Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions Part 7

On no account must we fail to consider another's work. In educational or medical work we must recognise that a school or a hospital which exists, by whomsoever created, in the district makes a difference to the situation. To deal with the district as if that school or hospital did not exist is to deal with an imaginary district, not with the real one; and no one supposes that there is any advantage in dealing with things that are what they are as if they were something else.

We have observed a certain tendency to recognise this truth in the matter of education and medicine, and to introduce into survey proposals a note, when the educational and medical tables were reached, to remind the surveyor that the educational and medical work of some society of which he is afraid, or from which he thinks himself widely separated, as extreme Protestants from Roman Catholics, must not be ignored; but in the evangelistic and Church tables no such note is inserted. This is, we suppose, a tacit acceptance of the idea that the opposite party's evangelical and church building work can be ignored with trifling loss--that to ignore it does not much matter. But if a man is surveying what he calls habitually "his" district, he is surveying it presumably to get at the facts, and one of the most important facts which he needs to know is how far the preaching of Christ has extended and where Christian churches have been established. Unless then he is prepared to deny the name of Christ to the opposite party (and that is a very serious thing to do), he cannot ignore their churches. The people claim to be Christians and declare that they believe in Christ. If the surveyor without further inquiry rejects them because they belong to a society which he does not like, that may be an exhibition of ecclesiastical zeal, but it is not the science of surveying.

Whatever he may think of them, as a surveyor he has no right to ignore them. He is surveying "his district". There are in it so many persons of various religious belief, amongst them his own converts and these Christians of the opposite party. He perhaps refuses to recognise the latter as Christians; but they are undoubtedly neither Moslems nor Confucianists, nor Buddhists, nor Hindoos, nor do they belong to any of the non-Christian religions. He cannot ignore them. He must take count of them. Therefore if in a district the Protestant and the Roman Catholic cannot survey together, the Protestant who does survey must carefully consider the facts before his face, and endeavour to find out what the facts really are as well as he possibly can. The facts are that Roman Catholics are working in what he calls "his district"; the facts are that there are churches here, and here, and here, and people who call themselves Christians so many, and that the heathen population is by so many less. And there are so many mission priests, and they win converts, and the converts won by them cease to be heathen, for they are sometimes persecuted by their heathen neighbours, even as his own converts are persecuted.

Happily all leading surveyors are realising these obvious facts and are now taking these things into serious account; but it is still necessary to insist on their importance.

In these tables, when other missions are at work in the district, all that is necessary is to add one column of the work of the other missions so far as it is known, or can be ascertained. We are well aware that that easy phrase covers in many cases great practical difficulty. Here is one of the places where estimates may be inevitable. If they are inevitable, they should be estimates, not guesses, and a note should be made of the process by which they were reached. The difference between an estimate and a guess is that an estimate is the result of a definite train of reasoned calculation and a guess is not. For an estimate reasons can be given, for a guess none other than--it occurred to me.

II. The Mission which has no Defined District.

We believe that the vast majority of missions accept a territorial district; but there are missions where the station district has not and cannot be defined.

The idea of the mission is not territorial. The object proposed is not to cover any area with mission stations, nor to establish in every town and village a church or chapel, but to create at a centre a Church of living sons trained and educated by many years, perhaps generations, of care to become the centre of a movement which may cover the whole country; or it may be to influence movements which arise in the religious, political, or social life of the people, and to direct these into Christian channels. In such cases a territorial foundation is impossible. The mission exists in the midst of a people and influences the people; it makes converts, it establishes them in the faith, it cares for them in mind and body, it prepares them to set the moral and religious standard for any Church of the future. It is not concerned directly with the widest possible preaching of the Gospel. When the native Christians whom it is painfully and slowly educating and training come to maturity they will spread the Gospel throughout the length and breadth of the land. It is not, we are told, the business of the Foreign Mission to preach the Gospel in every village of a defined area nor to make itself responsible for such preaching directly: it should give to converts in every country the highest and best and fullest teaching of Christian civilisation, in order that by so doing it may show to all the people of the country an example, by which they may be attracted and influenced. If we take the widest expression of such mission activity we find that to estimate the true value of such work we should be compelled to survey not only the mission and its activities but the social, moral, material, and spiritual state of the people among whom the mission was planted, and seek for signs of a change which we could trace with some certainty to the influence of the mission. That would be a stupendous and most intricate undertaking. Where innumerable forces are at work such as are implied in the impact of western civilisation upon the peoples of the East, or of Africa, it would be extremely difficult to state the exact impression made by the mission, even if we could survey the whole state of the people at regular and definite periods. We do not for a moment doubt that all Christian missions do exercise an influence of this wide and far-reaching character, and from time to time we can see results which clearly spring from it, but we cannot think it wise to set out this vague influence as the primary purpose of a mission. We believe that the Christian missions which aim directly and primarily at the conversion of men and the establishment of a living native Church produce this fruit by the way.

If, however, we take the narrower expressions in the statement of aim which we have set out above, we find in it the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng a Church, but the establishment is viewed as the result of a long and elaborate training and cultivation of a comparatively small body of Christians, rather than as the immediate result of widespread work. In such a case we ought to be able to trace progress and to place these missions in a common scheme.

The early tables of work to be done and of the force in relation to that work on a territorial basis certainly fail. The leaders of the mission have not the information and do not want it, but they could almost certainly provide the facts concerning the force at work contained in the tables without the proportions for the district, and they would perhaps be able to fill up most of the other tables omitting proportions to area and population.

Now if they did that we should be able to see the force at work and the type of work in which the mission was strongest and weakest, and the relation of the different types of work to each other, though it is probable that the tables dealing with the native Church as distinct from the Mission would not be filled up. With that information we could almost certainly define more or less exactly the place of the mission in a large area such as the province, or the country; for in dealing with the province or the country we must necessarily ma.s.s figures, and we have there a known, or estimated, area and population, to use as a basis for calculation of proportions and comparison, and we are aiming at placing each mission in a larger whole and trying to see what part each takes in the performance of a great work which is world wide in its scope. If the missions then which decline a territorial basis for their work would fill up those tables which reveal the nature of their work and the force engaged in it we should be able to advance to the next stage. This is what we meant when at an earlier stage we remarked that we had drawn our tables to serve a definite purpose, but that we had not ignored the case of the man whose idea of the purpose of a mission differed from our own.

CHAPTER X.

SURVEY OF THE WORK IN A PROVINCE.

In few parts of the world is a mission station really an isolated unit.

In most of the countries to which we go there are many stations of many different missions, all aiming more or less definitely at the establishment of a native Church, whatever their conception of the Church may be. In the vast majority of cases these stations have some relations.h.i.+p to one another. The definition of districts for the mission stations is commonly recognised, and in planning new work directors of missions frequently allow themselves to be influenced, in some way and in some degree, by the position of existing mission stations. There are also in some parts of the world bodies composed of leading members of many of the missions that work in the country, who meet to consider the progress of the Christian faith in the province or the country as a whole, and deliberately plan their work with some consideration of the position and character of the work done by the others. Now in all this there is a manifest approach to the idea that mission work in the country or province is a common work, and that the various missions engaged in it are not antagonists, but allies. It is certainly true that we are far from having reached the stage of a common direction and a real unification of work Rivalry and antagonism are still rampant, but the recognition of the fact that we must consider the position and character of other missions in directing our own is a most important advance; and it implies that we ought, in some measure at least, to be able to express the work of any mission station in relation to all the mission work done in the province or country, and to understand, at any rate in some degree, what place it takes in the mission work in the province viewed as a whole. It is true that a great many missionaries would refuse to admit that the recognition of other stations in the planting of our own is an acknowledgment of the unity of our work; but whether they acknowledge it, or whether they do not, it is so, and we for our part recognise it with thankfulness and look forward to a day when missions will not only recognise others by avoiding them, but by planning missions deliberately to a.s.sist each other. For that seems to us the necessary conclusion. The moment we recognise a station as a Christian mission station which we must not disturb, we have gone a long way towards recognising it as a mission station which our own must not only not disturb, but must complement; and when we know that one mission must complement another we are really not far removed from establis.h.i.+ng our missions with common consultation each to supply what is lacking to the other.

Holding this view, we desire to discover what place each mission station occupies when we take a wider view and survey the province or country.

Here we shall be able to adjust many apparent inequalities in the mission stations viewed by themselves. From our previous survey of the mission stations one by one we may have got the impression that some of them as mission stations designed for work in a district were very ill-balanced. The medical work, or inst.i.tutional work of some kind, may have seemed to be out of all proportion to the other forms of the work, and this impression may remain when we view the province. But on the other hand it may be seriously modified; because when we review the work of the province as a whole, we may find that the inst.i.tutional work of the province as a whole is out of proportion to the evangelistic work, and in that case we should think the disproportion at the station more serious. On the other hand we might find the inst.i.tutional work in the province inadequate, and in that case the emphasis which seemed undue in the one place, and may really be improper in that one place, nevertheless, in view of the situation in the whole province, may be shown to be reasonable in relation to the whole province. How then can we gather together the returns from all the stations so as to present a view of the work in the province? For that is the first thing. We cannot put the station into its proper place in the province until we have a view of the work in the province treated as a unity.

In provinces, large cities and towns, which are not reckoned as part of any mission station district, have to be taken into account. These large cities, capitals of provinces, countries, or empires, need special consideration, and must often be surveyed separately. They are centres in which many societies have their head-quarters, and many missionaries live, yet the work done in them is not always so impressive or extensive as the numbers of missionaries might suggest: occasionally the missionaries are all congregated in one quarter of the city, and large portions are practically untouched. In them, too, are sometimes large city congregations, self-supporting indeed and self-governing, but sucking into themselves all the more vigorous elements of the Christian community and employing them within a somewhat narrow circle. The problem of the evangelisation of these cities is a very serious one.

We suggest that these great cities might be treated either as one district or as several, and that they ought to be surveyed systematically by a body representative of all the missions in each city. If a proper survey were made and the facts tabulated, the statistical tables would be similar to those for the station district, and we could use them to complete a survey of the work done in the province treated as a unity.

But to view the work in the province as a unity we do not need all the detail of the station districts, indeed we should only find the multiplication of detail confusing. To gain a general view of work in a large area such as a province or a small country we must first of all select those features which are common to all the parts and vitally important. We venture to suggest that the important features to be represented are five. (1) The work to be done in the whole area. (2) The strength of the whole force at work in relation to the work to be done.

(3) The extent to which emphasis is laid on various forms of work. (4) The extent to which different cla.s.ses, races, and religions in the area are reached. (5) The extent to which the Church has attained to self-support.

1. If the mission stations and their allotted districts covered the whole country, we should need to do no more than add together the returns obtained from the station statistics which we have already drawn up. But in most countries there are large unoccupied areas of the size and population of which we are more or less ignorant. What we have is, either a census return for the whole province, or an estimate of its area and population. In dealing with the whole province then we must treat the station returns of towns and villages occupied and of the numbers of the Christian const.i.tuency as work done; and then we must find out the relation of these to the whole area and population. This would have to be done probably first on a large scale map which would show the density of the population in different parts of the area, and would show the stations and the strength of the Christian const.i.tuency in relation to the area and population. These facts could then be expressed in a table, and we should gain at once an idea of the extent to which the missions were in a position to reach the population. The table would be exceedingly simple and give us no more than the barest idea of the work to be done in its vaguest expression.

------------------------------------------------------------------ | | | Christian Con- | Non-Christian Province. | Area. | Population. | st.i.tuency. | Population.

------------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | __________|________|______________|________________|____________

If, in addition to this, there was either a census return or a credible estimate of the cities, towns, and villages, in the area, a table could be drawn of the cities, towns, and villages occupied, in the sense that there were Christians resident in them, and the work could be expressed in that form also, which would greatly a.s.sist the understanding of the other.

________________________________________________________________ | | | Occupied. | Unoccupied.

Province.|__________________________|___________________________ | | | | | | |Cities.| Towns.| Villages.| Cities.| Towns.| Villages.

_________|_______|_______|__________|________|_______|__________ | | | | | | _________|_______|_______|__________|________|_______|__________

We ought here to repeat that we do not imagine for a moment that the Foreign Missions are to occupy all the villages or even all the cities and towns. We believe that a careful statement of work to be done in this form would very speedily force us to realise, with a clearness and power never before experienced, the truth which we often repeat, that the conversion of the country must be the work of native Christians.

2. The force at work in relation to the work to be done. Here again it would not be sufficient to add together the figures returned from the stations, because in a large area like a province or a small country there are often many missionaries not at mission stations but at some large centre engaged in work for the whole province rather than for any particular mission district; as, for instance, translators or journalists; men engaged in hostels or Y.M.C.A. work; or in large inst.i.tutions, such as training colleges, medical or educational or industrial; or in some special form of Christian philanthropy, such as work amongst lepers, blind, deaf and dumb, and other infirm or defective persons; or men engaged in a.s.sisting the missionaries all over the country as directors, or forwarding agents; and all these must be taken into account in considering the foreign force in the province. Including all these we should get a table for the foreign force similar to that which we had for the station, and that force we could relate directly to the work to be done.

____________________________________________________________________ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Re- | | | | | | | |marks Popu- | Total |Propor-| |Propor-| |Single|Propor-| and lation.|Foreign|tion to| Men. |tion to| Wives.|Women.|tion to| Con- | Force.| Popu- | | Popu- | | | Popu- | clu- | |lation.| |lation.| | |lation.|sions.

_______|_______|_______|______|_______|_______|______|_______|______ | | | | | | | | _______|_______|_______|______|_______|_______|______|_______|______

We cannot sacrifice the proportions, because the life is in them.

Comparison of conditions in different areas can only be made on proportions. The mere statement of the figures with the suggestion that anyone can work out the proportions would reveal a singular ignorance of human nature.

For the native force all that we need for the present purpose is a table that will show us the Christian const.i.tuency, communicants, and workers in the whole province in proportion to one another. Here also we must include many workers and some congregations in large towns which the station district survey may have omitted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- |Total.| Proportion| Proportion |Proportion |Remarks | |of |of Christian |of |and | |Population.| Const.i.tuency. |Communicants.|Conclu- | | | | | sions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Christian | | | | | const.i.tuency| ---- | ---- | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Communicants| ---- | ---- | ---- | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Paid workers| ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Unpaid | | | | | Workers | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------

3. It is important to consider carefully the proportions in which the force is engaged in different forms of work since, as we have already explained, these different forms are often, if not generally, treated as distinct and separate methods of propaganda, and men want to know what is the effectiveness of each. They ask, what are the fruits of medical and educational work, and they expect an answer in terms of additions to the Church. If the dominant object of missions is the establishment of a native Church this is indeed not unnatural; but, as we have already said, many educational and medical missionaries might resent this demand, for they have other ideas of the nature and purpose of their work. Nevertheless, since this native Church is constantly presented to us as the dominant purpose of all our efforts, it is only right that we should make the inquiry here, as we did in the earlier chapters, and ask how the force in the field is divided. It seems almost absurd that we should have no idea in what proportion medicals, educationalists, and evangelists should be employed in any field. In some countries medical work is by far the most effective, if not the only possible form of propaganda; in some fields the evangelists can work effectively almost alone, and medical inst.i.tutions are not the same necessity, and their establishment does not produce great results in the building of the Church when compared with the work of evangelists and educationalists.

In some places their aid was at first apparently necessary to success, but as time went on that first desperate importance ceased. We have not so large a medical force that we can afford to use it for any but the most important and necessary purposes; yet, if the establishment of a native Church is the dominant purpose, large numbers of medicals are doing work which is (from this point of view only) of second-rate importance, whilst work which only they could do is left undone, and cries aloud for their a.s.sistance. Similarly, if the establishment of a native Church is really the dominant object, educationalists are often wrongly directed and placed. They are not producing fruit in this regard (of course in this regard only) in anything like the abundance which they might produce if they were free to attack the real questions of the education of the native Church. In many centres they are doing splendid work for the enlightenment of the people, but close beside them are large bodies of Christians who from the point of view of the establishment of a native Church need their help much more.

We ought then to know in each province how the force is divided and what is the fruit of the labours of each cla.s.s of missionaries viewed from the standpoint of the building up of the native Church.

Now if we know the proportions of the workers in each cla.s.s in each country, and if we could have a table which told us with any degree of accuracy the numbers of the inquirers, communicants, and places opened by the labours of each cla.s.s, we should surely have some facts from which we might gain light on this most practical question, in what proportion the work of each cla.s.s of workers was most effective in each country as an evangelistic and church-building agency. We propose then two tables (see opposite page).

(i)

_____________________________________________________________________ | | Paid |Amount of| Amount of | Remarks | Mission-| Native | Foreign | Native | and Con- | aries | Workers.| Funds. |Contributions. | clusions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Evangelistic| -- | -- | -- | -- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Medical | -- | -- | -- | -- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Educational | -- | -- | -- | -- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Other forms | | | | | of work. | -- | -- | -- | -- | _____________________________________________________________________

(ii)

_____________________________________________________________________ | Inquirers | | Places Opened | Remarks | Derived | Communicants | Directly Through | and Con- | From | Derived from | Influence of | clusions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Evangelistic| -- | -- | -- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Medical | -- | -- | -- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Educational | -- | -- | -- | _____________________________________________________________________

If we desire to know the influence of our medical and educational work upon the native Church we ought certainly to have a table which, for the schools at least, would show us what proportion of the pupils who pa.s.sed through the schools became valuable members of the Church. But every one who has had any scholastic experience, and has tried to follow the after-history of his pupils, knows that that is not easy, even in external and material affairs, and when the inquiry is concerned with internal convictions and religious influence that difficulty is insuperable. A few specially endowed and devoted educationalists could indeed tell the after-history of a considerable number of their pupils, and ideally all schools ought to have a record of the history of pupils for at least a few years after leaving the school; but there would always be a percentage of loss; in many cases that percentage would be very high, and we doubt whether many schools have any record at all.

Under these circ.u.mstances to put into an inquiry such as that which we propose a question concerning the after-life of scholars or patients seems almost impossible. Yet we cannot be content. There are mission schools which go on year after year educating boys for a business career, and generation after generation of boys pa.s.s through the school, large sums of mission money are expended on them, and the results _from a missionary point of view_ are shrouded in Cimmerian gloom; or the general darkness is relieved by one or two exceptional pupils who, because they do very well, appear to justify the existence of the inst.i.tution in which they were educated, though they would probably have been as valuable Christians if they had been educated in any other school. In this way a very low average is often concealed. If a school is judged by a few exceptionally good scholars, it should also be judged by a few exceptionally bad ones. It is indeed of serious importance that the missionary value of some of our medical and educational, especially the educational, inst.i.tutions should be carefully examined and tested by an appeal to indisputable facts. It is generally supposed that education in mission schools must necessarily produce a strong, enlightened, and zealous Christian community. That it produces a large number of Christians intellectually enlightened is certain: that they are zealous evangelists is not as certain. We want a statistical table to reveal the missionary value, not the commercial value, of the education given. But what table can we draw? The preceding table which sets forth inquirers and communicants is clearly insufficient though it is better than nothing. Until every school keeps a careful record of the after-history of at least a large number of its pupils it seems impossible to get any clear light on the question.

4. With regard to the extent to which different races and cla.s.ses are reached by the missions, we may safely a.s.sume that the Christian missions ought to extend their benefits to all cla.s.ses and races in the area, and that there ought to be some proportion between the efforts made in each case. If, and when, the responsible leaders of the missions decided that the time had come to concentrate on one particular kind of work for one particular cla.s.s, we may be perfectly certain that they would have no difficulty in justifying their action. But in any case action should not be taken without consideration of proportions, and, therefore, it is important that the proportions should be known.

But in dealing with work in the province or small country we cannot simply repeat the table prepared for the mission district. In the province or country there are often missionaries at work who give themselves up wholly to one cla.s.s. It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish every possible form of work; but seeing that very considerable work is done amongst students, we have thought it well to add one column in which the proportion of the children of different cla.s.ses who are attending Christian schools or living in Christian hostels is set forth:--

_____________________________________________________________________ | | Agri- | | | |Remarks Percentage Stud-|Offi- |cultural|Traders.|Labourers.| Crafts-|and of: ents.|cials.|Small- | | | men. |Conclu- | |Holders.| | | |sions.

________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______ In Population -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | ________________|______|________|________|___________________________ In Christian -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | Const.i.tuency | | | | | | ________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______ In Christian | | | | | | schools and | | | | | | hostels, -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | percentage | | | | | | of children | | | | | | of | | | | | | ________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______

With respect to work among different races, castes, etc., no addition to the table prepared for the district seems necessary, and we therefore repeat it:--

--------------|-----------------------------------------|------------ | Races, Religious Castes, etc., whatever| Remarks | they may be. | And | |Conclusions.