XVI

THE PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF

FOREIGN MISSIONS

(Preached at the Simultaneous Mission which followed the Edinburgh Conference)

"Be ye wise Money Changers."

THESE words, though not found in the New Testament, are quoted as scripture by several of the early fathers, and by at least one of them as from the lips of Jesus. Interpreting them by some of his parables and by his words, "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light," I do not hesitate to take them as the motto for a discourse advocating the larger employment of the resources of his followers in the maintenance and extension of foreign missions; and that mainly on the ground of their progressive character. I suppose a shrewd business man, before investing in any commercial undertaking, will always ask, "Is it up to date? Is it adapting its methods to the ever-changing needs of the times? Is it what our American friends would call a live concern?" Herbert Spencer defines a living organism as an organism which continually adapts itself to its environment. Now I want to show that this

may confidently be affirmed of Foreign Missions; and if I illustrate this chiefly from the work of the society with which I am best acquainted, it must be understood that it is characteristic in a greater or less degree of all foreign mission work.

We have to consider the environment of the missionary abroad, and the intellectual environment of his directors at home. Beginning with the former, there has been a continual adaptation of our methods as we have become better acquainted with the needs of the various peoples. In the early days of missionary enterprise the evangelistic method was the only one adopted. The one idea of the missionary was to preach the Gospel, and where the people had a written language, to tranlate our scriptures into the vernacular. But it early became apparent that the evangelistic method must be supplemented by the educational. It was of little use to translate the scriptures if less than a tenth of the people were able to read them; and schools of some sort were an adjunct to our missions from the first. But as the eye sees only what it brings to power the see, and the beauty of the fairest landscape or the finest painting is lost upon the untrained eye, so the mind sees only what it brings the power to see, and the greatest truths of divine revelation will be fully appreciated only by the man whose whole nature has been elevated by the development of his mental and moral faculties. Therefore, throughout our mission fields effort has long been made to provide education, from the simplest elementary school up to the standard of the university; and for this education the

people themselves are increasingly willing to pay. Many of our missionaries who at first looked somewhat askance at this higher education have become its warmest advocates. They found that thousands of the higher classes in India and China who have never declared themselves converts to Christianity have gone forth from our schools and colleges imbued with the Christian spirit, accepting, if they do not always come up to the standard of, Christian ethics and venerating the name and character of Christ. They have lived to see, too, a complete reform of the Chinese system of education mainly through the influence of these colleges, and to see one of our Baptist missionaries summoned to assist the Chinese Government in drawing up such a scheme and prescribing the text-books to be translated from Western literature.

Let us turn for a moment to the medical work of our missions. It is evident that the missionary who would follow the example of his Master must go with healing for the body as well as for the soul; and as a matter of fact, the skill and kindness shown to patients in our hospitals have led large numbers of them to embrace the Christian faith. As the need of medical and surgical work increased the missionary societies provided the means to meet it. Within the last eighteen years the number of medical missionaries (men and women) who hold British diplomas has trebled, standing now at 395, and the American societies follow closely with 386. At Pekin a Union Medical College has been established, open to all Chinese students; and on the first degree day eighteen students received the

imperial diploma, of whom sixteen have devoted themselves to medical mission work.

The large employment of woman's agency is another indication of the progressive character of modern missions, and the adaptation of their methods to their environment. You know that the women of China and India, except the lowest classes, are practically inaccessible to male agency. The London Missionary Society sent out its first lady missionary in 1870. Now it has eighty in the field, besides 243 native bible-women and 347 female teachers. Nor must we overlook the enormous benefit to women in general resulting from the introduction of Christianity. It alone restores women to the place whence according to the old story she was originally taken-from man's side, as old Matthew Henry quaintly says, not from his feet to be kept in subjection by him, nor from his head to rule over him; but from his side, next his heart, to be loved and cherished by him as his fellow helper on the road of life."

Let me just mention as the latest instance of the adaptation of missionary work to its environment, the further development of Industrial Missions, where those who formerly passed their days in war and idleness are taught useful occupations; also branches at our ordinary mission stations where such training is provided; and further, a company, The Papuan Industries," formed on a business basis outside the missionary organization, but almost entirely supported by friends of foreign missions because of the enormous benefit it confers on the natives of that huge island.

Now let us turn from the advance in methods employed abroad to the advance in thought on the part of those who in the homeland support and direct our missions.

Our way of thinking of God has changed and with that the grand motive for missionary work. In the Calvinistic theology, the idea of God as Judge so obscured the idea of Him as Father, that to save men from the Judge's doom used to be the prime incentive to the missionary enterprise. Now in ten years' experience on the examining committee of one of our large missionary societies, I cannot remember a single candidate who said he was impelled mainly by this motive. Their views differed, of course, and their ways of expressing them, but they all told us that they were moved by the desire to impart the knowledge of the Father's love to all men as it is manifested in Jesus Christ.

Again, it has been truly said that the solidarity of the race must be recognized in modern missions, and that their aim ought to be, not simply the salvation of the individual, but the uplifting of each tribe and nation, the permeation of its whole life, domestic, social, political, with the spirit of Christ. Well, that is just the idea pressed forward by one of our missionaries at Benares in his recent book, "The Empire of Christ," which I commend to your notice, believing that we should all endorse its general principle, though we might differ about some of its practical applications. Its author himself would be the first to acknowledge that this general uplift of the people can be effected only