features to be represented are five. (1) The work to be done in the whole area. (2) The strength of the whole force at work in relation to the work to be done. (3) The extent to which emphasis is laid on various forms of work. (4) The extent to which different classes, races, and religions in the area are reached. (5) The extent to which the Church has attained to self-support.
1. If the mission stations and their allotted districts covered the whole country, we should need to do no more than add together the returns obtained from the station statistics which we have already drawn up. But in most countries there are large unoccupied areas of the size and population of which we are more or less ignorant. What we have is, either a census return for the whole province, or an estimate of its area and population. In dealing with the whole province then we must treat the station returns of towns and villages occupied and of the numbers of the Christian constituency as work done; and then we must find out the relation of these to the whole area and population. This would have to be done probably first on a large scale map which would show the density of the population in different parts of the area, and would show the stations and the strength of the Christian constituency in relation to the area and population. These facts could then be expressed in a table, and we should gain at once an idea of the extent to which the missions were in a position to reach the population. The table would be exceedingly simple and give us no more than the barest idea of the work to be done in its vaguest expression.
————————————————————————————————— | | | Christian Con- | Non-Christian Province. | Area. | Population. | stituency. | Population. ————————————————————————————————— | | | | __________|________|______________|________________|____________
If, in addition to this, there was either a census return or a credible estimate of the cities, towns, and villages, in the area, a table could be drawn of the cities, towns, and villages occupied, in the sense that there were Christians resident in them, and the work could be expressed in that form also, which would greatly assist the understanding of the other.
________________________________________________________________
| |
| Occupied. | Unoccupied.
Province.|__________________________|___________________________
| | | | | |
|Cities.| Towns.| Villages.| Cities.| Towns.| Villages.
_________|_______|_______|__________|________|_______|__________
| | | | | |
_________|_______|_______|__________|________|_______|__________
We ought here to repeat that we do not imagine for a moment that the Foreign Missions are to occupy all the villages or even all the cities and towns. We believe that a careful statement of work to be done in this form would very speedily force us to realise, with a clearness and power never before experienced, the truth which we often repeat, that the conversion of the country must be the work of native Christians.
2. The force at work in relation to the work to be done. Here again it would not be sufficient to add together the figures returned from the stations, because in a large area like a province or a small country there are often many missionaries not at mission stations but at some large centre engaged in work for the whole province rather than for any particular mission district; as, for instance, translators or journalists; men engaged in hostels or Y.M.C.A. work; or in large institutions, such as training colleges, medical or educational or industrial; or in some special form of Christian philanthropy, such as work amongst lepers, blind, deaf and dumb, and other infirm or defective persons; or men engaged in assisting the missionaries all over the country as directors, or forwarding agents; and all these must be taken into account in considering the foreign force in the province. Including all these we should get a table for the foreign force similar to that which we had for the station, and that force we could relate directly to the work to be done.
____________________________________________________________________
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | Re-
| | | | | | | |marks
Popu- | Total |Propor-| |Propor-| |Single|Propor-| and
lation.|Foreign|tion to| Men. |tion to| Wives.|Women.|tion to| Con-
| Force.| Popu- | | Popu- | | | Popu- | clu-
| |lation.| |lation.| | |lation.|sions.
_______|_______|_______|______|_______|_______|______|_______|______
| | | | | | | |
_______|_______|_______|______|_______|_______|______|_______|______
We cannot sacrifice the proportions, because the life is in them. Comparison of conditions in different areas can only be made on proportions. The mere statement of the figures with the suggestion that anyone can work out the proportions would reveal a singular ignorance of human nature.
For the native force all that we need for the present purpose is a table that will show us the Christian constituency, communicants, and workers in the whole province in proportion to one another. Here also we must include many workers and some congregations in large towns which the station district survey may have omitted.
——————————————————————————————————- |Total.| Proportion| Proportion |Proportion |Remarks | |of |of Christian |of |and | |Population.| Constituency. |Communicants.|Conclu- | | | | | sions. ——————————————————————————————————- Christian | | | | | constituency| —— | —— | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Communicants| —— | —— | —— | | ——————————————————————————————————- Paid workers| —— | —— | —— | —— | ——————————————————————————————————- Unpaid | | | | | Workers | —— | —— | —— | —— | ——————————————————————————————————-
3. It is important to consider carefully the proportions in which the force is engaged in different forms of work since, as we have already explained, these different forms are often, if not generally, treated as distinct and separate methods of propaganda, and men want to know what is the effectiveness of each. They ask, what are the fruits of medical and educational work, and they expect an answer in terms of additions to the Church. If the dominant object of missions is the establishment of a native Church this is indeed not unnatural; but, as we have already said, many educational and medical missionaries might resent this demand, for they have other ideas of the nature and purpose of their work. Nevertheless, since this native Church is constantly presented to us as the dominant purpose of all our efforts, it is only right that we should make the inquiry here, as we did in the earlier chapters, and ask how the force in the field is divided. It seems almost absurd that we should have no idea in what proportion medicals, educationalists, and evangelists should be employed in any field. In some countries medical work is by far the most effective, if not the only possible form of propaganda; in some fields the evangelists can work effectively almost alone, and medical institutions are not the same necessity, and their establishment does not produce great results in the building of the Church when compared with the work of evangelists and educationalists. In some places their aid was at first apparently necessary to success, but as time went on that first desperate importance ceased. We have not so large a medical force that we can afford to use it for any but the most important and necessary purposes; yet, if the establishment of a native Church is the dominant purpose, large numbers of medicals are doing work which is (from this point of view only) of second-rate importance, whilst work which only they could do is left undone, and cries aloud for their assistance. Similarly, if the establishment of a native Church is really the dominant object, educationalists are often wrongly directed and placed. They are not producing fruit in this regard (of course in this regard only) in anything like the abundance which they might produce if they were free to attack the real questions of the education of the native Church. In many centres they are doing splendid work for the enlightenment of the people, but close beside them are large bodies of Christians who from the point of view of the establishment of a native Church need their help much more.
We ought then to know in each province how the force is divided and what is the fruit of the labours of each class of missionaries viewed from the standpoint of the building up of the native Church.
Now if we know the proportions of the workers in each class in each country, and if we could have a table which told us with any degree of accuracy the numbers of the inquirers, communicants, and places opened by the labours of each class, we should surely have some facts from which we might gain light on this most practical question, in what proportion the work of each class of workers was most effective in each country as an evangelistic and church-building agency. We propose then two tables (see opposite page).
(i)
_____________________________________________________________________ | | Paid |Amount of| Amount of | Remarks | Mission-| Native | Foreign | Native | and Con- | aries | Workers.| Funds. |Contributions. | clusions. ——————————————————————————————————- Evangelistic| — | — | — | — | ——————————————————————————————————- Medical | — | — | — | — | ——————————————————————————————————- Educational | — | — | — | — | ——————————————————————————————————- Other forms | | | | | of work. | — | — | — | — | _____________________________________________________________________
(ii)
_____________________________________________________________________ | Inquirers | | Places Opened | Remarks | Derived | Communicants | Directly Through | and Con- | From | Derived from | Influence of | clusions. ——————————————————————————————————- Evangelistic| — | — | — | ——————————————————————————————————- Medical | — | — | — | ——————————————————————————————————- Educational | — | — | — | _____________________________________________________________________
If we desire to know the influence of our medical and educational work upon the native Church we ought certainly to have a table which, for the schools at least, would show us what proportion of the pupils who passed through the schools became valuable members of the Church. But every one who has had any scholastic experience, and has tried to follow the after-history of his pupils, knows that that is not easy, even in external and material affairs, and when the inquiry is concerned with internal convictions and religious influence that difficulty is insuperable. A few specially endowed and devoted educationalists could indeed tell the after-history of a considerable number of their pupils, and ideally all schools ought to have a record of the history of pupils for at least a few years after leaving the school; but there would always be a percentage of loss; in many cases that percentage would be very high, and we doubt whether many schools have any record at all. Under these circumstances to put into an inquiry such as that which we propose a question concerning the after-life of scholars or patients seems almost impossible. Yet we cannot be content. There are mission schools which go on year after year educating boys for a business career, and generation after generation of boys pass through the school, large sums of mission money are expended on them, and the results from a missionary point of view are shrouded in Cimmerian gloom; or the general darkness is relieved by one or two exceptional pupils who, because they do very well, appear to justify the existence of the institution in which they were educated, though they would probably have been as valuable Christians if they had been educated in any other school. In this way a very low average is often concealed. If a school is judged by a few exceptionally good scholars, it should also be judged by a few exceptionally bad ones. It is indeed of serious importance that the missionary value of some of our medical and educational, especially the educational, institutions should be carefully examined and tested by an appeal to indisputable facts. It is generally supposed that education in mission schools must necessarily produce a strong, enlightened, and zealous Christian community. That it produces a large number of Christians intellectually enlightened is certain: that they are zealous evangelists is not as certain. We want a statistical table to reveal the missionary value, not the commercial value, of the education given. But what table can we draw? The preceding table which sets forth inquirers and communicants is clearly insufficient though it is better than nothing. Until every school keeps a careful record of the after-history of at least a large number of its pupils it seems impossible to get any clear light on the question.
4. With regard to the extent to which different races and classes are reached by the missions, we may safely assume that the Christian missions ought to extend their benefits to all classes and races in the area, and that there ought to be some proportion between the efforts made in each case. If, and when, the responsible leaders of the missions decided that the time had come to concentrate on one particular kind of work for one particular class, we may be perfectly certain that they would have no difficulty in justifying their action. But in any case action should not be taken without consideration of proportions, and, therefore, it is important that the proportions should be known.
But in dealing with work in the province or small country we cannot simply repeat the table prepared for the mission district. In the province or country there are often missionaries at work who give themselves up wholly to one class. It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish every possible form of work; but seeing that very considerable work is done amongst students, we have thought it well to add one column in which the proportion of the children of different classes who are attending Christian schools or living in Christian hostels is set forth:—
_____________________________________________________________________ | | Agri- | | | |Remarks Percentage Stud-|Offi- |cultural|Traders.|Labourers.| Crafts-|and of: ents.|cials.|Small- | | | men. |Conclu- | |Holders.| | | |sions. ________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______ In Population — | — | — | — | — | — | ________________|______|________|________|___________________________ In Christian — | — | — | — | — | — | Constituency | | | | | | ________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______ In Christian | | | | | | schools and | | | | | | hostels, — | — | — | — | — | — | percentage | | | | | | of children | | | | | | of | | | | | | ________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______
With respect to work among different races, castes, etc., no addition to the table prepared for the district seems necessary, and we therefore repeat it:—
———————|————————————————————-|—————— | Races, Religious Castes, etc., whatever| Remarks | they may be. | And | |Conclusions. ———————|————————————————————-|—————— In Population | —— | ———————|————————————————————-|—————— In Christian | —— | Constituency | | ———————|————————————————————-|——————
5. Concerning self-support, one table should, we think, suffice. We cannot possibly adopt any estimated necessary expenditure such as we proposed in the table for the station district because in the province that estimate would be almost impossible to make. Different missions have different ideas, and their estimates have for themselves some reality; but they have no reality for others, and a mere average of the estimates given for all the missions of the province would have still less reality. It would be an absurd guess, meaning nothing. If we want to judge progress in self-support we must have some definite key figure by which to judge it. What figure then can we use? The total cost of all the work carried on in the province is an impossible figure.[1] The mere contribution of the native Christians by itself means nothing. That is the figure generally given. The native Christian subscribed $6000 last year, $7000 this year. Here is progress. The progress is an addition of $1000. But does that tell us their progress towards self-support unless we know what self-support implies? In the year the Church ought to have increased in numbers, and the $7000 may represent exactly the same position as the $6000 represented last year. Expenses may have increased: the $7000 may be actually further removed from self-support than the $6000 last year. We must have a proportion of which we can trace the variation if we want to see progress. But is there any expense which we can use to strike the proportion? Suppose then we suggest the pay of all evangelistic and pastoral workers and provision and upkeep of churches, chapels, and preaching rooms. That would at least give us something to work by. But it might be difficult to calculate. We would propose then, as a secondary item, some easily calculable and known expense, something which every missionary accountant knows, such as the pay of all native pastors and evangelistic workers, and then compare with these the contributions of the Christians for Church and evangelistic work only, excluding all fees for education and medicine. That would, we think, give us a standard which we could apply without having to consider complications introduced by such things as Government grants to schools or hospitals. We propose then to judge progress in self-support thus:—
——————————————————————————————————-
| Total Cost | Total | Total |
| of all | Salaries of | Native |
| Evangelistic | all Paid | Contribution, |
Province.| and | Native | excluding | Remarks and
| Pastoral | Evangelistic | School or | Conclusions.
| Work, Men | Workers, | Hospital |
| and Material. | including | Fees or |
| | Pastors. | Donations. |
——————————————————————————————————-
| | | |
——————————————————————————————————-
[Footnote 1: In Dr. Eugene Stock's "History of the C.M.S.," vol. ii., p. 420, we are told that "In 1863,… 400 families raised 1371 rupees, equal then to £137. These families consisted mainly of labourers earning (say) 2s. a week; so that a corresponding sum for 400 families of English labourers earning 12s. a week would be £137 x 6 = £822, or over £2 a year from each family. A few years later, taking the whole of the C.M.S. districts in Tinnevelly and reckoning catechumens as well as baptised Christians, their contributions were such that, supposing the whole thirty millions of people in England were poor labourers earning 12s. a week, and there were no other source of wealth, their corresponding contributions should amount to £6,000,000 per annum." Yet he says on the very next page that "It was not possible for the native Church, liberal as its contributions were, to maintain its pastors and meet its other expenses (he does not say what the other expenses were) entirely. The society must necessarily help for a while…. This grant, in the first instance, had to be large enough to cover much more than half the expenditure."
If this was the case in one part of a province, what would happen if we took the whole expense of all work carried on in a whole province or country and used that as a standard by which to test progress in self-support?]
Turning now from the force at work we must consider the force in training, for this is prophetic. Let us then take first a table which shows the proportion in which students are being trained for pastoral and evangelistic work, for medical mission work, and for educational mission work, in the province or country, regardless of the place at which they are being trained, whether that place is inside or outside the area under consideration. This ought to show us on what lines we may expect the work to develop in the near future.
_____________________________________________________________________ Total |For Evangel- | | | | | Students |istic Work, |Propor- |For |Propor-|For Educa-|Remarks in |including the |tion of|Medical|tion of|tional |and Training.|Pastorate. |Total. |Work. |Total. |Work. |Conclu- | | | | | |sions _________|______________|________|_______|_______|__________|________ | | | | | | _________|______________|________|_______|_______|__________|________
Then we must examine more closely, if we can;—and first of the evangelistic workers. The difficulty is to classify, because ecclesiastical nomenclature is so confused that it is almost impossible to use any terms which would be widely recognised. The best we can do is to distinguish grades of training, beginning from the top thus:—
1st grade, college or university. 2nd " high school. 3rd " regular Bible school. 4th " intermittent, irregular Bible instruction.
It will probably be found that the first grade is commonly prepared for, and looks forward to, the charge of a settled congregation, or of an organised church, and the lower grades do the pioneer work, and it may well suggest itself to thoughtful men whether this is rightly so.
Then, educationalists in training: again we divide by grades roughly:—
1st grade, college or university. 2nd " normal school. 3rd " high school. 4th " teachers of illiterates.
The college students presumably look forward to work in the high schools, or colleges, or normal schools; the normal school pupils to work in normal schools, high schools, and large primary schools; the high school pupils to work in village schools; and the teachers of illiterates to village work, or work among the poor in the towns. Of medicals the generally recognised distinctions seem to be, qualified practitioners, assistants, and nurses.
Following these lines we should obtain simple prophetic tables for each of the three branches of work.
(i) Students in Training for Evangelistic Work.
—————————————————————————————
1st Grade. | 2nd. | 3rd. | 4th.
College. | High School. | Regular | Intermittent.
| Bible School | Teaching |
—————————————————————- ———————
| | |
| | |
—————————————————————————————
(ii) For Educational Work.
—————————————————————————————
1st Grade. | 2nd. | 3rd. | Teachers of
College. | Normal. | High School. | Illiterates.
—————————————————————- ———————
| | |
| | |
—————————————————————————————
(iii) For Medical Work.
———————————————————————————————————
1st Grade. | 2nd. | 3rd.
To be Qualified Doctors. | Assistants, including Dispensers, |Nurses.
| etc. |
———————————————————————————————————
| |
| |
———————————————————————————————————
If we had those tables for men and women we should see fairly plainly how the work might be expected to develop.
But here we ought to remember the difficulty which we set forth earlier in discussing the missionary influence of our various activities, medical and educational, from a Church building point of view. A great many boys are educated and trained at mission expense to be evangelists, medicals, and teachers in mission employ, who serve indeed for a period according to their contract and then disappear into Government service or private practice. It is a serious question whether missionaries can be raised up successfully in this way. "I will give you training if you will promise to serve the mission," is not a very certain way of securing ready, wholehearted, zealous service of Christ. We have found out its uncertainty in many cases at home; we have found it out in still more frequent cases in the mission field. Unless we keep a very careful record of the after-life of those whom we train, and a very honest one, we are apt to ignore the failure, a failure which we cannot properly afford, and consequently we cannot know what we are really doing by our training. We ought to know the truth in this matter, both for our encouragement and our admonition. Happily here, we think, we can find an easy and a valuable test. If we ask what proportion of those whom we train continue in their missionary work after the end of their first term of service, we shall certainly have some enlightenment; for it is true of medicals and educationalists, and of evangelists, though in a much less degree, that if any man continues in missionary work after he has fulfilled the letter of his contract, it will generally be because he has his heart in the work; for missionary work seldom, if ever, offers the emoluments of Government service, or of private practice. We ask then—
——————————————————————————————————- |Evangelistic | Medical | Educational ————————————————+——————-+————-+—————— Total Students | | | ————————————————+——————-+————-+—————— Trained at Mission Expense, | | | Wholly or in Part. | | | ————————————————+——————-+————-+—————— Number who Continue in | | | Mission Work after the end | | | of the Term of their Contract. | | | ————————————————+——————-+————-+—————— Proportion of Total Students | | | who so Continue. | | | ————————————————+——————-+————-+—————— Remarks and Conclusions. | | | ————————————————+——————-+————-+——————
If the institutions in which the training is actually carried on lie within the province, then we ought to have tables such as we have for the schools in the station area for these institutions. We need no elaborate statistics in this place, because the work of these institutions should be specially treated in departmental surveys. Here, all that we need is to relate the work of the schools or hospitals which were omitted in the station district survey, because they served a larger area than the station area, to the work done in the province or country. The educational returns from each station area must be added together and the returns of these larger institutions added to the total educational statistics; that will give us the work done in the larger area in proportion to population.
But in the province it is important to consider the relation in which the different grade schools stand to one another; because if the aim of the missionary educational system is the education of the Christian community, and the higher schools are designed primarily for Christian pupils from the lower schools, this relation is of importance. It is possible to build an organisation too narrow at the base and too heavy at the top, and then to fill the higher schools with non-Christian pupils without any definite understanding of the way in which that practice is to serve the main purpose of the mission. Then these schools stand on a distinct and separate basis from the rest of the mission activities, and the work of Christian missions in the country is split, part aiming directly at the establishment of a native Christian Church, and part "aiming at the general improvement of morals, and social, religious, and political enlightenment. Thus we arrive at that chaotic state in which the mission as a whole is not subordinate to any dominant idea of the purpose for which it exists, which alone can unify the work of all its members. But if the colleges and schools are designed for mutual support, and if the higher have any relation to the lower grades, then there must be some proportion between the base and the superstructure, and that proportion must be known and expressed in any survey worthy of the name. We include, therefore, the following table:—
——————————————————————————————————- | Mission | Proportion | Proportion | Remarks | Schools, | to | to | and | Number | Population. | High | Conclusions. | of. | | Schools. | ——————————————————————————————————- Primary | | | | Schools | | | | ——————————————————————————————————- High | | | | Schools | | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Normal | | | | Schools | | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Colleges| | | | ————+—————-+———————+——————-+—————————-
In the province also we must know the educational facilities afforded by non-missionary agencies, if we are to have any true conception of the work of the educational missions. We must therefore add a table for these schools.
—————————————————————————————— | Non- | Proportion | Remarks. | | Missionary | to | | | Schools, | Population. | | | Number of. | | | ——————————————————————————————- Primary Schools | | | | ——————————————————————————————- High Schools. | | | | ——————————————————————————————- Normal School | | | | ——————————————————————————————- Colleges. | | | | ——————————————————————————————-
Here it is not necessary for us to find the proportion between the higher and lower grade schools, because we are not surveying the non-missionary educational work, and their scheme of proportions is not our business.
A comparatively slight addition to the tables for medical work in the various station districts will suffice to give an adequate impression of the medical work done in the whole area. We need not go into details, for the medical work should be, and generally is, reviewed by Medical Boards in their reports. For us now, all that is needed is the addition of tables, similar to those which we used for hospitals in the station area, for hospitals excluded from any station survey.
Two other subjects ought to be included in this provincial survey, namely, literature and industrial work. First, we must try to find a table which will express the work done by those important missionaries who are engaged in providing Christian literature, both for the Christian community and the heathen outside. Here we find once more the difficulty that, whilst a few missionaries are wholly engaged in this form of missionary work, much is produced by missionaries who have already been included in the tables as either evangelistic or educational or medical missionaries, and we also touch bookselling and other kindred commercial questions. With the commercial aspect of this work we cannot deal. The following tables will throw light on the extent to which Christian literature is being produced and read:—
(i)
——————————————————————————————————- Number of Missionaries wholly Engaged | Proportion of Total in Literary Work. | Missionaries. ———————————————————-+——————————————- | ———————————————————-+——————————————-
——————————————————————————————————- Number of Vernacular | Number of | Proportion of Sales Christian Books Produced | Christian Books | to Population. in the Year. | Sold in the Year.| ——————————————————————————————————- | Bibles or | | Bibles or | | Scripture | Other | Scripture | Other | Portions. | Books.| Portions. | Books. ————————————-+—————-+————+——————+————- | | | | ————————————-+—————-+————+——————+————-
If the business side of literary work is difficult, the whole position of industrial missions is still more difficult. In some countries industrial missions seem to be trading ventures with a Christian intention, in others industrial missions are really almost entirely educational establishments. The best tables which we have ever seen dealing with this subject were those drawn by Mr. Sidney Clark in one of his papers, "From a Layman to a Layman".[1] All that we can do is to suggest that industrial missions which are in the main clearly and unmistakably educational should be included in the educational work, and that the missions with large commercial interests, even if they are doing a valuable educational work for the community, should be treated separately, thus:—
[Footnote 1: Printed for private distribution by Mr. S.J.W. Clark, 3
Tudor Street, Blackfriars, London, E.C. 4.]
Industrial Missions,
(a)
——————————————————————————————————- Province. | Number of | Amount of Mission | Proportion of | Industrial | Funds Allotted to | Total Mission | Missions. | such Work. | Funds. ——————————————————————————————————- | | | __________|______________|_____________________|_____________________
(b)
——————————————————————————————————- | Number of | Number of Missionaries | Proportion of Province. | Industrial | Engaged in such | Total | Institutions. | Institutions. | Missionaries ——————————————————————————————————- | | | __________|________________|________________________|________________
(c)
——————————————————————————————- | Number of | Number of | Proportion of Province. | Industrial | Native Agents | Native Christian | Missions. | Employed. | Workers Employed. ——————————————————————————————- | | | __________|_____________|________________|___________________
In some missions the proportion of missionaries and native workers so employed would be very small; in others they would be very considerable. There is now a tendency to hand over some of the industrial work as it develops along commercial lines to Boards of Christian men who are interested in the social and spiritual aspect of the work.
In the province we must also consider union work, work done in common by two or more societies,[1] sometimes evangelistic, sometimes medical or educational training, sometimes the establishment, or enlargement of an educational or medical institution; or sometimes, as in Kwangtung in South China, several societies unite in a "Board of Co-operation". This union of societies for the better and more efficient performance of their work is a most important development of the last few years: important both to the workers on the field and to us at home. We ought, therefore, to have a short table to show what is being done.
——————————————————————————————————- | Number of Societies | | Number | Co-operating in |Number of | of |————————————————| Societies |Remarks Societies|Evangelistic|Medical|Educational| Co-operating| and at Work. | Work. | Work. | Work. | in all Work.|Conclusions. ————-+——————+———-+—————-+——————-+—————— | | | | | ————-+——————+———-+—————-+——————-+——————
[Footnote 1: The larger and more important movements towards corporate union, such as those now taking place in S. India, China, and E. Africa, lie outside the scope of this survey until their completion affects their statistical returns. Then the importance of them will speedily appear.]
We have now dealt with the survey of the station and of the province or small country, but the final end of missionary work is the attainment of a world-wide purpose. The Gospel is for the whole world, not for a fragment of it, however big. Missionary work cannot properly be carried on in any place except by means and methods designed with a view to the whole, and missions can never be properly presented to us at home so long as we are taught to fix our eyes on small areas; because the great characteristic of missions is their vastness. This is what is so uplifting and ennobling in the work. Every little piece of mission work ought to be directed on principles capable of bearing the weight of the whole. We ought to be able to say, "The whole world can be converted by these means and on these principles which we are here employing in this little village". If the methods and the principles are so narrow that we can build no great world-wide structure on them, we can take little more interest in them than we do in the petty politics of some little parish at home.
We have then yet to demand that we shall be able to put every little station into its proper place in this larger whole, and to see how its principles and methods are illumined by the vision of the whole, being established with the design of accomplishing the whole task. We turn then now to this larger view of mission work. The tables which we have drawn for a province or small country would enable us to compare the work in each area with another such area in the larger whole, and to judge whether we were unduly neglecting any; where the Church was strongest and where it was least established; where it was more capable and where it was less capable of taking over that work which rightly belongs to it, of extending its own boundaries, and of maintaining its own life. We should not send hasty missions here or there because some interesting political event attracts the eyes of men to this or that particular country, but on definite missionary principles, acting on a clear and reasonable understanding of the missionary situation in the world.
The commission of Christ is world-wide, the claim of Christ is world-wide, the work of Christ, the Spirit of Christ are all-embracing; and the work which missionaries do in His name should be all-embracing to. We should conduct all our work, and plan all our work, at home and abroad, with our eyes fixed on the final goal, which is for us, so long as we are on this earth, coterminous only with the limits of the habitable globe. We cannot be content to approach even the largest areas as though our action was limited by them. All our policy in every part should be part of a policy designed for the whole. If it is not designed to accomplish the whole it is not adequate for any part.
How then could we gain a vision of the whole, a whole composed of such vast and diverse parts? Obviously we must have for every country in which any missionary work is carried on some common returns, either those which we venture to suggest or others which some abler minds might suggest; but that they must be common to all, and fundamental in character, is obvious; and they must be reduced to proportions on a common basis, or comparison and combination will be impossible; and they must be as few as possible in order to avoid confusion.
We suggest, then, that if we had the four tables which follow we should possess a reasonable basis, sufficient for our present needs, especially since we suppose they would be supported by the tables for the different provinces, countries, and stations which we have already suggested, and they ought to be supplemented by surveys made by each society of its own work and by departmental surveys of medical, educational, industrial, and literary work made for the special direction of each of these branches. But for a first general view of the whole we propose:—
(1) A table showing the force at work in the area in relation to the population:—
——————————————————————————————————- Proportion to Population. —————————————————————————————————— Province| Popula-| Total | Chris- | Com- | | or | tion. | Foreign | tian | municants | Paid | Unpaid Country| | Mission-| Constitu-| or Full |Workers.| Workers. Area. | | aries. | ents. | Members | | ————|————|————-|—————|—————-|————|————- | | | | | | ________|________|_________|__________|___________|________|_________ ——————————————————————————————————-
That would give us a general view of the force at work in relation to the work to be done and of the proportions between its constituent parts. Then (2):—
——————————————————————————————————-
| Proportion of Paid | Proportion of
| Workers | Unpaid Workers
—————————-|————————————|————————————
Propor- | |
Christian tion |—————-|——————|——————-|—————
Constitu- of | | To | |To
ency. Liter- | To | Christian | To |Christian
ates. | Com- | Constitu- | Com- |Constitu-
| municants.| ency |municants. |ency.
—————————-|—————-|——————|——————-|—————
| | | |
—————————-+—————-+——————+——————-+—————
That would give us an idea of the character and power of the force. (3)
——————————————————————————————————- | | | Percentage | Percentage | | Paid | of Total | of Total | Missionaries.| Native | Foreign Funds| Native | | Workers.| Employed in. | Contributions | | | | Employed in. ——————-+———————+————-+———————+———————- Evangelistic | — | — | — | — ——————————————+————-+———————+———————- Medical | — | — | — | — ——————————————+————-+———————+———————- Educational | — | — | — | — ——————————————+————-+———————+———————- Other forms | — | — | — | — of work | — | — | — | — ——————-+———————+————-+———————+———————-
That would give us relative emphasis on different forms of work.
(4)
——————-+——————————-+———————+————————— | Total Amount Paid | |Relation of Native Christian | to Native Evangel- | Total Native | Contribution to Constituency.| istic Workers In- | Contribution.| Pay of Workers. | cluding all Pastors.| | ——————-+——————————-+———————+————————— | | | _____________|_____________________|______________|__________________
That would give us some idea of the extent to which the native
Christians support the existing work.
Now if we could form some idea of the force at work in relation to the country in which it is working; and some idea of the character of the force; and some idea of the relative emphasis laid on different forms of work, and some idea of the extent to which the native Christians support the work, we should, we hope, be able to form a reasonable estimate of the extent and progress of our efforts in the world. The whole number of forms would not be very large, for there would only be about 150 areas from which such forms would be required, and these could be combined so as to give us a view of the situation in the world such as the mind could grasp.
This is, we admit, rather a hasty and tentative expression of the way in which we might satisfy the present need; but it seems to us that the time is ripe for the consideration of this great subject, and we can think of no better plan than to propose tables, and then to leave others to criticise and amend them, or to suggest better ones, or better methods of attaining an object which few would deny to be desirable.
With proper tables, these or others, we should then be able to trace the meaning and results of each station which we founded and to put it into its place in a reasoned scheme of things, and that is the crying need.