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Philanthropy in Missions
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^umenical Missionary
►nference :\idies
tihraxy of t:he trheolo^ical ^eminarjo
PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY
•d^D-
PRESENTED BY
Delavan L, Pier son
BV 2060 .E3 1901 Ecumenical Conference on
Foreign Missions, New Ycjrk, Philanthropy in missions
Philanthropy in Missions
ECUMENICAL MISSIONARY CONFERENCE STUDIES I-V
FOREIGN MISSIONS LIBRARY
156 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
I901
We love, because He first loved us. I John, iv. ig.
THE WINTHROP PRKSS NEW YORK
Price twenty-five cents, postpaid.
CONTENTS
Study I. One Motive in Many Methods 5
The Love of Christ Constraineth Us — Philanthropy Shown in the Methods — Illustrations of Missionary Philanthropy — All Methods Evangelistic.
Study II. Personal Presentation of the Gospel. . 15 Nature of the Message — Condition of the People, Moral and Spiritual — Lines of Approach : Through Social Intercourse ; Through Meetings ; Through the Truth Contained in Non-Christian Religions ; Through Direct Preaching of the Gospel as the Power of God Unto Salvation, satisfying the universal need — Development of the Native Church in Spirit- ual Life — Development of the Native Church as an Evangelistic Force.
Study III. Medical Work 31
The Need. — Most Immediate and Influential Means of Gaining Access to all Classes — Hospitals, Dispen- saries and Visiting — The Missionary Physician — Mo- tive and Opportunity of the Missionary Physician — Medical Training of Natives.
Study IV. Literary Work 41
Bible Translation — Example of the Early Church — Need of General Literature — Literary Character — Printing and Distribution.
Study V. Educational Work 54
Education Inherent in Christianity — Non-Chris- tian Education Inadequate — Religious Character: Emphatically Christian ; Determined by the Person- ality of the Teacher — Educational Character and Aims — Advantages of Manual and Industrial Train- ing— Necessity for Training in Teaching — Evan- gelistic Opportunity and Influence.
PREFACE.
This book is made up almost entirely of quotations from the Ecumenical Missionary Conference Report.* In most cases the exact words of the author are given, though sometimes it has been necessary to make verbal changes in order that the meaning of the part quoted shall be clear when taken from the context. In a few instances the substance only of what was said is given. The subjects of the quotations will be found more fully elaborated in the Report itself.
The book has been compiled with several objects in view. Its first object is to show that Christian missions of necessity embrace all kinds of philanthropic work and that philanthropy in its broadest sense is the motive of all missionary work. Indirectly these brief studies should lead to the conviction that the temporal need is only an evidence of the deeper spiritual need, and that work for humanity in general is incomplete when not distinctly Christian.
The second object of this book is to make it possible for those who may not find time to read the full Report to gain a fair insight into missionary work and methods as surveyed and discussed at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference.
The third object is to provide a course of studies for missionary meetings.
W. Henry Grant,
Assistant General Secretary Ecumenical Conference.
American Tract Society, New York, looo, 2 vols $1.50 Religious Tract Society, London, 6s.
Philanthropy in Missions.
STUDY I.
ONE MOTIVE IN MANY METHODS. " The Love of Christ Constraineth Us."
Philanthropy in missions is a Christlike, all-embracing love for man. It is the impulse which sends the mis- sionary forth and which acts upon him in the field in leading him to extend or vary his methods to meet con- ditions he could not have anticipated.
There is a comm.on impression that Philanthropy ex- ists on a large scale apart from Christianity. But where in Asia, Africa, or the Islands of the Pacific is there any sort of benevolent work conducted by non- Christians for people of another nation? We know of no such work persistently sustained which has not its root and supply in the Christian Church. A distinction is too commonly made between the Philanthropic and the Missionary motive, as though the one cared for man's temporal affairs while the other concerned itself with his spiritual interests. No such distinction is pos- sible. Philanthropy grows from the same root and pervades the whole work of Christian missions. Both are united in that love for mankind which extends itself into persistent effort for their full salvation, and which, while it begins with the felt wants of men, can not be satisfied till it brings them into a personal union with Christ through the Gospel.
God makes his universe the organ and expression of his love. To such love there is, there can be, no stopping place. A God who so loved would not spare even his
6 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
only begotten Son. A Son so sent would fill his life with miracles of love, to cleanse the foul leper, or raise the widow's son. Nor would he refuse to bear the bitter cross. Thus we are brought, and thus we may bring those to whom we are sent, face to face with the highest expression of Divine love in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Gordon, II., 103.) The passion of a Christ- like love for human lives develops in the soul of the Christian disciple powers and activities that reflect the mind of Christ. To a clear vision of the world, and a deep feeling toward the world, our Lord joined active effort for the world, and out of this holy triad of powers issues the passion of his love which for us to know is to be filled with all the fullness of God. (Hall, I., 149.) The missionary's impulse comes from likeness to Christ in consecration to the will of the Father and in the yearning to save men. Thus love originates all mis- sionary effort. This passion for redeeming humanity, based on love for a personal Christ, is one of the greatest phenomena of the century. (Capen, I., 190.) As love shapes the aim, love unchecked must shape its opera- tions. The missionary, whether he be a preacher, or a teacher, or a writer, must be full of the Spirit of Christ, and must reflect the life of Christ in his own life, or he will never win men to the service of his Master. (Washburn, II., 130.) Be our methods of work what they may, the extent to which they succeed in enthroning Christ in the hearts of the people is the measure of their efficiency. (Preston, II., loi.) In the absence of yearning love for the hearers and the opposers, the mis- sionary, however splendidly furnished otherwise, had much better return to his own land. . . . Not by might of human knowledge nor by the power of human eloquence, but by the spirit of the Lord God, reincar- nated in human hearts, preparing and pervading the
ONE MOTIVE IN MANY METHODS 7
message, thousands in all lands have yielded themselves to the power of the invisible God. (Oldham, II., 88.) A single, far-seeing, loving desire to lead men to Jesus Christ, then, distinguishes Philanthropy in missions from all efforts which stop at relieving their material distress. If the school teacher, or physician, or writer in mission fields has not this desire he is not a mis- sionary. If he is a missionary, even though like Paul his daily occupation be tent-making, the missionary Phi- lanthropy cries in his heart : " Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." As we can not limit or control the needs of the various classes of men encountered by mission- aries, those sent out should be fitted for all emergencies and all demands by this far-seeing Divine love. Because the missionary enterprise of evangelization is full of de- mands that are unexpected and perplexing, it is the character of the missionary rather than the method adopted which determines the outcome of the mission. How often have we been amazed at the comparative un- fruitfulness of splendidly equipped men, while others of no special mental outfit seem to have found the secret hiding place of power. (Oldham, II., 87.) "In Jesus Christ," by stating the position of the Christian, defines his point of view, defines the inspiration and the law of his relation to everything outside of Christ, and defines the source of the power that is effective through his activity. (Robson, I., 365.) In his personal qualities the missionary must truly represent his Master before men. No other qualification or combination of qualifica- tions will compensate for the lack of that Divine Vision which has captivated the heart and life for Christ, which makes a man live, and move, and have his being among the unseen realities. (Mackay, I., 301.) According to the New Testament standard the passion of a Christ- like love for human lives is a greater thing than elo-
8 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
quence, knowledge, or faith. . . . Without mission- ary passion, ministers are not able ministers of the New Testament; they are disabled, deficient, half-equipped; they lack the fullness of the Spirit of Christ. (Hall, I., 148-149.) It is the duty of the missionary to take in the Divine Spirit as the dominating power of his nature, and to receive from him direction, and guidance, and help. (Foster, I., 324.) In reading the lives of Chris- tians of many denominations, of varied intellectual at- tainments, engaged in a great variety of work in many lands, the one fact that confronts you is that these missionaries believe in the presence of the Spirit of God. (Halsey, I., 174.)
Philanthropy Shown in the Methods.
The motive of every missionary being love and his aim the personal presentation of the Gospel, his method of evangelization is simply the means by which he makes the Gospel of love a reality to the people. The simplicity of our Saviour's commands to preach the Gospel to every creature, has led many to think that the work of evangelization is solely the work of preaching as from a pulpit. But experience in the field soon shows that evangelization is a work of great complexity. Heathen nations have no general preparation for com- prehending the Gospel message. The idea of disinterest- edness in the missionary is commonly beyond the reach of the heathen mind, so that his approach repels rather than attracts. Caste and class combine with pride of scholarship and philosophy to fortify many against the missionary's discourse. Men, women, and children are separate classes, requiring differing methods of treat- ment. The seclusion of the women renders access to them by ministers nearly impossible and compels in many cases the use of other methods than the pulpit. Super-
ONE MOTIVE IN MANY METHODS 9
stition forges many a heavy chain, and it is always around woman's neck that its links are most tightly fastened. It is the venerable grandmothers of China, the Bibis of the Indian Zenana, who to-day are keeping many a man from entering the kingdom. It is from woman's lips that that poison flows which enters deepest into the life of the nation, for shut out from all that would enlighten, woman instils into her children's minds the darkness of her own. The tightly shut doors of the Zenanas will only open to a woman's touch ; it must be a woman's voice that tells there the story of redeeming love, and the same is true in modified degrees of heathen homes the wide world over. (Mrs. McLaren, I., 114.) There is no work which God has given to women which exceeds in beauty and grandeur the work to be done by woman for woman. (Mrs. Archibald, II., loi.) This complexity of the work of evangelization necessitates the use of many methods, the only requirement being, that besides all other training and ability, the missionary possess the true motive and purpose. One missionary thus inspired, uses the method of formal preaching, an- other the method of teaching, another the method of medical work, another the method of literary work. Yet all preach the Gospel. This diversity of methods accords with the practice of Jesus Christ, the model Evangelist and Missionary ; who in sending a list of his works, to convince the inquiring prisoner of Herod of his Messiahship, spoke of formal preaching as only one of many. " The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and to the poor the Gospel is preached." Now, he used the written word of Scripture and expository discourse, now he called in his power to heal ; now he made himself a social leader with limitless conversa- tional powers. Yet he preached the Gospel in all that
lo PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
he did. It is the experience in the missionary fields of to-day that all these kinds of work evangelize. If they did not serve the evangelistic purpose they would have no place in modern missions.
Illustrations of Missionary Philanthropy.
There is sometimes a tendency to check the missionary who takes up what is called " merely philanthropic " work for sufferers by calamity. But the experience of those in the field as well as the example of the Master is a complete condemnation of such limitations of love. Whatever " opens doors " in a country like China or Thibet may well be welcomed as from the hand of God. As famine proved a mighty blessing to old Jacob's people so it has proved a mighty blessing to the people of China. The happy results of famine relief are: the saving of life; an intimate knowledge of the home life; the opening up of the country to missionary residence and effort ; the actual saving of souls. Many recipients of aid will become inquirers after the truth, some of them will become true penitents genuinely converted. Many who have received no aid whatever have yielded to the conviction that the Christian Church, which not only preaches but practices love to one's neighbor, is the true Church. (Laughlin, II., 233.) A missionary in India tells of villages which had always refused to receive the Gospel preacher. But when famine afflicted the land the people of those villages came by thousands asking help from the missionaries whose love they knew, and afterward sent formal deputations to apologize for the hostility of the past and to promise good-will for the future. (Winsor, II., 230.) Can any form of evan- gelistic work be more profound in its effects than that compassionate care for lepers, of whom it is said that " When the lepers realize that Christ still lives and pities
ONE MOTIVE IN MANY METHODS ii
them and is willing to save them, the effect on them is so marvelous that it makes the missionary realize as never before that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world." (Miss Budden, II., 250.) Can we overestimate the influence upon the heathen and Christian natives alike of a refined woman binding up the sores of a poor leper in the name of Jesus Christ? (Bailey, II., 249.) When the Christian missionary is moved to provide homes and schools for the child-widows of India, as one says, " In every case the love and care which they re- ceived was a revelation to them, and nearly everyone yielded with joy to her Saviour, to become a new creature in every sense. (Miss Abbott, II., 242.) Similar re- sults attend the services of missionaries to orphans. Painstaking care .has given a practicable system of raised letters to the blind in various mission fields. Shall we ignore or begrudge the services of missionaries to such work? and if so on what grounds? Blind Peter, a Chinese beggar, was taken from the streets and taught to read the Bible. He received the truth, talked it, lived it, sang it. He also made the organ tell it in many Gospel services. He was a valued and trusted helper. His sincere Christian life and victorious death both told of the power of God upon him. (Cunningham, II., 244.) Surely the love which opens the powers of such unfortunates not only reveals the heart of the Mas- ter himself, but has received his favor and blessing.
So, too. medical work is founded on a need which is universal and felt by all. It has proved a permanent agency of evangelization. Were the offices of the doctor merely a bribe to induce men to listen to the Gospel they would soon lose their power to draw men to Christ. We believe them to be the necessary outcome of that humanity which Christ taught and lived. (Post, II., 195- ) Why should it be supposed that the Gospel
12 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
preached conversationally by a woman physician in an atmosphere made friendly by gratitude for her skill, will not reach the heart as directly as when preached from a pulpit or taught in a woman's meeting? (Dr. Rachel Benn, II., 194.) There can be no difference of opinion upon the evangelistic value of the work of literary mis- sionaries in the translation of the Bible. " To give to men the message of God on lips touched with a live coal from the altar of God is the first true greeting of the ideal missionary as he lays the foundation of a living church. To hand to his people God's written revelation ; plain, permanent, perfect, as far as anything partly hu- man can attain to the perfect, is when his other work is over, his ideal farewell." (Edmonds, II., 7.) But the importance of providing general Christian literature as an agency becomes more apparent every year in every part of the mission field. " We have taught the children to read, and having done that we must put something to read into their hands. (Miss Thoburn, II., 7^.) The evangelistic value of the literary method of approach to the people appears on realizing that the tract, the paper, or the book goes where the missionary can not, and abides after the missionary has gone his way. But neglect of this method is surrender to the enemy. " The Christian nations have no copyright, no monopoly of the world's knowledge. If the Chris- tian does not go with the Christian's interpretation of nature and of nature's God, someone else will go with another interpretation." (Spencer, II., 166.) Arabic literature, proud, self-confident, domineering, stands forth like the mighty Goliath of a vast Philistine camp to challenge the armies of the living God (Hul- bert, II., 46.) The defenders of Hinduism are on the whole much better equipped in respect to periodical lit- erature than are the exponents of Christianity. (Lovett,
ONE MOTIVE IN MANY METHODS 13
IL, 42.) When we bear in mind that tons upon tons of atheistic, agnostic, and pernicious leaflets are issued annually we dare not close our eyes to the ever- increasing and imperative obligation upon the mis- sion presses, to print Christian literature, and to see what is printed is put into circulation. (Rudi- sill, II., 56.) If you take books like any of those great Christian classics that have become part of the lifeblood of the Anglo-Saxon nature, and which are incalculable in their influence here, you have the measure of the opportunity abroad now before the Christian Church. The great missionary weapon of the Twentieth Century must be a literature saturated with the Gospel and efficient for the proclamation of Christ. (Lovett, II. , 84.) This impulse of Christian love is also fully justified by the blessing of God seen in the evangelistic effect of schools which are taught by missionaries full of the spirit of Christ. " We can not teach a geography lesson without striking a blow at both Hinduism and Mohammedanism. ... In the Christian College we have the best evangelistic agency that there is for reach- ing all classes of the community. (Wilkie, II., 140.) There is no sphere of work which promises higher re- sults to the man who is capable of reaching those re- sults ; there is no sphere of work which demands greater spiritual earnestness, and quickness, and sensitiveness. (Thompson, II., 118.) It is a matter of constant experi- ence that a heathen father deliberately sends his son to the mission school for the sake of the moral teaching of the creed which he does not accept. (Barber, II., 116.) More and more missionaries are moved by their desire to see the people lifted to a higher grade of life, to offer Christian education, primary, industrial, or higher, to larger classes of those submerged in superstition and ig- norance, (Leonard, II., 119.)
14 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
All Methods Evangelistic.
It is necessary only to study in detail the work of the Hospital, the Dispensary, the Press, and the School to see that Ihey are co-ordinate in value with the pulpit as means of securing an entrance for the Gospel to the hearts of the people, provided the missionary using them is an evangelist full of the spirit of Christ. And no man lacking this spirit can be called a missionary. The further we gO' the more clear does it become that the love of Christ in the worker makes every branch of the work fruitful. These various kinds of work, often called auxiliary to the work of preaching the Gospel, are not even indirect methods of evangelization where the missionary's qualifications are spiritual. They are direct and conclusive expressions of Christian Philan- thropy— the limitless love of Jesus Christ for mankind — and it is this love which has compelled missionaries to adopt many methods, becoming all things to all men, if by any means they might save some.
PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS 15
STUDY II. PERSONAL PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL.
Nature of the Message.
The purpose of Foreign Missions is to enthrone Christ in the hearts of men, to make all men the temples for his personal indwelling, that he may be the firstborn among many brethren and may fill the world with himself. (Strong, I., 70.) It is the aim of Foreign Missions to make Jesus Christ known to the world, with a view to the full salvation of men and their gathering into true and living churches. (Speer, I., yy.) Our aim is to change the unconverted and indifferent into interested inquirers and these inquirers into strong and aggressive Christian believers ; and we are to do this through per- sonal dealing with them, recognizing in the most de- graded the possibilities of restored moral and spiritual fellowship with God and brotherhood to man, including capabilities of sharing the best society on earth or in heaven, Jesus Christ was the highest and most perfect personality the world has ever seen, the ideal son and brother in actual realization, and therefore our supreme model in personal dealing with men. Holding this con- scious sonship and brotherhood as our highest dignity and most priceless possession, we seek in the name and Spirit of Christ to awaken the same consciousness in those to whom we are sent. (Gordon, II., 102.) The missionary is primarily a messenger to tell a great story, and also a witness of what the Christ of that story has wrought for himself and the world. The great mass of heathendom is not scholarly, is not philosophical; it needs not argument so much as mercy, relief, sympathy, primary instruction, the sight of pure homes and
i6 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
Christly lives, and, in the midst of all these things, the lifting up of the one Lord and Redeemer. This message should be carried to all men with glowing love and radiant loveliness of spirit. (Barrows, I., 357.) Evan- gelical Christianity teaches a life of simple faith in an Almighty Redeemer, of personal and immediate fellowship with a personal God. And since it preserves intact the full idea of man's personality its value will be felt in proportion as paganism is stirred by the pro- gressive forces of civilization, for these call into activity the individuality of man. (Purves, I., 373-374-) When Christianity sends its ambassadors to heathendom, to save the individual is the first step, while the objective is the Christianizing of the nation. Every member of the body politic must be made familiar in idea and in ex- perience with the good news of a personal God who reveals himself, who incarnated as man has lived and died to make atonement for sin, who now lives to inspire and help all willing souls to conquer sm. (Bar- ber, II., 112.) There is no permanent advance in ethical prosperity or orderliness in society which does not begin with the regeneration of the individual soul. (Hartranft, I., 348.) The great mission fields need men and women who are ready and willing to spend and be spent in making Christ known to individuals. (Tho- burn, II., 109-110.) The man who can say, the Lord Jesus saved me from the guilt of sin by dying for me, he is saving me daily by the Holy Spirit from the power of sin, and he is going to save me with his full salvation when he comes again — the man who can say this on his own account and out of the depth of his heart — that is the man for a missionary. (Stock, I., 93.)
Condition of the People, Moral and Spiritual. The actual task of the missionary implies a dealing
PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL 17
with men who are not simply erringly or defectively religious, but who are antagonized by sin to true re- ligion. In every man, whether inside or outside of Christendom, the effect of sin has been to generate an inclination toward evil, a dislike of submission to spir- itual influences, a materialistic self-centered temper. This irreligion is the great difficulty of the evangelist dealing with human nature in Christian lands; for the missionary in heathen lands it is a difficulty, not less in any way, but rather the greater, in that it lies intrenched behind religions which conceal and shelter it. (Robson, I., 365.) Mighty religious systems have had sway for centuries in the distant East. What claim can have more weight upon us than the utter failure of these sys- tems to redeem the races among whom they had their origin? Granted all their good, yet the final test must be what, as a whole, they have made of their peoples. Pure transcendental philosophy has ruled amidst the leaders of the Hindu races. But there was no person- ality, and there could be no Christ. Pantheism has done its utmost during millenniums, and what do we find? It has blurred the sense of personality, for God is all and even sin is from him; moral power has followed personal responsibility into its grave; the common people bow before idols whose temples are sculptured with obscenity ; the Nautch girl and the tem- ple prostitute bring the sanctions of religion to their shame; woman is degraded; child-marriage legalizes brutal lust and dooms myriads of girl-widows to lives of ignominy; and caste relentlessly imposes slavery upon vast multitudes of pariahs. That is what thou- sands of years of Brahmanism have done for India. (Barber, II., 330.) Time fails me to depict adequately modern Hinduism; with its absolute divorce between religion and morality; so that a man may be at once a
i8 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
most devout worshiper of the gods, a priest reverenced as such and bowed down to by the people, and yet guilty of every vice and immorality of life. The vast majority of the pious endowments are corrupt to the core. They are a mass of crime and vice and gigantic swindling. The Brahman priesthood of to-day is the mainstay of every unholy, immoral, and cruel custom and supersti- tion in the land. (Chamberlain, I., 503.) Many people think that the South Sea Islanders are better without the Gospel, and ought not to be troubled with our civilization, but these people have never seen the crimes, the cannibalism, the polygamy, the infanticide, nor any or all of the cruelties to which woman is there sub- jected. (Paton, I., 497.) Some writers have said that Christianity, as introduced by the missionaries, has robbed the native of his primitive hilarity, and made him dull and unhappy. Could these writers have seen cannibal Fiji as it was when the glare of oven fires spread dismay through a district, and the exacting de- mand for human victims sat like a perpetual nightmare upon the community, they would never have formed such an opinion. (King, I., 500.) The non-Christian religions should be studied not in books only, but in living men, and in the religious and social institutions which have grown out of these religions. With due respect to the many able scholars and writers who have essayed translations, expositions, and popular lectures on the religions of the East, it is impossible to state Eastern thought in terms of the English language. A Christian language of necessity gives a Christian color- ing to the thought expressed. Edwin Arnold's " Light of Asia " gives a semi-Christian Buddha. It is a beauti- ful poem, but not Buddha history. Burma and Siam are the living Buddhism. (Wynkoop, I., 363.) Could anything more touchingly illustrate the utter helpless-
PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL 19
ness of Buddhism than its inability to comfort in the presence of death? How impressive the contrast with the words of Him who once stood near an open grave, and said to the mourners : " I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Courage, hope, sympathy, modesty, respect, appreciation — these are some of the elements in the right Christian attitude, but these may finally be united in the Christian heart in a great, overwhelming compassion and pity as one confronts the non-Christian world. (Barrows, I., 362.)
Lines of Approach: Through Social Intercourse.
The endeavor of the missionary, which should pre- cede all others, even that of preaching the Gospel, is to show that, though a stranger, he is a friend. Once let him really prove that, and he can begin to work with hope, and not before. This is because his is the re- ligion of love, and he need not expect to spread that religion unless he himself is loved. . . . We have, indeed, to go to Asia to find that general and public so- ciability which has well-nigh departed from us. In the Oriental bazaar everyone is talking to everyone else, and perfect strangers meet with a free interchange of civilities and mutual expression of pleasure at making each other's acquaintance. That this element in Oriental manners, which affords complete accessibility of every man to every other, is an ordering of God, for us to take advantage of, goes without saying. Political opening of doors into countries is as nothing compared with this social entrance, which the missionary can find free to him if he will walk therein and gladly avail him- self of every opportunity to meet men with wise Chris- tian good- will. (Thomson, I., 305-307.) A flaunting of one's own people and their ways as over against the
20 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
" Effete East " can never pave the way for that lending of the heart to the power of the message which is the paramount object, (Oldham, II., 87.) Many a noble missionary has been denied entrance to hearts sorely needing help on account of lack of what the world calls good breeding. (Allen, I., 308.) An open door to the American missionaries in a Syrian town was closed for eight years because the missionary who first went there to live refused, when calling on the governor, to drink the small cup of coffee which Arab etiquette required the governor to offer him. (Thomson, I., 306.) The mis- sionary needs to get the language, not only to give the people his message, but in order to get into the very thought and life of the people and learn their true con- dition, so that he may get down to their side. (Correll, I., 318.) If we are to reach the hidden springs of feeling and trust which bubble up silently in every human heart, we must do it by a free use with the people of their own mother tongue. (Mrs. Baird, II., 90.) The lesson of combining zeal, fervor, and intense enthusiasm with broad charity and sanity is the lesson that we all need to learn. We must strive to work with and not against all who honestly and in good faith strive for the betterment of mankind. (Theodore Roosevelt, I., 42.) We can often teach the women by showing that we are their friends. (Miss Duncan, II., 99.) Moving the tent excited curiosity and gave excuse for talking to the women. " When I get done in India," I said to some drawn in this way, " I am going to my Father's house, and I should like you also to go there.". A woman came out from behind the crowd and asked : " Do you think your Father would give me a room in that house?" "Oh, yes, he sent me to ask you to come." " My friends," said a woman, turning to those around her, " I believe in this Saviour of the world. Since last
PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL 21
year I have never worshiped idols." (Mrs. Archibald. II., 102.)
Lines of Approach: Through Meetings.
The term meetings must be taken to comprise all kinds of meetings, from those with the individual in- quirers to those composed of large audiences in buildings set apart for the purpose. It must include house-to- house visitation, informal conversation by the wayside, and all kinds of street and chapel preaching. No evan- gelistic method is so highly valued as personal conversa- tion : nothing else admits so much faithful and per- sistent projecting of oneself upon the hearer; no other method brings the preacher and the people so close together ; and in consequence no other method necessi- tates so much personal piety on the part of the mis- sionary. (Mrs. Baird, II., 91.) Our usual way to at- tract the people was to walk down the street. Sometimes one would speak to us. Sometimes a potter at work in an open yard would give an excuse for standing and talking. Sometimes a tree in bloom would give oppor- tunity to ask a question of a woman in a doorway near by. Sometimes the sight of the tent would set the people to asking questions. Sometimes the presence of the missionary alone would attract large crowds. . . , Non-Christian women usually will not come to general meetings. Som.e may come to those where Christian women attend. But to reach the heathen the missionary must go to their houses where large numbers may be collected in some shady place, shed, or veranda. (Miss Baskerville, II., 95.) I have usually taken with me a Bible-woman who is able to play the accordion, and by means of that and singing we gather large audiences of women. (Miss Duncan, II., 100.) I do not favor in- discriminate visiting, but there is a harvest in visiting
22 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
women who attend meetings, former pupils, and other hom.es into which an entrance may be had in some legit- imate way. We should visit systematically, faithfully, and as frequently as seems desirable, with Scripture read- ing and prayer in every possible place. (Miss Preston, II., loi.) An evangelist in the village does not need a pulpit or even a house of worship. He does not even stand up to preach, but in the evenings of the hot season he may be found sitting cross-legged under a village tree, with possibly a score of people around him asking ques- tions and often pausing to discuss some matter among themselves. If he is a singer he will probably sing some hymns and possibly pray. But he is bound by no fixed routine and never loses sight of his objective point. (Thoburn, II., no.) The reward of this work of itin- erating is great. In one large village a mother expressed regret that her daughter was not present, for she said, " After you went away from here last year she could not speak of anything but you." And her sister added, " She prayed to your God Jesus every night before she went to sleep." (Miss Baskerville, II., 95.) I place in the forefront of all missionary work the constant preaching of the Gospel. Not one woman in a thousand in China can read a single letter, and not more than ten per cent, of the men have ever been to school. How shall this great unlettered mass ever hear of Christ ex- cept through the public preaching of the Gospel? The street chapel that I was in charge of in Peking was open every day at twelve o'clock and remained open until five or six. No fewer than 15,000 people have heard the Gospel in that one chapel every year. A scene often witnessed in China is this : A foreigner is preaching. A Chinaman who is a scholar from the country district comes in. He listens with contempt upon his face; but as the missionary proceeds, quoting
PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL
23
from Mencius and Confucius, contempt gives place to wonder, and he is compelled to say, " I did not know the foreigners had sense enough to speak like that." Through the preaching of the Gospel prejudice and opposition have largely died away in the neighborhood of the older stations, and large numbers of people have heard something of Christ. (Owen, II., 105.) In India the ordinary methods of the missionary will not effect the cultured classes. Great numbers of young men are now pouring forth from Government schools who can speak English. Educated Christian men should be in- duced to go in numbers to India to work among the English-speaking natives. (Pentecost, II., 103.)
Lines of Approach: Through the Truth Contained in Non-Christian Religions.
The preacher must avail himself of all the truth al- ready in the minds of his non-Christian hearers. There are not two sources of truth but one. Every grain of truth in the mind of the hearer unacknowledged by the preacher is a mountain obstacle against his usefulness. (Oldham, II., 86.) Every fragment of truth imbedded in those erring and imperfect religions, every germ of spiritual insight however distorted, every motive of moral origin however misguided in operation, every yearning proper to the human heart however faint and uncertain, the Son of Man regards as part of the in- heritance to be rescued, conserved, purified, and per- fected in Himself. . . . There is a law in the mind and conscience of those who are without the written revelation; and there are prophecies lurking in their rites, their traditions, and their prayers. . . , Behind all non-Christian religions are the worshipers ; they are the men and the women for whom the Son of Man laid down his life; the erring forms of belief and wor-
24
PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
ship that intervene between him and them can not impede the outgoing of his love to seek for them deliverance into the liberty of God's children. (Robson, I., 367.) The true conception of these non-Christian religions seems to be this : That originally they had more or less revealed truth in them, but as time went on they lost much of this pristine excellence, and so, as we find them to-day, they present a sad mixture of a little truth and much error. Yet the fact that they have some truth in them indicates the way of approach to those who hold these faiths, viz. : by the truths we have in common. (Jackson, I., 362.) And so, recognizing that Truth of God which has lighted men in all the cen- turies past, we yet proclaim that the people of China, as the people of Korea and Japan, need that supreme reve- lation in Jesus Christ, not of an impersonal principle and force, but of the Son of the living God. (Knox, I., 392.) Missionaries are keenly alive to the fact that some of the non-Christian faiths are keeping their place in the world because they minister in a measure to some of the needs of the human heart. They are preserved from utter condemnation by the great truths, which amid all errors and perversions, they undoubtedly contain. (Barrows, I., 358.) It is important for a missionary to Muslims to know the Koran well ; not merely at second-hand, but so as to be able to quote accurately the more important passages bearing on his work. Not only does it con- ciliate the Mohammedan, by showing him that the mis- sionary has at least done him the justice of studying his sacred book, but often a captious critic is silenced by an apt quotation. (Wilson, I., 396.) Lines of Approach: Through Direct Preaching of the Gospel as the Power of God unto Salvation, Satisfy- ing the Universal Need. To place Christ before paganism in his completeness
PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL 25
as the Bible reveals him is perhaps the best of all ways of meeting the doubts of both pagan and Christian in- quirers. (Purves, I., ZT7-) One does not have to work very long among the heathen to realize very clearly that the Gospel is meant for them. (Miss Budden, II., 249.) The theme of the evangelist is Christ, and power attends his word. Evangelists preach Christ with power sent down from heaven. (Thoburn, II., 107.) Jesus satisfies the heart hunger. Human nature is the same every- where. Christ is a world Saviour. (Vance, I., 86.) All should study the Bible with reference to the soul needs of others, and expect to wing their shafts entirely from its pages. (Mrs. Baird, XL, 90.) There is no more delicate or discriminating task before the Gospel preacher than that of suiting his methods and his mes- sage to the differing aptitudes and wants of his hearers. Preaching to a South Sea Island congregation must necessarily be very different from that to a Hindu audience, or to keen, rationalistic Japanese hearers. (Oldham, II., 85-86.) The preaching of the truth clearly and simply is of the utmost importance. There should be frequent repetition until there is intelligent understanding. (Miss Preston, II., 100.) No matter how we introduce it the Gospel message must be pre- sented as simply, earnestly, and convincingly as possible. The women know that in order to be taught to read they must take the Scripture lessons and learn to read the Bible. Oftentimes the most bigoted women become at last the most earnest students of the Bible. Oral les- sons will need to be given first. But as there is a power in the beautiful words of the Bible, if the attention of the women can be gained while we read, reading is preferable to wholly telling the story ourselves. Pic- tures will be found to be a great aid in teaching. (Miss Duncan, II., 99-100.) The missionary should stoop to
26 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
fill the simplest words with the deepest thoughts. (Edmonds, II., 26.) The experience of Henry Richards in Africa is instructive. His field was entirely new. While feeling his way into the knowledge of the lan- guage, he began to translate and give the people verses from the Bible. It seemed necessary to teach them the Old Testament; that God is the Creator; that He is good; and that they were sinners. He went on in this way, but they would not acknowledge that God is good, nor that they were sinners. He continued teaching for six and one-half years and there were no Christians. When he told them that they were sinners he had to use a word meaning "bad people." They were very angry. They seemed to have no conscience of sin. He began to trans- late the Gospel of Luke and immediately the people became interested, and finally he says : " Work on the Word of God went on until I came to the crucifixion; then the climax occurred, when I told them * You say you are not sinners. There is Jesus dying for you. He never did anything wrong, but he dies for your sins and mine.' Then I could see that the Holy Spirit was convincing them." (Richards, TL, 93.) It is a common saying among the people of Satara, with reference to the preaching, that wherever the preacher may begin, he always ends with Jesus Christ. (Bruce, II., 66.)
Development of the Native Church in Spiritual Life.
The Foreign missionary has a double duty: First to evangelize the heathen, and second to build up the Christian character of the converts. The building up of the Christian character is of the utmost importance, and its results will tell and continue to influence the world when the voice of the evangelist is silenced by death. It is almost impossible to describe the value of a living church. The converts gathered in are to become
PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL 27
the instrument of evangelistic work, the vessel filled with the Gospel treasure, and the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Church must realize that it is a part of the most sacred body of Christ. It must present a strong and positive testimony to the world. An ideal church will stand as an uncompromising witness against sin, with a spirit of hunger and thirst after righteousness ; with a heart of love, throbbing with the sympathetic mind and spirit of Jesus Christ ; a living power to help in all good work. When we attempt to edify and strengthen the small society of converts gath- ered at any mission station, we find the work difficult and progress slow. (Galpin, II., 273.) After experi- ence the missionary finds that a process, not a single act, is what demands his devotion. His work for the moral culture of men, like that of the Apostle Paul, is but begun when they have believed. The moral sense must be cultivated continuously. (D wight, II., 60.) The character of the churches in India, China, and other lands will depend very largely upon the spiritual life and devotion of the native ministry ; and the number and the efficiency of the ministry will in turn depend upon the spirituality of the membership, and that again upon the care taken in receiving members into the churches. The note which ran throughout all the preaching and teaching of our Lord and his apostles was the " new birth," the " new life," and the " new man." This is the dominant thought voiced by Peter on the Day of Pente- cost and echoed by John in the Revelation. The pur- poses of the Church's existence indicate the character of its membership. It is to exhibit to the heavenly powers and intelligences through all ages the manifold wisdom of God, to show forth to all men the excellencies of Christ Jesus our Lord, his power, his wisdom, his righteousness, his grace, and love. All this can be predi-
28 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
cated of but one class of people, namely, regenerated ones. . . . How necessary that they should be ro- bust, self-reliant, pure, and full of abounding spiritual life. Discipline is an education, a process of training for the unruly in the school of Christ. It is also a vindication of the character of God and his Church : " Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters." (McLaurin, II., 275-277.) The first great thing is to bring them closer to the blessed Lord, to develop and deepen within them the Christian life, the power of the Gospel within the soul, which is the great power of all Christian effort. Then, there is the course of study in different directions : The ten commandments, the life of Christ, Bible drill, and class instruction and conference, taking each man and getting him to report to others his experiences, and conferring personally with the men, who are doing the work, in all the points which relate to their daily ex- perience. (Wynkoop, II., 270-271.)
Development of the Native Church as an Evangelistic Force.
Every missionary wherever his work, being essentially an evangelist, the scope of his work will be measured by his ability to multiply himself by the native evangelists he finds, trains, and guides. In this ability, or the lack of it, more than anywhere else is the difference between small and great missionaries. (Chester, II., 255.) This work is one of the most important that can fall to the lot of the missionary, and it calls for infinite patience, tact, skill, and grace. The missionary may be led into the error of so vigilantly overseeing and controlling every detail of the work, as to leave little scope for the
PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL 29
{Icvclopincnt of iiidividnal character in the workers, making them either restless and dissatisfied, or so de- pendent as to be useless without her support. But with judicial guidance and wise counsel the worker may be led on step by step in the performance of Christian duties, doubtless often trying the patience of the mis- sionary, but just as often developing unsuspected ability, and filling a sphere of usefulness among her own people to which no foreigner could ever attain. (Miss Belton, II., 266.) We are merely starting the work which the natives must carry on, and we must continually try to prepare them for that responsibility. Leave the work in their hands, let them have as much of the counseling as possible. (Haskell, II., 265.) One of my missionary fathers continually lectured me on the point of develop- ing responsibility. Up to the time that he came to our mission all the native people were accustomed to ask the missionaries about everything. He astonished them greatly after he came there by refusing point blank to advise them. He would simply tell them the principles are so and so ; it is your business to decide, and it is very much better for you that you should decide. (San- ders, II., 259.) We are doing our best to train one man in each village religiously as a leader for his own village. These men can not read or write, but they are taught to sing and pray, and tell of the love of Jesus. The work of this leader is to hold prayers with the Christians and inquirers in his own circle. These lead- ers are, of course, all unpaid workers, but the training of such for this special work is doing great good, (Parker, II., 264.) The training and teaching of cate- chists form now an essential part of all missionary work. No lay evangelist should be permanently ap- pointed until he has undergone some course of training. (Hackett, II., 253.) How shall we manage so that we
30 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
may have this financial question out of the way, and get into new relation to our native Christians? Abso- lutely no question of finances and no question of superior power and executive ability of the foreign missionary should for one instant be allowed to come in between us and this tremendous purpose for which we are sent forth, to make men. (Ewing. IT., 254.)
PHILANTHROPE IN MISSIONS 31
STUDY III. MEDICAL WORK.
The Need.
Think of millions of men, in the far outposts of progress, surrounded only by superstition, who are keenly sensitive to pain, who have no knowledge of any power or any opportunity of relief; and who, when pain touches them with its iron grasp, must needs lie helpless and struggle in fearful agony, until the pain has spent itself or is forever stilled in the touch of death ! When a medical man comes with his fine science amongst these people, he seems to come as a worker of miracles. He opens up a new realm-, he breaks down the doors of superstition. So he is often the first herald of the Cross in the places of pioneer mission work throughout the world. (Lynch, II., 188.) Those living in Christian lands can have little conception of the extent and power of quackery in the unevangelized world. Among the lower types of humanity in Africa, Polynesia, and aboriginal America, religion is quackery. The abject fear of the unknown on the side of the people, and the devilish cunning and malice of the sor- cerers and the medicine men or witch doctors on the other, have given to the latter an incredible power for evil. Medical missions break the power and destroy the prestige of the medicine-men and witch doctors. They teach the true nature of disease and death, and their in- dependence of the malignant spirits which are supposed to be their causes. They urge the use of the means which God has given to men to cure the one and ward off the other. (Post, IL, 196-197.) There are in the
32 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
world something over 5,000 Protestant mission stations. There are in each station an average, I presume, of at least 200,000 people, to whom that mission station must minister in all things spiritual and medical. Six hun- dred and fifty medical missionaries are scattered among 5,000 mission stations. That gives you the amount of work which the medical missionary is expected to do. (Dr. Grace Kimball, II., 199.) The supply of medical missionaries is unhappily only too small, and in many parts of the world in which missionaries are work- ing there is no possibility of securing qualified medical help for themselves or their families. (Battersby, II., 209.) In India, you know, the work is only limited by the doctor's strength. If you could work every minute of the twenty-four hours, and then add twenty-four hours more to the day, you could not get through with the work that would come to you to do. (Levering, II., 216.) If any of you have ever had the experience that I have had, of treating 8,000 patients a year, with 20,000 prescriptions to fill, you will then deem it a blessing that there is a school for training druggists, nurses, and doctors. (Bryan, II., 221.) In a country where women are not honored, they are left to suffer untold miseries. In China there are women who would rather disease should run its course than call a man to treat them. (Johnson, II., 223.) For this reason a woman physician is welcomed most cordially. They tell her what they will tell nobody else in all the world, of their sorrows and pains, and they will allow her to do what they will allow nobody else; they will listen to the Gospel from her. Think of going into a one-room mud hut without any furniture, and trying to perform an operation, and then compare that with the same operation performed in a place fitted up as a hospital. (Levering, II., 190.) The hospital is a perfect heaven compared with their
MEDICAL WORK
33
own homes and the nurses are very angels in the sight of the Arabs and Jews. (Torrance, I., 446.)
Most Immediate and Iniluential Means of Gaining Access to All Classes.
A doctor may live in security among robbers and thugs. He can visit districts closed to all others. He is called to the inmost recesses of the harem and the zenana. He is the welcome guest in the house of Jew- ish rabbis, of Mohammedan ulema, of Hindu and Bud- dhist priests. He is regarded as a guardian angel by the poor, and he stands as an equal before kings and rulers. (Post, II., 196.) Curiously enough the princi- ple of attracting the regard of the people by medical work was used by the French Government on entering Madagascar and finding itself confronted by the turbu- lent hate of its people. (Cousins, II., 198.) At Tiberias the people came when they heard that an English doctor had arrived, for there was no skilled medical aid. But the moment the Gospel was preached bans of excom- munication were issued from the synagogues against any who had relations with the missionary. But the Jewish mothers love their children. In spite of the ban they brought their children to the doctor. Before long the Rabbi's daughter and finally the Rabbi himself became sick. He had to appeal to the missionary and the Medical Mission was thenceforth established in its in- fluence. (Torrance, I., 445.) A woman in Africa was carried a cripple to the mission station and went back to her home cured after four months, passing through a tribe which had always refused to receive missionaries. She said to these people, " We have not understood the people at God's station. They are for our good. See me. I was carried; now I walk." And from that time every door in that district was open to the missionary.
34 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
(Lynch. II., i88.) In 1884 Dr. H. N. Allen successfully treated the wounded prince, Min Yong Ik, in Korea. This secured to him personally that royal favor which has been ever since extended to his colleagues and suc- cessors. (Avison, I., 537.)
Hospitals, Dispensaries, and Visiting.
Medical work in missions should be done through both hospital and dispensary, and this, as a rule, from the beginning. The dispensary from a missionary stand- point is like a street chapel. It has the advantage of a more regular audience and of favor and good-will gained by the medical work. But, as in the case of a street chapel, its audience is constantly changing. Many come but once, and these are liable to get an inadequate idea of the Gospel message presented to them. By means of a dispensary much seed-sowing can be done, and it serves admirably to advertise Christian work ; it is possi- ble through the dispensary to distribute large numbers of tracts and portions of the Scripture. A hospital is naturally required to complete the work begun, and it is in the wards and regular daily services of the hospital that the Gospel is made plain. The hospital affords time, under most favorable circumstances, for leading men to Christ. (Beebe, II., 211.) At the dispensary the cards given to the patients, with their number on, have printed on the back a concise statement of Chris- tianity. The carrying out of the missionary idea in dispensary or hospital does not militate against the re- ception of the missionary physician by the heathen, or prevent them from coming to him for medical aid. " We will wait for the reading and the prayer," said three Brahmans, " though we be not of your religion we believe that your prayers are heard." (Chamberlain, II., 203.) An important feature of hospital work is the
MEDICAL WORK 35
following up of the interest excited, making the most of the access to the hearts of the patients. A plan of giving the history of each patient from country districts to the missionary residing there would increase many fold the efficiency of the hospital as an evangelistic agency. (Beebe, II., 214.) The woman trained nurse must do the work of a deaconess also, as she has a field unequaled for religious work. I think there is no more valuable worker to be found on the mission field. (Beebe, II., 213.) The root of China's redemption must be in her home life. But the minister can not enter that secluded circle. The woman physician, however, can penetrate the furthest corner of her sister's seclusion. The work of a woman physician often brings her into positions of prominence and authority which heathen- ism has never dreamed of as belonging to any but a man. (Dr. Rachel Benn, II,, 193.)
The Missionary Physician.
All other questions relating to hospitals and dispen- saries in mission stations are subordinate to the one relating to the physician who serves them ; for on his character and spirit depends the success or failure of the work. The missionary physician should have a thor- ough professional training, and as much hospital experi- ence as possible before going to the field. (Beebe, II., 212.) Nothing will take the place of love for preaching the Gospel, as the first requisite for Christ's laborers. Yet to make that love effective one of the greatest helps is a vast possession of modern medical science, (Thomson, I., 308,) A Christian physician's duty is to maintain his power to the highest degree of which he is capable, and to use his skill with single-heartedness for the benefit of the physical welfare of his patients. Do work only in the area which you can cover. Do it
36 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
well, do it scientifically, get good medical results, and the kingdom of God will get the glory. The missionary physician preaches Christ without opening his lips. To everyone of his patients to whom he comes with loving sympathy and with skillful power, he brings the message of the love of God. (Kimball, II., 200.) The medical missionary should avoid undertaking too much, both in seeing too many patients and in trying to do everything himself. (Torrance, II., 215.) He must not allow his work as physician to crowd upon his work for souls ; else he will miss his object besides starving his own soul. (Dr. May Carleton, II., 216.) His qualifications are first, spiritual — of which the chief is love, second, professional — ^being the best medical trainin.o: possible, and third, personal — including good mind, good health, good fellowship, and good judgment. (Taylor, II., 205.) He should be thoroughly taught and well equipped, and his work should include care of the health of his asso- ciates and a study of the hygienic conditions of his field. Experience in the sacred privilege of soul winning and the power and knowledge to point clearly the way to everlasting life should be regarded as indispensable. (Battersby, II., 208.) The medical missionary should undertake this work with a definite sense of obligation and consecration, and a clear conception of duty and privilege, so that he will give his life and energies in full surrender to the Lord for joyful service. (Beebe, 11., 212.)
Motive and Opportunity of the Missionary Physician.
The ministry of healing has a motive and an end in itself, and, to be effective as an evangelistic agency, must be given as a brotherly service, unencumbered by any condition as to religious teaching, even as Christ ren- dered it. But the ministry of healing has also a motive
MEDICAL WORK
37
and an end above itself, which raises it to the highest plane of Christian service. This motive and end are the saving of the soul from sin and death. There is a pecuHar appropriateness in the association of bodily and spiritual healing. During sickness the soul is usually open to conviction of sin, and, after the restoration to health, often strongly moved by gratitude to God. The physician who has given his knowledge and strength to the sick man has a special right to speak to him on the state of his soul, and the patient will listen to him with a confidence and affection which he can have for no other man. If the doctor is filled with love for souls, and has the gift of utterance, he can never fail for illustrations to enforce his appeal. And if he have the gift of healing, but not of teaching or exhorta- tion, his brother missionary stands upon the vantage ground won by the doctor's skill and devotion, from which to reach and capture the healed man for Christ. (Post, II., 198.) It is an egregious mistake to suppose that to open doors that the Gospel may follow is the province of medicine. The physician, especially the woman physician, does open doors indeed, but she walks through them herself into the most inaccessible strong- hold of heathenism — the home — taking the Gospel with her. (Rachel Benn, II., 192.) The woman physician's work is that individual personal work which is con- verting the world. The pathos of Chinese woman's life as seen by the woman physician would eat her heart out were it not for the hope of changing its sorrow to joy. A question to the doctor as to the time of the next visit leads to the mention of Sunday, and that brings in instruction about the Creator, the Creation, and the Sabbath. The healing of a desperate illness gives op- portunity to speak of God who has blessed the means used to save life, and of Christ who came to help the
38 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
suffering and to teach of the Father's love to all. (Rachel Benn, IL, 194.)
Medical Training of Natives.
The necessity for native assistants is felt by every medical missionary. Such assistants must prepare and dispense drugs, or must be able to assist in the serious surgical operations of the hospital, and aid in the after treatment and nursing which is as essential to success as the operation itself. Native assistants in the hospital should be Christians, alive to the spirit and purpose of missionary work. When imbued with the proper spirit and possessed of a high degree of intelligence they are invaluable to the work. (Beebe, IL, 213.) A plain, practical, and somewhat empirical education is the best for an undeveloped state of society, teaching the best uses of the imperfect equipment, the rude surroundings which they have. So my recommendation is for what we would now call an old-fashioned education for our medical students. Considerable attention should be given to practical pharmacology. The materia mcdica of the country should be studied by scientific methods. This leads to the thought of using on principle the coarser and cheaper forms of drugs. (Peck, IL, 229.) A medical school, or a training-class connected with the mission hospital, multiplies through its graduates the influence of the work of the medical missionary; it ac- complishes for humanity a mission in harmony with Christ's example and commands ; it encourages the broad interests of Christian education, deepens a spirit of benevolence in a community, raises up an influential profession whose members will effectively co-operate with Christian pastors and evangelists in the work of the Church, and it encourages a spirit of responsibility for the support of Christian institutions. (Berry, XL,
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39
225-226.) Broadly speaking, if we recognize the value of the medical profession as a social factor in our own civilization, we shall be ready to see tne importance of such an element in the infusion of a new life into the effete civilization of the East. To the reflecting mind it will seem to be a religious duty to assist in the formation of such a useful class in the communities where we arc trying to build up a Christian civilization. (Peck, II., 228.) There can be little doubt but that in the vast majority of cases the training should take place in the country itself, both on the ground of expense and prob- able influence on character and mode of life. (Fry, II., 218.) Where medical schools are already supported by the State, but dominated by infidelity, missionaries should unite to establish a medical school under Chris- tian auspices second to none in the practice of medicine. (Berry, II., 226.) A Christian medical school should be established in Korea at once. Then when the Govern- ment establishes its schools the only men whom it can get to teach in them will be Christian doctors. (Avison, II., 224.) A plan was followed in Japan for aiding na- tive physicians already in practice to improve their medi- cal knowledge. The native physicians were organized into groups and once a month each group met at some central place to submit their difficult cases to the mis- sionary physician. After opening the exercises with a religious service each case was examined in the presence of all the physicians and suggestions were made for treatment, the physicians taking notes which they could study at leisure. Several of those who attended early accepted the Christian faith. (Berry, II., 226.) At Travancore they used to select a few young men, church members tested in mission work and sufficiently grounded in English to study in that language. Their instruction consisted in work in the hospital, assisting
40 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
at operations, attending systematic lectures, and the study of anatomical diagrams and models. A Bible class was regularly held, and every day one of the stu- dents addressed the assembled patients, and on Sunday they went by twos to heathen towns and in villages and in other ways were encouraged to combine spiritual and medical work. The result has been to supply the Cen- tral Hospital and thirteen branch dispensaries with ca- pable men, and in all of these places the evangelistic work goes on along with the healing of the sick. The influence of the medical mission is thus multiplied. (Fry, II., 218.)
PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS 41
STUDY IV.
LITERARY WORK.
Bible Translation.
The nineteenth century presents to the twentieth printed copies of the Holy Scriptures in about four hun- dred languages as a part of the equipment with which the work of evangelization is to be carried on. (Gilman, IL, 32-36.) Each Bible translation bears witness to the love that God hath to us, and each bears witness also that no race or language is now common or unclean. (Edmonds, IL, 15.) Out of the translations of the Scriptures now existent in living tongues, no fewer than 219 have been made in languages which have been re- duced to writing for the purpose within the nineteenth century. With the Bible printed in the common tongue literature and education become possible amongst the people for whom the translation was made. Who can tell the importance and the worth of Bible translation which thus starts so many languages upon their literary career! (Thomas, IL, 23.)
Example of the Early Church.
From whichever of the great missionary centers we start, from Antioch, from Alexandria, from Carthage, or from Constantinople, the footprints of the translator of the Bible are there, beautiful are their feet, and their footsteps are not only beautiful, but indelible. Whatever else was done, or not done, this branch of the ministry of truth was never neglected in the early Church. There are instances in the work of the early Church as well as in the modern Church where the best of books was the first of books, where the very alphabet was con-
42 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
structed for the purpose of translating the Bible into the people's language.
The greatest but one of the early mission fields was the Syriac-speaking land that stretched out east from Antioch. Syriac was for seven or eight centuries the chief literary instrument in Western Asia. It was the official language of the great kingdom of the Seleucidae. The cities spoke Greek, the villages Syriac. Here, then, in the second century, the question arose and was set- tled : Whether the New Testament was to speak out the truth in whatever language the believers in it spoke, or whether the truth was to be buried in the sacred grave of the one only language in which the Church had re- ceived it? And what makes this matter more personally and keenly interesting is that Tatian, the most earnest of the Syrians, tells how his own heart was touched and his mind satisfied by the Bible. He had made trial of every kind of religious worship, and the result had sickened him. " As I was earnestly considering this," he says, " I came across certain barbarous writings, older in point of antiquity than the doctrines of the Greeks, and far too divine to be marked b> their errors. What persuaded me in these books was the simplicity of the language, the inartificial style of the writers, the noble explanation of creation, the predictions of the future, the excellence of the precepts, and the assertion of the government of all by One Being. My soul being thus taught of God, I understood how the writings of the Gentiles lead to condemnation, but the Sacred Scriptures to freedom from the world's slavery, liberating us from thousands of tyrants, and giving us not indeed what we had not received, but what we had once received but lost through error." This fragment of the second cen- tury autobiography is not only decisive as evidence of the policy of the early Church in the matter of transla-.
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43
tion and diffusion of the Scriptures, but it is in itself and in its far-reaching results, an eloquent example of the missionary value of that policy.
The same lesson is taught when we look at Alexan- dria, the next in order of the Apostolic Churches. Our knowledge of Egyptian Christianity is rapidly increasing. We know of four Coptic versions of the Scriptures, be- ginning with the second century.
When we reach the fourth and fifth centuries we are in the era of great Bibles, and nearly every one is the result of missionary work. There are diversities of operation, indeed, but the governing principle is always the same. The aim is to translate the Bible into the language of the people, and thus put it into their hands. Sometimes, as in the case of the Latin Vulgate, it is one man away in solitude, like Jerome in Bethlehem, who does the work, or in the full activity of Church life as Miesrob was when he gave the Armenian Church their Bible and constructed their very alphabet for this pur- pose. Sometimes the missionary impulse is given half unconsciously, as when Ulphilas felt the spell of Chris- tianity at Constantinople and gave the Gothic people the first of Teutonic Bibles, five hundred years in advance of the earliest Anglo-Saxon Gospels. But nowhere is there an exception to the rule. It operates wherever there is need; and only because of the fact that the German and other invaders of the Roman Empire adopted Latin as their sacred tongue was the work of translation in the Western Church apparently suspended for nearly a thousand years. There is no fallacy more fallacious than that the Latin Bible was provided with a view to the protection of the Word of God from com- mon use. It was distinctly the reverse. What the Syriac Bible was in the East, that the Latin Vulgate was in the West.
44
PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
The millions who look up with reverence to the Czar of all the Russfas owe their Bible to Constantinople. The Bible which is now circulated among them is the child of that ninth century version for the sake of which the current Russian alphabet was invented by Cyril and Methodius.
Teutonic Christianity comes into view with the Bible in its hand. Twenty editions of the Latin Bible had been printed in Germany alone, before Luther was born, and in the year that followed the nailing up of the " Theses " at the door of the church at Wittenberg, October 31, 1517, the fourteenth known edition of a German Bible took place.
It is an exceedingly solemn thing to notice that there was nothing formal and final to hinder the work of the Bible translation and Bible ditfusion from being done in every country in Europe, whether of Latin or of Ger- man race, till the Council of Trent took its fatal decision in 154b. Then for this high service the one race was taken and the other left The Jesuit missions are the first considerable examples of learned men carrying the Gospel message, abundantly competent to translate the Bible, but, as far as appears, not doing it. (Edmonds, II., 10-15.) The Roman Catholic priesthood have had exclusive jurisdiction in the Philippine Islands for the last three hundred years. During those three hundred years the priests and their colleagues never translated a single Gospel into the language of those tribes. (Fox, II., 30.) The time has come when missionary societies should willingly place their best scholars at the service of Bible societies to give themselves wholly to tliis great task, so that such versions as are sorely needing revision may as speedily as possible be brought to the perfectness which is so earnestly desired. (Thomas, II., 23.)
LITERARY WORK
Neeti of General Literature.
45
Exclusive of Bible translation, the utmost that can be said is that a considerable number of books and tracts have been put with more or less success into the native dress, that school books have been provided, and that a few newspapers and periodicals are maintained. (Lovett, II., 41.) Another literature is, however, greatly needed for the building up of the Church and the build- ing up of the native ministry — a work along the line of commentaries, and Bible exposition, and Church history. CDearing. II.. 48.) In a word, we must have a growing Christian literature for a growing Christian Church. (Shearer, II.. 44.) We study the Bible as a text book in our schools. We have very few other books for our girls to read, and it has been a problem for years, what to do with those girls on Sunday. The same is true of the boys* school. They need some other good litera- ture that they can read on the Sabbath. (Mrs. Ashmore, II., 71.) We have taught the children to read, and hav- ing done that, we must put something into their hands. They have nothing of their own. The men of India have said that the reason they never taught the women to read is because there was nothing fit for them to read. (Isabella Thoburn, II., 72,.) To-day it is esti- mated that in India there are a million women that can read. Is it putting it too strongly to say that this in- struction by the Christian Church is a positive injury, unless good, wholesome literature be provided? Read they will, once taught to read, whatever comes into their hands. It is for the Church of (Thrist to decide what they shall read. (Miss Easton. II., 7Z-) These women are shut up in their houses. They have the Bible and the tract. We want to give them something to read besides the tract, something that will be helpful and in-
46 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
teresting and uplifting. (Mrs. Pettee, II., 70.) In Korea one of the greatest needs is for reading matter for Christian girls. They now have two little tracts that have been gotten out for the women and girls. That is all. There are hundreds and thousands of women and children whom we can not hope to reach, and can not hope to get to us, and we want to start a newspaper, so that we can feel that the field is in some sense covered. We hope that once a week it will be scattered all over that north country carrying the news of Christ. (Mrs. Baird, II., 70-71.) Too great importance can not be at- tached to the necessity of giving our literature for children the utmost simplicity. I have a wonderful little book, called " The First Book for Children." It is a model of pure, simple Marathi, and has been one of the most useful and successful Christian books ever pub- lished in Western India. Dr. Narayan Sheshadri calls it " A body of Divinity for children." It required twenty-five years for it to grow up to its present form. (Bruce, II.. 66.) In every part of the field a higher class of work needs to be done, since the majority of the larger works appeal solely to native Christian read- ers, and do not in the slightest touch the non-Christian populations of India. (Lovett, II., 42.) A million stu- dents leave the Government schools every year, and there are fifteen million readers in the country. As a rule, though, they will not come to our preaching, they will take the printed page and read it, either openly or secretly. (Bruce, II., 65.) One of the most striking results of the contact of Oriental peoples with the Western world is the development of a taste for reading. The large bookstores in India's chief cities that deal almost exclusively in English books, are the outward proofs of the immense influence English literature is gaining over the Indian mind. In the bookshops of
LITERARY WORK 47
Bombay, novels with such titles as " The Mysteries of Paris," crowd the shelves, and furnish the students n source for improving their knowledge of English, and sad to think, a source of corrupting their moral life, to say nothing of the false idea they give of life in Chris- tian countries, of which many suppose these novels are a faithful picture. (Abbott, II., 66.) Our cheaper re- ligious literature, however good for us, is not exactly suited to them. Seldom does one see a religious tract from England or America that is suitable to be placed in the hands of a Hindu. The emphasis is on the wrong place for the Hindu point of view. What India needs is a high-class Christian literature created on her soil, written with her own peculiar problems in mind and published in a form adapted to the pockets of the great mass of her readers. (Abbott, II., 67.) Periodical literature, too, needs greater attention. Many missions have their weekly or monthly organs which have their limited circulation among Christians and non-Christians. But the insignificance of their size, the unattractiveness of their appearance, and the fact that they are edited by those who are busy with a hundred other things, makes one feel that Christian periodical literature lacks proper support. Instead of occupying the front rank in evan- gelistic work, pioneering the way, meeting week by week new phases of thought, as current events bring them to the surface, and forcing its way by its attractiveness and grasp of problems affecting the Indian mind, it is made to hobble along half starved, in the rear. (Abbott, II., 67.) There should be strenuous efforts to secure in the great centers of missionary enterprise, in short, wherever missions have passed through their prelim- inary stages, newspapers or magazines devoted to the discussion and exposition of Christian Truth. These should be Christian periodicals in a very real sense.
48 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
They should deal with the ideas, life, modes of thought, and the different experiences of the people for whom they are published. But they should be issued under Christian control and used as channels of instruction in Christian truth. (Lovett, II., 41-42.) There are world- wide problems of the day which no writings of the apostolic fathers or of medieval times can solve, prob- lems which were not then in sight. In order to capture the attention and regard of the best minds in non-Chris- tian lands, we must offer to them the highest products of our own intellects. The preacher speaks with com- parative infrequency and to comparatively few. When a nation is born in a day, the individuals of the nation must have been previously instructed by the printed page. (Richard, II., 75-76.) The mission's press at Constantinople, published a dozen years ago a physical geography in the Turkish language. It was a choice book, carefully prepared. The edition, printed in Arabic letters and authorized by the Government, was intended for the use of Mohammedans. Again and again Moham- medans expressed appreciation of its exposition of the qualities which make nations great. One Turkish official said : " If this book is true, the teachings of our Mollahs are false." The inspiring ideas of that book of science had a circulation and influence far wider than we could have dreamed. Histories, biographies, readers, primers, such as are issued by the Christian Literature Society of India, and its namesake in China, all have a place in this class of literature and lend themselves readily to the moral culture that we need for mission schools. (Dwight, II., 61-62.)
Literary Character.
Up to this time most of the literature of India has been translation, not in the ideas or illustrations or
LITERARY WORK 49
expressions fitted to the life and thought of the country, but literal translations of our Occidental books, which are in a very large measure unfitted for the Oriental mind. This has been very largely due to the fact that Christian literature has no recognized place in the work of most missionaries. It is relegated to their spare mo- ments. It is a side issue, put upon those already greatly overburdened with other work. I think the time is fully ripe for certain missionaries, both men and women, to be set entirely free to devote their time and energy to this very important branch of the work. (Miss Easton, II., 73-74.) The time has come when our translating work ought to be done upon more scientific principles than allowing an individual translator to go his own way, unguided by all the gathered experience of the past. (Edmonds, II., 24.) Workers in every department of the Christian literature field should maintain as their ideal the production and publication of books, tracts, and periodicals in harmony with the ideas and environment of the people among whom the mission is at work, and written, wherever possible, by natives with the assistance and guidance of competent missionaries. (Lovett, II., 42.) The large success of a long list of Americans and Englishmen engaged in literary work is due to this: That they have stood behind their native scholars and given the outline of the thought to them and allowed the literary finish to come from the Chinaman's own pen. (Sheffield, II., 45.) Not many missionaries pos- sess that dramatic talent which would enable one to see the thing with a native's eyes. Some few have it. It has been my privilege to associate with these men and to bear witness to the wonderful powers which they had over these languages ; but still, they were not natives, and not one of these gifted men would have dared to commit to print what he had prepared, unless
50 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
he had in some measure allowed it to pass through the alembic of a native's mind. There is to-day in the em- ploy of the American Board a gifted young Greek who is capable of doing the highest literary work. For want of means his brilliant talents are not utilized. This man whose scholarship is recognized by his own people is rusting, so far as his highest equipment is concerned, because God's people have not yet awakened to the re- sponsibility which rests upon them to put into the hands of this native brother, under the guidance of missionaries for the selection of material, the means to prepare that literature which is necessary. (Sampson, IL, 57.) In the Bombay Presidency there is a man in the prime of life, a Brahman, a Sanscrit scholar, with a mind deeply philosophic, a poet whose verses are loved and prized, and which, notwithstanding their deeply Christian fervor, are sought for by the Hindu press, a man who could edit a magazine with judgment, and make it ac- ceptable to Hindu and Christian. But the door of a providential opening stands only half used, because Christian givers have not realized the place this sort of literature might occupy if given the support its impor- tance deserves. (Abbott, II., 68.) In the words of that man of eminent success in this branch of work. Dr. Murdoch of India: " The most effectual way of putting truth into the minds of a nation, is to put it into its schoolbooks." Such minds will hold to the purpose of making each book a simple but trusty guide to the prin- ciples of the science to which it relates, but the Chris- tian personality, the high principles, and the love of hu- manity of the writer will cling like a subtile perfume about the book. The writer of school books must be one who makes literature, and not a mere catalogue of facts. (Dwight, II., 61.) There are extraordinary fa- cilities for the expression of the deepest spiritual truths,
LITERARY WORK 5I
bound up with the language of the very simplest human being who ever spoke at all. (Edmonds, 11. , 25.)
Printing and Distribution.
A mission press should be recognized as a permanent and essential branch of the propaganda, to be developed into the highest possible usefulness, and provided for accordingly in a large and liberal way. It is well to own the building in which the press is located, as well as the plant. The business manager should be a lay- missionary, with thorough training as a printer and manager. Job work should be taken with caution. The best way to secure self-support is by increasing receipts from subscriptions and from advertisements in our pub- lications. (Brown, II., SO-51.) It is greatly to be de- sired that all the employees of a mission press should be Christians. Says Mr. Rudisill : Some Christian boys whom I took fourteen years ago are now skilled work- men, and one of them is foreman of our job department. The foreman of the electrotyping foundry is another instance of how native Christian talent may be utilized. The departments of an up-to-date missionary press be- come by this method so many industrial schools. (Rudisill, II., 55-56.)
Seventy-eight years ago, exiled from Syria, the Protestant missionaries established their first Arabic printing press on the island of Malta, transferring it twelve years later, 1834, to Beirut; where for sixty-six years it has been steadily pouring forth Christian litera- ture, for the vast field of Arabic readers. (Hulbert, II., 46.) The Bible Society is the natural and inevitable corollary of the Reformation. At the present time more than half of the Bibles issued go into foreign countries and are used directly for the work of foreign missions. (Fox, II., 29.) The Religious Tract Society was
52 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
founded in 1799 " To promote the dispersion of religious tracts, and to develop the evangelical doctrines of the Gospel." Step by step throughout the century the So- ciety has been led in the providence of God to become, on the one hand, a great publishing house, circulating all classes of Christian literature, and, on the other, a great missionary literature society, helping workers in all sections of the Evangelical Church. (Lovett, II., 40-42.) The American Tract Society has issued at its own ex- pense, for circulation abroad, 4,966 publications, of which 955 are volumes. A description of these publica- tions can not be given here ; they include tracts, cate- chisms, primers, commentaries, parts of Scripture, and other volumes, such as a Bible dictionary, in Arabic at Beirut, in Telegu at Madura, in Chinese, in Spanish at New York ; the " Peep of Day " series for the children of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, all living books which contain the old truths in the thought of the pres- ent day, set forth by missionaries and native preachers. (Shearer, II., 43.) For many years the Christian Literature Society of India has published annually, in the various languages of India, more books addressed to the moral and spiritual needs of the people than all other societies put together. (Patterson, II., 47.)
The question how to find a market for mission books is a very important one. It is a commercial business, although its object is not to get returns in money so much as to get the books into circulation. The books should be made attractive, the prices should be made as low as possible, and intelligent native salesmen should be employed, and lastly the books should be advertised. We can use the power of advertising where the mer- chants themselves do not know enough to advertise ; we should make the advertisements in such a form that they will attract the eye, even the eyes of those who
LITERARY WORK 53
can not read, and attract their attention, and thus en- large the sales. (Riggs, II., 58-59-) Newspapers in mission fields, like every other department of Christian work, must aim to make themselves self-supporting. One of the items that enters into the support of a paper is the advertisements. I believe that advertise- ments can be used with discretion. They indeed become the chief source of revenue during the first years of a paper. (Correll, II., 49.)
The Bible Societies having given us translations of the Bible, we use colporteurs, supported by the Bible So- cieties, in scattering the Word of God. (Parker, II., 31.) Every mission field where the natives are a reading people affords numberless illustrations of the work of colporteurs preparing the way for the mission station. The colporteurs are often pioneers of the missionary and many testimonies to this fact have been received. The British and Foreign Bible Society provides for Eastern lands five hundred and fifty Bible women, who not only read the Scriptures to their fellow-country- women but also teach them to read. (Thomas, II., 28.) Circulation is not everything, and a Bible Society can no more live by its funds or its issues than men can live by bread alone. We seek readers rather than buy- ers, souls rather than sales. The man with the Book must be the man of the Book, with the Gospel in his heart and on his lips as well as in his hand, a true mis- sionary of the cross, who endures hardship, ignores in- sult, and plods steadily on his way. (Slowan, II., 19.)
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STUDY V. EDUCATIONAL WORK.
Education Inherent in Christianity.
It is the nature of Christianity to educate and uplift. God saves the man. He does not save the soul while the mind and body are left unsanctified. Of preach- ing the Gospel then education is an integral part.
In non-Christian lands of old civilization the con- verts are nearly all poor. Hence the elementary Christian school gathers the out-castes, and, in the few years before the grim necessities of poverty drive the little hands to labor, does its best to broaden the horizon beyond the limits of the hamlet, and irradiates all with the gracious presence of Him who bowed all heaven into a peasant's life in Galilee. But Christianity by its very nature uplifts. The out-caste gains new dignity, his mind new powers, his children have new ambitions. The Christian Church must assert its value in the national to play in the life of the nation. Education must grow. In the lands of the East even the first generation of Christians will need more than the elements of knowl- edge. The native systems have their own standards : the Christian Church must assert its value in the national life by obvious intellectual as well as moral strength. The Christian high school or college is an expression of the Church's faith in its own future as a permanent fac- tor in the national life. (Barber, II., 113.)
Necessity for Education Found in Social and Educa- tional Needs.
When a man feels the divine thrill of God's love in the soul, the lower and more subject he is, the more cer-
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55
tainly does he feel a great material uplift. Can you think of a band of naked savages becoming Christians and remaining naked? Poverty there may be and will be in connection with Christianity, but the poverty that was — that grim, hopeless poverty — can not exist with true Christianity. (Spencer, II., 164.) Two-thirds of the people of Africa are hungry simply because they do not know how to feed themselves. . . . They are not clothed. There the man is naked. How is he going to clothe himself? It is an anomaly to see a naked Christian. He does not know anything about making clothes or working for money. Unless the missionary teaches him, he will remain naked. (Morris, II., 157.) India with its caste system tends to make every Christian a penniless beggar. In most cases the wages of a non- Christian laborer are only a part of his income. But a Christian has nothing but his wages. He is disconnected from his former relations. He has no longer a part in the joint property of the family. On the other hand, it has always been our opinion that it is our duty to assist our Christians to rise from an unworthy poverty to a position of comparative superiority in the midst of the non-Christian population, so as to enable them to exert, by an enhanced power of life, a wholesome influence on the whole nation. It is partly on account of the benefi- cent influence of Christianity that our people can not be content with their former style of life. . . . We ex- pect them to go to church on Sunday decently dressed, we hope they will want a few books ; we urge them to contribute toward the expenses of the church to pay school fees for their children, and so on. Then we must teach them how to provide the means. (Frohnmeyer, II., 160.) Two-thirds of the world's population can not read. Even of the readers many are victims of the most puerile superstitions and endowed with pitiful emptiness
56 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
of mind. The millions whom we call savage are far more deficient. . . . They must learn to read the Bible if Christianity is to come to full fruitage among them. (Conklin, II., i68.) The time was, and not so long ago, when the only training which it was thought necessary to give those born from heathenism to the new light of the gospel light and privilege was knowl- edge of the Bible, the catechisms and formularies of the Church, and perhaps the ability to read. Now. it is pertinent to inquire what forces are at work for the up- lifting of those whom God has placed in our hands as pledges to the final conquest of the kingdom of right- eousness. (Spencer, II., 164.) Any education at all presupposes higher education. The infant school re- quires teachers who have passed in the primary stand- ards. The primary teachers must have studied at least in the middle or grammar school ; the grammar school teachers should be high school graduates, and the high teachers require a college education. Step by step, led by the necessity of the situation the advance has been made from the lowest to the highest standards. (Miss Thoburn, II., 139.) The sort of education we give to our own sons and daughters must be supplied to leaders of thought in unenlightened nations. (Richard, II., 75.)
Non-Christian Education Inadequate.
Some say, give the people Western education and they can then receive the truths of Christianity. This is wrong; it would be the body without the soul. Equally wrong are those who say. Convert the people and the rest will take care of itself. That is the soul without the body. (Rachel Benn, II., 192.) Intelligence is not compatible with Buddhism and Shintoism as they are familiar to the people of Japan. In one or two gen- erations the Japanese will be a people from whom the
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57
devil of idolatry has indeed been cast out, but into which have entered the devils of a godless and immoral ma- terialistic civilization. (Pieters, I., 528.) The so-called neutral education is necessarily anti-Christian. Chris- tianity is eliminated, and heathen stories fill the pages of the reading books. Thus the children's minds, at a very early age, are saturated with the very ideas, generally debasing, which an enlightened government professes to try to dispel. (Mrs. Bellerby, II., 121.) In the differ- ent colleges of India to-day there are 40,000 students, and the number is rapidly increasing. The most of these are in the Government colleges and are virtually infidels, and are now becoming a serious danger in the land. They can not be reached by the ordinary evan- gelistic agencies. (Wilkie, XL, 141.) Is the Church to look on and see the whole of the higher education un- moral ? Purblind, indeed, would be her leaders ; utterly unstatesmanlike in their criminal neglect of obvious op- portunity and duty. (Barber, II., 116.)
Religious Character Emphatically Christian.
Every mission college should be first of all Christian. (ElHnwood, I., 239.) The higher education must oi necessity include the education of the highest, and this is impossible unless we have the education of the spirit- ual nature. (Goucher, II., 141.) All through the course of study in mission schools and colleges, the supreme object for which missions are founded should be kept in view, as though the schools were special training in- stitutes for that one purpose — the evangelization of the country in which they are situated. (Miss Thoburn, II., 141.) The missionary purpose is to enthrone Christ in the hearts of the people, whether by preaching or hospital or school. (Leonard, IL, 119.) The one distinguishing feature of the missionary college will be
58 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
that the Word of God shall have the place of honor. It will invariably be made an integral and indispensable part of the course of study. (Dodge, 11. , 143.) Our effort is to saturate the minds of our people with God's Word. So our pupils are taught to repeat passages of Scripture. You may say many of them do not under- stand what they learn. Quite true, but we find that in after days these passages of Scripture come back to their minds. God, the Holy Spirit, enables them to under- stand them, and we find these same people coming back to the missionary to enter a catechumen's class. (Laws, I., 460.)
Religious Character Determined by the Personality of the Teacher.
As has been pointed out, and as has been observed throughout these studies, it is the personal character of the missionary which decides the quality of his work. In colleges on mission ground far more than at home the personality of the teacher is the chief factor. Unless he is a man of evident spirituality, with a positive desire and purpose to bring his students to a clear apprehen- sion of the truth, he will be a failure. (Dodge, II., 143.) The question whether any college established in a mis- sion field will be a truly Christian college, must depend, not upon the constitution and rules, but upon the per- sonal character of the men sent out to direct it. (Wash- burn, II., 130.) Not only does the missionary teacher gain every day an audience which his itinerant brother might well envy, but his intellectual interest and honesty speak through every hour of the day; he looms large before his pupils as the hero who has won the fights which they must face. And for the most part, to the graduates who have not acknowledged Christ, the mem- ory of the dignity, the Christian character, the mental
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59
honesty of their teachers will make them fair in their attitude toward their teacher's faith. Experience shows that in such mission schools many of the heathen pupils become Christian, and still more who make no profes- sion of change have yet breathed a new atmosphere which has altered all life for them. (Barber, II., 115.) We need to take care that our educationalists are not men who are mainly educationalists, but that the heads of our colleges shall be men most filled with the spirit of Christ and the ardor of evangelization. What a pe- culiarly difficult position to fill. We want men magnetic in their influence, men who can lay hold of young men personally; we want men so filled with the great idea that the mission school is the means of leading the pupils to know Christ in the most susceptible years of their life, that the whole atmosphere of the school shall be pervaded by Christian influence. (Thompson, II., 118.)
Educational Character and Aims.
The Christian school must stand so high as a giver of knowledge that no secular institution can afford to point the finger of scorn at its equipment or its alumni. (Barber, II., 114.) Such institutions will thrive only as they show manifest leadership in every branch they un- dertake to teach. This will be facilitated and insured by strictly maintaining a high standard of scholarship. Their graduates will be seen to possess qualities not found among students from other institutions. (Dodge, II., 144.) An illustration of scholarship as overbalanc- ing religious antagonism is the incident where the jealous rivals of a mission school in India posted pla- cards denouncing the teacher as of the scavenger caste. The placards led to talk; and the only way the man's enemies could specify the school where the scavenger
6o PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
taught was by describing it as the school whose scholars always passed the Government examinations. (Goucher, II., 141.) How important it is, then, that mission schools have definite aims and begin with the children at their most acquisitive age. The native impulses or tendencies of children and the interests and desires into which these develop, are the means given them for the beginnings and continuations of growth, and for over- coming of obstacles in the attainment of valuable aims, and since the direction and amount of one's energy are dependent upon the direction and extent of his interests, it is highly important to have a course of study that appeals to the pupil. . . . Strong motives are the condition of work, and the interests that grow out of the native impulses mean an abundance of motive for life work. (McMurry, II., 173-174.) The products of the school are not things, but men. (Smith, II., 150.) We are shifting over from a basis of " How much do you know ? " to " How much can you do ? " from an educa- tion that emphasizes information, passive listening, and bookishness, to an education that gives one a masterful acquaintance with action, with things, with human na- ture, as well as with the treasures of thought that we inherit in books. . . . Attention and judgment are acquired in having to do things with a real motive be- hind and a real outcome ahead. (Scudder, II., 177.) The power of educated womanhood is simply the power of skilled service. We are not in the world to be minis- tered unto, but to minister. The world is full of need, and every opportunity to help is a duty. Preparation for duties is education, whatever form it may take or what- ever service may result. (Miss Thoburn, II., 132.)
Advantages of Manual and Industrial Training. It is sheer cruelty to send our sons and daughters out
EDUCATIONAL WORK 6l
into the world to get a living without having first learned the use of their hands. . . . Moreover, industrial work has great discipHnary value for the mind. It de- velops the power of observation and attention; it trains eye, ear, and hand to precision ; it produces order, neat- ness, and accuracy ; it inculcates habits of industry and thrift; thus it gives the boy more than a trade; it gives him power to succeed in any trade or in any walk in life. But it does even more than this ; it leads him into deeper, wider sympathy with all manual laborers. (Scudder, II., 178.) Industrial training does not interfere with the study of books. I was in charge of an American school in which a number of pupils each spring were obliged to leave school to work on farms. I never hesitated upon their return in the fall to advance them with their class ; they soon caught up. (Reader, II., 179.) There can be no over-education in the all-round sense, though in the partial sense there may be. . . . The education that creates aspirations and then furnishes the tools to carve in imperishable forms the image held up, is safe, progressive, expansive. (Spencer, II., 165.) There is a popular contempt for manual labor which prevails among those who consider themselves educated. It is not laziness so much as a deep-seated conviction that work of any kind is dishonorable. ... I have been publicly accused by Indian Christians of lowering the social status of the community because I advocated manual training. (Smith, II., 147.) The old caste sys- tem of India, for example, has imbued the people with the notion that he who reads must be waited upon by him who does not. Hence the school girl claims exemp- tion from manual labor. ... To each girl above eleven years of age is assigned the charge of a small child for whom she is responsible in every way. She weaves, makes, and mends its garments. She washes
62 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
and dresses it every day, prepares its food, and hears its prayers as they kneel together beside its cot placed next her own. It is the elder girl's place to tend the younger in sickness as well as in health, and in short to expend upon it a mother's solicitude. (Barnes, II., 155.) These two home tasks (cooking and sewing) may also be strong in their training for social service. The child may thus be led to feel her connection with the working world around her; may learn that she can do for others, or may be led through simple tasks at first to the inclina- tion to help in greater ways in the world. (Woolman, II., 181.) The Livingstonia Institute is wisely avoiding the mistake of surrounding students with all modern conveniences and comforts. Thus when they are called away to teach in a grass hut for a school they do not feel helpless or discontented. The work in the institutes approximates to the conditions of the first beginnings of school work in new villages. A shed of wood and grass has been erected along the sides of a quadrangle, with a door on one side and an open court in the middle, shaded by a tree. Such a school natives can easily pro- vide for themselves at most villages. Those under train- ing are required to make the most they can of it by thti ! own ingenuity. (Daly, II., 125.) The child must be trained to act. . . . The studies we give a child must touch his interests ; be connected with the life of the present, and lead to immediate action. . . . Man- ual training was placed in our curriculum with only a partial grasp of the idea of combining thought and ex- pression. The mechanical side was emphasized, but the thought side was the teacher's rather than the child's. We must plan the work so that it shall require executive thought from the pupil, so that his own self-activity shall come into it, and the whole curriculum shall lead to efficient action. ... It is not so important that a
EDUCATIONAL WORK 63
child shall do a piece of work perfectly at first. He should be so interested in the work as to put his whole heart into it, and execute the idea to the best of his ability, his own will power acting. A class of children were considering a question of patching. They had to decide what to do in a certain case. For nearly three- quarters of an hour these children worked hard. At the end of the time, with quite a sigh, one of the girls said: " I have not thought so hard for a year." (Mrs. Woolman, II., 181.) The will may be made strong by developing the capacity for sustained effort and for prosecuting a series of means leading to a distinctly con- ceived end. And it is for precisely these things that manual training is adapted. Not only are the ordinary educational processes carried on simultaneously with manual training, so that the brain shall be taught through the printed page, but the industrial impulse is in itself moral. It is constructive; it brings into exist- ence what is good, and useful, and beautiful. It creates in the pupil an initial interest in the end proposed, be- cause the successful completion of each step in the work is in itself a stim.ulus, and because the completion of the whole is rewarded with the joy of achievement. (Mrs. Bruce, II., 183-184.)
Necessity for Training in Teaching.
The solution of the problem of educational improve- ment in mission schools lies in the trained native teacher. And further, the solution of the problem of training the native teacher lies in the missionary trained to train teachers. (Conklin, II., 170.) Of the mission schools now existing 112 are universities and colleges, 546 are theological and training schools, and at least half of the students in the higher schools are expected to teach. Here are at least 50,000 teachers in the course of prep-
64 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
aration. The students who are to preach are being taught homiletics ; those who are to practice medicine are being taught the sciences ; how are the teachers be- ing fitted for their work? I venture a guess that in all these 546 theological and training schools homiletics, the art of preaching, is taught, but in not one-tenth of them is pedagogy, the art of teaching, taught. And yet at least three-fourths of the graduates will be teachers. (Conklin, IL, 169.) Our educational work is a mighty power and it is worth while to put into it the very best superintending and directing force that can be obtained. (Grant, II., 128.) The Mission Board which establishes and encourages schools with the money of the Church and does not require a training in pedagogy for its teachers is not keeping pace with the march led by the Light of the world. A course of pedagogics is desirable for all missionaries and normal departments should be considered a necessity in mission seminaries and col- leges whose aim is to prepare teachers. (Conklin, II. , 171-172.)
Ladies who expect to go to India should not suppose that they will be able to teach there unless they learn here. I have seen ladies come out who have never had a chalk in their hands ; they have been sent to school work, and have felt themselves perfectly helpless. Men and women are alike in this. Unless we learn to teach, we shall not be fitted to take up this, the greatest work that we have. (Sutherland, II., 127.) Where practicable a normal training school should be established in every district, and its principal and her missionary helper should control all primary schools in the district and direct all their operations. (Mrs. Bellerby, II., 122.) We now know the instruction of little children to be one of the most difficult things in the whole school course. It is cruel to a work and a worker to send her to
EDUCATIONAL WORK 65
such labors without preparation. . . . It is not only the missionary spirit they will need ; not only the constraining love which is essential for keeping the heart warm and devoted, but the same training which we need, as well as skill for service. They need this more than we because of their harder task. (Miss Tho- burn, II, 132.) The upper class girls are trained by be- coming pupil teachers to practicing classes formed of children. (Miss Barnes, II., 156.) It has been our ex- periences, proved by many experiments, that we have never succeeded in any trade without a qualified man- ager sent out from Europe. (Frohnmeyer, II., 160.) I believe that the time has come when there should be a special preparation of the highest kind for educational work in these mission colleges, and that our boards should send out only specially prepared men. No more consecrated men have ever come out than some who have specially prepared themselves for what some would call secular work. (Smyth, II., 132.)
Evangelistic Opportunity and Influence.
Primary and village schools must be awarded one of the foremost places in all missionary enterprise. They form the nursery of the native church, and are an indis- pensable factor in its organization. ]\Iany in a heathen village who have watched the life of the teachers will allow their children to attend the mission school, al- though they would not listen to a missionary preaching or receive a visit from a catechist or pastor. In many cases where one now finds a flourishing native church the original seed may have been the humble primary school taught by a conscientious follower of the Lord Jesus, whose example and conduct led to further inquiry into the religion which produced such results. (Mrs. Bellerby, II., 122.) The man who comes into the coun-
66 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
try with the tools of industry gets at the heart of the people, the great middle class, who are everywhere the backbone of the nations. (Spencer, II., 165.) It is evangelization by practical illustration of Christian dili- gence, honesty, and respectability. (Frohnmeyer, IT . 158.) It affords the Christian the opportunity of bridg- ing over the gulf that separates the foreign missionary from the orthodox Hindu, and has an influence that can not be overestimated, not only in disarming preju- dice, but in drawing men to Christ as the Saviour. (Smith, II., 148.) A college for the higher education, established in any large city in China is a great recon- ciler, and affords a platform upon which the leaders among the Chinese and the leaders of the Christian Church can stand together. Such institutions aid largely in the general stirring up which is necessary in diina, and which seems to be necessary in every country before Christianity can be accepted. Christianity is the religion of the living and not the religion of the dead, and every- thing that the Christian Church can do to awaken a higher and more active intellectual life among the peo- ple will aid them in the acceptance of the Christian re- ligion. (Smyth, II., 130.) We are happily familiar at home with mighty waves of spiritual influence which sweep from time to time over our churches. Now, ordi- narily the Holy Spirit does not move on heathen popula- tions in this wondrous way. He does mightily save men in every heathen land; but a revival in the sense that we have learned to associate the term with the la- bors of such men as Moody does not occur among the unprepared Chinese and Hindus. The remarkable thing is that they do occur amidst the generations that have been leavened by the intiuence of Christian schools. When the Rev. Thomas Cook, one of the most successful of English evangelists, made a special campaign in Cey-
EDUCATIONAL WOJRK 67
Ion, he found many brought to conversion, but with scarcely an exception every convert had been educated in mission high schools. (Barber, II., 116.) The far- reaching effect of the mission educational work as an evangelistic agency can be traced in mulliludes of an- ecdotes from the field. Dr. Chamberlain, of India, tells of a Hindu judge who urged his fellow-townsmen to put a missionary over a school which they had just estab- lished. He said to them if you want your sons to be noble, upright men, put this school under charge of the missionary and have the Bible taught in it daily. (Chamberlain, I., 504.) Mr. D. G. Barkley, of the In- dian civil service, tells of the son of an Indian prince, as one of a party of Cambridge students engaged in evangelistic work for children in Ireland. The father of the young man had been educated in a mission school in India. (Barkley, I., 507.) The head of one of the great Christian Churches of the East said to Dr. Wash- burn not long ago, that among all his people the only young men who really believe in God and Christianity are those who have been educated in Robert College at Constantinople. (Washburn, II., 130,) A prime minis- ter of Jeypore, an educated man known for justice and ability, surely did not speak as an enemy of Christianity when he said to Dr. Barrows, " All that I have and am 1 owe to my education in Duff College, Calcutta." He was there trained by Christian men. (Barrows, I., 333.) A dignified and intelligent Tamil surgeon in Ceylon, who showed attention to an American missionary visitor, gave this reason for his kindly feeling: "I was edu- cated at the American Mission College at Jaffna. Per- sonally I owe all that I have attained to the American missionaries; and no one can tell the incalculable good they have done to my people." (Peck, II., 228.) If you go into any of the villages where the missionaries are
68 PHILANTHROPY IN MISSIONS
at work, and see a child — a boy or girl under fifteen years of age — who has been in one of the station schools two or three years, he will meet you with a warm wel- come and a bright face. He is a missionary in that com- munity ; where he is bringing new and fresh ideas — ideas of life and light — of the Gospel and of the benefits of Christian education. (Grant, II., 128.) We look upon our school work as one of the greatest and most valuable and most direct of evangelistic agencies. If I could go to Lake Nyassa to preach at a village, I might find an audience of fifteen, or fifty, or five hundred, but I am not able to get back to that village for months to preach again. But in our schools 16,000 pupils are each day re- ceiving a lesson in the Scriptures. (Laws, I., 460.) The bazaar or the preaching tent, however thronged by the ever-changing multitudes, is not to be compared in op- portunity with an institution in which for weeks and months young and plastic hearts are brought under the influence of earnest missionary teachers. (Ellinwood, I., 239.)
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