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CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
By Robert E. Speer 
 
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The Duff Lectures for 1910 
 
 MAY 19 B75 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 THE NATIONS 
 
 By 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
 Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian 
 Church in the United States of America 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, igio, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago : 80 Wabash Avenue 
 Toronto : 25 Richmond St., W. 
 London : 21 Paternoster Square 
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PREFACE 
 
 THE six chapters in this volume comprise the Duff 
 Missionary Lectures delivered in Scotland on the foun- 
 dation established by William Pirie Duff, Esq., in mem- 
 ory of his father, Alexander Duff. It was an honour to be 
 charged with any work associated with that great name. Mem- 
 ories still exist in America of a visit from the famous missionary 
 in 1854, when under his leadership a missionary conference 
 was held in New York City from which deep and abiding 
 influences remain with us to this day. The printed reports 
 of the conference leave Dr. Duff's public address uncom- 
 pleted. The reporter was so carried away that no record was 
 made of the rushing torrent of eloquence with which it closed. 
 But above a sense of wonder at his gift of convincing and per- 
 suasive speech, Alexander Duff left upon those who heard him 
 in America, as he left upon the world, the impress of his 
 supreme devotion to a supreme cause. I shall be grateful if 
 through these lectures any one may be led to recognise as supreme 
 the cause which Duff served, and to give his life to it with some 
 small measure of Duff's devotion. 
 
 With the venture of such a prayer I asked the hearers of 
 these lectures and now ask the reader to consider some of the 
 problems of modern missions under the general theme of Chris- 
 tianity and the Nations, looking first at the missionary duty and 
 motives, secondly at the missionary aim and methods, thirdly at 
 the three great sets of problems involved in the relations of mis- 
 sions (1) to the new national Churches which they found, (2) 
 to politics, and (3) to the non-Christian religions, and lastly at 
 the relation of the missionary movement to the attainment of our 
 hopes of a united Church and a united humanity. 
 
 The lectures were written on steamships while skirting the 
 coasts of South America on a visit to the mission work in the 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 South American lands and there was access only to notes on 
 missionary books but not to any libraries, and much appeal to 
 missionary biography which would have been desirable was im- 
 possible. I think, however, that no opinions have been set forth 
 for which there is not ample support in the judgment and expe- 
 rience of some of the great missionaries of whom the world 
 knows and of many of the missionaries, equally great, of whom 
 the world does not know. 
 
 The lectures were delivered in January and February, 1910, 
 in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, and I am glad to take 
 advantage of the opportunity presented by this preface to thank 
 the many friends whose kindness made the duties of the lecture- 
 ship an ever memorable delight. The limited time available for 
 the delivery of each lecture required the cutting out of a good 
 part of the material, but all that was omitted is restored in the 
 printed form. 
 
 No claim of finality or completeness is made for the judg- 
 ments on mission policies and methods which are advanced. The 
 work of missions is a living work, full of all the perplexities and 
 problems of human life wrought upon by the Divine Life, and 
 we are all only feeling our way toward the great principles which 
 are involved in it and toward the formulation of these princi- 
 ples in some systematic statement. If the discussion attempted 
 here leads, either through agreement or through dissent, to a 
 fuller and juster view than has been here proposed, the end of 
 the book will have been attained. It is the truth that is sought 
 and not the maintenance of any particular theory or opinion. 
 
 R. E. S. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Missionary Duty and Motives . . . .17 
 
 The last command of Christ not the deep and final ground of 
 missionary duty, but 
 
 (1) The character of God; (2) The personality of 
 Christ; (3) The purpose of the Christian Church; 
 (4) The need of humanity. And only Christianity 
 can meet these needs. It does so by striking down to 
 the individual and saving him. 
 
 But we are told that these motives are dead and inoperative, 
 that they cannot live — (a) With the new theology, (b) 
 With " the force of evolution." 
 
 But the missionary motive does not change: 
 
 It has always been moral and not merely eschatological. 
 
 The fundamental motive, — but there are others : 
 
 (1) The outward movement of civilisation requires 
 the missionary enterprise — To advance it, to support 
 it, to correct it; (2) The Church also requires it; (3) 
 The special urgencies of our own day. The condition 
 of transition in Asia ; the need and collapse of Roman- 
 ism in South America. 
 
 It is objected 
 
 (1) That we ought not to interfere with the religious 
 ideas and institutions of the non-Christian people; (2) 
 That so much is to be done at home that it is wrong 
 
8 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 to divert Christian energies into the work of distant 
 missions; (3) That the whole outward movement is 
 wrong and futile. 
 No. The outward movement is the genius of the faith. 
 Check it and the faith decays, because the faith is a re- 
 ligion — a life to be lived, a love to be obeyed. 
 
 II 
 
 The Missionary Aim and Methods . . . -57 
 
 The missionary enterprise not charged with the whole duty 
 
 of Christendom to the non-Christian peoples. 
 Its aim not to be confused with its results or its methods. 
 Its aim includes three things: 
 
 The proclamation of Christ. 
 
 The salvation of men. 
 
 The naturalisation of Christianity in the non-Christian 
 nations. 
 The task one of great difficulty. 
 
 The aim is not the civilisation or the conversion of the world. 
 Is it "the evangelisation of the world in this generation?" 
 Its aim and the flexibility of its methods seen in St. Paul. 
 Our methods : 
 
 1. The method of incarnation, but not of asceticism. 
 
 2. Preaching Christ. 
 
 3. Education. Is it legitimate? 
 
 4. Philanthropy. 
 The problems which arise. 
 Our attitude toward these. 
 
 Two different points of view, and four comments upon one 
 of them. 
 
CONTENTS 9 
 
 PAGE 
 III 
 
 Missions and the Native Churches . . . .113 
 
 The growth of nationalism in Asia. 
 
 This spirit inevitable and desirable in politics. 
 
 The problem of nationalism a welcome mission problem. 
 
 It is in line with our ideal, but not with the Roman ideal. 
 
 It is a problem. 
 
 1. In right ideals for the native Churches and right 
 
 education of them from the outset. 
 
 (a) Self-propagation. 
 
 (b) Self-support. 
 
 (c) Self-government. 
 
 2. In right relations of missionaries to native 
 Churches. 
 
 3. In the setting of right moral standards. Polygamy. 
 Caste. 
 
 4. In the true impartation of a free life. 
 
 The need of seeing clearly the principle on which we work, 
 the need to be supplied, and the difficulty to be met. 
 
 IV 
 Missions and Politics ....... 177 
 
 The origin of the political problem in Missions. 
 
 The political aspects of the movement inevitable, and com- 
 plicating. 
 
 They come from without, but also from within. 
 
 Christianity is a force which affects all life. 
 
 And its agents have been unable to refrain from rendering 
 political service. 
 
io CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Is this political entanglement consistent with the aim of 
 
 Missions ? 
 What are the political rights and duties of missionaries? 
 Have missionaries any political rights? 
 Ought they to have any ? 
 What ought they to do with their rights? 
 St. Paul's course of action. 
 Three practical questions: 
 
 i. The question of the exercise by missionaries of the 
 right of extra-territoriality. 
 
 2. The question of the protection of native converts. 
 
 3. The vital question of the effect upon the purity and 
 
 vitality of the mission movement of its confusion 
 with politics. The confusion is inevitable and is 
 likely to increase. It is dangerous. It is the con- 
 fusion of an era of construction in which God is 
 working in many ways. 
 
 V 
 
 Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions . . 239 
 
 Christianity's claims only tenable if rational. 
 
 Comparison with other religions unavoidable. 
 
 And a fundamental element in missions. 
 
 Essential conditions of a just comparison. 
 
 Diverse views of the non-Christian religions and their rela- 
 tion to Christianity. 
 
 Results of our comparison : 
 
 (1) Men are made for religion; (2) Christianity has 
 all the good of other religions ; (3) Christianity is free 
 from the evils of other religions ; (4) Christianity 
 
CONTENTS ii 
 
 contains indispensable elements of good, which all 
 other religions lack, (a) The conception of the Fa- 
 therhood of God, (b) The discovery of the evil of sin 
 and provision for its forgiveness and defeat, (c) The 
 ideal of sacrificial service, (d) The idea and principle 
 of resurrection; (5) the non-Christian religions are 
 inadequate to meet the world's needs; (6) Chris- 
 tianity is adequate because of its superior conception 
 of God, its moral efficiency and its universality. 
 
 Have, then, the non-Christian religions prepared the way for 
 Christianity? 
 
 What do we conclude should be the attitude of Christianity 
 toward the non-Christian religions? 
 
 (1) It should be consistent; (2) It should recognise 
 joyfully all the good in them and build upon it; (3) 
 It should not slur over or ignore the points of differ- 
 ence ; (4) It should make no compromises, but should 
 anticipate its own absolute triumph; (5) It should 
 welcome all transformations of the thought of non- 
 Christian peoples which bring it nearer to Christi- 
 anity; (6) But it must continue to seek to win men 
 away from these religions to Christianity; (7) It 
 should perceive and hold fast the truth of its own 
 uniqueness; (8) It should welcome any contribution 
 to a fuller understanding of its own character, but it 
 may exaggerate the prospect of such contributions. 
 
 This view of the non-Christian religions and of our attitude 
 to them is not the Gospel which we are to preach. It is 
 the ground of our Mission not the substance of our 
 message. 
 
12 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VI 
 
 The Relation of Missions to the Unity of the Church 
 and the Unity of the World ...... 327 
 
 Considerations which indicate that Christian unity on the 
 foreign mission field is desirable and necessary : 
 
 1. The magnitude, difficulties, and urgency of the task 
 
 demand economy and efficiency. 
 
 2. The elementary needs of the peoples to be reached 
 call primarily for what is essential alone. 
 
 3. The definiteness of the missionary aim provides for 
 unity. 
 
 4. There is already sufficient intellectual agreement in 
 
 the Evangelical Churches of the West. 
 
 5. The Occidental character of our divisions makes 
 
 their export unnecessary and inexpedient. 
 The kind of unity for which these considerations call in- 
 volves : 
 
 (1) The avoidance of all waste and friction; (2) A 
 positive co-operation; (3) A real and spiritual unity. 
 
 The measure in which such unity has been attained on the 
 foreign field — (1) The disuse of denominational names; 
 
 (2) Territorial divisions of the field; (3) Mutual rec- 
 ognition of ordinances and discipline ; (4) Union in 
 prayer; (5) The establishment of committees of con- 
 ference and arbitration; (6) Church federation; (7) 
 Corporate oneness. 
 
 The influence of missionary unity upon the unity of the 
 Church at home: 
 
 ( 1 ) It is showing the home Churches the possibility of 
 unity; (2) It is teaching them the duty of unity; (3) 
 
CONTENTS 13 
 
 It is revealing to them the method of unity, (a) It has 
 shown us the uniting power of a great work, (b) And 
 the power of fellowship in difference to dissolve the 
 difference, (c) And that the supreme method of union 
 is not adaptation but transcendence, (d) The principle 
 of nationalism: its relation to the problem of the Ro- 
 man Church, and the relation of missions through this 
 principle to world-unity. 
 The dangers of political nationalism — The misconstruction 
 of the nationalistic principle; Insolence of racial prej- 
 udice. 
 The work of missions in meeting these dangers and supply- 
 ing the elements essential to the unification of mankind: 
 (i) The missionary construction of Christianity alone 
 proclaims a hope and use for every race; (2) The 
 missionary agency is an effective and essential con- 
 ciliating influence; (3) It introduces new principles 
 into the non-Christian nations, without which they 
 cannot fulfil their mission or be fitted for human 
 unity; (4) It presents the only method of effecting the 
 unity of mankind; (5) It provides the adequate moral 
 basis; (6) It embodies the supreme uniting power. 
 
I 
 
 THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 
 
 THE last command of Christ is not the deep and final ground 
 of the Church's missionary duty. That duty is authorita- 
 tively stated in the words of the great commission, and it is 
 of infinite consequence to have had it so stated by our Lord Him- 
 self. But if these particular words had never been spoken by Him, 
 or if, having been spoken, they had not been preserved, the mission- 
 ary duty of the Church would not be in the least affected. " The 
 supreme argument for foreign missions," says an earnest mis- 
 sionary advocate, " is the word of Jesus Christ Himself." This is 
 correct but for three words. The supreme argument for foreign 
 missions is not any word of Christ's, — it is Christ Himself, and 
 what He reveals and signifies. The words of Christ did not 
 create new duties. They revealed eternal duties, the grounds 
 of which lay back of all words in the nature of things and in 
 the facts of life. 
 
 It seems clear that the last command of Christ played no part 
 at all in the first foreign missions of the Church. There is no 
 reference to it in Paul's Epistles. No appeal was made to it 
 in the issue over the admission of Gentiles to the Church. Medi- 
 aeval missions did not find their ground in it. It is without 
 authority for many men to-day, because, while they accept the 
 words as Christ's words, they do not feel the domination of Christ 
 or of the real grounds of missionary duty. Those grounds are 
 in the very being and thought of God, in the character of Chris- 
 tianity, in the aim and purpose of the Christian Church, and in 
 the nature of humanity, its unity, and its need. 
 
 The word of Christ as an argument for foreign missions has 
 just as much vitality as it draws from the depth of our discern- 
 
 17 
 
18 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ment and the power of our acceptance of the considerations 
 which are the true grounds of missionary duty. " If any of you 
 enter the Gospel ministry in this or other lands," said Adoniram 
 Judson in an appeal to young men at home, " let not your object 
 be so much to ' do your duty,' or even to ' save souls,' though 
 these should have a place in your motives, as to please the Lord 
 Jesus. Let this be your ruling motive in all that you do. . . . 
 Some one asked me not long ago whether faith or love influenced 
 me most in going to the heathen. I thought of it a while and 
 at length concluded that there was in me but little of either. 
 But in thinking of what did influence me, I remembered a time, 
 out in the woods back of Andover Seminary, when I was almost 
 disheartened. Everything looked dark. No one had gone out 
 from this country. The way was not open. The field was far 
 distant and in an unhealthy climate. I knew not what to do. 
 All at once that last command seemed to come to my heart 
 directly from heaven. I could doubt no longer, but determined 
 on the spot to obey it at all hazards, for the sake of pleasing 
 the Lord Jesus Christ." But what pleased Christ was not the 
 disciple's conformity to an enactment, a statute of evangelisation, 
 but the deep realisation of the grounds of missionary duty, which 
 enabled Judson to see what the last command meant and to lay 
 his life in line with the purpose of God in the Incarnation. 
 
 It is in the very being and character of God that the 
 deepest ground of the missionary enterprise is to be found. 
 We cannot think of God except in terms which necessitate the 
 missionary idea. He is one. There cannot, therefore, be such 
 different tribal or racial gods as are avowed in the ethnic re- 
 ligions of the East, and assumed in the ethnic politics of the 
 West. Whatever God exists for Scotland exists for all the world, 
 and none other exists. And that cannot be true of God in 
 Scotland which is not true of Him also in India. Men are not 
 free to hold contradictory conceptions of the same God. If 
 there be any God at all for me, He must be every other man's 
 God, too. And God is true. To say that He is one is merely 
 to say that He is. To say that He is true is to begin to describe 
 Him, and to describe Him as alone He can be. And if He 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 19 
 
 is true He cannot have taught men falsehood. He will have 
 struggled with their ignorance in His education of mankind, but 
 it cannot have been His will or be His will now that some men 
 should have false ideas of Him or false attitudes toward Him. 
 A true God must will to be truly known by all men. And God 
 is holy and pure. Nothing unholy or impure can be of Him. 
 Anything unholy or impure must be abhorrent to Him, if in 
 religion the more abhorrent because the more misrepresentative 
 of Him, the more revolting to His nature. If anywhere in the 
 world religion covers what is unclean or unworthy, there the 
 character of God is being assailed. And God is just and good. 
 No race and no man can have slipped through the fatherly affec- 
 tion of a loving God. Any inequality or unfairness or indiffer- 
 ence in an offered God would send us seeking for the real one 
 whom we should know was not yet found. A God who was 
 idols in China, fate in Arabia, fetiches in Africa, and man him- 
 self with all his sin in India, would be no God anywhere. If 
 God is one man's father, He is or would be every man's father. 
 We cannot think of God, I say it reverently, without thinking 
 of Him as a missionary God. Unless we are prepared to accept 
 a God whose character carries with it the missionary obligation 
 and idea, we must do without any real God at all. 
 
 It is by Christ, however, that the character of God is revealed 
 to us. One of His most bold and penetrating words was His 
 declaration, " The day will come when they shall slay you, think- 
 ing that they do service unto God, and these things will they do 
 unto you because they have not known the Father or me." The 
 best people of His day, He declared, were ignorant of the true 
 character of God. Only those truly knew it who discovered or 
 recognised it in Him. " He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
 Father. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. No man 
 knoweth the Son save the Father, and no man knoweth the 
 Father save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to 
 reveal Him." These are not arbitrary statutes. They are simple 
 statements of fact. The world's knowledge of the character of 
 God has depended and depends now on its knowledge of God 
 in Christ. A good and worthy, an adequate and satisfying God, 
 
20 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 i.e., God in truth, is known only where men have been in contact 
 with the message of historic Christianity. 
 
 This simple fact involves a sufficient missionary responsibility. 
 Men will only know a good and loving Father as their God, 
 i.e., they will know God, only as they are brought into the knowl- 
 edge of Christ, Who is the only revelation of God. For those 
 who have this knowledge to withhold it from the whole world 
 is to do two things. It is to condemn the world to godlessness, 
 and it is to raise the suspicion that those who think they have 
 the knowledge of God are in reality ignorant of what Christ 
 was and what He came to do. " It is the sincere and deep 
 conviction of my soul," said Phillips Brooks, " when I declare 
 that if the Christian faith does not culminate and complete itself 
 in the effort to make Christ known to all the world, that faith 
 appears to me a thoroughly unreal and insignificant thing, desti- 
 tute of power for the single life and incapable of being con- 
 vincingly proved to be true." And I recall a remark of Principal 
 Rainy 's to the effect that the measure of our sense of missionary 
 duty was simply the measure of our personal valuation of 
 Christ. If He is God to us, all in all to our minds and souls, 
 we shall realise that He alone can be this to every man, and 
 that He must be offered thus to every other man. The Unitarian 
 view has never produced a mission save under an inherited mo- 
 mentum or the communicated stimulus of evangelicalism, and 
 it has been incapable of sustaining such missions as it has pro- 
 duced. But when men really believe in God in Christ, and 
 know Christ as God, they must, if they are loyal to themselves 
 or to Him, share Him with all mankind. 
 
 For, child of one race and one time though He was, and 
 that race the most centripetal of all races, Christ thought and 
 wrought in universals. He looked forward over all ages and 
 outward over all nations. The bread which He would give was 
 His flesh, which Pie would give for the life of the world. He 
 was the light of the whole world. If He should be lifted up 
 He would draw all men unto Himself. His disciples were to 
 go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. His 
 sheep were not of a Jewish fold alone. It was not of a race 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 21 
 
 but of a world that the Father had sent Him to be the Saviour. 
 He did not regard Himself as one of many Saviours and His 
 revelation as one of many revealings. He was the only Saviour 
 of men, and His was the only revelation of the Father God. 
 " I have long ago ceased to regard the history of the Hebrew 
 race as unique," writes a well-known Christian leader of our 
 day. " It was well for us in our early days that our studies 
 were directed towards it, and we saw how the Hebrew people 
 found God in every event in their history, but we believe that 
 Assyria and Babylon, Nineveh and Rome, could have similar 
 stories written of God's dealings with them." Now, whether 
 the history of the Hebrew race is unique or not is not a matter 
 of theory. It is a simple question of fact. If it was not unique, 
 then where is its like? What other history produced a vocabu- 
 lary for a revelation? What other history yielded God to hu- 
 manity? What other ended in a Saviour? As a simple matter 
 of fact, Christianity which sprang out of this race and this 
 history is unlike all other religions in its kind, as we shall see. 
 As such, it never contemplated anything else than universal 
 dominion. If it shrinks into a more racial cult, it separates itself 
 from its Founder and life, and utterly abandons its essential 
 character. 
 
 Not only is the missionary duty inherent in the nature of 
 Christianity and in the Christian conception of God, i.e., in the 
 real character of God, but it is imbedded in the very purpose of 
 the Christian Church. There were no missionary organisations 
 in the early Church. No effort was made to promote a mission- 
 ary propaganda, but the religion spread at once and everywhere. 
 The genius of universal extension was in the Church. " We may 
 take it as an assured fact," says Harnack, " that the mere exist- 
 ence and persistent activity of the individual Christian com- 
 munities did more than anything else to bring about the exten- 
 sion of the Christian religion." 
 
 Bishop Montgomery in his little book on " Foreign Missions " 
 recalls Archbishop Benson's definition of four eras of missions, 
 " first, when the whole Church acted as one ; next, when mis- 
 sions were due to great saints; thirdly, to the action of govern- 
 
22 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ments; lastly, the age of missionary societies." The Church 
 at the outset was a missionary society. The new Christians 
 were drawn together spontaneously by the uniting power of a 
 common life, and they felt as spontaneously the outward pressure 
 of a world mission. The triumphant prosecution of that mission 
 and the moral fruits of this new and uniting life were their 
 apologetics. They did not sit down within the walls of a formal- 
 ised and stiffened institution to compose reasoned arguments 
 for Christianity. The new religion would have rotted out from 
 heresy and anaemia in two generations if they had done so. 
 
 As an old writer of the Church of England has put it : " The 
 way in which the Gospel would seem to be intended to be alike 
 preserved and perpetuated on earth is not by its being jealously 
 guarded by a chosen Order and cautiously communicated to a 
 precious Few, but by being so widely scattered and so thickly 
 sown that it shall be impossible, from the very extent of its 
 spreading, merely, to be rooted up. It was designed to be not 
 as a Perpetual Fire in the Temple, to be tended with jealous 
 assiduity and to be fed only with special oil ; but rather as a 
 shining and burning Light, to be set up on every hill, which 
 should blaze the broader and the brighter in the breeze, and 
 go on so spreading over the surrounding territory as that noth- 
 ing of this world should ever be able to extinguish or to conceal 
 it." The sound doctrine of the Church was safeguarded by 
 the wholesome hygienic reflex action of service and work and 
 conquest. And its light and life convinced men, because men 
 saw them conquering the world. The Church was established 
 to spread Christianity, and to conserve it in the only way in 
 which living things can ever be conserved, by living action. 
 When in any age or in any land the Church has forgotten this, 
 she has paid for her disobedience. So long as there are any 
 unreached men in the world or any unreached life, the business 
 of the Church is her missionary duty. 
 
 And while so long as our present unhappy divisions continue 
 among us there may be diversities of tasks among various bodies 
 of Christians, nevertheless that is true of each body which 
 is true of all. Its main business can never be to guard. It 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 23 
 
 must be to give. Each Church must recognise the missionary 
 duty as its duty as a Church, and its primary duty, if it would 
 be true to the fundamental purpose of the Church in the world. 
 The Church of Scotland was the first great Church in modern 
 times to rediscover this principle. In 1796 two Synods of the 
 Established Church overtured the Assembly regarding foreign 
 missions, proposing a collection. The proposition was violently 
 opposed. Even moderatism can be violent. It was argued that 
 " to spread abroad the knowledge of the Gospel amongst bar- 
 barous and heathen nations seems to be highly preposterous, in 
 so far as philosophy and learning must in the nature of things 
 take the precedence, and that while there remains at home a 
 single individual without means of religious knowledge, to propa- 
 gate it abroad would be improper and absurd." A collection 
 for missions, it was contended, " would no doubt be a subject 
 for legal prosecution." Thanks to Chalmers and Inglis, the 
 day came when the Church of Scotland came to the truth and 
 became " the first Protestant Church as such to send out a 
 missionary." In 1831, Dr. Rice presented in the General As- 
 sembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
 America his famous overture whose principle, six years later, 
 was permanently embodied in the constitution of the Church. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church in the United States of North 
 America [declared Dr. Rice in his overture] in organising 
 their form of government, and in repeated declarations made 
 through their representatives in after times, have solemnly recog- 
 nised the importance of the missionary cause and their obligation 
 as Christians to promote it by all the means in their power. 
 But these various acknowledgments have not gone to the full 
 extent of the obligations imposed by the Head of the Church, 
 nor have they produced exertions at all corresponding thereto. 
 Indeed, in the judgment of the General Assembly, the primary 
 and principal object of the institution of the Church by Jesus 
 Christ, was not so much the salvation of the individual Christian, 
 for " he that believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved," — 
 but the communicating the blessings of the Gospel to the destitute 
 with the efficiency of united efforts. The entire history of the 
 Christian Societies organised by the Apostles affords abundant 
 evidence that they so understood the design of the Master. 
 
24 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 They received of Him a command to preach the Gospel to every 
 creature, and from the churches planted by them the word of 
 the Lord was " sounded out " through all parts of the civilised 
 world. Nor did the missionary spirit of the primitive churches 
 expire until they had become secularised and corrupted by 
 another spirit. And it is the decided belief of the General As- 
 sembly that a true revival of religion in any denomination of 
 Christians will generally, if not universally, be marked by an 
 increased sense of obligation to execute the commission which 
 Christ gave the Apostles. The General Assembly would, there- 
 fore, in the most public and solemn manner, express their shame 
 and sorrow that the Church represented by them has done com- 
 paratively so little to make known the saving health of the Gospel 
 to all nations. . . . Be it therefore, Resolved, that the Presby- 
 terian Church in the United States is a Missionary Society, 
 the object of which is to aid in the conversion of the world ; 
 and that every member is a member for life of said society, 
 and bound in maintenance of his Christian character to do all 
 in his power for the accomplishment of this object. 
 
 As a matter of fact, nine-tenths of the loyalty to the mis- 
 sionary purpose of the Church is shown by one-tenth of the 
 membership, but the Church none the less is a missionary or- 
 ganisation, and the missionary organisation and the missionary 
 duty are grounded in her charter and character. 
 
 The fourth deep ground of missionary duty is the need of 
 humanity. The world needs Christ to-day as much and as truly 
 as it needed Him nineteen centuries ago. If Judaism and the 
 Roman Empire needed what Christ brought, then Hinduism 
 and Asia need it now. If they do not need Him now, no more 
 was He needed then. If they can get along without Him just 
 as well, the whole world can dispense with Him. If there is 
 no missionary duty, the ground falls from under the necessity, 
 and therefore from under the reality of the Incarnation. But 
 that world into which He came did need Christ. It was dead 
 without Him. It was He Who gave it life, Who cleansed its 
 defilement, Who taught it purity and service and equality and 
 faith and gave it hope and fellowship. He alone can do this 
 now. The non-Christian world needs now what Christ and 
 Christ alone can do for it. 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 25 
 
 It needs the physical wholeness, the fitting of life to its 
 conditions, which, as a matter of fact, nations get just in pro- 
 portion as they get Christ. We do not need to go for proof 
 of such needs to any overcoloured, distorted accounts of those 
 who see only the good of Christendom and only the evil of 
 heathenism — heathenism is a good word, and it describes facts. 
 Sir John Hewett's account, as Lieutenant-Governor, of the con- 
 ditions of sanitation in the United Provinces of India, will suffice : 
 " Speaking generally, the death rates recorded in the Province 
 in recent years, both in urban and in rural tracts, are nearly 
 three times as high as in England and Wales. It is estimated 
 that in India nearly one out of every ten of the population is 
 constantly sick, and a person who has escaped the diseases and 
 dangers of childhood and youth, and entered into manhood or 
 womanhood, has an expectation that his or her life will extend 
 to only 68 per cent, of the time that a person similarly situated 
 may be expected to live in England. . . . Infantile mortality 
 is nearly twice as great as it is in England. . . . It is lamentable 
 that one out of every four children born should die before he 
 or she has completed a year of life. . . . The average number 
 of persons per house (which frequently consist of two rooms, 
 or even of only one) is 5.3 in important cities, and 5.5 in the 
 rest of the country. It is estimated that the average superficial 
 area per head of the population is something like 10 square feet, 
 and the breathing space — 150 cubic feet — just half what is re- 
 quired in common lodging-houses in England." Conditions in 
 Christian lands are not what they should be, but they are in- 
 finitely superior to the conditions in other lands, and in pro- 
 portion as they are Christian, famine and disease and want are 
 overcome. Are these blessings to be ours alone? 
 
 The world needs the social message and redemption of Chris- 
 tianity. Paul tells us that it met and conquered the inequalities 
 of his time, the chasm between citizen and foreigner, master and 
 slave, man and woman. These are the chasms of the non- 
 Christian world still. It has no ideal of human brotherhood 
 save as it has heard of it through Christianity. Not one of the 
 non-Christian religions or civilisations has given either women 
 
26 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 or children, especially girl children, their rights. There is human 
 affection. The statement of a recent writer regarding China, 
 that " children are spawned and not born," is surely most un- 
 true save on the basest levels of life. But the proverb of the 
 Arab women of Kesrawan too truly suggests the Asiatic point 
 of view : " The threshold weeps forty days when a girl is born." 
 And between man and man the world knows no deep basis of 
 common humanity, or if it knows, it has no adequate sanction 
 and resources for its realisation. Its brotherhood is within the 
 faith or within the caste, not as inclusive as humanity. It wants 
 what all the world wanted until it found it through Christ. 
 " In his little churches, where each person bore his neighbour's 
 burden, Paul's spirit," says Harnack, " already saw the dawning 
 of a new humanity, and in the Epistle to the Ephesians he has 
 voiced this feeling with a thrill of exaltation. Far in the back- 
 ground of these churches, like some unsubstantial semblance, 
 lay the division between Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, 
 great and small, rich and poor. For a new humanity had now 
 appeared, and the Apostle viewed it as Christ's body, in which 
 every member served the rest and each was indispensable in 
 his own place." The great social idea of Christianity is still 
 only partially realised by us. But we do not have it at all unless 
 we have it for humanity, and it can be made to prevail anywhere 
 only by being made to prevail everywhere. 
 
 The world needs, moreover, the moral ideal and the moral 
 power of Christianity. The Christian conceptions of truth and 
 purity and love and holiness and service are original. Every 
 ideal except the Christian ideal is defective. Three other sets 
 of ideals are offered to men. The only other theistic ideals are 
 the Mohammedan and the Jewish. The Mohammedan ideal ex- 
 pressly sanctions polygamy, and the authority of its founder is 
 cited in justification of falsehood. The Jewish ideal is wholly 
 enclosed in and transcended by the Christian. Buddhism and 
 Shintoism and Confucianism offer men atheistic ideals, i.e., ideals 
 which abandon the conception of the absolute and cannot rise 
 above their source in man who made them. Hinduism, with 
 its pantheism, is incapable of the moral distinctions which alone 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 27 
 
 can produce moral ideals, and as a matter of fact owes its 
 worthy moral conceptions to-day exclusively to the influence of 
 Christianity. But it is not ideals alone, — it is power for their 
 realisation that the world requires. That power can be found 
 only in life, in the life of God communicated to men. What 
 offers this or pretends to offer it but Christianity? How can 
 it be offered by religions which have no God, or whose God has 
 no character? 
 
 For this is the great need of the world. It needs the knowl- 
 edge and the life of the good and fatherly God. Its own religions 
 have given it neither of these, and its own religions are dis- 
 integrating. Christianity has detached small companies of people 
 from them, but the influence of Christianity has penetrated them 
 to the marrow. Let alone, it would war against their vicious 
 elements and preserve all in them capable of redemption. But 
 it will not be let alone. Other influences are at work upon the 
 religious conceptions of the non-Christian world, and under those 
 influences the conceptions and the institutions of the non-Chris- 
 tian religions are doomed. Never did men face a more solemn 
 responsibility than confronts us now. " The ancient beliefs and 
 customs of the non-Christian peoples," says Mr. Bryce in a 
 recent letter, " are destined soon to pass away, and it becomes 
 a matter of supreme importance to see that new and better moral 
 and religious principles are given to them promptly to replace 
 what is disappearing; and to endeavour to find methods for 
 preventing the faults or vices of adventurers and others who 
 are trying to exploit the uncivilised races from becoming a fatal 
 hindrance to the spread of Christianity." The Christian nations 
 are standing face to face with judgment here. The Bishop of 
 Lahore put this earnestly in a Ramsden sermon at Cambridge 
 University many years ago. " And is it too much to say," he 
 enquired, " that our greatest national glory or our deepest na- 
 tional shame will, in the eye of history, turn in the way in which 
 we recognise our responsibility and discharge our obligations to 
 the land [of India] more, perhaps, than any other single aspect 
 of our national life? That our contact with India must, whether 
 we will it or not, be fraught with issues of the most momentous 
 
28 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 importance to that land, is patent to every one who is the least 
 acquainted with the conditions of life there. Even putting all 
 distinctive missionary effort out of the question, the mere con- 
 tact of Western thought and culture and education is inevitably 
 breaking up the older forms of Hindu thought. But it lies with 
 us whether that contact shall be charged with infinite blessing, 
 leading them on to a higher, deeper, truer faith, and a new 
 national life, or whether, cutting them adrift from their old 
 moorings, we leave them without Christ, strangers from the 
 covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the 
 world. But if, indeed, this is the return that we make them, 
 if, after holding the land for our own benefit and skimming 
 it of its choicest productions and pouring into it as a happy 
 solution of difficulties at home, in ever-increasing streams, our 
 sons as civilians, soldiers, engineers, professional men, men of 
 business, artisans, mechanics, and the like, we express our in- 
 ability or our unwillingnes to satisfy its hope and need, to 
 minister to its sore sickness, how think you will this stand in 
 the eyes of a righteous God Who loveth righteousness, Whose 
 countenance will behold the thing that is just?" Yes, how are 
 we to think that He will regard such paltering with manifest 
 missionary duty? 
 
 And throughout the non-Christian world there are multitudes 
 who are conscious of their needs. They may not regard Chris- 
 tianity as the answer to their need. It is not surprising if 
 they do not. In what way has Christendom not misrepresented 
 Christianity to them ? But they know their need. " You speak 
 as if our country is already a dead thing," says one of the 
 characters in Uchimura's dialogue on " The Future of Japan." 
 " Yes," is the reply, " immoral nation is already dead. With all 
 its shows of stability, a nation without a high ideal is a dead 
 corpse. Japan under the Satsuma Choshu Government is a 
 dead nation." " You speak very determinedly." " Yes," replies 
 Uchimura, " I have to ; I cannot bear to see my nation die." 
 And there are many who do not wish to see their nations die 
 in Asia, who turn to Christ. " All over India," wrote Dr. Cuth- 
 bert Hall to the missionaries there when he left India, with 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 29 
 
 India's need upon his heart and its poison in his blood, " all 
 over India are men unprepared to identify themselves with any- 
 Christian denomination, to whom the popular forms of the an- 
 cient faith have become inadequate, if not distasteful, and for 
 whom the name of Jesus Christ and the distinctive truths con- 
 nected with that name for the redemption of individuals and 
 the reconstruction of the social order, are taking on new at- 
 tractiveness and value." The fact that the world is awaking 
 to its need, whether it is drawn or repelled by Christianity as 
 it understands it matters not, adds a pathos to its mute appeal 
 to those who have in custody the Gospel of God in Christ. 
 
 For it is only that Gospel that can meet the world's need. 
 Commerce and government, philanthropy and education, deal 
 with it superficially, and in the hands of shallow or evil men 
 only accentuate it. A force is needed which will cut down to 
 the roots, which deals with life in the name and by the power 
 of God, which marches straight upon the soul and reconstructs 
 character, which saves men one by one. Here we are flat upon 
 the issue, and not to evade it or confuse it, I will put it un- 
 mistakably. It is our duty to carry Christianity to the world 
 because the world needs to be saved, and Christ alone can save 
 it. The world needs to be saved from want and disease and 
 injustice and inequality and impurity and lust and hopelessness 
 and fear, because individual men need to be saved from sin 
 and death, and only Christ can save them. His is the only 
 religious power which will reach down deep enough to transform, 
 and will hold till transformation is fixed. Christianity alone is 
 the religion which will do this and will struggle until it has pre- 
 vailed. The American Consul-General at Hong Kong, Mr. Wil- 
 der, understands this : " Commerce, exploitation of resources, 
 diplomacy, personal contact, secular education even, have had 
 their way ; they are handmaids of truth, but they do not do the 
 work. The Anglo-Saxon has rubbed against the Chinese for a 
 century in South China, yet the crudest forms of superstition 
 abound in almost every native home; tawdry dragons are carried 
 about the streets to expel the plague; polygamy and slavery are 
 common, and one may only infer the dark scenes that must be 
 
3 o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 enacted under a system whose heaven can be bought or whose 
 hell can be averted by burning coloured sawdust and vain repeti- 
 tions. You say that our American-European phases of these 
 coast ports are no less abhorrent. We deny it absolutely. We 
 confess the sorry showing, but we point out the constant protest, 
 the disgrace attached to it, the periodic war on it; the promise 
 from the operation of Christian resistance and uplift elsewhere 
 of better days to come in the Far East. There is this all-im- 
 portant difference : pagan vice and ignorance are a dead incubus, 
 with no hope from within. Paganism, unaided, never improves. 
 In a Christian community where you find vice and degradation 
 there is no peace, there is recurring protest; some one is forever 
 carrying forward the standard and bidding the line to come up : 
 if one generation does not relieve the iniquity, better men and 
 women to follow us force the improvement." 
 
 And Christianity does this by striking down to the individual 
 and saving him. It saves him by the power of God in Christ, 
 working in and upon him. The missionary duty is this duty. 
 " I hold education," says Uchimura, " as essentially personal 
 and individualistic." And he uses the term education in its 
 broad sense. There is more to education than this. Society is 
 something more than the sum-total of individuals, but it begins 
 and ends with individuals, and the need of the world is primarily 
 the need of its individuals, and the salvation of the world the 
 salvation of its soul through the salvation of its souls. The 
 world's need, and the full supply of that need in Christianity, 
 is the basis of missionary duty and the perception of the need, 
 the knowledge that Christ can supply it and the spirit of sym- 
 pathy and fairness which any true knowledge of Christ will 
 give, are the fountains of the missionary motive. 
 
 We have been often told in recent years that the atmosphere 
 in which the modern missionary movement was conceived has 
 passed away and that the movement cannot live in the new days 
 that have come. New theological ideas and new principles of 
 human progress, it is said, have cut the foundation from beneath 
 the missionary duty. What are the new theological ideas which 
 have done this? They resolve themselves, the new teachers 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 31 
 
 tell us, into the idea of God as the loving God and Father of 
 all mankind, Who loves all equally and is equally teaching all 
 and leading them to Himself. But when did this idea become 
 new ? Paul held it. It was this very conception which led the 
 founders of foreign missions to go out to the nations which had 
 no such notion of God, in order to make clear to them Him 
 after Whom they had been ignorantly feeling. If modern the- 
 ology boasts of a better God than the founders of missions 
 knew, and shows itself less zealous to share its better God with 
 all the world, we will be forced to regard its better God as a 
 delusion. How good a man's God really is will be shown by 
 the man's eagerness to make Him known to all the world. If 
 new theological conceptions do not lead men to do this, they 
 will have no power in them, and no long-continuing life. The- 
 ology without a missionary spirit only appears to deal with a 
 good God, and to believe in Him. The men who really believe 
 in a good God will continue the passionate effort to give Him 
 to all men and all men to Him. And what are the new prin- 
 ciples of human progress which have dissolved the missionary 
 motive? The force of evolution, we are told, by which all people 
 are being developed toward the sure goal. But evolution is no 
 force. It is simply the commonplace method of action by which 
 results have always been wrought everywhere. You get out 
 of causes only what is in them, and there is in the world's need, 
 its moral and spiritual destitution, no power of self-fulfilment. 
 We believe that the nations and the souls of men will move 
 upward and forward towards a worthy end only if living forces 
 capable of lifting them toward such an end are set to work 
 upon them. The new day discerns this, and the missionary 
 motive will not only survive into the new day, — it will be more 
 powerful then than ever in the past. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the missionary motive does not change. 
 The enterprise rests now on the same foundation on which it 
 has always rested, — on which it rested at the beginning. Our 
 Lord came to give men life abundantly, to save them from their 
 sins, to show them the Father, to be the Saviour of the World. 
 The disciples went out to give to others what had meant every- 
 
32 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 thing to them, to proclaim a kingdom which was the true prin- 
 ciple of life, to deliver men from darkness to light and from 
 the power of Satan unto God, to give them freedom from their 
 sins, to tell them good news, to bring them unto God, and to 
 bring to them the love and strength and forgiveness of God in 
 Christ. A great love and sense of human brotherhood, of the 
 oneness of humanity in its need, and the oneness of its hope 
 and privilege in God, filled the hearts of the disciples with a 
 compassion which was and is the essence of the missionary- 
 spirit. 
 
 These have been the motives which have led the missionaries 
 out in all ages. Adolphus Good wrote that his reasons for going 
 to Africa were " just about those that would suggest themselves 
 to any one. The Gospel is here within the reach of all, and many 
 of the temporal benefits, at least, are enjoyed by all. The 
 heathen have neither. This, I think, makes it the duty, especially 
 of every young minister, to enquire not, 'Why should I go?' 
 but ' Why should I not go ? ' " M. Berthoud chose Africa under 
 a sense of the obligation resting upon Christians to atone to 
 Africa for the wrongs of slavery. " It is the Gospel," he said, 
 " which has begun to make amends, and it is the Gospel which 
 will certainly complete the work. The Gospel will yet make 
 Africa one of the most beautiful territories of the Kingdom of 
 God. . . . What a privilege to be called to labour in this great 
 undertaking ! " I have chosen two missionaries, not among the 
 best known, who justly represent the motives which have actually 
 sustained the missionary enterprise, although these two need to 
 be supplemented by a third, whose words add the deeper element 
 of loving devotion. " I see," said Raymond Lull, " many knights 
 going to the Holy Land beyond the seas, but in the end all are 
 destroyed before they attain that which they think to have. 
 Whence it seems to me, that the conquest of the Holy Land 
 ought not to be attempted except in the way in which Thou 
 and Thy apostles acquired it, namely, by love and prayers, and 
 the pouring out of tears and blood." 
 
 The idea that the supreme missionary motive has been the 
 desire to save the souls of the heathen from hell rests upon a 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 33 
 
 very partial and inaccurate knowledge of missionary literature. 
 That idea has entered deeply into men's thoughts and it repre- 
 sents a great and solemn truth, but in the crude form in which 
 it is flung reproachfully at the missionary movement it has never 
 constituted the foundation of the missionary enterprise. The 
 Epistles of Paul know nothing of it. He never once uses the 
 word hell. He is so engrossed in living issues that he says little 
 about destinies. He saw men dead without Christ, and he was 
 more concerned with bringing them life than with speculation 
 as to the issue of their death. There has always been far more 
 speculation on the future fate of the heathen among stay-at- 
 homes than among missionaries. 
 
 The future destiny of any man is not a thing to trifle over. 
 The New Testament certainly does not deal lightly with it. We 
 have no slightest ground for diluting the solemn significance of 
 man's present life as determining the future, as an integral and 
 ordering part of the man's eternal career. On the other hand, 
 we know that men are not to be judged as though all had seen 
 the same light. No man is lost for not accepting a Saviour of 
 whom he has never heard. Men are lost because sin destroys 
 them, and they are lost now because sin is now alienating them 
 from God and blinding them to light. What we have to deal 
 with is not destinies but facts. Salvation is salvation from a 
 destiny only because it is salvation from the fact of sin. As 
 by the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, God saved 
 men before Christ came, so now He is dealing with men 
 in the nations which are still B. C. But this absolves us from 
 no missionary duty, for first, we know these nations and we see 
 there no salvation such as the Lamb made flesh has wrought, 
 and secondly, we do see there such sickness of society and of 
 the soul as only Christ can heal. We think with awe of the 
 future, and that awe is the background of our missionary medi- 
 tation, but our duty is the duty of carrying a present deliverance 
 and revealing to men a present Father of Love and a present 
 Saviour of Power. 
 
 This and not the eschatological consideration has been the 
 real missionary motive in all ages. Even when the eschatological 
 
34 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 consideration was given bold and conspicuous utterance, it was 
 a mode of speech to express what Paul also felt and we feel, 
 and what Paul also expressed and we express with a different 
 emphasis. It was a way of describing human need, but it was 
 the need, howsoever described, and living faith in Christ and 
 His Gospel as alone able to meet that need that has ever con- 
 stituted the ground and motive of missions. Indeed, if we go 
 back to the appeals of the great leaders of the missionary enter- 
 prise at the beginning of the modern movement, we shall find 
 their emphasis often less appreciative of the individualistic and 
 distinctively religious character of the enterprise, and more social 
 and political than our own. " Can we as men or as Christians," 
 asks Carey in his famous " Enquiry into the Obligations of 
 Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen," 
 " hear that a great part of our fellow-creatures, whose souls are 
 as immortal as ours, and who are as capable as ourselves of 
 adorning the Gospel and contributing by their preaching, writ- 
 ings, or practices to the glory of our Redeemer's name and the 
 good of His Church, are enveloped in ignorance and barbarism? 
 Can we hear that they are without the Gospel, without govern- 
 ment, without laws, and without arts and sciences, and not exert 
 ourselves to introduce among them the sentiments of men, and 
 of Christians? Would not the spread of the Gospel be the most 
 effectual means of their civilisation ? Would not that make them 
 useful members of society?" This was the characteristic note 
 of the argument advanced at the beginning of the modern mis- 
 sionary enterprise. In America two of the greatest of the early 
 leaders were Jeremiah Evarts and Walter Lowrie, both of them 
 public men who gave up law and politics to serve the cause of 
 missions. In an address to the Christian public, issued in 1812, 
 Evarts wrote : " It is now generally seen and felt by those who 
 have any claim to be considered as proper judges, that Chris- 
 tianity is the only remedy for the disorders and miseries of the 
 world, as well as the only foundation of hope for the world to 
 come. No other agent will ever control the violent passions of 
 men, and without the true religion all attempts to meliorate the 
 conditions of mankind will prove as illusory as a feverish dream. 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 35 
 
 The genuine patriot, therefore, and the genuine philanthropist, 
 must labour, so far as they value the prosperity of their country 
 and the happiness of the human race, to diffuse the knowledge 
 and the influence of Christianity at home and abroad. Thus will 
 they labour most effectually to put a final period to oppression 
 and slavery, to perfidy and war, and to all the train of evils 
 which falsehood, ambition, and cruelty have so profusely scat- 
 tered through the world." Lowrie was ever writing and speak- 
 ing in the same vein. We find in the early missionary writings 
 a preponderant appeal to the moral need of the world. It needs 
 a spiritual regeneration now. It needs the establishment of 
 Christian institutions now. The charge of a narrow eschato- 
 logical appeal never did hold against the missionary movement. 
 An adequate knowledge of missionary literature would lay it 
 open rather, I think, to the error of over-moralising and over- 
 socialising the missionary duty. Neither in missions nor in life 
 have we lived enough under the shadow of the eternal. 
 
 The fundamental missionary duty, then, is the application 
 to the need of the world of God in Christ, its only hope and 
 salvation, and the fundamental elements of the missionary motive 
 are compassion for the world, and loyalty to Christ and the 
 Spirit of a fair and equal love which shares its good with all. 
 The missionary movement will be carried on by those who feel 
 the burden of this duty and respond to these motives. There are, 
 however, supplementary and subordinate considerations, which 
 do not constitute the missionary motive but which are of interest 
 and significance. 
 
 In the first place, the outward movement of civilisation re- 
 quires the missionary enterprise, for three purposes, — to advance 
 it, to support it, and to correct it. The missionary enterprise 
 has advanced this movement steadily from the beginning, and 
 even now, when the movement has progressed so far that it is 
 prone to ignore missions, it is receiving evident advantage from 
 them. Two quotations from recent consular reports will suffice 
 as illustrations : " The medical branch of missions," reports the 
 American Vice-Consul at Chefoo, " is probably doing more to- 
 ward reconciling the Chinese to foreign association than any 
 
36 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 other agency. In Weihsien, where no foreigner has hitherto been 
 permitted to live, an American medical missionary has recently 
 opened a dispensary. During a recent overland trip to that city, 
 the mention of acquaintance with the missionary invariably put 
 me on a friendly footing. Such contact with this work forces 
 the conclusion that the missionaries are practical forerunners of 
 commercial enterprise. They seldom fail to win the respect and 
 esteem even of those who do not accept their doctrines, and 
 they unconsciously pave the way for further foreign intercourse." 
 — (Daily Consular and Trade Reports, March 16, 1909, p. 13.) 
 " There are about fifty American missionaries living within this 
 territory," writes the American Consul-General at Boma, in 
 Africa, " whose civilising work and influence among a large por- 
 tion of the 1,500,000 natives comprising the population will un- 
 doubtedly result in largely increasing the demand for light- 
 weight cheap clothing and for numerous household articles. 
 These agents of civilisation are pioneer salesmen and are instru- 
 ments in introducing products of their own country. . . . One 
 of the first steps to be taken at the present time, aiming at the 
 introduction of American goods into this country by the mail 
 order system is to get in touch with the missionaries." — (Daily 
 Consular and Trade Reports, April 5, 1909, p. 3.) But missions 
 are advancing civilisation in a far more vital and significant way 
 than simply by opening markets for foreign goods and disposing 
 the people to foreign intercourse. They are planting the prin- 
 ciples of ordered life, teaching people what lies at the base of 
 civilisation, and so permanently increasing their capacity for 
 trade and elevating the class of trade of which they are capable. 
 " The benefits of the missionary work in New Guinea," says 
 Hugh Milman, a magistrate, " are immense, inter-tribal fights 
 formerly so common being at an end, and trading and com- 
 munication, one tribe with another, now being carried on with- 
 out fear." " It is they," says Sir H. H. Johnston, speaking of 
 British Central Africa, " who in many cases have first taught 
 the natives carpentry, joining, masonry, tailoring, cobbling, en- 
 gineering, bookkeeping, printing, European cookery, to say noth- 
 ing of reading, writing, arithmetic, and a smattering of general 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 3? 
 
 knowledge. Almost invariably it has been to missionaries that 
 the natives of interior Africa have owed their first acquaintance 
 with a printing press, the turning-lathe, the mangle, the flat-iron, 
 the sawmill, and the brick mould." And in lands of a more 
 advanced and compacted civilisation of their own, like China, 
 the missionary has introduced movable type, the newspaper, 
 Western education, scientific textbooks, and practically all that 
 is known of medicine and surgery. He was China's only guide 
 in her first steps. God has wrought in the world by many forces, 
 but none has compared in purity and power with the force of 
 missions. " The missionary, the philanthropist, the social re- 
 former, and others of the same sort," says Lord Cromer patron- 
 isingly, " should have a fair field. Their intentions are excellent, 
 although at times their judgment may be defective. They will, 
 if under some control, probably do much good on a small scale. 
 They may even, being carried away by the enthusiasm which 
 pays no heed to worldly prudence, effect reforms more important 
 than those of the administrator and politician, who will follow 
 cautiously in their track, and perhaps reap the result of their 
 labours." Financially, the missionary agency is one of the pettiest 
 forces at work on the non-Christian world. Its total annual ex- 
 penditure is less than the cost of three battleships, and not as 
 much as the annual maintenance of the Italian navy. Yet small 
 as it is, it has made a deeper impact in the name of civilisation 
 than any other agency, and all its mistakes from the beginning, 
 put together, have not been one-thousandth part as costly as the 
 single mistake of Gordon's fall in the Soudan and what followed 
 it, to whomsoever that mistake may have been due. 
 
 The missionary movement has not only advanced civilisation ; 
 it has been and is required to support it. Civilisation rests upon 
 great moral ideas. It is not a mere commercial affair. It 
 could not be at all the great commercial affair it is if it were 
 not for the moral ideas which underlie it. It is only possible 
 as the people who would enjoy it are animated in some real 
 measure by the principles on which it rests. Marquis Ito saw 
 a great light in this regard in his last years. Some years ago 
 he repudiated the idea of the importance of religion to national 
 
38 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 life. It was mere superstition from which intelligent men eman- 
 cipated themselves, but in December, 1908, he told a gathering 
 of Christian people at a dedication of a building in Seoul that 
 in the early years of Japan's reformation the senior statesmen 
 were opposed to religious toleration, especially because of dis- 
 trust of Christianity. " But," said he, " I fought vehemently 
 for freedom of belief and propagation, and finally triumphed. 
 My reasoning was this: civilisation depends upon morality, and 
 the highest morality upon religion. Therefore, religion must be 
 tolerated and encouraged. It is for the same reason that I 
 welcome the Young Men's Christian Association, believing that 
 it is a powerful ally in the great task I have undertaken in 
 attempting to put the feet of Korea upon the pathway of true 
 civilisation." President Taft also saw this light when he went 
 out as Governor-General to the Philippines. " The missionary 
 societies," said he, when he grasped the facts, " have great 
 responsibilities with reference to the expansion of civilisation 
 in distant lands, as I came to realise much more fully than ever 
 before in my contact with this work while in the Far East. 
 No one can study the movement of modern civilisation from 
 an impartial standpoint and not realise that Christianity and 
 the spread of Christianity are the only basis for hope of modern 
 civilisation in the growth of popular self-government." Chris- 
 tianity is the only religion which can do this service for civilisa- 
 tion. It is the only religion which can live with civilisation, 
 for the reason that what is good in civilisation Christianity 
 has produced or fortified, and that what is evil in it Christianity 
 alone can correct and subdue. 
 
 And there is much evil in Western civilisation with which 
 Christianity must wage war. The conflict is fiercer than ever 
 now at home, and the need of Christianity as the corrective 
 of our civilisation abroad is even more acute because the brand 
 we export is tainted, our best badly tainted with our worst. 
 To correct that taint, to accuse civilisation of its treachery 
 whenever it misrepresents our highest to the other nations, to 
 express to those nations the ideal of service with which Chris- 
 tianity is seeking to permeate human life, to teach purity and 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 39 
 
 love, where so many are teaching lust and hate, to hold the 
 whole movement of the West true to its missionary duty — 
 for this ministry foreign missions are indispensable to civilisa- 
 tion. As Mr. Roosevelt has plainly put it : " In past history 
 it has ever been true that all enterprises, whether of govern- 
 ments or of private individuals, whether of scholars or of 
 men of action, have needed the awakening and controlling power 
 of that high and self-sacrificing morality which accompanies 
 the Christian religion, and nowadays it is needed more than 
 ever because of the marvellous ways in which both the good 
 and bad in civilised nations are being carried to the utmost parts 
 of the earth." The good and the bad! " I can honestly state," 
 said Joseph Thompson of his visit to missions in Nyasaland, 
 " that for the first time in all my wide African travels, I have 
 found a spot where the advent of the white man may be de- 
 scribed as an unmitigated blessing to the nation." The mis- 
 sionary duty would extend that spot to cover the whole non- 
 Christian world. The outward movement of civilisation requires 
 the missionary enterprise, but the outward movement of civilisa- 
 tion should be itself a missionary enterprise. The foreign mis- 
 sions of the Church alone are capable of impressing that ideal 
 upon it. 
 
 Not only does the outward movement of civilisation require 
 the missionary enterprise. The Church also requires it. " We 
 are plainly taught by God," says an old writer on " Obedience, 
 the Life of Missions," " that it was for this very purpose that 
 the Church was established. God placed it where it is, in the 
 centre of its own particular orbit — just as He did the sun and 
 the moon and the stars — to give light unto all. For this very 
 end, and no other, were each particular Church and the Church 
 universal — which is the sum of all particular Churches — ordained 
 and established on the poles of truth and in the sphere of sinful 
 humanity, that they might each one, according to their ability, 
 irradiate its darkness with the light of the glorious Gospel of 
 the blessed God." — (Smyth, "Obedience, the Life of Missions," 
 p. 54). No institution can deliberately repudiate its fundamental 
 purpose, its main reason for being, and not suffer for it. The 
 
4 o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Christian Church will certainly suffer if she does it. She has 
 suffered. Her energies have shrivelled, her visions have died, 
 her grasp on her nearby problem has relaxed, her sense of God 
 has thinned until it has vanished, and she has lost her power 
 whenever and so far as she has forgotten or evaded her mission 
 to the world. She wonders why her word is so ineffective, and 
 her projects so unavailing, and her activities so fruitless. The 
 reason is she has betrayed her character and ignored her busi- 
 ness. The last word of Christ shows her where the secret of 
 a new and sufficient power is to be found. In the execution 
 of her mission to the whole world, and only so, Christ promises 
 with all His power to be in the Church. Our schemes and our 
 preachings are impotent because He is absent from them, and 
 there is only one way to bring Him back into them. Exhorta- 
 tion and resolution will not avail. Prayer itself will be futile 
 because unreal, if offered on the old basis of distortion of the 
 divine purpose and disobedience to the divine will and dis- 
 loyalty to the divine character. There is one way only to 
 bring Christ and His divine power into the Church, and that 
 is to bring the Church into her right mission and purpose toward 
 the world, as the channel for the life of God into all the life 
 of all men. And any sacrifice by the Church of her true mis- 
 sionary character involves loss not to the Church alone, but to 
 the world through the Church. " Let us heed the solemn warn- 
 ing across the ages of the Church of the fourth century. Imagine 
 what would have been if the Nicene Council, when for the 
 last time the garment of Christ was seen unrent and all Christen- 
 dom sat together, had done its duty, and instead of disputing 
 upon dogma and dividing on doctrine, had become a great 
 missionary assembly, and felt upon miter and imperial circlet 
 the Pentecostal flame. Suppose, only suppose, that the great 
 council, whose supreme ability no student of history can doubt, 
 had done its full missionary duty, and the northern and southern 
 nations had been converted before, instead of after the con- 
 quest of the Roman Empire. Suppose Arabia had known a 
 missionary Christ before Mohammed, and that Saxon on the 
 Elbe, and French beyond the Rhine, and Goth below the two 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 41 
 
 rivers, had heard the Gospel in the fourth century instead of 
 the sixth, seventh, and eighth. Is it not possible that a thou- 
 sand years of wasted history, which have cast more than three- 
 quarters of the Christian Church under the cloud of superstition, 
 would have been saved if the Church of the fourth century 
 had been a missionary Church, looking without, instead of 
 within?" — (Talcott Williams, " Men and Missions," p. 11 ff.) 
 
 The missionary duty bids us not repeat that mistake to-day. 
 Many other voices are summoning us to reproduce it. We are 
 bidden to give heed to our doctrine. The doctrine will take 
 care of itself if we carry God in Christ to the world. It will 
 pollute fast enough if we sit down about it to dissect it. We 
 are bidden to look at home and see what we shall see. We 
 shall see far worse things if we fail to see, also, and as equally 
 in the love and care of God and of equal title in the Gospel, 
 those other sheep of whom Christ spoke, and the uttermost parts 
 of the earth. Rather the very hope of the Church for her life 
 and work at home is in her clearer discernment and richer 
 acceptance of her whole mission. 
 
 And just such an urgent need throughout the world as the 
 Church of the fourth century failed to see in its day confronts 
 the Church in ours. There is the obvious abiding and always 
 urgent need of every human life for Christ. If we Christian 
 men need Christ, every man needs Him. If we find His help 
 sufficient and His salvation indispensable, other men's hearts, 
 we need to remember, are just like our own. If we could not 
 dispense with Christ, if we sing truthfully, " I could not do 
 without Thee, Thou Saviour of the lost," other men cannot do 
 without Him. The old missionary appeal which bade us reach 
 men because they are so fast passing beyond our reach is an 
 ever true appeal. Men are passing away to whom Christ should 
 have been given before they passed out from us, given because 
 they needed Him while they were here, given because they should 
 have not passed out without Him whither they have gone. 
 
 The ideal of the evangelisation of the world in this genera- 
 tion is a legitimate ideal. It is more than that. It is a necessary 
 ideal. The Gospel can never be given to the whole world in 
 
42 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 any other way. Dead men cannot evangelise the world. Even 
 if you could evangelise dead men, that would leave the living 
 world still to be evangelised. " Every creature " means to us 
 " our generation." To preach the Gospel to them means to 
 evangelise them. Now is our day of obedience, and now the 
 word of Christ and what that word embodies, the will of God 
 and the need of the world, call us to carry forward to completion 
 the missionary task. 
 
 But the present situation has also its special urgency. The 
 whole world is astir now and plastic. Great tides are running 
 which should be grasped and ordered in the name of God. 
 Nations are reshaping and new destinies are determining. It 
 is Christianity's day of opportunity and trial. Fifteen years 
 ago the authoritative books on Asia preached the doctrine of 
 its stagnation and sterility. Mr. Norman applied to China the 
 lines : 
 
 " Aloof from our mutation and unrest, 
 Alien to our achievement and desires." 
 
 And Mr. Townsend declared that some mysterious fiat of arrest 
 seemed to have fallen upon the yellow races, making them in- 
 accessible to new principles from without and stamping all 
 foreign missions whether of politics or religion as futile and 
 vain. 
 
 We look out upon a situation to-day completely belying these 
 hopeless predictions. We see in Asia a great industrial awaken- 
 ing. In these fifteen years the exports of Japan have grown 
 from 91,000,000 yen to 432,000,000 and her imports from 71,- 
 000,000 to 494,000,000. The China railroads have grown from 
 200 miles to 3,746, with 1,622 more under construction. New 
 industries are springing up everywhere, and the world has some- 
 thing to look forward to in the production by cheap labour 
 from raw material, produced on the spot by cheap labour, and 
 manufactured on machinery made by cheap labour, of the very 
 commodities which now constitute our export trade. Against 
 that industrial development our protective tariffs will take on 
 a pitiful significance. We see in Asia, also, a great intellectual 
 
THE. MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 43 
 
 awakening."** Six million pupils are in the public schools of Japan. 
 In China, the vastest nation on earth has cut away its old and 
 antiquated system and is groping toward the new lights, and 
 a new press is beginning the education of the multitudes too 
 old to go to school, while a new post-office system, with 2,000 
 offices, and handling, in 1906, 103,000,000 articles, is beginning 
 to unify the thoughts of the people. And what is more wonder- 
 ful, the Moslem world has been talking of freedom of thought, 
 and actually thinking freely. The world never dreamed to see 
 the Moslem caliph and sultan flung down by Mohammedan 
 hands in the interest of free institutions. All Asia has begun 
 to think and talk, and its language is the language of men of 
 free minds. The froth of license and excess is only the sure 
 evidence of the deep tides running beneath. We see also in 
 Asia a great political awakening, not only in the sense of a 
 demand for constitutional and representative government, though 
 that is wonderful enough, but also in the sense of a great de- 
 velopment of the spirit of nationalism, the Eastern nations feel- 
 ing at last the deep influence of those ideals which for two 
 generations have increasingly dominated the political movements 
 of the West. We see in Asia also a great moral awakening. 
 The political awakening is at bottom ethical. It is only a sign 
 of the Asiatic's awakening to manhood and the sense of human 
 equality. He began with a sense of lofty superiority, then 
 became either abject or menial and angry and aloof, but now 
 stands forth on his feet again, to be treated and to treat others 
 as men. The idea of equality and brotherhood on which Asia 
 now stands is a distinctly ethical principle. Indeed, it is a 
 purely religious principle, which East and West alike owe to 
 the influence of Christianity. The East is beginning herself to 
 realise that her awakening is an awakening to moral needs, and 
 that there is only one quarter where she can find what she 
 requires. " It is a question," said Count Okuma not long ago 
 to young men in Japan, " whether we have not lost moral fibre 
 as the result of the many new influences to which we have been 
 subjected. Development has been intellectual, not moral. The 
 efforts which Christians are making to supply to the country 
 
44 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 a high standard of conduct are welcomed by all right-thinking 
 people. As you read the Bible you may think it is antiquated, 
 out of date. The words it contains may so appear, but the noble 
 life which it holds up to admiration is something that will never 
 be out of date, however much the world may progress. Live 
 and preach this life, and you will supply to the nation just 
 what it needs at the present juncture." And we see in Asia, 
 also, a great religious awakening. We see it in the growth of eager, 
 living, aggressive Christian churches among the natives of these 
 lands, but even more in the widespread groping and discontent, 
 the decaying worship at idol shrines, the increasing apology for 
 idolatry, the abandonment of popular forms of religion in the 
 interest of what is esoteric or in the interest of older forms 
 now construed in Christian terminology, in the anxious search 
 for the secret of power. 
 
 And this condition of transition and opportunity which we 
 see in Asia, we see also in Africa and South America. The 
 social, industrial, and political changes which are passing over 
 Africa, the southward movement of Islam, the need of a unifying 
 power, the call for life from dying peoples, and in South America 
 nations with deepening moral needs because without God, with 
 a Church which has given men a cross without a Christ, a 
 dead man without a living Saviour, which has separated ethics 
 from religion and lost its power to redeem life, and which calls 
 as loudly for the vivifying challenge of foreign missions as 
 Hinduism or Islam, with a civilisation developing fast on a 
 basis of trade, but with no adequate foundation in popular educa- 
 tion or in religious principle — the conditions of Africa and 
 South America press upon the Christian Church with an appeal 
 as urgent as Asia's. 
 
 Men need the Gospel, and they need it now. And the nations 
 need the Gospel, and they need it now. And the need of men 
 and nations will not delay. These conditions lay a great burden 
 upon us. This great awakening will prove an evil and disaster if 
 it is not moralised, and it can be moralised only by Christianity. 
 The pressing question is, shall we have a renaissance without 
 a reformation, an awakening of the world's commercial passion 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 45 
 
 and its intellectual life without any awakening of its soul, or 
 with its awakened soul unfed ? " History," says Professor Lind- 
 say, " knows nothing of revivals of moral living apart from some 
 new religious impulse. The motive power has always come 
 through leaders who have had communion with the unseen." 
 Has our communion been real enough to make us leaders, to 
 give us vision of our opportunity and will to be obedient to 
 
 our vision 
 
 There are those, however, who tell us that we ought not to 
 interfere with the religious ideas and institutions of the non- 
 Christian peoples. Some say that they are not worth trying 
 to win to Christianity. I am only quoting what we hear year 
 in and year out. No one who really knows what Christianity 
 is will say this because he knows that it is of one blood that 
 God has made all men. No one who knows history will say 
 this because he knows that it was from such as these that 
 Christianity made men out of his ancestors. No one who knows 
 the non-Christian races will say this, because he knows that there 
 is in them as good material for the Gospel to work upon as 
 there is in the West, or has ever been in the world anywhere. 
 
 Some say that they stand in no need of Christianity. " I 
 have found that they [the South African natives] are highly 
 moral," says a correspondent who signs himself " Captain Late 
 South African Field Forces," in the New York Sun of July n, 
 1905: 
 
 I have invariably found them, in their native state, living 
 lives that we who call ourselves Christians would do well to 
 pattern after. . . . It is a great pity that in giving them the 
 benefit of our knowledge we undermine their moral character 
 in the process. Were we all good, and were our teachers all 
 good, capable only of acts becoming their religion, all would be 
 well ; but unfortunately, the native copies the bad as well as the 
 good. Therefore, when our heathen brother accepts our religion 
 because he believes it is good, inasmuch as it is ours, he also 
 learns to drink whiskey because he sees the white man drink it; 
 he learns to smoke because the white man smokes ; he learns to 
 lie because the white man lies to him ; he learns to steal because 
 the white man steals, and he observes that the white man has 
 
46 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 not the same respect for moral laws that he has in his native 
 state, and he feels his law must be wrong, and copies the white 
 man's way. 
 
 I wish to assure you that I am not exaggerating one iota in 
 my expressions herein. There is no honest traveller (who is not 
 a missionary) who has observed the results of mission work 
 in South Africa or any other country who will not support me 
 in my assertions. 
 
 The development of heathen and unchristianised nations is 
 a development that is made not for the benefit of the natives, 
 but for the benefit of civilised nations, to provide new fields 
 for the ever-increasing surplus of population. The heathen 
 native who would live on forever, if left in his natural state, 
 is crushed under the wheels of our ever-increasing civilisation. 
 He is sacrificed on the altar of the white man's advancement. 
 We have no better example of this than the North American 
 Indian. 
 
 The white race and its methods must rule the universe, but 
 let us not deceive ourselves by attempting to believe that our 
 religion improves those who have not been born to it. 
 
 It will seem strange that a believer in religion could feel 
 that the religion of Jesus Christ could destroy a race, but that 
 is what I believe to be true. Not that the religion itself could 
 destroy a heathen people, but we have, unfortunately, more of 
 bad to impart to them than of good. We are anxious to impart 
 the rules of righteousness, but, unfortunately for those whom 
 we would teach, our lives are the reverse of our doctrine, and 
 our heathen brethren follow not our doctrine, but the example 
 of our daily lives. 
 
 I have quoted this curious production because it is fairly 
 typical of much popular talk about missions, and also because 
 it is such an odd mixture of error and truth. Would that this 
 idyllic picture of the African native in his estate untouched by 
 Christian missionaries were true, and that he stood in no need 
 of our moral message, but let us read an extract from a letter 
 from Dr. Alexander Brown of the Livingstonia Mission, dated 
 Serenje, N. E. R., 14th September, 1908: 
 
 I shall never forget the poor drunken creature of a chief 
 who staggered along the path to meet me, shot his arm up in 
 the air, and, by way of good-morning said, " Thank you, mas- 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 47 
 
 ter " ; or the drunken village I passed through, whose collections 
 of half-naked maudlin women sat drinking beer and singing. 
 Or another village I approached on a Saturday night after a 
 long day's tramp, utterly fagged out. A Saturday night at home 
 was curiously persistent in my thoughts as I drew near it. 
 There was general shouting and singing going on, which did 
 not cease as I entered the village just at dark. " What's the 
 noise about?" "Beer drinking, sir." It is the nearest resem- 
 blance to the Glasgow Green on a Saturday night I have yet 
 seen in Africa. There was general restlessness, excitement, and 
 singing, or rather shouting. It kept up for hours, and grew 
 louder, and a fire was set agoing, then a hut caught it, or it 
 was done intentionally, and the lurid flames leapt up and lapped 
 it round and the roof crashed down, and I thought there was 
 danger of a general conflagration. But my boys laughed at 
 my fears. I went over to it in among the crowd, of whom two 
 drunken women were specially distinguishing themselves by their 
 howling and rolling on the ground. " What is the matter with 
 these two, Yona?" I asked. "One, sir," he said, "is crying 
 for her pot, and the other is crying for her beer." I went away 
 to my tent sick at heart. 
 
 Surely there is as great need here for whatever the Gospel 
 can do as there is in Glasgow. And indeed, it is at this point 
 that the strongest opposition, or at any rate, the heaviest lethargy 
 is found, at least in America. There is so much to be done at 
 home that it is wrong to divert Christian energies into the work 
 of distant missions. Another newspaper correspondent puts the 
 objection forcibly: 
 
 If India were the only country in the world with souls in 
 peril, the case [for foreign missions, says he] would be very 
 different ; but with the world as it is, the game is not worth 
 the candle. One mission like Jerry McAuley's in the slums of 
 New York does more lasting good and to better subjects than 
 any dozen in India or Africa. All the missionaries in India 
 could be located in the three cities of New York, Chicago, and 
 St. Louis, to say nothing of others with slums just as black, 
 and have plenty of room for more. It is not only a waste of 
 good material to send missionaries to the sticks and stones of 
 India, so long as we have such frightful fields for missionary 
 work in our great cities, but it is a sin against sinners worthy 
 
48 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 of salvation. [For he has already pointed out that] the high caste 
 Hindu's mind is no more capable of moulding itself to the 
 requirements of such a religion as ours and thinking our thoughts 
 about it, than he is to set up for himself and maintain over all 
 India a republican government. Christians worthy of such a 
 Saviour as ours are made of very different stuff from that which 
 forms the natives of good caste. As for those who are so low 
 as to have no caste to lose, shall we seek to clothe asses with 
 immortality? — (W. T. Hornaday, in the New York Tribune, 
 December 2d, 1885.) 
 
 The Hindu who objects to Christian missions would not 
 be likely to welcome this ally, but it is the natural and sig- 
 nificant fact that those who have the highest estimate of the 
 non-Christian peoples are not the opponents but the friends of 
 missions. 
 
 Foreign missions, however, do not rob or weaken the forces 
 of the Church at home. They multiply them. The home mission 
 work has had most of its roots in the foreign missionary spirit. 
 In America it was foreign missions which originated the home 
 mission activities. To recall the foreign missionaries and curtail 
 the work would be to paralyse and ultimately to annihilate both 
 home missions and the Church herself. Her life would dry 
 up and God would cast her sapless boughs aside to be burned. 
 Every man sent abroad enlists the energy of ten men in the 
 home work of the Church, and every dollar sent abroad means 
 the investment of ten in the work of redeeming those lands 
 whose salvation depends upon the fidelity with which they seek 
 to save others. 
 
 For these lands are not keeping at home their agencies of 
 evil. That is the truth in the words of the South African captain. 
 All over the world new hate, new lust, new vice, new wrong 
 have gone out from Christendom. Are they to be allowed to 
 go unchecked? Are we to evangelise the world with the worst 
 we know and not with the best? Are our brothels and saloons, 
 both stocked from the West, to be set up in the East, and the 
 church, the hospital, and the school to be withheld? 
 
 But it is held by some that the whole outward movement 
 is wrong. The East should be let alone. It has a right to 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 49 
 
 live its own life, and to think its own thoughts, and to pursue 
 its own ancient way undisturbed. Its civilisations and religions 
 are its own, and better adapted to it than ours can be. The 
 whole outward movement of Christendom is an impertinence 
 and an invasion. There are some who say this only of our 
 religious mission. The commercial and political invasion they 
 justify. But on what ground? If there is one aspect of our 
 relationship to the non-Christian nations which can be singled 
 out and defended as resting on superior grounds it is our re- 
 ligious propaganda. It asks nothing in return. It seeks only 
 to give. It is willing to be judged by facts. But we do not 
 seek now to separate it for two reasons: first, because the rest 
 of our Western projection upon the non-Christian world needs, 
 as has already been pointed out, the moralising influence of the 
 Christian mission, and secondly, because I believe that it is 
 not by what we call the foreign missionary movement alone 
 that God is working upon the non-Christian world. This move- 
 ment is not charged with all the responsibility of Christendom. 
 It is given, as we shall see, a certain distinct work to do, and 
 that work is the fundamental and indispensable work, but all 
 the outgoing of the Christian nations upon the non-Christian 
 world should bear upon it the stamp of God's mission, it should 
 seek the good of the world, it should make its contribution 
 toward the building, here on earth, of that kingdom in which 
 men shall serve God as His sons. The missionary enterprise 
 has always seen that it was the foundation and the custodian of 
 the justifying principle of intercourse between East and West. 
 Now, at last, the other forces entering into that intercourse 
 are realising it also. " The change of sentiment in favour of 
 the foreign missionary in a single generation," says Mr. Roose- 
 velt, " has been remarkable. The whole world, which is rapidly 
 coming into neighbourhood relations, is recognising, as never 
 before, the real needs of mankind and is ready to approve and 
 strengthen all the moral forces which stand for the uplift of 
 humanity. There must be government for the orderly and per- 
 manent development of society. There must be intercourse 
 among peoples in the interests of commerce and growth. But, 
 
50 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 above all, there must be moral power, established and main- 
 tained under the leadership of good men and women. The up- 
 right and farseeing statesman, the honest and capable trader, 
 and the devoted Christian missionary represent the combined 
 forces which are to change the Africa of to-day into the greater 
 and better Africa of the future. . . . Beyond question of rule 
 or traffic are the responsibilities of America as to the moral 
 uplift of the people of Africa. This responsibility is to be met 
 in co-operation with the Christian forces of other nations." We 
 are content to take this view. The principle of the missionary 
 enterprise should be the guiding and dominating element in our 
 contact with all the non-Christian nations. 
 
 It is futile to protest against that contact, to say that the non- 
 Christian nations should be left undisturbed. That issue is 
 closed. They are already disturbed. The West never had any 
 idea of leaving them undisturbed. When they would not trade 
 with us we fought with them and compelled them to trade. 
 When their internal condition impeded trade, we interfered and 
 suppressed their rebellions, or policed their politics, or bodily took 
 over their governments. The world simply will not stop to listen 
 to the man who raises a vain protest against the whole genius 
 of history. The world knows itself to be one world, and that 
 no part of it is to be alien and caviar to the rest, and no part 
 of the world is more bent upon this intercourse than the East. 
 The non-Christian nations are open and will not be closed. 
 They intend to have for themselves the power which they see 
 resides in civilisation. The simple question is, will we give 
 them the good or let them have the evil only ; will we give them 
 the reality, or let them deceive themselves with the sham? Are 
 we to trade with them, selling them things, and not have with 
 them a truly human intercourse, sharing with them our thoughts 
 and sympathies, and above all, our hopes, our knowledge, not 
 of the world only, but also of Him who made the world and 
 us men as brothers to live in it? 
 
 And the idea that the East ever enjoyed a placid and con- 
 tented civilisation of its own, that it ever was satisfied with 
 its own ideas and institutions, or if it was, should have been 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 51 
 
 allowed to remain so, is the delusion of those who never knew 
 the East or darker Africa. Arminius Vambery is a witness who 
 testifies of what he knows. " During the much-extolled golden 
 era of the history of Asia," says he in " Western Culture in 
 Eastern Lands," " tyranny and depotism were the ruling elements, 
 justice a vain chimera, everything depended on the arbitrary will 
 of the sovereign, and a prolonged period of rest and peace was 
 quite the exception. Asiatics, from motives of vanity or inborn 
 laziness, may condone these abnormal conditions, but still it re- 
 mains our duty to recognise the true state of affairs, and to 
 take pity upon our poor oppressed fellow-men. Without our 
 help, Asia will never rise above its low level ; and even granted 
 that the politics of European powers are not purely unselfish, we 
 must nevertheless, keeping the ultimate object in view, approve 
 of the interference of Europe in the affairs of the East, and 
 give the undertaking our hearty support. Viewed in this light, 
 we may be thankful that the Christian world for 300 years has 
 been unceasing in its interference in Asiatic affairs." But once 
 again, we cannot but reflect how different the whole history 
 would have been, and upon what a different world we should 
 now look out, if, after penetrating the life of the Roman Empire, 
 or in the very penetration of that life, the Church had moved 
 eastward also, not in the frustrate mission of the Nestorian 
 Church in the seventh century only, but with such a spirit 
 and such a Gospel as a truly world-compassing Church would 
 possess by virtue of the confirming and purifying power of her 
 obedience. Before Islam had petrified the life of Western Asia 
 and set up the Crescent where the full sun might have shone, 
 long ages before wrong and injustice in international dealings 
 had sown hatred and distrust in central and eastern Asia, before 
 the bloody centuries, East and West, had twisted all human 
 institutions and deflected the human spirit, the Gospel of peace 
 and love and life and equality might have remade the world. 
 It can do it still. 
 
 If it is to do it, Christian nations, and the Western nations 
 ought to be Christian nations, must represent the Gospel in their 
 dealings with other nations. We cannot do our duty to the 
 
52 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 world by sending it the Gospel through the professional mission- 
 ary movement at the same time that we traduce the Gospel 
 politically. The Earl of Clarendon wrote a letter once, years 
 ago when he was principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 
 to Great Britain's esteemed friend, Sekeletu, Chief of the Moko- 
 lolo in South Central Africa, and this is what he said: 
 
 Ours is a great commercial and Christian nation, and we 
 desire to live in peace with all men. We wish others to sleep 
 soundly as well as ourselves ; and we hate the trade in slaves. 
 We are all the children of one common Father; and the slave- 
 trade being hateful to Him, we give you a proof of our desire 
 to promote your prosperity by joining you in the attempt to 
 open up your country to peaceful commerce. With this view 
 the Queen sends a small steam vessel to sail along the river 
 Zambesi, which you know and agreed to be the best pathway 
 for conveying merchandise, and for the purpose of exploring 
 which Dr. Livingstone left you the last time. This is, as all 
 men know, " God's pathway " ; and you will, we trust, do all 
 that you can to keep it a free pathway for all nations, and let 
 no one be molested when travelling on the river. 
 
 We are a manufacturing people, and make all the articles 
 which you see and hear of as coming from the white men. We 
 purchase cotton and make it into cloth ; and if you will cultivate 
 cotton and other articles, we are willing to buy them. No matter 
 how much you may produce, our people will purchase it all. Let 
 it be known among all your people, and among all the surround- 
 ing tribes, that the English are the friends and promoters of 
 all lawful commerce, but that they are the enemies of the slave- 
 trade and slave-hunting. 
 
 We assure you, your elders and people, of our friendship, 
 and we hope that the kindly feelings which you entertain toward 
 the English may be continued between our children's children ; 
 and, as we have derived all our greatness from the Divine 
 religion we received from Heaven, it will be well if you consider 
 it carefully when any of our people talk to you about it. 
 
 We hope that Her Majesty's servants and people will be 
 able to visit you from time to time in order to cement our friend- 
 ship, and to promote mutual welfare; and, in the meantime, we 
 recommend you to the protection of the Almighty. 
 
 If the West would always speak in this way to the non- 
 Christian world, if it would hate opium and robbery and im- 
 
THE MISSIONARY DUTY AND MOTIVES 53 
 
 morality and plunder and dishonesty as much as it hates slavery, 
 if it would practise the Christianity which its missionary repre- 
 sentatives preach, if it would realise that its political duty to 
 the non-Christian world is a missionary duty as truly as that 
 the Church is bound to serve all the world, the rest of the task 
 would be easier. And the Christian nations of the West cannot 
 recognise their responsibility too soon. The life of the Church 
 is not more truly bound up in her world-wide mission than the 
 life of the state is dependent upon her acceptance of her Chris- 
 tian duty as a missionary power. For the foreign missionary 
 principle is the condition of life. " I declare my conviction," 
 said Sir William Hunter, " that English missionary enterprise 
 is the highest modern expression of the world-wide national life 
 of our race. I regard it as the spiritual complement of Eng- 
 land's instinct for colonial expansion and imperial rule, and I 
 believe that any falling off in England's missionary efforts would 
 be a sure sign of swiftly coming national decay." 
 
 But what we are considering now is our missionary duty and 
 the motives which will lift us to discharge this duty. It is 
 true that all Christendom lies under the missionary duty, and 
 that there are motives which should lead the great forces which 
 we call Christendom to fulfil their missionary tasks, but the 
 central question is the question of our own personal action. 
 Have we taken up our duty? If we have not, what motives 
 will lead us to do so? "Those motives," replies the New York 
 Evening Post, " are now almost purely humanitarian. The edu- 
 cational, the medical, the civilising work of missionaries, which 
 in many countries has undoubtedly been wonderfully beneficent 
 and fruitful, this is the great argument for missions. It is on 
 this that the emphasis should be put, and we are sure that it 
 would mean dollars in the mission treasuries if a franker stand 
 were taken upon this rational and practical basis. Missions 
 would get on better, as most people do, by taking one world at 
 a time." The shortest and most summary reply to this view 
 would probably be found in the missionary contributions of the 
 writer of this editorial. The humanitarian motives have their 
 place, but the missionary duty rests on deeper foundations, the 
 
54 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 missionary spirit flows from deeper springs. The Church will 
 lift herself to her missionary task, not when she has learned 
 to forget the eternal world, but when she has learned to re- 
 member it, when she sees in men not only bodies to be healed 
 and minds to be taught, but souls to be saved, the image of 
 Christ to be wrought out ; not when her ideal is Western civilisa- 
 tion, but when, with an eye the more humane for the vision, 
 she sees, though yet from afar, a kingdom of God to come upon 
 the earth and a thorn-crowned King waiting for that kingdom. 
 Those men will go as missionaries, and those men will support 
 them as they go, whom the love of Christ constrains, the love 
 of Christ, and of the souls for whom Christ died. 
 
II 
 
 THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 
 
II 
 
 THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 
 
 THE missionary enterprise is a religious enterprise. This 
 does not make its problems simple, but it makes both 
 its aim and its methods much simpler than they would 
 otherwise be. Of course, if religion is conceived to take in 
 the whole of human life and to include politics and industry 
 and all the activities and relationships of men, we have not 
 made any progress in defining the purpose of the missionary 
 movement by calling it religious. But while the Christian con- 
 ception of religion is indeed all-embracing, it recognises a neces- 
 sity of definition and does not confuse the relations and func- 
 tions of family, state, and Church, and it acknowledges social 
 and national duties which are missionary in character, and 
 which religion is to inspire, but which it is not the formal duty 
 of Christianity organised in the Church to control. 
 
 The West and Western nations, which owe all their good 
 to Christianity, are under a heavy debt to the rest of the world, 
 which it is not the function of the Christian Church to discharge. 
 It is the function of the Christian Church to inspire the Christian 
 nations to do justice and to give help to the non-Christian nations, 
 but there are many great and truly Christian services with which 
 the foreign missionary enterprise is not charged. They are to 
 be rendered through other forms of international relationship. 
 The suppression of the slave trade was one such service. Alas, 
 that in this and in the suppression of the trade in liquor and 
 opium and in firearms among savage peoples the service of the 
 West should consist so largely merely in the discontinuance of 
 its own wrongdoing! And even of all the duties which Chris- 
 tianity is to perform toward the world, foreign missions are 
 
 57 
 
58 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 not the sole executive. Most of the work of Christianity among 
 the non-Christian nations is to be done, not through foreign 
 missions at all, but through the great Christian Churches which 
 are to grow up indigenously in these nations, and something is 
 to be left to be done by the great Churches of the West in 
 friendly co-operation with the new Churches, when the dis- 
 tinctive need for foreign missions will have wholly passed away. 
 " That Christ's religion and Christian missions," says a thought- 
 ful missionary writer, " have the leading part to play in the 
 alleviation of woes and sufferings, in the removal of human 
 ills and wrongs, in the social progress of the world, can admit 
 of no doubt whatever." Yes, but the leadership of Christ's 
 religion is permanent and complete, and the leadership of Chris- 
 tion missions is temporary and partial. Christ's religion and 
 Christian missions are not separate and co-ordinate forces. The 
 one force is Christ's religion. Christian missions are merely 
 the agency by which that religion makes its first and purest 
 impact upon the world. When the religion has struck in its 
 roots, it will do its work and dispense with this agency. 
 
 Two further distinctions will bring us still closer to a true 
 definition of the aim of foreign missions. First, the aim is not 
 to be confounded with the results. Many things result which 
 are not primarily aimed at. The Levant is astir to-day, and the 
 Turkish Empire and the Caliphate have been shaken ; the Iwa- 
 kura Embassy went forth from Japan and came back with fixed 
 and clarified purposes of national transformation ; the Chinese 
 treaties of 1858 opened the Empire to Christianity and author- 
 ised for the Chinese people what had been a rcligio illicita; 
 great wrongs which had become imbedded in the religions of 
 India have died, and great movements of reform in Hinduism 
 have come to life, — all these things not because the missionaries 
 made them their aim, but as the inevitable result of the work 
 they were doing in seeking to achieve that which was their 
 aim. If they had aimed at some of these things, they would 
 surely have missed them. How long would a Christian mission 
 have been tolerated in the Turkish Empire, which had proclaimed 
 as its aim the dissolution of Turkish absolutism? He that would 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 59 
 
 seek to save his life shall lose it. That law is of wide applica- 
 tion in the life and work of men. The work of foreign missions 
 in planting the divine life in the dead nations is releasing ener- 
 gies whose consequences no man can foretell. Immense moral, 
 social, and political effects are inevitable, but these are not the 
 aim of missions. They are its accessory results. " The mission 
 that is to prove of permanent value," says a religious journal, 
 " must aim at a thorough reconstruction of the whole social 
 fabric." I think not. Christianity will instinctively destroy all 
 that is evil in any society, and its end will be thorough recon- 
 struction of the whole social fabric. But that is the far-off, 
 ultimate issue of missions, not their immediate aim. This 
 journal's view confuses the work of missions with the whole work 
 of Christianity. The work of missions will be done long before 
 these results have been attained, and the foreign missionary 
 enterprise must refuse to accept this responsibility. 
 
 In the second place, the aim of missions is not to be con- 
 founded with the means or methods employed for its realisation. 
 We often start out to use a method to an end or to accomplish 
 an accepted aim, but the method becomes itself the end and 
 conceals the real aim. The aim may be difficult and the method 
 easy, those for whom we work may be averse to our end but 
 eager for our agency, the means employed may be in them- 
 selves beneficent ; in such circumstances we easily content our- 
 selves with the prosecution of our methods, allowing our aim 
 to fall into the background or to await a more favourable time. 
 There may often be no other course than this open to us. In 
 such case, we need only to make sure that the aim is still there, 
 that the methods are kept true to it, and that we ourselves have 
 not lost our loyalty but are only waiting for the first suitable 
 hour. But we must not be as that ambassador who was sent to 
 negotiate a treaty of union and bidden to use every friendly 
 resource, and who so lost himself amid his resources that he 
 came back with good-will, but with no more. The maintenance 
 of hospitals and schools is not the aim of Christian missions. 
 They are the methods by which it is to achieve the real end. 
 Preaching is not the supreme aim of the missionary. That, 
 
60 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 too, is simply a method, and a man may lose himself and his 
 aim in that method as easily as in any other. 
 
 What, then, is the supreme and determining aim of foreign 
 missions? It is something religious, and it is something as near 
 the vital and living core of religion as can possibly be. It 
 must include that and as little beside that as is possible. It 
 is to make Christ known to the world with a view to real results, 
 for time, as well as for eternity, and to the incorporation of 
 these results in living national character. In other words, the 
 aim of missions includes three things, — first, the proclamation 
 of Christ ; second, the salvation of men, and third, the naturalisa- 
 tion of Christianity. 
 
 Let us consider each of these. First, it is the aim of missions 
 to make Jesus Christ known to the world. Some will say that 
 this is simple enough. Our business is to preach the Gospel. 
 Yes, but what is the Gospel that is to be preached, and what 
 is it to preach it? The problem is by no means as simple as it 
 appears. We think we know what the Gospel was which Paul 
 preached and which constituted the message of the Church in 
 the missionary expansion of the first two centuries. Harnack 
 is sure that the one living God, as Creator, Jesus the Saviour, 
 the resurrection and self-control formed the four conspicuous 
 features in the new propaganda. " Along with this, the story 
 of Jesus must have been briefly communicated (in the statements 
 of Christology), whilst the resurrection was generally defined as 
 the resurrection of the flesh, and self-control identified with 
 social purity, and then extended to include renunciation of the 
 world and mortification of the flesh." — (Harnack, " Expansion 
 of Christianity," Vol. I, p. m.) The facts of Christianity re- 
 main what they were, and men can state them, but is that 
 preaching the Gospel, is that making Christ known? The 
 problem is not so easy. Those who have tried most earnestly 
 best realise the difficulties. " The moment I could speak the 
 language," says an ingenious missionary to Mohammedans, " and 
 began to see something of the people, man after man would come 
 to me, all with the same question, ' We have heard a great 
 deal, a great deal of Christian teaching, and a great deal about 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 61 
 
 Jesus Christ, but Sahib, matlab chist? ' which may be trans- 
 lated, ' What is the point of it all? ' " — (Malcolm, " Five Years 
 in a Persian Town," p. 202.) If any one should say that making 
 Christ known is simply showing to others the beauty of His 
 character, that is no simple task. The late Mr. A. G. Jones, 
 of the English Baptist Mission in Shantung, one of the freshest 
 and most vigorous minds in China, said that even that task 
 baffled him, and Mr. Townsend said some years ago of India: 
 
 The character of Christ is not, I am convinced, as acceptable 
 to Indians as it is to the northern races. It is not so completely 
 their ideal, because it is not so visibly supernatural, so completely 
 beyond any point which they can, unassisted by divine grace, 
 hope to attain. The qualities which seemed to the warriors of 
 Clovis so magnificently divine, the self-sacrifice, the self-denial, 
 the resignation, the sweet humility, are precisely the qualities the 
 germs of which exist in the Hindu. He seeks, like every other 
 man, the complement of himself, and not himself again, and 
 stands before Christ at first comparatively unattracted. The ideal 
 in his mind is as separate as was the ideal in the Jews' mind 
 of their expected Messiah, and though the ideals of Jew and 
 Hindu are different, the effect is in both cases the same — a 
 passive, dull repulsion, scarcely to be overcome save by the 
 special grace of God. I never talked frankly with a Hindu 
 in whom I did not detect this feeling to be one inner cause of 
 his rejection of Christianity. He did not want that particular 
 sublimity of character, but another, something more of the sov- 
 ereign and legislator. 
 
 The character of Christ wields a far greater attraction in 
 India to-day. But preaching the Gospel, making Christ known, 
 is something far more than describing to men the beauty of His 
 character, but just what it is and how it can be done in the 
 truest and most effective way are questions so deep that they 
 lift the missionary enterprise to a level of its own. Mr. Jones 
 keenly felt, as all true missionaries feel the burden of these 
 questions. 
 
 There are [said he] those who believe the true course is, 
 without further preparation, to proclaim and declare Christ, His 
 deity, and His saving work of atonement, first and always, to 
 
62 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 every creature, irrespective of the hearer's state of heart, as 
 the true sequence of truth, as the Scriptural, the speediest, and 
 most effective way. Now this has been done on a vast scale 
 in India and China, with a sincerity, perseverance, and zeal that 
 admits of no question ; by men, too, that were both pious and 
 spiritual, and in a way that compels the highest admiration. 
 The one fact, however, that voices itself above every other, is 
 the utter disproportion of the results to the efforts, and it is 
 this which at once both raises doubts and compels investigation 
 as to the correctness of this principle of working. I believe 
 with all my heart in the preaching of Jesus Christ and His 
 atonement as the very and essential truth of God; but I believe, 
 also, it is utterly useless, profitless, and meaningless unless the 
 existence of God, the rule of God, the reality of the after-life, 
 and the certainty of a future retribution be, to some extent, 
 believed by the inquiring soul, if indeed in any sense inquiring 
 at all. The efficacy of the Gospel is not like the chemical efficacy 
 of some substances on other substances, as the efficacy of spells, 
 or passwords, but lies in its spiritual adaptation for bringing 
 the soul to be in an attitude of harmony with God, if that God 
 be known and that harmony desired. . . . The question is 
 one which the increasing experience of the Church in her mis- 
 sionary work among cultured nations increasingly calls attention 
 to, i.e., the true principles and right method of evangelising the 
 heathen. Faith in Jesus is the best of all evidence when a man 
 has got it, but as to how he is to be helped to get it, and how 
 he is not to be hindered in getting it, this is my one day's con- 
 tribution. Judge not according to the appearance or the letter, 
 but judge righteous judgment. Idols are worshipped and false 
 gods trusted, after a certain fashion, and hold their own. We 
 do not want Christ worshipped or trusted in that way, but 
 collaterally with an internal process of a spiritual character. 
 That process seldom results from mere assertions unless they 
 be as real rays of light entering into the very centre of a man's 
 heart and making the person and power of Jesus Christ a living 
 reality to the soul. I do not for a moment believe that the 
 ordinary view, that Christianity fails mostly or solely for want 
 of faith, or because the hearers are so evil, is the right one. 
 Nay, it often fails, even under fair conditions, because we so 
 mar it in the preaching, and because we so fail to demonstrate 
 its spirit and its power. 
 
 What Mr. Jones, whose tragic death was an untold loss 
 to missions in China, has said of conditions on the mission field 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 63 
 
 is as true of conditions at home. The fruit, indeed, is greater 
 there than here, though with us the difficulties are infinitely- 
 less, for we have the ideas to build upon. He forgets, or in 
 his stern humility ignores, the effectiveness with which even our 
 stumbling efforts do make Christ known. He passes over the 
 great fact of life that Christ is each man's head and will find 
 His way to him. But his words express clearly the difficulty 
 and the necessity of the primary missionary aim, which is to 
 bring the living Christ home to men. 
 
 In the second place, the aim is to do this with a view to 
 results, not only in the general acquaintance of the nations with 
 the Christian ideal, but also in the salvation of individual men. 
 The missionary movement may not absolve itself from responsi- 
 bility here. It may not say, " Our aim is to make Christ known, 
 whether they will hear or not. The results are with God." 
 There is, of course, a measure of truth in this view, but on the 
 other hand, if there are no results, how can we be sure that 
 we have made Christ known ? We believe that everywhere there 
 are those whom in His exquisite Oriental speech our Lord 
 called His sheep, who, when they hear their Shepherd's voice, 
 will follow Him. If none respond, how can we be sure that 
 any have heard? We are to aim at and work for the actual 
 conversion of men, and not be content with witness-bearing, 
 heedless of result or seed-sowing for future harvest. The late 
 Dr. Ellinwood, who represented a view of missionary effort 
 which gave full allowance to the wider aspects of the work 
 as they are usually called, toward the close of his life felt the 
 importance of this primary work of missions as his chief burden. 
 
 Another thing [he said] which I would place in the very 
 forefront among the impressions which have grown upon my 
 mind is this : that the importance of our work, whether in 
 the actual contact of the missionary on the field or the planning 
 and stimulus of the work here at home, should be the conversion 
 of men. Do you ask why I utter such a truism as this? I 
 do it because I think that too often a feeling has grown up 
 that our work is to prepare the way for somebody hereafter 
 to reap the harvest. There is no phrase as much abused as 
 that of " seed-sowing." There is a legitimate sowing of the 
 
64 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 seed, but neither the phrase nor the idea should be made a 
 subterfuge or an excuse for a limp and self-contented inefficiency. 
 A missionary in Benares belonging to one of the British Societies 
 once told me that he had preached the Gospel in that city ten 
 years, but he had never, so far as he knew, been the means 
 of any conversion, and when I showed some surprise at his 
 apparent freedom from concern, he said that it was his business 
 to preach the Word, — he really had nothing to do with results. 
 Quite different was the feeling of Mr. Hudson Taylor, when in 
 the great missionary conference of 1900 he urged the mission- 
 aries to aim at the conversion of men at once, even though it 
 might be the first and possibly the only opportunity, and he gave 
 instances in which the work of the Spirit had thus directly owned 
 the message and made it effectual. As we turn back to the 
 New Testament, I think we find that that was very much the way 
 in which believers were expected to respond when Peter and 
 John and Stephen and Paul proclaimed to them the message 
 of salvation. I once heard the secretary of a missionary Board 
 say that about the least concern of all to the missionary was 
 the question of numbers received into the Church. His meaning 
 was good, but it was a careless and one-sided statement. It 
 must be admitted that sometimes a great and exclusive emphasis 
 is put upon the statistics of church membership. But dissent 
 from this view has, I think, been carried too far and indicates 
 a lack of that travail for souls of which Paul speaks. I am 
 fully persuaded that the unit of measurement in preaching the 
 Gospel of reconciliation is the individual soul. 
 
 Was this not what Jesus sought when He came here to 
 win men? Was this not what He charged His disciples to 
 do, namely, to make disciples of others, even of all nations? 
 Was not this what Paul sought, the persuasion of men to believe 
 in Christ and to follow Him in His Church? I certainly believe 
 that this is the aim of foreign missions and of every agency em- 
 ployed by foreign missions. I know that there are some who hold 
 a different view. One of the most honoured and distinguished 
 leaders in educational work on the foreign field set forth a dif- 
 ferent view some years ago in a lecture to his students at Madras. 
 " We have institutions for education around us," said Dr. Miller, 
 " which deliberately decline to turn the thoughts of those trained 
 in them toward every divine purpose, — which are not intended 
 to suggest any thoughts beyond those that belong to the brief 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 65 
 
 lives of individual men on earth. We have other institutions 
 which, working rather on the Greek and Roman ideal than on 
 Christ's, make it their one overmastering aim to bring men over 
 from other schemes of life, and to place them within the Chris- 
 tian fold. With neither of these classes of schools and colleges 
 have I any quarrel. . . . But you, amid such imperfection in 
 those who trained you and yet not wholly without success, have 
 been trained differently. . . . To you, — if you have at all re- 
 ceived the Spirit of your training — to you it is a familiar thought, 
 nay, it is the guiding thought of all, that while God's moral 
 work, like all His works, is organised around a centre, it is 
 yet something wider far than any Church or system or race, 
 nay, that it embraces every land and age, and extends to every 
 member of the human family." These words raise a great ques- 
 tion and embody truth, and, I think, also some error. I quote 
 them now as setting forth an aim which we do not regard as 
 the great aim of missions, and dismissing as Greek and Roman, 
 rather than Christian, what we do regard as the supreme aim 
 and chief business of the missionary enterprise, namely, making 
 Christ known to individual men with a view to their open personal 
 acceptance of Him as their only Lord and Saviour. This aim 
 is sometimes condemned by the supposedly opprobrious term of 
 proselytising. But what is meant by proselytising? If it means 
 to take a good follower of one religion and to make him into 
 a bad follower of another, then it goes without saying that it 
 is not worth while. But if to win a man to Christ, to take 
 an adherent of any other religion or a man of no religion and 
 make him a true disciple of Christ — if that be proselytising, then 
 that, as we understand it, is exactly what the work of foreign 
 missions aims to do. 
 
 This also, as those who have tried it know best, is no easy 
 task. Robert Morrison wrought seven years before his first 
 convert was won. To make Christ known in a way that satisfies 
 the heart and mind of the preacher is a great achievement. 
 To make Christ known in a way that convinces the heart and 
 mind and will of the hearer is a greater one. Only the divine 
 Spirit, Who we believe is at work in the enterprise, can effect 
 
66 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 either. He can effect and is daily effecting both. For the work 
 is simpler, as well as more difficult, than it appears. In many 
 ways, by many doors, on many angles of the infinite and ade- 
 quate truth of God in Christ is the Spirit through men reaching 
 men and making them the open and fearless followers of the 
 Saviour. 
 
 The third element of the missionary aim is the naturalisation 
 of Christianity in the non-Christian lands. Its aim is not to 
 impose our Western systems of theology or our Western forms 
 of Church government upon the converts who may be gathered 
 upon the mission field. It is to make Christ known to these 
 peoples, to bring together those who accept him, and to estab- 
 lish them in indigenous organisations which will take their 
 own forms and come to their own statements of the truth of 
 Christianity, as wrought out in their own study of the Bible 
 and their own Christian experience. It is not the aim of missions 
 to denationalise those who become Christian disciples, to inter- 
 fere with styles of dress or modes of life, to give Occidental 
 institutions to them or to Westernise their minds or hearts. 
 It is their aim to carry to all the world the universal elements 
 of the one adequate religion, the knowledge of the one Saviour 
 of men, and to secure that permanent and effective perpetuation 
 and that adequate apprehension of the truth by men which are 
 possible only in the corporate association of the Church, one 
 over all the earth, and yet adapted to the genius and needs of 
 each people. 
 
 It is in this adaptation of her missions to national conditions 
 that the Roman Catholic Church is supposed to have been spe- 
 cially wise. The supposition is erroneous. The great mistake 
 of the Roman Church has been in the iron imposition of her 
 forms, both of doctrine and of institution, absorbing much evil, 
 it is true, in such adaptation as she has permitted, but crushing 
 out spontaneity and life, and drawing everything under an essen- 
 tially alien rule. " It presents," says Professor Moore, " the 
 singular contrast of being the faith which professes to differ 
 most absolutely from all others, yet visibly differing very little 
 from the old faiths of its converts, and giving them but a con- 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 67 
 
 fused sense of anything beyond an external allegiance to a punc- 
 tilious routine for which it stands. The Roman Church, there- 
 fore, represents the phenomenon of the naturalisation of Chris- 
 tianity in the Orient in a form in which it is only too easy to 
 say that, if this is what is meant by naturalisation of Christianity, 
 then the less we have to do with it the better." — (E. C. Moore, 
 in the Harvard Theological Review, July, 1908, p. 273.) Cath- 
 olic writers admit the fact of their alien ideals. " Even at 
 Peking," writes one of them, " where there are old Christian 
 families of three hundred years' standing, the Chinese priests 
 require the support of a European missionary. . . . The mis- 
 sionaries are of opinion that it is only after four generations that 
 the Chinese can be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the 
 Catholic faith. For this reason, only Chinamen whose families 
 have been Catholics for two or three centuries are admitted to 
 the priesthood. Converts of a recent date are never accepted 
 without a special dispensation, which is seldom applied for, and 
 which is still more seldom granted." — (Kelly, " Another China," 
 p. 74.) The Roman Catholic aim, in other words, is the im- 
 portation of a foreign ecclesiastical system. In South America 
 men will tell you frankly that the greatest evils which ever 
 befell the continent were its discovery by Spaniards and the 
 imposition of an alien religious institution which was not a 
 fountain of indigenous life. 
 
 Now it is charged against Protestant missions that they have 
 made in principle the same mistake as Roman Catholics, and 
 have simply carried out into the non-Christian nations a Western 
 set of ideals, body of social usages, and form of religious or- 
 ganisation. Let us listen to the charges. " The Christian re- 
 ligion," says Arminius Vambery, " may in the beginning have 
 borne many traces of Asiaticism ; but in its further development 
 it has decidedly adapted itself to Western views ; and as an 
 amalgamation of Aryan and Semitic ideas, as Seeley expresses 
 it, has become a European religion par excellence. As such, 
 it is a development foreign to the Asiatic mind ; a faith which 
 does not coincide with his tastes and conception of life, and 
 an anonymous author in the Contemporary Review is about right 
 
68 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 when he concludes his instructive article entitled ' Islam and 
 Christianity in India,' with the remark : ' Mohammedan prosely- 
 tism succeeds in India because it leaves its converts Asiatics 
 still. Christian proselytism fails in India because it strives to 
 make of its converts English middle-class men. That is the 
 truth in a nutshell, whether we choose to accept it or not.' " — 
 (Vambery, " Western Culture in Eastern Lands," Ch. VIII.) 
 Hear, also, Mr. Townsend, who is the anonymous writer whom 
 Mr. Vambery quotes : 
 
 The missionaries are Europeans [he says] divided from the 
 people by a barrier as strong as that which separates a Chinaman 
 from a Londoner, by race, by colour, by dress, by incurable dif- 
 ferences of thought, of habit, of taste, and of language. The 
 last named the missionary sometimes, though by no means always, 
 overcomes, but the remaining barriers he cannot overcome, for 
 they are rooted in his very nature, and he does not try. He never 
 becomes an Indian, or anything which an Indian could mistake 
 for himself; the influence of civilisation is too strong for him. 
 He cannot help desiring that his flock should become " civilised " 
 as well as Christians; he understands no civilisation not Euro- 
 pean, and by unwearied admonition, by governing, by teaching, 
 by setting up all manner of useful industries, he tries to bring 
 them up to his narrow ideal. That is, he becomes a pastor on 
 the best English model ; part preacher, part schoolmaster, part 
 ruler ; always doing his best, always more or less successful, but 
 always with an eye to a false end — the Europeanisation of the 
 Asiatic — and always acting through the false method of develop- 
 ing the desire of imitation. There is the curse of the whole 
 system, whether of missionary work or of education in India. 
 The missionary, like the educationist, cannot resist the desire 
 to make his pupils English, to teach them English literature, 
 English science, English knowledge ; often — as in the case of the 
 vast Scotch missionary colleges, establishments as large as uni- 
 versities, and as successful in teaching — through the medium 
 of English alone. He wants to saturate Easterns with the West. 
 The result is that the missionary becomes an excellent pastor 
 or an efficient schoolmaster instead of a proselytiser, and that 
 his converts or their children or the thousands of pagan lads 
 he teaches become in exact proportion to his success a hybrid 
 caste, not quite European, not quite Indian, with the originality 
 killed out of them, with self-reliance weakened, with all mental 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 69 
 
 aspirations wrenched violently in a direction which is not their 
 own. It is as if Englishmen were trained by Chinamen to be- 
 come not only Buddhists, but Chinese. The first and most 
 visible result is a multiplication of Indians who know English, 
 but are not English, either in intellectual ways or in morals ; and 
 the second is that, after eighty years of effort, no great native 
 missionary has arisen, that no great Indian Church has developed 
 itself on lines of its own, and that the ablest missionaries say 
 sorrowfully that white supervision is still needed, and that if 
 they all retired, the work might even now be undone. . . . 
 Christianity in a new people must develop civilisation for 
 itself, not be smothered by it, still less be exhausted in the im- 
 possible effort to accrete to itself a civilisation from the outside. 
 Natives of India, when they are Christians, will be and ought 
 to be Asiatics still — that is, as unlike English rectors or English 
 dissenting ministers as it is possible for men of the same creed 
 to be, and the effort to squeeze them into those moulds not only 
 wastes power, but destroys the vitality of the original material. 
 
 These are faithful words, and we are saying them ourselves. 
 " One going into a Hindu or Chinese Christian Church," says 
 Professor Moore on his return from his missionary visitation, 
 " is positively astounded to see how completely some of the con- 
 verts represent, seemingly to the minutest detail, the type with 
 which we are familiar in the devout life of our Churches here 
 at home. . . . Their Christianity, real as it is, is still exotic. 
 . . . Christianity is not yet naturalised. Such converts ex- 
 plain how their compatriots may come to look upon the Christian 
 as denationalised, and on conversion as equivalent to denationali- 
 sation." 
 
 Now in the face of all this, we repeat that the aim of foreign 
 missions is just what we have declared it to be. It is the naturali- 
 sation of Christianity, both as doctrine and institution in the 
 foreign nations. But this is no more easy than the work of 
 making Christ known or the work of winning men to His 
 discipleship. The racial chasm exists. It is that chasm which 
 creates the difficulty. Paul did not experience it. He was a 
 Roman. Wherever he went he was in his own country and 
 among his own people. Everywhere he found Jews and prose- 
 lytes to Judaism. Everywhere he found Greek culture and 
 
7 o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Greek forms of thought. Everywhere he was under Roman 
 law and under Roman social institutions. Our missions are 
 foreign missions, not in the sense of Paul's, but in the sense 
 that Paul's would have been if he had gone to India or to 
 China. We cannot go into the non-Christian world as other than 
 we are or with anything else than that which we have. Even 
 when we have done our best to disentangle the universal truth 
 from the Western form that it may find the Eastern heart, we 
 know that we have not done it. " We are there," says Dr. 
 Gibson, " to teach the Word of God, to plant in their minds 
 ideas which are to be the universal possession of all God's 
 people. We are perhaps hardly aware how much our own na- 
 tional temperament, our own upbringing, and the schools of 
 theology from which we come, tend to shape and colour our 
 teaching. It requires a constant effort of watchfulness to see 
 to it that we offer to those under our care the pure, uncoloured, 
 universal essence of our Lord's teaching, and not the essentially 
 Scottish or Western theology and Gospel." — (Gibson, " Mission 
 Problems and Mission Methods," pp. 282-286.) We are not 
 agreed as to the essential and universal elements of Christianity 
 here. How great is their problem who go out to plant the 
 faith in other lands! 
 
 And even in the case of elements of Christianity which are 
 obviously and concededly universal, do not think that it is easy 
 to find a home for them in all lands — the sinless holiness of 
 God in India, the fatherly goodness of God in Islam, the in- 
 dividuality of the soul in Japan, the personality of God in all 
 the Buddhist lands. " They will readily understand," said a 
 Japanese speaker in Tokyo, several years ago, referring to his 
 countrymen, " if you say that God is Creator or that Heaven 
 is order, but a God with personality is an idea hard for them 
 to grasp. Even among Christians (Japanese) of the present 
 time, the number who have really comprehended this personal 
 God is comparatively small. ... A ready understanding will 
 be met with if Christ is said to be a man of perfection or per- 
 fect righteousness or the like. But the divine nature of Christ 
 they do not readily accept. . . . The weakness of mankind they 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 71 
 
 well know. To make them take the next step, to grasp the sin- 
 fulness of sin, is the great problem. ... To make these funda- 
 mental truths clear to the present generation is a great and 
 agonising labour." — (Watson, " The Future of Japan," p. 328.) 
 The introduction of Western elements in our intercourse with 
 the non-Christian peoples is inevitable. The Christian missions 
 are not the only agencies at work upon the world which carry 
 their treasure in earthen vessels, or which have difficulty in 
 planting their contribution as a living power. Let us hear the 
 same witnesses we have already heard — first, Vambery, speaking 
 of Western political policy in Asia : 
 
 A deeper insight into the actual relationship between East 
 and West, a thorough testing of the ethnical characteristics and 
 the ethical conditions of the elements that had to be reformed, 
 was seldom thought necessary ; it was enough to have laid out 
 the programme of the reforms and innovations which were to 
 take place, and afterwards we wondered why the Asiatic, dressed 
 in clothes far too big, too wide, and too heavy for his corporeal 
 dimensions, should drag himself along so painfully and labori- 
 ously. It was an initial mistake both on the part of the Euro- 
 pean master and of the Oriental pupil, that the modern doctrines 
 were not made more compatible with the local, ethnical, and 
 ethical conditions, and also more popular. If many of the new 
 customs and notions, which must have appeared monstrous to 
 the Moslem mind, had been made a little more attractive, the 
 transition would have been easier. But Europe has never taken 
 the trouble to enquire into these matters, and the Oriental does 
 not understand such things ; the several conditions of the two 
 worlds have not been sufficiently taken into consideration, and 
 from the consequences of these initial mistakes the Islamic world, 
 and Turkey in particular, suffers to this day. 
 
 And next, Mr. Townsend: 
 
 English education in India may remain sterile for all national 
 purposes. It is not a pleasant thought, but it is an unavoidable 
 one, that the conquest of the east Aryans by the west Aryans, 
 though it has brought such marvellous blessings in the way of 
 peace and order and material prosperity, though it has given to 
 millions, as Mr. Grant Duff says, all the results of political 
 evolution without the wearying struggle for them, may have 
 
72 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 brought also evils which overbalance, or almost overbalance, all 
 its gifts. Not much is gained to the world because under the 
 shadow of the Empire Bengalees increase like flies on a windless 
 day. It is not time yet for conclusions, for the work of con- 
 quest has but just ended, and that of sowing seed has just begun; 
 but that decay of varieties of energy, that torpor of the higher 
 intellectual life, that pause in the application of art knowledge, 
 from architecture down to metal work and pottery, which have 
 been synchronous with our rule in India, these are to the philo- 
 sophic observer melancholy symptoms. Why is not the world 
 yet richer for an Indian brain ? There was a Roman peace once 
 round the Mediterranean, under which originality so died away 
 that it is doubtful whether, but for the barbarian invasion, society 
 would not have stereotyped itself, and even Christianity have 
 grown fossil ; and our rule, much nobler though its motive and 
 its methods be, may be accompanied by the same decay. In 
 the two hundred years during which Spaniards have ruled in 
 the New World but one Indian name has reached Europe, and 
 Juarez was only a politician. We have only to hope and to 
 persevere ; but it is impossible, when the results are from time 
 to time summed up by cool observers like the Governor of 
 Madras, not to feel a chilling doubt. We think little of the 
 political childishness of educated natives on which Mr. Grant 
 Duff is so serenely sarcastic, for that is a mere symptom of 
 unrest, possibly healthy unrest ; and we utterly disagree with 
 him in his assertion that only a wealthy community can be well 
 governed, holding Switzerland to be better governed than France ; 
 but the want of spontaneous effort in all directions, the limita- 
 tion of ambition to a salary from the State, seem to us symptoms 
 either of intellectual torpor or intellectual despair. We know 
 quite well the tendency of Asia to stereotype herself, but we 
 had hoped that British dominion would revivify her; and as yet 
 — except possibly in the important domain of law, a reverence 
 for which is slowly filtering down — the signs are very few. The 
 Codes will, as Mr. Grant Duff believes, materially influence 
 Indian thought ; but then, the Codes were the work not of East- 
 ern Aryans, but of those who conquered them. We want original 
 Indian work ; and as yet we have only men who will take any 
 post, provided that its salary is guaranteed by the State and 
 its work ordered and controlled regularly from above. 
 
 Christian missions are not alone in this difficulty. The diffi- 
 culty, moreover, lies more with the material than with the move- 
 ment. The obstacles to the naturalisation of Christianity do 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 73 
 
 not reside in any reluctance of the Christian missions to recog- 
 nise this as their aim so much as in the imitativeness of the 
 East. The new public buildings of Asia, the new furniture in 
 her palaces, the dress of her modern statesmen, the new things 
 which she is spontaneously taking on are copies of the West. 
 The exotic appearance of the new religious forms is not peculiar 
 to religion. Asia of her own accord is importing the West. The 
 missionary movement would fain see far less of imitation and 
 far more inward acceptance of the real principle of a new life. 
 Our lament is not that the Eastern Churches are thinking for 
 themselves, but that they are not thinking for themselves, that 
 they are not working out fresh theological statements on the 
 basis of an adequate critical study of the growth of Christian 
 doctrine, a new search of the Scriptures, and their own new 
 experience of God in Christ. The missionary movement is left 
 to bear too great a burden. Its aim is to be rid of this burden, 
 to build up native Churches which will themselves carry this 
 burden, which will deal with their own apologetic problems, 
 work out their own institutions, support their own activities, 
 and evangelise their own lands ; in one word, to establish in- 
 dependent, national Churches. 
 
 In realising this aim, however, many things will of necessity 
 be done that will have to be undone. No one can foretell what 
 forms of thought and what types of organisation will be developed 
 by any national genius when wrought upon and wrought in by 
 the living principles of the Gospel. The life will grow in these 
 lands as it has grown elsewhere. What it had to borrow at 
 the beginning it will throw off. It will pass through many 
 phases. For generations it may have far more to learn from 
 us than we from it. Can its early stages be otherwise than 
 imitative? They are very certain, in some lands, especially in 
 a land like China, steeped in its Confucian moralism, and Japan, 
 destitute of the idea of personality, to have a very inadequate 
 sense of sin. Dr. Gibson has described for us clearly and sym- 
 pathetically in his book the type of Christianity developed in 
 a field where missionaries have, nevertheless, sought earnestly to 
 naturalise the new religion : 
 
74 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 It is difficult to characterise with accuracy the prevalent type 
 of Christianity which we find on our mission field. There is 
 a great deal of simple faith, of belief in prayer, and there is 
 at least a very frequent acknowledgment, if not a very pro- 
 found sense, of the working of the Holy Spirit. The great 
 defect which probably all missionaries in China feel, is the lack 
 in the native Church of a keen sense of sin. The natural con- 
 science has not, of course, lost wholly its appreciation of the 
 distinctions between right and wrong, but sin in the Christian 
 sense, and still more an adequate conception of the guilt of sin, 
 are things wholly unknown to the non-Christian Chinese, and 
 which only come very slowly to the consciousness even of the 
 Christians. I have said that new converts are generally brought 
 in by the example and the testimony of native Christians in 
 private life, and so far as their conversion is a matter of doc- 
 trinal conviction, I believe experience shows that the great 
 majority of those who accept the Christian faith do so, not 
 because of conviction of personal sin, but because they have 
 grasped the idea of the obvious helplessness of the idols, and 
 the folly rather than the sin of worshipping them. From this 
 position they attain to some knowledge and belief in the living 
 and true God, but they seem seldom to realise that their long 
 alienation from Him has involved any guilt. They have com- 
 mitted a mistake, perhaps ; they have been unhappily left in the 
 dark ; but now that they have come to know God the past per- 
 haps is too easily forgotten, and there is always a too superficial 
 gladness in their new possession of the truth, which leads them 
 away from that kind of self-questioning which might have led 
 them to a deeper sense of sin. The state of mind has its ad- 
 vantages and its drawbacks. On the one hand, it gives a fresh- 
 ness, simplicity, and freedom to their testimony to the Gospel. 
 They have no tendency to make the way of salvation seem hard 
 to those who are outside. They reduce the Gospel to its simplest 
 elements, and seek to lead men to it by the easiest paths. It 
 may be that this is a right and needful stage in the early history 
 of a Christian Church, but we who have been brought up in 
 an older Christian life often long to see a deeper conception 
 of spiritual things, and a larger sense of what is involved in 
 the transition from death to life. One is often tempted to ask 
 what the Christian religion is as it presents itself to the con- 
 sciousness of many of our Christian people in China. Occa- 
 sional utterances on their part give one glimpses of a system 
 of Christian ideas some of which are strange enough, and many 
 of which, though true and sound in themselves, differ widely 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 75 
 
 as regards emphasis and balance from the Christian system as 
 it presents itself to our minds. Hence arises the profoundly 
 interesting question how Christian life and theology are likely 
 to develop themselves in a young Church like that of China, 
 growing up amongst a people who are themselves the outcome 
 of an ancient civilisation and intellectual life. 
 
 A Christian experience like this is not prepared to make 
 any great contribution to theology or to the experimental under- 
 standing of our faith. It is merely the replica of a frame of 
 mind very common among us in the West, a frame of mind 
 capable of subtracting from, but not of adding to, the race's 
 apprehension of the fulness of God in Christ. And in the 
 naturalisation of Christianity we must be prepared not only for 
 such subtraction, but also for many excesses. The Taiping 
 rebellion is an illustration of what an indigenous interpretation 
 of Christianity, unguided by the maturer experience of the West 
 and divorced from organic relation with the historic Christian 
 tradition, may produce. It will be no strange thing if the 
 Hindu consciousness runs off into wilder and less recoverable 
 wreckage. 
 
 The aim of the missionary movement, as we have now defined 
 it, i.e., to make Christ known to the world with a view to real 
 results in the salvation of individuals and their organisation into 
 living native Churches, is, accordingly, not an easy aim, but it is 
 simple and coherent, and it is practicable. It is the aim of the 
 mission enterprise to make Christ known to men with a view 
 to making men disciples of Christ. This means more than induc- 
 ing them, while still remaining Hindus or Mohammedans, to take 
 a broader view of God's moral government and His education 
 of the human race. It means their acceptance of Christ as their 
 Saviour and Lord, as the full revelation of God and the Redeemer 
 from sin, and their open enlistment in His service. 
 
 The aim of foreign missions is not, therefore, the civilisation 
 of the world, any mere change in men's habits of life, any 
 mere enlargement of men's knowledge. A multitude of agencies 
 are operating on the world in behalf of human progress. Some 
 are doing harm; some, mingled harm and good; some, good. 
 
76 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The deepest and purest of these is the force of Christianity 
 expressed to the non-Christian world, for the most part, in 
 the enterprise of missions. Every motive which interests men 
 in the good of their fellows should dispose men to advance this 
 enterprise, but the aim of the enterprise is not the civilisation 
 of the world. 
 
 Neither is it the conversion of the world. We believe that 
 some day Jesus Christ is to rule over all the earth, that every 
 knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is God to 
 the glory of God the Father, but foreign missions finished their 
 work in Scotland and the United States before that day was 
 reached, and they will finish their work everywhere else in the 
 world before that day will come. The foreign missionary enter- 
 prise is not coterminous in place or time with the Church. Its 
 business is a strictly limited business. It is to plant Christianity 
 as a living power in each non-Christian land, develop there a 
 Church which will have a life of its own, and assume itself the 
 burden of responsibility for the evangelisation of its own nation. 
 For a time longer or shorter, the missionary enterprise must 
 remain to co-operate with the Church, and will then pass on 
 into regions beyond, if there be yet regions beyond, while further 
 aid will be given, if needed, and under expedient arrangements, 
 by the Churches of Christ, as by equal to equal in a common 
 task. 
 
 This does not dissolve the obligation expressed in the phrase, 
 " the evangelisation of the world in this generation." That 
 phrase embodies the solemn duty of the Christian Church. 
 Every man has a right to know of Christ. Every man can be 
 made to know of Christ. There are old men who will die 
 before the Church can reach them, but it remains true, none 
 the less, as a rough statement of fact, that we can, if we will, 
 make Christ known to all the world in this generation. No other 
 work will need to be left undone. No interest will suffer. On 
 the other hand, the resolute effort of the Church, through all 
 the channels by which she can act upon the world to make 
 Christ known to every creature, would involve that very access 
 and release of power, that very rediscovery of the living God, 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 77 
 
 that very opening of the healing life of God to men, which 
 would not only carry Christ over all the world, but would also 
 carry Him into all the world's life and make Him the redeemer 
 of humanity. The evangelisation of the world in this generation, 
 however, is not the full aim of the foreign missionary enterprise. 
 The aim of this enterprise is to establish everywhere a Church 
 that will have this for her aim, to inspire that Church as she 
 is founded abroad, and to quicken the Church that has been 
 founded at home to seek this end, and to co-operate with both 
 until it is absorbed in the awakened tide of their missionary 
 energy in their effort to realise the character of God in Christ 
 and to fulfil the very nature of the Christian Church and the 
 Gospel with which she is charged in the Christianisation of all 
 the life of man. 
 
 When once the distinctive and determining aim of the mis- 
 sionary enterprise is clearly grasped, then we can make room 
 for the use of almost any method. Everything is legitimate 
 which is consistent with this aim and which helps to realise it. 
 As Alexander Duff said in the resolution which he presented 
 at the Conference held on the occasion of his visit to New York 
 City in 1854 in answer to the question : " What are the divinely 
 appointed and most efficient means of extending the Gospel of 
 salvation to all men ? " 
 
 Resolved, as the general sense of this Convention, that the 
 chief means of divine appointment for the evangelisation of the 
 world are — the faithful teaching and preaching of the pure 
 Gospel of salvation by duly qualified ministers and other holy 
 and consistent disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ — accompanied 
 with prayer and savingly applied by the grace of the Holy Spirit ; 
 such means, in the providential application of them by human 
 agency, embracing not merely instruction by the living voice, 
 but the translation and judicious circulation of the whole written 
 word of God — the preparation and circulation of evangelical 
 tracts and books — as well as any other instrumentalities fitted 
 to bring the word of God home to men's souls — together with 
 any processes which experience may have sanctioned as the most 
 efficient in raising up everywhere indigenous ministers and teach- 
 ers of the living Gospel. 
 
78 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 We see this flexibility of method combined with definiteness 
 of aim in the missionary work of St. Paul. He sought to do 
 just what foreign missions are seeking to do, and he resorted 
 to every method which he thought might prove serviceable. 
 He went out to the centres over the Roman world where men 
 were accessible and where the Church, when established, would 
 be most influential in reaching both lives and life. He did not 
 settle permanently in one place. His ambition was to found 
 churches all over the Roman Empire, and especially in unevan- 
 gelised territory. He was, at least to a great extent, self-support- 
 ing in his work, labouring with his own hands in some places, 
 and at other times apparently living upon other resources. At 
 any rate, the churches which he founded did not support him. 
 He did not rely upon miracles, or philanthropic work of any 
 sort. He did not supply funds for the salaries of workers in 
 the churches. He appointed leaders of the Christians from 
 among their own number and expected them to give liberally 
 to aid the poor in distant places. He took the living Gospel of 
 the divine Saviour and planted that in the soil of human life. 
 He was his own supreme method. Christ was in him, and in 
 him and by him Christ was preached to men. 
 
 The conditions to-day are widely different from the con- 
 ditions with which Paul had to deal. We work among people 
 of other languages, other civilisations, other intellectual and 
 moral presuppositions, other political sovereignties, where our 
 propaganda is entangled with contradictions. Our work is easier, 
 but it is also more difficult than his. We go about it with 
 his methods, and also with methods of our own — but all with 
 the same aim. 
 
 The first method is the method of our Saviour Himself, — 
 namely, the method of incarnation. That is the only way living 
 truth can be communicated. Words cannot convey it. In many 
 lands there are no words which contain or even suggest the new 
 ideas which are to be conveyed. In China for many generations 
 there has been a dispute as to the best term to use for God. 
 And even if there were words, the words cannot impart life 
 save as a living Spirit works in them, and as for the most part 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 79 
 
 they are illustrated and confirmed in life. Men must be the 
 Gospel before men. Only by being Himself the conception of 
 God which He came to reveal did Jesus impart that conception 
 to men. Only by being the bread of life and the light of the 
 world did He give nourishment and knowledge to human souls. 
 It is so still. 
 
 It goes without saying that the man who would thus make 
 Christ known will love the people to whom he goes and will be 
 their friend. He may not like them. He surely will abhor much 
 that he finds among them as he abhors much that he finds at 
 home, but the love of Christ constrains him to love the un- 
 likable, and that love will discover what is lovely or can be 
 made so. The missionary enterprise sprang from such a temper, 
 and whatever men may say about the hard motives which they 
 suppose led our fathers to begin it, we know that it was begun 
 in a spirit of great sympathy and desire for the most practical 
 helpfulness. The letter which the General Assembly of the 
 Presbyterian Church in the United States of America addressed 
 to its foreign missionaries in India and Africa in 1838 well 
 illustrates this view : 
 
 Let the heathen among whom you labour see that you love 
 them and that you are intent on promoting their best interests. 
 Your labours will be pleasant to yourselves, as well as more likely 
 to benefit them in proportion to the degree in which you feel 
 and manifest an ardent desire to advance their happiness. You 
 can probably do much for promoting their temporal as well as 
 their eternal welfare by recommending abstinence from intoxi- 
 cating liquors, industry, the introduction of important arts and 
 trades ; and, in short, everything which has a bearing on personal 
 and domestic comfort. Every benefit of this nature which you 
 confer on the heathen will endear you to them, and will also 
 prepare them more fully to profit by your evangelical ministra- 
 tions. In a word, everything that you can do to lift them up 
 in the scale of knowledge and civilisation, as well as of Chris- 
 tianity, will be important, and will forward the great purpose 
 for which you are sent to them. 
 
 The supreme missionary method is this living of the Gospel. 
 Each true missionary is in himself a proclamation of Christ. 
 
80 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Without a word he is making Christ known if he is living 
 Christ before the people. The simple fact that all over the 
 non-Christian world are little companies of Christian men and 
 women who are living the Christian life and in themselves re- 
 vealing Christ, is a missionary agency of greater power than 
 any other, and without which no other would be of any power 
 at all. 
 
 The truly great missionaries, accordingly, have been the men 
 and women of love in whom Christ has shone forth. The 
 richer their intellectual capacities and personal force, the better, 
 but only provided through these also Christ was made known 
 to men. Let us recall, for illustration, three great missionaries 
 who were men of rare qualities, but whose chief power and 
 service were their ceaseless witness to Christ in all that they 
 were and did. The first is Adoniram Judson. His missionary 
 ideal was set forth in a letter home : " In encouraging other 
 young men to come out as missionaries, do use the greatest 
 caution. One wrong-headed, conscientiously-obstinate fellow 
 would ruin us. Humble, quiet, persevering men ; men of sound, 
 sterling talents (though, perhaps, not brilliant), of decent ac- 
 complishments, and some natural aptitude to acquire a language ; 
 men of an amiable, yielding temper, willing to take the lowest 
 place, to be the least of all and the servant of all; men who 
 enjoy much closet religion, who live near to God, and are willing 
 to suffer all things for Christ's sake, without being proud of it, 
 these are the men. . . . But O ! how unlike to this description 
 is the writer of it." 
 
 But those who knew him felt that he did embody this ideal, 
 and his own spiritual principles show how fervently he sought 
 to represent Christ in his own person and to glorify Him, whether 
 by life or by death : 
 
 Points of Self-denial 
 
 i. The passion for neatness, uniformity, and order in arrange- 
 ment of things — in dress, in writing, in grounds. 
 
 2. A disposition to suffer annoyance from little improprieties 
 in the behaviour and conversation of others. 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 81 
 
 3. A desire to appear to advantage, to get honour and avoid 
 shame. " Come shame, come sorrow," etc. 
 
 4. A desire for personal ease and comfort, and a reluctance 
 to suffer inconvenience. 
 
 5. Unwillingness to bear contradiction. 
 
 Rules of Life 
 
 Rules adopted on Sunday, April 4, 1819, the era of commenc- 
 ing public ministrations among the Burmans ; revised and adopted 
 on Saturday, December 9, 1820, and on Wednesday, April 25, 
 1821. 
 
 1. Be diligent in secret prayer, every morning and evening. 
 
 2. Never spend a moment in mere idleness. 
 
 3. Restrain natural appetites within the bounds of temperance 
 and purity. " Keep thyself pure." 
 
 4. Suppress every emotion of anger and ill will. 
 
 5. Undertake nothing from motives of ambition or love of 
 fame. 
 
 6. Never do that which, at the moment, appears to be dis- 
 pleasing to God. 
 
 7. Seek opportunities of making some sacrifice for the good 
 of others, especially of believers, provided the sacrifice is not 
 inconsistent with some duty. 
 
 8. Endeavour to rejoice in every loss and suffering incurred 
 for Christ's sake and the Gospel's, remembering that though, 
 like death, they are not to be wilfully incurred, yet, like death, 
 they are great gain. 
 
 Readopted the above rules, particularly the 4th, on Sunday, 
 August 31, 1823. 
 
 Readopted the above rules, particularly the first, on Sunday, 
 October 29, 1826, and adopted the following minor rules: 
 
 1. Rise with the sun. 
 
 2. Read a certain portion of Burman every day, Sundays 
 excepted. 
 
 3. Have the Scriptures and some devotional book in constant 
 reading. 
 
 4. Read no book in English that has not a devotional tend- 
 ency. 
 
 5. Suppress every unclean thought and look. 
 
 Revised and readopted all the above rules, particularly the 
 second of the first class, on Sunday, March 11, 1827. 
 
82 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 August 9, 1842. 
 God grant me grace to keep the above rules, and ever live 
 to His glory, for Jesus Christ's sake. A. Judson. 
 
 1. Be more careful to observe the seasons of secret prayer. 
 
 2. Never indulge resentful feelings toward any person. 
 
 3. Embrace every opportunity of exercising kind feelings, and 
 doing good to others, especially to the household of faith. 
 
 4. Sweet in temper, face, and word, 
 
 To please an ever-present Lord. 
 
 Renewed December 31, 1842. 
 
 December 31, 1842. Resolved to make the desire to please 
 Christ the grand motive of all my actions. 
 
 The second is James Stewart, the founder of Lovedale, whom 
 Lord Milner called the greatest human in South Africa, but 
 who would never have been that if he had not been more, if 
 Christ had not been in him and through him made known, in 
 tenderness and patience and love. " Tenderness of heart in 
 him," says Dr. Wells in his biography, " rose to genius, and 
 it was not chilled by years or by cruel disappointments. His 
 sympathies overflowed and went down beneath man to the animal 
 world. A man or beast in misery was to him a sacred thing. 
 He could not pass unheeded a beggar, an old man or woman, 
 or poor little children. However busy — and he was always in 
 a whirlpool of work — he had endless patience with sufferers. 
 ... It was the knowledge of his sympathy with them in all 
 their troubles that gave Stewart such a hold over his natives 
 and pupils. They knew that they could go to him at any hour 
 of the day, and he would listen as patiently to their little tales 
 of distress as if it were a matter of mighty moment. His sym- 
 pathy kept him from being impatient with those less gifted than 
 himself. Stewart was full of patience towards the boys and girls 
 who were gathered together at Lovedale." 
 
 The third missionary is David Hill. Let me quote an extract 
 from Dr. Barber's " David Hill, Missionary and Saint." It is 
 Hill himself speaking: 
 
 The possibility of a far, I was almost writing an infinitely, 
 higher Christian life than I live or see lived, is so indisputable 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 83 
 
 to reasonable minds that the employment of this or that term 
 in expressing the same is to my mind a small matter. 
 
 The Church needs, and John Wesley felt, as he proceeded 
 with his great work, the great benefit of the setting forth of a 
 high ideal towards which to aim, — an ideal, if you like to call 
 it so, but an impossible ideal, which, if faithfully and honestly 
 taught, sets men a-longing for it by the power of the concurrently 
 witnessing Spirit. But you will find as clear exposition of John 
 Wesley's teaching on this subject in his hymn-book as any- 
 where. 
 
 " A little MS. book lies before me," writes Dr. Barber, 
 " marked ' Private and Personal,' and it is with hushed footstep 
 that we venture into the inner shrine of a soul's dealing with 
 God. It contains the records of prayer and answer. ' A register 
 of matters on which I have been much pressed in spirit, and 
 for which I have been largely drawn out in prayer.' There 
 are two divisions, headed ' Personal ' and ' General.' Some 
 prayers occur again and again, some are speedily marked as an- 
 swered. There occur as subjects of supplication the names of 
 missionary secretaries in England, English friends, — missionary, 
 consular, and mercantile — in China, Chinese with whom he has 
 been talking, statesmen and mandarins, the Chinese money- 
 changers, etc. There are pathetic confessions of sin, of fear of 
 excess in food and sleep, of faults of temper, and again and 
 again is the record ' with groanings which cannot be uttered.' 
 There are thanksgivings for conquest over parsimony and im- 
 patience, and for the consciousness of guidance. Here is an 
 entry : 
 
 Carried out in rapturous love to Christ whilst on the road ; 
 the dear friends at Taiyuen Fu must have been praying for me. 
 This was early in the morning, but in the afternoon wounded 
 badly by Satan, — cartman very trying, impatience, etc. 
 
 Here is a form of daily self-inquiry: 
 
 1. What is my present relation to God? A son? A slave? 
 An enemy? 
 
 2. What to my fellow-men? In love and charity? 
 
 3. What act of self-denial have I done or can I do to-day? 
 
 4. What prayer has been answered? Give thanks. 
 
84 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 5. What "lost" ones have I sought to save? 
 
 6. What duties arise out of prayers I have put up to-day? 
 
 7. What grace of Christian character do I need especially to 
 foster to-day? By what means? 
 
 Here are two estimates of the man from those who knew 
 him, one a missionary, the other a civilian : 
 
 Mr. Hill was noted for his gentle and refined manners. He 
 was the Christian gentleman everywhere and always. Whether 
 in his intercourse with foreigners or natives he was always 
 polite, always civil, always refined. He had his strong con- 
 victions, and he held them tenaciously ; but it was always in the 
 spirit of unfeigned meekness and true charity. What is it to 
 be a gentleman ? Is it to be honest, gentle, generous, brave, wise, 
 and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most 
 graceful outward manner? If that is to be a gentleman, then 
 David Hill was unquestionably a perfect gentleman in every 
 sense of the word. He was more — he was a Christian gentle- 
 man. Over and above all these natural and acquired qualifica- 
 tions there rested upon him something that lifted him far above 
 the mere gentleman, and which those who knew him best could 
 only recognise as the beauty of the Lord. 
 
 To me he has always seemed the type of an ideal missionary, 
 and I have quoted him and his life scores of times in refutation 
 of unfriendly criticism of missionaries and their work. The in- 
 fluence which men of his stamp — unconsciously often to them- 
 selves — exercise upon Europeans as well as upon natives, is not 
 perhaps properly appreciated until we have lost them. One 
 cause, to my mind, of the distinct line of demarcation, which 
 unfortunately characterises to so large an extent the intercourse 
 of missionaries and laymen in the Far East, is want of tolerance 
 on the part of the former, and of sympathy, among other things, 
 on the part of the latter. We find in David Hill a bridge between 
 the two. While his life was saturated, so to speak, with religious 
 ideas and aspirations, he was absolutely tolerant ; and as he was 
 a man of high education and refinement — a gentleman in the 
 highest sense of the word — one felt in his presence that one 
 was not dealing with a man who had placed himself on a pedestal 
 of lofty, moral superiority, but one who was sympathetic, liberal 
 minded, and appreciative of the doubts and difficulties with which 
 so many conscientious men have to struggle, while his trans- 
 parently simple and self-denying life was beyond the reach of 
 hostile criticism. For myself, I can only say that he will hold 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 85 
 
 a revered place in my memory. I owe much to his talk, his 
 influence, and his example. 
 
 These men made Christ known in their lives. If they had 
 not done so, they could not have made Him known by their 
 words. " The very presence of a missionary, man or woman, 
 is the symptom of a good method," says Dr. Cust. " It is a 
 surprise to the Africans to have a white man in their midst, who, 
 if he chose, could ill-use them, carry off their wife and children 
 and sell them as slaves, and yet does not do so: the wages, 
 whether in cash or kind, paid regularly, cause a new sensation 
 among people used to do forced labour : the kind word uttered, 
 and assistance rendered in case of sickness, surprises them still 
 more. Character does not go for much in old civilised countries, 
 like India, China, and Japan, yet the people are led to reflect 
 upon the wonderful phenomenon, that there are men and women 
 living among them for a score or more years, not to rule the 
 land like the officials, not to make money like the merchant, but 
 to do acts of kindness, speak words of gentleness, encourage 
 morality, and talk about God, and a Future State." 
 
 But we are told by some that this can only be effectively 
 done, that we can only truly, persuasively represent Christ to 
 these non-Christian peoples by the absolutely ascetic ideal, or 
 that there are conditions in which only that ideal can avail. 
 So Canon Taylor argued in the paper in the Fortnightly Review, 
 twenty-two years ago, on " The Great Missionary Failure," 
 which attracted so much undeserved attention. " The man who 
 can best touch the hearts of Indians," said he, " must be a celi- 
 bate and an ascetic, abstaining from alcohol, living like the natives 
 on rice, receiving no payment, either a mendicant or working 
 with his own hands, giving up everything that makes life com- 
 fortable, converting, not by argument, but by exhibiting in prac- 
 tice that absolute self-renunciation which is the only language 
 the natives can understand." — (Fortnightly Review, October, 1888. 
 p. 495.) This is the easy ideal of many missionary theorists 
 and critics. But it is the ideal of others, also, within the mis- 
 sionary circle. Chinese Gordon believed that such a principle 
 
86 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 alone would avail in the Soudan. The conditions made anything 
 else impracticable. " There is not the least doubt," he wrote 
 to his sister, " that there is an immense virgin field for an 
 apostle in these countries among the black tribes. . . . But 
 where will you find an apostle? I will explain what I mean 
 by that term. He must be a man who has died entirely to 
 the world ; who has no ties of any sort ; who longs for death 
 when it may please God to take him; who can bear the intense 
 dulness of these countries ; who seeks for few letters ; and who 
 can bear the thought of dying deserted. ... A man must 
 give up everything, understand everything, everything to do 
 anything for Christ here. ... To tell you plainly, I think the 
 price God asks of a man who comes out to live among the 
 tribes is too great for a man to pay. I know none, no, not 
 one who could pay it." — (" Letters to his Sister," pp. 130-135.) 
 Even more within the circle, we have had men like Crossett 
 in China who have become mendicants for Christ's sake, and 
 we are watching now Mr. Stokes's experiment with the friar 
 life in India, in which he seeks a literal imitation, as he con- 
 ceives it, of the life of Christ, exempting the great body of 
 missionaries from such responsibility, but contending that the 
 Christian fakirs are indispensable. " Their lives will count," 
 writes Mr. Stokes. " I speak not from theory, but in the light 
 of experience. Most non-Christians are unable to believe in the 
 disinterestedness of our missionaries, and are inclined to look at 
 their labours as the fruit of some Government policy. Hence, 
 men are needed who will take their hearts by storm and force 
 them to admit the great and disinterested love of the Christians 
 by the magnitude of their self-sacrifice and the Christlikeness 
 of their labours. Men are needed who will be willing to deny 
 themselves completely and live the roughest of lives under the 
 most trying circumstances for Christ's sake." — (East and West, 
 April, 1908, p. 138, Art. " Interpreting Christ to India.") 
 
 Every Christian heart must rejoice in such devotion and pray 
 for God's blessing upon it. Mr. Stokes does not propose his 
 plan as the standard missionary method but as a useful sup- 
 plementary agency. There are some, however, who do advocate 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 87 
 
 the fakir or mendicant ideal as the only true or at least the 
 wisest missionary ideal. It is an appealing theory, but the 
 example of Christ is against it, and the principles of St. Paul. 
 Their aim was to domesticate Christianity in the common life of 
 man, not to commend it by an abnormal setting. Whatever was 
 necessary to effect their mission they accepted, but these things 
 were not their mission, and both rejected the ascetic ideal. Those 
 who have tried it have accomplished no such results by it as were 
 accomplished by Judson, Stewart, and David Hill. In India 
 the work of the Salvation Army, which Canon Taylor praised 
 as embodying the right principle, has been an utter failure among 
 the native peoples, and George Bowen and missionaries still 
 living, who have sought by asceticism and imitation of native 
 modes of life to make Christ known to the people, have had 
 to confess that the method was ineffective, — and for obvious 
 reasons. The Hindu people " understand real asceticism per- 
 fectly well," as Mr. Meredith Townsend wrote long ago, 
 " and reverence it as a subjugation of the flesh, and if the 
 missionary and his wife carried out the ascetic life as Hindus 
 understand it, lived in a hut, half or wholly naked, sought no 
 food but what was given them, and suffered daily some visible 
 physical pain, they might stir up the reverence which the Hindu 
 pays to those who are palpably superior to human needs. But 
 in their eyes there is no asceticism in the life of the mean 
 white, the Eurasian writer, or the Portuguese clerk, but only 
 a squalor unbecoming a teacher, and one who professes and 
 must profess scholarly cultivation. . . . The cheap mission- 
 aries will have absolutely no special result to encourage them 
 to persevere. A missionary is not made more efficient by being 
 sacrificed every day with the squalid troubles of extreme poverty, 
 and the notion that his low position will bring him closer to 
 the natives is the merest delusion. The white missionary is 
 not separated from the Indian by this means, but by his colour 
 and the difference produced by a thousand years of differing 
 civilisation, which the word colour implies. He is a European ; 
 those to whom he preaches are Asiatics ; in presence of that 
 distinction all others are not only trivial but imperceptible. The 
 
88 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 effect of the cheap missionary on the native mind will be pre- 
 cisely that of the dear missionary, except that as an unmarried 
 man he will be regarded with infinitely more suspicion and 
 disgust. Nothing, in fact, will be gained by the change except 
 the privilege of repeating an experiment which has been made 
 half a dozen times and has invariably failed." 
 
 Christ is made known by what a man is, and not by the mere 
 style of his dress or home, or the appearance of his person. 
 The missionary enterprise aims to plant the Gospel; for that 
 purpose it needs agents; it needs to keep them in health and 
 strength of body and mind ; the more experience they have the 
 more efficient they are. So much should be spent as is necessary 
 for these purposes, — no more or less. Whatever difficulties 
 spring from the comfort of the missionary's life are unavoidable. 
 A real love in his heart will overcome all these, and if Christ 
 is there small problems will solve themselves and Christ will 
 speak forth. This is the primary missionary method. 
 
 But if Christ is really in a man He will speak forth through 
 the man's lips as well as through his life. The great commission 
 was a command of oral proclamation. The Saviour Himself 
 was a teacher, and the Gospel was spread at the beginning, and 
 must be spread now, by conversation. New believers talked 
 about their faith to others. Its missionaries seized all the oppor- 
 tunities of human intercourse for the communication of the good 
 news which they bore. They feared no situation and were 
 equipped to set forth their message to every type of mind. 
 " The unity and variety native to the preaching of Christianity 
 from the very first," says Harnack, " were what constituted 
 the secret of its fascination and a vital condition of its success. 
 On the one hand, it was so simple that it could be summed up 
 in a few brief sentences and understood in a single crisis of 
 the inner life; on the other hand, it was so versatile and rich 
 that it vivified all thought and stimulated every emotion. It 
 was capable, almost from the outset, of vying with every noble 
 and worthy enterprise, with any speculation, or with any cult of 
 the mysteries. It was both new and old ; it was both present 
 and future. Clear and transparent, it was also profound and 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 89 
 
 full of mystery. It had statutes, and yet rose superior to any 
 law. It was a doctrine and yet no doctrine, a philosophy and 
 yet something different from philosophy." — (Harnack, "Ex- 
 pansion of Christianity," Vol. I, p. 102.) 
 
 These early missionaries proclaimed the facts of Christianity 
 and applied them to life. The missionaries of mediaeval Europe 
 followed the same course. " Their teaching," says Maclear, 
 " from first to last was eminently objective. It dealt clearly 
 with the great facts of Christianity. It proclaimed the incarna- 
 tion of the Saviour, His life, His death, His resurrection, His 
 ascension, His future coming to judge the quick and dead, and 
 then it proceeded to treat of the good works which ought to 
 flow from the vital reception of these Christian truths." Our 
 apologetic conditions, in the midst of the great ethnic religions, 
 are different to-day, and they differ in different lands and in 
 different sections of the same people. Before Mohammedanism 
 we face a problem unknown to the Apostles and evaded by the 
 mediaeval Church, with one such shining exception as Raymond 
 Lull. In each nation the mode of preaching Christ adapts itself 
 to the fashion of men's minds, and on the other side it takes 
 form from the experience and faith of the preachers. How 
 great and intricate is the problem, — so great and intricate that 
 we must have committed more error far than we dream. " I 
 for one," said Mr. Jones, " most certainly believe that there 
 has been an immense amount of preaching, which was done 
 in a most unwise, most bald, and detrimental way; indeed, so 
 much so as to render it really unworthy of being called the 
 true preaching of Christ at all, — preaching which, if Christ had 
 preached on earth after His resurrection, He would have been 
 slow to own as the preaching of Him ; and this to such an 
 extent and in such a way as to make the name of Jesus a by- 
 word among the heathen, in proportion as the sound of it is 
 known, — a result not by any means arising solely from the per- 
 versity of the natural heart, but very largely from the indiscreet 
 way in which that name has been preached." It is so difficult 
 just because it is so fundamental and primary. The missionary 
 enterprise needs the ablest, most original, most adaptive men to 
 
9 o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 make Christ known by word to the non-Christian world. But 
 at the same time it is both true and comfortable to remind our- 
 selves that any man who will tell the facts of the Gospel in 
 love, who knows Christ as his own Saviour and Lord, and can 
 speak out of his own human heart to other men's hearts, will 
 be preaching Him. The human race is one. Its unity underlies 
 all its varieties. There is a capacity of response in each son 
 to his Father's call, and the man who truly knows God in Christ 
 and truly loves his fellow-men cannot preach without making 
 Christ known. 
 
 The difficulties and discouragements of preaching Christ 
 often turn men aside to other less arduous and exacting forms 
 of missionary service? No work is more intellectually taxing 
 if rightly done. None draws so upon the very depths of the 
 soul. None demands more patience and tenderness. It is hard 
 enough when carried on locally, but it is still harder when it 
 is carried on as Paul carried on his through great itineracies, 
 carefully planned and consecutively followed up. But whatever 
 its difficulties, the great missionary method in the past, and a 
 method in which the missionaries themselves must be leaders 
 for many years yet to come, is the Apostolic method of going 
 about and preaching the Gospel. What such work still is Dr. 
 Cust, in a tender mood, rare in his later writings on missions, 
 set forth in an idealised picture of women's evangelistic work 
 in India : " To the village women," wrote he, " the appearance 
 of a female evangelist must be, as it were, the vision of an 
 angel from Heaven. To their untutored eyes she appears taller 
 in stature, fairer in face, sweeter in speech than anything mortal 
 they had ever dreamed of before ; bold and fearless without 
 immodesty ; pure in word and action yet with features unveiled ; 
 wise, yet condescending to the ignorant and little children ; 
 prudent and self-restrained, yet still a woman loving and tender 
 — such as there never appeared before to poor village-women, 
 even in their dreams, until suddenly their eyes, their ears, and 
 their hearts, seem to realise faintly and confusedly the beauty 
 of Holiness, when they begin to hold converse, only too brief, 
 with their sweet and loving visitor, who, smitten with the 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 91 
 
 wondrous desire to save souls, has come across the sea from 
 some unknown country to comfort and help them. Short as 
 is her stay, she has, as it were with a magic wand, let loose 
 a new fountain of hopes, of fears, and desires : she has told 
 them, perhaps in faltering accents, of righteousness, and judg- 
 ment, of sin, repentance, and pardon, through the blessed merits 
 of a Saviour. This day has salvation come to this Indian 
 village." 
 
 The third great missionary method is foreshadowed in Paul's 
 counsel to Timothy, " The words which thou hast received 
 from me, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be 
 able to teach others also." And Paul was anticipated in this 
 obvious and inevitable method by the Saviour Himself in the 
 college of the Apostles, " the training of the Twelve." Regard- 
 ing this kind of educational work in missions, there could be 
 no controversy. Men and women are to be trained to give the 
 Gospel to their own people. It is a commonplace to say that 
 the evangelisation of any land must be in the main accomplished 
 by the people of that land. If there were to be but one mis- 
 sionary in a country, his best work would be done in raising 
 up a large body of native preachers. He would have to do 
 preaching himself in order to make preachers out of others, but 
 he would certainly have to give the others careful training. 
 Such educational work as is necessary to raise up a host of 
 native preachers, and as actually accomplishes such a result, is 
 an indispensable method of mission work. 
 
 But the problem cannot be kept in this simple form. When 
 a Christian community has been formed, its children will require 
 Christian education. They cannot be left to grow up as the 
 heathen children about them. Not all of them will become native 
 preachers. A self-supporting Church must rest on self-support- 
 ing members, and if all become preachers, giving all their time 
 to such work, who will support them? A Christian Church 
 needs a wide variety of Christian leadership. The work of the 
 Church is not only evangelisation ; it is the permeation of life 
 with Christian principles. Its members require the education 
 which will equip them for such service. Furthermore, in the 
 
92 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 actual prosecution of the work, difficulties are encountered which 
 light from the facts of the world and of history will dissolve; 
 prejudices are met which knowledge will allay. And also often 
 our statement of Christian truth finds no lodgment for it in 
 hardened minds. Young and plastic minds, kept day after day 
 under Christian teaching, will, it would seem clear, be more 
 likely to respond. Now, if the Christian Church in a given 
 land were able to do this work, or if in part at least it were 
 being done by the State without prejudice to Christianity, to 
 that extent foreign missions would be relieved of it; but in the 
 nature of the case the Church is not in existence, or is but 
 just coming into being, and the State is likely to be either non- 
 Christian or neutral, with a neutrality which allows hostility 
 but not friendship to Christianity. Conditions such as these 
 make the problem of education as a missionary method a far 
 more intricate one. 
 
 The founders of our modern missionary movement viewed 
 these matters, however, with good spiritual sense. Let me 
 quote again from the letter addressed by the Presbyterian 
 General Assembly in 1838 to its first missionaries: 
 
 We recommend to your attention and to your unceasing 
 prayers the children of the heathen. We are far from despair- 
 ing of the conversion of adults among them. Experience, as 
 well as the Word of God, shows that the power of the Holy 
 Spirit can overcome the most obstinate hardness, as well as 
 the most inveterate habits of pagan profligacy. And, therefore, 
 it will be your duty to preach the Gospel to all classes, in every 
 form, and by all the means in your power. Proclaiming the 
 Word of God, by the living teacher, is God's own ordinance, 
 which ought never to be exchanged for any other, where it is 
 possible to employ it. But still we consider the children and 
 young people as pre-eminently the hope of your missionary 
 labours. The greater susceptibility of the youthful mind — the 
 durability of impressions made in early life — and the compara- 
 tive ease with which habits are changed which have not become 
 inveterate — all recommend diligent and persevering efforts to 
 form the minds of children and youth, as among the most promis- 
 ing and probably productive departments of missionary labour. 
 But this is not all. Parents themselves are never more likely 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 93 
 
 y - v 
 
 to be effectually reached and profited than through the medium 
 of their children. They will, of course, regard with favour 
 those whom they see to be labouring for the happiness of their 
 offspring; and when they see their children growing in knowl- 
 edge and in good habits under the instruction of the missionaries, 
 this will form a new bond of attachment and open a new avenue 
 to their hearts. 
 
 We exhort you, therefore, next to the preaching of the 
 Gospel, to make the instruction of heathen youth, in every form 
 which you may find practicable and expedient, an object of your 
 constant and diligent attention. But let all your schools and 
 instructions be strongly stamped with a Christian character. Let 
 the Bible be everywhere carefully introduced. Let all your 
 efforts for the benefit of youth be consecrated with prayer; 
 and let the excellent catechisms of our Church be as early and 
 as extensively employed as possible, as formularies of instruction. 
 Recollect that it is our object to raise up, as soon as practicable 
 among the heathen, a native ministry. The attainment of this 
 object will require the most vigorous efforts to educate the young; 
 the selection of the most promising of their number for special 
 culture, and elevating the means of their instruction as far as 
 circumstances will admit. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church has never faltered in its wise 
 policy at this point. " This is one of the most vital works of 
 the mission," writes Mr. Kelly of the Catholic missions in 
 China, and especially of the work of Christianising the children : 
 
 They must be instructed very young, and taken away as much 
 as possible from pagan surroundings. To do this properly, the 
 schools should be near the missionaries. There are central 
 schools in all the chief mission stations, where the children are 
 completely separated from bad influences, and are taught to 
 practise their religion by their teachers and by the good example 
 they see around them, whereas children who have not had this 
 advantage are recognisable at a glance, as they do not compre- 
 hend their religion at all well. 
 
 Another very important consideration is the following with 
 regard to schools. These are often found to be the most useful 
 as a means of furthering conversions, as according to a French 
 missionary, " When the infant comes to school, his father will 
 soon follow the child to the church," and these dear children, 
 like St. John the Baptist, fill the valleys and bring low the moun- 
 
94 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 tains and hills, by opening to their parents the path leading to 
 our Blessed Saviour. 
 
 It is the business of the foreign mission to see that in- 
 struction is provided in some way for Christian children and 
 to use schools for reaching children with the knowledge of 
 Christ. It is not the work of foreign missions merely to pro- 
 vide education as such for the children of any nation. That 
 is the business of the nation and the Church in that nation. 
 The missionary enterprise should give the sense of educational 
 duty and the educational form to both nation and Church. It 
 has already done this in India, Japan, China, and Korea, and 
 Brazil, and the Turkish Empire. It is doing it in other lands. 
 
 And the foreign missionary enterprise uses, and does right 
 to use, education also as a preparatory agency as well as a 
 training school for Christians and as a method of evangelisation. 
 I cannot find worthier words in which to set forth this view 
 than Dr. William Miller's in his paper on " Educational Agencies 
 in Missions," in 1893 : 
 
 The servants of God have always acted (with more or less 
 of insight into the meaning of what they did) upon the 
 principle that subordinate preparatory agencies — educational 
 agencies of different kinds — are to be employed in the mighty 
 task of bringing mankind to rejoice in God, revealed in Christ. 
 It was mainly by the great monastic corporations, so long as 
 they had something of their early vigour, that Christianity 
 was maintained and spread in Europe in the ages when the rude 
 northern races were being brought under the gentle yoke of 
 Christ. These corporations were centres of every kind of human 
 activity. Occasionally connected with them there were schools 
 and hospitals, orchards and farms, and warehouses. Of all these 
 activities the dominating aim was — wholly in point of theory 
 and to some extent practically as well — that they should be 
 means of opening men's minds to saving truth and of bringing 
 them within the Christian fold. 
 
 But to act on an implicit principle is one thing: to bring a 
 principle into clear consciousness and work it out with deliberate 
 intention is another. The greatest discoveries are often no more 
 at bottom than the statement and application of laws and prin- 
 ciples which are always operating in nature and which are there- 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 95 
 
 fore, in the strict sense, no novelties at all. Thus it is only in 
 a secondary and subordinate sense that the preparatory use of 
 educational agencies has any novelty, though in that sense ^ it 
 certainly has some. The distinct statement of the implicit prin- 
 ciple must be ascribed to Dr. Inglis of Edinburgh, the Convener 
 of the first Committee on Indian Missions of the Scottish Church. 
 In 1818, a good many years before his Church in its corporate 
 capacity had entered on any foreign work, Dr. Inglis, in a sermon 
 on a public occasion, enunciated the principle which he after- 
 wards largely helped to reduce to practice. He held it to be 
 indisputable that — to use his own words — " a man of an under- 
 standing mind, habituated to thought and reflection, has an ad- 
 vantage over others for estimating both the evidence of the 
 Christian doctrine and its accommodation to human wants and 
 necessities." From this the practical inference drawn by the 
 preacher was, to use his own words again, that " schools for 
 the education of the young, in every department, accomplish 
 His purpose by the intervention of natural means. The intrinsic 
 excellence of the Christian doctrine, and its accommodation to 
 our spiritual wants, are, through Divine Grace, made obvious to 
 the eye of the mind; the prejudices of the corrupted heart are 
 thereby overcome, and our inclinations, instead of resisting as 
 formerly the external evidences of the truth, co-operate with 
 that evidence towards our establishment in the faith of the 
 Gospel." 
 
 The principles indicated in these quotations are the principles 
 on which the educational mission work of the Scottish Church 
 has always proceeded, and still proceeds. Both in its theory 
 and its practice, that Church maintains that while the simple 
 presentation of the message of forgiveness and love through 
 the cross of Christ is the highest form of Christian effort and 
 the central means of building up the Church, there is yet, accord- 
 ing to the divine plan, both room and need for humbler agencies 
 to work in auxiliary subordination to it. That Church's aim 
 has been through study of God's ordinary methods of procedure 
 to become an instrument in making them effectual — to lay her- 
 self along the line of the divine purpose, and, seeking no glory 
 for herself, to do intentionally, and therefore more rapidly, a 
 work that must be done somehow if the divine purposes are 
 to be fully carried out in any land or among any race. These 
 were the views of the Committee of the Scottish Church for 
 Indian Missions which was formed in 1825, with Dr. Inglis at 
 its head. In the first letter of that Committee to " the people 
 of Scotland," these significant words occur : " Let it not be 
 
96 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 inferred from our having said so much about schools and other 
 seminaries of education, that we for a moment lose sight of the 
 more direct means of accomplishing our object, by the preaching 
 of the Gospel to the heathen world. . . . It is in subserviency 
 to the success of preaching that we would, in this case, devote 
 our labour to the education of the young." 
 
 And the use of education as a missionary agency is firmly 
 supported on even more general grounds. The report on edu- 
 cation presented to the Shanghai Centenary Missionary Con- 
 ference declared: "When we reflect that there is a Gospel of 
 creation, and a Gospel of the divine government of the world, 
 as well as a Gospel of redemption, we see that the found- 
 ing of the school and college is a necessary duty of the 
 missionary. In later years, since men's conceptions as to the 
 function of the Christian Church in the world have been en- 
 larged, we understand that we are not only working for 
 the salvation of separate individuals, but for society as a 
 whole. Our great ideal is the establishment of the Kingdom 
 of God upon earth. We aim at influencing all the strata of 
 society. Christianity is to save the world and to bring all 
 human relationships, political, social, commercial, and industrial 
 into harmony with the laws of God. The imparting of an 
 enlightened and Christian education is one of the great means 
 for the accomplishment of this end." And in the memorial 
 to the home Church the conference justly declared: " The success 
 of such institutions (mission schools and colleges) will have 
 to be measured not simply by the number of pupils that are 
 baptised in the course of each year, but by the measure of our 
 own unhesitating confidence of faith that such work is of itself, 
 and without regard to results that can be tabulated in terms of 
 Church membership, a work ' worthy of God.' We must believe 
 earnestly," the memorial continues, " that no labours done on 
 such lines for His glory by those whom He Himself calls to 
 such service will be in vain in the Lord ; for the revealing of 
 the wonders of His ways, whether in the realms of nature, 
 of history, of science, or of grace and redemption, is, in truth, 
 all one work, and it is constantly so represented in the Bible." 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 97 
 
 I venture, however, to raise the question whether these statements 
 do not mingle the work of the Christian state, of the Christian 
 Church, and of the foreign mission. The Centenary Conference 
 recognises some distinction, for its memorial proceeds : " We 
 freely and entirely recognise that the work of national education 
 in China cannot possibly be undertaken by missions, but must be 
 carried out by the Chinese themselves." The business of the mis- 
 sions is to give inspiration and to set models. But they are to do 
 so, we must maintain, under the dominating aim of foreign 
 missions. That aim was clearly and unflinchingly defined by 
 the Deputation of the Free Church of Scotland to India in 
 1891 in these words: " We must lay it down as a principle that 
 the one absorbing aim in all real mission work is to bring our 
 fellow-men to know Jesus Christ to be their Saviour, and to 
 profess their faith in Him in baptism. The mission work of 
 the Church is done in obedience to the command of the Lord, 
 ' Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the 
 name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.' Every 
 mission, and all mission methods, must in the end submit to 
 this test. Therefore, in discussing the mission value of educa- 
 tional missions, we must put aside all arguments drawn from 
 the spread of humanitarian and civilising ideas. These are wel- 
 come accompaniments, but, after all, the question is — Is all 
 this educational work calculated to draw men to faith in Jesus 
 Christ as their Saviour, and to a profession of that faith in 
 baptism ? " 
 
 There are those who say that it has not had this result. 
 General Booth is emphatic in his condemnation. " But it is 
 said," he declares, " we must educate the people in order that 
 they may read their Bibles. But alas! in teaching them to 
 read their Bibles you have enabled them to read the works of 
 unbelievers and doubters which you meet in so-called Christian 
 literature. I have an impression that for every one, who, through 
 his boasted education, is to-day reading his Bible, a hundred 
 are lost to all regard of God and religion. I believe thoroughly 
 and say deliberately that so far as the salvation of souls is 
 concerned, the Christian Church in India has by her colleges 
 
9 8 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 and schools done more harm than good." That is one witness 
 against a thousand. Neither schools nor preachings have yielded 
 the longed-for results, but so far as the high castes are con- 
 cerned, what converts there are have been won through the 
 schools, and of India as a whole it is maintained by those who 
 know, that whether we have in view the primary aim or the 
 ultimate results of missionary work, Christ has been most deeply 
 and most widely made known through the schools. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is as earnestly maintained by those in the 
 schools, as well as by those out of them, that the great need 
 of mission work in India is such an enlarged equipment and 
 such a reorganisation as will make the missionary aim actually 
 dominating and sovereign. All missionary education should be 
 uncompromisingly and pervasively Christian. That will mean 
 that it will be honest as educational work, the best and most 
 thorough educational work that can be given, and that it will 
 be adapted to the conditions in which it is given, making men 
 leaders of their own people and not denationalised and forceless 
 copies of foreign ideals. Whatever may be the final judgment 
 Vo be pronounced upon the policy of English education estab- 
 lished in India as the consequence of Duff's influence and 
 Macaulay's minute, a policy of which Sir Henry Craik, Secretary 
 of the Scotch Education Department for many years, wrote 
 in 1908, after a study of the Indian schools : " In thinking 
 that in its main lines it is hopelessly wrong, I am only repeating 
 the opinion expressed to me universally by all the wisest Anglo- 
 Indians and natives whom I have seen, and impressed on me 
 by my own experience. I can only describe that impression 
 by saying that there is a sort of mildew lying over the work," — 
 (Punjab Mission Nezvs, February 20, 1908, p. 4) — missions 
 in all lands should avoid in their educational work the loss of 
 their nationalistic purpose to make Christianity at home in the 
 language and natural genius of each people, as well as the loss 
 of their primary aim to make Christ known to men in order to 
 win men to Christ's faith and Christ's service. 
 
 Those philanthropies and humane services by which the 
 Spirit of Christ in men is sure to utter itself constitute the 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 99 
 
 fourth method of the foreign mission. These expressions of 
 the Christian Spirit are irrepressible, and they are characteristic. 
 Whether medical missions and charitable activities are proper 
 agencies of the missionary enterprise are senseless questions. 
 They cannot be prevented. If missionaries see widows burned 
 and children slaughtered and villages ravaged in slave raids, 
 and famine orphans and Christ's sheep scattered abroad and 
 suffering with no man caring, they are going to care, and 
 agitation and action are as certain as the love of Christ. And 
 such services are themselves manifestations of Christ. They are 
 original to Christianity. The non-Christian peoples recognise 
 this. " There is plenty of scope for active work," said the lead- 
 ing social reform paper of Madras, " not only for policemen, 
 but for earnest men and women, of course among Christians. 
 Our countrymen must pardon us for this piece of plain speak- 
 ing, as they have never shown the least anxiety to reclaim the 
 fallen. For ' once fallen, always fallen ' would appear to be their 
 maxim." — (Quoted by Slater, " Missions and Sociology," p. 
 34.) All pure unselfishness preaches Christ. Indeed, it is the 
 only way He can be preached. No words can speak Christ 
 to men as words can speak Him when pictured also in deeds. 
 Many of the non-Christian peoples are kindergarten peoples 
 and need to be taught by object lessons. Acts must put content 
 into words for them. The love of Christ must be interpreted 
 to them by the vision of a man in whom Christ is loving 
 them. 
 
 But universal charity is not the aim of the foreign missionary 
 movement. It cannot heal or feed the world any more than it 
 can educate it, and it is not its business to try to do so. All 
 that the Church is giving or would need to give to discharge 
 its distinctive foreign mission work would not suffice to meet 
 the physical sufferings of the Yangtse valley or to educate 
 Bengal. The philanthropic work of missions is to be subjected 
 to its aim, just as all other methods. (1) The business of each 
 missionary in his life and of each mission in its policy is to 
 make Christ known. He and it are to do such loving deeds 
 as will effect this, and as they cannot help doing if Christ be 
 
ioo CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 in them. There will be difference of view among them as to 
 what this involves. David Hill's life reveals one of these: 
 
 Last evening I had a conversation with on the sub- 
 ject of charity. His views differ widely from mine, though we 
 both believe that we are following our Lord. He sees the evils 
 which have arisen from distribution of charity to be so great 
 that, unless in cases of actual starvation, he would refuse to 
 give, and even then in a manner disconnected as far as possible 
 from evangelistic work. The history of missionary work in 
 China, and the East generally, he thinks is so strongly corrobora- 
 tive of this view, that he would hold it as simply ruinous to go in 
 for any large and widespread plan of benevolence in connection 
 with the work of preaching the Gospel. In favour of this view 
 he quotes the life of our Lord. Twice only, he says, did He 
 give supplies of food, and after one of these distributions refused 
 to repeat the act because of the impurity of the motives of those 
 professedly seeking His instruction. With the affluence of divine 
 power at His disposal, he asks why but these two times? seeing 
 there were so many thousands of poor around. 
 
 I need hardly say that this view is strangely out of accord 
 with my reading of our Lord's life. Its fundamental principle, 
 its Alpha and Omega, was sacrifice for others, and that not only 
 of preaching time, hours of study, etc., but of comforts and 
 enjoyments. Given a poverty like that of our Lord, Who had 
 not where to lay His head, I can understand the limitation of 
 charity distribution to a few isolated instances. But where all 
 one's surroundings are so comfortable, and where hundreds 
 around are so wretched, I can no more conceive of our Lord's 
 living so than I can conceive of His abdicating His throne and 
 disowning His cause. . . . 
 
 How He healed the sick ! " But," inquired , " did He 
 
 ever heal them irrespective of their moral preparedness for His 
 teaching?" I asked what meant His teaching about the Good 
 Samaritan, and I might add His requirement to love and do 
 good even to our enemies, — not only those in suffering, but our 
 enemies even. But holding views which mean universal love, 
 the loving one's neighbor as oneself, implies on the part of a 
 single man no heavy encumbrance of wealth, for he has no chil- 
 dren to provide for and no responsibility on that score. This 
 free, full outpouring of himself is the only consistent course 
 for one so situated, and this honestly done, it seems to me, will 
 tell not against but for the Kingdom of God, — if Christianity 
 means anything at all. Looking at the whole subject, not in 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 101 
 
 the brief course of a few months or years, but judging of it in 
 the light of eternity, and of the Spirit of Life and Triumph of 
 
 Jesus, I see very differently from , and shall be judged 
 
 for my convictions as he for his. 
 
 Each man must do what he believes to be right in the light 
 of the supreme missionary aim. He must show forth Christ. 
 (2) In the second place, Christ is to be made known for the 
 winning of men to Christian discipleship. Our philanthropic 
 work, accordingly, must be directed to this end. Hospitals, relief 
 work, orphanages, moral reform should be openly in Christ's 
 name and should be followed up so that their fruitage may be 
 gathered into the Christian fold. (3) And in the third place, 
 all such work must have in view the naturalisation of Chris- 
 tianity, not the parasitical dependence of the people upon charity 
 from without. Our Lord did not go about as a mere healer, 
 nor even predominantly as a philanthropist. In nothing is His 
 divine wisdom and self-restraint more clearly seen than in His 
 refusal to become simply the philanthropist, feeding all hunger, 
 abolishing all need. Paul seems purposely to have avoided 
 all miracle-working and personal charity. The Saviour's pur- 
 pose and Paul's was not to meet the passing physical need of 
 one century, but to plant in the world the eternal life of Chris- 
 tianity, those living principles which would lead each century 
 to meet its own needs. The energies by which St. Paul natural- 
 ised Christianity throughout the Roman Empire might have been 
 exhausted in the effort to cope with the physical evils of the 
 one city of Antioch. He had a greater work to do and was 
 strong enough not to sacrifice the best on the altar of a good. 
 The aim of foreign missions is not to care for all the industrial, 
 social, economic, and physical ills of the non-Christian world, 
 but to plant there the living seeds of the Gospel of the incarnate 
 God. That Gospel is to be the healing of the world in God's 
 own day. Foreign missions will have passed away long before 
 the dawning of that day. 
 
 Beside these four great methods of which I have spoken, 
 there are others, as many as men can devise and as conditions 
 demand, entirely legitimate, urgently demanded, requiring only 
 
102 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 that they minister to the missionary aim, — the circulation of the 
 Scriptures and Christian literature, the translation of good books, 
 especially home reading books and educational text-books, the 
 establishment of medical schools, the cultivation of new indus- 
 tries and the improvement of old, and many more, but any of 
 these are not appropriate activities of foreign missions if they 
 do not make Christ known as the Saviour and Lord of life, 
 or if they make men dependent instead of free. 
 
 It is not unlikely that as we work out this aim, we shall come 
 upon situations where its attainment will be long delayed. A 
 co-operative assistance, or even guidance, may be required for 
 a long time, and it may be found that this help can be given 
 better through the continuance of the foreign missionary enter- 
 prise as such than by any new arrangement. In some lands the 
 absence of religious liberty, or the presence of social or political 
 conditions which stifle the independent influence of the new 
 Churches, or the slow growth of the number of Christians, or 
 their slow development in Christian character, may make both 
 the realisation and also the clear discernment of the true aim 
 difficult. But there are always perplexities surrounding high 
 and distinct aims, and we shall be hindered and not helped in 
 the work of missions if we have no clear aim, or if, hav- 
 ing one, we lose sight of it because at times it seems merely 
 theoretical. 
 
 In pursuing the missionary aim and adapting methods thereto, 
 three great sets of problems arise. First, in offering to men 
 the revelation and life of God in Christ we meet their own 
 religious conceptions. Are these not already adequate, many 
 ask us? If not, what is the true attitude of the witness of 
 Christianity to these other religions? Second, these people have 
 their own social and political institutions; missionaries who go 
 out to them go as citizens of foreign governments and represent- 
 atives of other ideals. What is to be the relation of the preachers 
 of the new religion to the governments from which they come 
 and to the governments to which they go? How is the new 
 religion to relate itself to the organised life of the people to 
 whom it is offered? How are its new adherents to meet the 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 103 
 
 inevitable consequences of their new situation? And thirdly, 
 Christianity is not pure individualism. It is a corporate relation- 
 ship. Men who come to Christ come into Christ and into a 
 united life with all who are Christ's. They are members of 
 His body. And that body has a visible form, confused and 
 imperfect, but necessary. Those who are won as Christ's dis- 
 ciples must be organised into Churches for the confirmation of 
 their own faith, for the enlargement of their own knowledge, 
 for the sake of human service, in order that Christianity may 
 be made indigenous and enduring in the life of the nation. 
 What should be our ideals for such a Church? How is it to 
 be established? What shall be its fundamental moral and spirit- 
 ual standards, what its essential characteristics, what its rela- 
 tions to the missionaries who founded it and the Churches from 
 which they came forth? What are to be the responsibilities 
 of these new Churches toward their nations, and how are they 
 to be truly set each in its own national life? These three great 
 sets of problems we are to consider separately, and in the 
 reverse order. 
 
 The judgments we shall form regarding them, however, will 
 depend on whether or not we are prepared to accept the con- 
 ception of the aim of the foreign missionary enterprise main- 
 tained here. Some will take exception to this conception as 
 too broad, others as too narrow. There are some who hold 
 that the one business of missions is the oral preaching of the 
 Gospel, that no institutions are legitimate, save churches and 
 chapels, that we are to bear our witness to the facts of the 
 Gospel and pass on. Others will allow for patient reiteration 
 and repeated itineration, but the one allowable agency, they hold, 
 is preaching to companies or to individuals with a view to the 
 conversion of men. On the other hand, are those who hold 
 that the view we have taken is far too narrow, that the business 
 of missions is to Christianise the world, that national conversion 
 is more important than individual conversion. Dr. Timothy 
 Richard has been one of the most eloquent advocates of this 
 larger view of missionary policy. His thought is that we should 
 transfer the emphasis from trying to convert individual China- 
 
104 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 men by preaching the Gospel, and should grasp the present op- 
 portunity to reform the Empire by larger methods. 
 
 After over sixty years' experience [he wrote shortly after 
 the Boxer troubles had subsided] missionaries have discovered 
 that there is a way of influencing the millions of China through 
 the Government, through the leading Viceroys and Governors, 
 and through the gentry and students which has no parallel in 
 any other part of the world, viz., by systematic distribution of 
 carefully prepared literature and frequent communication with 
 the authorities. The marvellous effect of our literature is known 
 to you, the influence of frequent telegraphic communication with 
 the central Government, Viceroys, and Governors by competent 
 and experienced persons is also enormous. But this latest phase 
 of influencing these involves occasional use of scientific instru- 
 ments, like the cinematograph, wireless telegraphy, illustrated 
 books, etc., etc., to give an idea of every phase of Christian 
 progress throughout the world. The " Gunboat policy " produces 
 fear and suspicion and the awful catastrophes of last year, while 
 this friendly, personal intercourse produces love and confidence, 
 a great desire for reform and regeneration, and feelings of good- 
 will to all the world. 
 
 The old methods of mission work aimed at influencing a 
 village or a town or at most comparatively few towns by each 
 mission on the model of home work. But this method aims at 
 nothing less than influencing every town and village throughout 
 the Empire, not by placing a foreign missionary in every place 
 (a plan which usually excites the natural opposition of the 
 Chinese much more than placing an Italian priest in every town 
 in England would), but by enlisting the sympathy of the Chinese 
 themselves with Christian principles, which save and ennoble 
 individuals and nations, so that they themselves may carry the 
 message enthusiastically to their fellow-countrymen, and establish 
 schools, colleges, and churches. We have seen it work marvel- 
 lously already on a limited scale, but we want to extend it so 
 as to embrace every province till the whole Empire is regenerated 
 on Christian lines. 
 
 Great as the influence of other methods has been, it is ac- 
 knowledged by all who have carefully studied this method that 
 it is immeasurably superior. Moreover, it was not possible a 
 generation ago, it may not be possible a generation hence, but 
 it is possible now. " Now is the accepted time, now is the day 
 of salvation " for China. 
 
 We appeal to missionary societies individually and col- 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 105 
 
 lectively, we appeal to Christian laymen individually and col- 
 lectively. Consider carefully whether it is not better to follow 
 providential openings like this than to follow old and compara- 
 tively unsuccessful methods which were adapted chiefly to former 
 times and conditions. 
 
 And the Rev. Bernard Lucas has earnestly argued, out of 
 a rich experience of mission work in India, for a wider con- 
 ception of the missionary aim than has been set forth here. 
 Let me present his view in his own words: 
 
 To the older theology, India was a ship on the rocks, and 
 the missionary was the lifeboatman engaged in the task of pick- 
 ing up the few survivors who were swept within his reach, 
 and who, if he failed to reach them, were carried away to eternal 
 destruction. To the modern mind, on the other hand, India is 
 a ship which is salvable, not on the rocks, but aground ; and 
 the real missionary enterprise is not that of picking up a few 
 survivors from a hopeless wreck, but of bringing the ship into 
 port with all on board. There is sufficient truth in the illustra- 
 tion to justify its use for the purpose of marking the contrast 
 between the newer and the older conception of the Church's 
 task. The missionary who set off in his lifeboat has got on 
 board, examined the condition of the vessel, sounded the depth 
 of water in the hold, seen the crowded condition of the decks, 
 and been forced to the conclusion that the lifeboat is inadequate 
 to the task. If the people are to be saved, the ship itself must 
 be brought into port. Above all, he has realised that the people 
 zvill not leave the ship. This last fact must be grasped by the 
 Christian Church with all that it signifies, if its cry of India for 
 Christ is to have any real meaning. The great work amongst 
 the outcaste population has been the pressing work of picking 
 up those who have been swept overboard, and of whose welfare 
 those who remained on board were callously indifferent. We 
 have landed them on sandbanks and desert islands, and supplied 
 them with as much of our stores as we could give, but the 
 question of their future is one of grave anxiety. It has been 
 a noble work, and worthy of all the consecrated and heroic effort 
 which has been spent upon it, but it is not the salvation of India. 
 We must not shut our eyes to the fact that the India we have 
 come to save is a ship which is aground; and that the true task 
 which confronts us is that of getting her floated, her damages 
 repaired, her disorganised crew and distracted passengers organ- 
 
106 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ised and encouraged, so that she may proceed on her way to 
 the port to which she is bound. Nothing short of that will 
 satisfy the soul of India, and nothing short of that will fulfil 
 the sacred obligation which rests upon the Church of Christ. 
 The illustration here used is only an illustration, and its details 
 can easily be criticised, but it fairly represents the difference 
 between the newer and the older views of missionary work, and 
 it is to emphasise that difference that it is alone employed. . . . 
 
 This changed standpoint will review our methods in the light 
 of its conception of the larger aim which it contemplates. It 
 will insist that the true aim of the Western Church is to give 
 to India a deeper religious life, and not what it may conceive 
 to be more correct religious opinions; and it will demand that 
 the larger aim shall occupy the paramount position. It would 
 be a mistake to suppose that in thus emphasising the distinction 
 between creed and life, the modern mind fails to appreciate the 
 connection which exists between the two, or that it in any sense 
 confounds mere civilisation with that which in contradistinction 
 may be called Christianisation. It distinguishes, however, be- 
 tween thought and the expression of thought, between the trans- 
 lation of words and the translation of ideas, between creeds and 
 the truth every creed of necessity limits and confines. It believes 
 that thought can be and ought to be propagated ; but it equally 
 believes that its expressions must not be translated, except from 
 the original, and that the translation must invariably be idiomatic. 
 Christian truth can be and ought to be propagated in India, 
 where it will inevitably produce a richer and fuller religious life. 
 It is India's supreme need, and apart from that truth, her re- 
 ligious life shows no sign now, as it has shown no sign for ages, 
 of any quickening whatever. Christian truth, however, must be 
 left to find its own expression ; the translation must be into 
 the vernacular of to-day, not into the Sanscrit of yesterday; 
 and it must be perfectly idiomatic. The task of the Western 
 Church, a task for which it has been destined by the providence 
 of God, and for which it is not yet fully qualified, is to propagate 
 Christian thought in terms of life-value. To that task everything 
 must be subordinated, and to its successful accomplishment all 
 our missionary methods should be devised. 
 
 And in a review of Bishop Mylne's " Missions to Hindus," 
 Mr. Lucas speaks even more plainly : 
 
 It is probably too much to hope for at present, but the time 
 will doubtless arrive when what are called mission statistics will 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 107 
 
 be found only in census reports. In dealing with the qualitative 
 results, Dr. Mylne limits his survey to the Indian Christian 
 community, and seems hardly to recognise what in many respects 
 are the far more significant results in the changed thought and 
 feeling of the nation as a whole. This is a very serious defect 
 in the book, and it is more serious because it reveals a failure 
 on his part to recognise the working of the Spirit outside all 
 ecclesiastical organisations. Apparently no work which does not 
 bring definite results, in the shape of additions to the Christian 
 community, is worthy of consideration in the discussion of mis- 
 sionary methods. That this is no unfair criticism of his position 
 may be seen by the estimate he forms of the strictly educational 
 mission, which, he distinctly tells us, " has had its day and done 
 its work." His chapter on Educational Missions is vitiated 
 throughout by this failure to recognise any other results than 
 those of additions to the Church. The real fact is that in the 
 greater task of bringing India to Christ, as contrasted with the 
 very much smaller one of gaining converts, there is no method 
 which has had a greater result than education, and missionary 
 education in particular. It is the larger and not the smaller 
 aim which should dominate missionary policy, and in proportion 
 as that larger aim influences our missionary methods will the 
 coming of the kingdom of Christ in India be hastened. — (L. M. 
 S. Chronicle, July, 1908.) 
 
 On the general question involved, I venture to make several 
 remarks, observing first that these views have their own truth 
 but appear to us to commingle the aim of missions with the total 
 purposes of Christianity. 
 
 1. To spread what we know as Christian civilisation over 
 the world is not the aim of foreign missions, nor is it an ade- 
 quate aim for the Christian Church to cherish for her mission 
 to the world. Christian civilisation owes what is good in it 
 to Christianity, but that civilisation is distinctly Occidental, not 
 universal, and it is seamed with evil. It is an open question 
 whether, apart from its distinctly Christian elements, it has not 
 done more harm than good to the non-Christian people. — (Cust, 
 " Mission Methods," p. 96.) And if so, we had better devote 
 our far too inadequate resources in the missionary movement to 
 carrying to the world that knowledge of Christ in which is no ele- 
 ment of evil and which will mean life and not death to the world. 
 
108 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 2. The conversion of a nation does mean more than the con- 
 version of the individuals composing the nation, but it cannot 
 mean less than the conversion of some of these individuals, 
 and the real conversion of any nation would mean the devotion 
 of all its life and of all its lives to God. That will be the 
 ultimate result of missionary effort, but long before that result 
 will have been attained, foreign missions will have ceased. In- 
 deed, the condition of our home lands raises in our minds 
 the question whether that result will be reached until the prom- 
 ised return of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ from Heaven. 
 I do not believe that it will. Neither Scotland nor America 
 holds out the faintest hope that it can. But even if that result 
 is to be attained now by us, it is not the responsibility of foreign 
 missions to attain it. It is the work of the Christian Church, 
 which it is the business of missions to found and to which it must 
 give ideals. The Church is to bear the burden of national 
 Christianisation. Of course, when the mission is doing the work 
 of the Church, as it must when the Church is just beginning, 
 as it must not beyond a certain limit and after the Church has 
 begun, then the responsibility of the Church may be confessedly 
 taken over by the mission. But that is just the evil from which 
 Christianity in some lands is suffering. There is no great in- 
 digenous Church, and there is not likely to be one so long as the 
 missions forget their aim and duty to create one, and cover over 
 their failure by undertaking to do themselves the work of the 
 Church. 
 
 3. Where the aim of missions is hard of realisation, as it is 
 in India, in no small measure because the ostracism of caste has 
 denationalised the Christian constituency and the dependent 
 political life of the nation has depressed and stifled the indigenous 
 Christian life, the work of the mission will inevitably take on the 
 permanent character of the work of the Church, all the more 
 because the people are so poor and missions seek to carry them 
 forward in one century over the development which with the 
 West covered from ten to twenty. We must make allowance 
 for this, and stretch our methods perhaps beyond our aim, 
 but we must not abandon our aim, nor for one moment cease 
 
THE MISSIONARY AIM AND METHODS 109 
 
 seeking to realise it. We may carry on work which does not 
 actually realise it, and justify our doing so on the ground of 
 the good which we are accomplishing and the preparation we 
 are making for a future larger good, and be fully warranted in 
 this view, but I do not believe that we are justified in abandoning 
 our aim or subordinating the ideal of converted men and an 
 indigenous Church to the ideal of a reformed and enlightened 
 nation. 
 
 4. The issue raised is the perennial issue of the individual 
 or the society, and the position which is unhesitatingly taken 
 in these lectures is that the primary aim of foreign missions is 
 to reach individuals and to make Churches out of them, and 
 through these Churches to redeem the life of humanity. All 
 that can be done, meanwhile, for society, which will make Christ 
 known to it and in it, will be done. When individuals will not 
 be reached, the enterprise will not let go. It will strike in its 
 roots, and sap and mine and wait. All that is effected in the 
 amelioration of human conditions, in the extension of knowl- 
 edge, in the softening of prejudice, in the infiltration of truth 
 about God and the world into the opinions of nations and the 
 philosophies of religious systems, in the spread of human sym- 
 pathy and the improvement of international relations, — all the 
 rich fruitage which is the inevitable consequence of living Christ, 
 of making Him known, and all of which is a sign of the larger 
 coming of the knowledge of the Son of God — in all this missions 
 will rejoice. They will press upon the world the duty of sup- 
 porting them because of this fruitage, fruitage which they can 
 yield in unequalled purity and fulness, but nevertheless their 
 aim will be the definite religious aim of making Christ known 
 to all the world as the Saviour and Lord of men, with a view 
 to making men His disciples, uniting them in the life and min- 
 istry of the visible Church, and in them and in that Church 
 domiciling Christianity in all the races of humanity. This is 
 the first stage in the long journey toward the Kingdom of 
 Heaven among men. It is the Church's primary duty, and her 
 noblest privilege, and the condition of her power and prosperity 
 at home, to attempt to complete this stage in our generation. 
 
Ill 
 
 MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 
 
Ill 
 
 MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 
 
 THE greatest fact in modern politics has been the growth 
 of nationalism. The history of the past century has 
 been the history of the arrangement of national boun- 
 daries, the development of national ambitions, the formation 
 of national policies, the definition of national responsibilities, the 
 sharpened distinction of national characters, the realisation and 
 resolute acceptance of national destinies. With all the emphasis 
 which systems of ethics and of political philosophy have given 
 on the one hand to the individual, and on the other to humanity, 
 it remains true that the dominant principle of modern history 
 has been the ideal of nationalism. 
 
 In Europe, assuredly, as Professor Reinsch has said in his 
 excellent little book on " World Politics," 
 
 The great modern development has been the principle of na- 
 tionality. When we view the historical development of the world 
 since the Renaissance, we find that the one principle about which 
 the wealth of facts can be harmoniously grouped is that of 
 nationalism. Ever since the world-state ideals of the Middle 
 Ages were left behind, this principle has been the touchstone 
 of true statesmanship. The reputation of a statesman, as well 
 as his permanent influence on human affairs, depends on his 
 power to understand and aid the historical evolution, from out 
 the mediaeval chaos, of strong national states. Genius could not 
 countervail this law of development. Even Napoleon was un- 
 successful whenever his policy opposed the innate strength of 
 nationalism. As we enumerate the great statesmen whose per- 
 sonalities have left a permanent impress on the institutions of 
 their countries, such as Louis XI, Wolsey, Elizabeth, Richelieu, 
 Henry IV, Cromwell, Chatham, Cavour, and Bismarck, we find 
 that their title to greatness rests upon the manner in which they 
 
 113 
 
ii 4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 aided a national state in realising its independence and developing 
 its character. 
 
 Especially during the nineteenth century has nationalism been 
 a conscious influence in political life. The nations that, at its 
 beginning, had partly achieved their independent political exist- 
 ence, have since been striving for the attainment of completely 
 self-sufficing life; while those races that regard themselves as 
 unjustly held in bondage by others have been engaged in a stern 
 struggle to obtain national independence. Success has not been 
 the equal portion of the striving races. Germany and Italy, 
 which have most nearly approached their ideal, are still looking 
 yearningly toward the completion of their work by the addition 
 of Austria and Trieste to the national states to which they re- 
 spectively belong. The Hungarians, whose nationalism is most 
 violently enthusiastic, have carried their nativistic policy so far 
 as to destroy the economic resources of other parts of the 
 Austrian Empire, as, for instance, the forests of Dalmatia, in 
 order to protect their own economic existence. Other races have 
 been less successful, either from a lack of political genius or 
 from the overpowering strength of their political superiors. An 
 aid to the successful, the principle of nationalism has been turned 
 against the less fortunate. Under its influence attempts are con- 
 stantly being made to force races like the Irish, the Poles, and 
 the Finns into unwilling assimilation with nations that are 
 politically organised and superior in strength. For it is necessary 
 to distinguish the spirit of nationalism from that of particularism 
 just as sharply as from that of the world state of the Middle 
 Ages ; it does not look with favour upon local peculiarities and 
 variations, but rather stands for a thoroughgoing assimilation of 
 all the component parts of the nation. 
 
 It has thus come about that the successful nations have de- 
 veloped a clearly marked individuality. The cosmopolitanism 
 of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance, the dreams of world 
 unity, have been replaced by a set of narrower national ideals 
 concerning customs, laws, literature, and art, — by a community 
 of independent states, each striving to realise to the fullest its 
 individual aptitudes and characteristics. It is not necessary to 
 infer from this a universal reign of chauvinism. The idea of 
 the general solidarity of mankind is still strong enough to restrain 
 national action in some measure. In ordinary times there is 
 a healthy competition between the members of the international 
 commonwealth, — a competition sharpened by the knowledge that 
 temporary weakness may mean loss of national existence. Mean- 
 while, international law holds a balance between the states by 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 115 
 
 preventing any of the stronger members from unjustly oppress- 
 ing the smaller civilised nations. Under these conditions, too 
 great uniformity of civilisation is avoided, and humanity is given 
 an opportunity to develop its varying characteristics. Thus the 
 ideal of the period is as far removed from the dead uniformity 
 of a world empire on the one hand, as it is on the other from 
 the distracting anarchy of a regime of mere local custom. The 
 world community idea of the great founders of international law, 
 Grotius and Suarez, and of philosophers of eternal peace, like 
 Saint-Pierre and Kant, is reconcilable with the existence of 
 national states, if it is understood to imply, not political union, 
 but the active co-operation of all nations in the common work 
 of mankind. — (Reinsch, " World Politics," pp. 1-6.) 
 
 This has been the political spirit of the West. And in Asia, 
 where the ideal of nationality has been weak partly because 
 of the racial character of the Asiatic peoples, partly because of 
 their religious and social philosophy, and partly because their 
 political history had enfeebled the sense of national identity, 
 but chiefly because absolutism had given no room for the exer- 
 cise of the political reason, we have witnessed in our own day 
 a development of national consciousness surpassing anything that 
 we have seen in the West. First, Japan laid aside her system 
 of Oriental feudalism, which supplied her with a political organi- 
 sation but which did not produce a national consciousness or 
 give her any living national purpose. By a wisely guided transi- 
 tion, which preserved the constructive political elements of the 
 ancient order, Japan passed over into the character of a modern 
 state, with a definite and conscious national personality, charged 
 with a distinct sense of national rights and duties and a definite 
 national mission. With Japan, Siam by different processes, and 
 with different consequences, with no such rupture of her or- 
 ganisation or political methods, and with no such energy of 
 national purpose, but with placid adaptation as characteristic 
 of her history as Japan's eager absorption of the new idea was 
 in keeping with Japan's past, took on the character of a Western 
 national state. After these, and with heavy labours, which are 
 still shaking the earth, China has been slowly struggling out 
 of her old, antique notions of nationality, very real but impossible 
 
u6 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 in a real world. History has seen nothing greater than the 
 birth throes of China's new nationalism. By those throes one- 
 fourth of the human race are coming into a new political con- 
 sciousness, and with it will claim a distinct racial destiny, which 
 we may well pray may include no purpose of vengeance in the 
 new nation for its antenatal wrongs. With this incomplete but 
 fast developing nationalism in China we are witnessing also a 
 struggle whose progress is more involved and whose issue is 
 more uncertain in India and in the Mohammedan lands of 
 western Asia. For a century British influence in India has 
 been directed to one end — to unify the life and thought of 
 the country, and to school it to justice and modern political 
 ideals. The best representatives of Great Britain in India have 
 always declared that the end of British rule would be an Indian 
 nationality. " In the background of every Englishman's mind," 
 says Mr. Theodore Morrison, formerly Principal of the Moham- 
 medan College at Aligarh, in " Imperial Rule in India," " is 
 probably to be found the conviction that it is our duty to so 
 govern India that she may one day be able to govern herself, 
 and as an autonomous unit take her place in the great confedera- 
 tion of the British Empire." Macaulay, when legal member of 
 the Council in India, contemplated the possibilities of a yet more 
 distinct nationality. " It may be," he said, " that the public 
 mind of India may expand under our system till it has out- 
 grown the system ; that by good government we can educate 
 our subjects into a capacity for better government; that having 
 become instructed in European knowledge they may in some 
 future day demand European institutions. Whether such a day 
 will ever come I do not know. But never will I attempt to 
 arrest or to retard it. Whenever it does come, it will be the 
 proudest day in English history." And Sir Herbert Edwardes, 
 one of the great men of the early days in India, dreamed of 
 a completely free nation. " England," said he, " taught by both 
 past and present, should set before her the noble policy of first 
 fitting India for freedom, and then setting her free. ... It 
 may take years, it may take a century to fit India for self- 
 government, but it is a thing worth doing, and a thing that 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 117 
 
 may be done." There could be but one result of the policy 
 which Great Britain has pursued, and which was capable of 
 justifying such words as these. Whether, indeed, India can be 
 unified, and if so, by what power, are problems which religion 
 and not politics will answer ; but surely, as the Bishop of Lahore 
 said in his charge of 1906 at his third triennial visitation, when 
 he quoted the words of Macaulay and Edwardes, " would it 
 not be madness to come with our English ideals, our ideals of 
 personal freedom and equality of opportunity, of local self- 
 government established or aimed at, and of essential justice be- 
 tween man and man, to seek by every means in our power to 
 infuse them into the life and thought of this land, and then — 
 then to expect nothing to happen — to expect that all things would 
 continue as they have been from the beginning," — to preach 
 in the hearing of the people the ideal of a free and united 
 nationality for them and not foresee that they would inevitably 
 begin to discuss and desire this nationality for themselves? 
 They are doing so. " Important classes among you," said the 
 King in his message to the people of India, November 1, 1908, 
 " representing ideas which have been fostered and encouraged 
 by British rule, claim equality of citizenship and great share 
 in legislation and government." 
 
 And even in Persia and Turkey, where Asiatic absolutism 
 has lasted longest and been most complete, the fountains of the 
 deeps have been broken up. Free thought has uttered itself in 
 free speech in lands where the denial of freedom of speech 
 seemed to have resulted in the paralysis of men's minds. The 
 demand for representative institutions and constitutional guar- 
 antees in these countries has been the natural, perhaps in Persia 
 the merely conventional, form of expression of the inward stir- 
 ring of the national spirit. 
 
 The national resentment of Korea at the domination of Japan 
 is due to her dread of the extinction of her national autonomy. 
 The new order is vastly superior to the old, and the men who 
 have been at the head of the Japanese administration of Korea 
 have been of the highest political principle, but the Koreans 
 had looked forward to the opportunity to develop their national 
 
n8 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 character and destiny as an independent political personality, 
 and are even yet unwilling to surrender what they regard as 
 their right to free statehood. 
 
 This spirit of nationalism is inevitable and it is invaluable. 
 It is not in conflict with the ideal of a united humanity. It 
 is essential to its realisation. The same God Who made of one 
 blood all nations of men, assigned them also their racial and 
 national character and destinies to the end of a perfected hu- 
 manity. The development of state consciousness, state con- 
 science, state ambition, state duty, is a development in the will 
 of God for man, and the true world citizenship will recognise 
 this and build the unity of mankind, not upon any speculative 
 theory of humanity, nor upon any sand-heap of individual units, 
 but upon corporate nationalities such as God has always dealt 
 with and built upon in human history. He used a nation to 
 prepare the salvation of the world, and He has always wrought 
 His purposes through racial movements. His men were men 
 of their nations, and His judgments were judgments of nations 
 of men. 
 
 The problems presented by a world made up of conscious 
 and independent nationalities, with distinct missions to fulfil 
 and distinct contributions to make to the ultimate perfected 
 human society, are complicated and difficult. Each nation re- 
 seiits any interference with its autonomy and racial aspirations. 
 It may misconstrue and oppose the offer of those services which 
 are essential to the fulfilment of its destiny as Japan did, and 
 as China has done for a hundred years. Good and evil, loss 
 and gain, truth and falsehood are mingled in all relations be- 
 tween individuals • they will be mingled, also, in international 
 relations. One nation will seek in the fulfilment of its ambitions 
 the extinction of another nation. One of the two great problems 
 of our day is the problem of the clear discovery by each nation 
 of its true mission and the friendly and co-operative adjustment 
 of this mission to the divinely appointed and distinctive mission 
 of each other nation. The problem has been sadly mishandled. 
 The nations have made their way toward light, but it has been 
 through tears and blood. 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 119 
 
 Now this problem of the nations is the inevitable problem 
 of the Churches also. For the aim of foreign missions is to 
 plant Christianity indigenously in the life of each nation, to 
 domesticate it there and let it grow up and out in the forms 
 of life appropriate to it in the new environment to which it has 
 been naturalised, to which, indeed, it has not needed to be 
 naturalised so far as it has been presented in its true character 
 of the universal life and faith of man. So far as we succeed 
 in carrying out this aim, we build up in each nation, or we are 
 witnesses to a building up by God of Churches rooted in the 
 life of each separate nation, each one made up of its nation's 
 people, subject to its distinctive character and participating in 
 its national mission and destiny. Our very fundamental ideal 
 in foreign missions involves the creation of the national problem, 
 the problem of the relation of national Churches or of Churches 
 which are to become national. 
 
 I fear that it may be necessary somewhat to explain and 
 defend this ideal, and to appeal later for a candid acceptance 
 of all that it involves. It certainly is the ideal of missions for 
 which we must contend. The Roman Catholic ideal and the 
 ideal of some Protestant bodies is different. There are Protestant 
 missionary organisations whose professed aim is to extend over 
 the world their own denominational institution, with its doc- 
 trines, its polity, and often with the subjection of the new 
 Churches which may be established to the chief authorities of 
 the Western Church whose missionaries established them. Such 
 native Churches, instead of being true national Churches, a com- 
 ponent part of the national life, and entering pervasively and 
 completely into its mission, are only local branches of an alien 
 Church, a Chinese or Indian section of an American or Anglican 
 or German organisation, with racial traditions, qualities, and 
 responsibilities wholly distinct from those of the subject branch. 
 The policy of the Roman Church is, of course, a part of its 
 character and traditional principle. Much is said of its adapta- 
 tion to the life of the people to whom it goes. Mr. Kelly draws 
 a true picture of the noble devotion and conscientious adaptation 
 to their work of the Roman priests : 
 
120 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Free from all ties of the world, having no family cares to 
 distract their attention, they are at perfect liberty to follow their 
 vocation, which is, like the Apostles, to be all things to all men, 
 in order to gain souls to Jesus Christ. As the Son of God 
 came on earth to save man, so the missionaries who continue 
 His work, set aside their prejudices and conform themselves, 
 as far as is allowable, to the manners of the people they wish 
 to convert. This being an essential condition to insure success, 
 the missionaries lead the life and wear the dress of the Chinese, 
 so that there may be as little difference, and as few causes of 
 distrust between them and the people as possible, and a closeness 
 of intercourse which will enable them to smooth away many 
 difficulties, and to study and understand the good and bad quali- 
 ties of the soil they have to cultivate. At the same time by their 
 sacred calling they are able to discern the virtues and the vices 
 of individuals ; they come in contact with families, and in this 
 way they acquire knowledge of many a detail connected with 
 the life of the people. The Chinese do not consider them as 
 travellers or mere birds of passage, but as neighbors who speak 
 the same language, and very often as dear friends living under 
 the same roof. In one word, China is the adopted home in which 
 the Catholic missionaries live and die, and which they love in 
 spite of many privations and hardships, that are not as well 
 known as the dangers of ill-treatment and murder, and yet are 
 the great cause of the mortality that so rapidly thins the ranks 
 of these zealous priests. — (Kelly, "Another China," p. 37 ff.) 
 
 But the ideal of independent nations, each working out 
 through its own free state and free national Church its own 
 mission and contribution to the perfected humanity which God 
 is fashioning, is an ideal with which Rome has ever been at 
 war. The Churches which she founds are all subject Churches. 
 On the foreign mission fields she imposes a devoted and adapted 
 but still an alien clergy. In Brazil, at the present time, she 
 is crowding out the Brazilian priests and dominating the whole 
 Church with its rich endowments by foreign orders. In the 
 state of Santa Catharina there are only three Brazilian priests 
 left. In South Africa, we are told in the Report of the South 
 African Native Races Committee, that " the Trappists, Jesuits, 
 Marists, and other Roman Catholic missionaries keep their native 
 converts in a subordinate position, enforcing a strict discipline 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 121 
 
 and insisting on industrial training. ' I noticed in the church of 
 the splendid Trappist mission in Natal,' writes Mr. A. Colquhoun, 
 ' that the members of the Order, the lay brothers, and the native 
 congregation, each had their special place in which they wor- 
 shipped ' ; and he points out that, although a native may some- 
 times become a lay brother, the Roman Catholic bodies ' admit 
 no natives to their orders, and maintain a strictly disciplinarian 
 relation with all their converts, never admitting them to an 
 equality in matters ecclesiastical.' " The ideal of the Roman 
 Church is to subject all Churches everywhere to the Roman 
 tradition, the Roman theory, and the Roman government. 
 
 This is not our ideal. Our ideal is to establish in each land 
 a native Church that shall be of the soil, rooted in the tradition 
 and life of the people, fitted to its customs and institutions, 
 sharing its character and participating in its mission, yes, defining 
 and inspiring that mission as it can do only when it is a truly 
 national Church subject to no alien bondage. In such a Church 
 Christianity will, of course, surrender nothing that is essential 
 and universal. She enters into no compromise. She simply 
 domesticates herself in a new home which she has been long in 
 finding, and from the new roots which she sinks into humanity 
 expands that interpretation of the life of God in man and 
 nourishes that hope of man's future in God, which can only 
 be perfected as all the peoples bring their glory and honour 
 into the final temple of humanity. 
 
 In this view our ideal is not to project our Western ecclesi- 
 astical organisations into the mission fields, but to carry there 
 the Catholic principles of the Gospel, let them take root and 
 develop, while we give our fostering aid to their growth and 
 such guidance to the institutional forms which they will take 
 as we are able to give, but as will not hinder the nationalisation 
 of our religion, which will show its divine adaptation and power 
 by taking a Chinese body to itself in China, as it took a Scotch 
 body in Scotland. With different measures of completeness, and 
 yet with candid acceptance of the central principle, widely dif- 
 fering agencies have set forth this view. In 1886 the Committee 
 of the Church Missionary Society adopted a statement of which 
 
122 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 one article was the following : " That this Society deprecates 
 any measure of Church organisation which may tend to per- 
 manently subject the native Church communities in India to 
 the forms and arrangements of the National and Established 
 Church of a far distant and very different country, and there- 
 fore desires that all present arrangements for Church organisa- 
 tion should remain as elastic as possible until the native Chris- 
 tians themselves shall be numerous and powerful enough to have 
 a dominant voice in the formation of an ecclesiastical constitu- 
 tion on lines suitable to the Indian people, — a constitution which 
 the Society trusts will, while maintaining full communion with 
 the Church of England, be such as to promote the unity of In- 
 dian Christendom." In like manner, the General Assembly of 
 the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, de- 
 clared in 1890 its approval of an action of its Board of Foreign 
 Missions, recommending to its Missions in various lands, " that 
 they encourage as far as practicable the formation of union 
 churches, in which the results of the mission work of all allied 
 evangelical churches should be gathered, and that they observe 
 everywhere the most generous principles of missionary comity," 
 and adopting a statement of one of its Committees, as follows: 
 
 In the view of the Board, the object of the foreign missionary 
 enterprise is not to perpetuate on the mission field the denomi- 
 national distinctions of Christendom, but to build up on Scrip- 
 tural lines, and according to Scriptural principles and methods, 
 the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Where Church union 
 cannot be attained, the Board and missions will seek such 
 divisions of territory as will leave as large districts as possible 
 to the exclusive care and development of separate agencies. It 
 is believed that in other regards, also, missionary comity should 
 be given large range: (1) Salaries of native workers should be 
 so adjusted among missions as not to introduce an element of 
 dissatisfaction among the workers of any mission, or to tempt 
 them away from the mission with which they are connected. 
 (2) Each mission and the churches connected therewith should 
 recognise the acts of discipline of other missions and the churches 
 connected with them. (3) In co-operative educational work, 
 and especially where the schools of one mission train helpers for 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 123 
 
 other missions, the latter should render some compensatory 
 service. (4) Printing establishments are in many missions re- 
 quired by the missionary work. Such should not be unnecessarily 
 duplicated. The printing establishment of one mission should, if 
 possible, be made to serve the needs of all others in the same 
 territory. (5) A hospital invariably opens wide opportunities 
 for evangelistic work. Until these are properly utilised, it is not 
 judicious or economical to establish further unutilised spiritual 
 opportunities. (6) Fellowship and union among native Chris- 
 tians of whatever name should be encouraged in every possible 
 way, with a view to that unity of all disciples for which 
 our Lord prayed, and to which all mission effort should 
 contribute. 
 
 From the beginning the free Churches have had leaders 
 who spoke in the same Catholic mind. And at the conse- 
 cration of the new bishops of Bombay and Polynesia on 
 Ascension Day, 1908, Bishop Gore set forth the oft-repeated 
 warning of wise missionary leaders against the confusion of 
 our nationalism with that Catholic Christianity which will find 
 a home in every other nationality. " There is," said he, " a 
 very specifically Anglican colour about our home religion, which 
 we ought to have no desire to perpetuate in India. An English- 
 man, wherever he goes, is apt to identify his religion with his 
 memories of home. We ought to identify our religion with the 
 Christ of all nations. What we desire is to see an Indian Church 
 arise with an Indian episcopate and an Indian spirit." — (The 
 Churchman, June 27, 1908.) 
 
 But this ideal creates in missions the same problems which 
 we have noted in the political life of our time — the problem 
 of relations between the missions as representing foreign 
 Churches on one side, and the native Churches on the other. 
 Those Churches which, whether by theory or by practice, ob- 
 scure any distinction between the two, and either confuse the 
 missions with the native Churches or subordinate the native 
 Churches to foreign ecclesiastical organisations, do not escape 
 the problem. They lay it up for themselves in a more difficult 
 and aggravated form, unless their work is entirely without fruit. 
 If it bears fruit, if men are influenced by it, then inevitably 
 
124 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 the question of the relation of these men and their new prin- 
 ciples to those of their own race and nation, their relations 
 to the foreign missionaries who brought the Gospel to them, 
 and to the Churches and nations which they represent and can- 
 not escape from representing, will arise, and it is in the highest 
 degree desirable that it should arise. 
 
 It is an inevitable evil, to which attention has already been 
 drawn, that Christianity must appear in the mission field as 
 a foreign religion, connected with foreign peoples and institutions 
 in a way that arouses the suspicion of the nationalistic aspira- 
 tions of non-Christian states. The first converts must bear 
 the reproach of unpatriotic and disloyal action. They will be 
 regarded as attaches of a foreign doctrine, and at the very 
 outset will appear without the character of a native institution, 
 as allies of barbaric disturbers of the national ideals. We need 
 to remember that, after all, Christianity met this same problem 
 at the outset in its entrance upon the Greek world. Aristides 
 defends " the Greek nationality against the Christian and philo- 
 sophic cosmopolitanism." — (Harnack, " Expansion of Chris- 
 tianity in the First Three Centuries," Vol. II, p. 129.) "To 
 him," says Harnack, " Christians are despisers of Hellenism. 
 How a man like Tatian must have irritated him ! Neumann thus 
 gives the charges of Aristides : ' People who themselves are 
 simply of no account venture to slander a Demosthenes. . . . 
 They have severed themselves deliberately from the Greeks, or 
 rather from all that is good in the world. Incapable of co- 
 operating for any useful end whatsoever, they yet are masters 
 of the art of undermining a household and setting its members 
 by the ears. Not a word, not an idea, not a deed of theirs has 
 ever borne fruit. They take no part in organising festivals, 
 nor do they pay honour to the gods. They occupy no seats on 
 civic councils, they never comfort the sad, they never reconcile 
 those who are at variance, they do nothing for the advancement 
 of the young, or indeed of anybody. They take no thought for 
 style, but creep into a corner and talk stupidly. They are ven- 
 turing already on the cream of Greece and calling themselves 
 ' Philosophers.' " Aristides said then just what in mission fields 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 125 
 
 of our own day the nationalistic spirit has said of the Christian 
 Church. To the extent to which it is a new and upheaving 
 force, the Church can say nothing; it can only proceed to do 
 its work of conversion of others and of the spirit it opposes. 
 But to the extent that the charge of disloyalty and alienism is 
 true, it can only raise with itself the question whether it is 
 native or foreign, whether its founders ought to be its masters 
 and preside over its destinies as well as its origins. 
 
 We pass over the personal forms in which the problem is sure 
 to arise from the ambitions of individual leaders both native 
 and foreign, whether these ambitions are founded and directed 
 well or ill. Apart from all personalities, the question springs 
 from the very nature of things. The Eastern nations are coming 
 to a new national consciousness. Who are to be the leaders of 
 the new day? In that which concerns and expresses the deeper 
 life of these peoples are Christian men to take a leading place 
 or not? What shall be the relation of the Christian Church 
 to these movements, which, as a matter of fact, it helped to 
 originate, to which it alone can give the right principle and the 
 truest guidance? Surely if Christianity is to be a power in 
 the lives of these people, it must enter into their national char- 
 acter and form and control its hopes and ambitions. Well, that 
 is the last thing it can do as an exotic, an alien imposition, an 
 influence organised and directed from without. If it is not to 
 be this, if it is to fulfil its destiny as the directing force of 
 national character and purpose, the question of the right rela- 
 tions of mission and native Church must be raised, and raised 
 from the outset. 
 
 And not only is the problem inevitable. It is in the highest 
 degree desirable. Those missions are to be congratulated upon 
 which it has pressed first and most insistently. It is a hopeful 
 sign of the reality of the work done in Japan and China that 
 the question has arisen and demanded solution there, and it is 
 the most discouraging element in the situation in India that after 
 a hundred years of mission work in that land the ideal of so 
 many of the men who should be the leaders of the native Church, 
 engaged in rooting Christianity and its life deep in the soil and 
 
126 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 native institutions, is to become employees of foreign missionary- 
 organisations on the basis and with the status of foreign mis- 
 sionaries. I repeat that this seems to me one of the saddest 
 and most discouraging features of missionary work. It is a 
 symptom of the same disposition of which Mr. R. I. Paul com- 
 plains in an article on " Indian Christians and the National 
 Movement." " Does it not behoove us," says this Indian Chris- 
 tian, " to dispel from the minds of our non-Christian brethren 
 the suspicions that we count ourselves as other than Indians? 
 If we persist in keeping aloof, what other conclusion is possible? 
 Nay, more. Are we not giving ground to the deplorable idea 
 that Christianity is videshi ? As Dr. Ghose has well said, ' Are 
 we not working, praying, and waiting for the glorious day 
 when our Hind becomes a Christian country ? ' Deeply have 
 we realised that Christianity has come not only to stay in India, 
 but also to conquer it; and that this will take place whether 
 a Christian nation rules us or not — so firm is our idea that 
 Christianity is becoming more and more every day a Swadeshi 
 religion. But can any thinking non-Christian in India be got 
 to think so? If not, the fault lies with our aloofness." — (The 
 Young Men of India, January, 1909.) It is high time that 
 the question raised long ago in Japan should be raised in India, 
 not the petty and fallacious question of how to control the ex- 
 penditure of mission funds, but the deep and vital question of 
 how to build up a true native Church which shall be able to lay 
 hold upon the living movements of the nation and give them 
 genius and guidance. And this question, as a matter of prac- 
 tical missionary administration, is a question of ecclesiastical 
 national relations. It is the problem of nationalism expressed in 
 terms of mission and native Church. 
 
 And the point to which we address ourselves is this : Can- 
 not the problem which in politics has not been solved, but only 
 slowly worked out in tears and blood, be so dealt with in re- 
 ligion as to bind men together from the outset in the harmonious 
 fulfilment of diverse functions, and the development of that 
 ecclesiastical nationalism which is to give spiritual meaning and 
 direction to all others? We must believe that it can. 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 127 
 
 To this end it is necessary to recognise that it is a problem 
 which we confront, and to define to ourselves the nature of this 
 problem. First of all, it is a problem in right ideals and right 
 education from the outset. The mission movement must see 
 what the end is that it is seeking, and must keep this clearly 
 before itself, no matter how long delayed its realisation may 
 be, and it must set it before the native Church from the be- 
 ginning, so that no false education shall leave behind it results 
 from which the future generations can only extricate themselves 
 with suffering. In the second place, it is a problem in gradual 
 transition. It is this which constitutes one great element of 
 difficulty. At first there is no native Church. When it begins, 
 it may begin in the conversion of some one poor individual, it 
 may be a personal servant. The growth may be slow. Long 
 before the time of maturity will have come the mission will 
 have had to anticipate it and to lay the foundation of institutions 
 essential to the life and power of the native Church, which will 
 in due time become the business of the Church. As the Church 
 approaches maturity, there will still remain duties which the 
 mission is to aid it in discharging. If the mission and the native 
 Church started on equal footing and qualified at the outset to 
 arrange their relations, the whole question would be different ; but 
 the problem is one of a long and complicated transition in which 
 the slowess of the process easily obscures the essential principles 
 and the ultimate issues. In the third place, as has just been 
 suggested, it is a problem in relations. The mission is a foreign 
 mission. Its work may be long continued, but it can only be 
 permanent where it is a failure. The greater the success, the 
 more temporary its character. Its end is to create something 
 else to which it is to give place. The problem is one of right 
 relationship to the fulfilment of this end. It is on this very 
 account, also, a problem in distinctions. The native Church is 
 to be independent. Unless that independence is to be secured 
 by crisis and revolution, it must be prepared for by wise recogni- 
 tion of free and separate rights from the outset, and by the 
 cordial development of liberty. Henry Venn's schemes for the 
 definition of distinct duties and rights on the part of native con- 
 
128 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 gregations have been thoughtfully criticised by a modern student 
 of missions on the ground that by his system " the difference 
 between the work and aims of the missionary society and those 
 of the Church it has brought into being is unnecessarily accen- 
 tuated." — (Richter, " History of Indian Missions," p. 431.) It 
 may be, but there is a difference and it needs to be discerned 
 and firmly accentuated. If no such difference is observed in 
 the long preparatory years, it will be difficult to secure its recog- 
 nition afterwards. Missions will have to go on doing work which 
 a native Church should long before have been raised up to do, 
 as is the case in India, and the native Church will be an exotic 
 or a parasite when it ought to be a native and indigenous power, 
 pervading and moulding the life of the nation. And lastly, the 
 problem is a problem also in faith and love. It is a problem in 
 faith and trust. Men take on the character with which you 
 credit them. They become what you trust that they are. Move- 
 ments and institutions, also. They learn as men learn, by effort 
 and experiment, by the actual attempt to discharge responsibility, 
 by failure oft-repeated and by mistakes. We must not think 
 that we can carry on mission work in disregard of all the prin- 
 ciples of human nature and true education. Responsibilities 
 must be laid on the native Churches from the beginning, and 
 they must be expected and trusted to do many things, which 
 they may not do or may not do nearly as well as they would 
 be done by a well-organised foreign mission. Diverse judgments 
 are presented to us on this issue by men who, if they faced 
 practical issues together, might not after all be very far apart. 
 On the one hand, Dr. Warneck wrote to the students at the 
 Liverpool Conference in 1908, expressing his misgivings as to 
 the consequences of free action and undirected growth on the 
 part of the new Churches of the East. He pointed out two 
 dangers, as he saw them: 
 
 The first is the danger of a religious eclecticism, which has 
 already attained formidable proportions in Japan, and which will, 
 I fear, before long, start propaganda in China and India, and 
 turn many heads. It is by no means confined to frankly non- 
 Christian circles, which speak quite openly of a development of 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 129 
 
 Christianity by the incorporation of Buddhist and Confucianist 
 doctrines, but also Japanese native Christians, including con- 
 spicuous preachers, who are questioning the finality of Chris- 
 tianity, and are leaving it an open question what and how much 
 can be taken over from other religions in order to complete the 
 Christian faith. I cannot stop to prove this, in this short message 
 of greeting, but if you study the accurate reports which are not 
 idealistic, which come from Japan, you will find sufficient proof 
 of what I say. It is not the first time that a young native Church 
 has found itself face to face with eclectic dangers of this sort. 
 As you know from your Church history, such dangers existed 
 in the early Christian centuries. In the Far East, we stand 
 now only on the threshold of these dangers ; but do not close 
 your eyes to them and, in so far as you may be called to take 
 a part in the Christianising of those lands, spare no effort that 
 the old apostolic Gospel is not mingled with heathen elements. 
 
 The other danger is that of a premature complete independ- 
 ence of the young native churches from the parent Christendom. 
 Of course, it is the objective of all missionary agencies to raise 
 up self-supporting, self-governing, and self -extending native 
 Churches, and our whole missionary aim is, at present, directed 
 towards educating them to independence of this kind. But a 
 healthy education avoids sudden leaps. We must first have 
 Christians who are mature, well grounded in Christian doctrine, 
 stable in morals, capable of an independent judgment in spiritual 
 matters, rich in Christian experience, before we can constitute 
 completely independent native Churches. Without that guaran- 
 tee, there is, as experience everywhere shows, the danger of a 
 religious and moral declension. If a doctrine, right enough in 
 itself, lacks practical pedagogic wisdom in its actual application 
 to life, it becomes a dangerous theorising. 
 
 On the other hand, Mr. Meredith Townsend proposes the 
 heroic course of abandonment of the native Churches to their 
 own development. 
 
 Let every native Church once founded be left to itself or be 
 helped only by letters of advice, as the Churches of Asia were, 
 to seek for itself the rule of life which best suits Christianity 
 in India, to press that part of Christianity most welcome to the 
 people, to urge those dogmatic truths which most attract and 
 hold them. We in England have almost forgotten those dis- 
 cussions on the nature of God which divided the Eastern Empire 
 of Rome, and which among Christian Indians would probably 
 
130 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 revive in their fullest force. It is the very test of Christianity 
 that it can adapt itself to all civilisations and improve all, and 
 the true native Churches of India will no more be like the 
 Reformed Churches of Europe than the Churches of Yorkshire 
 are like the Churches of Asia Minor. Strange beliefs, strange 
 organisations, many of them spiritual despotisms of a lofty type, 
 like that of Keshub Chunder Sen, the most original of all modern 
 Indians, wild aberrations from the truth, it may be even mon- 
 strous heresies, will appear among them, but there will be life, 
 conflict, energy, and the faith will spread, not as it does now 
 like a fire in a middle-class stove, but like a fire in the forest. 
 There is far too much fear of imperfect Christianity in the whole 
 missionary organisation. Christianity is always imperfect in its 
 beginnings. The majority of Christians in Constantine's time 
 would have seemed to modern missionaries mere worldlings ; the 
 converted Saxons were for centuries violent brutes ; and the 
 mass of Christians throughout the world are even now no better 
 than indifferents. None the less is it true that the race which 
 embraces Christianity, even nominally, rises with a bound out 
 of its former position, and contains in itself thenceforward the 
 seed of a nobler and more lasting life. 
 
 Mr. Townsend's proposal may be regarded by some as only 
 theoretical as yet, since no Asiatic people can be said to have 
 embraced Christianity as a race, and some might argue that 
 no native Church has yet been adequately founded in Asia. 
 But the Rev. F. B. Meyer some years ago was prepared to go 
 the full length of Mr. Townsend's proposition without further 
 delay. In an interview dictated and corrected for an American 
 paper, he said : 
 
 It might be the very best thing for China, and India as well, 
 if all the American and European missionaries would have to 
 clear out. I have had no personal experience or observation in 
 China, but I have in India. The one thing lacking in the life 
 of the Indian Christians is independence. They lean on the 
 foreign missionaries. If the missionaries went two things would 
 happen : 
 
 i. The " rice Christians " would drop off. 
 
 2. Those on whom real growth must depend would be com- 
 pelled to take a determined stand, and through them the Holy 
 Ghost would probably produce a native Christian Church that 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 131 
 
 would prove the one organisation for the evangelisation of India. 
 I doubt if India can be evangelised by present methods. Both 
 American (to an extent) and English missionaries stand as the 
 representatives of a conquering race, to whom the weak cringe 
 or depend for support, and from whom the self-reliant stand 
 aloof. 
 
 As in the case of Madagascar the awful persecution in the 
 sixties proved the means of developing a strong Madagascar 
 Church, so persecutions in China incident to the present up- 
 heaval may well prove under God the development of a strong 
 Chinese Church. In China the Gospel is not now indigenous. 
 I think the time is ready for withdrawal of the foreigners. The 
 early Christian Church had not as long a time of probation before 
 its leaders were given up to martyrdom, and yet the Church 
 stood. It will stand in China, the more so that the Chinese have 
 the Scriptures. For that matter, my judgment is that the prin- 
 ciple holds more in China than in India, and from my own 
 knowledge I am convinced that the American and European 
 missionaries will have to leave India before the work there 
 becomes truly successful. The Chinese character is of stronger 
 stuff than the Indian. The Chinese make superb preachers, 
 and are excellent evangelists. Of course the Europeans and 
 Americans would leave the property there for native use. In 
 this whole matter I am only trying to interpret what I think 
 to be the course of God's providence. Christendom has never 
 had a chance to know the splendid stuff of which native Chris- 
 tians in China are made. Withdraw the foreign Christian work- 
 ers and I believe we shall soon force the Church in both countries 
 to become indigenous and independent, and see it prosper as 
 it can never prosper under present conditions. — (The Church 
 Economist, Sept., 1900.) 
 
 This is a measure of confidence in the ability of the native 
 Church to evangelise the world which neither those Churches 
 nor the foreign missions are able as yet to feel, although the 
 day for it will surely come, and when it does come the transition 
 will be made not because of the failure of the missions, but 
 because of their success, a success prepared for by generous 
 confidence in the native Churches, and by trust in the Spirit of 
 God, Who is leading them as truly as He is leading the Churches 
 of the West. For the problem with which we are dealing is, 
 as I have said, a problem of trust. If we do not trust the 
 
132 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 native Churches and trust them with responsibility, we shall 
 only raise up anaemic imitations of Western models, which will 
 be impotent to play their part in the national destinies which 
 they ought to be moulding and inspiring. I am content to state 
 the convictions set forth in these lectures in the words of a 
 great Indian missionary, Robert Clark of the Punjab, in which 
 he speaks of the natural leaders of the native Church : " It 
 would seem to follow, then, that we must make them the actors 
 in missionary work, and must not let them be merely the per- 
 sons who are always acted on. We must throw responsibility 
 on them, and throw on them difficulties, too, as they occur; and, 
 placing them in the arena, in the sight of God and man, we 
 must let them act, and see how they will act, and encourage 
 them to act well, and of themselves. Have we not, we may 
 ask, made duties, and especially mission duties, too easy for 
 native Christians ; so that they are still, even now, many of 
 them, mere babes, without self-reliance, or ability to originate 
 or carry out measures by themselves ; so that, without any will 
 or wish of their own, they are like the pieces at a game of chess, 
 put forward by the player, and, when left to themselves, remain 
 everlastingly in the same position in which they were placed? 
 It would seem that they must begin to act for themselves; to 
 preach for themselves ; to conduct schools for themselves ; to 
 go out on itinerations for themselves ; to publish books for them- 
 selves ; to raise subscriptions for themselves ; to live by them- 
 selves; leaning on no arm but their own and God's." — (Clark, 
 " Robert Clark of the Punjab," p. 251.) 
 
 Such an attitude of confidence is possible only to great love. 
 It is the love of parents in the home which makes them too 
 wise to do for their children what they should do for them- 
 selves. The metaphors of paternalism are not good in mission 
 work, but yet in a true sense the native Churches are the children 
 of the older Christian Churches. Those older Churches show 
 the greater love to the newer who trust them truly. And in 
 a closer sense the problem is a problem of love as well as of 
 confidence. We are dealing with men and women of the same 
 spirit as ourselves, with the same feelings and rights. The whole 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 133 
 
 course and issue of difficult and complicated questions of in- 
 stitutional relations and adjustments may depend upon personal 
 courtesy and affection. Dr. Warneck rightly states that " we 
 must first have Christians who are mature, well-grounded in 
 Christian doctrine, stable in morals, capable of an independent 
 judgment in spiritual matters, rich in Christian experience, be- 
 fore we can constitute completely independent native Churches." 
 There are many such Christians, and the solution of the problem 
 with which we are dealing will hinge upon our confidence in 
 them as men entitled to be trusted wholly, and upon our affection 
 for them as personal friends. 
 
 I believe that this is the general way in which we should 
 view the problem. It remains to consider it in its practical 
 detail. The administrative ideal of foreign missions is the es- 
 tablishment of independent national Churches. The familiar 
 adjectives describing the practical characteristics which, in their 
 relation to missions, it is sought to develop in these Churches 
 are self -propagating, self-supporting, self-governing. 
 
 The primary essential of Christianity is self-extension. It 
 is the sign of life. The Church is here to make disciples of 
 all the nations. To that end, as Dr. A. J. Gordon was accus- 
 tomed to say, " every disciple must be a discipler." The first 
 Christian must go out at once to tell his story and to win others. 
 From the very beginning the Church must be an evangelistic 
 agency. The early Church was such a living, self-propagating 
 power. The work was not done by a few select missionaries. 
 The very life of the Church was a propaganda. Harnack de- 
 scribes its character and its method : 
 
 The most numerous and successful missionaries of the 
 Christian religion were not the regular teachers but Christians 
 themselves, by dint of their loyalty and courage. How little we 
 hear of the former and their results, how much of the effects 
 produced by the latter ! 
 
 If this dominated all their life, and if they lived according to 
 the precepts of their religion, they could not be hidden at all ; 
 by their very mode of living they could not fail to preach their 
 faith plainly and audibly. Then there was the conviction that 
 the day of judgment was at hand, and that they were debtors 
 
134 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 to the heathen. Furthermore, so far from narrowing Chris- 
 tianity, the exclusiveness of the Gospel was a powerful aid in 
 promoting its mission, owing to the sharp dilemma which it 
 involved. 
 
 We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of 
 Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal 
 missionaries. Justin says so explicitly. — (Harnack, "The Ex- 
 pansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries," Vol. I, 
 pp. 458-460.) 
 
 This character must be given to the native Church on the 
 foreign mission field from the first hour of its existence. Before 
 there is a church organisation, before there is a baptised be- 
 liever, the principle of propagandism must be planted in the 
 first enquirers. They must be taught that the duty of spreading 
 Christianity by life and word is the duty of every Christian. 
 It is not the duty of official preachers only, far less of those 
 alone who are supported by such work. Wrong conceptions on 
 these points can easily be given at the outset, and their fatal 
 effects will be felt for generations. There are native Churches 
 which are not only ineffective as forces of propaganda, but 
 positively obstructive. And their character is due in part to a 
 wrong education at the outset. The duty of making Christ known 
 must be impressed upon the Church by impressing it upon each 
 believer at the very beginning. That has been done in Uganda 
 and Korea, and in two ways. First, the enquirer in Korea was 
 asked whether he had told any one else of the Gospel, and was 
 not received until he could bring some one else. The new Chris- 
 tians tasted the joy and learned the duty of evangelism at the 
 start. Secondly, the missionaries set before the Church the 
 right example. It would have imitated the contrary example 
 of torpor, stagnant home-keeping, general conversation on civili- 
 sation, routine secularism, and occasional religious activity on 
 set occasion if that example had been offered. A heavy re- 
 sponsibiliy rests on the founders of native Churches in this 
 matter. " There are some missionaries," writes an experienced 
 and untiring worker in China, " who are doing aggressive evan- 
 gelistic work and thus setting an example to the Chinese Church, 
 but too many allow themselves to be occupied simply with the 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 135 
 
 care of stations that they have fallen heir to, or that have 
 come to them in some way without much effort on their part, 
 so that all the growth is simply addition from the family con- 
 nections in the old Christian stations that have probably existed 
 for twenty or thirty years. This fact, with its bearings, is one 
 of the most serious in the mission enterprise. Missionaries ought 
 to be an example to the Chinese Church in the matter of con- 
 secrated enterprise." — (The Chinese Recorder, October, 1908, 
 Art. " Evangelism in Relation to the Growth of the Chinese 
 Church." See also speech by Bishop Tucker on " Self-exten- 
 sion, Self-support, and Self-government in Missionary Churches," 
 at the Anglican Church Congress, Brighton, 1901.) The self- 
 propagating zeal of native Churches is the measure of missionary 
 fidelity in this regard, and a noble and convincing testimony 
 it provides, but the foreign missions of the Western Churches 
 have not always discerned that the great duty of evangelisation 
 must rest upon the native Churches, and that the duty must be 
 taught the native Churches by beginning to teach it by method 
 and policy and example before ever the native Churches exist. 
 And if one characteristic of the native Church is to be exalted 
 above another, it is this one. As a matter of fact, is it not the one 
 least talked about, least exalted? But of what use is a self- 
 supporting and self-governing Church which is spiritually dead? 
 The very purpose of the Church is to carry the Gospel to every 
 creature and to form the national character and inspire the 
 national purpose. The missionary enterprise fails in its central 
 mission if it does not establish Churches whose life is dominated 
 by the spirit of national propagandism and world evangelisation. 
 This is the first thing. 
 
 The second is self-support. It is more important than self- 
 government, as a man's duties are more important than his 
 rights. From the very beginning, the ideal of self-support, just 
 as the ideal of self-propagation, must be imbedded in the ger- 
 minating and growing native Church. The first preaching must, 
 of course, be by the missionaries, but just as soon as possible 
 the native Church itself must be set to doing the preaching and 
 meeting the expense of it. Where the work meets with speedy 
 
136 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 success it may be possible to make the work of the Church 
 self-supporting from the outset. This has been the case in 
 Uganda. Bishop Tucker set forth the remarkable record of the 
 Uganda Church at the Brighton Church Congress in 1901 : 
 
 I have already spoken of the 2,000 native evangelists at work 
 in the country. These are all maintained by the native Church. 
 The same is true of the 2j native clergy. Nor is 
 this all. The churches and schools of the country — some 700 in 
 number — are built, repaired, and maintained by the natives them- 
 selves. In one word, the whole work of the native Church — its 
 educational, pastoral, and missionary work — is maintained en- 
 tirely from native sources. Not one single halfpenny of English 
 money is employed in its maintenance. 
 
 What is the secret of the attainment of this most desirable 
 state of things? Two things from the very beginning have been 
 kept steadily in view. First, the necessity of bringing home to 
 the minds of the converts a sense not merely of the duty and 
 responsibility, but also of the privilege, of giving to the support 
 of their own Church; and secondly (and this is vitally im- 
 portant), the setting one's face " like a flint " against the employ- 
 ment by the missionaries of European funds in the work of the 
 native Church. 
 
 It is so easy to appeal to wealthy and generous friends at home 
 for £10 or £15 for the support of a Bible- woman or a native 
 evangelist, and so difficult to continue in the work of inculcating 
 by slow degrees the responsibility and privilege of giving. But 
 here again, as in the case of self-extension, self-denial must come 
 in, and the temptation to appeal to loving friends at home must 
 be resisted at all costs. 
 
 We are hearing continually of the deficits of missionary 
 societies ; and no wonder, when their funds are so largely em- 
 ployed in the maintenance of native Churches. Numbers of 
 native Christians are being deprived of the inestimable privilege 
 of supporting their own Church by the mistaken kindness of 
 missionaries and missionary societies. Such missionaries and 
 such societies are, in my opinion, inflicting a cruel wrong on 
 those native Churches whose burdens they seek to bear. They 
 are depriving them of one of the surest means of growth and 
 development to maturity of life and action. 
 
 But it is not everywhere that so many Christians come into 
 the Church. There are fields where the work has been carried 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 137 
 
 on for years with small direct result, where the missions are 
 supporting great and expensive schools and maintaining many 
 evangelists, and where they have organised churches with pastors 
 whom the people are not able, or do not think that they are 
 able, to support, and whose salaries are paid from mission 
 funds while they preach in church buildings erected and main- 
 tained by mission funds and in mission compounds. There are 
 other fields where the work has been fruitful, but where the 
 advance propagation is in the hands of the missions, which 
 employ evangelists and helpers who itinerate or locate over con- 
 gregations which become soon self-supporting churches. Many 
 practical questions arise under these conditions on which de- 
 voted and capable missionaries are of different opinions. Should 
 foreign money be used for the employment of native agents? 
 If so, on what scale and with what limitations? Should pastors 
 be given to churches unable to support them in whole or in 
 part? If not, with what provision for entire self-support at 
 the proper time? Should men be employed whom the native 
 Church, if it were in charge, would not employ, or for salaries 
 which the native Church would not pay, or for work which 
 it would not do? Should church buildings be erected for the 
 people? These are but a few of many questions which con- 
 stitute the missionary's daily problem. Back of them all, how- 
 ever, we may press to two fundamental principles which may 
 be difficult of application, but which are not likely to be applied 
 at all unless we see them and resolve to adhere to them. The 
 first is that we are not to set up and maintain with our foreign 
 funds institutions or ideals which do not enter in and minister 
 to the character of a truly national Church. Foreign standards 
 of salary, of architecture, of organisation, are natural for us. 
 They may be not only alien but crushing to the native Church. 
 The second is that we are not to do for others what they can 
 and ought to do for themselves. There is no kindness, there 
 is positive harm in providing for native agents and native 
 agencies on a scale and for purposes which are beyond what 
 they can and ought to provide for themselves. 
 
 The problem which is presented here is no mere academic 
 
138 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 problem. It is a matter of life and death. If the foreign mis- 
 sions are to be charged with the permanent maintenance of the 
 native Churches which they establish, they will break down of 
 their own weight unless the native Churches themselves decay 
 from a want of exercise of the functions essential to life. And 
 the native Churches will scarcely be worth maintaining, as they 
 can have no power to mould a national life in which, as mere 
 subsidised projections of foreign organisations, they can have no 
 vital part. 
 
 There are situations in the mission fields which teach us 
 the vital importance of the issue. One of them was set forth 
 at the monthly meeting of the Calcutta Missionary Conference 
 in March, 1900. The following account of the Conference's 
 consideration of " Self-support and Self-propagation in the Na- 
 tive Churches," is from The Indian Witness of March 16, 1900: 
 
 A VITAL QUESTION OF THE HOUR 
 
 Seldom has it fallen to our lot to attend a more depressing 
 meeting in some respects than the monthly meeting of the Cal- 
 cutta Missionary Conference held last Monday evening. The 
 subject for consideration was " Self-support and Self-propaga- 
 tion in the Native Churches," introduced by a paper read by 
 the Rev. W. R. Le Quesne, of the London Missionary Society. 
 The native Churches of Bengal were especially in thought. De- 
 clining to discuss the second part of his theme, on the ground 
 that self -propagation was impossible while self-support remained 
 unachieved, Mr. Le Quesne pointed out that after a hundred 
 years of missionary labours in Bengal the hopes cherished con- 
 cerning self-support appear to be almost as far from fulfilment 
 as ever. Important experiments made by the English Baptist 
 brethren, in the essayist's judgment, have proved by no means 
 satisfactory. He could not accept the plea of poverty on the 
 part of Bengali Christians, for in other sections of India where 
 similar social conditions prevail, self-support is far more ad- 
 vanced. It is sometimes claimed that the salaries of pastors are 
 higher than the people can afford, but men of character and 
 efficiency are required, and these must have sufficient to main- 
 tain themselves and their families. The great hindrance, he 
 thinks, is that the people fail to realise that the duty of sustain- 
 ing the institutions and ordinances of the Gospel rests upon 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 139 
 
 them. Their idea is that the mission is beholden to them, under 
 obligation to provide everything for them, while the true con- 
 ception should be the reverse. 
 
 When we inquire as to how self-support and independence 
 may be developed, an important consideration is the co-operation 
 of the various societies, which too frequently overlap, so that 
 in some places there are two, three, or four feeble struggling 
 churches when there might be one strong self-sustaining church. 
 Union of forces would help to solve the problem. The grant-in- 
 aid system, annually reviewed so as to note progress, was advo- 
 cated. Contributions in kind should be encouraged ; also thank- 
 offerings. In some places it would be helpful if churches had 
 plots of land attached on which pastors could raise their own 
 rice, etc., in cultivating which their people might help with labour. 
 The practice in Calcutta of Bengali Christians of good position 
 who do not identify themselves with Bengali churches, is a per- 
 nicious one and should be discouraged in all possible ways. In 
 conclusion, it was suggested that the Conference appoint a special 
 committee to take the whole subject into most careful con- 
 sideration. 
 
 The discussion which followed was a most interesting one — 
 painfully interesting in one point of view. Every missionary 
 speaker took a gloomy view of the present spiritual condition of 
 the Bengali Churches, — a view not demurred to by the Bengali 
 brethren who spoke ; and no one appeared to feel encouraged 
 as to the prospects for improvement in this respect or regarding 
 the attainment of self-support in the near future. The situation 
 seems to be something akin to the military situation in South 
 Africa prior to the arrival of Lord Roberts. Embarrassment, 
 perplexity, inability to surmount the difficulties which present 
 themselves prevail. Who will show the way out? As a lady 
 missionary, whose words on this point we quoted last week, 
 says : " We need a Moses to lead us out of the bondage of 
 parwarish (dependence for support on others). ... I myself 
 feel that a crisis of some sort is impending, and that we greatly 
 need wise generalship." Rev. A. Paton Begg, L. M. S., regretted 
 the paper had not taken up the question of self-propagation. He 
 was unable to see the great advantages to arise from securing 
 independence of village churches. Better they should realise 
 themselves a part of a greater and stronger whole. He recom- 
 mended the deepening of spiritual life and the preaching of the 
 more practical Christian duties. 
 
 The most notable contribution to the discussion was that fur- 
 nished by the Rev. I. W. Charlton, of the Church Missionary 
 
i 4 o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Society. He pointed out that one practical difficulty in the way 
 of self-support is the universal indebtedness under which the 
 village people groan. They are in bondage to the mdhajans, and 
 while these conditions prevail an aggressive church cannot be 
 developed. Some practical method of delivering our Christian 
 people out of the hands of the mdhajans is a first necessity. 
 Then, we should do our best to make the provision of pastors 
 and other workers for our village Christians as inexpensive as 
 possible. If Bengali Christians should be gotten out of debt and 
 pastors become available whose salaries are not two or three 
 times the average income of the people, independence would be 
 in sight. The people strongly object to be obliged to educate 
 their pastors' sons and dress their daughters. If some pro- 
 vision of scholarships for the children could be made, the ques- 
 tion would be simplified. Much interest was awakened by Mr. 
 Charlton's impressive appeal to the missionaries to aid in organ- 
 ising a united Bengali Church. Let all come together and prayer- 
 fully consider such a possibility. Laying aside all non-essentials, 
 accepting as a foundation the few fundamental truths on which 
 all are agreed, why should not there be one Bengali Church? 
 It was pointed out that God has wonderfully kept the way open 
 for such a consummation ; for the native Christian families of 
 Bengal have not crystallised into churches very readily. A 
 father may be an agent of the Church of England, while the 
 son is attending a Wesleyan day school, another member of the 
 family being a Baptist Bible reader, and so on. If a united 
 Bengali Church be only a dream, let us cease talking about it; 
 but if it be a possibility it should be taken hold of with practical 
 earnestness. 
 
 Mr. Kali Charan Banurji said he had no desire to extenuate 
 any of the things laid at the door of the native Christians, nor 
 to emphasise the responsibilities resting on missions and mission- 
 aries. He differed from the writer of the paper, believing that 
 self -propagation must precede self-support. An individual must 
 be a missionary before he is technically a minister. As a mis- 
 sionary he wins a soul, then he becomes a pastor to feed that 
 soul. When our churches become self-propagating — winners of 
 souls — they must feed and sustain these souls. In regard to 
 support of pastors, the question is one of men, not of money. 
 He had in thought a church which, if able to provide support 
 for a pastor, absolutely had no man in view to call to the position. 
 Others who participated in the discussion were the Revs. 
 W. R. James and A. Jewson, B. M. S., P. M. Mookerjee, S. P. G., 
 and the writer. Mr. James thought the difficulty of getting 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 141 
 
 missionaries to come to a common understanding a serious one. 
 We have begun by expecting too little of our Christians. All 
 contributions from the Societies towards building, repairing, and 
 maintenance of chapels should be stopped at once. Mr. Jewson 
 expressed the conviction that a closer union between the Bengali 
 Christians and Christ would powerfully tend to make self-support 
 possible. Few Bengali Christians have any true knowledge of 
 Christ, though they know about Him. Rejoicing in the ex- 
 ceptions, the majority of those who minister to Bengali Chris- 
 tians are simply imitators of missionaries, retailing the things 
 they have heard them say. Missionaries' meagre vocabulary 
 limits the scope of their teaching, hence the imitative teaching 
 of native ministers is of an inadequate type. Mr. Mookerjee 
 entreated the missionaries to make a beginning in the direction 
 of a united Church. The native Churches as they are now, are 
 what the missionaries have made them. " Take us as you find 
 us. Make a beginning here in Calcutta. As the mission work 
 has been a failure up to the present, let there be a new departure 
 and see what it may do for the native Church." A speaker 
 said that in view of what he had heard, the feeling came to him 
 that it would be a blessing to the Church of Christ in Bengal 
 if every foreign missionary were deported, and the Bengali 
 Christians left to work out the problem of a standing or falling 
 Church with such resources as they possess. It is an appalling 
 state of things that at the close of a century of missionary labours 
 the prospect for self-support and independence is so gloomy and 
 unpromising. 
 
 It is to be regretted, we think, that the suggestion made by 
 the reader of the paper was not adopted. The worthy chairman 
 thought a good way to shelve further development of the agita- 
 tion would be to appoint a committee. We find ourselves com- 
 pelled to differ from him. A committee ought at once to take 
 hold of this vital question in the interests of the Church that is 
 to be, and see if there is not some practicable plan by which even 
 an approximate solution of the problem may be arrived at. Is 
 the state of things which now exists in Bengal to be perpetuated 
 for another century? It will, unless some aggressive practical 
 action is taken. It is a most humiliating position. The Evan- 
 gelical Churches are compelled to admit that their earnest en- 
 deavours through, say, three generations, have ignominiously 
 failed to establish anything that might with a semblance of truth 
 be regarded as self-supporting work. The most depressing 
 feature of the situation is that there is not the ghost of a remedy 
 in actual sight. It would be profitable were missionaries to drop 
 
i 4 2 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 all outside work for a season and give their undivided and best 
 thought to this most important problem. We hope the Calcutta 
 Missionary Conference will grapple with it in such a statesman- 
 like way as to remedy the blunders of the past and save the 
 Christian Church of Bengal from another century of tutelage 
 and impotency. 
 
 This is doubtless a too discouraged view. It shows, however, 
 that missionaries are their own most merciless critics, and it 
 indicates the penalty that the future pays for any past failure to 
 incorporate in the character of a native Church one of its 
 fundamental and indispensable elements. 
 
 It is on the problem of self-government, which is the easiest 
 problem of the three, and which, if the other two are solved, 
 will entirely take care of itself, that attention is usually fixed. 
 This has been because with our Western haste and passion for 
 order and mechanism we have carried organisation ahead of 
 life. Partly so, partly because we have often found the work 
 hard and have been thrown back on siege methods and have 
 had to wait longest for what we desired most. Also, the 
 whisper of nationality, far away, has often in good providence 
 breathed early in the hearts of the new Christians. The problem 
 lies inevitably in the situation. Men of two nationalities, repre- 
 senting two Churches, one a foreign Church far away, the other 
 the new native Church now at hand, are working together for 
 certain ends. What are their ends ? How are they to be related 
 in their work for them? 
 
 Their great end, as we conceive it, is the evangelisation of 
 the world, and with this and what is to flow from it in view, 
 the establishment in all lands, and primarily in this particular 
 land, of an independent national Church which will fulfil its 
 own mission and destiny. And an independent national Church 
 we hold to be one which is genuinely independent and national, 
 which has no organic, ecclesiastical connection with any foreign 
 Church, which is under no foreign bishop or Church council, 
 which is as free and autonomous as the nation is or would be, 
 and with a character and identity which lay it eye to eye, 
 hand to hand, mouth to mouth, heart to heart, like the prophet, 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 143 
 
 upon the body of its people. Now, to that Church as our ideal, 
 in its incipiency or in its advancing development, what is to 
 be the relation of the foreign mission and its foreign agents? 
 
 First of all, the Western Churches at a distance and their 
 representatives near at hand are to take up the most cordial 
 and generous attitude toward the ideal of freedom and the 
 measure of attainment which the native Church may have 
 reached. Any coldness or sceptical criticism is disloyalty to the 
 very aim of the foreign missionary enterprise. These Churches 
 have a problem upon them of the most crushing gravity. They 
 are seeking against the charge of unpatriotism and filial treason 
 to make a home in their national life for the ideas which belong 
 there and the power which alone can redeem, while these are 
 the very things which are mistakenly regarded as alien and 
 treasonable. The success with which they have met has been 
 wonderful. It has been our own success. We should rejoice 
 in it, and in every way in our power encourage these Churches 
 to go on. 
 
 But the practical question remains. These Churches are 
 definite organisations with an established jurisdiction. What 
 relation shall missionaries have to them, and shall they have to the 
 foreign missions? Three answers are given among Presbyterians: 
 
 ( 1 ) It is proposed that the missionaries should have a dual 
 relationship, that they should remain the representatives of their 
 home Churches and subject to their jurisdiction, while at the 
 same time they should sit as full members of the native Church 
 councils or as assessors with the right to vote, but independent 
 of their jurisdiction save as to work done in the name of 
 the native Church. This is the plan which has been adopted 
 in the case of the English Presbyterian missionaries in China 
 and the Scotch Presbyterian missionaries in India. It has been 
 ruled that any such dual relationship is contrary to the con- 
 stitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
 America ; that a minister cannot be a member of two presbyteries, 
 much less of two independent national Churches. 
 
 (2) It is proposed that the missionaries should withdraw 
 from their home presbyteries or other courts and become mem- 
 
i 4 4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 bers exclusively of the native presbyteries or courts. This is 
 what some of the American Presbyterian missionaries have done 
 in China and India and other lands, where independent Churches 
 have been established. It is what the Irish missionaries did in 
 Manchuria. Dr. Ross tells us : " In connection with the 
 establishment of the Presbytery, the Irish missionaries did a 
 generous thing. Originally, they were ecclesiastically connected 
 with the presbytery by which they had been ordained, though 
 they had an organic connection with the General Assembly. As 
 one man cannot properly be a member of two presbyteries, the 
 Irish members proposed to sever their connection with the home 
 presbytery, in order to be free to become members of the presby- 
 tery of Manchuria. 
 
 " At our first presbytery meeting it was resolved also that 
 the native presbytery would have no control over the funds 
 or the persons from abroad. Each society on the field would 
 still continue to hold the same relations to the home Boards 
 as formerly. But the native presbytery would have control of 
 all funds contributed by the native Church, and of all other 
 Church matters whatsoever appertaining to the Presbyterian 
 Church of Manchuria. It would define the terms of admission 
 into the Church, the causes and modes of discipline; it would 
 take charge of the conduct of worship and the administration 
 of all Church affairs. The presbytery is meantime the supreme 
 court of the Church." — (Ross, " Mission Methods in Man- 
 churia," p. 126 ff.) 
 
 (3) It is proposed that the missionaries should retain their 
 ecclesiastical connection with the Churches which they represent, 
 sitting, if desired, as corresponding members in the native Church 
 councils, as they might do if visiting and working in any land, 
 and giving all their aid and support to the native Church, but 
 not taking up any organic ecclesiastical relationship to it. 
 
 Now, it has been argued with unquestionable validity that 
 there are no proof texts in the Bible with which to support 
 this third view. (Article quoted in The Indian Witness, De- 
 cember 12, 1907.) And we admit that the view that a missionary 
 should never identify himself ecclesiastically with a native 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 145 
 
 Church cannot be set up as a fundamental principle. Whether 
 he should do so or not depends upon what the effect of his course 
 will be upon the realisation of the ideal of a truly independent 
 national Church. We are disposed to believe, however, that 
 that ideal and the distinction which certainly exists between such 
 a Church and a foreign missionary agency can best be served 
 by the missionary's retention of his home connection, by the 
 preservation of the integrity of the native Church as a national 
 organisation, and by separate but co-operative activity. 
 
 (1) If the confusion is once begun, it is difficult to keep it 
 from being carried too far. Alexander Duff discovered this 
 fifty years ago. Mr. Day tells us the story frankly in his 
 account of his master. He says that he and his native asso- 
 ciates saw no reason why, upon their ordination, they should 
 not be made members of the mission Council, just as Dr. Duff 
 and the other missionaries were members of the presbytery, 
 that every ordained native was as much entitled to a seat in 
 the mission as the ordained missionaries, and that the distinction 
 between the European and the Indian was contrary not only 
 to the principle of Presbyterian parity, but to the essence and 
 spirit of Christianity itself. — (Day, " Recollections of Duff," pp. 
 210-216.) The position was strongly taken. If the ideal of a 
 genuine native Church was to be given up, why not also the 
 ideal of a genuine foreign mission? What is the use of pre- 
 serving one if you abandon the other? One confusion may as 
 well lead to the other. The confusion involves even more to- 
 day, for the work of women in foreign missions has almost 
 entirely grown up since that day, and that work needs to be 
 administered, and for the most part is administered, as an in- 
 tegral part of the whole work of missions. Now, unless ecclesi- 
 astical ideas are radically changed, the women missionaries 
 cannot become members of Church courts. But the oblitera- 
 tions of distinction between such courts and missions will leave 
 women without that relationship to their own work and the 
 other work of the mission as such, in its integrity, which 
 capable women will more and more, and not less and less, re- 
 gard as indispensable. 
 
i 4 6 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 (2) A truly self-conscious national Church will not feel 
 able to perpetuate the idea of a large voting membership subject 
 to the jurisdiction of a foreign body. When the Synod of 
 Central China was organised in Nanking in 1906 the Chinese 
 resolutely refused to tolerate the plan. For foreigners to cease 
 nominally to be foreigners and to become Chinese churchmen 
 was an endurable conception, but not the anomalous arrange- 
 ment of the possession of authority without submission to juris- 
 diction. 
 
 (3) If it is said that this arrangement has been accepted 
 by some Chinese Church courts and has been welcomed by the 
 Presbyterian Church in India, it may be replied that that is 
 the sad element in the situation, that there are native Churches 
 which do not desire independence, and which shrink from tak- 
 ing up their national destiny. They wish to have the connection 
 either organic or actual with the Western Churches. The very 
 evil of the plan is that it weakens their sense of responsibility. 
 They do not take up their financial burden; it is easier to lay 
 the problem upon the foreign Church. They do not deal with 
 their distinctive duty and the racial difficulties which press 
 upon them. Their mission is blurred over and indistinct. 
 
 (4) And even if the missionary wholly gives up his home 
 connection and joins the native Church alone, has he really done 
 so? Is he no more a foreigner? Does he rest down upon 
 and derive from the native people and congregations who are 
 the substance of the native Church ? Is he part of the nationality 
 which is to be expressed in the native Church and which is 
 to grow out from it? Is he no more the representative and 
 flesh and blood son of that other Church and that other na- 
 tionality to which he looks as to race and home, to which he 
 expects at least from time to time to return, and to report as 
 to the errand with which that other Church and that other 
 race charged him in their fulfilment of their missions? The 
 editor of the Indian Standard observes : " The missionaries think 
 that they have cut themselves off from the home Church and 
 fully identified themselves with the Church in India, but of 
 course they have really done nothing of the kind. They are 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 147 
 
 all under their respective mission boards, which are committees 
 of the home Churches. The true presbytery knows nothing of 
 a body of ministers from a foreign land, outnumbering the 
 native ministry and independent of it, and yet dominating all 
 presbyterial action by their vote, and the expedient of cutting 
 the ecclesiastical tie with home does not solve the problem. . . . 
 At present the missionaries are virtually in the position of the 
 House of Lords, with this advantage, that they sit and vote 
 in both houses." The native leaders are not slow to see that 
 the missionary is not really subject to the native Church. When 
 a missionary in Japan said that he regarded himself as under 
 the jurisdiction of the Japanese Church, Mr. Uyemura replied: 
 " The missionaries who have joined our presbyteries are in no 
 true sense integral parts of the Japanese Church. They are 
 members in name, but in fact they are under the control of an 
 outside organisation." — (Quoted in Brown, "The Foreign Mis- 
 sionary," pp. 314, 315.) 
 
 (5) Whatever our judgment as to method, however, the 
 principle which we must keep clear and which must be served 
 by whatever we do is the principle of a truly independent Church 
 resting on the life of a people and leading their steps. What 
 we do in the way of method and relationship is right or wrong 
 as it advances or retards the triumph of that principle. How 
 to decide what is right is one of the hardest problems in mis- 
 sionary administration. The Ethiopian movement in South 
 Africa, which, as his biographer says, broke Coillard's heart, 
 has been one of the most vivid recent illustrations of the diffi- 
 culty. That movement has embraced many impulses and di- 
 vergent motives, but its central principle was a desire for 
 Church autonomy, combined with a desire for racial unity, a 
 dim feeling after a national destiny on the part of a considerable 
 number of the negroes of South Africa. " The Church Separatist 
 or Ethiopian Movement," said the Native Affairs Commissioners 
 in their first report, " has as its origin a desire on the part of 
 a section of the Christianised natives to be freed from control 
 by European Churches. Its ranks are recruited from every 
 denomination carrying on extensive operations in South Africa, 
 
148 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 and there is in each case little or no doctrinal divergence from 
 the tenets of the parent Church, though it is alleged, and the 
 Commission fears with truth, that relaxed strictness in the moral 
 standard maintained frequently follows. It is the outcome of 
 a desire on the part of the natives for ecclesiastical self-support 
 and self-control, first taking tangible form in the secession of 
 discontented and restless spirits from religious bodies under the 
 supervision of European missionaries." The movement had " a 
 great influence upon Dr. James Stewart's last years," Dr. Wells 
 tells us. " It was one of the sorest disappointments of his 
 life and yet it contributed to the fulfilment of one of his greatest 
 dreams." — (Wells, "Life of James Stewart," p. 287.) It 
 wrought no end of harm as Dr. Stewart viewed its fruits, 
 but it embodied his idea of a truly native Church, ruling itself. 
 And it represented a great and noble craving. The second 
 report of the Native Affairs Commissioners sets forth the facts 
 dispassionately : 
 
 " The idea of secession," says Mr. Sargant in his report on 
 native education, " is probably not due only, or primarily, to a 
 wish on the part of the native leaders to manage their ecclesi- 
 astical affairs for themselves, but also to a real longing for 
 national union through a single spiritual head of the Church." 
 And he points out that, owing to the distinctions of tribe and 
 language by which the natives are divided, it was natural that 
 this national feeling should find its first expression through 
 Christianity. Similar views are expressed by the Rev. F. B. 
 Bridgman in a paper on the Ethiopian Movement read before 
 the Missionary Conference in Natal. " The fact," he says, " that 
 a great race, hitherto content to grovel, has at last begun to 
 aspire is momentous." And the Coadjutor-Bishop of Cape 
 Town, who, as chaplain to the Order of Ethiopia, had special 
 opportunities for observing the inner working and spirit of the 
 movement, declares emphatically that its " root-principle is, I 
 believe, patriotism ; in other words, the self-assertion of a grow- 
 ing national life." . . . " It is perhaps surprising that so able a 
 body of men as the leading South Africa missionaries, with their 
 long and intimate experience of native affairs, should in this 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 149 
 
 instance have failed so signally to read the signs of the times. 
 Had they gauged the position more accurately, it is conceivable 
 that they might have been able to direct the movement into safe 
 channels, and to have diverted painful breaches between native 
 Churches and their parent missions. But the workings of the 
 native mind have often proved inscrutable to the white man." 
 
 Both the ideal and the abuse have their lesson for us, that 
 we may walk wisely. 
 
 In Japan the question of relations between the missions and 
 the native Churches is presented in a far more advanced stage. 
 There are three large independent Churches — the Kumiai or Con- 
 gregational, the Church of Christ or Presbyterian, and the 
 Methodist. Each is ecclesiastically free. In the case of the 
 Methodist Churches, the relation of the foreign missionaries is 
 covered in the following addendum to the Basis of Union: 
 
 The relation of the Churches in the United States and in 
 Canada to the Methodist Church of Japan shall be co-operative, 
 and the appropriations made from time to time by the several 
 missionary organisations for work in Japan shall be regarded 
 as auxiliary to the work of the Methodist Church of Japan 
 (Nippon Methodist Kyokwai), and be administered accordingly. 
 
 The supreme and only reason for the presence of Methodist 
 missionaries in Japan is to aid in bringing Japan to Christ at 
 the earliest possible day. In order to carry out this purpose, the 
 Methodist Churches of the United States and of Canada must 
 continue to bear their part of the burden which rests upon the 
 Methodist Church of Japan, and continue to send foreign mis- 
 sionaries to Japan, under the three Boards of Missions taking 
 part in this Union, in such numbers and for such periods as may 
 by these Boards be deemed necessary for the accomplishment of 
 the object above stated. These missionaries shall hold their 
 Conference relation in their home conferences and shall be sup- 
 ported wholly by their respective Boards of Missions until re- 
 called. 
 
 In recognition of this aid from the American Churches, and 
 of his services to the Church in Japan, every such missionary 
 shall be entitled to all the rights and privileges of membership 
 in the Annual Conference to which his work for the preceding 
 year has been related, except on questions in which the character 
 or Conference relation of Japanese preachers is involved. 
 
i 5 o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The Church of Christ, or Presbyterian Church in Japan, allows 
 missionaries to become associate members of the presbyteries if 
 they are members of missions recognised by the Synod as co- 
 operating with the Church. Associate members do not have the 
 power to vote. " A co-operating mission," by the definition of 
 the Synod, " is one which recognises the right of the Church of 
 Christ in Japan to the general care of all the evangelistic work done 
 by the mission as a mission within the Church or in connection 
 with it; and which carries on such work under an arrange- 
 ment based upon the foregoing principle and concurred in by 
 the Synod acting through the Board of Missions." This defini- 
 tion followed a statement of the ideals and desires of this Church, 
 which it addressed to the missionary societies which had estab- 
 lished it, as follows: 
 
 It is now more than thirty years since the Church was first 
 founded, and already it has a history that may rightly be de- 
 scribed as eventful. Among its ministers and private members 
 there are many who are well deserving of respect. It extends 
 from one end of Japan to the other, and carries on its work 
 through a Synod, presbyteries, and congregations. It has a 
 Board of Missions actively engaged in the work of evangelisation 
 and the establishment of churches. Therefore, it seems to it 
 reasonable to claim that it has a right to a voice in all work 
 carried on within its organisation or closely connected with it. 
 That is the principle for which the Synod stands ; and for which 
 it believes that Churches in other lands, under like circumstances, 
 would stand. 
 
 The question of co-operation has agitated the Church and 
 the missions from time to time for nearly fifteen years; and 
 there are those who think the agitation uncalled for, since co- 
 operation is already a matter of fact. Whether it is a matter of 
 fact or not depends upon the sense in which the word co-opera- 
 tion is used. The fact that the missions employ evangelists, aid 
 in the support of pastors, establish and maintain preaching places, 
 while at the same time they also, in fact, practically retain such 
 matters solely within their own control, does not in itself con- 
 stitute co-operation ; if by co-operation is meant a co-working 
 which recognises the principle for which the Synod stands. Even 
 though the work done extends the Church, the system as a system 
 is that of an imperium in impcrio. 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 151 
 
 The co-operation which the Church seeks is a co-operation 
 of the missions as missions with the Church as a Church. The 
 missions and the Church, acting as independent organisations, 
 should make clear and definite arrangements with each other 
 under the principle set forth; and the work of the missions 
 as missions carried on within or in close connection with the 
 organisation of the Church should be controlled by such arrange- 
 ments. Co-operation should find a partial analogy in the alliance 
 between England and Japan ; not in the relations between Japan 
 and Korea. 
 
 The Congregational churches have had a different problem 
 because of their individualistic polity. The spirit of independ- 
 ence was naturally strong in them, and they have had for years 
 no connection with the American Congregational churches, and 
 now have taken over the care of every church which the mis- 
 sionaries were aiding, leaving the mission as an evangelistic 
 agency free from every relationship to an organised congrega- 
 tion. What results may flow from the mission work the Church 
 will absorb, but there is an absolute independence between the 
 native Church and the foreign mission. It is even proposed 
 by the Kirisutokyo Sekai, a Japanese Congregationalist paper, 
 which seems to have hazy ideas of what a real self-supporting 
 independence is, to dissolve the foreign mission altogether and 
 absorb its members as individuals in the Japanese Church so long 
 as they stay in Japan, their work as a mission, in its view, being 
 now at an end. (Quoted in the Japan Times, June 28, 1908.) 
 
 We appeal next to the missionaries. In the first place that 
 you would dissolve your mission church and join the Kumi-ai 
 churches in those places where you severally reside. You have 
 come here for the purpose of converting Japan, and there is no 
 reason for not uniting with our churches. Then without hesita- 
 tion become associate members of our Missionary Society, and 
 take part in all its evangelistic work under the direction of 
 the Society. Of course, as individual members and workers 
 you would share with us appropriate duties and responsibilities, 
 and stand in the same rank as we. Could we not then say for 
 the first time that you were really promoting the conversion of 
 Japan ? 
 
 If we were to state our ideal it is this, that as there is neither 
 male nor female in the Church, so there should be neither native 
 
152 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 nor foreigner among Church workers, but those who have ability 
 and aggressive power should be called to work in churches as 
 pastors and evangelists, and in schools as teachers of theology 
 and languages. Certainly the principles of finance should be 
 followed and we should be satisfied with salaries fitting our 
 labours and position. This emphatically would be to gain the 
 respect and following of a foreign nation. But if this is mere 
 talk and impossible of realisation at once, then at least let the 
 missionaries take steps to dissolve their mission church and 
 become members of our churches and Missionary Society. Then 
 the American Board, whenever any important question like the 
 sending out of new missionaries arises, would naturally consult 
 with our Missionary Society. 
 
 We hear that since the war began some of the great com- 
 mercial houses are deeply considering the future. Those houses 
 that are doing a world business are wondering whether it is 
 not best to abolish foreign management, and pass over the local 
 branches to natives of the respective countries, retaining foreign- 
 ers for duty simply in matters pertaining to their own country. 
 Even for business houses this plan is no miscalculation, since it 
 would be a gain for both sides. We are ashamed that this 
 move did not originate in our religious world, but was first 
 announced from the business world. As for immediate and 
 decisive steps, rather than doing nothing, there are numerous 
 things that were better done. We hope that the American Board 
 will be the first of all foreign boards to have the honour of 
 taking this decisive step. Foreign missions were originally un- 
 dertaken in the hope that native Churches would attain to in- 
 dependence and self-support. Now the prayers of all earnest 
 friends in the Lord are being answered, and the time is come 
 for the Kumi-ai Church to proclaim an independence that agrees 
 with facts. Will not the originators of this work rejoice in 
 experiencing the meaning of the words: " He that hath the bride 
 is the bridegroom ; but the friend of the bridegroom which stand- 
 eth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bride- 
 groom's voice: this my joy is therefore fulfilled." 
 
 Here are three different stages to which the independence 
 of a native Church has come. The problem will take on yet 
 other phases in Japan, and new forms in every other land. But 
 blessed is the day when it arises, even if cloaked with difficulty. 
 Doubly blessed is the mission policy which prepares for it from 
 the outset and lays a way of peace for its coming. 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 153 
 
 But, it may be asked, how is the way of peace to be laid? 
 I do not think that any one answer can be given. The foreign 
 missions represent many nationalities and Church polities, they 
 are carried on among people of varying resistance and re- 
 sponsiveness and capacity. Individual missionaries are of widely 
 differing temperaments and characteristics, and their modes of 
 largest influence are dissimilar. No one prescription can be 
 laid down covering all situations. How soon and in what man- 
 ner the native Church is to be organised, what measure of au- 
 thority it derives from those who organize it, and what measure 
 it owes to no body of men, what help it shall receive, and in 
 what form — these are practical questions which to many mis- 
 sionaries will appear more important than the reiteration of a 
 general ideal which they have always held. But they are ques- 
 tions which must be answered in the light of the varying ele- 
 ments which enter into them in a score of divergent situations, 
 and we shall have done enough now if we have come to see more 
 clearly and to accept more unreservedly the ideal of self-gov- 
 ernment for the Church in as full a measure as possible 
 from the beginning and in complete measure as soon as 
 possible. Whatever plans we do adopt will be determined by 
 the heartiness and confidence with which we hold to this 
 ideal. 
 
 We must go on now to suggest that there are other regards 
 than these three of the self-propagation, self-support, and self- 
 government of the native Church, in which foreign missions 
 must give heed to the ideal which they set before the Church 
 and the form and principles which they give to it in its infancy. 
 Both the spiritual character and the practical methods of the 
 native Churches will be determined for years by the missions 
 which found them. The manners of their clergy, down to their 
 style of dress, their modes of worship, their forms of church 
 architecture, their attitude toward their former religions and 
 the customs of their people, their standard of moral and re- 
 ligious character will all be learned from their missionary teach- 
 ers. In many mission fields they have already been learned, 
 and the whole problem of missions has become complicated 
 
154 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 with things that must be laid aside, lessons taught within the 
 Church which must be unlearned. 
 
 Two of these points are of such importance as to demand 
 special notice. One is the matter of the standard of Church 
 membership and discipline. In some cases native Churches have 
 raised the standard which they were given and become more 
 exacting; in others they have lowered their tone. They are 
 dealing with their own responsibilities. But at the outset, and 
 for a long time, the influence of the missions will set the stand- 
 ard. What shall it be, easy-going and tolerant or high and 
 exacting? Shall baptism be the mark merely of separation from 
 the old heathenism or of a living entrance into Christ? On the 
 one hand, we have to remember that, while there are inward 
 spiritual revolutions and rebirths, they are often as silent and 
 secret in grace as in nature, and that the processes of God and 
 the soul are orderly and slow. We are dealing in many cases 
 with men of insight and spiritual desire, and in some lands 
 with earnest people, but for the most part with masses of men 
 with whom patient methods are required. Dr. Lawrence, after 
 his wise studies on the ground, thought he knew of nothing 
 wiser than Bishop Caldwell's words: 
 
 I cannot imagine any person who has lived and worked 
 amongst uneducated heathens in the rural districts believing them 
 to be influenced by high motives in anything they do. They 
 have never heard of such things as high motives, and they can- 
 not for a long time be made to comprehend what high motives 
 mean. An enquiry into their motives, with a view to ascertaining 
 whether they are spiritual or not, will seem to them like an 
 enquiry into their acquaintance with Greek or algebra. They 
 will learn what good motives mean, I trust, in time — and, per- 
 haps, high motives, too — if they remain long enough under Chris- 
 tian teaching and discipline ; but till they discard heathenism, 
 with its debasing idolatries and superstitions, and place them- 
 selves under the wings of the Church, there is not the slightest 
 chance, as it appears to me, of their motives becoming better 
 than they are. . . . The only hope for them lies in their ad- 
 mission as soon as possible into Christ's school. . . . Whatever 
 the motive, provided it is not sordid or disgraceful, we receive 
 them. — (Lawrence, " Modern Missions in the East," p. 236.) 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 155 
 
 We need to remember this on the one hand. On the other, 
 we need to recollect that it was the austerity of its moral re- 
 quirements and the reality of its spiritual energy which gave 
 the early Church its victory. If the native Churches are to 
 subdue their world as the early Church subdued its world, it 
 can only be by virtue of their indisputable and commanding 
 moral superiority, sustained and invigorated by an inner life. 
 In India, for example, Sir William Hunter would have the 
 Christian Church as clean of the drink habit at least as Islam. 
 " I for one," said he in an address at the Society of Arts in 
 London, " believe that if Christianity is to be an unmixed bless- 
 ing in India, it must be Christianity on the basis of total ab- 
 stinence." " We cannot help thinking," says the leading paper 
 of North India, notoriously unfriendly to the missionary, but 
 giving him good counsel, " that the duty of the foreign mission- 
 aries who have been the means of introducing Christianity into 
 India, and who are still its recognised leaders, is to give the 
 highest and best presentation of religion, and not to yield to 
 any passing temptation to lower the standard of faith and prac- 
 tice." — (The Pioneer, Editorial, "Missions Up-to-date," April 
 23, 1908.) 
 
 One of our American missionary societies made an attempt 
 some years ago to state the sound principle on the subject of 
 the standard of admission and of discipline in these terms: 
 
 Recognising that Christian character is a growth, and that 
 the facts of Scripture and of life teach that patience and educa- 
 tion are necessary to the development of high moral standards 
 and the realisation of these standards in conduct, it is believed 
 that it is unprofitable to expect the fruits of eighteen centuries 
 of Christian culture to be reproduced in a generation on the 
 mission field, and unjust to demand them as conditions of ad- 
 mission to the Church. At the same time, the vital importance 
 of establishing from the outset right ideals in the native Churches 
 must be recognised, and the weight of judgment should be given 
 in support of those missionaries who contend for a relatively 
 high standard of admission and discipline as essential to the 
 strength and purity of the native Church. It is not regarded as 
 permissible, for example, that polygamists should be admitted 
 
i 5 6 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 to the Lord's Supper, or the establishment of distinctions be- 
 tween baptism and the Lord's Supper, which render the former 
 only an introductory and inconclusive ordinance, open to those 
 who are merely catechumens. Thorough instruction of enquirers 
 before baptism, and the inculcation of high moral obligations, 
 should be provided for. On the other hand, regard should be 
 had to the antecedents and environment of the people, and 
 emphasis should be laid not so much upon extended knowledge 
 or even conformity to set requirements, as upon earnestness, 
 genuine faith, and that sincere acceptance of Christ which will 
 issue in true living. 
 
 There are some who take exception to this unyielding judg- 
 ment regarding the exclusion of polygamy from the native 
 Church, holding that, while polygamy is of course wrong, we 
 have no right to exclude a polygamist who is truly converted 
 but who contracted his polygamous relations in the days of 
 his ignorance. With regard to this view held by many great 
 missionaries, we suggest: (i) That that which would be made 
 the ground of expulsion if in the Church, should constitute a 
 barrier to admission to the Church; (2) that it is not Church 
 membership or any Christian requirement which makes polyg- 
 amy wrong, but a law of nature, and that ignorance or mere 
 compliance with usage offered as an excuse for the contraction 
 of polygamy cannot warrant its admission to the Church; 
 (3) that the only way to keep polygamy out of the Church where 
 it is acknowledged that it ought not to be is to exclude or expel 
 those guilty of it; (4) that the requirement that a polygamist 
 should live in marital relation with only one wife is not a re- 
 quirement that he should cease to support the others; on the 
 other hand, he should be required to do so; (5) that there is 
 no Scriptural or rational ground for admitting a man to the 
 Church and then excluding him from office, as some propose, 
 on the ground of his marital relation; (6) that the allegation 
 that such a course is recognised in the Epistle to Timothy in 
 I Tim. iii : 2, which specifies that a bishop must be the husband 
 of one wife, thereby implying that there were ordinary mem- 
 bers who had more than one wife, can only be defended by 
 acknowledging that the statement regarding widows in I Tim. 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 157 
 
 v : 9, 10, namely, that each should have been the wife of one 
 husband, proves that there was polyandry also in the early 
 Church; (7) that the purity of the home is an essential not 
 to be imperilled by any concession or in any way whatsoever ; 
 (8) that to admit polygamy into the Church defiles the ideal 
 of the Church as described by Paul in the noble passage in the 
 fifth chapter of Ephesians, and cuts at the foundation of Chris- 
 tian morals and the Christian revelation ; (9) that it weakens 
 the testimony of Christianity to righteousness; (10) that polyg- 
 amous wives have no right to continue marital relations which 
 can be defended without dissolving the foundation of purity ; 
 and (11) that it does not affect the case to say that there will 
 be but a few exceptional instances of such baptisms. It is a 
 question not of few or of many, but of essential moral principles. 
 This illustration of the problem of the standard of Christian 
 morals to be set by the missions suggests the other point to 
 which attention was to be drawn, namely, the attitude which 
 foreign missions should set before the native Churches toward 
 questionable social conditions involving religious principles, such 
 as ancestor worship in China and caste in India. The mission- 
 aries and native Churches in China are practically unanimous 
 in their judgment that ancestor worship contains inadmissible 
 idolatrous elements, and they have agreed with small dissension 
 upon a common attitude toward it. Over caste, however, there 
 is a great conflict of view. It is evident that it is to be a far 
 more massive barrier in the way of Christianity than ancestor 
 worship. Some Chinese seem only too likely to abandon what 
 was really good in ancestor worship with its foolish idolatrous 
 elements, while others are perceiving that the Christian spirit 
 of reverence for the dead includes all that was worthy in their 
 traditional idea. But in spite of all that has been done to dis- 
 solve the exclusiveness of caste in India, it remains still the 
 most deep-seated institution in the land, so deep-seated and 
 irrefragable that many urge the abandonment of the attitude 
 of absolute hostility to it taken up by the foreign mission move- 
 ment, or the transfer of our missionary energies from the assault 
 on the caste-intrenched people to the unhindered evangelisation 
 
158 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 of the low-caste and outcaste peoples. The Bishop of Madras 
 has stirred up a still lively controversy (See The Baptist Mis- 
 sionary Review, Bopatla, India, December, 1907) by arguing that 
 our work for the high-caste people, especially through our col- 
 leges, has been practically fruitless, while low-caste evangelisation 
 has met with immense success, and that this is evidence not only 
 of the direction which the providence of God would have our mis- 
 sionary activities take, but also of the quickest method of reach- 
 ing the high-caste people themselves, who see already the ad- 
 vancement of the classes they had despised through the uplift- 
 ing influence of Christianity, and who will be forced to consider 
 the claims of a religion whose power they behold and through 
 which alone they can hope to escape being outdistanced. Many 
 have come forward to argue against Bishop Whitehead's propo- 
 sitions, and the result of his declarations will be sure to be 
 more work and better work for both high-caste and outcaste 
 peoples. On the other hand, Mr. Bernard Lucas of the London 
 Missionary Society, in " The Empire of Christ," has argued for 
 a different attitude toward the caste spirit. It is not entirely 
 clear to us just what Mr. Lucas would have us do. With his 
 principle, " There should be no baptism outside of the Church, 
 there should be no caste within the Church," we heartily agree, 
 but this seems, in his view, to involve keeping all high-caste con- 
 verts out of the Church and meanwhile making no vigorous effort 
 to dissolve their caste narrowness, but waiting until Hindu 
 society is prepared to come over bodily into Christianity. It 
 is not souls out of the ship of India, to quote again his figure, 
 whom we are to bring in, but the whole ship. How are we 
 to do it? Meanwhile, is the Church to be made up of low-castes 
 and of those from the high-castes who have naturally of them- 
 selves given up their caste separation and come into that body 
 where there is neither low-caste nor high-caste, but where all 
 are one in the unity of their Saviour? It is clear, however, that 
 Mr. Lucas would not have caste in the Church. He would have 
 foreign missions set that attitude for the native organisation. 
 In that view he would disagree with an Indian writer, Lall 
 Binary Dass in The Epiphany, the organ of the Oxford Mission 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 159 
 
 in Calcutta (January 16, 1909), who holds that caste should be 
 taken into the Church and dissolved in time within, as was the 
 case with slavery. " In a caste-ridden country like India," says 
 Mr. Dass, " where caste is all in all, you cannot root out in one 
 day what the ages have done, so it will augur well if this 
 theoretical system be kept up and at the same time they be 
 made Christians, and if caste itself is an evil, it will gradually 
 melt away like snow before the noonday sun, when the true 
 light of the Sun of Righteousness will commence to shine forth 
 in their hearts." The foreign mission enterprise in setting stand- 
 ards for the Churches which it creates, cannot accept this view 
 any more than it could provide for the admission of polygamy 
 and slavery, of concubinage and idolatry, in the hope that these 
 would in time disappear. Christianity means something moral 
 and social. It is a religion which embodies ideals, and the 
 Church is the institution which expresses those ideals. 
 
 At the same time, there are discriminations to be made in the 
 case of what is called caste, just as in the case of ancestor wor- 
 ship, which embodied one of the noblest of human sentiments. 
 The former Bishop of Bombay, Dr. Mylne, has suggested these : 
 " When I maintain that caste must go, that to make terms with 
 it is to break once for all with the practical Gospel of Christ, 
 I am not to be taken for a moment as intending that the edu- 
 cated Brahman, with his social refinement, is to be treated as 
 a traitor to Christianity, if he determines to marry his children 
 to no one whose social position would render their happiness 
 impossible." And in his review of Dr. Mylne's " Missions to 
 Hindus," Mr. Lucas has pointed out that more such discrimina- 
 tions must be drawn : 
 
 Between the caste spirit and the spirit of Christ there is an 
 irreconcilable opposition, whether that caste spirit is manifested 
 in the caste system of India or in the social distinctions of the 
 West. But just as there are social distinctions in the West, 
 which have nothing to do with a caste spirit, so there are social 
 distinctions and social habits in India which, though connected 
 with the caste system, are not bound up with the caste spirit. 
 While it is quite true that caste is religious as well as social, 
 
160 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 it must be borne in mind that the India of to-day is by no 
 means the India of a hundred years ago. In no respect has India 
 changed more during the past century than in the position which 
 caste occupies in the thought of the Hindu of to-day, as com- 
 pared with that of his forebears of a century ago. There has 
 been a divorce going on between caste and religion, which the 
 missionary of the twentieth century will do well to recognise. 
 Amongst the educated Hindus it is hardly too much to say that 
 the religious aspect of caste has largely ceased to be operative. 
 While the same cannot be said of those uninfluenced by English 
 education, yet in many parts of India the bond between religion 
 and caste has been very greatly loosened, and while caste is 
 still jealously guarded, it is far more as a social than as a re- 
 ligious system. These changes make it imperative for us to 
 change our attitude towards the question of caste, and distinguish 
 between the real caste spirit with which we can make no terms 
 and the social habits and customs which are merely a stage in 
 social development. Already there are signs that the time is 
 coming when the acceptance of Christianity will not involve that 
 breach with the past which hitherto has been inevitable. 
 
 With such a problem a truly independent national Church 
 would be far more competent to deal than a foreign mission, and 
 it is a pity that there is not such a Church in India to settle 
 it for itself, but what India lacks we still lack ourselves, both 
 in America and Great Britain, and in all the lands from which 
 the missionaries go forth. 
 
 This question of caste, however, is only part of a larger 
 problem, namely, the establishment of the foundations of the 
 new Churches solidly and broadly on the life of the people. Mis- 
 sionaries begin where they can, knowing that all souls are 
 Christ's. Sometimes they reach first the ignorant and poor; 
 and the work of the new Church is taken up by those who are 
 not the natural leaders of life. Often out of these classes the 
 real national leaders come, and God demonstrates again His 
 power to use the weak to confound the mighty. But often the 
 native Church, built thus on one class, never works out from 
 it but remains a small and unrepresentative society, separated 
 from the life it is meant to mould. Such are still the churches 
 built on the old negro communities in Bahia and Pernambuco 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 161 
 
 in Brazil. On the other hand, the foundation of a new Church 
 may be laid in a higher class, with results not less marked. As 
 a keen observer of mission work writes from Japan: "If you 
 look for the source of the financial weakness and the unsatisfac- 
 tory history of the Church in Japan in regard to relations with 
 the missionary body, you will find that one fact explains both. 
 It has been the poor but proud Samurai who have filled the 
 churches and the ministry. They have been to us a strength 
 and a weakness, our pride and our torment. The Heimin, or 
 plebeian poplation, have been too ignorant and superstitious, 
 too much under the domination of their Buddhist priests and 
 their Shinto schoolmasters, to open the ear to the Word. But 
 we are at last getting at the Heimin, and there are better days 
 ahead. We shall never have substantial, steady churches till 
 they are made up less of Samurai officials, army and navy men, 
 teachers, and students, and more of plain farmers, business men, 
 and workmen." The broader the foundation of the new 
 Churches, the more representative their membership, the more 
 truly will they embody the ideal seen in the churches which 
 St. Paul founded, which did indeed rest upon the common life 
 of men, but also knew no inaccessible class and claimed all 
 society as the sphere and instrument of the Church's mission. 
 
 There are doubtless some, however, to whom the breadth of 
 the foundation of the native Churches will seem of less im- 
 portance than its depth, who will be less concerned that these 
 foundations should be laid out widely upon life than that wher- 
 ever they are laid they should be laid with precision and exact- 
 ness. They are so firmly convinced, in other words, of the 
 universal warrant and validity of some of these convictions which 
 they themselves hold, that they cannot believe that any founda- 
 tions are rightly laid that are not laid in these convictions. Now, 
 all of us belong to this class in things that really are universal 
 in Christianity. That is why the foreign mission movement 
 exists. To lead men to the living and true God by the way of 
 His only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who is the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life, and by Whom alone men can find the 
 Father — that is the sole spring and power of the missionary 
 
162 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 enterprise. In the faith and love of the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
 Son of God, and the Saviour of the World, we find all our 
 own life, and deep therein we believe it to be indispensable 
 above all things else to lay the foundation of the new Churches. 
 But we are not of those who believe, as some do, that any 
 particular ecclesiastical polity or historic statement of Christian 
 doctrine should be laid down bodily upon the native Churches. 
 In an older day, a notable letter of counsel to its foreign mis- 
 sionaries from one of our great Churches contained the admoni- 
 tion : " Be careful to maintain in all your missions the worship 
 and order, as well as the doctrine of your ozvn Church. We have 
 no desire either to cherish ourselves or to recommend to you 
 a sectarian spirit. But we cannot think that a warm attach- 
 ment to our own beloved Church, and a decided preference 
 of its rites and polity, deserve to be so styled. As long as we 
 believe them to be founded on the Word of God, we must con- 
 sider an adherence to them as our incumbent duty. And as 
 you are the representatives among the heathen of the Church 
 of your choice, we trust you will faithfully maintain all its claims 
 and usages." And within the last two years an earnest mis- 
 sionary bishop in another great Christian Church declared : " The 
 one grand object, of course, which every evangelist must pur- 
 sue, is the development of an indigenous Church, which shall 
 work upon lines of its own, taking nothing from European 
 Christianity but the Bible, the Creeds, the Sacraments, and the 
 historic Orders of the Ministry." — (Mylne, "Missions to Hin- 
 dus," p. 130.) I do not wonder that an equally earnest mis- 
 sionary has been stirred to reply: "One may ask, with some 
 amount of wonder, what there would be left to take from Euro- 
 pean Christianity after you have taken the Creeds, which repre- 
 sent its theology ; the Sacraments, which stand for its conception 
 of ritual, and the Orders of the Ministry, which, presumably, 
 represent its ecclesiastical organisation? If all these are to be 
 imposed bodily upon the Indian Church, one wonders upon what 
 ' lines of its own ' the indigenous Church is going to work. The 
 author seems to join us in this wonder, for he immediately adds: 
 ' The goal may lie centuries in front of us. At present it is 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 163 
 
 not in sight, even dimly descried on the horizon.' As long as 
 Christianity is identified, as our author seems to identify it, with 
 Western theology, Western ritual, and Western ecclesiasticism, 
 so long will the Christianisation of India be delayed, and the 
 Indian Church remain an exotic, instead of becoming indigenous. 
 We have so guarded against producing an Indian Christian here- 
 tic, that we have equally failed to produce a theologian." — (Ber- 
 nard Lucas in the Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, 
 July, 1908, p. 130.) Our Western ecclesiastical polities are not 
 universal or final. Each of them grounds itself upon Scripture, 
 but they are mutually contradictory. Our Western theological 
 statements are not universal or final. How can they be? They 
 were not divinely inspired. They are the products of only a 
 small part of mankind, the outgrowth of a small fraction of 
 the experience of humanity, a mere fragment of the still in- 
 completed education of mankind by God. The men who go 
 out as foreign missionaries can go, of course, only as the men 
 they are, believing what they believe, and if they believe that the 
 presiding eldership or supralapsarianism or immersion or bap- 
 tismal regeneration is fundamental and universal, they will teach 
 it, and we shall have to work out from the consequences as best 
 we can. But we believe nothing of the sort, nor that episco- 
 pate or presbytery, nor Calvinism or Arminianism, nor anything 
 else of polity or of creed, but simply that the fact that Jesus 
 Christ, the Son of God, is come the Saviour of the whole world, 
 is the fundamental and universal thing, the rock on which to 
 build the new Churches of the nations. We must doubtless help 
 and guide these Churches, and those who do it will do it in the 
 way in which alone they conscientiously can, but a true foreign 
 mission policy will make room for a free life in the native 
 Churches, and will rejoice in their adaptation of means to meet 
 their own needs in organisation and in their guidance by the 
 Spirit of God into new constructions and fresh emphasis of the 
 enduring truth of God, too rich and infinite to have been codified 
 by any one man, or one race, or one age. Surely we can say this 
 with no want of love or loyalty to the Church in which we grew 
 up and through which we do our work. We are not less true 
 
164 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 to her and her vision of truth when we declare these to be but 
 a part of a nobler whole, and when we watch and wait with long- 
 ing desire for the completion of the whole body, absorbing ours 
 in its fulness, and the gathering of the fuller light, eclipsing 
 ours in its brightness. 
 
 At the same time, it must be said that as yet the native 
 Churches, even the strongest and most independent, have pro- 
 duced nothing notable either in the way of Church organisation 
 or in the way of perception or statement of truth. Dr. Datta 
 has told us the reason, in the case of India : 
 
 The Indian Church has failed on the whole to produce a 
 distinctive theology capable of reaching the minds and hearts 
 of the people. The religious history of India would lead us to 
 look for something of this kind. Yet the nearest approach to 
 a distinctively Indian interpretation of Christ has come from 
 a non-Christian sect, the Brahmo Samaj. The cause is not far 
 to seek. Indian Christianity is as yet a Western product in the 
 process of being grafted on to India. The children of converts 
 know little of, and care less for, the whole heritage of Indian 
 thought and religion. They are brought up with a stock of 
 Christian ideas in a society of their own. The conversion of 
 their parents has severed all the old relationships. Another 
 consideration which throws light on this barrenness of the Indian 
 Christian religious mind is the fact that up to the present the 
 members of the Church have been drawn from castes which do 
 not afford a soil in which theological ideas naturally spring up 
 and come to harvest. There have been Christians like K. M. 
 Banerji and Nehemiah Goreh, but the converts from the castes 
 which show special philosophical aptitudes are few and insuffi- 
 cient to form an intellectual society in which there can be a 
 free interchange of ideas. New interpretations of Christian doc- 
 trine will scarcely be possible till the intellectual level of the 
 Indian Church is raised either by greater accessions from the 
 Brahman class, or by an extraordinary development of the mind 
 of the outcaste people who form the bulk of the Christian 
 community. — (Datta, "The Desire of India," p. 255.) 
 
 The foundations of the native Church are neither sufficiently 
 deep nor sufficiently broad. But even if they were, as they are 
 becoming in Japan, we must beware of cherishing too great ex- 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 165 
 
 pectations. Some have been bold to hope for far more than 
 there is any prospect of receiving. Truth grows out of life. 
 It is the character of God unfolding itself to men and races 
 as they live up into God. It is not a thing which men or 
 Churches can find by saying: "Go to, now, watch me discover 
 new truth." The pride of nationalism, which is the near peril 
 of independent native Churches, is a sure prevention of great 
 spiritual discovery. But in all our relations to the new Churches 
 we should be zealous to guard their liberty and should not post- 
 pone the day of their own independent guidance by the divine 
 Spirit by loading them with the symbols, whether of worship 
 or of organisation or of doctrine, which have grown up in our 
 long racial development in the West. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be justly argued, and the truth 
 must be taken up into our views, that the new Churches are 
 entitled to start where we have come and not where we began, 
 that there is no reason why they should go back to the first 
 century to repeat for themselves the long history which has 
 produced us. The truth here is the obvious truth that we should 
 do our best and act with all the wisdom which this history has 
 taught us in dealing with them. The error lies in forgetting 
 that much of this history has been bitter and destructive, and 
 that we are only now returning to those fundamental principles 
 of the Lord and His Apostles, from which the centuries have 
 led us so far away. 
 
 Two further aspects of the problem of the relation of mis- 
 sions to the native Churches are brought before us in the words 
 quoted a moment ago from Dr. Datta. He is speaking of India. 
 It is in India that the difficulty of the work of raising up a truly 
 independent Church seems to be greatest. It is the oldest field, 
 and there are more native Christians there than in any other 
 mission land, but the Church is still a foreign organisation on 
 Indian soil. There are self-supporting congregations. There are 
 able Indian ministers. There is now a new and hopeful National 
 Missionary Society, but even this was a foreign idea and largely 
 inspired and initiated by foreign energy. There seems to be 
 wanting the spirit of a brave and sacrificial nationalism, such as 
 
166 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 led Paul Sawayama to starve himself in the Naniwa church in 
 Osaka and is already moving in what is to be the mighty Chris- 
 tian Church in China. This may be due in part to the chill of 
 caste, in part to the placidity of the national character. Partly, 
 I think, it is due, and the fact shows how varying are the 
 conditions in which the missionary problem must be wrought 
 out, to the effect of the political situation. The goal of Indian 
 ambition has been service under a foreign Government ruling 
 the political life of India. The analogy of service under a 
 foreign Church ruling the religious life of India has been too 
 natural to resist, or even to be conscious of its needing resistance. 
 The conditions have been precisely the reverse of those in Japan. 
 The problems of missionary policy are entwined with the deepest 
 issues of national life and are rendered vastly more difficult 
 thereby. If a native Church leads in a nationalistic movement, 
 it is exposed to the peril of political confusion and entanglement, 
 the danger of disloyalty in India, of chauvinism in Japan. If 
 it does not lead, it is distrusted for unpatriotism and discredited 
 as the motive power of national life. The American Churches 
 confronted in the days of the Revolutionary War a situation 
 reproduced in its essential principles to-day in many Asiatic 
 lands. 
 
 Dr. Datta's words suggest not only the diversity of conditions 
 on the mission fields, but also the problem of the relation of 
 missions to the education of the second generation of the native 
 Church. It is from that generation that the capable and effective 
 leaders come. It is there, also, that the most bitter disappoint- 
 ments are met. In many mission schools it is this class which 
 presents the chief difficulty, more than boys from the homes 
 of the old religions. In many stations it is they who paralyse 
 the Church and nullify the apologetic value of its life and 
 example. Of such a generation the Report of the Basle Mission 
 in Western India, for the year 1890, speaks: "Most of these 
 [Christians] have not tasted the thralldom of idolatry and the 
 enmity of the world, but have enjoyed all the privileges con- 
 ferred upon them through the medium of Church and school. 
 They feel their present elevated position ; their energies, however, 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 167 
 
 have not as yet found their proper channels. Many, especially 
 of those who till now have not experienced what a new birth 
 is, in their desire to improve their circumstances are impatient 
 that things develop so slowly and not in the very way they 
 wish, and are often apt to suspect the very missionaries to 
 whose instrumentality most of them owe their prosperity, and 
 who leave untried no means or way to push them on, as if it 
 were they who were keeping them down and hindering their 
 progress." — (Quoted by Cust, "Missionary Methods," p. 23.) 
 The report is speaking of native Christians maintained by mis- 
 sionary industrial institutions. The risk of fostering the spirit 
 of complaining dependence in such work is its great danger. 
 But the second generation is always a peril because it is also 
 a hope. What may be so much better may be also so much 
 worse. If, in the new Christian homes the Christian atmosphere 
 has not really permeated all the life now emptied of its old 
 sanctions and motives, if the boy grows up with no God, either 
 false or true, really sobering his life and holding it in awe, 
 if he learns contempt for superstition without having come to 
 faith, his latter state is worse than his father's first. The mis- 
 sion, in seeking to produce a true and abiding Church, will 
 remember that the second generation is as important as the 
 first. That is one reason why missions are not content to see 
 a number of people converted and then pass on. That is the 
 end of only the first stage of their work. There is now a 
 second stage, and beyond that there is a third. 
 
 In the education of the second generation one of the most 
 foolish, and yet one of the most natural things to do, is to 
 bring choice young men to the Western countries for their train- 
 ing. That is, it is natural when the aim of the enterprise is 
 forgotten and the laws of human nature and leadership are 
 unknown. It seemed at the first to many friends of missions 
 that the best thing that could be done would be to establish 
 training schools for natives in the home lands. They tried it. 
 One of the despairs of missionary organisation now is that they 
 cannot persuade well-meaning individuals to accept the results 
 of the bitter experience of a hundred years. The Moravians 
 
1 68 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 were among the first to come to wisdom in the matter. " We 
 disapprove of bringing converts to Europe on any pretext what- 
 ever," they say in their instructions, " and think it would lead 
 them into danger of injury to their own souls." Hundreds, 
 probably thousands of young men and women have been harmed 
 and spoiled for all useful service in this way. Instead of 
 being prepared for true work as members and leaders of their 
 own people, they have gone back separated from them, with 
 unnatural tastes and ambitions, representing, or desiring to repre- 
 sent something foreign, obstructing, and in some fields, practi- 
 cally destroying the hope of establishing a free and living 
 Church. There have been exceptions, many especially among 
 the Chinese and Japanese who have studied abroad, but the 
 sending forth of such men should be by the missions or Churches 
 on the foreign field. When they come otherwise, the greatest 
 kindness that can be shown is to let them save their character 
 by complete self-support. The man who can do this may go 
 back to be a true power among his people, and by the character 
 which he has achieved for himself help his race to a full realisa- 
 tion of its character. 
 
 I said that after the second stage of relations between mis- 
 sions and native Churches, the long stage between the first 
 organisation of the Church and its achievement of a free and 
 competent independence, there was a third. We have not 
 reached that stage yet, when the actual co-operation of the 
 foreign missions is no longer needed, and when any help to 
 be rendered by the foreign Church may be given, if it is needed 
 at all, outright and direct. Even when that time comes, as 
 some Japanese mistakenly think that it has come in their coun- 
 try, there may still be for some time a work for the selected 
 missionary to do, very delicate and difficult, but valuable. Mr. 
 Ebina, a very " advanced " leader of the Japanese Congrega- 
 tional Church, last year addressed a statement to the foreign 
 missionaries in Japan in which he set forth services which he 
 believed they were still needed to render, and there are others: 
 
 The mission of the missionary is not merely to propagate 
 ideas. With his own character he must seek to influence the 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 169 
 
 character of others. We must pay the profoundest respect to 
 the character of England and America, which has been nurtured 
 now for over a thousand years. Without doubt there are among 
 them contemptible men, but when we speak of them as a whole, 
 it is not too great praise to say that they excel, not by a day 
 nor a year, but by a hundred years. And foreign missionaries 
 are their representatives. For example, let us compare the atti- 
 tude of some of our young evangelists with that of the young 
 foreign missionaries. The former, after their studies in Tokyo, 
 go out into the country to preach, but after two or three years 
 they grow pessimistic, disheartened, give vent to dissatisfaction 
 and complaints, cannot endure their calling. The latter exhibit 
 endurance, determination, boldness, and humility. Without free- 
 dom in the use of the language, in the midst of an imperfect 
 social organisation, compelled to listen to most discordant music, 
 living among the Japanese with their utterly different customs, 
 these men deserve our admiration. The two are simply not to 
 be compared. 
 
 Nay, more. The Japanese are far from attaining to the in- 
 domitable perseverance of the men who have gone with their 
 Gospel to such places as Africa, the South Sea Islands, and 
 central China. It is, of course, true that there are defects among 
 the Christians of England and America, but as gentlemen and 
 as ladies they conduct themselves as if they had received the 
 baptism of Bushido. Now, you missionaries are the represent- 
 atives of these men and women. Therefore, as elder brothers, 
 it is your duty to give to the Japanese the refining influence of 
 this pure and lofty character. To be a genuine Christian gentle- 
 man is the highest thing that a Japanese can learn. We must 
 hope that you will take a more positive attitude toward the 
 Japanese. Because of your deep reserve, you have suffered to go 
 unsaid many things that you wished to say. As far as you 
 were concerned, this was unavoidable, but your beloved younger 
 brethren need your reproof whenever occasion offers. Even 
 though you should be disliked and hated for it, in the name 
 of Christ you should have all boldness. When viewed from 
 the Christian standpoint, the Japanese character, down to the 
 very words they use, needs no little reform. There certainly 
 must be many things that meet your eyes and ears which as 
 Christians cause you pain. We trust that on these points you 
 will not hesitate to wield the lash. We know of your efforts to 
 make apologies for the Japanese before Westerners, and we 
 are deeply grateful therefor; but we cannot help hoping 
 that for the benefit of the Japanese themselves you will 
 
i7o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 point out their faults without reserve, and try to improve 
 them. 
 
 We must perfect ourselves by means of the religious con- 
 sciousness of Germany, England, and America. Christianity, 
 except that of these three countries, we cannot regard very 
 highly. Nor do we think that we should abandon our Shinto, 
 Buddhism, and Confucianism, or set aside our Bushido to em- 
 brace such a faith. The Christianity of the Protestant nations 
 alone has value for the whole world. This Protestant religious 
 consciousness may in a certain sense be said to be of greater 
 importance than the Scripture. The Old Testament has value 
 only as this consciousness reveals in it a new meaning. And 
 the true value of even the new Testament can be revealed only 
 as one possesses this consciousness and experience. It goes with- 
 out saying that, if this living consciousness and experience are 
 wanting, Old and New Testament alike cannot reveal this won- 
 derful glory. Our revered and beloved foreign missionaries are 
 the living representatives of this lofty religious consciousness 
 and experience. We Japanese even now demand just this thing. 
 Whether the nation shall have a vigorous and well rounded 
 development or not depends on whether or not we assimilate 
 this consciousness and experience. 
 
 Such being the case, is not your mission in Japan perfectly 
 clear? The purpose of your preaching is not to save men from 
 Hell ; there is no need for that sort of preaching in Japan. The 
 Japanese have set their faces toward Heaven and are making 
 progress in that direction. If the old methods of missionary 
 work are to be continued, your mission is surely ended. But 
 if you will share with other men and with another people your 
 own experience and the religious consciousness of your nations, 
 and if the burden of your message is the common enjoyment 
 of the blessings of the kingdom of Heaven, your mission in 
 Japan is manifest. It is your unique duty to share with the 
 men of Japan the basic religious consciousness of the Protestant 
 nations. Was it not for just such work as this that Christ 
 died upon the cross? The religious consciousness of the Japanese 
 possesses a certain excellence of its own, but I need not say how 
 immature it is. You, with your strong, clear, ethical conscious- 
 ness, and your kindly, peaceful, loving sensibilities, have you 
 not a motive that ought to call forth faith from us men of 
 Japan? If you are conscious of this, then your mission is as 
 clear as the day. — (Danjo Erina, on " The Mission of the For- 
 eign Missionaries in Japan," in the Shin j in, translated in the 
 Japan Weekly Mail, March 2j, 1909.) 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 171 
 
 For how long a time in the great mission fields of the world 
 the foreign missionary enterprise has a work to do we cannot 
 say. Everything can be predicted but the unfolding of life, 
 and it is with life that we are dealing. But the goal will be 
 the more quickly and surely reached if we see clearly three 
 things : first, the great principle on which we are working ; 
 second, the great need that must be supplied; and third, the 
 great difficulty which we meet. 
 
 The great principle we have already defined. It is the estab- 
 lishment of true national Churches. There may be some who 
 feel that the ideal of the unity of humanity requires something 
 more than this. " A theological ideal which I believe should 
 determine in a measure the ecclesiastical principle in mission 
 work is that of the Church Catholic," writes a thoughtful mis- 
 sionary. " This involves, I take it, not only the unity of all 
 Christians in any given land, but also unity of all Christians 
 in all lands. The conception of as many independent Churches 
 as there are countries or nations needs the complemental idea 
 that all members are one body, permanently united in service 
 and in life." It is indisputably so. But the unity of the body 
 is the unity of many diverse members. The unity of the family 
 is the unity of its separate individuals, and the richness and 
 power of the family life depend on the perfection of individual- 
 ism in its members. The unity of humanity requires the free 
 development of all those members of humanity whose perfection 
 of separate service is to make possible the perfect character and 
 service of the whole. And those members of humanity are the 
 nations and the Churches each within its nation. The nation 
 is as divine an institution as either the family or the Church, 
 and is to have its own religious life uttered and inspired by the 
 Church. The late Bishop Whipple, presiding bishop of the 
 American Episcopal Church, set forth our principle in his auto- 
 biography : 
 
 I believe that national Churches are the normal law of 
 Church extension, and that in the past, centralisation of authority 
 beyond national bounds has been full of mischief and has brought 
 sorrow to the Church. In my sermon before the Lambeth Con- 
 
172 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ference of 1888, I said: " We meet as representatives of national 
 Churches, each with its own peculiar responsibilities to God 
 for the souls entrusted to its care, each with all the rights of 
 a national Church to adapt itself to the varying conditions of 
 human society, and each bound to preserve the order, the faith, 
 the sacraments, and the worship of the Catholic Church for 
 which it is a trustee." 
 
 In these words I voiced the sentiment of our late primate, 
 Bishop Williams, who wrote me before my departure for the 
 Lambeth Conference, expressing the hope that in all our delibera- 
 tions nothing would be done to affect the prerogatives of national 
 Churches, affirming that in the past the greatest evils which 
 have come to the Church have come through usurpation of 
 the rights of national Churches, and that it was more impor- 
 tant that we should maintain our primitive and apostolic 
 position because the Church of England was allied to the 
 State. . . . 
 
 Each national Church has its own particular difficulties grow- 
 ing out of the sad divisions among Christian men, and under 
 God it alone can solve these difficulties and heal these divi- 
 sions. There is danger that this work may be hindered, if 
 not prevented, by any appearance of the intervention of a 
 foreign Church against which unjust prejudices might be 
 aroused. 
 
 There is, thank God, a growing recognition among all Eng- 
 lish-speaking Christians that they have a common mission in 
 evangelising the world. But until the race of jingoes shall have 
 perished from the earth, I believe that an intervention of one 
 national Church in the affairs of another will certainly bring 
 sorrow. — (Whipple, " Lights and Shadows of a Long Episco- 
 pate," pp. 459-463.) 
 
 This is the ideal that we seek, the ideal of free national 
 Churches, through which alone a universal Church, rich with all 
 the varied treasure of humanity, can be realised. 
 
 The great need is for leadership, not primarily missionary 
 leadership, though the missionaries themselves meeting these 
 great problems face to face are ever seeking for this, but the 
 leadership of strong native men who, knowing their own people, 
 resting upon them, holding them fast, will accomplish among 
 them that of which the missions have dreamed and for which 
 they have toiled. 
 
MISSIONS AND THE NATIVE CHURCHES 173 
 
 And the great difficulty is not in the policy of the missions, 
 nor in the ideals of the missionaries. It is in human nature. 
 Men respond slowly to God. They were made for Him, and 
 the deep hunger is there, but they will not come. The ideal of 
 perfecting the spiritual character of a race, of realising the 
 dream of a united humanity — none other can compare with it, 
 but there are nearer interests — daily bread and games, and war 
 and trade, and the roar of the whole great world overwhelms 
 the whisper of its soul. The new Churches are made up of 
 common human beings like ourselves, but without our Christian 
 inheritance. Their leaders are men of their own ranks. Where 
 are there any others? Some of them are good and thoughtful 
 men, who share our ideals and are earnestly working to make 
 them real. Some of them are eager to reach the end without 
 travelling over the intervening road. They want self-govern- 
 ment when there is as yet nothing to govern. Their thoughts 
 are of places rather than of service. We are told of the " one 
 Christian Gautama (who) sitting under his tree to shake the 
 Asiatic world with his thoughts, would be worth all the English, 
 Scotch, or American missionaries who have laboured or died 
 for their faith since Henry Martyn or Dr. Carey." But we 
 cannot forget that " the early Church had to wait centuries for 
 its Augustines and its Chrysostoms, and to endure, in early 
 converts who took the lead, much unripe fruit. The Gnostics 
 were instances of Greek Christianity trying to cut loose from 
 the Hebrew leading strings. Monasticism was another out- 
 growth of the amalgamation of pagan and Christian ideas by 
 new converts. But the deepest depths reached by Christian 
 heretics were as nothing to the degradation Buddhism under- 
 went at the hands of new converts, who took the lead in shaping 
 its presentation to their countrymen. The Tai-pings, again, are 
 an illustration of what Christianity might become in the hands 
 of a Chinese ' Christian Gautama, sitting under a tree to shake 
 the Asiatic world with his thoughts.' It is evident that long 
 contact with the Gospel constitutes the necessary prerequisite 
 to sane and effective missionary work." — (Editorial, "Missions 
 and Heredity," The Sunday School Times, July 17, 1897.) It 
 
i 7 4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 is no short and easy task which we have undertaken, and the 
 difficulties are great, — not short, for it will take our lifetime; 
 not easy, for it will take our lives, and difficult because it is 
 great, but short and easy for God, and sure if He has us for 
 His free and unresisted working. 
 
IV 
 MISSIONS AND POLITICS 
 
IV 
 MISSIONS AND POLITICS 
 
 THE political problems of missions arise from the fact 
 that the missions are foreign, the missionaries who carry 
 them on are foreigners, and the religion which they 
 carry, claiming to be universal, is seen to be a foreign religion 
 by those to whom it is offered. Christianity in the first three 
 centuries faced grave political questions, but it did not face 
 these problems of modern missions. The early Christian mission 
 was carried on in the Roman Empire. The missionaries were 
 native Roman citizens or Roman subjects. The religion was 
 hostile to the established religion and it was at times proscribed, 
 but it was not foreign in the sense in which Christianity is 
 foreign to-day, as complicated with a foreign civilisation and 
 foreign governments; at the outset it was allowed a free course, 
 and the persecutions when they came were not continuous or 
 permanent. The issue was one of domestic politics, of the rela- 
 tion of Church and State, of the adjustment of the Christian 
 and his religion to the political order in which they belonged. 
 This is only part of the problem to-day. It is the universal 
 part to which there are many elements added by the distinctive 
 character of modern foreign missions. 
 
 The political aspects of Christian missions, accordingly, are 
 inevitable. The Boxer troubles brought them forward into the 
 thought of all the world, but they were not new. Fifty years 
 before they had been pressed on the world in connection with 
 the Indian Mutiny, and scarcely anything was said in 1900 about 
 the political status of missionaries and the political problems of 
 the movement that had not been said in 1857, or even earlier. 
 At their very inception foreign missions were so entangled with 
 
 i77 
 
178 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 politics that it almost seemed that the enterprise would be stifled 
 at its birth. The East India Company prohibited the work and 
 excluded the missionaries from its territories. Carey had to 
 begin his work under the Danish flag. Judson was shut out 
 from India by political opposition and had to change his plans 
 and settle in Burmah, and there all sorts of political per- 
 plexities beset him. For years the work in India was either 
 forbidden or discouraged or offset by the East India Company. 
 When in 1807 the missionary press at Serampore issued " An 
 address to all persons professing the Moslem faith," the Danish 
 Governor of Serampore was instantly requested by the Governor- 
 General and Council of the East India Company to interpose his 
 authority to prohibit the issue of any more copies of the pam- 
 phlet or of any publications of a similar description. Not long 
 after, the British authorities issued an order forbidding preach- 
 ing and prohibiting the missionaries from printing any books 
 " directed to the object of converting the natives to Christianity." 
 And the resolutions of the Supreme Council to this effect were 
 justified on the ground that " the obligation to suppress within 
 the limits of the Company's authority in India treatises and 
 public preachings offensive to the religious persuasions of the 
 people, were founded on considerations of necessary caution, gen- 
 eral safety, and national faith and honour." 
 
 Many non-Christian lands were entirely closed not only to 
 missionaries, but to all foreigners, such as Japan, Korea, and 
 China. When foreigners were at length admitted to these coun- 
 tries it was by political arrangements which applied equally to 
 all classes of people, and none could enter save on the basis of 
 these arrangements. To-day there are countries such as Turkey 
 where no one can enter without a passport granted by his gov- 
 ernment, and in some of these lands like Turkey and Persia 
 there are traditional political arrangements governing all native 
 Christian bodies, which bring at once all who have relations to 
 these bodies within an absolutely unavoidable tangle of political 
 questions. And the proposition to make Christian disciples in 
 these Moslem lands raises immediately, as we shall see, the most 
 acute political issues. 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 179 
 
 Even those who think that missionaries should not be re- 
 ligious propagandists, and who find in their religious zeal the 
 source of the political perplexities which arise, approve of the 
 medical and educational work of missions. But such work can 
 only be carried on in buildings and on land, the acquisition and 
 titles of which open at once the whole political issue. Treaties 
 have to be made covering these questions, registrations are re- 
 quired, rights have to be defined, and problems of taxation 
 settled. The missionary movement has to be carried on on 
 the earth, and all the problems of the earth ensnare it. 
 
 These political bearings of foreign missions are simply in- 
 evitable and inescapable. Missionaries have created some of 
 them, some unwisely, some unavoidably, but some have been 
 created for them by others, or have lain in the nature of things. 
 They are here now, at any rate, and the movement must deal 
 with them. 
 
 The Western nations will not let missions escape from their 
 political relationship. Even if they wished to escape they would 
 not be allowed to do so. Citizens are citizens, and each nation 
 cannot do otherwise than keep watch over its own. The problems 
 springing from such simple watchfulness and protection have 
 been eclipsed by the consequences of the acts of Western na- 
 tions in using missions as pretexts for invasion and aggrandise- 
 ment. A missionary pretext served Germany as the ground for 
 action in Africa, which brought on the partitionment of the con- 
 tinent, and it was Germany's action in Shantung in the seizure 
 of Kiao-Chou bay which partly caused and entirely precipitated 
 the Boxer uprising. France has been guilty of more offences, 
 though no act of hers has yielded such tragic results as Ger- 
 many's two. For damages inflicted on French missions in the 
 interior of China the French consul at Choongking demanded 
 as compensation " mining rights in six districts of Szechuen, 
 extending over six degrees of latitude, together with an in- 
 demnity of 1,200,000 taels. In May, 1898, Pere Berthollet, a 
 French missionary in Kwangsi, was murdered. Among other 
 compensations for this outrage, the French Government ob- 
 tained the right to build a railway from Pakhoi to Nanning. 
 
180 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 This concession," adds Professor Reinsch, " was sought mainly 
 in order to prevent a grant of the concession to Great Britain. 
 The manner in which religious, industrial, and political con- 
 siderations are combined in. this case produces a somewhat in- 
 congruous result." — (Reinsch, " World Politics," p. 146.) No 
 one has protested against such incongruities, such iniquities, 
 as the missionaries have done. There may have been rare indi- 
 viduals who welcomed them, but no one who loves justice, 
 much less any one who understands and accepts the missionary 
 aim can do otherwise than abhor them and lament the disastrous 
 effects upon the unity of the world and upon the missionary 
 enterprise which is its chief hope, of the lawless brigandage 
 and international crimes of Western nations. The non-Christian 
 peoples cannot be blamed for identifying missions and politics 
 and the mission cause suffers incalculably from the confusion. 
 
 The fact of the confusion immensely complicates and hinders 
 the missionary movement. The movement even without such 
 confusion, presented in its purity, would be difficult of under- 
 standing in many countries. Its unselfishness would be mis- 
 interpreted and its ideals mistrusted. But the Eastern nations 
 have not been left free to view it in its purity. The foreign 
 missions which we carry on are met by the most intricate net- 
 work of political misconceptions. An article in the Nida-Ye- 
 Vatan in Teheran in 1907, protesting against the agreement 
 between Great Britain and Russia as to spheres of influence in 
 Persia, shows how far the effects of proceedings in China reach, 
 for no wrong of this sort has ever been done in Persia: 
 
 " So then we with loud voice say to the Persians, if you 
 do not yourselves invite the Russians and the English, for a 
 thousand years they will not enter your country. The invitation 
 to them is in several ways. One is to oppress the subjects of 
 foreign countries, and it is also necessary that we make this 
 point clear. The subjects of foreign countries place themselves 
 in the region of oppression, and for the sake of advancing their 
 own country are ready to give themselves to death, as is the 
 custom of the foreign priests for the most part; and it is ne- 
 cessary that in this matter there should be special care." 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 181 
 
 Dr. Ross has described for us the frame of mind to which 
 the first missions in Manchuria had to address themselves: 
 
 At the initiation of the mission in Newchang in 1872 it was 
 discovered that the Chinese were deeply and angrily suspicious 
 of the missionary. As we read in Du Halde, this suspicion 
 became chronic in China, soon after the Jesuits had established 
 themselves in the country. Sir George Staunton, in his history 
 of Earl Macartney's Embassy, refers to the same suspicion and 
 its causes. The suspicion in Newchang was but the echo 
 of the louder and older suspicion in China proper. Ap- 
 pearances deepened the belief that the missionary had some secret 
 design not consistent with the peace or the freedom of China. 
 The merchant was there avowedly for gain. The doctor was 
 working to make a fortune. The consul was well-paid for look- 
 ing after his countrymen. But for what was the missionary 
 there? The people knew nothing of Christianity, not even the 
 most elementary truths. It was the general belief that Jesus 
 was the reigning sovereign of " foreigndom," by which generic 
 title Europe was known to the Chinese, who could not differen- 
 tiate between the various nationalities. China was the land of 
 beauty and wealth, and foreigndom the land of poverty — for if 
 not, why should foreigners leave their own land? Hence King 
 Jesus sent an army into China in 1842, and another in i860, 
 to take possession of the land of wealth and beauty. The armies 
 were victorious, but were compelled to return again, as there 
 was no party of Chinese to welcome them. Force had twice 
 proved inadequate, and therefore cunning was resorted to. 
 
 These relations of missions to politics arise not only from 
 the actions of Western nations and the ideas of Eastern peoples, 
 but from the certain consequences of missionary activity. It is 
 a revolutionary force which missions carry into the non-Chris- 
 tian nations. 
 
 It is a force which affects life. The religion of which the 
 missionaries are the custodians and propagandists, as Dr. Oswald 
 Dykes remarked at the London Conference in 1888, is " a 
 religion which appeals to man's nature through all its avenues, 
 and which aims at satisfying all its cravings and needs." This 
 religion deals with men in their activities and relationships. 
 Those who feel its spirit instantly become leaders in work and 
 
182 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 service. On September i, 1908, the Japanese Government held 
 a convention of native leaders in philanthropic enterprises, such 
 as orphanages, ex-convict homes, factory-girls' homes, rescue 
 homes, blind asylums, and many other institutions designed to 
 ameliorate the condition of the unfortunate or the depraved 
 classes of society. There were lectures on all kinds of social 
 subjects. The Christians of Japan are less than one two-hun- 
 dredths of the population. They were one-ninth of this con- 
 ference. The Buddhists outnumber the Christians in the Em- 
 pire two hundred to one; in this conference only five to one. 
 The schools through which missions spread light throw that 
 light into all recesses of life and affect the policies of nations. 
 Modern Turkey testifies to the work of Robert College at Con- 
 stantinople and the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut. Au- 
 thoritative voices have recognised the effects of missions upon 
 Chinese life and policy. " The history of modern education in 
 China," says Dr. Yen, Secretary of the Chinese Legation in 
 Washington, " covers a period of only a few years, but the 
 system has made wonderful strides in that period, and certainly 
 the work is considered by our Government and people alike as 
 the most urgent and most important we have on hand. . . . 
 A large part of the credit for initiating this wonderful educa- 
 tional movement in our country is due to missionary foresight 
 and enterprise. They were the earliest to realise the importance 
 of changing radically our obsolete system of education, and to- 
 day some of the missionary colleges may easily be classed among 
 our best. The splendid work they are doing is appreciated 
 and recognised by our Government and people. ... To me 
 the educational phase of the missionary labours seems the most 
 important and most influential. Through the school and college 
 the missionary comes in contact with the upper and ruling classes 
 of our people, and the influence he exercises over his pupils 
 in the classroom — the future leaders of the Empire — will help 
 to direct our future national policies." — (The Inter collegian, 
 February, 1909, p. 116.) And at a banquet in New York to 
 the Imperial Chinese Commissioners who visited the West in 
 1906, His Excellency Tuan Fang, recently viceroy of Chih-li, 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 183 
 
 declared : " We take pleasure this evening in bearing testimony 
 to the part taken by American missionaries in promoting the 
 progress of the Chinese people. They have borne the light of 
 Western civilisation into every nook and corner of the Empire. 
 They have rendered inestimable service to China by the la- 
 borious task of translating into the Chinese language religious 
 and scientific works of the West. They help us to bring happi- 
 ness and comfort to the poor and the suffering by the estab- 
 lishment of hospitals and schools. The awakening of China, 
 which now seems to be at hand, may be traced in no small 
 measure to the hand of the missionary. For this service you 
 will find China not ungrateful." — (New York Sun, February 3, 
 1906.) In India the work of missions among the low or outcaste 
 people is profoundly affecting the life and social organisation 
 of India. The Brahman commissioner for the state of Travan- 
 core, in the last census but one, bore testimony to this in a 
 state paper submitted to an Indian prince; and this was nearly 
 twenty years ago, before the greatest movements among these 
 people had been begun by Christianity. " The heroism of rais- 
 ing the low from the slough of debasement," said he, " is an 
 element of civilisation unknown to ancient India. But for the 
 Christian missionaries in the country, these humble orders would 
 forever remain unraised." The highest educational officer in the 
 south of India has recently set forth the same opinion of the 
 life-moulding character of the work done by Christianity in 
 the country. In a report to the Government he writes : " I 
 have frequently drawn attention to the educational progress of 
 the native Christian community. If this community pursues 
 with steadiness the present policy of its teachers, there can be 
 no question that with the immense advantages it possesses in 
 the way of educational institutions, in the course of a generation 
 it will have secured a preponderating position in all the great 
 professions, and possibly, too, in the industrial enterprises of 
 the country ; in the latter because no section of the community 
 has entered on the new departure in education with greater 
 earnestness than the native Christians." — (Quoted in Slater, 
 "Missions and Sociology," pp. 42, 51.) The testimony that 
 
i8 4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 could be cited to show the inevitable effects of Christian mis- 
 sions upon the life of men, the principles of society, and their 
 political organisation is unlimited. (See Dennis's encyclopaedic 
 work, " Christian Missions and Social Progress.") 
 
 It must suffice to add but one other illustration, namely, the 
 Sandwich Islands. The Hon. John W. Foster, formerly the 
 American Secretary of State, and a man of extensive diplomatic 
 experience and authoritative knowledge of the Far East, has told 
 the story in his history of " American Diplomacy in the Orient " : 
 
 The first missionaries were kindly received, and hopefully 
 entered upon their labours under favourable conditions. Addi- 
 tional missionaries were sent out from the Boston board, and 
 soon they were actively at work throughout the group. Such 
 great success attended their labours that within a few years 
 the larger part of the population were reported as adherents 
 of Christianity, including the king and the court. In 1843, John 
 Quincy Adams, then Chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
 Affairs of the House, made a report to Congress in which he 
 spoke of this achievement as follows: " It is a subject of cheer- 
 ing contemplation to the friends of human improvement and 
 virtue that, by the mild and gentle influence of Christian charity, 
 dispensed by humble missionaries of the Gospel unarmed with 
 secular power within the last quarter of a century, the people 
 of this group of islands have been converted from the lowest 
 abasement of idolatry to the blessings of the Christian Gospel ; 
 united under one balanced government; rallied to the fold of 
 civilisation by a written language and constitution providing 
 security for the rights of persons, property, and mind, and in- 
 vested with all the elements of right and power which can 
 entitle them to be acknowledged by their brethren of the human 
 race as a separate and independent community." The islands 
 were visited in i860 by the well-known American, Richard H. 
 Dana, who, after spending some time in investigating the work 
 of the missionaries, on his return to the United States published 
 an article upon the subject. From his high standing as a lawyer, 
 and from the fact that he was not a member of the denomina- 
 tion which wrought this great transformation in the population, 
 his statement carries great weight. The following extract is 
 taken from his article : " It is no small thing to say of the 
 missionaries of the American Board that in less than forty 
 years they have taught this whole people to read and to write, 
 to cipher and to sew. They have given them an alphabet, gram- 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 185 
 
 mar, and dictionary; preserved their language from extinction; 
 given it a literature, and translated into it the Bible and works 
 of devotion, science, entertainment, etc. They have established 
 schools, reared up native teachers, and so pressed their work 
 that now the proportion of inhabitants who can read and write 
 is greater than in New England; and whereas they found these 
 islands a nation of half-naked savages, living in the surf and on 
 the sand, eating raw fish, fighting among themselves, tyrannised 
 over by feudal chiefs, and abandoned to sensuality, they now 
 see them decently clothed, recognising the laws of marriage, 
 knowing something of accounts, going to school and public wor- 
 ship with more regularity than the people do at home ; and 
 the more elevated of them taking part in conducting the affairs 
 of the constitutional monarchy under which they live, holding 
 seats on the judicial bench and in the legislative chambers, and 
 filling posts in the local magistracies." The result of this work 
 of the missionaries was seen in the new order of things in society 
 and government. Regulations were decreed by which the out- 
 ward exhibition of licentiousness and intemperance was sought 
 to be restrained, crime and disorder punished, and the civil rights 
 of the people enforced by judicial process. The government, 
 which had before been a despotic autocracy, assumed a con- 
 stitutional form, and the kmg was aided by an organised body 
 of advisers, and later by a legislative assembly. The political 
 reorganisation was almost entirely the work of the missionaries. 
 They were not always free from mistakes in government, but 
 they always studied the good of the people and the best interests 
 of the king. Much diversity of sentiment has been expressed 
 by writers upon the effects of the labors of the Christian mission- 
 aries in the Orient, but the better judgment of candid observers 
 is in favour of their beneficial influence on the rulers and the 
 people, even aside from the religious considerations involved. — 
 (Foster, "American Diplomacy in the Orient," p. 106 ff.) 
 
 Hawaii presents an exceptional situation, for there missions 
 became naturalised as well as the Church, and the missionaries 
 and their families became a really corporate part of the new 
 life which Christianity organised. But even when missions have 
 preserved their distinctively religious character and remained 
 foreign missions, they have affected political life, that is, the 
 life of men organised in the state and in local government. They 
 have done so in the deepest, most penetrating, and pervasive 
 way by planting in men a new principle of action and relation- 
 
1 86 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ship and new ideals of personal and national duty. This was 
 the effect of the first preaching of Christianity. It struck 
 straight at the ethical principles and relationships of men. 
 " Moral regeneration and the moral life were not merely one 
 side of Christianity to Paul," says Harnack in the second edi- 
 tion of " The Mission and Expansion of Christianity," " but its 
 very fruit and goal on earth. The entire labour of the Christian 
 mission might be described as a moral enterprise, or the awaken- 
 ing and strengthening of the moral sense. Such a description 
 would not be inadequate to its full contents." Yes, provided 
 " moral " is understood in a sufficiently full sense. Christianity 
 operated at once on the individual and corporate life. It does 
 so still. It penetrates to the roots of motives, and by relating 
 men anew to God, relates them anew to their fellow-men. The 
 new Christian Churches are themselves schools of order and 
 freedom, of loyalty, but also of democracy, and the missionary 
 as he goes to and fro is alike the reminder and the hope of a 
 free and serving society. No other force operates as deeply and 
 as transformingly as his. A traveller in Western Asia, William 
 E. Baxter, M.P., testifies to what he heard on the ground in 
 Egypt and Turkey. " I found that men of all nationalities and 
 creeds emphatically and unanimously gave evidence that the col- 
 leges, schools, churches, and other institutions, conducted with 
 most conspicuous ability, with a remarkable freedom from all 
 sectarian or religious narrowness, by American missionaries, 
 were doing more for the civilisation and education of the ignorant 
 masses of the East than any other agency whatever." — (Barton, 
 "The Missionary and His Critics," p. 64.) And abundant 
 testimony is at hand from those who have themselves been 
 identified with the other agencies by which the West is trans- 
 forming the East. The words of Sir W. Mackworth Young, 
 K. C.S.I. , Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, will suffice. Speak- 
 ing at St. Michaels, Cornhill, on March 4, 1902, he said: 
 
 As a business man speaking to business men I am prepared 
 to say that the work which has been done by missionary agency 
 in India exceeds in importance all that has been done (and much 
 has been done) by the British Government in India since its 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 187 
 
 commencement. Let me take the Province which I know best. 
 I ask myself what has been the most potent influence which 
 has been working among the people since annexation fifty-four 
 years ago, and to that question I feel there is but one answer — 
 Christianity, as set forth in the lives and teaching of Christian 
 missionaries. I do not underestimate the forces which have 
 been brought to bear on the races in the Punjab by our beneficent 
 rule, by British justice and enlightenment; but I am convinced 
 that the effect on native character produced by the self-denying 
 labours of missionaries is far greater. The Punjab bears on 
 its historical roll the names of many Christian statesmen who 
 have honoured God by their lives and endeared themselves to 
 the people by their faithful work; but I venture to say that 
 if they could speak to us from the great unseen, there is not 
 one of them who would not proclaim that the work done by 
 men like French, Clark, Newton, and Forman, who went in 
 and out among the people for a whole generation or more, and 
 who preached by their lives the nobility of self-sacrifice, and 
 the lesson of love to God and man, is a higher and nobler work, 
 and more far-reaching in its consequences. 
 
 Christianity, it must be said again, is bound to wield such 
 influences as these. The true corporate life of man has to 
 stand on religious sanctions, and Christianity inevitably offers 
 itself as providing these sanctions, and the dissolution of the 
 ancient sanctions of Asia by civilisation, as well as by Chris- 
 tianity, creates a necessity which no power can prevent Chris- 
 tianity from offering itself to supply. Capable men in Asia 
 see this. " I firmly believe," said Baron Mayajima, a former 
 member of the Japanese cabinet, " we must have religion as 
 the basis of our national and personal welfare. No matter how 
 large an army or navy we may have, unless we have righteous- 
 ness as the foundation of our national existence, we shall fall 
 short of the highest success. I do not hesitate to say that we 
 must have religion for our highest welfare. And when I look 
 about me to see what religion we may best rely upon, I am 
 convinced that the religion of Christ is the one most full of 
 strength and promise for the nation." 
 
 Christianity is bound to offer itself to such needs, and in 
 doing so and in affecting life, it is certain to work with up- 
 
188 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 heaving and revolutionary effects. It is a principle of life and 
 therefore its natural utterance is by orderly development; but 
 when opposed, its inalienable nature is to gather strength and 
 to burst through at last. The Taiping rebellion shows what a 
 terrible distortion can be given to the power which is in Chris- 
 tianity. The whole history of the world reveals what collisions 
 are certain when its truth in its purity and in the partial forms 
 in which we cast it, seeks a home for itself in life. Mr. Foster 
 refers to this in his discussion of troubles in China. " The 
 teaching of Christianity," he says, " tended to the introduction 
 of ideas hostile to the existing governmental order and struck 
 at ancestor worship. The missionaries opposed such native cus- 
 toms as slavery, concubinage, support of heathen festivals, and 
 foot-binding. In fact, in China as elsewhere, and in all ages, 
 the influence of Christianity was revolutionary. Its founder 
 declared that He came ' not to send peace but a sword.' Paul, 
 the first missionary, when he declared ' the Gospel is the power 
 of God,' used the Greek word which has been anglicised to 
 designate the most powerful of all modern explosives — dynamite. 
 If the introduction of Christianity into the little island of Britain 
 was attended with bloodshed and disorder for four hundred 
 years, it should not be regarded as strange that in the mighty 
 Empire of the East its propagation has been marked by civil 
 commotion." — (Foster, "American Diplomacy in the Orient," 
 
 P- 4H-) 
 
 Even now we have not exhausted the sources of the political 
 entanglement of the missionary enterprise. The movement in 
 the past has not been able to keep itself free from actual political 
 service. Its religious principle has produced political results, bu' 
 also its agents have engaged in unmistakable political activity. 
 They have sought to determine the political destinies of lands and 
 peoples. One of the many notable instances was John Mackenzie 
 of South Africa, who toiled in the interest of the native peoples 
 and of the cause of civilisation, to secure what he believed was 
 the best sovereignty for large areas of southern Africa. He not 
 only wrought at home in England to this end, but returned to 
 Africa with a civil appointment as administrator. His son 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 189 
 
 draws a picture of his political activity at home and quotes the 
 judgment of Mr. W. T. Stead: 
 
 There seemed to be no limit to his activity. He interviewed 
 cabinet Ministers, he buttonholed editors, he haunted the lobby 
 of the House of Commons. He saw every one who had any 
 influence in the matter, and compassed sea and land if by any 
 means he might make one proselyte. When the Transvaal dele- 
 gates came, they imagined that they had only to come and see, 
 and conquer. If they had come nine months earlier their antici- 
 pations might have been fulfilled. When they arrived, however, 
 it was too late. Mr. Mackenzie had been beforehand with them, 
 and to their unconcealed chagrin, they found that the public 
 would not tolerate their attempt to erect a Boer barrier across 
 the great trade route from the Cape to Central Africa. Bechu- 
 analand was saved, and much more than Bechuanaland. . . . 
 Mr. Mackenzie secured the favourable verdict of the Govern- 
 ment and of public opinion, not merely for the administration 
 of Bechuanaland, but for the adoption of that far-reaching native 
 policy which he has labelled the territorial system. . . . With- 
 out forgetting for a moment the old warning against boasting 
 when donning our armour, we may safely say that we bid Mr. 
 Mackenzie God-speed, with every confidence that hereafter he 
 will live in the annals of our empire as the man who, at a grave 
 crisis, saved Africa for England. — (Mackenzie, " Mackenzie of 
 South Africa," p. 310.) 
 
 At the Brussels Conference, in 1889-90, missionaries were 
 among the active agitators in behalf of the limitation of the 
 liquor traffic in Africa and in the fight against the slave trade 
 and the importation of firearms and intoxicants into the South 
 Sea Islands, and in the modern war against the opium traffic, 
 they have been the leaders. David Livingstone's name will ever 
 stand first among those who wrought for the social and political 
 redemption of Africa. John G. Paton, who eschewed all political 
 confusion of his mission, was the leading spirit in protecting 
 the savage people of the Pacific. And Bishop Brent, a mis- 
 sionary in the Philippines, was Chairman of the International 
 Conference on the opium traffic held in Shanghai, February, 
 1909. 
 
 Oftentimes political service has been imposed upon mission- 
 
igo CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 aries by their home governments, in circumstances where their 
 governments would have been impotent without them, and 
 where it would have been a disloyalty to civilisation and to 
 humanity for them to refuse their aid. Caleb Cushing, later 
 Attorney-General of the United States, who was sent to China 
 in 1844, has put on record his estimate of the services of Ameri- 
 can missionaries to the representatives of the United States in 
 the negotiation with China of the first treaties: 
 
 In the late negotiations with China, the most important, not 
 to say indispensable service, was derived from American mis- 
 sionaries, and more especially from Dr. Bridgman and Dr. 
 Parker. They possessed the rare qualification of understanding 
 the Chinese language, which enabled them to act as interpreters 
 to the legation ; their intimate knowledge of China and the 
 Chinese made them invaluable as advisers, and their high char- 
 acter contributed to give weight and moral strength to the mis- 
 sion, and while their co-operation with me was thus of eminent 
 utility to the United States, it will prove, I trust, not less useful 
 to the general cause of humanity and of religion in the East. 
 But the particular service rendered by the American missionaries 
 in this case is but one of a great class of facts appertaining to 
 the whole body of Christian missionaries in China. In the first 
 place, other legations to China have been equally dependent on 
 the Christian missionaries for the means of intercourse with the 
 Chinese government, of which well-known examples occur in 
 the history of the successive British embassies of Lord Macart- 
 ney, Lord Amherst, and Sir Henry Pottinger. In the second 
 place, the great bulk of the general information we possess in 
 regard to China, and nearly the whole of the primary philological 
 information concerning the two great languages of the Chinese 
 empire, namely, the Chinese and the Manchu, are derived through 
 the missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant. (Here follows 
 a long list of philological works, prepared by different mission- 
 aries.) In thus briefly answering your enquiry on a single point 
 in the history of Christian missions, namely, their incidental 
 usefulness, permit me to add that, eminently great as this their 
 incidental utility has been, it is but a small point, comparatively, 
 among the great and good deeds of the religious missionaries 
 in the East. There is not a nobler nor a more deeply interesting 
 chapter than this in the history of human courage, intellect, self- 
 sacrifice, greatness, and virtue; and it remains yet to be written 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 191 
 
 in a manner worthy of the dignity of the subject, and of its 
 relations to civilisation and government, as well as to the Chris- 
 tian Church. — (Bridgman, "The Missionary Pioneer," pp. 132- 
 
 134.) 
 
 Mr. Foster has borne striking testimony to the services ren- 
 dered later to America and the world, most of all the Empire of 
 Japan, by S. Wells Williams, a missionary of the American 
 Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions : 
 
 One of the best known of Americans in China was Dr. S. 
 Wells Williams. He mastered that most difficult language, and 
 came to be recognised as the first scholar and linguist of all 
 the foreign residents. When our Government determined to 
 force an entrance into Japan, which had been hermetically closed 
 against all foreigners for centuries, Commodore Perry was des- 
 patched with a formidable fleet, and both America and Europe 
 were laid under tribute to furnish men of learning and fitness 
 to make the expedition a success. But before Commodore Perry 
 could venture on the first diplomatic step in his work, he had 
 to repair with his fleet to Canton to take on board Dr. Williams 
 as his interpreter and adviser ; and the narrative which the Com- 
 modore has left of his expedition shows that in securing inter- 
 course with the authorities and in the details of treaty negotia- 
 tions, Dr. Williams was his main support, and to him, more 
 than to any other person, was the Commodore indebted for the 
 complete success of his expedition, which has brought so much 
 fame to American diplomacy and which has given to the United 
 States such prominence in the affairs of the Far East. 
 
 When the allied British and French fleets went to Tientsin 
 in 1858 to exact treaties from China, the American Minister 
 took with him Dr. Williams as his counsellor and interpreter, 
 and he played a very important part in those negotiations. The 
 Minister reported to his Government : " I could not but for this 
 aid have advanced a step in discharge of my duties." Years 
 afterwards, when Dr. Williams was leaving China to return 
 to America to spend the evening of his life, the Secretary of 
 State, Mr. Fish, wrote him : " Above all, the Christian world 
 will not forget that to you more than to any other man is due 
 the insertion in our treaty with China of the liberal provision 
 for the toleration of the Christian religion." For many years 
 after that event the Doctor continued as the trusted adviser of 
 our Government in all Chinese questions. He left as a monu- 
 
192 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ment to his industry and learning the Chinese Dictionary, and 
 he gave to the world in his " Middle Kingdom " the most com- 
 plete work on China, which is to this day the standard authority 
 on that country. 
 
 Another person took a prominent part as the associate of 
 Dr. Williams in the Tientsin expedition and negotiations of 
 1858 — Dr. W. A. P. Martin, who went to that country as a 
 missionary of the Presbyterian Church of the United States. He 
 became proficient in the Chinese language and literature, and 
 was called into the service of the Imperial Government. For 
 thirty years he held the post of the head of the Chinese educa- 
 tional system in the foreign course of study, and has acted as 
 an adviser to its Foreign Office in international affairs. He has 
 translated into Chinese our own standard author on international 
 law, Wheaton, and other Western publicists. He has been of 
 inestimable service to the Imperial Government, and has been 
 characterised by Minister Denby as " the foremost American in 
 China." 
 
 Such are some of the services which Christian missionaries 
 have rendered to the Western nations and to China in their 
 political and diplomatic relations. It is not too much to say 
 that up to the middle of the last century the governments of 
 Europe and America were almost entirely dependent upon the 
 missionaries for the direct conduct of their intercourse with 
 Chinese officials. — (Foster, " The Relation of Diplomacy to For- 
 eign Missions," pp. 13-15.) 
 
 This demand for diplomatic service did not come from the 
 Western nations only. Japan besought the assistance of Ver- 
 beck, and when the United States Government's treaty with 
 Siam was negotiated in 1856, Dr. Wood of the Embassy, wrote 
 that " the unselfish kindness of the American missionaries, their 
 patience, sincerity, and faithfulness, have won the confidence 
 and esteem of the natives, and in some degree transferred those 
 sentiments to the nation represented by the missionary and pre- 
 pared the way for the free and national intercourse now com- 
 mencing. It was very evident that much of the apprehension 
 they felt in taking upon themselves the responsibilities of a 
 treaty with us would be diminished if they could have the Rev. 
 Mr. Mattoon as the first United States Consul to set the treaty 
 in motion." In 1871, the Regent of Siam frankly told Mr. 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 193 
 
 Seward, the United States Consul-General at Shanghai, " Siam 
 has not been disciplined by English and French guns as China 
 has, but the country has been opened by missionaries." The 
 great districts of Uganda and Nyassa in Africa were practically 
 secured to Great Britain by the missionaries of the Church of 
 England and the Scotch Presbyterians. When the East Africa 
 Company was on the point of giving up Uganda, which would prob- 
 ably have involved its loss to Great Britain, the Church Missionary 
 Society raised £15,000 of the £40,000 needed to maintain the Com- 
 pany's hold for one year until the British Government could be 
 induced to take it over. Of the work of the Scotch Presbyterians 
 in Nyassaland, Joseph Thomson, the traveller, bears testimony 
 after his visit in 1879. " Where international effort has failed," 
 he said, " an unassuming mission, supported only by a small 
 section of the British people, has been quietly and unostenta- 
 tiously, but most successfully realising in its own district the 
 entire programme of the Brussels Conference. I refer to the 
 Livingstonia Mission of the Free Church of Scotland. This 
 mission has proved itself, in every sense of the word, a civilising 
 centre. By it slavery has been stopped, desolating wars put an 
 end to, and peace and security given to a wide area of the 
 country." The Church of Scotland mission at Blantyre has 
 rendered similar service. 
 
 The considerations which we have now reviewed bring clearly 
 before us the entanglement of missions and politics, and raise 
 some vital questions. Is this entanglement consistent with the 
 aim of the missionary movement? Does it make Christ known 
 or obscure Him? Is it helpful to the effort to make men His 
 true disciples and to domesticate the Christian Church as a 
 spiritual force in non-Christian lands? Is such an entangle- 
 ment unavoidable? If it is, are any of its results evil? If 
 they are, how can they be limited in their operation? To put 
 the questions more concretely, should Christians seek to preach 
 only what will not create disturbance or upheaval, heeding the 
 counsel of an article in The Empire Review some years ago on 
 " The State and Christian Missions," in which missionaries 
 were wisely warned against the assumption that they are justi- 
 
194 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 fied in preaching new and unfamiliar truths at all times and 
 among all people, without regard to consequences, and against 
 ignoring the sense of historical perspective or the law of accom- 
 modation to things as they are ? This is " to forget the example of 
 Christ and to set the character of His missionaries in a light 
 in which it will neither deserve nor command the respect of 
 mankind." More concretely still, are the missionaries to try 
 to convert Mohammedans? If they do this in Mohammedan 
 lands they will create more disturbance than they will by preach- 
 ing new and unfamiliar truth in Japan? And even if they 
 convert high-caste Hindus in mission schools in India, there will 
 be trouble. Should missionaries avoid this? Shall they ever 
 apply Christianity to life or merely preach it as a personal 
 philosophy or theory of things as they ought to be, not to be 
 pressed too far to the disturbance of things as they are? Shall 
 they avoid all collision with native customs and accept in silence 
 all wrongs which they behold, including the wrongs done in the 
 name of Christ or in the name of institutions which compromise 
 Him? Shall they refrain from all political service of any sort 
 whatever, refusing to give help of any kind to governments of 
 either East or West? Shall they divorce missions absolutely 
 from politics; that is, from the organised civil life of man, 
 and obey the law of accommodation to things as they are? 
 Doing otherwise, will they be forgetting the example of Christ 
 and the true character of Christianity? 
 
 Ask the men who ruled the Jewish nation in the day of 
 Christ how they regarded Him and His doctrine, that fearless 
 Teacher and that piercing message which, as they clearly saw, 
 imperilled all their ideals for the nation. Ask the Roman Em- 
 perors who saw in the new faith an imperial power which doomed 
 the ancient order and which in due time revolutionised the 
 state. Christianity was not, and was never meant to be, a nullity, 
 a reaffirmation of existing orders. It turned the world upside 
 down, and is needed for the same upheaving transformation 
 of life to-day. The missionary cannot be faithful to his aim 
 without producing results. The very troubles which sometimes 
 follow are a proof that he has earnestly sought to attain his 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 195 
 
 aim and that the aim was good. If no trouble followed, it 
 would be a proof that the man and his mission were innocuous 
 and unnecessary. " So far from the troubles in China being 
 an argument against missions, they are distinctly an argument 
 for them," says the Shanghai Mercury (August 6, 1900), which 
 is hot a missionary organ ; " and," it adds, " an overwhelm- 
 ingly powerful argument. The evils which flourish so abun- 
 dantly among the Chinese people, and which give opportunity 
 to the designing, unscrupulous, and greedy mandarins, are evils 
 which nothing can effectively cure in the absence of the Chris- 
 tian motive and the Christian ethic." 
 
 There is a confusion of missions with politics that is dis- 
 astrous. The very relationship between the two, which we have 
 seen to be inevitable, is freighted with intricate problems. But 
 all those relationships which are demanded or allowed by the 
 missionary aim will work out good, and the perplexities which 
 they involve are the unavoidable perplexities of life and progress, 
 perplexities which are less and less perilous than the opiate 
 issues of a stagnant and undisturbed order. The practical ques- 
 tions which we face are questions not of principle, but of 
 method, of judgment in the application of principle. In all 
 such questions men may err. Often we only know by the far-off 
 result whether the judgment was right or not. But the best 
 that we can do is simply to do the best that we can. And men 
 have never gone far astray who realised what the missionary 
 aim was, and who, walking with Christ, determined in the guid- 
 ing light of His countenance what it was for which that aim 
 called. 
 
 We are told, however, that the relation of missions to politics 
 is a question not of judgment in the application of a principle 
 to conditions, but of principle itself. The missionary movement, 
 it is said, has no civil standing. The missionary is a self- 
 expatriated man, the character of whose errand has deprived 
 him of political rights. His mission is an intrusion and an 
 impertinence. All other forms of national intercourse are legiti- 
 mate, even the trade in opium with China and in dressed pork 
 with Turkey, and in Russian brandy and French wine with 
 
i 9 6 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Persia. It is right to fight for the extension or preservation 
 of such trade and to instruct consular agents to investigate 
 the probable markets for beer, for patent alcoholic medicines, 
 for any reputable article of commerce. Western brothels and 
 saloons are entitled to protection, and the commercial pirate 
 must be backed against the heathen, and the judge advocate 
 who thinks otherwise must be replaced with a man of under- 
 standing. This is the baser form of the still too common opinion. 
 Others say that the missionaries cannot carry on their work 
 without disturbance, that this disturbance involves their Gov- 
 ernment, and that neither the character nor the results of the 
 work warrant the trouble to which the Government is put. The 
 Hon. John Sherman, when Chairman of the Senate Committee 
 on Foreign Affairs, put this view quite bluntly in a letter to 
 Professor A. D. G. Hamlin : " I sympathise with you entirely 
 in your view of Turkey," he wrote, " and its atrocious persecu- 
 tion of Christians, and would be glad to provide some suitable 
 remedy; but what can we do? If our citizens go to a far 
 distant country, semi-civilised and bitterly opposed to their 
 movements, we cannot follow them there and protect them." 
 — (New York Independent, April 30, 1896.) Others who recog- 
 nise that a nation must care for its citizens think that the move- 
 ments of the missionaries should be politically limited. A Lon- 
 don newspaper set forth a simple plan of this sort at the time 
 of the Boxer troubles. " Since there is no prospect of altering 
 the mass of Chinese life, which has varied little, if at all, since 
 a time in which Christianity only existed as implied in the 
 prophecies, would it not be better to stop the missionary enter- 
 prise altogether?" This was the way this forgotten writer of 
 a day put his question about a movement which all the nations 
 of the earth cannot stop. " It would be easy to do so," he 
 flowed on, " if the Powers would only agree. We allow, of 
 course, that it would be difficult to get them to combine for 
 the purpose, but if any good is to be done a public opinion must 
 be formed, and one can only try. As for the method, it is 
 easily defined. If it were settled, as it easily might be, by treaty, 
 that no European was allowed to enter China without a pass- 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 197 
 
 port, and that none should be issued except to those who gave 
 guarantees that they were engaged in commercial or industrial 
 business only, the trouble would cease at once. If any mission- 
 ary were to persist in going up country, the Chinese authorities 
 would be entitled to arrest him and bring him back to the nearest 
 treaty port." — (St. James Gazette, September 13, 1900.) 
 
 Still others who think that the missionary has a right to 
 propagate his religion all over the world believe that he should 
 not appeal to what Dr. Cust loved to call " the arm of the flesh," 
 or ever enjoy the physical protection of his Government. This 
 view was set forth in the resolution of the Universal Peace 
 Congress in Glasgow in 1902. One of the commissions pre- 
 sented the following proposal adopted for submission to the 
 congress : 
 
 I. — Considering that even if every man has the right to en- 
 deavour to induce his fellow-men to share his convictions, he 
 who undertakes such a task must expect opposition, and must 
 expect resistance to be particularly active when, as in the case 
 of the missionaries, he undertakes to inculcate in races belonging 
 to civilisations very different from his own, ideas and convictions 
 in absolute opposition to theirs ; considering that the missionaries 
 face these dangers with a perfect knowledge of all that is in- 
 volved, and that they ought to consider the opportunity of suffer- 
 ing for their faith as among the most glorious of their rewards ; 
 considering that even though homage may be rendered to the 
 courage and sincerity of these men, it can nevertheless not be 
 admitted that the propaganda of their religious ideas should have, 
 even as its indirect consequence, the exposure of their country 
 to the evils of war, and the endangering of the life of thousands 
 of their compatriots who do not perhaps share their convictions, 
 and are not disposed to make the same sacrifices ; considering 
 that even if the civilised nations are under obligation to protect 
 such of their subjects as may reside in a foreign land, it is only 
 that they themselves abstain from offending the prejudices, or 
 attacking the convictions of the peoples whose hospitality they 
 receive ; considering that it is the duty of missionaries to abstain 
 from all intemperate zeal, and on the contrary to exercise the 
 tact, prudence, and moderation which would be suggested to them 
 both by the precepts of their religion and the care for their 
 personal interest; 
 
i 9 8 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The Congress is of opinion that the Powers should rigorously 
 abstain from all armed intervention intended to protect, succour 
 or avenge the missionaries of their nationality who have volun- 
 tarily exposed themselves to the hostility or the resentment of 
 peoples of an absolutely different civilisation. 
 
 II. — Considering that in certain countries, and notably in the 
 Far East, some subjects of the non-Christian Powers who join 
 one of the Christian Churches take advantage thereof to claim 
 the position of diplomatic protection from one of the nations 
 holding the Christian Faith, and thus to escape the authority 
 of their own Government; 
 
 Considering that the Christian nations cannot admit these 
 claims without injuring the sovereign rights which even non- 
 Christian Powers have incontestably over their own subjects, 
 of whatever religion they may be, and without, as a consequence, 
 exposing themselves to the danger of exciting the legitimate 
 susceptibilities of these Powers ; 
 
 The Congress is of opinion that the Christian nations should 
 strictly abstain from claiming, or even admitting, their diplomatic 
 protection of the subjects of the non-Christian Powers who may 
 have joined either of the Christian Churches. 
 
 On the basis of this proposal, the following resolution was 
 adopted : 
 
 The Congress, recognising that it is the duty of every country 
 to protect its own citizens who reside abroad, and also citizens 
 of other countries residing within its borders, while they respect 
 the law; 
 
 Recognising also that homage should be rendered to the 
 courage and sincerity of missionaries who sacrifice comfort, and 
 sometimes life, for the promotion of their faith ; and that every 
 man has the right to endeavour to induce others to share his 
 convictions ; 
 
 The Congress nevertheless earnestly recommends that mis- 
 sionaries should rigorously abstain from all action which can 
 even indirectly expose their country to war; should refrain from 
 appealing to their governments to avenge their wrongs ; and 
 should rely on the well-recognised power of disinterested effort, 
 and not upon military force, which must always be a hindrance 
 to their service. 
 
 Very true, but when have missionaries exposed their country 
 to war? When have missionaries appealed to governments to 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 199 
 
 avenge their wrongs? When have they sought to rely on military 
 force ? Speaking for the Protestant missions of America, I do not 
 know. I believe that never in their history have the foreign 
 missionaries sent out from America exposed their country to 
 war, appealed to their Government to avenge their wrongs, 
 or sought to rely on military force. The missionary organisa- 
 tions may have asked their Government to maintain treaty rights 
 or to secure the establishment of justice or to protect lives, but 
 never by the use of force, and always in the interest of foreigners 
 and natives alike who suffer equally from injustice and wrong- 
 doing. The Resolutions of the Glasgow Peace Conference repre- 
 sent the excitement over false issues into which good people who 
 do not know the facts or who generalise from such national sets 
 of facts as the French and German Roman Catholic missions may 
 present, too easily stir themselves. 
 
 The simple, practical questions are first: What are the duties 
 of governments toward missionaries? and, second: What are the 
 duties of missionaries with reference to those duties of govern- 
 ments toward them which constitute their rights? 
 
 Now, with reference to the first of these questions, there 
 have not been wanting such statesmen as John Sherman, who 
 held that the missionary had no right to political protection, 
 and that his Government had no such duty toward him, that 
 his special errand annulled his political rights. And when such 
 sober and responsible statesmen have taken this view, it is not 
 to be wondered at that other men and newspapers, which were 
 neither sober nor responsible, should look at the matter in the 
 same light. And among sober and responsible men who could 
 not take Mr. Sherman's view there have still been many who 
 felt annoyed at the missionary enterprise, and who wished that 
 governments might be spared the trouble occasioned by it. Lord 
 Salisbury said there were some such in the British Foreign 
 Office. It was in a speech at the Bi-Centenary of the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel, January 19, 1900, in which, 
 with the sincerity and missionary sympathy of a Christian man, 
 he dealt with this fundamental problem of the relation of mis- 
 sions and politics, and recognised both the duty of govern- 
 
200 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ments and the great question of duty which missions had to 
 face: 
 
 We owe to this great Society our assistance not only on account 
 of those high and generous motives to which your president 
 appealed, but because the civilisation which it is in a small degree 
 our duty to serve, is not an unmixed blessing to this and other 
 missionary societies. We owe you assistance because we are not 
 able to avoid bringing a certain impediment to your work. I 
 do not merely allude to the example which is set by Christian 
 or so-called Christian men in other lands. They are open to 
 great temptations. They have great difficulties to contend with. 
 It may well be that there the spectacle of what they are doing 
 and the lives they are living is not always calculated to further 
 the work of missionary societies. But that is only partially the 
 case. I believe that over the vast area of the British Empire 
 the mass of those who draw their origin and receive their teach- 
 ing from these shores are no unworthy members of the religious 
 bodies to which they belong. 
 
 Yet we must recognise the difficulties which it is not in our 
 power to avoid placing in the path of missionary societies. The 
 difficulty results not so much from any lack on our part of desire 
 to assist them, but because our very assistance carries with it 
 certain drawbacks. We are startled when we read the history 
 of vast and sudden conversions in old time and of the tremendous 
 moral and spiritual power which seemed to sweep over a race 
 or over a country in obedience to the preachings of the early 
 missionaries of Christianity, and we wonder whether it will ever 
 be that phenomena of that striking character will take place in 
 our own time. But we must recognise that the position is en- 
 tirely different. In the Church of old time great evangelists 
 went forth to their work, exposed themselves to fearful dangers, 
 and suffered all the terrors that the world could inflict in support 
 of the doctrines which they preached and the morality which 
 they practised. There was no doubt at the same time a corrupt 
 society calling itself by their name. But, as your president has 
 pointed out to you, the means of communication were not active, 
 and were not as they are now, and things might go on without 
 attracting the attention of those who listened to the teaching 
 of the earlier teachers or diminishing the value of their work. 
 Now things are considerably altered, and that very increase in 
 the means of communication, that very augmentation of the 
 power of opinion to affect opinion, and of man to affect man by 
 the mere conquests that we have achieved in the material do- 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 201 
 
 main; those very conquests, while undoubtedly they are, as the 
 Archbishop said, an invitation for Providence to take advantage 
 of the means of spreading the Gospel, are also a means by which 
 the lives of many and the acts of many, which are not wholly 
 consistent with the ideal which is preached in the pulpit, or read 
 in the Holy Book, are brought home to the knowledge of the 
 vast nations which we seek to address. That is one of the great 
 difficulties with which we have to contend, and that is one reason 
 why this Society and all missionary societies appeal with un- 
 doubted force and with the right to have their appeal considered 
 — that as our civilisation in its measure tends to hamper mis- 
 sionary efforts, so in its nobler manifestations and its more 
 powerful efforts that civilisation, represented by our assistance, 
 shall push forward to its ultimate victory the cause to which 
 you are devoted. 
 
 But this is not the point on which it seems to me the great 
 difficulty of our present time arises. If an evangelist or an 
 apostle, a Boniface or a Columba, preached in the Middle Ages 
 he faced the difficulties, he underwent the martyrdom, and he 
 braved the torments to which he was exposed, and the whole of 
 the great moral and spiritual influence of his self-devotion acted 
 without hindrance upon the people whom he addressed. But now 
 if a Boniface or a Columba is exposed to these martyrdoms the 
 result is an appeal to the Consul and the mission of a gunboat, 
 and, unfortunately, though that cannot be helped, though it is 
 a blame to nobody, though it is far, indeed, from being a blame 
 to our devoted missionaries, though I cannot admit that it is 
 a blame to the secular Government by whom their end is avenged, 
 still it does diminish the purely spiritual aspect and action of 
 Christian teaching. It does give to men an opportunity and 
 a temptation to attach a different meaning to that teaching and 
 to suspect it of objects which are far, indeed, away from the 
 thoughts of those who urge it. . . . 
 
 Remember that in old times if an evangelist gave himself up 
 to martyrdom he derived the crown for which he looked, and 
 he did not injure the cause that he was preaching or those per- 
 sons whose interest he represented. But now any man who so 
 conducts himself that his zeal leads to martyrdom, at least incurs 
 this danger — that he will expose the lives of those to whom he 
 is preaching, and — what is probably in the material results even 
 worse — that he will cause the shedding of the blood of his own 
 countrymen, the soldiers and the sailors by whom his country- 
 men are defended, and who will be forced for the sake of their 
 fellow-countrymen and in order to avoid similar, or perhaps even 
 
202 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 worse, outrages in the future, to enter upon military and hostile 
 proceedings in order to avenge their death and prevent the out- 
 rages being repeated. It is a terrible dilemma. They cannot 
 renounce, they cannot abandon, they cannot even be lukewarm 
 in the commission which they have received. On the other hand, 
 there is a real danger that if they do not observe the utmost 
 caution, they may cause the loss of many, many lives, and they 
 may attach to the religion which they desire to preach the dis- 
 credit of being an instrument of territorial greed and a weapon 
 of that warfare which one secular Power wages against another. 
 I have urged what is not a pleasant topic, because I feel that it 
 is one that ought to sink deep into the hearts of those who 
 manage Missions. They run the risk, not in their own lives, 
 of producing terrible events on a gigantic scale, because their 
 position is closely mixed up with that of the secular Powers, and 
 because the secular Powers, in justice to their own subjects, are 
 unable to allow their death to go unavenged. — (Church Mis- 
 sionary Intelligencer, July, 1900, pp. 547-549.) 
 
 On the question of the missionaries' relations to their gov- 
 ernments, Professor Coolidge of Harvard University has ex- 
 pressed in his book on " The United States as a World Power " 
 what many would regard as the tolerant and large-minded view 
 of the unprejudiced man: 
 
 To the diplomat and to the consul, unless they happen to 
 have personal sympathy with efforts to spread Christianity, the 
 missionaries appear chiefly to be makers of endless trouble. 
 Without passing a summary judgment on so many-sided a con- 
 troversy, we can understand the point of view of those who 
 declare that the coming of strangers to convert a people of ancient 
 civilisation from long-inherited beliefs with which they are satis- 
 fied, is an impertinence in itself; that the missionaries frequently 
 lack tact, and by their meddlesomeness get into unnecessary diffi- 
 culties, and that what good they have accomplished has been 
 incommensurate with the money spent in doing it. All this may 
 be more or less true, but unprejudiced observers bear witness 
 that, notwithstanding the jibes of the foreign settlements about 
 the missionaries' comfortable mode of life, the latter often set 
 a fine example of unselfishness ; that they have alleviated much 
 suffering, and in many cases they have done great good to in- 
 dividuals if not to nations as a whole. They have also more 
 than once been helpful to their own government, and they have 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 203 
 
 promoted civilisation by adding to our knowledge of the lands 
 where they have worked, often at the price of untold hardships 
 and perils, and sometimes at the cost of their lives. Finally, it 
 should be noted that at the present day the Protestant missionary 
 of the older type, whose single idea was that of preaching the 
 Gospel to the recalcitrant heathen in season and out of season, 
 is dying out. In his place we find the practical, efficient repre- 
 sentative of Christianity, who gives more time to looking after 
 the material wants of his flock, and in particular to the cure of 
 their diseases, than he does to direct propaganda. . . . 
 
 Whatever may be the personal opinions of the official repre- 
 sentatives of the United States in the Far East they were obliged 
 to protect their missionary fellow-citizens in the rights which 
 treaties had accorded to them. (p. 3286°.) 
 
 Professor Coolidge recognises the simple fact that the mis- 
 sionary has a standing as a citizen, and that where he is at 
 work he is at work as a man; i.e., as a man with a country 
 which has authority over him and responsibility for him. This 
 is the fundamental fact. The missionary is a citizen engaged 
 in a recognised and legitimate activity, and as such he has 
 the right to attend to his business and his Government has the 
 duty to protect him in it. " There seems to be in a part of 
 the public press of our country," said Mr. Foster at the time 
 of the Chinese riots in 1895, " a misconception of the ground 
 upon which our Government bases its intervention on account 
 of these riots. It is not because we are a Christian country 
 and are seeking to support a Christian propagandism in China. 
 It is simply because the people in whose behalf our Govern- 
 ment intervenes are American citizens, pursuing a vocation 
 guaranteed by treaty and permitted by Chinese law. It should 
 also be borne in mind that the Imperial Government has re- 
 peatedly recognised the salutary influence of Christian missions 
 in their moral tendencies, their educational and medical work, 
 and their charities. The American missionary has the same 
 right to go into all parts of the Chinese Empire and preach 
 and teach in the name of his Master as the American merchant 
 has to carry on his trade with South America or the Islands of 
 the Pacific, and he has the same right to invoke the protection 
 
20 4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 of his Government when his lawful vocation is unduly obstructed 
 or his life or property put in peril."— (New York Sun, Septem- 
 ber 9, 1895.) 
 
 Any distinction between missionaries and other classes of 
 citizens is impossible. Some have proposed that the rights 
 recognised in the case of others should be denied to missionaries. 
 But it would not be practicable, as the Spectator once remarked, 
 to classify our citizens who go abroad into " burnable " and " un- 
 burnable," to distinguish to the easy recognition of each Chinese 
 or Turkish villager those Scotchmen who might with propriety be 
 murdered and their homes ravished from those whom the British 
 Government was unwilling to surrender to such treatment. In- 
 deed, if distinctions are to be made, we have some representatives 
 abroad whose expulsion from the lands where they have gone 
 would be quite justifiable, but all who are there in legitimate 
 business and on a legitimate basis must be equally protected in 
 their rights. 
 
 I am not raising yet the question whether a missionary should 
 have any political rights, but am only pointing out that the 
 fact is that he does have in every land where he is at work 
 rights already acknowledged by his Government, and the Gov- 
 ernment under which he works. Some of these rights have 
 grown up from long usage, and some of them have been em- 
 bodied in treaty stipulations. In China his work is specially 
 described and authorised. Article XIV of the last American 
 Treaty (1903) reads: 
 
 The principles of the Christian religion, as professed by the 
 Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches, are recognised as 
 teaching men to do good and to do to others as they would 
 have others do to them. Those who quietly profess and teach 
 these doctrines shall not be harassed or persecuted on account 
 of their faith. Any person, whether citizen of the United States 
 or Chinese convert, who, according to these tenets, peaceably 
 teaches and practises the principles of Christianity, shall in no 
 case be interfered with or molested therefor. No restrictions 
 shall be placed on Chinese joining Christian Churches. Con- 
 verts and non-converts, being Chinese subjects, shall alike con- 
 form to the laws of China; and shall pay due respect to those 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 205 
 
 in authority, living together in peace and amity ; and the fact 
 of being converts shall not protect them from the consequences 
 of any offence they may have committed before or may commit 
 after their admission into the Church, or exempt them from 
 paying legal taxes levied on Chinese subjects generally, except 
 taxes levied and contributions for the support of religious cus- 
 toms and practices contrary to their faith. Missionaries shall 
 not interfere with the exercise by the native authorities of their 
 jurisdiction over Chinese subjects; nor shall the native authori- 
 ties make any distinction between converts and non-converts, 
 but shall administer the laws without partiality so that both 
 classes can live in peace. 
 
 Missionary societies of the United States shall be permitted 
 to rent and to lease in perpetuity, as the property for such 
 societies, buildings, or lands in all parts of the Empire for 
 missionary purposes, and, after the title deeds have been found 
 in order and duly stamped by the local authorities, to erect such 
 suitable buildings as may be required for carrying on their good 
 work. 
 
 There can be no question that the missionary has political 
 rights under this treaty. And even in Turkey his presence and 
 work are covered by elaborate capitulations and international 
 agreements. The work of the American missionaries there, Mr. 
 Bayard declared when Secretary of State, " rests on usage 
 amounting from duration and the incidents assigned to it by 
 law, to a charter." — (Dwight, " Treaty Rights of American 
 Missionaries in Turkey.") 
 
 But there are some who admit that the missionary enterprise 
 does have a legal status who nevertheless think that it ought 
 not to have, and that governments should disavow any re- 
 sponsibility for the protection of missionary agents. Before 
 we examine some of the arguments for this view, it is well 
 to observe that the abrogation of an existing right does not 
 leave matters where they would be if the right had never been 
 recognised. If ignored by governments from the beginning 
 the missionary enterprise would have made its own place, and 
 that place would not be less influential than it is, but its position 
 in that case would not be the position into which it would fall 
 if all the historical development of the last century as affecting 
 
206 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 the relation of missions and politics were to be annulled. To 
 say to China and Turkey to-day : " All rights of missionaries 
 are waived by Great Britain and America ; you can do what 
 you please with them," is not to leave the missionaries where 
 they would be if governments had never concerned themselves 
 with them, and if they had always been and were entirely dis- 
 sociated from all political relationships. 
 
 And what are the reasons proposed for such a course? It 
 is said that the missionary is not like other foreigners, that 
 he is a disturber and source of sedition, that the people do not 
 want him, but are desirous of receiving the trader, that religion 
 and its activities are not, like trade, a matter of government 
 cognisance. The missionary, thank God, is different from some 
 foreigners, but the difference between him and other decent 
 foreigners is much less than the difference between the various 
 types of merchants and consuls who go to the non-Christian 
 nations. He is a disturber of what is evil and unjust in native 
 customs and in Western morals, but he is an element of good- 
 will and common understanding wherever he lives. Opium, 
 rum, dishonest trade, high-handed diplomacy, commercial piracy 
 have made a million times more disturbance and sedition. The 
 missionary is the most popular foreigner in any land to which 
 he goes. He makes more friends for himself and for his nation. 
 He has never been forced on one country by war as trade has 
 been. And the introduction of trade has religious results as 
 real, if not as adequate, as the work of missionaries. We de- 
 ceive ourselves if we think that we do not interfere with the 
 Eastern religions except through our missionaries. In the East 
 all life is permeated by religious ideas, and whatever touches 
 the life of the East or of Africa at all affects its religious con- 
 ceptions. The first trolley cars in Seoul were mobbed because 
 they offended the deities and caused a drought. The first cars 
 in Bangkok were worshipped by multitudes. All our contact 
 with the non-Christian world recognised as politically legitimate 
 is religiously destructive. Are we to be free only to tear down, 
 and is the one agency by which we seek to replace what we 
 are destroying to be outlawed? Are we to be free to spread 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 207 
 
 our diseases over the world, but not to heal them; to teach the 
 nations that their wisdom is false, but not where the true wisdom 
 is to be found? 
 
 Waiving the missionary point of view and regarding the 
 matter wholly from the side of politics, I believe that the mis- 
 sionary enterprise is the most legitimate utterance of the West 
 to the East, and that if governments have any right whatever 
 to deal with other governments, they have a right and duty 
 to deal with them in behalf of the best and most unselfish 
 activities of their people. The people of the West will never 
 take any other view. The proposal to separate missionaries 
 and to delegalise their undertaking is wasted breath. The sen- 
 timent of the Western people will always be what it has always 
 been since the missionary duty reached its conscience. Earl 
 Granville expressed it in his letter to Mr. Wade, the British 
 minister to China in 1871 : " It is the duty of a missionary, as 
 of every other British subject, to avoid giving offence as far 
 as possible to the Chinese authorities or people, but he does 
 not forfeit the rights to which he is entitled under the treaty 
 as a British subject because of his missionary character," and 
 he closed his letter with an assertion of Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment's declination to supplement existing treaties by regulations 
 designed to deal with missionaries alone." (Correspondence 
 respecting the Circular of the Chinese Government of February 
 9, 1871, relating to missionaries. China, No. 1, 1872, pp. 19, 
 20.) The missionaries are citizens of their nations, and wher- 
 ever they go have the rights and duties of such citizens. 
 
 But there remains the other question as to what missionaries 
 should do with their political rights. There have not been 
 wanting missionaries who have held that they should be entirely 
 waived. Wilmot Brooke and Alfred Robinson laid this down as 
 one of their principles in their short-lived mission to the Soudan 
 twenty years ago : " As the missionaries enter the Moslem states 
 under the necessity of violating the law of Islam, which forbids 
 any one to endeavour to turn Moslems to Christ, they could 
 not under any circumstances ask for British intervention to ex- 
 tricate them from the dangers which they thus call down upon 
 
208 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 themselves. But also for the sake of the natives who have to 
 be urged to bear the wrath of men for Christ's sake, it is nec- 
 essary that the missionaries should themselves take the lead in 
 facing these dangers, and should in every possible way make it 
 clear to all that they do not desire to shelter themselves as 
 British subjects, from the liabilities of perils which would attach 
 to Christian converts from Mohammedanism in the Soudan. 
 They will therefore voluntarily lay aside all claim to protection 
 as British subjects, and place themselves, while outside British 
 territory, under the authority of the native rulers." 
 
 And Dr. M. H. Houston, one of the most devoted mission- 
 aries in China, for some years also Secretary of the Executive 
 Committee of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in 
 the United States (South), argued for this principle in the case 
 of missionaries in China in a paper on " Appeals for Redress " 
 in the Chinese Recorder of February, 1906 : " Should the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States forbid its citizens to go as mis- 
 sionaries to China, would we obey? Should this Government 
 order all its citizens now working here as missionaries to leave 
 the field, would we depart? Not at all. And now, if the mis- 
 sionary is called to work and to speak independently of the civil 
 power, is it fair, is it just, when he finds himself in distress, to 
 call in the aid of this power? And if he considers himself 
 under the protection of this power, and does call on it for aid, 
 is he not then bound in honour to listen to its voice when it 
 bids him restrict his movements in the field? . . . Now, is it 
 well for a missionary to have his movements restrained by a 
 consul ? If the right to restrict be conceded, who can tell how 
 far it will extend? And yet, if the missionary invoke consular 
 aid, is he not bound in honour to heed the consular voice? . . . 
 Now, suppose that every missionary in China should resolve that 
 henceforth, under no circumstances, will he appeal to any earthly 
 government. He teaches men everywhere to be subject to the 
 powers that be. He prays always for kings and for all in au- 
 thority. But he will bring before them no request for pro- 
 tection or aid. If his persecutions are not too great, he will 
 bear them. If they threaten too much, he will flee. If his 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 209 
 
 property is destroyed, he will take joyfully the spoiling of his 
 goods in view of his heavenly treasure, and no representation 
 of the case shall be made to ministers or consul. If he is killed, 
 his comrades will bury him as ' devout men carried Stephen to 
 his burial,' and they will do no more." Such a course of action, 
 Dr. Houston argued, would enlist the sympathy of diplomats 
 and statesmen who would be relieved of annoyance on account 
 of missionaries, would restore missions to their apostolic char- 
 acter, would have a salutary effect upon native Christians, now 
 injured by appeals in their behalf to the civil power, would 
 open new doors of work and access, and would result in the 
 dropping of various impedimenta now weighing on the mission 
 work and in the accession of more heroic missionaries. 
 
 This view is by no means as simple as it appears. (1) It 
 ignores the fact that missionaries are citizens, that they cannot 
 divest themselves of their civil rights and duties by going abroad, 
 and that they do owe a debt to their own government and are 
 bound at least to consider consular advice. Dr. Houston would 
 teach men everywhere to be subject to the powers that be — that 
 must mean, in the case of the missionary, a just consideration of 
 his political duties. (2) It overlooks the fact that governments 
 have duties which they cannot ignore. A government may not 
 permit injustice and contempt for treaty obligation, however 
 willing its citizens may be to accept such hardships. " A citizen 
 himself," said Mr. Taft in his Presidential message, December, 
 1909, " cannot by contract or otherwise divest himself of the 
 right, nor can this Government escape the obligation, of his 
 protection in his personal and property rights when these are 
 unjustly infringed in a foreign country." (3) The proposed 
 course imperils all foreigners. The missionary is bound to do 
 his duty, but he is also to consider in the determination of 
 his duty the rights of others and the effect of his course of 
 action upon them. For him to announce that treaty obligations 
 as they affect him may be overridden with impunity is to create 
 a peril for others whom he has no right to endanger. (4) Citi- 
 zenship abroad is no more unChristian than citizenship at home. 
 If it is right for a man to enjoy the protection and immunities 
 
210 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 of good government while in his own land, it is not wrong for 
 him to do so in other lands. The renunciation of political rights 
 in foreign missionary work is no more a Christian duty than 
 their renunciation in Christian work at home. This view rests 
 on an inadequate conception of the place of the state in the 
 divine organisation of society. It is not by the Church alone 
 that God educates and governs men. The family and the state 
 are divine institutions, as well as the Church. Government is 
 ordained of God, and it is ordained of God to do right and to 
 prevent wrong. The missionary enterprise cannot commit itself 
 to a vicious and atheistic theory of government. The nation is 
 bound to fulfil its obligations of protection to every citizen, 
 even the most unselfish. (6) The course of the apostle Paul, 
 usually appealed to as justifying a renunciation by the missionary 
 of his political rights, proves precisely the opposite. Inside the 
 Roman Empire he again and again made use of his political 
 prerogatives. Under the principle of extra-territoriality, and it 
 is only when that principle prevails, practically, that Dr. Hous- 
 ton's problem arises, the missionary is under the jurisdiction of 
 his own government and within its protection, just as Paul was 
 in the Roman Empire, and if he avails himself of that protection, 
 is doing just what Paul did. And in other lands a missionary 
 does not do otherwise than we believe Paul would do to-day, 
 when he remembers his nationality and the rights and duties 
 which it involves. (7) A man cannot in this way expatriate him- 
 self and become a nationless man. It is not Christian that he 
 should. He has a land and a flag which demand an allegiance of 
 him and hold their privilege over him. (8) And lastly, the mis- 
 sionary aim does not require of the men who seek to realise it 
 that they should be men without a country. It only requires 
 that they should use their nationality and all that it involves 
 in such a way as to advance and not to retard the reali- 
 sation of their aim. In the possession and enjoyment of 
 political rights there is nothing essentially inconsistent with 
 this aim. 
 
 But if we cannot accept the principle that missionaries should 
 waive all political rights, a principle which is impossible because 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 211 
 
 whatever missionaries might propose they are citizens still and 
 cannot escape their civil responsibilities, we cannot, on the other 
 hand, accept the view that the possession of rights necessitates 
 or justifies their exercise to the full limit. As Woolsey says 
 in his " Political Science," " Rights may be waived. The very 
 nature of a right implies that the subject of it decides whether 
 he shall exercise it or not in a particular case." Here at home 
 no Christian thinks of demanding all his rights. The mark of 
 a Christian is the renunciation of rights. This was the principle 
 of the Incarnation of the Son of God, Who, though He was on 
 an equality with God, counted not His right of equality as a 
 thing to be retained, but emptied Himself and took on Him the 
 form of a servant. On this same principle the missionary enter- 
 prise proceeds. " It is dangerous for us," writes Dr. John Ross 
 of Manchuria, " to demand always what we call ' treaty rights ' 
 — rights under treaties extorted from China. Better to quietly 
 endure many a wrong than assist by ever claiming our ' rights ' 
 to deepen the sense of irritation given by our presence in China. 
 Where and when that endurance should end must be left to 
 individual conscience." 
 
 And yet not entirely so, for the determining element in the 
 decision must be the missionary aim. Missionaries are citizens 
 and have certain rights and duties, and the way they will act 
 will be governed, not by their personal interest, but by the 
 dominating aim of their lives and of their enterprise. The 
 missionary movement insists on the legitimacy of its character, 
 on the full responsibility of governments toward all their citi- 
 zens, on the possession by missionaries of full civil privileges, 
 and on the principle of self-renunciation in all who are con- 
 cerned in the movement, by which all rights are viewed in their 
 relation to the mission aim, and are waived or exercised as the 
 interests of that aim require. What will best tend to make 
 Christ known? What will contribute most to the development 
 of an indigenous Church? What will soonest make a home for 
 Christianity in the national life? These are the questions which 
 must be asked. They are not easy to answer, but it is foolish 
 to think that the problem can be settled by some simple legalistic 
 
212 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 rule. Mistakes will be made in trying to answer these questions, 
 but God will overrule these, and an honest effort to apply the 
 principles involved in the aim of missions will carry us further 
 toward the goal than the adoption of any arbitrary and un- 
 warrantable statute. 
 
 It is questioned by some whether the aim of missions is 
 inconsistent with demands for punishment, with requests for in- 
 demnity, with appeals for military interference or support, with 
 all use of physical force. It is clear to some that it is right for 
 a man to tell his government such facts as it should know in 
 order to determine its duty. The presumption is certainly against 
 all the other things, but men must judge each case alone, and it 
 is safer that they should not be alone in judging it. As a matter 
 of fact, an insignificantly small number of missionaries have 
 ever done anything of the sort or made any representation of 
 any kind, either to their own consuls or to native officials. " The 
 Principles and Practice " of the China Inland Mission expresses 
 the actual practice and the accepted principles of all missionaries : 
 " Too great caution cannot be exercised by all missionaries resid- 
 ing or journeying inland to avoid difficulties and complications 
 with the people, and especially with the authorities. Every mem- 
 ber of the mission must understand that he goes out depending 
 for help and protection on the living God, and not relying on an 
 arm of flesh. Appeals to consuls or to Chinese officials to procure 
 the punishment of offenders, or to demand the vindication of real 
 or supposed rights, or for indemnification for losses, are to be 
 avoided. Should trouble or persecution arise inland, a friendly 
 representation may be made to the local Chinese officials. . . . 
 Under no circumstances may any missionary on his own responsi- 
 bility make any written appeal to the British or other foreign 
 authorities. . . . Great respect must be shown to all in author- 
 ity, and must also be manifest in speaking of them, as is required 
 by the Word of God. Where prolonged stay in a city is likely 
 to cause trouble, it is better to journey onward, and where resi- 
 dence cannot be peaceably and safely effected to retire and give 
 up or defer the attempt. . . . God will open more doors than 
 we can enter and occupy. In conclusion, the weapons of our 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 213 
 
 warfare must be practically recognised as spiritual and not 
 carnal." 
 
 There remain, however, three great questions which are not 
 covered by such a general statement. The first is the question 
 of the exercise by missionaries of the right of extra-territori- 
 ality, the second is the question of the protection of native con- 
 verts, and the third the vital question of the effect upon the 
 purity and vitality of the mission movement of its confusion 
 with politics and Western civilisation. 
 
 A recent writer in one of our best known reviews, Mr. 
 Richard Weightman, in the North American Review, has raised 
 a question which is phrased also in an editorial in the Washing- 
 ton Post (June 24, 1906), on which Mr. Weightman is an edi- 
 torial writer, " Whether we can reasonably expect to establish 
 in China and Turkey that basis of good-will and sympathy upon 
 which alone a permanent and profitable commerce may be 
 founded, so long as our Government identifies itself officially 
 with the missionary propaganda." This identification consists 
 in the extension of the rights of extra-territoriality to mission- 
 aries. A writer in the Fortnightly Review has taken up the 
 same question in an article on " Christianity in China." " The 
 situation," he says, " is summed up in the phrase ' extra-terri- 
 toriality,' and it may safely be said that no religion was ever 
 presented to a people under such peculiar conditions." " The 
 legal status of European missionaries," he adds, " has been that 
 of superiority to the laws of the country whose hospitality they 
 have enjoyed and whose ancient customs they have attacked 
 not infrequently with imprudence. It is not necessary to dwell 
 on the mistakes of individuals, since it is evident that the whole 
 position was one which could not fail to rouse the deepest resent- 
 ment in a people so proud as the Chinese." The editorial in 
 the Post declares : " What the nation really wants of the so- 
 called pagans is their trade, and incidentally their money, and 
 it is now very clear that in order to attain that consummation 
 we shall have to treat them decently, and at least with common 
 consideration, whether we feel it or not. . . . It is quite evi- 
 dent that we cannot evangelise and sell our goods to them at 
 
2i 4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 the same time. We have to take one way or the other, and 
 that without much procrastination." All of which is merely 
 a good illustration of the absurd ignorance of facts and of life 
 on the part of newspaper writers. A good part of our trade 
 with China we owe to missionary work, and the American 
 people have larger and more genuine interest in China than is 
 credited to them by the Washington Post. The particular sug- 
 gestion of the two review writers is not much more sensible. 
 The exemption of the citizens or subjects of Christian nations 
 from the jurisdiction of Turkey, Persia, Tibet, China, and 
 Siam, and formerly of Japan also, was due to the fact that 
 these countries had, and in the case of the first four have now, 
 neither " the restraints of a constitution nor an orderly adminis- 
 tration of justice and law." The conditions in these lands make 
 it impossible to subject foreigners to their jurisdiction. There 
 are no true courts, no suitable prisons, no fair codes of law, 
 no provision for the just trial of offences. There are bribery, 
 oppression, absolutism, injustice, which it is shameful enough 
 that their own people must endure. The Christian nations have 
 always refused to hand over their subjects to such iniquities. 
 It is true that the nations have been restive under the system, 
 but the remedy is in their own hands. When Japan had re- 
 formed her courts, her prisons, and her codes, the Christian 
 nations surrendered the rights they had reserved. They will 
 gladly do the same with the other nations when they have been 
 duly reformed. Meanwhile, the Western nations can no more 
 separate missionaries from other foreigners in China than they 
 can in Japan or in Africa, although the missionaries are the last 
 foreigners to be likely to fall into Chinese courts and prisons 
 and to need the protection of their governments for crimes 
 against Chinese laws. The Chinese Government in 1871 desired 
 a withdrawal from the missionaries of the right of extra-terri- 
 toriality when they went beyond the places open to trade where 
 foreign consuls resided. The American Minister, Mr. Low, 
 wrote to his Government disapproving any action by it consent- 
 ing to the Chinese suggestions. " Neither will sound policy," 
 he wrote, " nor the moral and religious sentiments of Christian 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 215 
 
 nations, sanction any retrogression, although trade and commerce 
 might be promoted thereby; nor will the dictates of humanity 
 permit the renunciation of the right for all foreigners that they 
 shall be governed and punished by their own laws." — (Letter, 
 Frederick J. Low to Mr. Fish, March 20, 1871.) The Amer- 
 ican Government replied to Mr. Low that the idea of curtailing 
 the rights of the missionaries " cannot be entertained for one 
 moment by the United States." — (Letter, J. C. B. Davis to Mr. 
 Low, October 19, 1871.) The right of jurisdiction on the part 
 of a Christian nation over one class of its citizens in China and 
 Turkey and Persia cannot be waived ; it is neither right nor 
 possible to waive it, until it is waived for all. And neither the 
 individual missionary nor the enterprise can repudiate the right 
 and duty of a Western government to such jurisdiction. This, 
 however, may be safely said, that the missionary will be the 
 first Westerner to be willing to relinquish his extra-territorial 
 rights and to pass under the jurisdiction of a reformed China 
 or Turkey or Persia. As Dr. Verbeck was the first to seek 
 in Japan, as he, a man without a nationality, could do, the pro- 
 tection of Japanese law, before the new treaties surrendering 
 the system of extra-territoriality had gone into effect, so now 
 in Siam and everywhere the missionaries will be the first to 
 welcome, as they have been the most ardent to desire, the full 
 assumption by the Asiatic nations of the sovereignty of equal 
 states. 
 
 That the missionary is politically an alien is not a wrong 
 thing in itself, and it is not detrimental to his mission. He is 
 not and cannot be other than what he is — a man of his own 
 nationality. To remain such does not prejudice his success. His 
 business is not to merge separate races or nationalities, but to 
 give his burden to a body of men within the nation to which 
 he has come. If his spirit is the spirit of love, his foreign na- 
 tionality ought to make it easier for him to build up an in- 
 dependent, national consciousness and sense of autonomy in the 
 Church which it is his aim to found. 
 
 The second and more difficult problem is the problem of the 
 protection of native Christians from persecution or punishment 
 
216 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 on the ground of their Christianity. No one has ever argued 
 that Christian nations should interfere on behalf of native Chris- 
 tians to save them from the consequences of evil doing, but 
 the question has long been before men as to the duties of Chris- 
 tian nations toward native Christians when their sole offence 
 was their Christian faith, or when their faith was made the 
 basis of partial treatment or discrimination. 
 
 In China the question has been for a century a living question. 
 When Robert Morrison began his work, foreign intercourse and 
 the foreign religion were illicit things, and although the Opium 
 War opened certain points both to merchant and missionary, 
 foreigners of all kinds were forbidden to enter the country 
 beyond the limits specified, and the religion which the foreigners 
 brought was subject to the national dislike of all that was for- 
 eign. It was felt by S. Wells Williams, accordingly, and by 
 the other Christian men who were associated with the nego- 
 tiators of the treaties with China after the Arrow War, that 
 it would be a right and wise thing to secure for Christianity 
 an explicit toleration in the new treaties, and to include under 
 their toleration not the foreign teachers of Christianity alone, 
 but also the natives of China who might accept it and seek 
 to propagate it. The toleration clause in the American treaty 
 of i860 was as follows: 
 
 " The principles of the Christian religion, as professed by 
 the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches, are recognised 
 as teaching men to do good, and to do to others as they would 
 have others do to them. Hereafter, those who quietly profess 
 and teach these doctrines shall not be harassed or perse- 
 cuted on account of their faith. Any person, whether citi- 
 zen of the United States or Chinese convert, who according 
 to these tenets peaceably teaches and practises the prin- 
 ciples of Christianity, shall in no case be interfered with or 
 molested." 
 
 This clause was not extorted from the Chinese commission- 
 ers or forced upon them. Dr. Williams wrote in New Haven, 
 in 1878, a clear and authoritative statement of how he came 
 to draft the article and the Chinese to accept it: 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 217 
 
 As the matter of the " Toleration Clauses " in the treaties 
 of 1858 has become one of general interest in the mission body 
 of China, I regret that the statement concerning it in the report 
 of the [first missionary] Shanghai Conference should not have 
 been more accurate. The toleration of Christianity was not 
 brought forward by the Chinese commissioners in any shape, 
 for it was a point upon which they were wholly ignorant as a 
 religious question. The Russian Minister was the first to formu- 
 late an article on this subject, and in the discussion which ensued 
 as to his draft of a treaty presented to the Chinese officials, they 
 are said to have expressed their willingness to allow missionaries 
 to travel through the country, inasmuch as these could usually 
 speak the language ; they opposed a like permission to merchants, 
 who could not do so, as this ignorance was sure to breed 
 trouble. These officials knew the Russian priests in Peking to 
 be quiet, industrious men, and were doubtless willing enough to 
 admit them to further privileges, but they could give no opinion 
 on the general toleration of Christianity, for they knew prac- 
 tically nothing of its peculiar tenets. 
 
 The next day I got the Chinese text of this article and drew 
 up a similar one for the United States treaty, leaving out the 
 proviso that a " certain number of missionaries " would be 
 allowed, and inserting the two names of Protestant and Roman 
 Catholic Churches, so as to bring the former distinctly before 
 them as not the same as the Roman and Greek Churches ; it 
 was otherwise different in phraseology but not in spirit. The 
 night before the treaty was signed, a note was sent from the 
 Chinese, rejecting this article altogether, on the ground that 
 Protestant missionaries had their families with them, and must 
 be restricted to the open ports; the inference was therefore pretty 
 plain that the novelty of foreign women travelling about the 
 country had presented itself to their minds as an objection to 
 allowing Americans to preach Christianity. As soon as I could 
 do so I drew up another form of the same article, and started 
 off next morning to lay it before the Imperial Commissioners. 
 It was quite the same article as before, but they accepted it 
 without any further discussion or alteration ; however, the word 
 " whoever " in my English version was altered by Mr. Reed to 
 " any person, whether citizen of the United States or Chinese 
 convert, who " — because he wished every part of the treaty to 
 refer to United States citizens, and cared not very much whether 
 it had a toleration article or not. I did care, and was thankful 
 to God that it was inserted. It is the only treaty in existence 
 which contains the royal law. I have always regarded the present 
 
218 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 article as better than the discarded one; that in the British 
 treaty was abridged from it, and I understood at the time that 
 it would not have been inserted if ours had not contained such 
 a clause. It must be said, moreover, that if the Chinese had 
 at all comprehended what was involved in these four toleration 
 articles, they would never have signed one of them. In the 
 " Chinese Repository " you will find a partial toleration of our 
 religion by the Emperor Taokwang, but this was only a rescript 
 and did not carry with it the weight of a treaty, and during 
 the fourteen years which had intervened since its promulgation 
 it had pretty much lost its effect. 
 
 I could never ascertain who had a hand in causing the rejec- 
 tion of my first form of the article, but think that it was some 
 one connected with the French legation. The harsh and unjust 
 criticisms of some persons on these articles in i860 was only 
 the beginning of the pulling and hauling they have since received ; 
 but it is much easier to find fault and overthrow than to improve 
 and build up. Though Christianity does not depend upon treaties 
 for its progress and power, these articles have proved to be a 
 check upon the native officials, who have been taught therein 
 not to destroy what they did not approve. I thank God that 
 the Imperial Government was thereby bound not to become a 
 persecuting government, as it has more than once since wished 
 to be. 
 
 Williams never regretted his action in the matter. Twenty 
 years after the adoption of the treaties he wrote : 
 
 The articles in the treaties with China granting toleration 
 to those who preach and those who accept the doctrines of the 
 Bible, and allowing the public exercise of their faith, have already 
 proved to be a great protection to the growing Church. It is 
 one of those milestones of progress which indicate the advance 
 made, and guide that advance further on to the consummation 
 of the Christianisation of the whole land. The difficulty of con- 
 vincing the converts that the degree of toleration granted does 
 not release them from their allegiance to their own rulers, has 
 been increased of late years by a kind of semi-protection claimed 
 by Roman Catholic priests to appear before the rulers in cases 
 of oppression of their neophytes. There is, indeed, no caste 
 to warn people off from its peculiar enclosure nor state hier- 
 archy or bigoted priesthood to forcibly prevent members from 
 leaving it, but hindrances to the promulgation of the Gospel are 
 to be expected as the renovating, reorganising nature of its 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 219 
 
 doctrines are better understood, and the rights of conscience 
 are more strongly asserted. It is a cause of great thankfulness 
 that the progress of the faith has been attended with so few 
 drawbacks, persecutions, and causes of just complaint from 
 either party. Three Protestant converts have already yielded 
 up their lives rather than deny their Master; and others have 
 suffered the loss of all things at the hands of their countrymen. 
 The reputation of these converts has generally been good as 
 members of society. I was once talking with Wansiang, the 
 premier, respecting them, and told him that I had never known 
 of a member of the Yesu kiao having been condemned before the 
 native courts for any crime, and he said he had not heard of a 
 case. 
 
 No aspect of missionary work in China, however, has called 
 forth more discussion and criticism from friend and foe of 
 mission work. Foes have asserted that on the basis of this 
 clause missionaries have removed native Christians from the 
 jurisdiction of Chinese courts, all offences of such Christians 
 being covered by the allegation of persecution. " Suppose," says 
 Sir Hiram Maxim, a zealous antagonist of missions, " a Chinese 
 priest should visit England and the United States, and it should 
 become known that every burglar, pickpocket, and thief could, 
 by becoming a Buddhist, shield himself from arrest by the police, 
 how long would the English or American people submit to such 
 a state of affairs?" — {Harper's Weekly, September 16, 1905.) 
 Friends of missions have spoken carefully, but strongly on the 
 subject. The Congregational deputation to China, in its special 
 report on China to the Prudential Committee of the American 
 Board in 1907, declares its conviction that the toleration clause 
 was unwise and injurious in its effect. It says: 
 
 The treaties between China and the Western nations gave 
 a degree of foreign protection to Chinese converts to Chris- 
 tianity. This established a state of things unlike that prevailing 
 in any other country which has been the field of foreign mis- 
 sionary endeavour. It is now generally conceded that this clause 
 in the treaties was wholly unwise, and in the end has been most 
 injurious to the progress of Christianity in China. It has thrown 
 great temptation in the way of the missionaries and of the 
 Chinese people themselves. It has led the latter, in some cases, 
 
220 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 to pretend conversion for the sake of personal advantage. The 
 missionary on his part has been led to confuse his office as a 
 teacher of religion with that of the representative of a foreign 
 political power. It has led to constant deception on the part 
 of the Chinese and to repeated interventions on the part of 
 missionaries between the Chinese Government and its lawful 
 subjects. It has been taken advantage of by foreign powers in 
 the most flagrant fashion for the furthering of their schemes 
 for territorial aggrandisement. It is a just cause of constant 
 and increasing irritation on the part of the Chinese Government 
 and people toward the missionaries. It has caused an endeavour 
 which should have no aim but the teaching of pure religion to 
 be confounded in the minds of many Chinese with the political 
 schemes of the so-called Christian nations. It is at present by 
 far the greatest ground of reproach in China against Christian 
 missionaries. 
 
 In this respect, the Roman Catholic missionaries have been 
 the greatest offenders. France, until the recent disestablishment 
 of the Roman Catholic Church in that country, has been the 
 nation most active in the protection of Chinese converts. A 
 statement issued in the late spring of this year by the Governor- 
 General of Peking and others high in authority, over their own 
 signature, confirms this assertion with the greatest definiteness. 
 But it is deplorable that Protestant missionaries ever permitted 
 themselves to be led into a like error. The way was thus opened 
 for the interpretation of any lawsuit of which a Chinese Chris- 
 tian might be a party in the light of a case of religious persecu- 
 tion. It is true that a great majority of our missionaries dis- 
 countenance this practice. The sentiment prevails throughout 
 our missions that it is high time that intervention of any sort 
 on the part of missionaries in cases involving the relations of 
 Chinese subjects to the court or to their government should be 
 altogether discontinued. 
 
 Some of the best missionaries in China, while seeing clearly 
 the abuses and misunderstandings which have grown up, are 
 not clear that the assertion by treaty of the principle of 
 toleration was wholly unwise and injurious. Dr. Gibson has 
 dealt carefully with the subject in " Mission Problems and 
 Mission Methods in South China " : 
 
 In the treaties agreed to between China and Western powers, 
 distinct reference was made to the subject of Christianity, and 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 221 
 
 it was provided that under these treaties there should be com- 
 plete freedom for the propagation or practice of Christianity, 
 both on the part of natives and foreigners. This provision, as 
 well as the natural attitude always maintained by the Chinese 
 Government towards differing religions, has secured for us mar- 
 vellous freedom in preaching Christianity in all parts of China; 
 and not only in the treaty ports, where foreign residence is 
 sanctioned, but in all the cities, towns, and country districts of 
 the Empire, native preachers and foreign missionaries alike have 
 complete freedom in preaching the Gospel and gathering Chris- 
 tian worshippers ; a freedom, perhaps, which is more complete 
 than that which is enjoyed in any other part of the globe. Now 
 it is under such conditions as these I have described that the 
 Christian religion has been preached and the Christian Church 
 planted in China, and many complicated results have grown out 
 of this situation. 
 
 The toleration clause of the treaties runs as follows : " The 
 religions of the Lord of heaven and of Jesus teach men to 
 practise virtue, and to do to others as men would be done by, 
 and all persons shall be free to preach and practise these religions 
 without molestation or interference." This seems to secure the 
 right, on the one hand, of missionaries to preach Christianity, 
 and the right, on the other, of Chinese converts to follow their 
 teaching. But these rights are not precisely defined, nor is 
 any definite provision made for securing them ; but since the 
 clause formed part of an international arrangement regulating 
 the respective rights of Chinese and foreigners in their relations 
 with each other, it seemed to give the missionary the right, 
 enjoyed in other spheres by the merchant, of appealing to his 
 consul in all cases where the treaty was violated. In this way 
 the missionary was constituted in some sense the natural pro- 
 tector of the right of religious toleration conceded to Chinese 
 subjects by their own government. 
 
 It is no easy task to weigh the advantages and disadvantages 
 of this arrangement. We are profoundly thankful to God that 
 in His providence we have had secured, to the fullest, recogni- 
 tion of our right to preach the Gospel throughout the Empire, 
 and to enjoy the protection of the law for life and property in 
 doing so. We are not less thankful that the Church, in the 
 days of its weakness and inexperience, is spared the ordeal of 
 fiery persecution by a hostile and determined government. It 
 is a marvellous thing that every Chinese subject who hears 
 the Gospel, under the peace established by the treaties, has his 
 rights recognised to worship God according to his conscience. 
 
222 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 In this way the Church has been to a large extent sheltered dur- 
 ing its years of weakness, and the time has been given for its 
 growth in numbers, in influence, and what is more important, 
 in intelligent comprehension of the truth, and in the faith and 
 courage which spring from enlarged experience of the Christian 
 life. 
 
 But these great gains are not without their drawbacks. In 
 India it seems undoubtedly an evil that, notwithstanding the 
 official neutrality of the British Government, it yet inevitably 
 appears to the native mind that Christianity comes among them 
 backed by all the authority and influence of the ruling power. 
 The Hindu hearer of the Gospel, belonging to a race that is 
 naturally weak and pliant as compared with the sturdy independ- 
 ence of the Chinese, sees that the keys of advancement and the 
 springs of power are in Christian hands, and he is tempted to 
 seek favour by compliance with the religion of his superiors, 
 while the stronger minds may be driven all the more to hold 
 aloof. In China it is a distinct advantage that those who profess 
 Christianity know well that they will not ingratiate themselves 
 with the Government by doing so. The new religion is 
 preached by despised aliens, and those who follow it incur a 
 kind of social ostracism by connecting themselves with it. 
 This tends to deter the insincere and secure the purity of the 
 Church. 
 
 It is, therefore, an undeniable disadvantage that another set 
 of ideas has been fostered by the treaty arrangements. The ill- 
 defined right of toleration is enjoyed by the Christians under 
 pressure from foreign governments. They thus appear to stand 
 apart from the bulk of their fellow-countrymen, and to be under 
 a foreign protectorate. 
 
 But Dr. Gibson's mature judgment is in favour of the " Tol- 
 eration Clause." In his report as Chairman of the Commission 
 on " The Chinese Church " he said at the China Centenary Mis- 
 sionary Conference : 
 
 With regard to the question whether any action should be 
 taken by missionaries for the protection of converts, two views 
 are held. Some argue that they should be taught to look for 
 Divine protection, while the missionary declines to give any aid. 
 This appears to me to resemble too closely the action condemned 
 in James ii : 15, 16, to be a safe rule of action. It is true that 
 God can give, and does give, protection to His own, but it by 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 223 
 
 no means follows that He forbids the missionary to be His 
 agent or minister. We do not refuse to give food to a Christian 
 in time of famine on the ground that God will care for His own, 
 and that the righteous will not be left to beg his bread. On the 
 contrary, if we believe that protection from persecution lies 
 within the purposes of God's providence, it is extremely probable 
 that we are the agents through whom He will give it. I have 
 no doubt that there are cases in which we shall fail of our duty 
 if we do not seek to save Christian people from lawless violence. 
 The difficulty is to distinguish which are the cases in which we 
 ought to interfere, and here we cannot be too cautious. We 
 should remember in every instance that when we have learned 
 all we possibly can, we have never heard quite the whole story, 
 and should practise caution and reserve in stating our case. 
 We should also remember that by soliciting official interference 
 it is possible that we may aggravate a temporary difference into 
 a permanent hostility, and may only smooth the path of one for 
 the moment at the cost of permanently hardening a whole clan 
 or village against the Gospel. If we can once establish a char- 
 acter for fairness and integrity, it will often be possible to have 
 cases of " persecution " settled in a friendly and therefore most 
 effective way by the intervention of disinterested persons in the 
 neighbourhood. When this can be done, much is gained in 
 every way. 
 
 But with the utmost care there will still be cases in which 
 we must appeal to the officials. On this many hard things have 
 been said against us by statesmen and public writers. We are 
 accused of establishing a " protectorate over mission converts." 
 In reply to this it is enough to make two remarks. 
 
 (1) We do not try to create a foreign protectorate outside 
 of the Chinese law for Christians. We only ask that they should 
 not be outlawed. It is not we but our opponents and critics 
 who forget that Christian Chinese are still Chinese subjects. 
 The mandarins forget and sometimes furiously deny this, and 
 we are bound to remind them of it. The " protection " we seek 
 to procure for converts is the protection of the Chinese law. 
 Both we and our critics must remember that we do not even ask 
 for " justice," i.e., for justice after the high standards of the 
 West, for our converts. We only ask that they should receive 
 the same kind of justice or injustice, or quaint blend of the two, 
 which the Chinese subjects are able to procure from their tri- 
 bunals. 
 
 (2) The remedy for " missionary cases " does not lie in 
 further restrictions upon missionaries or Chinese Christians, but 
 
224 Christianity and the nations 
 
 in the impartial enforcement of the common law by the man- 
 darins without prejudice or partiality on the ground of religion. 
 
 It is certain that the Chinese officials have been greatly 
 troubled in mind over the outworkings of the toleration clause. 
 Their main troubles have come from the Roman Catholic mis- 
 sionaries, who have sought and used a political status also 
 offered to and openly renounced by the Protestant missionaries, 
 but it is true also that some Protestant missionaries have inter- 
 fered in Chinese courts in behalf of Christians, although the 
 practice has not been general and the interference has in almost 
 every case, if not in every one, been because the missionary 
 was convinced that the trouble was one of direct or indirect per- 
 secution. Dr. Bergen of the Shantung Province reported some 
 years ago that he had asked 73 missionaries as to their prac- 
 tice and had found that 25 had never interfered in litigation at 
 all and 48 had not applied for aid to the Chinese officials more 
 than three times each. The Chinese officials as a rule, however, 
 would be glad to have such intervention entirely cease. As 
 one Chinese writes : " Notwithstanding the outward — perhaps 
 real, in some cases — kindly disposition of the Chinese officials 
 towards the missionaries of late years, they as a class still con- 
 sider the latter as unavoidable evils, whom they must try to 
 tolerate with as minimum sufferings and damages as possible. 
 An official in being appointed to a certain place nowadays first 
 of all inquires not about the ' temper of the people,' but whether 
 that place has had any ' missionary cases ' before, and if so, 
 he must think that he has got into a bad and difficult position." 
 — (China's Young Men, April, 1905, Art. "The Missionary 
 Question," p. 24.) And Viceroy Tuan Fang in New York 
 requested the missionary societies to change " advise against " to 
 " forbid " in their instructions to their missionaries in China, 
 discountenancing interference in any native litigation whatever. 
 
 The question involved, however, is a much larger one than 
 this. The great issue is, should Christian nations seek to secure 
 the recognition by the non-Christian nations of the principle of 
 religious toleration? If they regard this as their duty, and do se- 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 225 
 
 cure the acceptance of this principle in treaty stipulations, will the 
 results be injurious to the missionary enterprise? If toleration 
 clauses are inserted in treaties, how can the possibilities of evil be 
 escaped, and what should be the policy of missionaries toward 
 the duties which such treaty stipulations create? It is clear 
 that if such stipulations are entered into, they should 
 cover simply the essential principle of toleration, and those 
 abuses by which evil men take shelter in the Church to secure 
 an immunity from merited punishment should be avoided. The 
 language of the new American treaty of 1903, already quoted, 
 defines the proper limits and precautions. It might have been 
 well, some would say, to have incorporated such language in 
 the treaty of i860. It was impossible. No one had sufficient 
 foresight, but perhaps the treaty of 1903 would never have been 
 if the treaty of i860 had not been first. It is possible now 
 to define the rights of Chinese Christians by treaty, because in 
 i860 the right of a Chinese Christianity was secured. 
 
 The fact, however, that these rights of Chinese Christians 
 are secured by a foreign treaty leaves with the foreign govern- 
 ment and those on whom it must depend for its knowledge of 
 facts responsibilities which are full of danger, but which cannot 
 on that account be ignored. " It will undoubtedly simplify the 
 missionary's course in many cases," says Dr. Gibson, " to have 
 an unalterable rule that he will on no consideration appeal to 
 the foreign consul or native mandarin for the protection of 
 Christian converts; but solutions of such extreme simplicity are 
 seldom the right ones. We cannot dissociate ourselves from 
 the fact that we are members of a nation whose Christian civilisa- 
 tion and history have given it, in common with other Christian 
 nations, an enormous amount of power and influence. The 
 Chinese Government, under pressure of this power, has recog- 
 nised what is in itself absolutely and indisputably true, that 
 all men, and the Chinese like others, have an inalienable right 
 to follow the truth and to worship God without interference 
 or persecution. In the providence of God we have, willingly 
 or unwillingly, become to the Chinese the asserters and represent- 
 atives of this undeniable principle. It is impossible for us to 
 
226 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 divest ourselves of this character and to assume that of the 
 earliest preachers of Christianity, when it was a proscribed 
 faith with neither wealth nor worldly influence behind it, still 
 upon its trial and facing without support the whole strength 
 of the civilised world." 
 
 But there are those who question the wisdom of making 
 religious toleration a matter of government action. But why? 
 We hold now that each government for itself should establish 
 the principle of religious liberty as a constitutional right of its 
 people. Well, these people are going all over the world. Are 
 they not to enjoy wherever they go their religious freedom? 
 How are they to do it unless in each land to which they go 
 their government follows them with the protection of its extra- 
 territorial jurisdiction, or unless in each land the principle of 
 toleration prevails? How is it to be brought to prevail in these 
 lands, save by international influence? And this right of re- 
 ligious freedom ought to belong to every man, not to Scotchmen 
 and Americans in China and Turkey, but to Chinese and Turks 
 also, not only when they come to Scotland and America, but 
 when they are at home in their own lands. We believe that this 
 proposition should be laid down unequivocally, that it is the 
 duty of the enlightened and free nations to secure the recog- 
 nition of the right of religious freedom universally. Mr. Roose- 
 velt held this view. " This administration," he declared in 1904, 
 in his letter of acceptance of his renomination to the Presidency 
 of the United States, " has on all proper occasions given clear 
 expression to the belief of the American people that discrimina- 
 tion and oppression because of religion, wherever practised, are 
 acts of injustice before God and man ; and in making evident 
 to the world the depth of American conviction in this regard, 
 we have gone to the very limit of diplomatic usage." Govern- 
 ments have again and again intervened to prevent oppression 
 and injustice. Europe interfered in Bulgaria. It was Europe's 
 shame that she did not interfere in Armenia. America inter- 
 fered in Cuba. Great Britain interfered in Burmah. If it is 
 right to go to war to prevent injustice, it is right to seek to 
 prevent it in advance by peaceful treaty agreements. Religious 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 227 
 
 intolerance and persecution are wrongs before God and man. 
 It is the duty of Christian nations to forestall and terminate 
 such wrongs. They do what it is right to do, what it would 
 be wrong not to do, in securing for all men the benefits of full 
 religious toleration. And that involves on their part action 
 in some such form as was taken in the case of China. When 
 it was clear that there would be religious intolerance and per- 
 secution the Western nations did what they could to guard 
 against such wrongs. The necessary form of action was a treaty 
 guarantee of toleration in the case of the religion for which 
 they had a sense of responsibility, and which was likely to be 
 the victim. 
 
 " It might, perhaps, be arguable," said the Spectator some 
 years ago, " that missionaries in China could not claim the pro- 
 tection of England, supposing they were breaking the law of 
 the land by teaching Christianity. Personally, we hold that 
 there is a good deal to be said for the opinion that they should 
 be protected even in that case, or in other words, that no 
 Christian state should recognise the right of a semi-civilised 
 power to exclude the entry of Christianity." This is only a 
 corollary of the general principle which I have suggested, namely, 
 that governments are right in taking action in behalf of com- 
 plete religious toleration. 
 
 The United States made representation in this view to Japan 
 in the years before Japan had embodied the principle of tolera- 
 tion in a constitution. When the country was opened to 
 foreigners, " it appeared," as Mr. Foster says, " that, notwith- 
 standing the severe measures which had been adopted in the 
 seventeenth century for the suppression of the ' evil sect,' a 
 considerable body of native Christians — numbering several thou- 
 sand — had secretly kept their faith, and the changed condition 
 of the country emboldened them to make themselves known. 
 This awakened the hostility of the government, and a proclama- 
 tion was issued by the Emperor reviving the ancient prohibitive 
 decrees. The matter came to the notice of the American Min- 
 ister. He convoked his colleagues, and an identic note of pro- 
 test was agreed upon and sent to the Japanese Government. 
 
228 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 " On receipt of the proclamation by Secretary Seward, he 
 replied to Mr. Van Valkenburgh that the President ' regards 
 the proclamation as not merely ill-judged, but as injurious and 
 offensive to the United States and to all other Christian states, 
 and as directly conflicting with the eighth article of the treaty 
 of 1858, and no less in conflict with the tolerating spirit and 
 principles which prevail throughout the world. You are advised, 
 therefore, that the United States cannot acquiesce in or submit 
 to the Mikado's proclamation.' The minister was instructed to 
 bring the matter quietly and in a friendly manner to the atten- 
 tion of the Japanese Government, in view of the civil disturb- 
 ances, but to ' proceed with firmness and without practising in- 
 jurious hesitation or accepting any abasing compromise.' The 
 other treaty Powers adopted the same course, but not until after 
 much discussion and delay on the part of the Japanese Govern- 
 ment did the persecution cease and were all the prohibitions 
 against Christianity revoked." — (Foster, "American Diplomacy 
 in the Orient," p. 200 f.) 
 
 Similar representations have been made by the European 
 powers to Turkey. In 1853, when the British and French fleets 
 were in the Turkish waters for the protection of Turkey, " a 
 young man was judicially condemned to death and publicly 
 executed in Adrianople, by the Ottoman authorities, for the 
 crime of having apostatised from Islam to Christianity. He 
 had openly declared that Christ was the true Prophet, and that, 
 having Him, he had no need of Mohammed, who therefore was 
 a false Prophet. He was cast into prison and cruelly tortured 
 to induce him to recant, but in vain. On being beheaded, he 
 exclaimed with his last breath, - I profess Jesus Christ, and for 
 Him I die.' On September 17, 1855, tne Earl of Clarendon, 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote to Lord Stratford de Red- 
 cliffe, the British Ambassador at Constantinople : ' The Christian 
 Powers, who are making gigantic efforts and submitting to 
 enormous sacrifices, to save the Turkish Empire from ruin and 
 destruction, cannot permit the continuance of a law in Turkey, 
 which is not only a standing insult to them, but a source of 
 cruel persecution to their co-religionists, which they never can 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 229 
 
 consent to perpetuate by the successes of their fleets and armies. 
 They are entitled to demand, and Her Majesty's Government do 
 distinctly demand, that no punishment whatever shall attach to 
 the Mahometan who becomes a Christian.' The same noble 
 language of Christian patriotism had also been held earlier by 
 the Earl of Aberdeen, who wrote to Sir Stratford Canning on 
 January 16, 1844: 'The Christian Powers will not endure that 
 the Porte should insult and trample on their faith, by treating 
 as a criminal any person who embraces it.' The intention was 
 to induce the Porte to renounce and abrogate the law in ques- 
 tion. But the spirited correspondence with the Turkish Govern- 
 ment, even under those exceptionally favourable circumstances, 
 led to no greater result than that, early in the year 1856, a 
 Memorandum was agreed upon containing these words : ' As all 
 forms of religion are and shall be freely professed in the Otto- 
 man dominions, no subject of His Majesty the Sultan shall be 
 hindered in the exercise of the religion that he professes, nor 
 shall be in any way annoyed on this account. None shall be 
 compelled to change their religion.' The discovery had been 
 made that the objectionable law, being regarded as invested 
 with a divine character, could not be annulled or abrogated by 
 any human authority whatsoever. Therefore, the British Am- 
 bassador considered it best to advise his Government to be 
 content with the aforementioned clause, saying in his despatch 
 to the Earl of Clarendom, dated February 12, 1856: 'The law 
 of the Koran is not abolished, it is true, respecting renegades, 
 and the Sultan's ministers affirm that such a stretch of authority 
 would exceed even His Majesty's legal powers. But, however 
 that may be, the practical application of it is renounced by 
 means of a public document, and Her Majesty's Government 
 would at any time be justified in complaining of a breach of 
 engagement if the Porte were to authorise or to permit any ex- 
 ception to its own official declaration.' " — (Koelle, " Mohammed 
 and Mohammedanism," p. 474.) 
 
 In the Treaty of Berlin, into which England, Austria, Russia, 
 France, Italy, and Turkey entered in 1878, it is declared in 
 Article 2 that complete religious liberty is to exist in the various 
 
230 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 territories mentioned in the preceding article, " including the 
 whole Turkish Empire." The 62d article begins : " The Sublime 
 Porte, having expressed its willingness to maintain the principle 
 of religious liberty and to give it the widest sphere, the con- 
 tracting parties take cognisance of this spontaneous declaration." 
 The work of the West in this matter is not ended, however. 
 " In spite of the reiterated declarations," says Dr. Barton, " it 
 is evident that the Turkish Government does not and never did 
 intend to acknowledge the right of a Moslem to become a Chris- 
 tian. A high official once told the writer that Turkey gives 
 to all her subjects the widest religious liberty. He said: ' There 
 is the fullest liberty for the Armenian to become a Catholic, 
 for the Greek to become an Armenian, for the Catholics and 
 Armenians to become Greeks, for any one of them to become 
 Protestant, or for all to become Mohammedans. There is the 
 fullest and completest religious liberty for all the subjects of 
 this empire.' In response to the question, ' How about liberty 
 for the Mohammedan to become a Christian ? ' he replied : ' That 
 is an impossibility in the nature of the case. When one has 
 once accepted Islam and become a follower of the Prophet he 
 cannot change. There is no power on earth that can change 
 him. Whatever he may say or claim cannot alter the fact that 
 he is a Moslem still, and must always be such. It is, therefore, 
 an absurdity to say that a Moslem has the privilege of changing 
 his religion, for to do so is beyond his power.' For the last 
 forty years the actions of the official and influential Turks have 
 borne out this theory of religious liberty in the Ottoman Empire. 
 Every Moslem showing interest in Christian things takes his 
 life in his hands. No protection can be afforded him against 
 the false charges that begin at once to multiply. His only safety 
 lies in flight." — (Barton, "Daybreak in Turkey," p. 256 ff.) 
 
 Now, apart altogether from the interests of the missionary 
 movement, we believe that it is wrong for the Christian 
 nations to allow Turkey to deny to her Moslem subjects the 
 right to become Christians, or to kill men, women, and children 
 as was done in the Armenian massacres, whose only crime was 
 Christ. It may be said in reply that the Turkish Empire is 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 231 
 
 a Moslem state, and that the conversion of Moslems to Chris- 
 tianity would destroy the character of the state. Undoubtedly 
 it would transform it. But all religions should be free to appeal 
 to men, provided they do not assail the moral axioms of life, 
 as no religion can which will command the assent of men in 
 a free society. And only those institutions ought to be free 
 to endure which can command the loyalty of free men. It 
 is not the duty of the Western nations to annihilate one an- 
 other's nationality or the nationality of the non-Christian nations, 
 but it is their duty to demand that the human spirit in all lands 
 shall be free to think its own thoughts and pursue its own 
 worship of God. 
 
 But now to turn to our last question, it is asked, does not 
 all this confusion of missions and politics, of the duties of 
 governments with the work of Christianity, hopelessly entangle 
 the missionary movement, defile its purity, paralyse its spiritual 
 strength, and frustrate its aim? 
 
 We reply, first, that it is inevitable, and as governments im- 
 prove is certain to increase; second, that it is assuredly fraught 
 with danger and the possibilities of disaster; and third, that 
 it is the confusion of an era of construction in which by diverse 
 and entangled forces God is building His kingdom among men. 
 
 It is inevitable. I have already spoken of the impossibility 
 of separating the missionary and his movement from the con- 
 ditions in which alone they could originate and under which 
 alone they can operate. The missionary movement is in- 
 evitable, and stripped as you please to strip it, it remains an 
 effort on the part of Western men to carry a religion which 
 has become domesticated in the West to the East to secure 
 its domestication in life there. The problem is inevitably a 
 problem of man's organised life, that is of politics. 
 
 And the confusion will increase because the Western nations 
 are to act increasingly together in a spirit of unselfish service. 
 They are to take over more and more distinctively missionary 
 duties. No one can travel through the great sections of the 
 world neglected and undeveloped by incompetent peoples, with- 
 out realising the validity of the moral basis on which, as Pro- 
 
232 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 fessor Reinsch has said, political expansion is justified by its 
 advocates, even if one doubts whether expansion is the one 
 necessary implication, the claim, namely, " that large portions 
 of the earth's surface are in the hands of nations or tribes who 
 are guilty of an under-development of their natural resources. 
 As the world becomes more and more densely populated, — so 
 runs the argument, — the natural wealth of the remoter regions 
 must be utilised for the benefit of mankind, and if any nation 
 or tribe, by the use of antiquated methods of production, or 
 by total neglect of certain parts of its resources, such as mines 
 or forests, stands in the way of this great need, that nation or 
 tribe must pass under the political power or tutelage of a nation 
 that will draw from the earth the utmost quantity of produce. 
 At any rate, the world must be policed, so that in every part 
 of it investments of capital may be made securely, and so that 
 industrial works may be carried on without annoyance or mo- 
 lestation from the natives. Few nations, however, stop with 
 this demand. Most of them frankly regard the world as the 
 inheritance of the most powerful races, which have a right to 
 replace those that are more barbarous or less well endowed with 
 force of mind and character. An advocate of radical methods 
 of colonisation says : * It is an inexorable law of progress that 
 inferior races are made for the purpose of serving the superior ; 
 and if they refuse to serve, they are fatally condemned to dis- 
 appear.'" — (Reinsch, "World Politics," p. n.) In a foot- 
 note Professor Reinsch adds the less selfish theory held by 
 German historians like Mommsen, Sybel, Ranke, and Von Hoist 
 that the superior nations have the mission to civilise the inferior, 
 if necessary, by force. Without the pressure of a just and 
 peaceful political constraint, Vambery holds, the regeneration 
 of the Moslem world is impossible. The world's interest in it- 
 self is to increase steadily, and the relation of politics to the 
 work of missions is to grow more intricate, whether missionaries 
 will or no. 
 
 And as the Western nations enter with increasing intimacy 
 and responsibility into the life of other nations, they will in- 
 creasingly ask themselves, " What are our duties to the nations ? 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 233 
 
 Are they merely governmental or commercial? Have we not 
 intellectual and moral responsibilities also ? " And these ques- 
 tions bring these nations and their representatives face to face 
 with their governmental religious responsibility. On this point 
 but two things need be said, each of which will indicate the cer- 
 tainty of increasing relationship between the political and the 
 religious missions of the West to the East. One is that, just 
 as the missionary inevitably has a political message wrapped 
 up in his mission and his Gospel, so the statesman or the 
 merchant has a religious message, which he delivers in spite 
 of himself, for or against Christ and the aim which the mis- 
 sionary serves. The men whom the West sends out will in- 
 creasingly be men of the best type of the past — men like Town- 
 send Harris, one of the most useful diplomatists of the last 
 century, who records in his diary during the negotiations with 
 Japan which resulted in the treaty of 1858 : " I shall be both 
 proud and happy if I can be the humble means of once more 
 opening Japan to the blessed rule of Christianity " ; like the 
 Punjab statesmen of the school of the Lawrences, who believed 
 in Christ and openly confessed and served Him. Such men 
 identifying themselves with the missionaries and sympathising 
 with and advancing their aim will further confuse missions and 
 politics. The other point to be noted is that, as light breaks on 
 the difficult problem of Church and State at home, and our 
 governments become in a deeper and more real sense Christian, 
 they will express their Christian character in their relations to 
 other nations. If our governments are purely secular, of course 
 they can have none but a secular message to utter; but if, as 
 we believe, they are or are meant to be in a noble sense religious 
 and Christian, then their Christian character will find utterance 
 as the Christian character of John Lawrence's Government did 
 in the Punjab. In so far as our Western nations become truly 
 Christian and act consistently with their character, the confusion 
 of religion and politics is likely to increase in a way for which 
 we ardently pray. 
 
 But the political entanglements of missions with politics have 
 often been, and will continue to be, an embarrassment abroad. 
 
234 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The story of our relations with the backward nations is not 
 all a good story, and we shall not escape " the nemesis," as 
 Professor Moore calls it, " of the connection between the mission 
 work and national ambitions, international complications, and 
 race agitations, commercial exploitations, and what not. . . . 
 In a far higher degree than we really have been responsible 
 for them we shall be complicated in the issues. For, having 
 once, even only in a left-handed way, profited by these, or only 
 not sufficiently rebuked by them, we shall have with our own 
 right hand to pay the bill." — (Harvard Theological Review, July, 
 1908, p. 260.) "So your religion is a part of your Western 
 life?" we are told the Chinese will say to us. "Well, we do 
 not want your civilisation or anything that enters into it." 
 Mr. Dickinson told us this charmingly in his impersonation of 
 " A Chinese Official." Well, we must take whatever comes to 
 us, and for our part we mourn all the wrong and injustice and 
 selfishness and immorality of our relation with Asia and Africa, 
 but we do believe that the missionary movement has protested 
 against these, and we believe also that Asia and Africa make 
 more discrimination than we suppose, and that in the mercy of 
 God the evil that has been done will not be as long remembered 
 as men fear, and that the flareback of the unavoidable connec- 
 tion of missions with politics springing from the real, even if 
 chaotic and contradictory unity of our outward movement, may 
 not be destructive or permanently injurious. 
 
 We can leave the consequences of all such confusion to God 
 if our own motive is pure and we cling with loyal fidelity to 
 our distinct aim. If missionaries and their movement by what 
 they are and do act only in love and sacrifice, asking nothing 
 and giving all, if they teach those whom they reach the truth 
 of Christ and to live as the disciples of Christ, if they steadily 
 keep before themselves and the new Churches the great fact 
 that Christianity is not a religion of the missionaries of the 
 West, but that the missionaries of the West are the bearers of 
 a religion that is all men's and every nation's, — then the con- 
 fusions of which we have spoken, which are either desirable 
 or inevitable, or both, will work out in the end, with whatever 
 
MISSIONS AND POLITICS 235 
 
 unavoidable patience and pain, the plan of the Eternal One 
 Who governs all. The use of great national forces will be 
 seen to have been part of God's plan. A good man rejoiced in 
 an article in The Churchman of September 18, 1900, in the midst 
 of the Boxer troubles, that in the early centuries, " from the days 
 of Nero down," " there were no Christian powers to deflower and 
 degrade the purity of Christianity, and no Christian flag to wrap 
 around and conceal the Cross." But we will rejoice that steadily, 
 though all too slowly, the principles of the Gospel have wrought 
 their way into the life of the world, and that by many agencies, 
 though by none so purely as by the enterprise of foreign mis- 
 sions, itself we recognise so imperfect and incomplete, the new 
 age of true peace and justice comes, that new age which 
 
 Stands as yet 
 Half built against the sky 
 Open to every threat 
 
 Of storms that clamour by. 
 While scaffolding veils the walls 
 And dim dust floats and falls 
 
 As moving to and fro their tasks the masons ply. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE NON-CHRIS- 
 TIAN RELIGIONS 
 
V 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NON-CHRISTIAN 
 RELIGIONS 
 
 THE missionary movement springs from the conviction 
 that Christianity is the universal religion, that it is 
 meant for every man and needed by every man. This 
 conviction involves the belief that Christianity is superior to 
 the non-Christian religions. Some of them claim to be au- 
 thoritative and sufficient for special peoples, and others claim, 
 like Christianity, to be universal. Christianity contests all these 
 claims when it sets forth on the foreign missionary enterprise, 
 offering itself as better than all other religions for all men and 
 for every man. This contention of Christianity must be reason- 
 ably supported. A religion cannot claim to be universal and 
 expect its claim to sustain itself. 
 
 Each believer in Christianity must have rational grounds for 
 his faith. If the mere fact that his fathers were Christians, 
 and that Christianity is the prevailing religion in his country, 
 are the reasons for his Christian belief, then he must allow that 
 the Mohammedans and Hindus have equally good reason for 
 rejecting Christianity in favour of their own religions. If he 
 believes in the Bible as the Word of God because it appears 
 to make that claim for itself, and in Christianity because its 
 preachers confidently affirm its truth, then he cannot complain 
 if others urge similar grounds for loyalty to other religions and 
 other sacred books. In early years a child will hold his religion 
 on such grounds as these, and men and women whose lives 
 involve no intellectual problems may believe as children believe. 
 But the great mass of men and women, if they are to believe 
 their religion truly and do its work in the world, must know 
 
 239 
 
2 4 o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 why they believe it, independently of tradition and authority. 
 In the Christian lands such knowledge may not necessitate a 
 comparison of Christianity with the other religions of the world. 
 The glory of Christianity is that it offers itself to human ex- 
 perience to be tested, and that it is prepared to present to the 
 mind the grounds in history and in experience and in reason 
 on which its claims to supreme authority rest. It has absolute 
 proofs, which do not require comparison with the contentions 
 of all other religions before they may be accepted. And it has 
 been, and will continue to be, those who personally know God 
 in Christ, and who have such an indisputable experience as 
 well as a rational assurance of the truth of Christianity, who 
 will go out as its missionaries. 
 
 But even at home the possibility of cherishing a Christian 
 faith without a comparison of Christianity with other religions 
 becomes less and less. We find that there are adherents of 
 other religions who claim for them the power to satisfy the 
 needs of the soul, and who argue for the validity and sufficiency 
 of their religions as against Christianity. There are many people 
 about us who are disturbed by these claims. We can only assure 
 them rationally. We cannot do so by mere denunciation or 
 denial. Furthermore, what comparison we have thus far made 
 so powerfully confirms our Christian faith that we are sure 
 to make increasing use of the results of the comparative study 
 of religions for the vindication of Christianity in the home 
 lands. 
 
 And in the contention that perhaps, after all, our religion 
 is not final, that we have been misled regarding it, as millions 
 of people have been misled regarding other religions; that our 
 historic Christianity, after all, is only a phase, a stage in the 
 religious evolution of humanity, some of us can only assure 
 ourselves, and some of us who are undisturbed by such con- 
 tentions can only convince others, through the actual study and 
 comparison of all the religious thought and life of man. 
 
 In the foreign field, assuredly, the comparison of Christianity 
 with the non-Christian religions is inevitable. It is precisely 
 what the missionary enterprise invites. It cannot expect the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 241 
 
 people to whom it goes at once to abandon their own religions 
 and to accept a new one on the mere fiat of the missionaries. 
 What it seeks is intelligent and living faith. That involves the 
 examination of the new and its comparison with the old. The 
 new, indeed, can only be stated intelligibly in language asso- 
 ciated with the old, and by the use of ideas created or preserved 
 by the old. Every wise activity of the missionary movement 
 involves a knowledge of the non-Christian religions and of 
 their relations to Christianity. The offer of Christianity to men 
 can only be made effectively by men who have compared it with 
 other religions, and its offer is itself an invitation to set it in 
 such comparison. 
 
 The missionary enterprise has made this comparison. The 
 West has only begun to talk of comparative religion during the 
 last generation, but the missionary enterprise has been studying 
 it for a hundred years. It does not pretend to say that it has 
 approached the subject with an empty mind, with no preconcep- 
 tions. No one can do this, and if any one could he would be 
 utterly disqualified for the study. It is a study of religion. 
 A blind man might as well be set to comparing colours as a 
 man without religion to comparing religions. Missionaries have 
 gone out to the foreign field with the most positive and definite 
 convictions, but they have not been disqualified thereby from 
 studying justly the religious problem. No men have been better 
 qualified. They are the best experts in the world on Christianity, 
 and the love which has carried them on their mission makes 
 them the most sympathetic students of the religions to which 
 they go. Some of them are accused of being intolerant, and 
 they see enough to make them so, but the spirit of the enter- 
 prise is the spirit of such men as the late Dr. Faber of China, 
 or of the present Bishop of Lahore. " It is my purpose to 
 investigate scientifically the Chinese religion," wrote Dr. Faber 
 in his " Introduction to the Science of Chinese Religion." " Such 
 an undertaking is different from a description of the religious 
 practices of the present times. Religion has in China, as every- 
 where, its history. We shall have to trace, as far as possible, 
 every religious practice to its origin, show the connection be- 
 
242 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 tween the present and the past, and explain, as far as possible, 
 the symbolical forms from their original ideas, which they too 
 often have only preserved in a petrified state. I, as a mission- 
 ary, want to understand the religious state and condition of the 
 people I have to deal with." " It has been my effort," writes 
 Bishop Lefroy in speaking of the Mohammedans of Lahore, " to 
 enter as much as possible into their thoughts — understand as 
 intelligently and sympathetically their creed, and look out at least 
 as much for its good side and strong points as for its blots and 
 weaknesses. I need scarcely urge — for it is now becoming gen- 
 erally recognised — that some such attitude as this is alone either 
 worthy of our own faith, based as it is on the true light which 
 lighted every man coming into the world, or in any degree likely 
 to win those for whom we yearn, and enable them to find in 
 Christ the satisfaction of all the deepest needs of their own souls, 
 the way by which they can come home to their Father." — (Cam- 
 bridge Mission, Occasional Paper No. 21 , p. 3.) 
 
 It may be said that this attitude of the missionary enter- 
 prise is not open-minded and judicial, that for it the issue is 
 already closed, and that its study of the non-Christian religions 
 is merely for the purpose of making its propaganda effective. 
 Most assuredly foreign missions are not an enterprise of enquiry 
 for a true religion, an expression of uncertainty of faith. Mis- 
 sionaries are not hunting for truth which they have not. They 
 are offering truth which they believe they have. They do not 
 regard themselves as omniscient, but they do regard their re- 
 ligion as all-sufficient, and they are seeking to communicate it 
 to all mankind. But this does not incapacitate them for seeing 
 facts. And they and their enterprise know the facts about the 
 non-Christian religions. They know them better than the ad- 
 herents and teachers of these religions know them. Dr. Barton 
 says that when he was in India " a Hindu high priest was 
 showing him through one of their important temples. An 
 American missionary was in the company. The priest spoke 
 English easily, and was voluble in his talk. Early in his con- 
 versation he was describing one of the gods before whom we 
 stood, when the missionary most adroitly and kindly asked him 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 243 
 
 if he was not confusing the name of the god he was describing 
 with one standing several feet away. He hesitated a moment, 
 said the missionary was right, and then went on correctly. Fre- 
 quently after that he consulted the missionary openly in regard 
 to an idol, or a legend, or some principle of Hinduism. Quietly 
 he said to the writer during the hour in the temple : ' These 
 missionaries study our religion more thoroughly than the most 
 of us do, and so come to know it much more accurately.' " For 
 most of its knowledge of the non-Christian religions and peoples 
 the West is indebted to missionaries. " I would ask you," wrote 
 Dr. R. E. Hume to Vivakananda, " what body of foreigners 
 understand and sympathise with Indians better than, or as well 
 as, missionaries? What body of foreigners speak the vernacular 
 as well ? " It is true that the missionary enterprise represents 
 a judgment already passed upon the issue of comparative re- 
 ligion. We purpose to show now what that judgment is, and 
 that it is reasonable and just, and what in view of it the attitude 
 of the missionary movement to the non-Christian religions should 
 be. 
 
 It is to be said, at the outset, that any comparison on which 
 such a judgment rests must be honest and fair. It must not 
 compare what is best in Christianity with what is worst in the 
 non-Christian religions. It must not charge as results of any 
 religion conditions which exist in spite of it. It must be fair in 
 its selection of witnesses. It must appreciate the point of view 
 of the other side. It must get at the facts, and it must face 
 them all. It is preposterous to propose that only the favourable 
 facts are to be considered. Christians especially must be charita- 
 ble in their judgments of other religions as of other men, but 
 they are false and not charitable if they deliberately leave out 
 some of the facts on which a true judgment must be based. 
 It is especially important that the things to be compared be 
 clearly defined. We have to begin by understanding distinctly 
 just what Christianity is, and just what each of the religions 
 to be compared with it is also. We shall come to the latter 
 before we get through, but what do we mean by Christianity? 
 We do not mean what is called Christian civilisation. So far 
 
244 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 as Western civilisation is the product of Christianity it enters 
 into the account, just as Buddhist and Confucianist and Hindu 
 and Mohammedan civilisation enter in, so far, and only so far, 
 as these civilisations or any elements of them are the products 
 of those religions. But we refuse to identify Christianity with 
 Occidental civilisation. We do not mean the creeds and Churches 
 of Christendom, nor its development of doctrine, nor the po- 
 litical powers that are called Christian, nor the social and in- 
 dustrial institutions of Western nations. We mean by Chris- 
 tianity the Christianity of the New Testament. And we under- 
 stand by that the living offer of the Father God to men in 
 Christ, and that reaffirmation or new revelation of the eternal 
 and universal principles of the Kingdom of God which the New 
 Testament enshrines. That men differ widely as to what all 
 this means and involves goes without saying, but for the pur- 
 pose of comparing Christianity with the non-Christian religions 
 it is sufficient to set down on the side of Christianity that in 
 which Christian men are agreed. On the other side, we would 
 set the non-Christian religions, likewise essentially denned. 
 Then the contrast must be between these and their effects on 
 the lives of the men who hold them, the society which they con- 
 trol and inspire, and all the fruitage that they bear. In such 
 a comparison, if fully made, we would measure the Christian 
 conception of God, of man, of life, of ethics, of society, of sin, 
 of salvation, of time, and of eternity over against the concep- 
 tions of the non-Christian religions; the power and influence of 
 the Christian religion to realise its ideals, to mould life, to per- 
 petuate and propagate itself, over against the power and in- 
 fluence of the other religions, and we would come to results 
 which we can describe only in part, and which pour a new yearn- 
 ing into the missionary motive and run a new resolution as firm 
 as the dutiful will of Christ into the missionary duty. 
 
 But before we define these results, we will not conceal from 
 ourselves the fact that many others, either with or without any 
 actual comparison of the world's religions, hold varying views 
 of them. 
 
 i. Some few have found this or that Eastern religion more 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 245 
 
 satisfactory than they found Christianity. Thus Schopenhauer 
 declared his joy and contentment in the Upanishads of Hindu- 
 ism : " Oh, how thoroughly is the mind here washed clean of 
 all early engrafted Jewish superstitions, and of all philosophy 
 that cringes before those superstitions ! In the whole world 
 there is no study except that of the originals, so beneficial and 
 so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace 
 of my life; it will be the solace of my death." — (Quoted by 
 Sukumar Haldar in " Hinduism," p. 64, described in the ad- 
 vertisement on the cover as " an effectual vindication of Hindu- 
 ism on the strength (1) of the Hindu shastras and sages, and 
 (2) of the writings of European savants, such as Jones, Cole- 
 brooke, Max Miiller, Schopenhauer, Bjornstjerna, Wilson, El- 
 phinstone, Heeren, Tod, Niebuhr, Muir, Arnold, Pococke, Mau- 
 rice, Ward, Kennedy, Schlegel, Cunningham, Buckle, Cotton, 
 and others.") 
 
 2. Others have started with or come to the view that each 
 people has its own suitable religion, the outgrowth of its own 
 life, and best adapted to its needs. Mr. Bosworth Smith holds 
 that " missionaries will no doubt be found to acquiesce in what 
 seems the will of Providence, that a national religion is as much 
 part of a man's nature as the genius of his language or the 
 colour of his skin." — (Lectures on " Mohammedanism," 2d ed., 
 p. 68.) And Mr. Scawen Blunt says that " while admitting the 
 eternal truth of Christianity for ourselves, we may be tempted 
 to hold that, in the Arabian mind, if in no other, Islam too 
 may prove eternal." — (" The Future of Islam," pp. 142, 172.) 
 And especially do we hear this view set forth to-day in behalf 
 of Hinduism. " Let us be friends," writes a Hindu to the Amer- 
 ican public in a leading magazine, " and as children of one 
 God forget all differences of opinion. You have your religion, 
 and you think it best. If it is the best, keep it to yourselves. 
 But do not revile other religions. As for faults, other religions 
 have faults, but so has your own. Let us pray Him whom you 
 call God and I call Brahma, to send us enlightenment and make 
 us love each other without consideration of caste and creed. 
 But I assure you that you cannot thrust a new religion on an 
 
246 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 already civilised nation, whose religion is the cradle of religions ; 
 where the people are born to their religion and it is fostered 
 through generations. . . . Christianity is best suited to the 
 Western nations. As a religion we do not show disrespect to 
 it, because every religion tends toward the same end, namely, 
 salvation. ... In the present Hindu religion one can find all 
 the essential elements of all other religions. . . . The Hindus 
 regard it as impregnable and everlasting. To preach Christianity 
 to the Hindu, who had a religion and was civilised before the 
 dawn of history, seems to him, therefore, the most ridiculous 
 things on earth — indeed, audacious." — (The Forum, 1894, pp. 489. 
 483, art. by Purushatam Rao Telang, on " Christian Missions 
 as Seen by a Brahman.") And this is the view which Mrs. 
 Besant puts forth with her remarkable eloquence with the ap- 
 proval of the leaders of modern Hindu thought. It was the 
 dominant principle of her address on " Hindu Social Reform on 
 National Lines " at the Madras meeting of the Hindu Associa- 
 tion in 1903 : 
 
 The Hindu Association intends to promote Hindu social and 
 religious advancement on national lines in harmony with the 
 spirit of Hindu civilisation. There is the distinguishing mark. 
 While we have quarrelled with none, while we have harsh words 
 for none, while we have condemnation for none, we yet claim 
 our duty to choose the path which, we believe, leads best to 
 our goal, and that path is a national path and not a foreign one, 
 is one of Hindu civilisation and not of Western civilisation — 
 (hear, hear) — is one in which, while we will take from the West 
 everything that is useful, that can enrich our knowledge and 
 enlarge our hearts, we will take nothing that despiritualises India, 
 nothing that denationalises India, nothing that makes her simply 
 a copy instead of a divine original. We do not want a plant of 
 exotic growth that will wither before the Indian sun and will 
 be torn up by the Indian storm ; we want the plant of Hindu 
 growth and of Hindu root, that grows stronger when the Hindu 
 sun blazes upon it and is able to resist the tornado as well as 
 the tropical heat. (Cheers.) No reform is lasting, no change 
 is permanent which is not based on the traditions of the nation 
 and in accordance with the genius of the people. I am not 
 condemning Western ways, Western traditions, Western cus- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 247 
 
 toms. Were I in England I should tell them to base their in- 
 stitutions on English history, English genius, English thought; 
 but in India I claim the same right of originality for the Indian 
 nation to base her growth on Indian traditions and to build in 
 accordance with Indian architecture. A house is not well built 
 which is a mixture of every style of building; here a bit from 
 the architecture of England and there a scrap that comes from 
 China; here a doorway that has a Mussulman stamp on it, and 
 there a turret that recalls an English cathedral spire. Build your 
 temple as a Hindu temple, and then it will stand; but if you 
 build into it scraps of the architecture of every other religion, 
 you will have a grotesque anachronism and not a national build- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 Then we come to the religious education of Hindu boys and 
 girls in all Hindu schools and colleges. How vital that is you 
 can see if you look round you. Why, only yesterday I stood 
 face to face with a Brahmana, of high social position, of high 
 intellectual equipment, who, trained in a Jesuit college by the 
 carelessness of those responsible for his training, is on the verge 
 of renouncing his ancestral religion and embracing Christian 
 faith. (Cries of " Shame.") Shame; but shame to whom? To 
 that young man (cheers), to that young man who, placed as a 
 boy, plastic and helpless, in the hands of the Jesuit teachers, has 
 been moulded like plastic clay by their fingers and taken every 
 sophism that they present to him as truth direct from the mouth 
 of God, or shame to those who place plastic minds in the hands 
 of the Jesuit and the foreigner? And shame, most of all, not 
 to the one man who sent his son to that fatal influence, but to 
 the whole community which has been indifferent (cheers) to its 
 ancestral faith, and cared not whether its boys lost or kept their 
 religion provided they gained the Western veneer which was 
 sufficient for the gaining of a livelihood. I do not blame Western 
 veneer; I do not want you not to educate your sons on Western 
 lines. That is necessary in the present condition of India. But 
 why, at the same time, not give them Hindu religious and moral 
 education? Why not place within their reach the priceless 
 treasures that the past has bequeathed ? By all means give them 
 the jewels of Western learning; why should they not be en- 
 riched by them? But do not deprive them of the diadem, the 
 diamond of the Eastern faith in which all colours are found, 
 blended into one pure ray of light, that diadem of Hinduism 
 which is your priceless heirloom, and which India cannot afford 
 to lose. . . . 
 
 There is no nation greater than India on the face of the 
 
248 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 world. India has a right and a duty in the civilisation of the 
 future ; she is not simply to repeat the modern notes of younger 
 nations ; she has to sound out her own mighty note which belongs 
 to her among the nations of the world, and this not only for 
 your interest but for the interests of the Empire and for the 
 interests of the world at large. Unless you keep your own 
 national characteristics, unless you preserve your religion, unless 
 you walk along the road that suits the national genius, India has 
 no national future in the building of the coming civilisation. 
 
 This view, not without elements of truth in the case of some 
 religions which we must recognise, is set forth boldly even in 
 defence of fetichism and savage religions. We are bidden not 
 to disturb the primitive races in their noble simplicity, which can- 
 not bear the burden of the more advanced faith. This idea we 
 may as well dismiss in passing with the authoritative testimony 
 of one who lived among them and whose associate, James Chal- 
 mers, was eaten by them. " We hear of the noble savage," says 
 Dr. Lawes, " disturbed in the quiet of his simple, primitive life ; 
 but during the whole course of my missionary career I have 
 never met a noble savage. He exists only in the minds of novel- 
 ists and romancers. He is lascivious, crafty, quarrelsome, and 
 selfish, and nothing can change him but the power of the Gos- 
 pel." — (The British Weekly, May 16, 1901.) 
 
 3. The view which we have been considering is given a much 
 nobler form by some who see in each religion God's effort to 
 reveal Himself to men. 
 
 A little here, again a little there, 
 
 In varying measures, and in sundry ways 
 
 For men of different ages, various climes. 
 
 God hath withdrawn the veil that hides His face, 
 
 Lest any man should say, " God grudged me light, 
 
 And grudging light, denied the Hope of Life." 
 
 Another poet sets forth melodiously the same thought: 
 
 God sends His teachers unto every age, 
 To every clime and every race of men, 
 With revelation fitted to their growth 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 249 
 
 And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of truth 
 Unto the selfish rule of one sole race: 
 Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed 
 The life of men and given it to grasp 
 The master key of knowledge, reverence, 
 Infolds some germs of goodness and of right; 
 Else never had the eager soul which loathes 
 The slothful down of pampered ignorance, 
 Found in it even a moment's fitful rest. 
 
 A missionary in China has earnestly set forth the same view. 
 " All the great historic religions of the world are not only the 
 product of seekers after God, but, as the same sun shines in 
 Asia as in Europe, so it is the same Spirit of God which moves 
 Arabs, Hindus, and Chinese prophets and sages to write down 
 that with which they believe God's Spirit has inspired them, for 
 Jesus Christ lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 
 A Hindu writer in The Epiphany goes somewhat further: 
 " Christianity is not the only way revealed by God, but Hinduism 
 is also the way to God. The religion (whatever it may be) which 
 is best makes us closest to Him. Hinduism, which is an ancient 
 religion, is as good a religion as Christianity itself, because if it 
 be not good it is utterly impossible for it to stand on its own legs 
 for so many days in Asia and other parts of the world in the 
 midst of calamities and darkness, under the tyranny of ancient 
 kings, and when other religions by its side were rising and 
 declining and trying the match with it." — (The Epiphany, Jan- 
 uary 23, 1909.) 
 
 Under this view some hold that all that is necessary is that 
 each man should be faithful and conscientious in following his 
 own light. But the light is darkness with some men. " Tell 
 us what Hinduism is and is not," the Cambridge missionaries 
 reply to the writer in The Epiphany. " A Hindu has said that 
 Hinduism offers protection to the drunkard, the lascivious, the 
 liar, and the thug, for each of whom it prescribes a particular 
 kind of spirituality, giving sanction to deeds of darkness." Ro- 
 man Catholicism has extended similar shelter in some lands. It 
 has done so in Mexico. But the men who are faithful to such 
 
250 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 lights are not worthy of praise. Conscientiousness is no proof 
 of truth or righteousness. Conscience can be as depraved as 
 desire. Others under this view hold that other revelations are 
 superior to the Christian revelation. That is the foundation 
 contention of Islam and Vedantism and also of the New 
 Buddhism, which, however, talks in the terms of philosophy and 
 not of revelation. — (The Japan Daily Mail, March 31, 1892; 
 Art. " The New Buddhism.") Others still hold this view as part 
 of a larger thought of God's education of the human race, seeing 
 in the non-Christian religions either God's present school for the 
 non-Christian peoples or His past schoolmasters to bring them to 
 Christ. Some set forth this conception with a carelessness which 
 justifies Dr. Ashmore's vigorous reply that it "makes Christ the 
 author of heathenism as He is of Christianity. . . . According 
 to that, God, who was receiving with compliance the sweet smell 
 that rose from the camp in the wilderness, was, at the same time, 
 beholding with pleasure the sacrifices of Moloch in the valley 
 of the son of Hinnom. The same holy Spirit that was moving 
 Elijah on one side of Carmel to declare that Jehovah He is 
 God, was at the same time impelling the priests of Baal to gash 
 themselves with knives and declare that Baal he is God on 
 the other side of the plain. . . . Because there are some virtues 
 woven into heathenism, it does not follow that God made 
 heathenism. God made gold, but He did not work it up into 
 graven images. God made grain, but He did not make it into 
 whiskey. God made the natural virtues, but He did not organise 
 them into Confucian and Shintu systems of ancestor worship 
 and king worship." Undoubtedly, God has not forsaken any 
 part of this world, and He has been educating mankind, but 
 that does not entitle us to charge to Him all that has found 
 a place in the life and thought of men. We are bound to exempt 
 God from responsibility for whatever is morally discordant with 
 His character. The problem of the divine education of the hu- 
 man race is still unsolved (Faber, " The Science of Chinese 
 Religion," p. 149), and what we have to deal with to-day are 
 the simple facts of the world. What religions are actually ac- 
 quainting men with the character of God to-day and making 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 251 
 
 them sons of God and bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit 
 of God? This is our practical question. 
 
 4. A fourth view of the world's religions, including Chris- 
 tianity, reduces them all to mere ethnic superstitions, which 
 humanity should outgrow, and upon whose decay the hope of 
 human progress rests. Vambery asserts that the decline of 
 the Mohammedan world was due to its devotion to religion, 
 and that the progress of Japan is due to its repudiation of 
 religion : 
 
 The evil results of the existing relationship between Church 
 and State are now beginning to be realised by the Mohammedans 
 themselves. A learned mollah from India writes me on this 
 subject as follows: "The Church and State have been allies 
 in Christian Europe, and the subjection of the people has been 
 the policy of both. What is the condition of priest-ridden coun- 
 tries like Spain? It is true that the mollahs are the allies of 
 the tyrannical Moslem rulers. But, fortunately, there is no 
 priesthood in Islam. ... If Europe can become civilised and 
 progressive in spite of the absurd dogmas of Christianity, there 
 is every hope of regeneration and renaissance of Moslem Asia, 
 for the dogmas of Islam are less absurd and less rigid than those 
 of Christianity. The alliance between Church and State rests 
 in Islam merely on an act of violence which has to be removed 
 first of all." 
 
 That we are right in attributing the decline of the Islamic 
 world to the tyranny and the overmastering power of religion 
 is best proved by the marvellous advance made by Japan. When 
 the Japanese, although in many social and political points pre- 
 serving a severely Asiatic character, have, as by the act of a 
 Deus ex machina, become Europeanised ; have accepted our 
 sciences, our arts, our form of government, and our manner of 
 thought; this is because they were indifferent in matters of 
 religion — in fact, are practically atheists. The national religion, 
 Shintoism, is not a religion at all, but merely an apotheosis of 
 heroes, kings, ancestors, and the powers of Nature culminating in 
 the precept, " Follow thy natural inclination, and obey the com- 
 mandments." The Japanese who is at all educated laughs at 
 religion in general and wonders how it can continue in Western 
 lands. The spirit of liberalism which prevails in Japan excludes 
 all possibility of despotism. The present Emperor, Mutsuhito, 
 was in no way restricted when in 1888 he gave his people a 
 
252 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 constitution. No Divine command, no prophetic word, prevented 
 him from accepting or imitating the good he found in the ad- 
 ministrations of Western lands. The Japanese recognise no 
 Kafirs and no heathen, whom it is their duty to hate and to 
 despise, as is the case amongst pious Christians and Mussulmans. 
 In the same proportion as he keeps at a safe distance from the 
 narrow world of faith, he is able to get nearer to the light of 
 liberty and progress. The latest history of Japan contains a 
 solemn word of warning for all Islamic nations. 
 
 India is reading history in the same way. A writer in the 
 Kay as t ha Samachar calls upon his countrymen to learn the lesson 
 that religion has ceased to influence politics outside the Islamic 
 world, and that Japan's regeneration has been effected by states- 
 men and not by priests; that if we want to rise in the scale 
 of nations we must discard the thousand castes and creeds 
 which are raising their hydra heads around us everywhere and 
 adopt the one comprehensive eternal religion of Fatherland. 
 (Kayastha Samachar, August, 1902, p. 136; Art. "The Japanese 
 Renaissance.") " The Americans," says a Hindu writer, " are 
 the most progressive nation, and have in some respects left the 
 European nations behind, because they have not been hampered 
 with religion. . . . Religious superstition has been the curse of 
 India." — (The Forum, September, 1894, p. 95; Art. by Vir- 
 chand F. Gandhi, " Home Life in India.") In too many lands 
 the superficial comparison of religions is leading men to discard 
 all religion and to lose the religious sentiment. 
 
 5. A more common view is that all religions are funda- 
 mentally the same. Leaders of the non-Christian religions have 
 taken up this position. It was authoritatively expressed in a 
 careful statement addressed to " our revered ecclesiastical 
 brethren in the world " by the heads of the six sects allied in 
 the " Great Japan Buddhists' Union " in the year 1900. " It 
 is, indeed, certain," said these leaders of Japanese Buddhism, 
 " that the forms of religion in the world are manifold. But it 
 is equally certain that in spite of the dissimilarity of religions 
 in their tenets, as well as in rites — in short, in their external 
 organisation — the fundamental principles embodied in what we 
 regard as the higher classes of religion, to say nothing of those 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 253 
 
 which still remain undeveloped, are in all cases essentially, if 
 not entirely, analagous." — (Report of Eighth Conference of For- 
 eign Mission Boards of United States and Canada, 1901, p. yj.) 
 This is now a very common view, both in the East and the 
 West. Natural religion is assumed to be all that is really essen- 
 tial, and it is taken for granted that this is the fundamental 
 thing in each of the great religions entering into our comparison. 
 But this assumption is erroneous. (See Goreh, " The Supposed 
 and Real Doctrines of Hinduism, as held by educated Hindus, 
 with the True Source of the Former."). Natural religion is 
 not the common substance of all these religions. Hinduism 
 " denies the very existence of natural religion." Logically, as 
 Dr. Kellogg points out, it does away with morality entirely, 
 because: (1) It makes God the author equally of sin and 
 righteousness, truth and falsehood. (2) Because it regards 
 existence in the world as an evil consequent upon a life of 
 virtue, no less than a life of vice. All actions are, therefore, alike 
 evil. (3) It destroys all human responsibility, in that it affirms 
 that in all things man acts, not freely, but under the compulsion 
 of an inevitable necessity. (Kellogg, " Hinduism," a sermon, 
 Mirzapore Orphan School Press, 1876, p. 17.) What is com- 
 mon to all the religions of the world is simply the religious 
 sentiment, with its evidence of the deep religious needs of men. 
 There is no common idea of God or of morals, of sin or of 
 righteousness, of man, or of truth. " The non-essential parts 
 of religions differ, but the essentials agree," says a Hindu apolo- 
 gist. " What are the essentials ? " he asks, and answers, " Self- 
 control and self-knowledge." But all religions do not agree in 
 this point, and even if they did verbally, they do not agree as 
 to what the " self " is, or how it is to be controlled, or for what 
 purpose, or what it can know, or what knowledge is. The re- 
 ligions of the world do not even agree as to what religion is, 
 or what the world is, and some of them affirm that nothing 
 is, or that the end of life is that nothing should be. The only 
 point in which the religions of the world are agreed is that 
 men need a religion, although Singhalese Buddhism denies even 
 this, but as to what is meant by religion, and what that religion 
 
254 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 should be, and where it is to be found, and what use is to be 
 made of it, they are not agreed. The religions of the world, in 
 a word, start from the same point in response to the same deep 
 human need. That is all. They travel nowhither all together. 
 
 6. Still another view, differing from those we have con- 
 sidered, is that what each religion needs is simply to modify 
 itself in accordance with the new requirements of life, borrow- 
 ing from other religions what elements it may need, but that 
 it should not consider conversion or surrender to any other re- 
 ligion. We behold to-day the great non-Christian religions 
 undergoing this transformation and taking this attitude. The old 
 idea that the non-Christian religions were immovable, and that 
 the work of Christian missions beat upon them with impotent 
 futility, has had to be given up. " The ancient faiths," said 
 the late Dr. Cuthbert Hall upon his last return from India, 
 "are in process of readjustment to new conditions, and are 
 assimilating religious elements of Western thought, and using 
 the product thus assimilated as a means of self-defence against 
 Christianity." — (New York Observer, October 21, 1907.) Mr. 
 Slater in " The Higher Hinduism " has described for us the 
 changes which are taking place in Hinduism in this way, holding 
 as a Christian man must to the most hopeful view of the out- 
 come, while he yet foresees the increased difficulties which the 
 transformation is to bring. 
 
 At the bottom of the " Hindu revival " and of all the present 
 restlessness and ill-feeling towards Christianity, is the patriotic 
 desire to preserve the integrity of Bharata Kanda, the ancient 
 land of spirituality. As formerly in Japan, so in India now, 
 Christianity and Christians are chiefly disliked because these 
 terms appear to be synonymous with whatever is opposed to the 
 honour and independence of the nation. Every movement in 
 India that would insure success must ally itself with this senti- 
 ment of nationality ; hence the greater success of the Arya Samaj 
 movement, which is based on Indian lines, than of the Brahmo 
 Samaj, which owes its origin mainly to Christianity. . . . 
 
 And here we may note a significant fact in which the inherent 
 weakness of Hinduism is disclosed. If it looks to the revival 
 of the national faith in regard to religion, it yet looks to the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 255 
 
 West for its social and political ideals. In this strange diver- 
 gence it confesses its utter weakness as a social force; that there 
 is nothing in its ancient institutions to revive which will fit the 
 nation for its keen struggle for existence ; but that for the 
 elaboration of a better order of society it must look outside 
 itself. This severance of religion from sociology, this failure of 
 Hinduism as a reforming agency, a regenerator of society, an 
 instrument of progress, robs it of half its strength, and en- 
 courages the Christian advocate to hope that, as the thoughtful 
 men of India come to study the sociological results of Christ's 
 religion in the West, and see it to be the pioneer of all true 
 progress, the only effective agency in destroying the old evils, 
 they may be led to pay a deeper respect to its underlying and 
 distinctive truths. Applied Christianity is now the demand of 
 the Western world, and possibly the great Indian nation, born 
 to new life in the present age, may find a way to Christ through 
 the social and political avenues of our time. . . . 
 
 The fact is that, though a new spirit is abroad working under 
 the old forms of Hinduism, whose ethics are gradually being 
 penetrated and transformed by the ideals of the West, this 
 movement is not so much the result of an honest conviction of 
 the soundness of either the dogmas or the institutions of Hindu- 
 ism as a patriotic attempt to harmonise its higher ideals with 
 those of Christianity, which are seen to be everywhere gaining 
 ground in the world. It bears certain resemblances to the pre- 
 tensions of the Gnostics of Alexandria in the second century 
 who held the key to the higher spiritual philosophy, which at- 
 tempted to unify Christ's teaching with the esoteric wisdom of 
 Greece and Egypt. The leaven of Christianity will work, and 
 in its own way, and in its natural affinity with certain pre-existing 
 conditions of thought will form semi-Christianised philosophies 
 like the neo-Platonism of Alexandria, which explained away the 
 objectionable features of the old mythology, and tried to fight 
 Christianity largely with its own weapons ; and those eclectic 
 systems will, for a time at least, give a distinct support to the 
 old religions of the country, and even infuse new life into them, 
 presenting many features of the Gospel though non-Christian in 
 their basis. . . . 
 
 Mr. Mazumdar has observed : " The New Testament is the 
 source of a hundred developments of personal, social, and 
 spiritual reform among thoughtful Hindus." And, in still more 
 striking words, he wrote : " Christ is a tremendous reality. The 
 destiny of India hangs upon the solution of His nature and our 
 relation to Him." 
 
256 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 And, speaking generally, in all recent religious reforms, the 
 Vedic idea has been modified by Biblical theism and Christian 
 thought, as was seen in the history of Brahmoism itself as far 
 back as 1854, when it came to the conclusion that it was im- 
 possible to frame its advanced creed upon the Vedas and Upani- 
 shads. And in other directions, not excepting the revived Ve- 
 danta of the present day, those who in India have not studied 
 the Bible for naught are reading Christianity into Hinduism, 
 and finding there, under its light, truths that were never found 
 before, instead of saying, as they did twenty years ago, of our 
 religion, " It is not true," they are now saying, " It is not new." 
 Tending more and more to the belief in the underlying unity 
 of all religions, they are maintaining that the faiths of the East 
 do not differ materially from Christianity in their essential prin- 
 ciples and more important teachings, and so, even in reform 
 speeches, and on the National Congress platforms, as well as 
 in Vedantic pamphlets, not to speak of Brahmist services and 
 prayers, there are frequent allusions to the Christian Scriptures, 
 together with a more or less Christian colour pervading the 
 thought. To the assimilative mind of India, there is no difficulty 
 in this placing Christian thought in the midst of Hinduism, and 
 regarding it as a part thereof. We may rest assured that the 
 truth thus absorbed will live, and will ultimately displace the 
 thoughts and ideas that have ceased to thrill with life. — (Slater, 
 "The Higher Hinduism," pp. 14-22.) 
 
 But there are those who do not anticipate such an outcome, 
 but who regard the natural result of all the present stir of re- 
 ligious thought throughout the world to be not the conquest of 
 the world by Christianity, but the permanence of the world's 
 present religions modified to admit some portion of Christian 
 philosophy and ethics. They would hold this also to be the 
 desirable result, on the ground that no new faith or religious 
 principles can possibly fill the function of the old. " It is cer- 
 tainly true," says one, " that human nature is so constituted 
 that when a man's religious ideals are once disturbed, those 
 by which they may be replaced are likely to be so insecurely 
 rooted as to have little determining effect upon his character 
 or future career." — (Interview in the New York Evening Post, 
 July 22, 1905.) And so also a correspondent in the Scotsman 
 tells us : " Thinking men have long been agreed, that it cannot be 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 257 
 
 claimed for any organised faith that it is essential to human 
 salvation. The chief end of the ideal missionary cannot be to 
 proselytise, but to vivify truth wherever he finds it, and inspire 
 men with a love of goodness, leaving it to them to decide whether 
 they should quit the ancestral house of faith in which they have 
 dwelt. To some it will appear necessary to quit it; to others 
 it may seem needful to remain. The non-Christian faiths are 
 neither an accident nor a monstrosity. They contain nutriment 
 for such inner life as their votaries are capable of, though, like 
 the dress and food of lower races, they have elements which 
 appear incongruous and repugnant to us. Their difference from 
 our own faith makes it easy for us to misjudge them. For 
 a man to accept a new creed and a strange terminology, and 
 use these so that his personal quality shall be improved, is a 
 work of such intellectual difficulty that we need not be sur- 
 prised if many shrink from it, and prefer to seek goodness by 
 ruder instruments which are familiar to them. From this and 
 other reasons, proselytism has its limits in any mission field." — 
 (Quoted in Indian Witness, June 13, 1896.) 
 
 7. Yet once more we are told that the indisputable result 
 of modern thought upon Christianity and the non-Christian re- 
 ligions is to make it impossible any longer to regard Christianity 
 as the absolute religion, and unwise to speak of it more con- 
 fidently than as " better " than the non-Christian religions, and 
 many add that the final religion is only to be reached when all 
 the religions of the world have been fused into one, each making 
 its own distinctive contribution, and humanity working out the 
 ultimate result only by the patient evolution of life. The florid 
 Oriental form of this view was poured forth by Swami Viva- 
 kananda at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1903: 
 " If there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be that 
 one which will have no location in place or time ; which will 
 be infinite like the God it will reach ; whose sun will shine 
 upon the followers of Krishna and Christ, saints or sinners 
 alike; which will not be the Brahmans' or the Buddhists', the 
 Christians' or the Mohammedans' religion, but the sum-total of 
 all these, and still have infinite space for development; which 
 
258 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite aims and find a 
 place for every human being, from the lowest grovelling man 
 not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering 
 by the virtues of his heart and mind almost above humanity 
 and making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human 
 nature." The Swami made room for caste in his dream. The 
 calm Western view is stated in Mr. Scott's little book on " The 
 Apologetic of the New Testament " : " It has become nec- 
 essary to defend, not only the Gospel itself, but those very 
 foundations of all religion which the writers of our New Testa- 
 ment could assume as unquestionable. Hardly less serious are 
 the difficulties which have been brought into prominence by the 
 study of comparative religion. Christianity, it would appear, 
 must abandon its claim to a unique inspiration. Its genesis in 
 history can be in large measure traced; the elements that have 
 gone to the moulding of it can be ascertained and separated; 
 it stands no longer as a solitary peak, but only as one summit 
 in a vast formation." This view is the inspiring principle of 
 the interesting but unimportant propaganda of Behaism in the 
 West, and it is the commonly accepted principle of the new 
 " Science of Religion." At the special conference in Miihlocker 
 some eight or nine years ago, attended by many of the most 
 prominent university professors and theologians from all over 
 Germany, and called to discuss the comparative study of 
 Christianity as one of the world's religions, the leading paper 
 by Professor Troeltsch of the University of Heidelberg set 
 forth, among a number of propositions, these: that there are 
 gradations between the great religious forces ; that in the va- 
 rious personalities and phenomena of history there is a gradual 
 unfolding of the revelation of the transcendental forces be- 
 hind all history, which in these personalities and phenomena 
 brings us nearer to the transcendental absolute; that Chris- 
 tianity, judged from this point of view, shows itself the highest 
 stage of religious development, and in principle superior to 
 all other forms of religion, but nevertheless as a phenomenon 
 subject to the historical laws of growth; that all other beliefs 
 as to Christianity, such as the conviction that Christianity will 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 259 
 
 be invincible, are purely a matter of personal faith and not the 
 subject of scientific certainty. At the same conference Dr. Max 
 Christlieb discussed mission work as affected by this denial of 
 the absoluteness of Christianity, and these were his leading 
 propositions : 
 
 1. Our knowledge of non-Christian religions has become 
 much greater in recent decades than it was before. One of the 
 results of this growth in knowledge is the general conviction 
 that the absoluteness of Christianity can no longer be claimed. 
 This new knowledge must influence mission problems and meth- 
 ods of work. 
 
 2. The relative merits or demerits of a religion are to be 
 judged by its fruits. This principle must obtain, also, in the 
 judgment of Christianity. 
 
 3. The proposition that " everything in heathendom is false " 
 can no longer be maintained, in view of the fact that these systems 
 contain so much that agrees with Christianity. 
 
 4. On the other hand, the recognition of the good elements 
 in the heathen religions may result in a dangerous practical 
 syncretism. 
 
 5. The proposition that " everything in Christianity is true " 
 can no longer be maintained. The fact that certain leading doc- 
 trines of older Christian creeds, such as the eternal condemnation 
 of the unbaptised, the historical character of the story of crea- 
 tion, the personality and activity of the devil, have been generally 
 discarded by Christian thinkers themselves, has already led to 
 a different attitude in principle toward the heathen races. 
 
 6. The fact that the doctrine of verbal inspiration has been 
 generally discarded has led to the following changes in the 
 mission field: (a) The missionary has lost the support of abso- 
 lute authority ; (b) Liberal theology must be taught in mission 
 institutions; (c) All problems of modern religious life receive a 
 different importance. 
 
 7. Since the absoluteness of Christianity cannot be demon- 
 strated, but only the fact that it is relatively the highest of 
 religions, we need, and those engaged in mission work also need, 
 a greater faith than ever before. — (Translated in The Literary 
 Digest of December 28, 1901.) 
 
 Now the question of the absoluteness of Christianity may, 
 after all, be not much more than a controversy over words. 
 At any rate, we can leave it for those who have leisure for it. 
 
2 6o CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The practical problem of the missionary enterprise is this, Does 
 the actual comparison of Christianity with the non-Christian 
 religions, necessitated by the work of missions, show that that 
 work is unnecessary or dissolve the missionary duty or nullify 
 its aim? What does the missionary movement believe that it 
 finds as a result of that study of comparative religion which is 
 its daily business? 
 
 i. We find, first of all, that men everywhere are made for 
 religion, that there is in humanity a deep hunger after some- 
 thing from without humanity, that in spite of all that has ob- 
 structed His way and distorted His word, God has been seeking 
 men. What Jesus told the woman of Samaria we find evidenced 
 in every nation, that God is a Spirit, and that those who wor- 
 ship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth, and that the 
 Father is seeking such to worship Him. 
 
 2. We find when we come with Christianity to the other 
 religions of the world, and place Christianity in comparison 
 with them, that Christianity has all the good of other religions. 
 There is good and truth in these religions which we joyfully 
 acknowledge, which has enabled them to survive and given them 
 their power, but there is no truth or good in them which is not 
 found in a purer and fuller form in Christianity. Hinduism 
 teaches the immanence of God; Mohammedanism the sov- 
 ereignty of God ; Buddhism the transitoriness and yet the solemn 
 issues of our present life ; Confucianism the dignity of our 
 earthly relationships and of human society. But are not all 
 these truths in Christianity also? It is so with whatever of 
 good we find anywhere. To complete a sonnet, from which I 
 have already quoted : 
 
 We with reverent minds searching the lore 
 Of ancient days, find buried here and there 
 Fragments of precious truths and, piecing them 
 Again with reverent minds, construct a Form 
 And Body of the Truth — when lo! the whole 
 Grows to the likeness of our own dear Christ. 
 
 There is no truth anywhere which is not already in Christ, 
 and in Christ in its fullest and richest form. Even the trans- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 261 
 
 formed Hinduism of the Vedanta offers only portions of what 
 we already have in Him. As Mr. Slater says: "The Christian 
 Gospel offers all that the Vedanta offers, and infinitely more. 
 So true is it that every previous revelation flows into the revela- 
 tion we have in Christ, and loses itself in Him. Christ includes 
 all teachers. All ' other masters ' are in Christ. We do not 
 deny the truths they taught; we can delight in all. We can 
 give heed to all the prophets; but every truth in every prophet 
 melts into the truth we have in Christ. And Christ 
 tells us that life, not death, is what our souls are made 
 for. That is His distinctive message to the non-Christian world. 
 To be made one with the divine, ' not in the dull abyss of 
 characterless nonentity, lapsing from the personal down to 
 the impersonal, from the animate to the inanimate, from 
 the self back to the mere thing ' ; but in the reciprocal em- 
 brace of conscious love, mutually realised and enjoyed — that 
 is the true and highest bhakti-yoga — knowing even as we are 
 known." 
 
 And not only are all the truths of the other religions in 
 Christianity, but they are there balanced and corrected as they 
 are not in the non-Christian religions. Hinduism teaches that 
 God is near, but it forgets that He is holy. Mohammedanism 
 teaches that God is great, but forgets that He is loving. It 
 knows that He is a king, but not that He is a father. Bud- 
 dhism teaches that this earthly life is fleeting, but it forgets 
 that God sent us to do work, and that we must do it while it 
 is day. Confucianism teaches that we live in the midst of a 
 great framework of sacred relationships, but it forgets that in 
 the midst of these we have a living help and a personal fellow- 
 ship with the eternal God, in whose lasting presence is our home. 
 What the other religions forget, or never knew, Christianity 
 tells us in the fulness of its truth. 
 
 3. We find that with whatever good they may have, the 
 non-Christian religions are seamed with evils from which Chris- 
 tianity is free. How they came there a great parable of our 
 Lord describes. Whatever truth men know we know is His; 
 whatever evil mars that truth, another's. 
 
262 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The Sower sowed, and sowing went His way: 
 His seeds, sound grains of truth, and on a soil 
 Rich with the mellowed wisdom of the age, 
 Promising noble yield of increment, 
 But night came on — the waning aeon's night — 
 And while men slept an envious neighbour came, 
 Trod in the Sower's steps, and broadcast threw 
 Over the new-sown fields his evil tares, 
 And so withdrew. 
 
 If only one might hope that he had withdrawn! But the 
 harm that he wrought and some power which sustains it abide. 
 These are facts which in the interest of truth we are bound to 
 face. For the truth's sake, and with joy, we recognise what- 
 ever of " true teaching or high aspiration " we can find, but 
 without disloyalty to the truth we cannot deny the tares, we 
 cannot maintain that these religions " have no materially worse 
 side, that they embody the best thoughts and the highest long- 
 ings of the men from whom they proceeded, that their defects 
 are only of deficiency in comparison with the fuller teaching 
 of the Christian creed, and that they must no more be held 
 responsible for the vices which obtain amongst their followers 
 than the Gospel for the vices of Christendom. To me," says 
 Bishop Lefroy, from whom I quote these words, " St. Paul is 
 conclusive on this point, for, while never abusing other faiths 
 in the presence of their followers, rather at such times laying 
 hold on them to suggest and justify his own teaching — he yet 
 in the Epistle to the Romans unmistakably shows what his view 
 was of the working of Grecian and Roman mythology as a 
 whole, tracing all the fearful social and political corruption of 
 the age up to idolatry and false religious beliefs as the foun- 
 tain head." — (Cambridge Mission, Occasional Paper, " Moham- 
 medanism," No. 21, p. 13 ff.) If we take a different attitude, 
 if we gloss over the dark facts in the non-Christian religions, 
 we do three things, — we falsify the facts, we prepare for a 
 great reaction of denunciation and dislike of the non-Christian 
 religions when the truth finds access to minds accustomed to a 
 distorted view, and we disqualify ourselves for dealing helpfully 
 with the non-Christian religions. " For one and all of these, 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 263 
 
 while their strength is in that fragment of truth, which, how- 
 ever maimed and distorted, with whatever contradiction and 
 under whatever disguises, they hold, have also their eminently- 
 weak side, that on which they signally deny and ignore some 
 great truths which the spirit of man craves, which the Scripture 
 of God affirms, a side, therefore, on which " we need to know 
 how to give the hearts that rest in them the very help which 
 they need and have not found. (Trench, Hulsean Lectures for 
 1845. Lecture 8, p. 117. Quoted by Lefroy, op. cit., p. 14.) 
 
 With no joy, with a heavy heart, the missionary enterprise 
 sets down what it has found of radical evil and error in the 
 non-Christian religions. 
 
 In Confucianism it has found polytheism, idolatry, and polyg- 
 amy. The Chinese people are a people of many noble qualities, 
 but we are considering now not the people but the Confucian 
 system. As Dr. Faber has described it, it recognises no rela- 
 tion to a living God. Though dimly known, He is not the only 
 object of worship. Polytheism is taught in the Classics. Idolatry 
 is the natural consequence, and all the superstitions in con- 
 nection with it among the people are the inevitable results. 
 Geomancy, spiritualism, exorcism, and all kinds of deceit prac- 
 tised by Buddhist and Taoist priests have their origin in the 
 worship of ancestral spirits, for which Confucianism is respon- 
 sible, since sacrificing to the dead is taught as the highest filial 
 duty in the Classics, and Mencius sanctions polygamy on its 
 account. Though the practice of building temples to heroes 
 arose shortly after the Classical Period, its roots can be found 
 in the Classics, and there are now over 100,000 such temples 
 in China to great warriors and other men of eminence, in which 
 sacrifices are offered and incense is burned to their shades. 
 Omens and the choice of lucky days are a sacred duty enjoined 
 by the Classics and enforced by law. Confucianism not only 
 has no censure for polygamy, but sanctions it in the Classics. 
 The misery of eunuchs, secondary wives, slave girls, degrada- 
 tion of women in general, are accompaniments of this vice. 
 " The Confucian system did not do much for women. The 
 Analects tell us that ' Women are difficult to manage ; if you 
 
264 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 are familiar with them, they are not humble; if you keep them 
 at a distance, they become discontented.' And, as Dr. Faber tells 
 us, nothing is said about the relations of married people. There 
 is abundance of instruction as to brothers, but sisters are not 
 even mentioned. The stress laid on filial piety, the worship of 
 ancestors, makes it the chief duty of sons to procure a posterity 
 in order that sacrifices may be continued. Hence polygamy at 
 times becomes an ethical necessity, a religious duty, and there 
 is no testimony against this social evil in the whole range of 
 Chinese literature." — (China Centenary Conference Report, Ad- 
 dress by D. L. Anderson, p. 47.) 
 
 In Confucianism the system of social life is tyranny. Women 
 are slaves. Children have no rights in relation to their parents, 
 whilst subjects are placed in the position of children with re- 
 gard to their superiors. It is a strict demand of Confucius in 
 the Classics that a son should lose no time in revenging the 
 death of his father or of a near relation. Blood revenge was 
 an ancient usage, but Confucius both sanctioned it and raised 
 it to a moral duty, poisoning by it three of his five social rela- 
 tions. (Summarised from Faber, "China in the Light of His- 
 tory," pp. 59-64 ; " A Systematical Digest of the Doctrines of 
 Confucius," pp. 124-127.) The Chinese people are both better 
 and worse than Confucianism, but it is a painful and significant 
 fact, as Kanzo Uchimura says in his dialogues, that " in all 
 the countries where the Confucian morality is in vogue, sexual 
 crime is not usually considered as a crime. That is so; and 
 that is the chief reason, I think, why there is no such thing 
 as happy home in these countries." — (An Anglo- Japanese Con- 
 versation, p. 48.) 
 
 It is neither necessary nor desirable to state all that is 
 found of evil in Hinduism, in comparison with Christianity. 
 The Hindus themselves have made the presentation far more 
 fully and convincingly than any missionaries have ever sought 
 to make it. The writings of Ram Mohun Roy and of Keshub 
 Chunder Sen are all that need to be read. It must suffice here 
 to point out only two things, first, the evil philosophy of life 
 which Hinduism presents in its pantheism, and secondly, the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 265 
 
 moral fruitage of it. Christianity, even at the sacrifice of 
 intellectual unity for the sake of moral completeness, maintains 
 both the transcendence and the immanence of God, while " Hin- 
 duism by denying His transcendence and maintaining His im- 
 manence totally abandons moral in favour of intellectual com- 
 pleteness." — (" Mankind and the Church," Mylne on " Hindu- 
 ism.") In a world where God is responsible for all, and is 
 in all, even in lust and sin, and where all reality is illusive, 
 men will not be clean, and they will not be hopeful. One of 
 the most capable of the younger leaders of India has described 
 the effect of this theory of life for us : 
 
 To the Hindu the external world is unreal and he is ever op- 
 pressed by the consciousness that behind the things of sense is 
 the unseen world, continually exerting its influence upon the life 
 of mankind in ways that are inexplicable. The fear of the 
 unseen and the delusiveness of the seen continually haunt him. 
 His luxuriant imagination detects symbolism everywhere and in 
 all things, pure and foul, good and evil, in love, passion, and 
 hate. In this ever-shifting world of impermanence the soul wan- 
 ders, finding temporary abode in human form or in that of a 
 lower animal, or even it may be in a rock, stone, or tree. Side 
 by side with this conviction of the unreality of the world of 
 sense, there is deeply ingrained in the Hindu mind the idea of 
 retribution. The deeds of a past existence hound a man through 
 this present life. Good and evil actions, whether done inten- 
 tionally or inadvertently, have a retributory force, and a man 
 is continually reaping a harvest sown in the unknown and un- 
 remembered past. Nothing avails to ease his lot, and thus he 
 struggles in the morass of existence. Every endeavour to extri- 
 cate himself sinks him even more deeply and hopelessly. It is 
 these beliefs that are ultimately responsible for the deadening 
 influences of Hinduism. 
 
 The Hindu theory of life and of the universe blunts the 
 finer feelings, and its hopelessness is subversive to morality and 
 truth, and antagonistic to progress and reform. The moral prac- 
 tice of the people is not on the whole very different from that 
 of Western peoples. The moral standard, however, is lower. 
 Hinduism has no bar of public opinion at which tyrannous social 
 custom and immorality may be arraigned. We cannot forget 
 that many Indian religious leaders have inculcated high and 
 noble sentiments, but Hinduism shows its impotence to correct 
 
266 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 or even to condemn moral and social wrong. The greatest evil 
 is not caste, nor untruthfulness, nor cruelty to the individual, 
 nor immorality. All these are symptomatic of a diseased mind. 
 The reform needed is more radical than to break down the 
 tyranny of caste, prevent child-marriage, rescind the restrictions 
 against widow remarriage, purify the temples and ennoble the 
 worship of the people. It is nothing less than to give India a 
 new outlook upon the world and human life. — (Datta, " The 
 Desire of India," Chapter III.) 
 
 This is Dr. Datta's analysis, but something further is to be 
 said of the actual working out in life of the moral effects of 
 Hindu pantheism. You can put it in grand words, if you like, 
 such as those which Macaulay uses in the introduction to his 
 famous speech on " The Gates of Somnauth " : " As this super- 
 stition is of all superstitions the most irrational, and of all super- 
 stitions the most inelegant, so it is of all superstitions the most 
 immoral. Emblems of vice are objects of public worship. Acts 
 of vice are acts of public worship. The courtesans are as much 
 a part of the establishment of the temple, as much the ministers 
 of the gods, as the priests. Crimes against life, crimes against 
 property, are not only permitted but enjoined by this odious 
 theology." And if you do not want it put in Macaulay's grand 
 way, you will find it cogently expressed in Mr. Meredith Town- 
 send's essay on " The Core of Hinduism," where he is dealing 
 especially with Vivekananda's representations at the Parliament 
 of Religions. There, and in other essays, Mr. Townsend, for 
 years a resident of India, and a careful student of its life, com- 
 plains that the great curse of India is just what he says is the 
 worst idea of all Asia, namely, that morality has no immutable 
 basis, but is deemed by every man a fluctuating law, and that 
 it is a characteristic of the Hindu mind that it is able to hold, 
 and actually does hold, the most diametrically opposite ideas, 
 as though all such ideas were true ; and that the great weakness 
 in Hinduism, making it utterly insufficient for the needs of men, 
 is the absolute want of that ethical reality which is one of the 
 essential characteristics of Christianity, the want of any vinculum 
 binding religious faith to moral life. This explains why the 
 holiest city of India is so vile. This explains why it was neces- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 267 
 
 sary for the British Government by statute to prohibit the ob- 
 scenities of public religious worship in India. 
 
 In Buddhism in our comparison we come upon no such 
 abyss. The evil of Buddhism is not so easily located, but it 
 is the more pervasive. To affirm it will be to invite denial, be- 
 cause of the developments in Buddhism which have raised up 
 schools which contradict its fundamental principles. " It passes," 
 as Sir Monier Williams says, " from apparent atheism and 
 materialism to theism, polytheism, and spiritualism. It is under 
 one aspect mere pessimism; under another, pure philanthropy; 
 under another, monastic communism ; under another, high moral- 
 ity; under another, a variety of materialistic philosophy; under 
 another, simply demonology ; under another, a mere farrago of 
 superstitions, including necromancy, witchcraft, idolatry, and 
 fetichism." — (Monier Williams, "Buddhism," p. 13.) In the 
 forms in which it presses itself upon comparison with Chris- 
 tianity in Northern Asia it is itself a reflection of Christian 
 thought, and is dependent for a knowledge of its own history 
 largely upon Christian scholars. " There are not a score of men 
 in Japan who can tell you what Buddhism teaches. In talking 
 with Dr. Lloyd of the Imperial University the other day," writes 
 a young missionary in Japan, " I said to him that I wanted tc 
 get hold of some educated Japanese Buddhist priest, who has 
 not been too much influenced by Western thought, for in this 
 way I hoped to learn what real Buddhists believed. He smiled 
 and then said he had thought that he had found such a man. 
 He was intelligent and apparently well-versed in the real teach- 
 ings of pure Buddhism, and as he knew no foreign language 
 he seemed quite promising as a source of first-hand information. 
 Dr. Lloyd asked him many questions of things ancient and 
 modern, and the priest's answers seemed quite intelligent and 
 much in harmony with what Dr. Lloyd already knew. After the 
 various interviews were over the priest mentioned as the au- 
 thority for his information the writings of Rhys-Davids." But 
 back of all the modification under the influence of Christian 
 thought pure Buddhism in the south of Asia is both outspokenly 
 atheistic and, from our point of view, non-religious. " Bud- 
 
268 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 dhism," says an editorial in The Buddhist, the organ of the 
 Young Men's Buddhist Association in Colombo, whose first ob- 
 ject is the study and propagation of Buddhism, " demands no 
 belief in a God, involves no dogma, and enjoins no ritual. It 
 is self-culture based on self-knowledge. In other words, it is 
 the rational regulation of our own conduct. Buddhism is that, 
 and nothing more, nothing less. ... It satisfies the needs of 
 men from whose eyes the scales of superstition have fallen, and 
 who need no supernatural help to understand and appreciate 
 what is good and true." " It is an etymological injustice to refer 
 to Buddhism as a religion," declares one of the leading articles. 
 " To be a Buddhist is to be irreligious, to be unbound. . . . 
 To call Buddhism a religion is a contradiction in terms. Bud- 
 dhism not only does not admit the existence of a God, it also 
 denies the existence of a soul." — (The Buddhist, July, 1907, pp. 
 209, 219.) Indisputably Buddhism is not a religion in the same 
 sense as Christianity, for it holds as false what Christianity 
 regards as its deepest and most precious goods. Pure Buddhism 
 denies the personality and the very existence of God. As Dr. 
 Kellogg has said, it deliberately " stamps human nature as evil, 
 not because it is sinful, but simply because it exists, for all 
 existence is evil " ; it is a religion that pronounces our holiest re- 
 lationships, husband and wife, father and child, evil relationships, 
 and that tells every man who would attain Nirvana at the last 
 that he must cut loose from such things; a religion that de- 
 liberately denies the most necessary convictions of our minds, 
 that pronounces our consciousness of personality, our belief in 
 our possession of a soul, simple delusions ; a religion that con- 
 demns our holiest ambitions to eternal punishment. 
 
 And in Islam, at once so near to Christianity and so far 
 away, we find when we make our comparison over against 
 Christianity's contrary principles, the great evils of fatalism, 
 despotism, polygamy, and slavery. " In vain," says Professor 
 Smyth in his Oxford Lectures on Modern History, " did he 
 (Mohammed) destroy the idols of his countrymen and sublime 
 their faith to the worship of the one true God. In vain did 
 he inculcate compassion to the distressed, alms to the needy, 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 269 
 
 protection and tenderness to the widow and the orphan. He 
 neither abolished nor discountenanced polygamy, and the pro- 
 fessors of his faith have thus been left the domestic tyrants of 
 one-half of their own race. He taught predestination, and they 
 have thus become by their crude application of his doctrines the 
 victims of every natural disease and calamity. He practised 
 intolerance, and they are thus made the victims of the civilised 
 world. He permitted the union of the regal and sacerdotal 
 offices, and he made the book of his religion and legislation the 
 same. All alteration, therefore, among the Mohammedans must 
 have been thought impiety. Last in the scale of thinking beings, 
 they have exhibited families without society, subjects without 
 freedom, governments without security, and nations without im- 
 provement." This is rhetoric, but it is truth. In the most 
 charitable and effective apology for Islam which we have in 
 English, Mr. Bosworth Smith admits the evil standards of Islam 
 as to woman and concedes that there are in Christianity whole 
 realms of thought, and whole fields of morals, that are all but 
 outside the religion of Mohammed ; that Christianity teaches men 
 ideals of personal purity, of humility, of forgiveness of injuries, 
 of the subjection of the lower life to the demands of the higher 
 life, ideals which are absolutely foreign to Mohammedanism; 
 that it sets before men possibilities of progress and boundless 
 development of the mind such as Mohammed never dreamed of ; 
 that in the various paths of human attainment the characters 
 that Christianity has developed have been greater, more many- 
 sided, more holy, than any of the characters that Islam has pro- 
 duced. Mr. Bosworth Smith himself has to admit as much as 
 this, that the great religion for which he is saying the best that 
 can be said is a religion that for 1,200 years has been sterile 
 intellectually. And, what is worse than that, Mohammedanism 
 is held by many who have to live under its shadow to be the most 
 degraded religion, morally, in the world. We speak of it as 
 superior to the other religions because of its monotheistic faith, 
 but missionaries from India tell us that the actual moral 
 conditions to be found among Mohammedans there are as terrible 
 as those to be found among the pantheistic Hindus themselves, 
 
270 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 and the late Dr. Cochran of Persia, a man who had unsurpassed 
 opportunities for seeing the inner life of Mohammedan men, 
 told me, toward the close of his life, that he could not say, out 
 of his long and intimate acquaintance as a doctor with the men 
 of Persia, that he had ever met one pure-hearted or pure-lived 
 adult man among the Mohammedans of Persia. 
 
 It is not pleasant to speak of these things. We are not 
 speaking of them because a Christian man finds any joy in 
 denouncing these evils in the non-Christian religions. We would 
 denounce these evils if we found them in our own land; we 
 speak no more harshly about them in other lands than we speak 
 about them in our own. But we will not let the fact that these 
 great evils are cloaked by religious sanctions abroad compel us 
 to speak of them with less condemnation ; we will speak of them 
 with more condemnation because they are imbedded in the midst 
 of those very forces out of which men's whole hope of holiness 
 must flow. It cannot be allowed, as we would gladly allow, 
 that these evils in the non-Christian religions are mere ex- 
 crescences not due to the religions, or not vitally connected with 
 the religions, but the sad contributions of man's own evil nature 
 polluting his religious faiths. For these evils spring out of the 
 fundamental principles of the non-Christian religions and are so 
 interwoven with them that they can only die with the death of 
 the religion or with such radical transformation of its character 
 as will make it cease to be itself. It is only the influence of Chris- 
 tianity which has led the non-Christian religions to discover these 
 things of shame, and many of them are not yet and cannot be 
 disavowed. In the case of Hinduism the worst evils are evils 
 which have been enshrined in the institutions and sanctified and 
 perpetuated in the character of the gods. When Lord William 
 Bentinck made widow-burning a crime the Hindus memorialised 
 the Government, affirming that suttee was a sacred duty and 
 a lofty principle, and denouncing the new legislation as " a 
 breach of the promise that there should be no interference with 
 the religious customs of the Hindus." The worst literature of 
 India is part of the sacred books, and one of the most obscene 
 festivals, the Holi or Shimga, is part of the prescribed religious 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 271 
 
 observance of the Hindus throughout the length and breadth of 
 India. " Of the sacred books, the Dharam Sindhu, for example," 
 says Dnyanodaiya, " quotes approvingly from the Jotirnibandh, 
 which says, ' of the fifteen days from the fifth day of the bright 
 half of the moon to the fifth of the dark half, ten are infinitely 
 meritorious. During these days wood and cowdung cakes should 
 be stolen and kindled either in or outside the village, with fire 
 stolen from the house of a low-caste man. The king, having 
 bathed and purified himself, should give gifts and light the Holi 
 fire. In the same way the people should spend the night in 
 pleasures, singing and dancing. Pronouncing obscene words, 
 they should walk thrice around the fire. By these obscene words 
 the sinful goddess, Dhunda, will be satisfied.' Here are two 
 religious books, at least, that approve of this filthy way of cele- 
 brating the Shimga, the former being not only a well-known 
 book, but the standard reference for present rites and ceremonies. 
 The Dharam Sindhu further adds that no sin is committed by 
 these acts and words. The philosophy with which this is ex- 
 plained is that the goddess, Dhunda, is a lover of sin, and there- 
 fore the appeasing of her and the gaining of her favour, by 
 that which is sinful, must be right." 
 
 And just as immorality is the inevitable and not the acci- 
 dental consequence of the fundamental principles of the actual 
 Hinduism of the past and of its sacred books, so the other 
 evils which we have considered stand essentially and inseparably 
 connected with the other religions, which in their true historic 
 character and not in Christianised form must enter the field of 
 comparison. 
 
 4. In the fourth place, we find not only that the non-Christian 
 religions are marred by evils from which Christianity is free, 
 but also that Christianity has indispensable elements of good 
 which they lack. When with reverent mind we piece again the 
 fragments of good and truth found buried in the lore of ancient 
 days and construct from them a Form and Body of Truth, the 
 whole does not yield exactly " the likeness of our own dear 
 Christ." There is no good or truth that is not in Him, but He 
 is more than men ever dreamed. I would mention four of the 
 
272 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 many things in Christianity which are original with it, and which 
 it alone offers to men. 
 
 (i) One is the conception of the fatherhood of God. No 
 phrase is more common in the discussion of comparative religion 
 to-day, and it is often assumed that this is a common idea of 
 all religions. On the contrary, it was the revelation of Jesus 
 Christ. The conception was strange to the Jews. In the prophets 
 there are three or four references to God as the father of his 
 people, but the idea is of a political or national fatherhood, not 
 of a personal father. And in the Book of Psalms, embodying 
 the religious aspirations and experiences of Israel, there are only 
 three references to the thought, and these merely poetical. In 
 any one of the Gospels or any two or three of St. Paul's Epistles 
 to his churches there is more of the Fatherhood of God than 
 in the whole Old Testament. And in not one of the non- 
 Christian religions does the rich conception really appear, except 
 as it has been learned from Christianity. 
 
 (2) Its discovery of the central need of man in the forgive- 
 ness of his sin and the destruction of sin's power, and its pro- 
 vision for this need. Because no other religion has the same 
 idea of God, no other religion can discover the central need 
 of man as Christianity discovers it, and, as a matter of fact, 
 no other religion does. And none other knows the principle of 
 the free forgiveness of love through grace. The one which came 
 in time after Christianity, and which should know more, if any 
 can, only declares in the verse of the Koran which has troubled 
 many Moslems : " Every mortal necessarily must once go to hell ; 
 it is obligatory on God to send all men necessarily once to hell ; 
 and afterwards He may pardon whom He will." And even 
 when other religions prescribe what the sin-hardened, soul should 
 do to expiate his sins that are gone, they have no word of 
 power or hope for the deliverance of men from the continuing 
 power of evil. A young university student in Japan, now occupy- 
 ing an important position in the city of Osaka, who had been 
 a leader among his fellows, near the end of his course gave 
 way to temptation. " After some time, eager to regain his self- 
 respect and his lost position, he sought the priest of a famous 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 273 
 
 Buddhist temple. To him he told his troubles and his longings. 
 The priest said : ' I can help you. If you kneel with your thumbs 
 together before the Buddha here, and remain absolutely motion- 
 less for three hours, you will be given strength to resist tempta- 
 tion.' The seeker obeyed. In spite of the fact that the mos- 
 quitoes annoyed him constantly, he knelt as nearly motionless 
 as possible for the required time. Then he passed out of the 
 temple — to fall before his temptation, as before. For two years 
 he groped for help, but in vain, until he heard of Christ." 
 
 (3) Thirdly, it is Christianity alone which has introduced 
 into the world the ideal of sacrificial service, the ideal which 
 a sympathetic student of the modern Vedanta in India describes, 
 in pointing out the needs of which it is conscious, as " the alien 
 conception of service and of energy." — (N. Macnicol, Hibberi 
 Journal, October, 1907.) We rejoice to see this ideal penetrat- 
 ing and modifying the non-Christian religions. Mrs. Besant has 
 made the ideal the basis of a society within Hinduism, The Sons 
 and The Daughters of India. As the journal of the new society 
 tells us: 
 
 This order consists of men and women of all ages, the elders 
 seeking by sympathy and good counsel to guide into channels 
 useful to the country the energies of the younger, and endeavour- 
 ing to help them to that self-discipline and self-sacrifice which 
 alone make the citizen worthy to be free. To this end it is 
 sought to wed practice to theory : by the definite and daily ren- 
 dering of service, thus building the habit of helpfulness by 
 awakening the desire to be useful and suggesting channels along 
 which that desire may realise itself in action ; by cultivating the 
 sense of duty and responsibility, without which Liberty becomes 
 a danger alike to the individual and the State. . . . 
 
 The following is the Pledge of the Order, to be taken in a 
 duly constituted Lodge, presided over by the responsible member 
 of the Chapter, or by a Warden appointed by him for the pur- 
 pose: 
 
 " I promise to treat as Brothers Indians of every religion and 
 every province, to make Service the dominant Ideal of my life, 
 and therefore: To seek the public good before personal advan- 
 tage ; to protect the helpless, defend the oppressed, teach the 
 ignorant, raise the down-trodden ; to choose some definite line of 
 
274 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 public usefulness, and to labour thereon ; to perform every day 
 at least one act of service ; to pursue our ideals by law-abiding 
 methods only ; to be a good citizen of my municipality or district, 
 my province, the Motherland, and the Empire. To all this 
 I pledge myself, in the presence of the Supreme Lord, to our 
 Chief, our Brotherhood, and our country, that I may be a true 
 Son of India." It is an honourable obligation on the part of 
 every member, pledged and unpledged, to repeat daily the Chain 
 of Union, as follows : 
 
 " May the One Lord of the Universe, worshipped under 
 many names, pour into the hearts of the Brothers and Sisters 
 of this Order, and through them into India, the Spirit of Unity 
 and of Service." — (Quoted in The Pioneer, Allahabad, October 
 26, 1908.) 
 
 If any one will really do the work of Christ, he will begin 
 to see the word of Christ. And whoever adopts the principle 
 of sacrificial service as the law of life borrows an original con- 
 ception of Christianity of which the non-Christian religions did 
 not know. 
 
 (4) Christ and Christ alone rose from the dead. The idea 
 and principle of resurrection are in Christianity alone. Dr. 
 Lloyd finds more in the non-Christian religions than some are able 
 to find, but in the resurrection he finds what was the unique, 
 what to St. Paul, too, was an original and accrediting distinction 
 in Christianity. " During the five centuries immediately before 
 the Christian era," says Dr. Lloyd in one of the most striking 
 of recent books on comparative religion, " God's Truth was 
 being gradually revealed ; here a truth and there a truth ; in 
 many fragments and in many ways, as nations and peoples were 
 able to bear the light. Christ took to Himself and combined 
 in His own person all that had hitherto been revealed and 
 known. The unifying factor was not the Incarnation, nor the 
 Virgin Birth, nor the Life of Benevolence, nor the words of 
 Wisdom and Love. All these were to be found in Hinduism, in 
 Buddhism, in Confucianism, in Greek philosophy. But when 
 the Incarnate Son of God, born of Mary, baptised in Jordan, 
 and tempted of Satan, after a life spent in works of mercy and 
 words of love, faced death rather than be untrue to principle, 
 and not only faced death but conquered it by Resurrection and 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 275 
 
 Ascension, it was known at once that He had gathered all things 
 into Himself, and that there was no further need of any partial 
 or fragmentary Gospel." — (Lloyd, " Wheat Among the Tares," 
 p. 236.) This does not purport to be a full view of Christianity, 
 but it does set forth the uniqueness of its great central fact, 
 which has no parallel as a fact in any other religion, and from 
 which springs the triumphant power of our Faith. 
 
 5. And now, in the fifth place, in our comparison of the 
 world's religions, we find not only that Christianity has all the 
 good and lacks all the evils of the non-Christian religions, and 
 that it has additional good which they want, but we find also and 
 in consequence that they are inadequate to meet the world's 
 needs. 
 
 For, looking at the matter more generally, what are the great 
 needs of men that a religion must meet? 
 
 Man has his intellectual needs. As Mr. Ruskin says in a 
 note, there are three great questions that inevitably confront 
 every man: Where did I come from? Whither am I going? 
 What can I know? Men must have those questions answered. 
 All over the world every honest, thoughtful man is confronted 
 by the great problems of his origin and his duty and his destiny. 
 The non-Christian religions have no satisfying message to speak 
 to such seeking men. Their philosophies of the world may 
 stand for a little while in any metaphysical discussion, but they 
 collapse, they are passing before our eyes, at the touch of the 
 physical sciences. Philosophies of the world that cannot endure 
 contact with reality cannot satisfy the intellectual needs of men. 
 
 The non-Christian religions are inadequate to meet the moral 
 needs of men. In the first place, the non-Christian religions are 
 not able to present a perfect moral ideal to men. Mr. Bosworth 
 Smith goes on, in the same chapter which I quoted a moment 
 ago, to say: "When I speak of the ideal life of Moham- 
 medanism, I must not be misunderstood. There is in Moham- 
 medanism no ideal life in the true sense of the word, for Mo- 
 hammed's character was admitted by himself to be a weak and 
 erring one. It was disfigured by at least one huge moral blemish ; 
 and exactly in so far as his life has, in spite of his earnest and 
 
276 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 reiterated protestations, been made an example to be followed, 
 has that vice been perpetuated. But in Christianity the case is 
 different. The words, ' Which of you convinceth me of sin ? ' 
 forced from the mouth of Him Who was meek and lowly of 
 heart, by the wickedness of those who, priding themselves on 
 being Abraham's children, never did the works of Abraham, are 
 a definite challenge to the world. That challenge has been for 
 nineteen centuries before the eyes of unfriendly, as well as of 
 believing readers, and it has never yet been fairly met; and at 
 this moment, by the confession of friend and foe alike, the 
 character of Jesus of Nazareth stands alone in its spotless purity 
 and its unapproachable majesty." And this is true of all the 
 non-Christian religions. Confucius never dreamed of setting 
 himself up as a moral ideal for men. The idea never crossed 
 Buddha's thought; and as for many Hindu gods, we are better 
 gods ourselves than they are. I mean that our moral characters 
 are superior to the moral characters of these Hindu gods. Such 
 religions cannot satisfy the moral needs of men. 
 
 Not only do the non-Christian religions erect before the eyes 
 of men no perfect moral ideal, but they do not offer to men any 
 living, transforming power by which the ideals that they do 
 present can be realised. No great non-Christian teacher ever 
 spoke to men such words as Christ spoke. " He that eateth 
 my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life." " Come unto 
 me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest." " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
 men unto me." Even if the non-Christian religions did make 
 upon men a perfect ethical demand, of what value is it to a 
 man to have a perfect ethical demand made upon him? His 
 own conscience already makes ethical demands upon him beyond 
 his ability to reply. What men need is not a fresh moral de- 
 mand. What men need is a fresh moral re-enforcement, a power 
 in their wills to enable them to attain the ideals which stand out 
 before them. Jesus Christ did not come to create a new set of 
 moral obligations ; He did not come to multiply the number of 
 " oughts " under which life was to be lived ; He came to give 
 men more power to fulfil the " oughts " under which they already 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 277 
 
 lived. The non-Christian religions are impotent to meet the 
 moral needs of man, because not only do they hold up before 
 him no perfect moral ideal, but they offer him no sufficient power 
 to attain even the best ideal which they do present. 
 
 They are inadequate to meet his moral needs because there 
 is in them no just conception of sin. A religion that has no idea 
 of a holy God cannot have any idea of a sinful man. It is 
 because under the non-Christian religions men have no concep- 
 tion of such a God as Christ disclosed that they have never 
 sat down in the midst of shame and sorrow at the hideousness 
 of their sin. And, of course, with no message showing man 
 the reality of sin, the non-Christian religions have no message 
 of deliverance and of forgiveness. 
 
 And further, the non-Christian religions are inadequate to 
 man's moral needs because they are all morally chaotic. We 
 mean more than one thing by that. We mean, for one thing, 
 that there never was a consonance between the best ideal and 
 the reality in the non-Christian religions. No great non-Chris- 
 tian religious teacher ever lived up to his own ethical ideals, 
 and that chasm which was real in the beginning is becoming 
 a wider and wider chasm with the years. It is perfectly true 
 that there is no Christian country in the world; it is true that 
 there is no society that entirely embodies in itself the principles 
 of Christ. But there is this great difference between the Chris- 
 tian societies and the non-Christian societies. The gulf between 
 the ideal and the actual in the non-Christian world is widening 
 every year, while the gulf in the Christian world is narrowing 
 with each passing generation. The people of the non-Christian 
 lands, most of them, have sunk ethically below the level in 
 which they were when their great religious teachers arose. 
 There never was an era in the history of the world when Chris- 
 tian lands were as near to the moral ideals of Christ as they 
 are to-day. It is true that our Christianity is not pure, but true 
 Christianity has in itself the self-purifying power; and whereas 
 all the non-Christian religions, instead of being steps upward, are 
 degenerating from the catastrophic moral upheavals from which 
 they sprang, the Christian religion moves on in a steady ascend- 
 
278 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ing stream toward the great fountain from which first of all it 
 came. 
 
 Yet once again, the non-Christian religions break down at 
 the central and fundamental point. They have not perceived 
 the inviolable sacredness of truth. " Verily," said Mohammed, 
 " a lie is allowable in three cases : to women, to reconcile friends, 
 and in war." And the god Krishna himself, in one of the Hindu 
 sacred books, the Mahabharata, declares that there are five 
 different situations in which falsehood may be used : in marriage, 
 for the gratification of lust, to save life, to secure one's property, 
 or for the sake of a Brahman. In these cases, says Krishna, 
 falsehood may be uttered. Let the story of " The Forty-seven 
 Ronins " testify to the failure of Japanese religion to perceive 
 and enforce the inviolability of truth. " Lie not one to another," 
 says Christianity's clean and unqualified injunction. " Lie not," 
 says Buddhism, but adds the truth-annihilating condition ; " to 
 constitute a lie, there must be the discovery by the person 
 deceived that what has been told him is not true." — (Hardy, 
 " Manual of Buddhism," p. 486.) Confucius himself broke an 
 oath and excused it. (Faber, " China in the Light of History," 
 p. 63.) Now, if there is one place where religion and the men 
 of religion meet their certain testing, it is here. Here are two 
 of the great non-Christian religions which deliberately proclaim 
 that no man is under obligation to tell the truth to women. All 
 proclaim that there are cases in which lies are justified. But 
 Christianity declares that there is one thing that to God Himself 
 is absolutely and inviolately sacred ; that God cannot lie, and that 
 what God cannot do no religion dare pronounce to be allowable 
 in the sons of God. Any religion or religious teacher proclaim- 
 ing the possibility, the allowability of lies, excavates the founda- 
 tions under human confidence, under all living faith in a real 
 God, and makes impossible an answer to the moral needs of 
 men. 
 
 And, furthermore, the non-Christian religions are inadequate 
 to meet man's moral need because they have no adequate sanc- 
 tions buttressing morality. You cannot support morality on 
 the basis of pantheism ; it liquefies the sanctions of morals. You 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 279 
 
 cannot do it on the basis of such a hard monotheism as Islam's, 
 because in actual fact it petrifies the moral restraints. Dr. H. 
 O. Dwight, long of Constantinople, told a little while ago of a 
 voyage which he took in the Levant with a Turkish official. As 
 they sat down in the cabin at the dinner table the Turkish official, 
 inviting Dr. Dwight to drink with him, said : " You may think 
 it strange that I, a Mohammedan, should ask you, a Christian, 
 to drink with me, when wine-drinking is forbidden by our re- 
 ligion. I will tell you how I dare to do this thing." He filled 
 his glass and held it up, looking at the beautiful colour of it, 
 and said : " Now, if I say that it is right to drink this wine, I 
 deny God's commandments to men, and He would punish me 
 in hell for the blasphemy. But I take up this glass, admitting 
 that God has commanded me not to drink it, and that I sin in 
 drinking it. Then I drink it off, so casting myself on the mercy 
 of God. For our religion lets me know that God is too merciful 
 to punish me for doing a thing which I wish to do, when I 
 humbly admit that to do it breaks His commandments." His 
 religion furnished this pasha with no moral restraints or power 
 for true character. The simple fact is that the pure monotheistic 
 faith of Islam has not prevented a horrible tarn of immorality 
 over all the Mohammedan world. Neither that lifeless mono- 
 theism nor the pantheism of other non-Christian religions can 
 furnish the sanctions by which alone moral behaviour can be 
 sustained. 
 
 And just as the non-Christian religions are inadequate to 
 meet alike the intellectual and the moral needs of men, so they 
 are utterly inadequate to meet the social needs of men. Re- 
 ligions which deny to one-half of society the right to the truth 
 cannot meet the social needs of mankind. Religions which pro- 
 claim that women may be lied to sinlessly are anti-social in the 
 very principles upon which they rest, and we might leave the 
 whole case against the adequacy of these non-Christian religions 
 here. There is in no one of the non-Christian religions any 
 thing like the Christian home. A woman missionary from Japan 
 spoke recently of the pathetic desire of many people in Japan 
 to learn about the constitution of the Western home. As she 
 
280 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 went to and fro, she said, even among the country villages she 
 always found the people eager to sit down with her and talk 
 about the home. They had heard of a better social organisation 
 than theirs, and they were anxious to know where the secret 
 of it was to be found. More than one Japanese statesman in 
 earlier days beheld a revelation in Christian home life. We hold 
 here in our Christian faith the one secret of a pure social life, 
 in the matter of the relation of sex to sex and of the adult to 
 the child. The non-Christian religions condemn women in prin- 
 ciple or legal right to the place of chattel or of slave. A religion 
 which denies to woman her right place in society, which even 
 proclaims that no woman, as a woman, can be saved, as Bud- 
 dhism does proclaim, cannot meet the social needs of humanity. 
 These religions cannot meet the social needs of men because 
 they are incapable of, and inconsistent with, progress. Now, 
 there are three great elements in religion : the element of fellow- 
 ship, the element of dependence, and the element of progress. 
 The non-Christian religions rest on man's sense of dependence, 
 but they have no message to deliver to his need of fellowship, 
 and they have no word to speak to his need of progress. Each 
 one of the non-Christian religions to-day is bound up with a 
 degenerating civilisation ; and the peoples who live under the 
 non-Christian religions are making no progress, are even slip- 
 ping socially backward, save as they break free from these old 
 restraints and feel the transforming power of the Christian 
 principles. This is true of Islam. Is it not a significant fact 
 that the great wastes of the world are under the faith of Islam? 
 Wherever Mohammedanism has gone, it has either found a 
 desert or made one. Twelve hundred years ago it bound down 
 all human life in the Arabian institutions of the seventh century, 
 and until this day, and so long as Mohammedanism abides itself 
 in the world, progress will be inconsistent with that faith. It is 
 as Lord Houghton put it: 
 
 So while the world rolls on from age to age 
 
 And realms of thought expand, 
 The letter stands without expanse or range, 
 
 Stiff as a dead man's hand. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 281 
 
 And that which is true of Mohammedanism is essentially true 
 of all the non-Christian religions. Not one of them is capable 
 of, or consistent with, progress. Japan offers no exception. 
 " Japan," said the Japan Mail, not long ago, " is an interesting 
 country. It has been an interesting country for the last forty 
 years. The moribund condition of its only religious creed is 
 certainly not the least interesting feature of its modern career." 
 Japan's progress has sprung, not from Buddhism, but from an 
 abandonment or modification of Buddhism. 
 
 At the celebration in Tokyo in October, 1909, of the semi- 
 centennial of the coming of Protestant missions to Japan, Count 
 Okuma frankly avowed the futility of Buddhism and the effi- 
 ciency of Christianity as an agency of human progress: 
 
 He said, in brief, that he was glad of this opportunity to 
 express a word of hearty congratulation to those who were as- 
 sembled to celebrate this semi-centennial of Christian work in 
 Japan. Though not himself a professed Christian, he confessed 
 to have received great influence from that creed, as have so 
 many others throughout Japan. This is a most important anni- 
 versary for the country. It represents the work of one whole 
 age in our history, during which most marvellous changes have 
 taken place. He came in contact with, and received great im- 
 pulses from, some of the missionaries of that early period, par- 
 ticularly from Dr. Verbeck, who was his teacher in English and 
 history and the Bible, and whose great and virtuous influence 
 he can never forget. Though he could do little direct evangelis- 
 tic work then, all his work was Christian, and in everything he did 
 his Christlike spirit was revealed. The coming of missionaries 
 to Japan was the means of linking this country to the Anglo- 
 Saxon spirit to which the heart of Japan has always responded. 
 The success of Christian work in Japan can be measured by the 
 extent to which it has been able to infuse the Anglo-Saxon and 
 the Christian spirit into the nation. It has been the means of 
 putting into these fifty years an advance equivalent to that of 
 a hundred years. Japan has a history of 2,500 years, and 1,500 
 years ago had advanced in civilisation and domestic arts, but 
 never took wide views nor entered upon wide work. Only by 
 the coming of the West in its missionary representatives, and 
 by the spread of the Gospel, did the nation enter upon world- 
 wide thoughts and world-wide work. This is a great result of 
 the Christian spirit. To be sure, Japan had her religions, and 
 
282 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Buddhism prospered greatly ; but this prosperity was largely 
 through political means. Now this creed has been practically 
 rejected by the better classes who, being spiritually thirsty, have 
 nothing to drink. — (The Japan Daily Mail, October 9, 1909.) 
 
 And yet once more, the non-Christian religions are inade- 
 quate to the social needs of men because every one of them 
 denies the unity of mankind, Hinduism with its caste, Con- 
 fucianism with its conceit, Islam with its fanatical bigotry, and 
 Buddhism with its damnation of all women. It was given to 
 Buddha in his destiny never to be born in hell, or as vermin, 
 or as a woman. " A Brahman," says the Code of Manu, the 
 highest Hindu lawbook, " may take possession of the goods of 
 a Sudra with perfect peace of mind, since nothing at all belongs 
 to the Sudra as his own." " The system of caste which is one 
 of the most characteristic institutions of Hinduism and the 
 basis of Hindu Society," says the Bishop of Madras, Dr. White- 
 head, " is a direct denial of the brotherhood of man. The idea 
 that the Brahman is the brother of the pariah is contrary to 
 the first principles of Hinduism, and abhorrent to the Hindu 
 mind. Whatever enthusiasm there may be for brotherhood in 
 the abstract, it stops short of the brotherhood of the Brahman 
 and the pariah. To apply to Hindu society the principle of 
 Christian brotherhood would mean a social revolution ; and it 
 is for this practical reason that the spread of Christianity in 
 India is so bitterly opposed. The Western dress has little or 
 nothing to do with it: the real ground of the opposition is the 
 fundamental principle of the brotherhood of man." To be sure, 
 the phrase, " The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of 
 man," is a common phrase throughout the world, but both of 
 these great conceptions are the contributions of the Christian 
 revelation. 
 
 And, just as the non-Christian religions are inadequate to 
 meet the intellectual and the moral and the social needs of man, 
 so they are inadequate to meet his spiritual needs. For one 
 thing, all these non-Christian religions are practically atheistic. 
 Dr. Dwight's pasha's god amounts to no god at all. Hinduism 
 has 333,000,000 gods, but the man who has 333,000,000 gods 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 283 
 
 has no god except himself. Buddhism, in the southern form at 
 least, deliberately denies the existence of any god. " Buddha," 
 says Max Muller, " denies the existence not only of the Creator, 
 but of any absolute being. As regards the idea of a personal 
 Creator, Buddha seems merciless." These great non-Christian 
 religions have no satisfying word to speak to man about God. 
 They represent, as they actually are — and this is the most charita- 
 ble view that we can take of them — they represent the groping 
 search of man after light. They show us the non-Christian 
 peoples stumbling blindly around the great altar-stairs of God, 
 the more pitiably, as Fleming Stevenson said, because they do 
 not know that they are blind. As over against all these, Chris- 
 tianity stands as the loving quest of God after man, the full, 
 rich revealing of His light and life, the unfolding of His love 
 toward His children, whom He has come forth to seek in a 
 way of which none of the non-Christian religions has ever 
 conceived. They are inadequate to meet the spiritual needs of 
 men, because they have never taught men to say " Father." By 
 so much as we love to call Him Father, by so much as we de- 
 light to kneel down alone, in all the joy of our own dear and 
 loving intimacy with Him, and call Him by the precious name 
 in which Christ revealed Him, by so much are we under the 
 noble duty to make our Father known to all our Father's chil- 
 dren throughout the world. 
 
 And these non-Christian religions are inadequate to meet 
 man's spiritual need, also, because they speak to him no word 
 of hope. Mohammedanism has no word of hope to speak to 
 him. When the true man's heart has revolted from its idea of 
 a sensual paradise, what can he say except what poor Omar 
 said? 
 
 One moment in annihilation's waste, 
 One moment of the well of life to taste. 
 The stars are setting, and the caravan 
 Starts for the dawn of nothing. Oh, make haste. 
 
 The folk lore songs of India, revealing the true heart of the 
 people, are no brighter : 
 
284 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 How many births are past I cannot tell ; 
 
 How many yet to come no man can say. 
 But this alone I know, and know full well, 
 
 That pain and grief embitter all the way. 
 
 In those first days, when Christianity first shone ori men, men 
 realised that the great hope was the hope of Christ, that those 
 who were without Christ were without God, and also without 
 hope. It is narrow to speak so to-day; but we are content to 
 be as narrow as Jesus Christ, the only Saviour; and as Paul, 
 the greatest heart that ever went out to make Him known to 
 the world. The world without Christ is a spiritually hopeless 
 world. 
 
 We cannot study its religions and believe otherwise. Opti- 
 mistic and buoyant of hope as he was, Dr. Barrows, who organ- 
 ised the comparison of religions in the Chicago Parliament of 
 Religions, came to the same belief. " The world needs the 
 Christian religion. I have given five of the best years of my 
 life to the examination of this question, and I have had oppor- 
 tunities, such as no other man ever had, of seeing and knowing 
 the best side of the ethnic religions. I count as my friends 
 Parsees and Hindus, Buddhists and Confucianists, Shintoists 
 and Mohammedans. I know what they say about themselves. 
 I have looked at their religions on the ideal side, as well as 
 the practical, and I know this: That the very best which is in 
 them, the very best which these well-meaning men have shown 
 to us, is a reflex from Christianity, and that what they lack, 
 and the lack is very serious, is what the Christian Gospel alone 
 can impart; and I know that beneath the shining example of 
 the elect few in the non-Christian world there is a vast area 
 of idolatry and pollution and unrest and superstition and cruelty, 
 which can never be healed by the forces which are found in 
 the non-Christian systems." 
 
 6. We are confirmed accordingly in the conviction with which, 
 as we freely admitted, the missionary enterprise starts out, with- 
 out which there would not be any missionary enterprise, that 
 Christianity alone is adequate for all the needs of the world, and 
 that it is to all the world that it must be carried. We believe 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 285 
 
 that it is adequate because, to recapitulate, a comparison of 
 Christianity with other religions shows that it has a unique and 
 superior conception of God. It " has such a conception of God 
 as no other religion has attained ; and what is more, it proclaims 
 and brings to pass such an experience of God as humanity has 
 never elsewhere known. . . . The God of Christianity is one, 
 the sole source, Lord and end of all. He is holy, being in 
 Himself the character that is the sole standard for all beings. 
 He is love, reaching out to save the world from sin and fill 
 it with His own goodness. He is wise, knowing how to accom- 
 plish His heart's desire. He is Father in heart, looking upon 
 His creatures as His own and seeking their welfare. All this 
 truth concerning Himself He has made known in Jesus Christ, 
 the Saviour of the world, in whom His redemptive will has 
 found expression and His saving love has come forth to all 
 mankind. . . . The conception of God with which Christianity 
 addresses the world is the best that man can form or entertain." — 
 (Clarke, "A Study of Christian Missions," pp. 10, 11, 18.) 
 And it is a conception belonging to Christianity alone. The 
 world can only know its God through Christianity. Other re- 
 ligions express the sense of human dependence. They do not 
 give the longing souls their God. Other religions speak of a 
 higher truth, as the Buddhists do in their appeal, of " The great 
 truth shining above," but only one reveals that truth in a loving, 
 personal God, " Our Father." Other religions utter man's feel- 
 ings of helplessness, but only one tells of a Divine Saviour who 
 offers man forgiveness of sin and salvation through His death, 
 and Who is now a living person working in and with all who 
 believe in Him to make them holy and righteous and pure. 
 
 Christianity also is the only religion of moral efficiency and 
 power. The Japanese papers candidly acknowledged the in- 
 feriority of Buddhism in its practical ministry to the soldiers 
 in the late war. As the Kyokawai Jiji, a Buddhist journal, 
 said : 
 
 Numerically speaking, Buddhism far outranks Christianity; 
 but, by reason of actual work accomplished, the balance of power 
 is in favour of the Christians. General hatred against Chris- 
 
286 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 tianity is passing away, and the belief that it is better adapted 
 to the new condition of things is daily gaining ground. Buddhist 
 customs and rites are becoming more and more alien to the 
 interests of society and Buddhist temples and priests are often 
 the subject of public ridicule. 
 
 The war-correspondents declare the unfitness and inability of 
 the Buddhist priests, and the more thoughtful of these priests 
 who are at the front lament bitterly their co-workers' ignorance, 
 senselessness, and idleness, which have caused the soldiers to 
 ridicule them and also to become tired of them. On the other 
 hand, the quarters of the Christians are regarded as a paradise 
 for the soldiers, and they are welcome everywhere. 
 
 The enormous amount of Y200,ooo has been expended by the 
 Honganji (the largest Buddhist sect in Japan) for the work 
 among the soldiers, but it is far inferior to the work of the 
 Christian Association, whose expenditure amounts only to a few 
 thousand yen. The work of the Christians has attained such 
 success that it has reached the Emperor's ear; while that of 
 the Buddhists is always attended by debts and disturbances. 
 
 When Shaku Soyen, one of the representatives of Japanese 
 Buddhism in Chicago at the Parliament of Religions, came 
 recently to Gobo to preach, one of his old students, Mr. Iwa- 
 hashi, went to call on him, and remarked : " I have now become 
 a Christian, and am preaching Jesus." Shaku replied : " The 
 Christian religion is a religion that has a power over the lives 
 of men which I long to see in our Buddhism." This superior 
 moral power of Christianity is due to the fact that it is the 
 only religion which identifies religion and ethics, which makes 
 righteousness the life and faith of men, and which utters itself 
 in holy obedience and service. (See article in The Independent, 
 December 15, 1898, by A. H. Bradford, " Does the World Need 
 Christianity?") Christianity is the one lifting religion, which 
 takes hold of classes and of races, as of men, and gives them 
 a new life. As a " Brahman " wrote in The Madras Mail 
 (Quoted in " White Already to Harvest," May, 1901) : 
 
 It is above this degrading and narrow influence of caste and 
 custom that the Hindu religion must rise, if it is to fulfil its 
 function as a social institution apart from its function as a 
 force promoting the affinity between soul and God. The Hindus 
 have seldom recognised religion as a social institution, with the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 287 
 
 material happiness of man among its legitimate ends. The Hindu 
 religion never cared to organise itself in order to be able to 
 control the secular interests of society, and consequently, unlike 
 Christianity, it is losing its hold, if it has ever acquired a hold, 
 on the minds of the great masses. There was never in India 
 any such organisation as a Hindu Church, corresponding to the 
 Christian Church in Western countries. The mats and monas- 
 teries established here and there are centres of spiritual educa- 
 tion, to keep alive ecclesiastical authority and ancient tenets ; 
 but they never professed to concern themselves with the general 
 condition of the people. In the Western countries modern 
 opinion insists on the Christian Church taking part — a leading 
 and effective part — in every good work done for the alleviation 
 of suffering and promotion of happiness; and its past history 
 is a laudable record of work done for the elevation of the poor, 
 the redress of social wrongs, and the general progress of hu- 
 manity. The Hindu religion boasts of no such record, and if 
 any modernisation of it is possible, it should abandon its attitude 
 of passive exclusiveness, of cold indifference to the grossest and 
 most cruel wrongs that caste and custom inflict on the poorer 
 classes. It should develop new energies and come forward as 
 a friend of the poor and oppressed. It is this practical spirit 
 of charity and friendliness to suffering humanity that must per- 
 meate the modernised Hindu religion. What thought educated 
 Hindus of modern times may give to their religion must be chiefly 
 dominated by this spirit, which is in entire accord with the 
 grandest and the most earnest teaching of all true religion. In 
 proportion as religion fulfils this great function, it will justify 
 the devotion it exacts from intelligent minds. It is this su- 
 periority of the Christian over the Hindu religion that is under- 
 mining its hold on the people. It has already lost a good deal 
 of its old ground. When it was safe against all foreign influence, 
 it could tyrannise over the poor as it liked. But the Moham- 
 medan religion, by taking the poorer class under its shelter and 
 by its attack on the Hindu caste system, first shook the social 
 basis of Hindu religion ; and Christianity, with its organised and 
 infinitely superior resources, is delivering harder blows. En- 
 lightened and patriotic Hindus should take warning betimes and 
 place the religion of their ancestors on a more practical and 
 utilitarian footing, if its future is to be saved and its position 
 strengthened among the great religions of civilised mankind. 
 
 And Christianity is not only found to be the one religion of 
 power. It is found also to be the one universal religion. It 
 
288 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 cannot be otherwise for it is the only religion with a universal 
 God, and it is the only religion which provides for ceaseless 
 progress and for the ever-enlarging knowledge of God and life. 
 " That is exactly what is wanting in the old religions. There 
 lacks in every one of them the principles of progress, and that 
 element of universality which is Christianity's distinctive glory. 
 They have no special promise in them. Their fatal lack of 
 motive power, their imperfect morality, and their incapacity 
 to give vitality and vigour to their principles, is the secret of 
 their failure. Social degeneracy is the historic outcome. There 
 is no trace in them of any ' modern element ' of universal adap- 
 tation to the wants of men. They have reflected the climate, 
 country, race, time, in which they arose ; and whatever influence 
 they may have exerted, they did not draw nations out of the 
 beaten track in which they had lived. ' Notwithstanding the 
 material and political revolutions which they underwent,' says 
 M. Guizot, ' these ancient nations followed in the same ways, 
 and retained the same propensities as before.' For the old 
 creeds are not fitted to harmonise with the intellectual, social, 
 and moral progress of the modern world." — (Slater, "The 
 Higher Hinduism," p. 283 f ; Hume, " Missions from the Modern 
 View," p. 13 ff.) 
 
 Whether, accordingly, Christianity is to be called absolute 
 or not we will not dispute. We only believe that it is absolutely 
 needed by all the world, and that the world must wait for its 
 satisfaction, for the completion of all its vague yearnings, of its 
 half-lights, of its hopes, which are half-despairs, and for the purg- 
 ing of its sins and the lighting of its darkness, which is itself the 
 promise of light, until Christ comes to it carried by those who 
 know Him and God in Him, and in Him as the light of all the 
 world. (See Westcott, "Religious Thought in the West," ch. 
 on " The Absoluteness of Christianity.") 
 
 If what I have been setting forth is the truth, then the 
 missionary enterprise is morally justified by the comparison of 
 Christianity with the non-Christian religions. That is expressing 
 it tamely. The enterprise is not only morally justified, it is 
 morally necessary. Christians owe it both to their God and to 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 289 
 
 the world to carry the enterprise to completion. If Christianity 
 is such a religion as this, it " deserves possession of the world. 
 It has the right to offer itself boldly to all men, and to displace 
 all other religions, for no other religion offers what it brings. 
 It is the best that the world contains. Because of its doctrine 
 and experience of the perfect God, it is the best that the world 
 can attain. Its contents can be unfolded and better known, but 
 they cannot be essentially improved upon. At heart, Christianity 
 is simply the revelation of the perfect God, doing the work of 
 perfect love and holiness for His creatures, and transforming 
 men into His own likeness, so that they will do the works of 
 love and holiness toward their fellows. Than this nothing can 
 be better. Therefore, Christianity has full right to be a mis- 
 sionary religion, and Christians are called to be a missionary 
 people." — (Clarke, " A Study of Christian Missions," p. 19 ff. ; 
 The American Journal of Theology, January, 1907, art. by 
 Henry C. Mabie, " Has Christianity the Moral Right to Sup- 
 plant the Ethnic Faiths?") 
 
 Two questions remain for us to consider, one, I think, largely 
 speculative, the other intensely practical. Have the non-Chris- 
 tian religions prepared the way for Christianity? And what 
 should be the attitude of Christianity toward the non-Christian 
 religions? 
 
 On the first of these questions conflicting judgments are 
 offered to us. On the one side, men say that these religions 
 have made ready for the acceptance of Christianity. " The fun- 
 damental requisites of all religious teaching," says Dr. Martin 
 of China, " are two, viz., first, a belief in God, i.e., in some 
 effective method of divine government; second, belief in the 
 immortality of the soul, i.e., in a future state of being, whose 
 condition is determined by our conduct in the present life. These 
 cardinal doctrines we find accepted everywhere in China. There 
 are, it is true, those who deny them, but such are Confucianists, 
 not Buddhists; and I do not hesitate to affirm that for the 
 general prevalence of both, China is mainly indebted to the 
 agency of Buddhists," and he calls Buddhism a " stock in which 
 the vine of Christ may be grafted." — {Chinese Recorder, May, 
 
2QO CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 1889; Art. by W. A. P. Martin, "Is Buddhism a Preparation 
 for Christianity?") Canon Isaac Taylor saw in Islam "not 
 an anti-Christian faith, but a half-Christian faith, an imperfect 
 Christianity," a religion preparatory to an advanced Christian 
 faith, an advance guard for Christian missions where it precedes 
 Christianity among non-Christian peoples. Dr. Timothy Richard 
 finds in the Mahayana School of Buddhism, as represented espe- 
 cially in " The Awakening of Faith " of Ashvagosha, simply an 
 Asiatic form of the Gospel, not to be feared as a foe, but to 
 be greeted as a friend. (Richard's Translation of " The Awak- 
 ening of Faith," pp. vi, viii.) On the other hand, Dr. Nevius 
 held that the non-Christian religions, as the bitter experiences 
 of his life had convinced him, instead of being upward steps 
 of man in an advancing evolutionary movement toward the truth 
 were in practical effect devices by which men fell away from 
 the truth and buttressed themselves in error. In his book on 
 " China and the Chinese " he says plainly of the religions of 
 China : " These forms of idolatry, while they evidence God's 
 revelation of Himself in the human soul, are, with the most con- 
 summate art, so devised as to lead the soul farther and farther 
 from God, and to turn the truth of God into a lie." — (Nevius, 
 "China and the Chinese," p. 157.) As to Mohammedanism, Dr. 
 Dennis declares that we cannot " consider Islam as a step to- 
 wards Christianity. It is rather an attitude of pronounced op- 
 position to Christianity, and not to Christianity only, but to 
 civilisation and to all social and intellectual and spiritual prog- 
 ress." — (Missionary Review of the World, August, 1899; Art. 
 " Islam and Christian Missions.") And Bishop Lefroy, while 
 with Dr. Dennis recognising the good in Islam, is constrained 
 to fear that " in the subtlety of the devil those very truths seem 
 to have been used to safeguard a citadel of fearful error." — 
 (Cambridge Mission, Occasional Paper 21, " Mohammedanism," 
 
 P- I5-) 
 
 But these views are not as contradictory as they appear, 
 
 and there are some reconciling suggestions which may be 
 made, upon some of which at least all will agree. (1) A re- 
 ligious mind is much better for Christianity to work upon than 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 291 
 
 an irreligious mind. As Archbishop Benson said some years ago 
 at a meeting of the S. P. G. : "A religious tone of mind, 
 though heathen, is a better field for Christian effort than a 
 non-religious tone of mind. . . . It is not true, that the mind 
 from which every possible superstition has been banished, until 
 it becomes a tabula rasa, is in a better state of receptivity for 
 the truths we have in hand than a mind that still retains its 
 religious tone. ... I fear that if we have one single genera- 
 tion intervening, which has no religious habits, no thought be- 
 yond the grave, no tone which makes it perpetually look up 
 to that which is beyond it and above it, we shall find it a harder 
 task to convert the children of that generation than to convert 
 the polished heathen, however firmly they hold to their old 
 faith." India and Japan witness to the reasonableness of this 
 fear, and warn the destructive forces of civilisation to beware 
 how they destroy that which they do not replace. And, indeed, 
 in every mission field, as a simple matter of fact, the earnest 
 and serviceable Christian men are those who were earnest and 
 zealous followers of the religion of their fathers. Christianity 
 will succeed best where it has religious faculties to which it 
 can give new objects, not where it must both give the objects 
 and create the faculties. 
 
 (2) But the non-Christian religions are not only an exercise 
 of the religious faculties, an expression of the religious nature 
 of man, they are also encumbrances upon the religious nature. 
 That is true of the low superstitions of men which hold them in 
 base fear, and it is true also of the higher religions, for reasons 
 which we have already considered, but which I venture to set 
 forth again in the clear statement of Dr. Clarke: 
 
 As for the low religions, fetishistic and animistic, they may 
 once have been upward calls, though they called but a little way 
 upward ; but they are not such now. They rule by terror, and 
 maintain a tyranny over the religious powers of those who live 
 under them. The unseen powers that are worshipped are usually 
 regarded as unfriendly, and dreaded for the harm that they can 
 do. Hence the perpetual deprecations and propitiations. Ages 
 of such feeling and practice have produced a habitual fearful- 
 ness, and a complete inability to shake off the incubus of dread. 
 
292 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The religious instinct is stopped from going higher, without 
 being really satisfied, and the religion that holds it thus in hard 
 constraint is rather an encumbrance than an inspiration and a 
 comfort. 
 
 The higher religions would seem able to do more for the 
 satisfaction of the religious nature. Some of them have a pro- 
 found philosophy, and have raised certain noble souls to a fervent 
 devotion. Some of them contain lofty thoughts and worthy 
 prayers, uttered and recorded long ago by choice spirits. Yet 
 in sad reality the higher religions rank with the lower, as en- 
 cumbrances upon the religious nature of mankind. How true this 
 is, and how it comes to pass, a glance at some facts in the great 
 historic religions will suffice to show. 
 
 In Confucianism the religious nature of man is almost left 
 out of account. Among the common people, the highest satis- 
 faction that it receives is provided in the worshipping of an- 
 cestors. The field of religion is occupied almost wholly by ethics, 
 and by ethics moving on the plane of human relations. The 
 whole Confucian system is exactly a burden or encumbrance on 
 the religious nature, preventing it from coming to its due develop- 
 ment. Religion suffers from being subordinated to ethics. In 
 Buddhism, and in Hinduism too, the religious nature has a 
 different weight to bear. A pessimistic philosophy suppresses it. 
 The doctrine of universal and dominant evil, so great and deep 
 as to make all existence a curse to those who suffer it, is too 
 much for religious life and feeling to thrive under, and religion 
 dies down discouraged, as it must where there is no hope. Re- 
 ligion suffers from being complicated with a philosophy of de- 
 spair. In Hinduism, as in the Baal-worship that the Hebrews 
 knew, the religious nature is fast wrought in with the non-moral 
 nature-powers and the animal element in man, and the com- 
 bination is commemorated in lustful and degrading rites. When 
 religion comes to expression on the side of feeling, its outlet 
 is found in what is gross and cruel, and bloodshed and lust 
 come to be elements in the ceremonial. Thus the religious nature 
 is degraded, and religion suffers from alliance with nature-powers 
 and animal impulses. In Mohammedanism the religious nature 
 finds yet another burden. Here there is one God, who is de- 
 clared to be the holy and merciful, but he is altogether tran- 
 scendent, and not accessible to any real fellowship of man. His 
 will is man's guide, but only from above and afar, to be obeyed 
 only in absolute submission, not in filial life and love. So the 
 religious nature finds no warm exercise, and is set free only to 
 works of obedient routine or else of fanatical fervour. Religion 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 293 
 
 suffers from the chill of bare sovereignty. Thus in one of the 
 great religions the religious nature of man is imprisoned in 
 human ethics ; in another, it is depressed by a dark philosophy ; 
 in another, it is corrupted by coarse feeling; in another, it is 
 deadened by want of the warmth of divine love. In other words, 
 in Confucianism, where the religious movement is ethical, the 
 ethics become human and religion is lost. In Buddhism, where 
 it is philosophical, the philosophy becomes pessimistic, and re- 
 ligion dies out. In Hinduism, where it is emotional, the emotion 
 becomes degrading, and religion is defiled. In Mohammedanism, 
 where it is doctrinal, the doctrine becomes cold and lifeless, 
 and religion is atrophied. Everywhere the great historic religions 
 of the world have come to be encumbrances upon the religious 
 nature of man. Everywhere it is the religious nature that suffers 
 under their influence. Nowhere is that nature permitted to rise 
 to its true proportions and develop its rightful worth. — (Clarke, 
 "A Study of Christian Missions," pp. 102-105.) 
 
 These religions do contain foregleams of truth, or as some 
 would say, aftergleams, but their errors and contradictions of 
 truth are essential and integral parts of them. Take Buddhism, 
 for example. " It progressed up to a certain point ; it preached 
 purity in thought, word, and deed, though only for the accumu- 
 lation of merit ; it proclaimed the brotherhood of humanity ; 
 it avowed sympathy with social liberty and freedom ; it gave 
 back much independence to women ; it inculcated universal 
 benevolence, extending even to animals ; and from its declaration 
 that a man's future depended on his present acts and conditions, 
 it did good service for a time in preventing stagnation, promoting 
 activity, and elevating the character of humanity. But if, after 
 making all these concessions," says Sir Monier Williams, " I am 
 told that on my own showing Buddhism was a kind of introduc- 
 tion to Christianity, or that Christianity is a kind of development 
 of Buddhism, I must ask you to bide with me a little longer, while 
 I point out certain contrasts, which ought to make it clear to 
 any reasonable man how vast, how profound, how impassable 
 is the gulf separating the true religion from a mere system of 
 morality founded on a form of pessimistic philosophy." — 
 (Monier Williams, "Mystical Buddhism," p. 24.) And then 
 he proceeds to point out those radical contradictions between 
 
294 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Buddhism and Christianity, which can only be regarded as a 
 preparation for Christianity in the same sense in which error 
 is a preparation for truth. In simple fact, there are agreements 
 and disagreements in fundamental things between Christianity 
 and each other religion. The disagreements overbalance the 
 agreements and constitute the essential character of Christianity. 
 The question would seem to be as to whether the truths which 
 the non-Christian religions hold will draw them to Christianity 
 more powerfully than their errors will repel them from it. 
 
 (3) In theory the non-Christian religions are expressions of 
 man's sense of need and incompleteness, and viewed as seekings 
 after God, ought to prepare men for the full truth. Twilight 
 ought to prepare for day, unless, indeed, it be the other twilight. 
 Phillips Brooks has put the noble view of the welcome fulfil- 
 ment by Christianity of all the hopes of men in his sermon on 
 " Disciples and Apostles." (" Twenty Sermons," Sermon IX, 
 p. 170.) 
 
 I think again that it is wonderful how many people who 
 understand perfectly what the Gospel is, in the work that it does 
 for them, are all wrong in their conception of what the Gospel 
 has to do for the world, and so have false conceptions about 
 the whole possibility of missions. They talk as if what the 
 religion of Jesus had to do was to go a perfect stranger into 
 a dark land, with whose people it had before had no concern, 
 to cast out everything that they had ever believed, to falsify all 
 their hopes, to begin their life all over again. Perhaps they 
 thought the same thing once about themselves. Perhaps they 
 stood for years untouched by Christianity, because Christianity 
 seemed to them to be the utter destruction of all that they had 
 ever been, or thought, or hoped. They could not understand it. 
 It was all strange and foreign to them. But by and by Christ 
 really came, and lo! Fie was the revealer of that old life. He 
 purified that old self; but it was it still, purified and saved, that 
 He set up to be the burden of their thanksgiving. The old hopes 
 were enlightened : the old ignorant prayers were fulfilled. It 
 was as when the Apostles went out and cried up and down 
 Judea, " The Messiah has come," and Judea understood itself. 
 It was as when Paul stood on Mars Hill and cried, " Whom 
 you ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you " ; and the altar 
 to the unknown God burst for the first time into the bright 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 295 
 
 blaze of an intelligent sacrifice. And that is what the Christian 
 religion, fulfilling its missionary duty, has to do for all the world. 
 It is the great interpreter of the religious heart of man. Its 
 manifested God speaks, and the divine voices throughout all the 
 world become intelligible. Its message is declared, and countless 
 oracles, that were all blind, win a clear meaning. Its sacrifice is 
 held up, and the heathen altar drops its veil of superstition and 
 discerns its own long-lost intention. Its Son of Man goes with 
 His gracious footsteps through the hosts of heathen barbarians, 
 and their sonship to God leaps into consciousness and life. 
 
 This is the noble view which we all want to believe. But 
 did Judea understand itself when it saw Christ? Did the altar 
 on Mars' Hill blaze after Paul with the fire of an intelligent 
 sacrifice, the sacrifice of the broken heart made new? Among 
 the hosts of the non-Christian peoples, does their sonship to 
 God leap into consciousness and life and obedience at the sound 
 of the Gospel? Did it when Dr. Hall preached to them with 
 as conciliatory and winning a voice as it is possible for the 
 Gospel to use, and when Phillips Brooks talked with Keshub 
 Chunder Sen? Is it, after all, not a simple question of facts? 
 Judaism prepared the way for Christianity, but it did not pre- 
 pare the Jews for either Christianity or Christ. He came unto 
 His own and His own received Him not. Phillips Brooks 
 preached to men the Lord Christ's fulfilment of the hopes and 
 longings of their hearts, and here and there a man answered 
 and was made complete in Christ, but the great mass of those 
 who heard him were only as those who had listened to a pleasant 
 song. There was a time when Dr. Barrows also held this view. 
 "'The glory of Christianity!' said Professor Jowett," wrote 
 Dr. Barrows in the full flush of enthusiasm over his parliament, 
 " ' is not to be as unlike other religions as possible, but to be 
 their perfection and fulfilment.' As Judaism and Christianity 
 were reconciled in the Epistle to the Hebrews, so Buddhism 
 and Christianity, Hinduism and Christianity, Confucianism and 
 Christianity, Islam and Christianity, are yet to be reconciled 
 by some supreme minds, who will show to India, China, Japan, 
 Arabia, that in Christ all that is good and true in their faiths 
 has been embodied and completed by a special revelation." — (The 
 
296 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Forum, September, 1894, art. by J. H. Barrows, " Results of 
 the Parliament of Religions," p. 62.) Well, those supreme minds 
 will have to do their proposed work more effectively than the 
 writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews did his. So Judaism and 
 Christianity were reconciled in that Epistle? Where, then, did 
 the Judaism we have known ever since come from, the million 
 of Jews in New York City who are unreconciled to Christianity? 
 The Epistle demonstrated the superiority and fulfilling glory of 
 Christianity, but it neither made Christians of the Jews nor ab- 
 sorbed Judaism in Christianity. The Gospel came to the Jews 
 as it goes now to the world. Some men, at least, have preached 
 it without denying it. It has found here and there the sheep 
 of Christ, who have recognised their Shepherd's voice. But, 
 as a matter of fact, the non-Christian religions have thus far 
 proved as poor schoolmasters as Judaism to bring men to Christ. 
 It may be held that, with Judaism, this was their mission, but 
 that is to throw us back on the mystery of God's method in the 
 education of mankind, and it is to present to faith a proposition 
 regarding the philosophy of history as yet unconfirmed by the 
 facts. Some day we shall know what part the non-Christian 
 religions played in the economy of God. We do not know now. 
 
 What, then, we ask finally, should be the attitude of Chris- 
 tianity toward them? 
 
 The New Testament apostles and the Old Testament prophets 
 had to deal either with non-Christian religions or with faiths 
 at variance with Hebrew monotheism. Without sharing his 
 criticism, we will let a modern writer describe their attitude : 
 
 Paul judges the alien religions from the position of strict 
 Jewish monotheism, and his estimate of them is lacking in breadth 
 and sympathy. He makes no allowance for the elements of good 
 that were mingled with the error, for the higher thoughts and 
 aspirations which had only found an imperfect utterance. Com- 
 paring Christianity with Paganism he saw nothing but an un- 
 qualified contrast of light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, 
 life and death. When we apply it literally to any form of heathen 
 religion, Paul's criticism is inadequate and unjust; but none the 
 less we cannot but recognise the truth at the heart of it. The 
 heathen spirit, which refuses to know the invisible things by the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 297 
 
 things that are made, is always the same, under many different 
 manifestations. It was this spirit which Paul condemned with 
 unequalled power and insight, and his words have still their 
 meaning and their warning for our world to-day. . . . 
 
 It is an axiom in Paul's psychology that the vov?, the inward 
 mind which is the core of man's being, is directed to God, 
 although its will is rendered impotent by the will of the flesh. In 
 the case of the Jews, this inward mind was still struggling to 
 assert itself, but the heathen, puffed up with the sense of their 
 own wisdom, had allowed it to grow paralysed. Spiritual beings, 
 they had denied their higher affinities, and had offered their wor- 
 ship to the merely natural, putting the creature in place of the 
 Creator. Not only was the true mind thus rendered inoperative, 
 but " since they cared not to retain God in their knowledge, He 
 gave them over to a reprobate mind." The light that was in 
 them changed into darkness ; the divine principle was replaced 
 by an active principle of evil, which wholly mastered them. 
 
 It may be objected to Paul's analysis that it is not in strict 
 accordance with historical fact. Heathenism, as we are now 
 aware, was not in its origin a rebellion against the sovereignty of 
 God. It was not the corruption of a higher primitive faith, but 
 the first stage in a religious development. Even Jewish mono- 
 theism was preceded by crude forms of nature-worship, which 
 only gradually gave way to the ethical teaching of the great 
 prophets. Paul's real object, however, is not to trace out the 
 historical genesis of Pagan religion, but to determine its ultimate 
 meaning and character. It had set the creature in the place of 
 the Creator. It had failed to perceive that above the natural 
 there is a spiritual world, in relation to which man's life and 
 destiny must be interpreted. The heathen were " without God 
 in the world" (Eph. ii:i2); and through their blindness to 
 the supreme reality their life was reduced to a chaos, their 
 feelings and thoughts and actions were hopelessly perverted. In 
 its substance, Paul's criticism thus holds good, not merely in 
 regard to heathen worship proper, but in regard to the naturalism 
 which threatens ever and again to displace religion. Laplace, 
 asked by Napoleon whether he allowed no room for God 
 within his system, is said to have declared, " I do not find that 
 I require any such hypothesis." Paul would answer that the 
 world becomes simply unintelligible to those who will not retain 
 God in their knowledge. Professing themselves to be wise, they 
 are made foolish. Their error may not be demonstrable by rea- 
 son, but it comes to light in the practical attempt to live as though 
 there were no God above the natural forces. Such a life contains 
 
298 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 in it the principle of dissolution. Leave out the spiritual and 
 the natural will fall to pieces, being emptied of its inward mean- 
 ing and reality. — (Scott, " The Apologetic of the New Testa- 
 ment," pp. 125, 144 ff.) 
 
 Shall we take the same attitude with St. Paul, or has our 
 knowledge of religions, of which Paul was ignorant, and our 
 view of God's relation to the world made that impossible? But 
 no one knows the non-Christian religions better than the men 
 who from a long personal association with them as adherents 
 are now in a position to compare them with Christianity, which 
 they have come to know by personal experience, men like Nehe- 
 miah Goreh and Imad-ud din. Shall we take their attitude? 
 Dr. Imad-ud din tells us : "I found nothing in Mohammedanism 
 from which an unprejudiced man might in his heart derive 
 true hope and real comfort, though I searched for it earnestly 
 in the Koran, the Traditions, and also in Sufism. Rites, cere- 
 monies, and theories I found in abundance, but not the slightest 
 spiritual benefit does a man get by acting on them. He remains 
 fast held in the grip of darkness and death. ... I discovered 
 that the religion of Mohammed is not of God, and that the 
 Mohammedans have been deceived, and are lying in error; and 
 that salvation is surely to be found in the Christian religion." 
 It must be recognised that this is the general attitude of Chris- 
 tians who had been Mohammedans or Hindus or believers in 
 some other faith. As Dr. H. Martyn Clark says: 
 
 The unanimity of all converts from Islam concerning that 
 religion is emphatic and startling. " Earthly, sensual, devilish," 
 is invariably in effect their deliverance. Not one of them has 
 ever found it aught else but an evil and debasing thing. They 
 have not felt the genial influences or vitalising power of any 
 of the truths it is supposed to contain. The statement that it 
 has such truths is in itself a revelation to them, and when they 
 hear such have been discovered to exist, their answer, to that 
 and other theories now rather the fashion concerning Islam, is 
 a pitying smile, and a " Well ! well ! It was our faith and that 
 of our fathers before us; we do not know of these things, nor 
 have we so found it." As for its being a help towards God and 
 good, it has been their sorest hindrance in the way of life. It 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 299 
 
 has made the acceptance of Christian truth all the more difficult, 
 and the Christian life infinitely harder. One of the best native 
 pastors said : " After many years of Christianity the poison of 
 Mohammedanism still works in our muscles and makes us weak." 
 They err who think Islam a development, an advance from a 
 lower to a higher plane. It is in reality a retrogression, a de- 
 generation from a higher to a lower state. I took one convert 
 to task for his unbridled speech. His reply was : " My father, 
 you can afford to speak kindly of the thing. You were never 
 steeped to the lips in that mire as I have been. Were it not for 
 God's mercy, where would I be now? " — (From The Church Mis- 
 sionary Intelligencer, November, 1894: "Some Results of the 
 Late Mohammedan Controversy," by Dr. H. Martyn Clark, 
 p. 814 ff.) 
 
 There are converts who take a different attitude. A friend 
 writes from India of a Christian layman, once a Mohammedan, 
 who is now a great champion of Christianity as against the 
 Moslem religious propaganda, and who says : 
 
 I have been proving the sublimity of the Christian religion 
 and endeavouring to show that the Christian counterpart of 
 everything good in doctrine and morality in Islam is always 
 superior, and that Mohammedanism, even at its highest, is only 
 the next best, and that from a true Koranic point of view the 
 religion of the Gospels is open to no question whatever. It is 
 rather the goal to which all the religions of the world aspire to 
 reach. My conception of Islam is more optimistic. I despair 
 of the Islam which obtains among the so-called Orthodox, and 
 it is only these whose weakness I would expose. The Islam of 
 the Koran, with its Asian Christology, is a fine amalgam of In- 
 diaism and Christianity. It is the Nazarene form of Christianity, 
 confounded with certain social and religious prejudices of the 
 time and the country, and can be very rightly regarded, " rather 
 as a heresy than as an alien faith," but not more heretical than 
 so many ancient and modern ones. 
 
 What then, amid these divergent views, shall we say that the 
 attitude of Christianity ought to be? 
 
 1. First of all, it should be consistent. Christianity in the 
 missionary enterprise, in its special lecturers and representatives, 
 and in its reception of representatives of the non-Christian re- 
 
3 oo CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ligions when they visit Western lands, should take a consistent 
 position. The relations of Christianity to the other religions 
 are not variable. If it is our right and duty to take an attitude 
 in foreign missions and to project our enterprise on the con- 
 viction that Christianity is the universal religion, and ought to 
 be the personal faith of every man, it is neither just nor honour- 
 able to belie that attitude in any of our relations. 
 
 2. Christianity should joyfully recognise all the good that 
 is in the non-Christian religions and build upon it. This is the 
 attitude it has taken from the beginning of the history of its 
 missionary relations. Harnack has eloquently described its 
 policy : 
 
 From the very outset Christianity came forward with a spirit 
 of universalism, by dint of which it laid hold of the entire life 
 of men in all its functions, throughout its heights and depths, 
 in all its feelings, thoughts, and actions. This guaranteed its 
 triumph. In and with its universalism it also declared that the 
 Jesus whom it preached was the Logos. To him it referred every- 
 thing that could possibly be deemed of human value, and from 
 him it carefully excluded whatever belonged to the purely natural 
 sphere. From the very first it embraced humanity and the world, 
 despite the small number of the elect whom it contemplated. 
 Hence it was that those very powers of attraction, by means 
 of which it was enabled at once to absorb and to subordinate 
 the whole of Hellenism, had a new light thrown upon them. 
 They appeared almost in the light of a necessary feature in that 
 age. Sin and foulness it put far from itself. But otherwise it 
 built itself up by the aid of any element whatsoever that was still 
 capable of vitality. Such elements it crushed as rivals and con- 
 served as materials of its own life. It could do so for one reason 
 — a reason which no one voiced, and of which no one was con- 
 scious, yet which every truly pious member of the Church ex- 
 pressed in his own life. The reason was that Christianity, viewed 
 in its essence, was something simple, something which could 
 blend with coefficients of the most diverse nature, something 
 which, in fact, sought out all such coefficients. For Christianity, 
 in its simplest terms, meant God as the Father, the Judge, and 
 the Redeemer of men, revealed in and through Jesus Christ. 
 
 And was not victory the due to this religion? Alongside of 
 other religions it could not hold its own for any length of time; 
 still less could it succumb. Yes, victory was inevitable. It had 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 301 
 
 to conquer. All the motives which operated in its extension are 
 as nothing when taken one by one, in face of the propaganda 
 which it exercised by means of its own development from Paul 
 to Origen, a development which maintained withal a strictly 
 exclusive attitude toward polytheism and idolatry of every 
 kind. . . . 
 
 It has been our endeavour to decipher the reasons for this 
 astonishing expansion. These reasons, on the one hand, were 
 native to the very essence of the religion (as monotheism and 
 as evangel). On the other hand, they lay in its versatility and 
 amazing power of adaptation. But it baffles us to determine the 
 relative amount of impetus exerted by each of the forces which 
 characterised Christianity ; to ascertain, e.g., how much was due 
 to its spiritual monotheism, to its preaching of Jesus Christ, to 
 its hope of immortality, to its active charity and system of social 
 aid, to its discipline and organisation, to its syncretistic capacity 
 and contour, or to the skill which it developed in the third cen- 
 tury for surpassing the fascinations of any superstition what- 
 soever. Christianity was a religion which proclaimed the living 
 God, for whom man was made. It also brought men life and 
 knowledge, unity and multiplicity, the known and the unknown. 
 Born of the spirit, it soon learnt to consecrate the earthly. To 
 the simple it was simple; to the sublime, sublime. It was a 
 universal religion, in the sense that it enjoined precepts binding 
 upon all men, and also in the sense that it brought men what 
 each individual specially craved. Christianity became a Church, 
 a Church for the world, and thereby it secured the use of all 
 possible means of authority, besides the sword itself. It con- 
 tinued to be exclusive, and yet it drew to itself any outside ele- 
 ment that was of any value. By this sign it conquered ; for on 
 all human things, on what was eternal, and on what was transient 
 alike, Christianity had set the cross. — (Harnack, "The Expan- 
 sion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries," Vol. I, pp. 
 145 f, 467 f.) 
 
 This, minus the compromises, is what Christianity is doing 
 still. It must build on something; it cannot build on nothing. 
 It builds as ever on all that it finds that is capable of redemp- 
 tion, of being wrought into the eternal and universal kingdom. 
 " It is in the power of the Gospel to enter sympathetically the 
 past of Japan and China, and the wonderful reach and wide- 
 ness of Hindu history, and put upon the whole expanse the 
 light of its own divine interpretation. It can, in a way, identify 
 
302 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 itself with the great traditions of all these people, make them 
 live their long histories over again, and read their deeper mean- 
 ings into itself. It can, without in the least endangering its 
 unique character, appear in the light of those empires, and 
 come in the colours which are dear to them; it can put on as 
 dress many of the intellectual habits that are inseparable from 
 their constitution. Until the Jew saw his Judaism transfigured 
 in Christianity, he could not abandon the old faith for the new ; 
 until the Greek beheld the vision of Plato under grander forms 
 in the mission of Christ, he could not forsake the Academy for 
 the Church ; until the Roman discovered in the sign of the cross 
 a diviner form of the victorious power after which he thirsted, 
 he could not change his allegiance; and until China shall see 
 Confucius idealised and transcended in our Master, and Japan 
 her beggarly elements glorified in the Christian inheritance, and 
 India her sublime names taken out of the region of imagina- 
 tion and in our Lord made the equivalent of the moral order of 
 the universe, we cannot expect them to become His disciples." — 
 (G. A. Gordon, "The Gospel of Humanity," p. 14.) This is 
 precisely the attitude of the missionary movement. It welcomes 
 and uses and completes all that it can. It borrows all the familiar 
 vocabulary that can be made tributary to the larger truth. 
 (Kelly, "Another China," p. 49.) It roots its conceptions in 
 whatever is found akin to them. It makes any such kindred 
 ideas the grounds of appeal to the home Church. A missionary 
 calls for larger work among the Ali Illahees in Persia because 
 " (a) They believe in incarnations of the Deity, (b) Many of 
 them venerate David as their greatest prophet. Hence they 
 are willing to listen to the voice of David's Son, Jesus, (c) Curi- 
 ous customs exist among them which might almost be considered 
 as borrowed from a crude form of Christianity." It is on what 
 is common ground alone that men can meet. It is the power 
 already working in men that is to be consecrated and enlarged 
 and turned to the will of God. (Dennis, " Islam and Chris- 
 tianity," p. 19.) The words of Principal Grant's introduction to 
 his little book on " The Religions of the World " describe truly 
 the attitude of missions: 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 303 
 
 The writer of this little volume believes that Jesus is " the 
 way, the truth, and the life," and that His religion is the absolute 
 religion. Therefore, he believes it to be right and wise to call 
 attention to the excellent features of other religions rather than 
 to their defects ; to the good rather than to the bad fruit which 
 they have borne ; in a word, to treat them as a rich man should 
 treat his poorer brothers, drawing near to and touching them, 
 getting on common ground, and then sharing with them his rich 
 inheritance. He does not pretend that an adequate account will 
 be found here of all the phases of any one of the great religions ; 
 but a sketch is attempted, in the spirit that should animate an 
 intelligent Confucianist, Hindoo, Buddhist, or Mohammedan, to 
 whom the task of describing Christianity briefly was assigned. 
 
 It is these words which Mr. Slater quotes when he sets 
 forth the actual attitude of the men and women who are doing 
 the work of foreign missions in the midst of the non-Christian 
 faiths : 
 
 He who reverently and sympathetically studies the way in 
 which various races have worshipped God, while loathing the 
 degrading rite still loving the misguided devotee, will increase 
 his power to lead on his fellow-men to greater light; since the 
 measure of a man's love is the measure of his power. We shall 
 never gain the non-Christian world until we treat its religions 
 with justice, courtesy, and love ; " treat them as a rich man should 
 treat his poorer brothers, drawing near to them, getting on com- 
 mon ground with them, and then sharing with them his rich 
 inheritance." For those religious truths which have been vene- 
 rated for ages as the felt facts of man's inner consciousness, 
 we claim for the spiritual Christ who was immanent as grace 
 and truth in human thought prior to the Incarnation, the Light 
 of every saint and seer who has relieved the darkness of the 
 pagan world. 
 
 Religions illuminate one another; and though it is true that 
 other shastras yield the student of the New Testament little 
 spiritual aliment for his soul, yet Christianity cannot be fully 
 appreciated unless viewed in relation to other historic faiths ; 
 and the study of comparative religion, which should be diligently 
 pursued by all intending missionaries, and which demonstrates, 
 not only that man was made for religion, but what religion he 
 was made for, is one of the most promising and fruitful for 
 the future of the Church and of the world. Discovering, as it 
 does, points of contact and elements of truth in systems outside 
 
30 4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 our own ; that no religion lies in utter isolation from the rest, 
 but that each, being the manifestation of a human want, has 
 had a raison d'etre, a place to fill, and a work to do, in the 
 great evolutionary scheme; it has led to the cultivation of a 
 broader and more generous spirit towards these ancient faiths 
 which have endured precisely according to the amount of truth 
 they have contained, to the fitness of their doctrine for the 
 special circumstances of race and culture, and to the degree 
 in which they have witnessed to Him Who is the " Heir of all 
 the ages," the Fulfiller of " the unconscious prophecies of 
 heathendom." 
 
 In the light of a Providential guidance, those religious so- 
 cieties that have advanced through centuries of growth, and 
 written the pathetic story of their human interests and en- 
 deavours, their aspirations and their miseries, in their temples, 
 laws, and homes, are destined for a diviner purpose than to 
 be swept away as vestiges of evil, with no message to be delivered 
 to the modern world. For, rightly conceiving the depth and 
 height and exceeding breadth of Christ's religion, we behold 
 it assimilating and adapting all that was valuable in the ancient 
 civilisations ; drawing into its pure and onward current all that 
 was best in the fields of virtue and truth ; finding expression 
 for all the various aspirations that are separately emphasised 
 by the old religions ; gathering up, explaining, and consummating 
 the lessons of all previous revelations ; while, at the same time, 
 fully and forever proving the incompleteness or the falsity of 
 the views that have kept humanity from God. — (Slater, "The 
 Higher Hinduism," pp. 1-3.) 
 
 3. But in the third place, Christianity should not slur or 
 ignore the points of difference. These points of difference are 
 radical. It is from them that the missionary movement springs. 
 If they are of no significance, Christianity's whole claim, both 
 abroad and at home, is untenable. But the comparison of re- 
 ligions reveals the vital, or perhaps we should say the deadly 
 reality of the distinctions between Christianity and other faiths. 
 Recall Hinduism, for example, as the religion whose opposition 
 to Christianity to-day rests on the claim that it includes all the 
 truth of Christianity. Is it so? Christianity asserts the exist- 
 ence of a personal God. Hinduism, except as influenced by Chris- 
 tianity, denies it. Christianity asserts the separateness of man 
 and all creatures from the Creator. Hinduism, except as influ- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 305 
 
 enced by Christianity, affirms that they are identical with God. 
 Christianity asserts the freedom of the will. Hinduism, except 
 as influenced by Christianity, denies it, and affirms an unbending 
 necessity. Christianity assumes the trustworthiness of our 
 own consciousness. Hinduism, except as influenced by Chris- 
 tianity, denies it; all is maya, illusion. (Kellogg, "Hinduism," 
 p. 12.) Christianity has far more that is unique than appears 
 until we have compared it with other religions. It is the actual 
 comparison which brings out the enormous differences. This is 
 illustrated in that interesting book, " Five Years in a Persian 
 Town." 
 
 It will perhaps be felt by some [says Mr. Malcolm in the 
 preface] that more ought to be made of the points in common 
 between Islam and Christianity. The fact is that when the 
 people come to the missionary they do not want to find agree- 
 ment but disagreement, and consequently the missionary gets 
 to think not so much of what they know as of what they do 
 not know. So a missionary writer is, perhaps, inclined to pass 
 over common points, whatever religion he is writing about. In 
 the case of Islam there are really not many to note, and in 
 support of this statement I may relate a story told by an officer 
 of Indian troops. One day a Mohammedan, in the course of 
 a conversation, said to him : " Of course, Sahib, your religion 
 and ours are very near together. Your Christ is one of our 
 prophets." My friend replied: " What do you mean? Of course 
 Christ is one of your prophets, but to us he is more than a 
 prophet; He is the Son of God and the pattern of our lives. 
 Besides there is hardly a single practical point where Moham- 
 medans and Christians are not entirely at issue." The man 
 looked up and said: " Sahib, you have read the Koran, and you 
 have read your Bible. I always make that remark to Christians : 
 I made it to a padre the other day ; and they most always say, 
 ' Very true ; Mohammedanism has a great deal in common with 
 Christianity.' Well, Sahib, when they say that, I know that 
 they have not read the Koran and they have not read their 
 Bibles." 
 
 Even when there appear to be resemblances between Chris- 
 tianity and other religions, they are underlain by deeper differ- 
 ences. In the matter of the idea of incarnation, for example, 
 the resemblance is merely verbal. The incarnations of Hinduism 
 
3 o6 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 were not incarnations of a personal and self-conscious being. 
 They were " means by which a being impersonal and incapable 
 by itself of attaining to conscious existence is enabled through 
 contact with matter to attain to personality." — (Bickersteth, 
 " Indian Mohammedans," p. 5 ff.) Now, the truth is not served 
 by the denial or suppression of the truth, and many have risen 
 from the actual comparison of the world's religions with the 
 judgment with which the just-minded Edward Lawrence re- 
 turned from a careful study of the peoples and beliefs of Asia: 
 
 With every disposition to recognise whatever of truth and 
 good may be found in the great Oriental religions, I have been 
 more and more led to the conviction that it will rather harm 
 than help our cause to minimise the differences between Chris- 
 tianity and any other religion. If we make the differences slight, 
 and say to men, " You have but to come a little further, get a 
 little more, and you will be Christians," one of two things will 
 surely follow. Either — and this will be at present most fre- 
 quently the case in India and China — the one appealed to will 
 respond, " If the difference is slight, since the change to me 
 will be so great in leaving my ancestral faith and encountering 
 certain persecution, I will take the chances and stay where I 
 am." Or — and this would more frequently happen in Japan — 
 he will say, " I come," and bring all his heathenism with him, 
 presuming that it will be quite consistent with Christianity. The 
 Japanese are sensitive to-day about being called heathens, which 
 is a most hopeful sign. But it will not make them any less 
 heathen to call them Christians until they become so through 
 allegiance to Jesus Christ. In Asia, as in Europe and America, 
 Christianity is strong, and is to remain so, through the imperious- 
 ness of its claims, and through the absolute assent and exclusive 
 loyalty which it demands. Be the effect of other religions what 
 it may, whether Judaism or Mohammedanism or Hinduism, 
 whether preparatory or obstructive or both at once, Christianity 
 treats every one of them as a usurper on the throne and a mis- 
 leader of the human heart from its true allegiance. — (Lawrence, 
 "Modern Missions in the East," p. 157.) 
 
 4. Christianity should make no compromises, but anticipate 
 its own victorious triumph. This is the view of the political 
 statesman who is also the Christian man. " If there is any 
 significance in Christian missions," said the Honourable John 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 307 
 
 W. Foster on his return in 1884 from a trip around the world, 
 " they mean that the world must be conquered for Christ. The 
 spirit of Christianity, while it inculcates charity towards our 
 erring brothers, tolerates no other religion. Its Founder de- 
 clared that ' no man cometh unto the Father but by me.' Peter 
 in laying the very first stone of the Christian edifice, filled with 
 the Holy Ghost, boldly announced to the rulers of the people 
 that ' there is none other name under heaven given among men 
 whereby we must be saved.' A.nd the first and greatest mis- 
 sionary, the author of the most beautiful panegyric of charity 
 ever written, exclaims, ' What concord hath Christ with Be- 
 lial ? . . . what agreement hath the temple of God with idols ? ' 
 Neither in Japan nor in any other land can Christianity be 
 compromised with Buddhism or any other Christless religion." 
 And this is the view also of the modern liberal theologian, who 
 is true to Christ and the Christian God : 
 
 Our second question is, What does Christianity as a mis- 
 sionary religion propose, with regard to the religions that exist 
 in the world? The answer to this question is, that Christianity 
 proposes to win men away from the other religions by bringing 
 them something better, and to take the place of the other religions 
 in the world. 
 
 The attitude of the religion that bears the name of Jesus 
 Christ is not one of compromise, but one of conflict and of con- 
 quest. It proposes to displace the other religions. The claim 
 of Jeremiah is the claim of Christianity, — " The gods that have 
 not made the heavens and the earth, they shall perish from the 
 earth and from under the heavens." The survival of the Creator, 
 joyfully foreseen, is the ground of its confidence and its en- 
 deavour. Christianity thus undertakes a long and laborious cam- 
 paign, in which it must experience various fortunes and learn 
 patience from trials and delays ; but the true state of the case 
 must not be forgotten, namely, that Christianity sets out for 
 victory. The intention to conquer is characteristic of the Gospel. 
 This was the aim of its youth when it went forth among the 
 religions that then surrounded it, and with this aim it must enter 
 any field in which old religions are encumbering the religious 
 nature of man. It cannot conquer except in love, but in love 
 it intends to conquer. It means to fill the world. — (Clarke, " A 
 Study of Christian Missions," p. 107 ff.) 
 
3 o8 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 And this is the view of the scholars who know both Christ 
 and the religions which do not know Him. Edward Lawrence 
 quoted one of the greatest of these, the one who knew Bud- 
 dhism and Hinduism as well as any, in confirmation of his own 
 deepened conviction: 
 
 The work of Christianity [wrote Lawrence] is conquest, not 
 compromise, and the missionary of the cross may exercise a 
 wise intolerance towards all else which claims man's homage. 
 
 I cannot do better than to quote from the one among all 
 others perhaps best qualified to speak on this subject, one who, 
 besides giving nearly a half-century to Eastern languages and 
 religions, has of late repeatedly visited India, to see and study 
 it with his own eyes. His words are the more important because, 
 when compared with utterances of the same author before he 
 had visited India, while he knew only the books, they show a 
 marked advance in positiveness of tone. They are, in fact, ac- 
 companied by a recantation of former different opinions. They 
 are the words of Sir Monier Williams, Boden Professor of San- 
 skrit at Oxford. He had just held up the two statements that 
 " A Sinless Man was made Sin " and that " He, a dead and 
 buried Man, was made Life," as unmatched in any other book 
 of any other religion. " These non-Christian Bibles," he says, 
 " are all developments in the wrong direction. They all begin 
 with some flashes of light, and end in utter darkness. Pile them, 
 if you will, on the left hand of your study table, but place your 
 own Holy Bible on the right side — all by itself — and with a 
 wide gap between. ... It requires some courage to appear 
 intolerant in these days of flabby compromise and milk-and-water 
 concession. But I contend that the two unparalleled declarations 
 quoted by me from our Holy Bible make a gulf between it 
 and the so-called sacred books of the East which severs the one 
 from the other utterly, hopelessly, and forever; not a mere rift 
 which may be easily closed up; not a mere rift across which the 
 Christian and non-Christian may shake hands and interchange 
 similar ideas in regard to essential truths, but a veritable gulf 
 which cannot be bridged over by any science of religious thought ; 
 yes, a bridgeless chasm which no theory of evolution can ever 
 span. Go forth, then, ye missionaries, in your Master's name ; 
 go forth into all the world, and after studying all its false re- 
 ligions and philosophies, go forth and fearlessly proclaim to 
 suffering humanity the plain, the unchangeable, the eternal facts 
 of the Gospel — nay, I might almost say the stubborn, the un- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 309 
 
 yielding, the inexorable facts of the Gospel. Dare to be down- 
 right with all the uncompromising courage of your own Bible, 
 while with it your watchwords are love, joy, peace, reconciliation. 
 Be fair, be charitable, be Christian, but let there be no mistake ; 
 let it be made absolutely clear that Christianity cannot, must not, 
 be watered down to suit the palate of either Hindu, Parsee, 
 Confucianist, Buddhist, or Mohammedan, and that whoever 
 wishes to pass from the false religion to the true can never hope 
 to do so by the rickety planks of compromise, or by help of 
 faltering hands held out by half-hearted Christians. He must 
 leap the gulf in faith, and the living Christ will spread His 
 everlasting arms beneath and land him safely on the Eternal 
 Rock." — (Lawrence, " Modern Missions in the East," p. 158.) 
 
 We are told to-day that we must cease to use the military 
 metaphors with reference to the mission of Christianity. It 
 is a little hard for us to do this who cannot forget the language 
 of the New Testament. But the metaphors are of no conse- 
 quence. The essential thing is the truth which the metaphors 
 veil, and that truth we believe to be the triumphant, fulfilling 
 conquest of Christianity and the sovereignty of Christ's name 
 over every name. 
 
 5. Christianity should welcome all transformations of the 
 thought of the non-Christian peoples which bring that thought 
 nearer to Christianity. These transformations constitute one 
 of the greatest intellectual and moral movements of our time. 
 The new Hinduism, the Vedanta, the Arya Samaj, the various 
 reform movements in India, the whole altered ethical standard 
 of the higher Hinduism, the deepest stirrings among the Hindu 
 peoples, are the direct product of the Christian spirit working 
 on India most purely in the missionary enterprise, and which 
 is transforming the ideal of the people. " I have just returned 
 from an interesting Indian concert, which the hostellers have 
 organised in our Lecture Hall," wrote a missionary from the 
 Oxford and Cambridge Hostel, in Allahabad. " It is one of 
 the many signs of change in India. The concert was in aid of 
 the Arya Samaj Orphanage at Agra, and several of the orphans 
 performed. It reminded me of Stepney Causeway and Dr. 
 Barnardo's Homes, which will always have a very warm corner 
 
310 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 in my heart since my East End days, when I often dropped 
 in to see the magnificent work going on there. But just imagine 
 an orphanage in India ! Who says Christianity is not touching 
 India? Two nights ago a crowd of hostellers came to me in 
 the greatest excitement. They wanted to leave to go down to 
 the annual mcla, or festival, which is held at the confluence of 
 the Jumna and Ganges, near the Allahabad fort, and what was 
 their purpose? They had heard that there were many wretched 
 pilgrims who were living in utter squalor and poverty there, 
 and they wished to go and do a little rescue work, and house 
 and feed them properly. Does this seem little to you ? Believe 
 me, it is a huge change. A few years ago, no one would have 
 moved a finger — why should they ? When a man is born poor 
 and blind, or when misfortune overtakes him, he is only suffer- 
 ing for the misdeeds of a former life, and why should any one 
 else interfere to prevent God giving a man his just reward? 
 Slowly, however, the Christian ideal is permeating India — you 
 see it everywhere. The point of view is changed, the standard 
 of conduct is raised; consciously or unconsciously, India is mak- 
 ing Christ the ideal of conduct, and perhaps this is one of 
 the contributing causes to the present dislike of the foreigner. 
 Somehow the materialistic, self-seeking, arrogant Westerner does 
 not suggest the meek and lowly Jesus." — (C. M. S. Review, 
 March, 1909; Art. by Norman H. Tubbs, " The India Student — 
 India in Transition.") 
 
 Under the same transforming influence Shintoism has given 
 up its claims to be considered a religion in Japan. Confucianism 
 is retreating into a ceremonial in China, Mohammedanism is 
 dissolving the bonds of the Koran, and Buddhism is taking over 
 from Christianity everything but its names and its power. " A 
 friend of mine," writes a resident in Japan, " was talking with 
 a certain Buddhist lady about Christianity, when the woman 
 said that she saw no difference between the teachings of the 
 two religions. 'How is that?' said my friend. 'What makes 
 you say there is no difference?' 'Well,' said the woman, 'you 
 Christians make much of what you call " The Sermon on the 
 Mount," but we have something just like it. In the last copy 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 311 
 
 of my Buddhist paper I read it.' When the paper was brought 
 it was found that it contained something just like the Sermon 
 on the Mount, for it was the Sermon on the Mount translated 
 and represented as Buddhist Scripture." We cannot welcome 
 deception, conscious or unconscious, nor false representation, 
 and it is certainly true that this spread of the truth of Chris- 
 tianity among the non-Christian peoples, transforming their 
 thought but not striking into the very central being and quicken- 
 ing the soul in God by a regeneration in Christ, makes our 
 problem in some of its aspects much harder. Nevertheless, we 
 will rejoice in all spread of truth among men, believing that 
 it builds to the kingdom of Christ, and that half-truth, in spite of 
 all, is better than whole error. 
 
 6. But Christianity must continue, and all the more as this 
 transformation advances, to seek to win individual men away 
 from their religions to Christianity. If by proselytising is meant 
 winning men from all that is false and evil in the world's re- 
 ligions and relating them to the one universal religion, which 
 is all truth and good, in other words, the effort to make Hindus 
 and Mohammedans Christians, then that is just what we are try- 
 ing to do. We are proselytising. And we do not see what else 
 in all the world is worth doing. The business of every man is 
 to find truth, to live it, and to get it found and lived by all 
 the world. This is what we are Christians for. And this change 
 in individuals must be a radical and living change. It is utterly 
 inadequate to describe the invitation of foreign missions to the 
 non-Christian peoples as an invitation to " philosophical adjust- 
 ment." It is an appeal for regeneration. We do expect to see 
 " the gradual conversion of heathenism by the adoption of Chris- 
 tian ideals instead of heathen ones," and this " to be followed 
 by the gradual absorption of paganism into the Church." — 
 (Lloyd, " Wheat Among the Tares," p. 36.) And doubtless the 
 day would be hastened if there were perfect preachers of the 
 perfect Gospel. Dr. Lloyd thinks so. " Japan does not believe 
 Christianity," he says, " because of faulty presentation. The 
 fault cannot lie with the Author of our Faith ; it must lie with 
 ourselves. ... If the Japanese rejects Christianity, it is in 
 
3i2 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 most cases because he has never had it properly presented to 
 him." But is this all? Does it go to the very centre? Are 
 the Japanese so different to-day from the Jews in our Lord's 
 day, and the Roman world in St. Paul's? Or can it be that 
 our Lord did not properly present the Gospel, and that St. 
 Paul's presentation was faulty? No, something more is needed 
 than philosophical adjustment on the part of the hearers and a 
 less faulty presentation on the part of the preachers. Men must 
 be born again. They must repent. They must find life in 
 Christ. The old phrases enshrine the eternal truth. The mis- 
 sionary enterprise is busy producing new moral climates, trans- 
 forming and enriching and fulfilling the ideals of the nations, 
 but it is doing these primarily and permanently by making dis- 
 ciples of Jesus Christ, by finding men and women who will 
 answer His call and forsake all that they have and follow Him. 
 
 7. Christianity should perceive and unswervingly hold to the 
 truth of its own absolute uniqueness. " He that hath not the 
 Son of God hath not Life." That is the fundamental law. We 
 refuse to be led aside by any distinction between the historic 
 Christ and the essential Christ. We believe in a loving God, 
 Who is the Father of all His children in spite of their denials, 
 and that His loving will is that none should perish but that 
 all should come unto life, and in a grace that has sought and 
 is seeking every human heart, and in a Lamb slain from the 
 beginning as a propitiation, not for our sins only, but for the 
 sins of the whole world. All this we believe, and our own duty 
 in view of it is clear. But into distinctions between two Christs 
 we cannot go. It leads us into regions where there is no foot- 
 hold. The Christ whom we know, and Who has been life to 
 us, is the Christ of history. " He that hath the Son hath life, 
 and He that hath not the Son of God hath not life." This one 
 law, which is law because it is fact, is what " distinguishes 
 Christianity from all other religions. It places the religion of 
 Christ," said Professor Drummond in " Natural Law in the 
 Spiritual World," (p. 83 f ) " upon a footing altogether unique. 
 There is no analogy between the Christian religion and, say Bud- 
 dhism, or the Mohammedan religion. There is no true sense 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 313 
 
 in which a man can say, He that hath Buddha hath life. Buddha 
 has nothing to do with life. He may have something to do with 
 morality. He may stimulate, impress, teach, guide, but there 
 is no distinct new thing added to the souls of those who profess 
 Buddhism. These religions may be developments of the natural 
 and moral man. But Christianity professes to be more. It is 
 the mental or moral man plus something else or some One else." 
 Christianity is showing no kindness to the world if it forgets 
 its own character, the mission of life with which it is charged. 
 A toleration which betrayed the very life of humanity would 
 be intolerable treason. Christianity must realise and hold im- 
 movably its unique character. As Mr. Griffith Jones says : " The 
 offer of Christ to sinful men wherever they can be found is not 
 the offer of an alternative religion to them in the sense in which 
 Hinduism and Taoism and Confucianism are religions. It is 
 the offer to men of the secret of life, of something that will 
 enable them to realise their true selves, and become men in the 
 true and full sense of the word. We do our Master little honour 
 when we place Him among a group of teachers competing for 
 the acceptance of men. He is not one of the many founders 
 of religions. He is the Source and Fountain of all, in so far 
 as they have caught a prophetic glimpse of His truth, and an- 
 ticipated something of His spirit, and given a scattered hint here 
 and there of His secret. He is the truth, the type, the saving 
 grace of which they faintly and vaguely dreamed ; the desire 
 of all nations, the crown and essence of humanity ; the Saviour 
 of the world, Who by the loftiness of His teaching, the beauty 
 of His character, the sufficiency of His atoning sacrifice, is able 
 to save to the uttermost all who will come to Him and trust 
 in Him." The men who in the non-Christian religions sought 
 in vain for life, and then found it in Christ, warn us to be 
 true to the trust which we hold for humanity. " I became Chris- 
 tian and openly professed my faith in Christ 54 years ago for 
 this precious truth," of life by the unique atonement of Christ, 
 writes one of the most venerable and respected Christian men 
 of India, the Rev. Dr. K. C. Chatterjee of Hoshyarpur, " and it 
 has been the solace of my life ever since. It is the differentiat- 
 
3H CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ing line between Christianity and all non-Christian systems, and 
 we must not keep it in the background, and, much less, give it 
 up. All the educated and thinking men of this country are 
 willing to give, and often do actually give the highest place to 
 Christ as a religious teacher. Only last week the Principal of 
 the Arya College at Lahore, in a public lecture delivered in this 
 place, exhorted his hearers, numbering above 4,000, ' to follow 
 Jesus Christ, the greatest religious teacher the world has pro- 
 duced in his self-denial and work of love for the poor.' The 
 removing of the line reduces Christ to one out of many — the 
 greatest one, it may be, but with it He is the only one Saviour 
 of the world. Between Him and other teachers the difference 
 is not of degree, but of kind. He is the only Saviour, and they 
 are teachers." 
 
 8. While we may hope for something in the way of a richer 
 understanding and a fuller interpretation of Christianity from 
 the new experience of Christians of other races, we may ex- 
 aggerate the prospect. And what we may hope for is rather 
 from the racial qualities of these peoples than from their re- 
 ligions. It is to be stated clearly that we look for nothing from 
 the non-Christian religions to be added to the Christianity of 
 the New Testament. Every truth in these religions is already 
 in Christianity, and it is there proportioned and balanced as it 
 is not in any of the other religions. We have much to learn of 
 our own religion. It reaches infinitely beyond our present com- 
 prehension of it. The thought and life of other peoples has much 
 to teach us of the riches of our own faith; but not one single 
 aspect of truth can be named which these other religions are 
 able to contribute to the religion of the New Testament. 
 
 But it may be asked, is not the Oriental consciousness to 
 enlarge and enrich our comparatively pinched and practical con- 
 ceptions? But is there such a thing as an Oriental consciousness? 
 A Western woman is the chief preacher of such a consciousness 
 in India, and the whole conception of such a consciousness as a 
 great force to be dealt with in philosophy and religion has been 
 produced and nourished in the West. There is doubtless a rough 
 utility in thus setting the East off against the West, but both East 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 315 
 
 and West are divided within themselves by differences of race 
 and tradition as great as separate them from one another. The 
 Chinese consciousness is nearer to Western materialism and the 
 Hindu consciousness to Western idealism than the Chinese and 
 Hindu consciousness are to each other. The phrase, the Oriental 
 consciousness, serves a more or less useful purpose, but it does 
 not define a source of new religious knowledge or promise a cor- 
 rection of Christianity. 
 
 Nevertheless we have much to learn from others. " The West 
 has yet much to learn in the school of Vedanta, so ancient and 
 so meditative," says one Christian writer. (The Rev. N. Mac- 
 nicol, Hibbert Journal, October, 1908.) And Mr. Slater says: 
 " The West has to learn from the East, and the East from the 
 West. The questions raised by the Vedanta will have to pass 
 into Christianity if the best minds of India are to embrace it; 
 and the Church of the ' farther East ' will doubtless contribute 
 something to the thought of Christendom of the science of the 
 soul, and of the omnipenetrativeness and immanence of Deity." — 
 (Slater, "The Higher Hinduism," p. 291.) These are sober 
 and true words. They speak of the inadequacy of our thought, 
 not of the inadequacy of Christianity. But Max Miiller goes far 
 beyond these more careful statements : " If I were asked under 
 what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its 
 choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems 
 of life, and has found solutions of them which well deserve the 
 attention of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should 
 point to India. If I were to ask myself from what literature 
 one, here in Europe, may draw that corrective, in order to make 
 our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, 
 and, in fact, more truly a human life, not for this life only, but 
 for a transfigured and eternal life, again I should point to India." 
 But there are others, both those who have studied Indian religion 
 and philosophy from afar, unprejudiced by the realities of the 
 popular religion, and those who have loved India so well that 
 they have lived and died for her, who have not found what her 
 speculations could add to the truth of the Gospel, I do not 
 say to the Western formulation of theology but to the essen- 
 
316 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 tial truth of the Gospels. And even of the former, some 
 doubt. 
 
 Take the Hindu race [says Dr. George A. Gordon]. They 
 are spoken of by those who best know them as intellectually one 
 of the most gifted people on the globe. I cannot help the feeling 
 that this is a very great exaggeration. The Hindus have no 
 science, and do not even know what the word means. They 
 have achieved no fame in working out a theory of government, 
 and less in the institution of one. Their gift lies in the direction 
 of metaphysics, and this subject they have conceived, not as 
 Plato or Aristotle did, nor as Kant and his great successors have 
 done. Their strength has never been in orderly and valid think- 
 ing, even when turned upon the great centres of being. But 
 they have a marvellous faculty and fertility of spiritual imagina- 
 tion, and their power of reflecting profound metaphysical truth 
 through the luminous haze of intellectual vision is indeed amaz- 
 ing. Nevertheless, one feels that even here there is a certain 
 cheapness about the product. It is as if there were an illimitable 
 fog bank off our shores, rolling in under a blazing summer 
 sun. It comes in transfigured masses; it is a wonder of beauty, 
 but, after all, it is thin and cheap and unwholesome. One can 
 hardly resist a feeling like this in witnessing the exercises of 
 the Hindu mind. It is talk by the mile and the league, and, 
 although pleasant to hear, it lacks the note of reality. It some- 
 how fails of representative worth in respect to the character of 
 the speaker, in respect to the experience of the average sincere 
 man, and, above all, in respect to the order and grandeur of the 
 universe. — (Gordon, "The Gospel for Humanity," p. 13.) 
 
 Something is to come into the temple of God from India, but 
 only when her consciousness and her speculations are humbly 
 laid at the foot of Christ's cross, and when she has begun to 
 learn by life in Him. 
 
 Thus far our hopes of any original contribution in philosophy 
 or theology or religion from the quickened consciousness of 
 Asia or from the Christian Churches in Asia have been unful- 
 filled. All the work of modern scholars in Japan and India 
 has been eclectic, a remodelling of old materials. And the 
 Christians of these lands have simply been reliving the ever old 
 and ever new problems of human life in all ages and in all lands. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 317 
 
 Those who have set out to give us new theologies or new 
 Christs have only rephrased the old truths or rearranged the 
 old heresies. Mr. Mozumdar gave us an Oriental Christ, but 
 he was merely a Unitarian Christ, less strong, less rich, less 
 true, less commanding, less a Christ than the Saviour whom 
 the Church had known for nineteen centuries. And Mozum- 
 dar's public statement, in which he retired from the leadership 
 of the Bramo Samaj and withdrew into solitude for his last 
 days, is the acknowledgment of the failure of one of the most 
 promising efforts of the last generation to correct Christianity 
 by the consciousness of India: 
 
 Age and sickness get the better of me in these surroundings, 
 I cannot work as I would — contemplation is distracted, concen- 
 tration disturbed, though I struggle ever so much. These soli- 
 tudes are hospitable ; these breadths, heights, and depths are 
 always suggestive. I acquire more spirit with less struggle, 
 hence I retire. 
 
 They talk and make me talk so much that, having respect 
 for them all, I prefer to go away. 
 
 I can best control my speech, my daily ways, my dealings with 
 the world, when I am lonely, and fall back upon myself. There- 
 fore, I retire. 
 
 My thirst for the higher life is growing so unquench- 
 able that I need the time and the grace to re-examine and 
 reform and purify every part of my existence. The spirit 
 of God promises me that grace if I am alone. So let me 
 alone. 
 
 There is so much to learn, to trust, to realise, to do, that 
 I must night and day draw nearer to my God. The society of 
 men is full of vanity. So I retire. I will go back when I can 
 serve men better. 
 
 The rich are so vain or. selfish, the poor are so insolent or 
 mean, that, having respect for both, I prefer to go away from 
 them. 
 
 The learned think so highly of themselves, the ignorant are 
 so full of hatred and uncharitableness, that, having good will 
 for both, I prefer to hide myself from all. 
 
 The religious are so exclusive, the sceptical so self-sufficient, 
 that it is best to be away from both. 
 
 Such a fatal liking I have for the company of every kind 
 of men, so open to temptation at every point, so easily provoked, 
 
318 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 so repeatedly impatient that I must school myself to retirement 
 and forgetfulness of all things. 
 
 Where are the dead ? Have not they too retired ? I wish 
 my acquaintance with the dead should grow, that my communion 
 with them should be spontaneous, perpetual, unceasing. I will 
 invoke them and wait for them in my hermitage. 
 
 What is life? Is it not a fleeting shadow, the graveyard of 
 dead hopes, the battlefield of ghastly competitions, the play- 
 ground of delusions, separations, cruel changes and disappoint- 
 ments ? I have had enough of these. And now, with the kindliest 
 love of all, must prepare and sanctify myself for the great Be- 
 yond, where there is solution for so many problems, and con- 
 solation for so many troubles. 
 
 The world is also bright, beautiful, and full of God ; but those 
 who are in it do not see that — I see it better from my retire- 
 ment, so farewell for a while. 
 
 They have thought and said kind things to me so unstintedly 
 that I could not help feeling flattered, though I knew they were 
 undeserved ; they have thought and said cruel and unworthy 
 things of me so persistently that I could not help being dis- 
 couraged. Now I must go away to make certain what I really 
 am in the sight of my God. And furthermore, I must strenuously 
 strive to mature myself in whatever good thing there is in me, 
 and purify myself with God's help from every evil and the possi- 
 bility of every evil. Does not this require much time and dis- 
 cipline ? 
 
 Who expects from such pathetic consciousness of failure any 
 improvement upon St. Paul? 
 
 What can the East add to Christ? we ask. What can the 
 East show us that we do not know? Can it give us anything? 
 
 Yes, it has a great deal to give us. But it is not Chris- 
 tianity that needs its help. It is we. And it is only by Chris- 
 tianity that it can give us its help. And it is not in our thoughts 
 of Christianity that we specially need its help. We do not 
 primarily require a larger intellectual comprehension of the Gos- 
 pel. Indeed, we cannot get it by mere speculation, by com- 
 parison of opinions, by new codifications of truth, or new efforts 
 to state the life and will of God and the nature and end of our 
 souls in words. We can only get it by more experience, more 
 life, by the actual occupation of humanity by God. It is in 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 319 
 
 the experience of Christianity that help is needed. It is in our 
 living it, in our getting the Gospel embodied in our life. It is 
 thus that the other races are to help us. And it is the races 
 that are to help us, not their religions, save as those religions 
 have come to embody in any measure above their error the great 
 racial qualities which are to be the contribution of these peoples 
 to the Spirit of God for His use as the materials of the King- 
 dom of God, the incarnation of the Gospel in the life of man- 
 kind. The non-Christian peoples are far better than the evils 
 of their religions. Even the sanctification of error and wrong 
 in the non-Christian religions has not extirpated from these 
 peoples the likeness of God, which will not be effaced, and that 
 original capacity for Him, for the indwelling of His life, for 
 the execution of His will of righteousness, which is to be their 
 contribution to the universal Church. 
 
 It is from these races that the new goods for Christianity 
 are to come. The line of thought in Bishop Montgomery's com- 
 posite volume, " Mankind and the Church," was justly chosen, — 
 " an attempt to estimate the contribution of great races to the 
 fulness of the Church of God." To the extent to which their 
 religions have really supported the strong national qualities of 
 these peoples, which they are to bring to the enlargement of 
 our interpretation of the Gospel by the enlargement of our ex- 
 perience of God in Christ, they have made a contribution, but 
 to the extent that they have weakened them they have increased 
 the measure of the encumbrance they have been on the life of the 
 world, or will be if they obstruct the triumph of Christianity. 
 But it is the character of the various races which Christianity 
 wants, to redeem and use them, rather than the speculations of 
 their religions for her reconstruction. And we will cherish the 
 hope, though as yet it is only a hope, which Dr. Gibson sets forth 
 in his " Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South 
 China," that through the qualities which the races are to 
 bring into the Church, the Church will be enabled to appro- 
 priate more of that Gospel which is perfect and complete 
 and needing only to be understood and accepted in its divine 
 fulness. 
 
320 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 A review of earlier Church history would show how the vary- 
 ing types of different races have contributed to the development 
 of Christian theology. The Greek mind contributed to it its 
 speculative liberality, its profound philosophical insight, its sense 
 of the essential dignity of human nature. The Roman type of 
 mental development contributed, on the other hand, the strong 
 sense of law out of which has arisen the whole region of what 
 is called forensic theology. It also imposed on Christian thought 
 definiteness, and the sense of limits which prevented it from 
 running wild in a too free speculation. In later times the subtlety, 
 thoroughness, and clearness of the French intellectual type, when 
 working at its best, impressed themselves through Calvin upon 
 our Western theology. When time has allowed for their develop- 
 ment, may we not expect the working of similar forces in the 
 Churches which are growing up on our great mission fields? 
 In India you have a mind naturally religious, highly speculative 
 and metaphysical, and moving habitually under the influence of 
 sudden heats of religious emotion. In China, on the contrary, 
 you have a national temperament with little natural sympathy 
 with the more subtle aspects of religious thought, but strongly 
 inclined to what is ethical and practical, having a firm grasp of 
 reality, and presenting a singular combination of solidity and 
 plasticity. Where our theology is still one-sided and incomplete, 
 may we not look for large contributions to it in days to come 
 from the independent thought and life of Christian men in our 
 mission fields ; and may we not look forward to the attainment, 
 as one of the ample rewards of our mission work, of the fuller 
 and more rounded theology for which the Church has waited 
 so long? So may come at last the healing of those divisions by 
 which she has been torn and weakened throughout her chequered 
 history. 
 
 When to Jewish fervour, Greek passion, Roman restraint, 
 French acuteness, German depth, English breadth, Scottish in- 
 tensity, and American alertness, are added Indian religious 
 subtlety, with Chinese ethical sagacity — all baptised into the One 
 Spirit — then we may reach at last the fuller theology, worthy 
 of the world-wide hospitalities of the kingdom of heaven, and 
 setting forth more nearly the very thoughts of God. — (Gibson, 
 Op. cit., pp. 282-286.) 
 
 There are those, it must be said, who feel grave concern at 
 the issues with which the modern world confronts us. It is 
 evident, they say, that the non-Christian races are to exert a 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 321 
 
 more direct and powerful influence upon the Christian peoples, 
 and they dread the result. What they have to give, they fear 
 will be by no means wholly good, and they look not for an 
 enrichment, but for an impoverishment of our best life from 
 their contribution to it: 
 
 At this juncture [says Professor Reinsch] the East with its 
 swarming hordes living a listless life from century to century ; 
 the West with its energetic, individualistic impulses, but without 
 any consistent philosophy of civilisation, meet face to face. That 
 this threatens to accentuate the reactionary forces, to strengthen 
 autocracy and brute force, and to weaken everything that bases 
 itself on reason, reflection, and individual right, is natural and 
 evident. While some presaging spirits cherish the hope that 
 Eastern thought will yield a harmonising principle to the life 
 of the West, others abandon themselves to the fear that we 
 are destined to be driven back into another period of dark- 
 ness in which intelligence will slumber and brute force reign 
 supreme. 
 
 The unfavourable influences that are to be expected from 
 Oriental civilisation may be summarised briefly as follows : a 
 pessimistic view of life ; an undervaluing of individual rights and 
 the power of individual initiative; a caste spirit that looks upon 
 men as mere incomplete portions of a larger unity in which 
 their existence is entirely swallowed up; the degradation of 
 women, whom Western ideals have placed on an equal intellectual 
 and moral footing with men ; a lack of sympathy ; the pre- 
 ponderance of theocracy ; and absolutism. It is paradoxical that, 
 with all its individualism, the West is, nevertheless, more sym- 
 pathetic than the East. This sympathy is largely a result of the 
 Christian religion ; for before the growth of Christianity, the 
 Roman world was dominated by the Stoic spirit, to which pity 
 for the sufferings of fellow-beings was entirely foreign. Through- 
 out the Orient man is singularly apathetic and untouched by 
 the woes of his fellows. It may be said, indeed, by apologists 
 of Eastern thought, that sympathy merely increases human suf- 
 fering a thousandfold by making every individual carry the 
 burdens of thousands of fellow-sufferers, and that it leads to 
 a perpetuation of deformities and disease by protecting from 
 extirpation the victims of these evils. Even so, it cannot be 
 doubted that, when we come to consider the feelings and ideals 
 which make our life endurable, the bond of sympathy with fellow- 
 beings is to be counted among the first of these, and that the 
 
322 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 introduction of Oriental apathy regarding the well-being of 
 others would impoverish our civilisation. No one who has read 
 the most recent European philosophical and critical literature can 
 have failed to see how deeply this question is agitating the Euro- 
 pean mind. — (Reinsch, " World Politics," p. 243.) 
 
 It may be so. It surely will be so, unless the non-Christian 
 races are redeemed by the Gospel and the power of the Gospel 
 is allowed to purge their souls and give to their raw capacities 
 the grace which is to be their contribution to the ultimate Chris- 
 tianisation of humanity. We discern anew the grounds on which 
 the missionary enterprise rests. It is needed to enable the non- 
 Christian peoples to make their contribution to Christianity. 
 
 And it is needed to enable Christianity to realise itself. So 
 far from needing anything from the non-Christian religions, 
 Christianity needs only one thing, that is, to give herself to 
 the non-Christian peoples. There is wanting in her nothing that 
 other systems can provide. There is wanting only the discovery 
 and fulfilling of her own true character, which is possible only 
 as she gives herself, not in the person of a few of her sons and 
 daughters, but in all her being and utterances, to the supreme task 
 of redeeming the world, nay, of bringing the world into the one 
 perfect redemption which has been already wrought. 
 
 9. I have one concluding word to add. This view of the 
 non-Christian religions, and of our attitude to them, is not the 
 Gospel. It is not this message with which we are to go out 
 to the world. This is what we have to say to ourselves when 
 we examine the grounds of our enterprise and state its warrant 
 to the Christian Church. But our message to the non-Christian 
 religions is the one simple, positive yet infinite and inexhaustible 
 message of Christ. It was after a venture in comparative reli- 
 gion at Athens, of which apparently little came, that St. Paul 
 wrote to the Corinthians : " I determined to know nothing among 
 you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." It is with true cour- 
 tesy and with frank and manly sympathy, and with a quiet but 
 yearning love, that we go to meet the people of the non-Christian 
 faiths to win them to the Saviour. We must put ourselves in 
 their places. How would we wish to be approached ? How would 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS 323 
 
 the Gospel most effectively reach us if we were where they are, 
 with their traditions and long inheritances and sacred memories 
 and infinitely complicated network of human relationships, of in- 
 tellectual ideas, and of actual responsibilities? We are asking 
 no light thing of men. We must not approach them with de- 
 nunciation of all that they regard most sacred, with ruthless 
 contempt for the intricate intertwinings of the buried roots of 
 tares and wheat. " We must not approach them as if they 
 knew that they were themselves deficient, and that it was only 
 pride and obstinacy that prevented them from listening to us." — 
 (Archbishop Benson, quoted in Cust, " Missionary Methods," 
 p. 264.) We do not approach them so. We approach them as 
 the Bishop of Winchester, blind and far advanced in years, 
 counselled Boniface to approach the souls to whom he was sent 
 in Hesse, avoiding scrupulously all contemptuous and violent 
 language, and trying above all things to show forth a spirit of 
 moderation and of patience. It is thus we go to them. We 
 love them. It is because we love them that we go to them. And 
 some day love will win them. It will go out after them and 
 will wait for them. It may be kept waiting for long years, but 
 it will wait, and at last, in the triumph of Christ over the world's 
 life and the divine perfecting of the world's life in Christ, it 
 will see of its soul's travail and be content. 
 
VI 
 
 THE RELATION OF MISSIONS TO THE 
 UNITY OF THE CHURCH AND THE 
 UNITY OF THE WORLD 
 
VI 
 
 THE RELATION OF MISSIONS TO THE UNITY 
 OF THE CHURCH AND THE UNITY OF 
 THE WORLD 
 
 THE objects which the missionary enterprise seeks include 
 and require the unity of the Christian Church. Let 
 us consider first some of the conditions which indicate 
 that such Christian unity on the foreign mission field is desirable 
 and necessary. 
 
 (i) In the first place, the magnitude, the difficulties, and the 
 urgency of the task which is before us demand the most fruitful 
 and effective use of all our resources. We have to secure the 
 evangelisation of a thousand million of our fellow-creatures; 
 that is, to carry spiritual truth, the most difficult of all truth 
 to carry truly, to two-thirds of the human race, and to seek to 
 persuade men, not only to embrace this truth, but to place their 
 characters under the transforming influence of the Lord of it. 
 The task contemplates changing the opinions of men, not upon im- 
 personal questions or matters of material self-interest, but upon 
 religion, of which men are ever most reluctant to think exactly, or 
 indeed really to think at all; and not the opinions of the open- 
 minded only, but those even of the ignorant and prejudiced with 
 whom religious traditions are, if possible, even more inveterate 
 than with the enlightened. And the work involves not only the 
 change of men's opinions, but also the revolution of their char- 
 acter, new principles of action displacing old and producing 
 a new fruitage of deeds. And further, it is not to suffice to try 
 to do this in individuals only. That is fundamental, but through 
 that and beyond that, it is proposed to introduce the new prin- 
 ciples into society and to drive out as far as may be all that 
 is alien to the Kingdom of God and that will not be naturalised 
 
 327 
 
328 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 in it. And this work is to be done, not in any one land, nor in 
 any one language, nor in any one set of conditions. It must 
 be done in all of the non-Christian lands, among all types of 
 races, from the savage up to the peoples proud of civilisations 
 long antedating ours, and made less accessible by their hate and 
 contempt for us, and by the materialism of the commercial 
 civilisation with which we have approached them. It must be 
 done in many scores of languages, which have not only to be 
 mastered, but in many cases to be expanded in order to express 
 the truth which is to be conveyed. It has to be done under 
 trying physical conditions of climate, which break down the 
 health of strong men and women and reduce the term of avail- 
 able service, and what is even more serious, under conditions 
 of moral climate which make the task hopeless except with God. 
 It has to be done under all conditions of intellectual difficulty, 
 demanding the truest and least confused presentation of the 
 salvation that is in Christ. And furthermore, the work must 
 be done by purely persuasive and moral agencies. The induce- 
 ments which trade and political power wield are not available. 
 Men must be won to the truth by motives to which only the 
 truth in men can respond. It is not to be wondered at that men 
 sometimes sneer at the missionary enterprise as visionary and 
 impossible. It does look so, but as General Armstrong exclaimed 
 once at a Conference at Lake Mohonk in behalf of the Indians, 
 when some one objected to a certain righteous course of action 
 on the ground that it was impossible : " What are Christians 
 in the world for but to achieve the impossible by the help of 
 God ? " Without that help our task is certainly chimerical, and 
 that help will only be available to us on its own conditions. 
 We cannot expect it if in the face of such an undertaking we 
 are so foolish as to waste our energies or not to measure our 
 forces over against our work. And the moment we do make 
 this measurement we realise that the supreme necessity is for 
 union of all our efforts. The task is too great and too difficult 
 and too urgent for any one section of Christians to hope to 
 accomplish it alone. As the late Bishop of London wrote to 
 Mr. W. H. T. Gairdner, when he enquired of him in 1898 as 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 329 
 
 to the propriety of participation by Anglican students in the 
 work of the World's Student Movement: "No one religious 
 body can undertake all the work that is to be done." Where 
 no body of Christians can do the work alone, its aloofness from 
 the rest with which it might do it is indefensible, unless indeed 
 the work is not important or urgent. " I say again here," said 
 the Bishop of Albany (U. S. A.) in a notable charge to his 
 clergy, speaking of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
 United States, " if we were large enough and liberal enough 
 as a Church to assume the responsibility for preaching the 
 Gospel to every creature, there might be some excuse for our 
 lack of recognition of those who, along lines that differ ma- 
 terially from our own, are nobly striving to carry the message 
 of our Master to those by whom it has not been heard. But 
 while we are so very unequal to the task in numbers or in 
 liberality, it seems to me impossible to hold aloof in our sym- 
 pathy from those who, with a profounder missionary zeal, are 
 striving to do, according to their own convictions, the work 
 which we are so largely neglecting." But even if one Christian 
 body might hope to accomplish the work in many generations, 
 were we to wait for it, we cannot wait, for these multitudes are 
 passing away, and before they pass are entitled to know of 
 the Lord who died for them and Who would be their Way and 
 Light, and no one denomination of Christians has a right to 
 claim the whole world as its preserve, the generations to wait 
 until it can compass them all in its denominational name. The 
 need is too urgent. There are, moreover, great forces astir 
 throughout the world which will not wait for their permanent 
 die and stamp. If we do not seize them in this generation and 
 claim them for God, they will set and harden in permanently 
 atheistic form. The magnitude of the missionary enterprise, 
 the difficulties, and the urgency of the task forbid all waste and 
 inefficiency and demand unity. 
 
 (2) In the second place, the elementary needs of the peoples 
 we are to reach call primarily for what is fundamental and 
 essential in Christianity. The great evils of the world are the 
 elementary moral evils of impurity, inequality, and hopelessness. 
 
330 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The world does not know the character of God, and therefore 
 it is unclean; the world does not know the love of God, and 
 therefore men are not brothers ; the world does not know the 
 life of God, and therefore men despair alike of the present and 
 the future. And these three things: the character of God, and 
 the love of God, and the life of God, are not the things on which 
 we disagree. They constitute the great fundamental and ele- 
 mentary things in Christianity, and it is for these and not for 
 any of the points about which we are at variance that the 
 world primarily calls. It wants Christ, and that is all. I know 
 that this sounds much simpler than it is, but it is simple enough. 
 He will take care of the complicated problems of Asia and 
 Africa and South America. Far wiser men than we are have 
 been wont in their furthest wanderings to come back simply to 
 Him. " ' Simply to Thy cross I cling ' is enough for me," said 
 Armstrong. And of " Rabbi " Duncan it was said that he could 
 always find his way back to Christ as a sinful man, knowing 
 nowhere else to go. " Thou, O Christ, art all I want," we sing, 
 and the declaration is no weak surrender of the awful problem 
 which the application of Christ to human need involves. It is 
 the simple assertion that in the mazes of the labyrinth we are 
 still holding fast to the clue. And so also of the world and 
 its multitudes. " Thou, O Christ, art all they want." He is 
 the world's one profound need, and the simplicity of that need 
 invites unity. 
 
 (3) In the third place, the definiteness of the missionary aim 
 provides for unity. That aim, as has been repeatedly pointed 
 out, is the establishment of strong national Churches which shall 
 be self-propagating, self-supporting, self-governing, the naturali- 
 sation of Christianity in the national life of the different non- 
 Christian peoples. Leaders of many different Churches and 
 schools of opinion unite in their judgment as to the clear and 
 definite aim of foreign missions: 
 
 " The aim of all missions in India," says Professor Christlieb 
 of Bonn, " should be to create an independent Church in the 
 future, neither Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor Congrega- 
 tional, but the outcome of the national spirit. For, now that 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 33i 
 
 people are coming over to Christianity in masses, the question 
 as to the formation of a Protestant National Indian Church 
 must become ever more and more a burning one. " It behooved 
 England," said Archbishop Benson, " to insist on the principle 
 on which she lived — that in the whole united body of the Catholic 
 Church there must be national Churches, and that each must 
 hold the Gospel with such forms as might interpret it in the 
 best light to itself." Dr. Norman Macleod put the whole matter 
 more vigorously still : " Is the grand army to remain broken 
 up into separate divisions, each to recruit to its own standard, 
 and to invite the Hindus to wear our respective uniforms, adopt 
 our respective shibboleths, learn and repeat our respective war- 
 cries, and even make caste marks of our wounds and scars, 
 which to us are but the sad mementos of old battles? Or, to 
 drop all metaphors, shall Christian converts in India be grouped 
 and stereotyped into Episcopalian Churches, Presbyterian 
 Churches, Lutheran Churches, Methodist Churches, Baptist 
 Churches, or Independent Churches, and adopt as their respective 
 creeds the Confession of Faith, the Thirty-nine Articles, or some 
 other formula approved of by our forefathers, and the separating 
 signs of some British or American sect? Whether any Church 
 seriously entertains this design I know not, though I suspect it 
 of some, and I feel assured that it will be realised in part as 
 conversions increase by means of foreign missions, and be at last 
 perpetuated, unless it is now carefully guarded against by every 
 opportunity being watched and taken advantage of to propagate 
 a different idea, and to rear up an independent and all-inclusive 
 native Indian Church. By such a Church I mean one which 
 shall be organised and governed by the natives themselves, as 
 far as possible independently of us." 
 
 The Churches, which it is the aim of foreign missions to 
 found that we may co-operate with them for the evangelisation 
 of the world, ought, by their very nature, to be united Churches. 
 They are not a set of imported denominations or of Western 
 Churches orientalised. To the extent that we ever realise our 
 aim, they will be indigenous native Churches. For we are not 
 trying to spread over the world any particular view of Christian 
 
332 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 truth or any particular form of Christian organisation. I be- 
 long to the Presbyterian Church, but I have not the slightest 
 zeal in seeking to have the Presbyterian Church extended over 
 the non-Christian world. I believe in one Church of Christ in 
 each land, and that it is far more important that the Presby- 
 terians of Japan should be related to the Methodists of Japan 
 than that either of these bodies should possess any connection 
 whatever with any ecclesiastical organisation in the United 
 States. 
 
 It is sometimes alleged that even if we accept this view at 
 home, the native Christians themselves will not endorse it, that 
 they disavow our ideal and are conscientious denominationalists. 
 There have been instances of this, but they have been ex- 
 ceptional. In many fields the great mass of native Christians 
 do not know of these different denominations. They are Chris- 
 tians or believers in Jesus, and while they may know the differ- 
 ence between Protestants and Catholics, they are entirely capable 
 of amalgamation in one common evangelical Christian Church. 
 Native Christian leaders are sometimes opposed to such a move- 
 ment because they prefer to be supported by foreign funds, 
 and they realise that these are more certain of continuance in 
 subsidised denominational native Churches. When all the native 
 Christians unite, it means self-support and the wholesome exer- 
 cise of control by the body of native lay Christians. Some native 
 agents do not relish this, but the best men do. They have seen 
 the right ideal and they are working for it. Missionaries should 
 help them. The best are eagerly doing so. The Bishop of 
 Lucknow spoke plain words on this point at the Bengal Church 
 Missionary Conference in 1882: 
 
 Yes, brethren, let us not deceive ourselves in this matter ; the 
 sin and shame of the disunion which exists among native Chris- 
 tians rest almost entirely with us European missionaries. It 
 is we who are guilty; we do not conciliate our brethren, and 
 have often carried ourselves stiffly and as though we had a 
 monopoly of the grace of God; and the nonconformist mission- 
 aries have needlessly perpetuated their sectarianism and imposed 
 it upon their converts in this heathen country, where often the 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 333 
 
 original cause of difference has no existence. God forgive us 
 all, for we are verily guilty concerning our brethren. How 
 should they know, how should they be able to stand out for 
 union against those whom they regard as their spiritual fathers? 
 No, it is we who are to blame, we with our pharisaism and our 
 bigotry and our want of brotherly love. Let us not attempt to 
 excuse or hide our fault, but, frankly acknowledging it to God 
 and one another and our native brethren, try to make amends, 
 and before it becomes too late, begin to strive sincerely and 
 honestly to put away these unhappy divisions and build up the 
 Church of Christ in godly union and concord. 
 
 I do not know the conditions that prevailed in India in 1882 
 and called forth these strong words. I believe that in every 
 mission field to-day the great body of the missionaries and 
 native Christians alike cherish the ideals which have been set 
 forth here. If these national Churches come, we do not say they 
 will not break apart again, but if they do, the shame of their 
 division will rest upon themselves, and their denominations will 
 spring out of the bitter realities of their own sins and not out 
 of alien and imported traditions. Our own duty is clear, and 
 the clarity and distinctness of that duty, the unity of our gov- 
 erning principle, show us not only how desirable and practica- 
 ble, but also how necessary and indispensable unity is. 
 
 (4) In the fourth place, we are already agreed in the evan- 
 gelical Churches of the West on the intellectual basis of common 
 faith which is necessary for such unity abroad. We believe in 
 one God and Father of us all, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and in one Holy Spirit, and in one Bible, and in one faith, and 
 in one salvation. It is true that to reach such a basis of agree- 
 ment we have to go back beyond the origins of many of the 
 contradictions which separate us. But men are now ready to 
 do this. " The question of unity," says Bishop Fyson of the 
 Church of England in Japan, " seems to me almost, if not quite, 
 the most important of all for the Church at the present day; 
 and I would go great lengths to attain it. The only hope of 
 ultimate agreement amongst the different Christian orders is, 
 as it seems to me, to get back to the most primitive time, not 
 to the third century, or to the second, but to the New Testa- 
 
334 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 ment. That is the only common basis on which we are likely 
 to agree." And this is not the voice of a single Christian leader 
 alone. The Anglican Bishops in India, in their encyclical letter 
 in 1900, set forth the basis which they deemed sufficient for 
 fellowship and co-operation, at least, in good works: 
 
 As Bishops of the Church we pray for visible unity, but we 
 pray with no less earnestness for sympathy and charity. The 
 presence of the many millions who know not Christ in India and 
 Ceylon exercises in itself a harmonising influence upon Chris- 
 tians. But it appears to us that the path of Christian unity lies 
 not so much in ignoring or disguising differences as in the wide 
 and common ground of belief in our Lord's Divinity, in His 
 Incarnation, in His passion, and in His ascension to glory. Those 
 who bow before Him as the one Divine Friend and Redeemer of 
 mankind, who acknowledge that His sacrifice upon Calvary is 
 the one true " sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins 
 of the whole world," will depart widely from His spirit if they 
 make of minor historical questions, about which Christians may 
 and do honestly dissent one from another, final barriers and 
 obstacles to brotherly love and co-operation. 
 
 We therefore heartily invite our fellow-Christians of all de- 
 nominations to join with us for Christ's sake in the fellowship 
 of good works, and in the cultivation of a charitable and sympa- 
 thetic spirit throughout the Christian world, and in united prayer 
 for these sacred ends. 
 
 And more recently still the whole body of Protestant mis- 
 sionaries in China at the Centenary Conference agreed in de- 
 claring that they were already one in their common faith and 
 witness to the Gospel of the grace of God. 
 
 Whereas [they declared] it is frequently asserted that 
 Protestant missions present a divided front to those outside, 
 and create confusion by a large variety of inconsistent teaching, 
 and whereas the minds both of Christian and non-Christian 
 Chinese are in danger of being thus misled into an exaggerated 
 estimate of our differences, this Centenary Conference, repre- 
 senting all Protestant missions at present working in China, 
 unanimously and cordially declares : 
 
 That this Conference unanimously holds the Scriptures of 
 the Old and New Testaments as the supreme standard of faith 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 335 
 
 and practice, and holds firmly the primitive apostolic faith. 
 Further, while acknowledging the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene 
 Creed as substantially expressing the fundamental doctrines of 
 the Christian faith, the Conference does not adopt any Creed 
 as a basis of Church unity, and leaves confessional questions for 
 further consideration ; yet, in view of our knowledge of each 
 other's doctrinal symbols, history, work, and character, we gladly 
 recognise ourselves as already one body in Christ, teaching one 
 way of eternal life, and calling men into one holy fellowship; 
 and as one in regard to the great body of doctrine of the Chris- 
 tian faith ; one in our teaching as to the love of God the Father, 
 God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; in our testimony as to 
 sin and salvation, and our homage to the Divine and Holy Re- 
 deemer of men; one in our call to the purity of the Christian 
 life, and in our witness to the splendours of the Christian hope. 
 We frankly recognise that we differ as to methods of ad- 
 ministration and Church government. But we unite in holding 
 that these differences do not invalidate the assertion of our real 
 unity in our common witness to the Gospel of the grace of God. 
 
 Here, surely, we have an adequate basis of intellectual agree- 
 ment. What more do we require than " a real unity in our 
 common witness to the Gospel " ? We differ, perhaps, as to 
 the symbols in which Christianity expresses itself, and as to 
 the institutional forms in which it is embodied, but we are all 
 agreed as to the spiritual principles which are expressed in these 
 symbols and embodied in these institutions, and, surely, that 
 agreement in these spiritual principles is the fundamental and 
 essential thing, and even in a great united Church, when it 
 comes, there will be room made for some disagreement as to 
 our symbols and our institutional forms. We are agreed enough, 
 I say, in our common intellectual convictions, regarding the 
 fundamental elements of our Christian faith to make the union 
 of the Church in the non-Christian world entirely practicable. 
 We have one common Lord. In that we all agree, and 
 no one doubts the other's love of Him. Believing this, surely 
 no one can say less than the Bishop of Newcastle said at the 
 Church of England Conference in Nottingham in 1897: "When 
 men agree in love for a common Lord, and can thank Him for 
 admission to His Kingdom on earth, and trust Him for the 
 
336 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 time to come, it is certain that this community of faith will 
 find expression in ways which scarcely need to be classified as 
 though else it would cease to exist. If they do not love ' one 
 Lord,' no unity of ecclesiastical organisation will ever bring 
 them together. If they do love ' one Lord,' no differences of 
 organisation can really keep them permanently apart. The man 
 who feels strongly the truth of his own convictions is just the 
 man who can afford to be tolerant in dealing with others, and 
 the English Churchman who realises that about four-fifths of 
 the results of foreign missions, outside those of the Church of 
 Rome, are due to other Christian bodies than his own, will 
 gladly recognise the fruits of the Spirit in the labours of others 
 throughout the world, and without abating one iota of what he 
 holds and teaches as true, will see the wisdom of the resolution 
 passed by the Bishops at the recent Lambeth Conference : ' That 
 in the foreign mission field of the Church's work, where signal 
 spiritual blessings have attended the labour of Christian mis- 
 sionaries not connected with the Anglican communion, a special 
 obligation has arisen to avoid, as far as possible without com- 
 promise of principle, whatever tends to prevent the due growth 
 and manifestation of that " unity of the Spirit," which should 
 ever mark the Church of Christ.' " And that due growth and 
 manifestation, we are confident, will be something actual and 
 discernible. 
 
 (5) In the fifth place, the Occidental character of our divi- 
 sions makes it both unnecessary and inexpedient to export them 
 to the mission field. Our denominational differences rest on 
 historical grounds. This history has significance to us. It has 
 none on the mission field. So far as our different Churches 
 spring from different historical incidents in our Western life, 
 they may justify themselves to us, but they cannot on these 
 grounds justify themselves to the Chinese and Indians. Our 
 differences as to Christian doctrine, moreover, which seem to 
 warrant our separation, are artificial in Asia. It is not necessary 
 there to prevent men from being both Calvinists and Arminians 
 at the same time, as most of them are, as a matter of fact, here 
 at home now. Indeed, the Methodists have been working all 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 337 
 
 these years with great success with a Calvinistic type of theology 
 in China. One of them complained recently in a paper published 
 by their press in Shanghai: 
 
 What distinctively Methodist literature does Methodism in 
 China need at present? In answer, I would say one thing needed 
 is a work on systematic theology. So far as I know, there is no 
 treatise from the Methodist standpoint. What we have is tinc- 
 tured with a diluted Calvinism, not rank, to be sure, but still 
 retaining a mild flavour of that dead system. 
 
 Many of us would think that theology that combined Cal- 
 vinism and Arminianism was a very desirable theology, and 
 that a native Church could not be better supplied than with a 
 theological teaching that recognised the truth in both of these 
 systems. Some, however, are for separating the two and re- 
 producing in Asia the theological differences of the West. In a 
 later number of the little publication just referred to, another 
 missionary writes : 
 
 Many times have I been pained to hear our preachers present 
 Calvinism to their congregations, and, what is worse, to know 
 that the books taught in our theological seminaries are tinctured 
 with that dead system? Let the Methodists of China look about 
 and at once select a man filled with the spirit of God and Method- 
 ism, and set him aside for the work of preparing clean Methodist 
 theological works. 
 
 But what is the use of seeking to transport our divergent 
 systems? Even among ourselves it is only a few theological 
 specialists who are able to keep them divergent. The great mass 
 of common Christians have already merged them, indeed, never 
 had them separated, and the specialists even cannot keep them 
 apart in practical work and life. The Arminian cannot pray 
 except as a Calvinist, and the Calvinist cannot preach the Gospel 
 except as an Arminian. The universal mind will not be re- 
 sponsible for the perpetuation of these divisions. The things 
 that have kept us apart here do not root down to what is funda- 
 mental or universal or eternal or really transportable: they root 
 
338 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 only into those things which are Occidental or temporary, and 
 which we cannot transport and make genuinely native to the 
 non-Christian lands or permanently retain among ourselves. 
 This Occidental and transient character of our differences in- 
 vites us to union abroad. 
 
 2. In the second place, to what degree and kind of unity 
 do these considerations of which I have been speaking summon 
 us? (i) In the first place, they call manifestly to a union that 
 shall prevent all waste and friction ; for all friction is disloyalty 
 to Christ, and all waste is disloyalty to the world. All friction 
 is disloyalty to Christ because it argues another principle su- 
 perior to His principle of brotherly love and unselfishness, and 
 all waste is disloyalty to the world because it denies to great 
 masses of our fellow-men a Gospel that might be carried to 
 them if there were no waste and duplication and overlapping. 
 The considerations of which I have spoken demand of us a 
 kind of union that will prevent all waste and friction on the 
 foreign field. I do not mean to say that there is great waste 
 and friction. There is some, but it is not great. But any is too 
 much. The contention that the heathen are puzzled and con- 
 fused by our multiplicity of sects, and that we are quarrelling 
 abroad, is groundless. How richly we have already attained we 
 shall presently see, and as to the confusion of the heathen, we 
 have never known in Christendom such schism and contention 
 as have marked the non-Christian religions, and they have never 
 known anything like the unity of Christianity. But there is 
 need and room for a practical co-operation of effort on the for- 
 eign field, which will make the work more powerful and fruitful. 
 The considerations which we have reviewed show how necessary 
 and practicable that co-operation is. 
 
 (2) For, in the second place, what these considerations de- 
 mand is not merely an avoidance of collision and strife; it is 
 the presence of a positive co-operation that bids us to say to 
 one another not " Hands off," but " Hands together." They 
 command us not to divide that we may march separately, but 
 to draw near that we may march together. The great things 
 which are to be attained in the world's evangelisation cannot be 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 339 
 
 done by companies of Christian men who agree to differ: they 
 can only be done by great companies of Christian men who 
 relate themselves for common and united action. Not only do 
 these considerations demand that we should avoid negatively the 
 things that impair the efficiency of our efforts, but they require 
 also that we should provide positively the things that will make 
 our efforts more powerful and more effective. 
 
 (3) In the third place, these considerations call not only for 
 this external form of co-operation of which we have spoken. 
 They call for the most living and real and spiritual unity. And 
 we believe this, first of all, because this was the kind of unity 
 for which our Lord prayed. We hear men say now and then 
 that what we need on the mission field and that we need nothing 
 more — is fraternal relations. Our Lord did not pray " that they 
 all may be one as John and James are one, or as brothers are 
 one," but, " that they all may be one as Thou and I are one." 
 The kind of unity for which He prayed was not a unity of fra- 
 ternity, not a unity of relationship of men externally bound to 
 one another. The ideal that He held out was not the ideal of 
 the unity of human brotherhood, but the ideal of the unity of 
 the Godhead itself; and because we believe that that was the 
 kind of unity for which our Lord made His prayer, we believe 
 that that is the kind of unity which should be our ideal on the 
 mission field. And we believe this not only because we believe 
 that this was the kind of unity for which our Lord prayed, but 
 also because any other kind of relationship among Christians mis- 
 represents His Gospel. You cannot express one God in a split 
 Church. The Gospel is a message of one God, of one Saviour, 
 of one human family, and until we have got all this embodied in 
 a great human symbol that speaks of a unity as real and com- 
 plete as this, we have not got a symbol that represents correctly 
 the great Gospel of the Saviour of all the world. And we be- 
 lieve in this corporate oneness in the third place, because until 
 we have this kind of unity our Gospel never can put forth its 
 full power. We must give Christ a body in which He can ex- 
 press Himself to the one humanity that He came to save. We 
 must give the Holy Spirit a channel through which He can pour 
 
340 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Himself out over the whole world that He came to keep in the 
 salvation and the purity of the Saviour. 
 
 And until we have a oneness like this our Gospel will go lame 
 and halt and never can have the fulness of the divine power for 
 the world's conviction which our Lord Himself said it would 
 have only when at last His people had arrived at a unity perfected 
 into one as He and His Father were one. " In common with 
 very many of our brethren, both clerical and lay," said the 
 Conference on Christian Unity which met in Edinburgh in 
 May, 1900, " we have had the conviction brought home to our 
 consciences that the lack of visible unity amongst Christian 
 people is one of the chief hindrances by which all efforts 
 to advance the Kingdom of our Lord are impeded." And 
 this is to be understood in the deepest sense. " The faith that 
 finally overcomes the world is a collective thing. ... It is 
 only the full and solidary faith of a living Church that can pos- 
 sess the secret and the command of those marvellous results 
 which so far appear but sporadically and come and go like the 
 wind. . . . When the Spirit dwells in a sanctified " and unified 
 Church as He dwelt in the Holy Son of God in the unity of 
 the life of the Godhead, then the Church will be able to do the 
 wonders that He did, the power of the Highest will come upon 
 her, and the world will believe that the Father sent the Son 
 to be the Saviour. — (P. T. Forsythe, The Sunday School Times, 
 January 9, 1909; Art. "Miraculous Healing, Then and Now.") 
 
 The missionaries on the foreign field realise the vital sig- 
 nificance of such unity in the fulfilment of their aim. " We 
 have been mourning the slow progress of our Churches toward 
 self-support," said one of them, the Rev. George Chapman, in 
 the discussion on Church Unity at the Japan Missionary Con- 
 ference in Tokyo, in 1900, " and many remedies are proposed. 
 But here is the root evil, get rid of our divisions and there would 
 soon be a self-supporting Church. It is because we are divided 
 into so many small congregations that united effort for self- 
 support is impossible. Once let them come together and it 
 would go forward by leaps and bounds." And it is not self- 
 support only that depends upon unity, it is the power of the 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 341 
 
 native Churches to become real national Churches, capable of 
 moulding the fast-moving forces which are bearing the Eastern 
 nations on to their altered destinies. " The tasks before us are 
 tremendous and immediate," said the China missionaries in one 
 of the public statements of their last conference. " Within half 
 a generation it is possible for Christianity to be established as 
 the most decisive force in Chinese affairs. To this task we pro- 
 pose to set ourselves with renewed devotion and a new sense 
 of urgency. In this emergency we require the backing and 
 co-operation of Christendom. Your progress, your fellowship, 
 your efforts, united and forceful as never before, are a source 
 of profound gratitude on our part. It is not less important that 
 we, in the far-flung battle line, shall be one in spirit and aim, 
 and that we shall co-operate in our common work. This has 
 already led to union and combination in educational work, in- 
 creasing economy of working force by division of labour and 
 frequent consultations in our plans. At the present conference, 
 Protestant missionaries, representing many countries and many 
 branches of the Church of Christ, have come to a new realisa- 
 tion of our unity, and have given definite expression to a com- 
 mon desire and hope that in China we shall not perpetuate 
 our Occidental distinctions; and we have expressed our definite 
 purpose to plant one Church in which all disciples may have 
 a common fellowship of joy and service. We have taken action 
 which will soon result in organic union between Churches hav- 
 ing a common policy. And we have planned for a federation 
 of all Christians in the Empire. In these deliberations we have 
 been conscious of divine guidance, without which all our plans 
 must fail."— (" Church Federation," Second Annual Report, 
 p. off.) 
 
 3. These words of the China missionaries, summing up with 
 grateful joy the achievements of the Spirit of God in unifying 
 the missions in China, lead us on to enquire, thirdly, as to the 
 measure in which the kind of unity demanded by the considera- 
 tions we have reviewed has been attained on the foreign field. 
 (1) In the first place, we have in some measure desisted from 
 importing into the various foreign fields our denominational 
 
342 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 titles and proprietary claims. Happily, there are some of them 
 that cannot be translated. We do not regret that the Chinese 
 language will not lend itself to the perpetuation of many of our 
 names. You cannot translate the word Presbyterian or the word 
 Methodist or the words Protestant Episcopal into a great many 
 of the heathen languages; the languages have no such terms. 
 You can transliterate them and then teach the heathen what 
 the names mean, but they have no words that correspond to 
 those and can serve as translations for them. Happily, even in 
 the lands where such terms exist, the missionaries have often 
 been wise enough to sink them into the background. It was 
 agreed at the outset in the Philippines, for example, that the 
 evangelical Churches should bear one common Christian name. 
 If anybody wanted to throw in a little parenthesis at the end, 
 perpetuating the Western denominational name, he could do 
 so, but the outstanding conspicuous name was one. The same 
 agreement, I believe, has been reached in Korea, and in many 
 other lands from the very beginning our Western denomina- 
 tional titles were not known. And while here and there a par- 
 ticular missionary institution may bear some proprietary title, 
 yet for the most part it is known as the mission hospital, or 
 the mission school, or the mission press, and no particular name 
 is tied to it to create distinctions in the minds of those who 
 may know of it. First of all, then, we have made a long step 
 in advance in leaving behind us the names. Abandon the names, 
 and the ideas that the old names embodied will sooner or later 
 fade away. 
 
 (2) In the second place, the principle of territorial divisions 
 has been measurably accepted. Alexander Duff set forth his 
 large-minded views on the subject, views which some missionary 
 organisations have always shared, at the Union Missionary Con- 
 vention held in New York City on the occasion of Duff's visit 
 to America in 1854. Speaking of the assembling of missionaries 
 in centres when great areas were still unoccupied, he said : 
 
 Now why remain thus crowded together, while whole regions 
 are left entirely destitute? Why not rather disperse? Yes, but 
 one will answer, " My flock belongs to such a sect, and yours 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 343 
 
 to another," and each will insist on maintaining a separate 
 service, as if he must go to Heaven only in his own way. I do 
 hope and trust that the day is coming when this divine spirit — 
 the true catholic spirit — the all-embracing spirit of Christ — shall 
 rise up in the midst of us — when evangelical Episcopalians, or 
 Presbyterians, or Baptists, or Congregationalists, or Methodists, 
 will say to each other : " For my part, if the Gospel is preached, 
 I do not care whether it be conveyed through an Episcopalian 
 tube, or a Presbyterian tube, or a Congregational tube, or any 
 other." What a blessed spectacle would it be to see true preach- 
 ers of the Gospel standing up together and saying to each other : 
 " There is room for us all. If you remain here, then I shall 
 go hence, or I will remain and let you go. There is space enough 
 and work enough for all ; let us not be coming into collision and 
 apparent contention. ..." The foreign missionary field is of 
 such vast extent that there is room for all, without encroaching 
 on each other's labours; and when we find any region of the 
 heathen field preoccupied, we should go elsewhere in search of 
 labour, as there is plenty of vacant territory. If, for a moment, 
 I could wield the wand of despotic power for a good purpose, 
 I would go to the heathen field, and there chalk out a separate 
 district for every evangelical denomination. I would say to the 
 Baptist, do you go there; to the Episcopalian, take this field; 
 to the Presbyterian, labour in that district; go and convert them, 
 and then baptise them all in whatever way you deem best. 
 
 Among the resolutions adopted at this Convention, embody- 
 ing the recommendations of Dr. Duff, was one approving of this 
 principle of territorial division: 
 
 Resolved, That considering the vast extent of the yet un- 
 evangelised world of heathenism, and the limited means of evan- 
 gelisation at the disposal of the existing evangelical Churches or 
 Societies, it would be very desirable that, with the exception of 
 great centres, such as the capitals of powerful kingdoms, an 
 efficient preoccupancy of any particular portion of the heathen 
 field by any evangelical Church or Society, should be respected 
 by others and left in their undisturbed possession. 
 
 If all the foreign missionaries on the field in 1900 had been 
 distributed evenly among the peoples, there would have been, 
 counting all men and women, one to each 60,000. There was 
 
344 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 one ordained man to each 200,000. There is no warrant in such 
 facts for overlapping and duplication. There are some bodies, 
 however, which are unable as yet in conscience to accept the 
 principles involved in permanent territorial divisions. The An- 
 glican Bishops in India in their conference in 1900 resolved : 
 
 (a) In view of difficulties which have arisen from territorial 
 agreements made between different missionary bodies, the Synod 
 holds that all members of the Church of England, whether Euro- 
 pean or Indian, whatever they may be, have a right to the minis- 
 trations of the Church to which they belong, and that it is the 
 duty of all Christian congregations to be centres of missionary 
 activity. 
 
 (b) That, therefore, while commending the spirit of the 
 policy in accordance with which the missions of different Chris- 
 tian bodies have endeavoured to avoid coming into collision with 
 one another, the Synod deprecates any such territorial agree- 
 ments in the future. 
 
 Some other bodies have felt constrained to take a similar 
 position. Such convictions are held with open-mindedness, how- 
 ever, and are acted upon with reluctance, and those who hold 
 them, as well as those who hold with Alexander Duff, wait for 
 the larger time when they will be not abandoned but transcended, 
 swallowed up in the comprehending Church ; and meanwhile it 
 can be said that the essential principle of territorial responsi- 
 bility has been generally accepted by all missionary bodies save 
 one, of which I shall speak presently. 
 
 (3) In the third place, the different Christian bodies in the 
 foreign field have come, in the main, to recognise the ordinances 
 and the acts of discipline of other Christian organisations, so 
 that if in any one territory men are baptised, they are baptised 
 for the territory of other Churches also, and if in any one 
 territory acts of discipline lie upon agents of the native Church, 
 the validity of those acts is acknowledged in other Christian 
 organisations whether adjacent or far away. 
 
 (4) In the fourth place, we have reached on the mission field 
 an advanced union in the spirit of prayer. Our Week of Prayer 
 sprang from the foreign field. It was in its inception a great 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 345 
 
 appeal in prayer for the pouring out of God's spirit upon the 
 unevangelised world. The united prayer movements from that 
 day have usually been related in one way or another to the 
 foreign mission field. Appeal after appeal has gone out within 
 the last ten years on the mission field to missionaries of every 
 name to unite themselves in common supplication. It is doubtful 
 whether there is any one object in the world for which as large 
 a volume of prayer is rising now all over the nations as for 
 this one thing, the unity of Christendom in its representation 
 of Christ to the non-Christian World. A noble illustration of 
 this unity in prayer, typical of many, was the call sent out in 
 1901 by Bishop Foss and Bishop Awdry of the Anglican Church 
 in Japan, which they prefaced by a reference to the conference 
 of " leading members of the Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches 
 in Scotland," in 1900, " to consider what could be done in view 
 of the sin, loss, and wretchedness of the unhappy divisions of 
 the one Church." This was their outline of subjects: 
 
 Penitence for any wilfulness, prejudice, worldliness, or evil 
 temper in ourselves or our predecessors which may have helped 
 to bring about a condition of Christendom so different from that 
 for which our Lord prayed. 
 
 Prayer for such change and enlightenment of our own hearts 
 as may help toward the undoing of this great evil — for the graces 
 of wisdom, humility, sincerity, unworldliness, self-control, and 
 open mind, reverence for others who sincerely disagree with us, 
 complete subordination of our self-will to the will of God, a 
 firm hold on truth, a spiritual mind — in short, the mind which 
 was in Christ Jesus. 
 
 Prayer for the removal of obstacles — in the character of pro- 
 fessing Christians, in heredity and other prejudice, in narrowness 
 of views, in special shibboleths, in unworthy rivalries, in exag- 
 gerated attachment to non-essentials. 
 
 Prayer for a fuller outpouring of the Holy Spirit in His 
 various powers, and for a more ready recognition of the work 
 of the Spirit in others in whom the " fruits of the Spirit " are 
 apparent. 
 
 Thanksgiving for the growing sense of sin in regard to our 
 divisions, and of longing for unity ; and for the better hope which 
 this gives of the world being won to believe in the mission of 
 Our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
346 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 One may see in this gathering volume of prayer a ground 
 of hope for the removal of the most massive obstacle in the way 
 of the union of Christendom, I mean the errant conscientious- 
 ness of Christian people. It has been the case from the begin- 
 ning that the greatest evils have succeeded in rooting themselves 
 in the consciences of men. " The day will come," our Lord told 
 His disciples, " when those who kill you will think that they do 
 service unto God." It was that very conviction that would make 
 them so merciless and implacable. It has ever been so. Men 
 transfer to their own fallible consciences the absolute authority 
 of the divine standard which they have misread. We hide behind 
 what we call our conscientiousness of principle as though that 
 were an adequate reason for delaying the day of the unity of the 
 Church. A principle is not necessarily sound because it is 
 conscientious. It is dangerous, but not necessarily sound. The 
 very thing that we stand most in need of to-day is such a 
 searching of the eyes of God upon our inner life as will reveal 
 to us the moral colour blindness, the obliquity of vision, the 
 distortion of judgment, and the misconception of His spirit in 
 our own hearts, which stand most in the way of the unity of 
 the body in the life of our Lord. And we shall never have 
 that exposure, that revelation of our own misguided conscien- 
 tiousness until we come in prayer, in great humility and self- 
 distrust, to the fear that where we think we stand we may 
 have fallen worst, in His sight whose eyes search us and dis- 
 cern the truth. 
 
 (5) In the fifth place, both at home and on many mission 
 fields, central bodies, more or less representative, have been estab- 
 lished for the prosecution of co-operative work or for the 
 nourishment of fraternity or for the adjustment of difficulties. 
 In America for nearly twenty years the officers and members 
 of the foreign mission organisations have been meeting an- 
 nually for conference, and have now established in addition a 
 central Committee of Reference and Counsel to act in matters 
 of common interest, and to which any question of divergent 
 judgment may be referred. The Conference of Missionaries in 
 India, held at Madras in 1900, voted to set up, with the con- 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 347 
 
 sent of the home boards, a central Court of Arbitration and 
 Appeal with seven provincial courts, and appointed represent- 
 atives of forty different missionary societies on the committee 
 to organise the court. It proposed the scheme in the hope, as 
 it said, that it would " reduce to a minimum the evils of rivalry 
 and competition, guard against the sin of wasting our Lord's 
 money, give increased efficiency to existing agencies, spread 
 the Gospel more swiftly into the regions beyond, and demon- 
 strate before the world the essential oneness of Protestant Chris- 
 tianity." Twenty-five of the societies concurred at once, ap- 
 proved of the plan, and the courts have now been constituted, 
 with the duty not only of deciding upon questions referred to 
 them, but also of securing information regarding unoccupied 
 fields and of suggesting what may be done to provide for them. 
 At the beginning of the work in the Philippine Islands, a divi- 
 sion of territory was arranged, and " The Evangelical Union 
 of the Philippine Islands " was organised, whose object was 
 stated to be " to unite all the evangelical forces in the Philippine 
 Islands for the purpose of securing comity and effectiveness in 
 their missionary operations." The Tokyo Conference of Mis- 
 sionaries in Japan in 1900 created " The Standing Committee 
 of Co-operating Christian Missions in Japan," with the function 
 of uniting the missions in co-operative efforts and " with a 
 view," as its constitution stated, " to the prevention of mis- 
 understandings and the promotion of harmony of spirit and 
 uniformity of method." A year before, the missionary agencies 
 working in Western China, including American Methodists and 
 Baptists, Canadian Methodists, English Congregationalists, An- 
 glicans, Friends, and the China Inland Mission had set up an 
 Advisory Board of Reference and Co-operation, and approved 
 of general principles of policy, including a division of the field, 
 with the object of promoting " such a spirit of harmony 
 and co-operation as shall tend to the speedier and more 
 complete occupation of the whole wide field by the mes- 
 sengers of the Gospel," and none denied this title to any 
 of the others. I will speak of but one other such organisa- 
 tion. Mr. Findlay described it some years ago in an address 
 
348 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 to the National Council of Free Churches at Cardiff in 
 1901 : 
 
 The trend towards co-operation which these great combined 
 enterprises, and many smaller ones, have for years exhibited and 
 encouraged in South India, and which also has been fostered in 
 local councils and conferences, issued four years ago in the 
 formation of a South Indian Missionary Association, which now 
 embraces more than two-thirds of the whole Protestant mission- 
 ary force of South India. The objects of this Association are 
 parallel to those of your National Council, though its constituency 
 is much wider. The sub-committee which drafted its constitution 
 consisted of an American Congregationalist, an English High 
 Churchman, and an English Methodist. Its membership includes 
 State Churchmen and Free Churchmen, Lutherans of Germany, 
 Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and America ; Scotch and Amer- 
 ican Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, Congre- 
 gationalists, Plymouth Brethren, all united to practise fraternal 
 intercourse, to take common counsel and to undertake common 
 action. This Association arranges conferences, focuses mission- 
 ary opinion, and expresses it, on occasion, to the Government 
 and the public, and seeks to organise and utilise inter-mission 
 co-operation in every possible way. As specimens of its activity 
 may be mentioned a directory of institutions available for the 
 common service, a board of vernacular examinations for mission- 
 aries, and a representative committee, which is preparing a com- 
 mon hymn-book for the whole Tamil Church. Missionaries of 
 twenty-four out of the twenty-five Protestant Societies at work 
 in South India are found in this Association ; and it may be 
 doubted whether there has ever before been witnessed the organ- 
 ised association for active service of Christian workers of so 
 many varieties of nationality, thought, and ecclesiastical system. 
 
 And this co-operation has not been left to such general com- 
 mittees and conferences. It has expressed itself in organised and 
 continuous work. In China, the medical missionaries of all 
 Churches have formed a medical association, which pursues in- 
 vestigations, issues a journal, and is publishing medical text- 
 books. The educational missionaries likewise have established 
 an educational association with like purposes, and holding a tri- 
 ennial meeting for common conference. Common hymn-books 
 are in use in Brazil, Japan, South India, and Spanish-speaking 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 349 
 
 lands. And I can count twenty different institutions, three of 
 them theological schools, where different denominations, repre- 
 senting different polities and creeds, have united themselves to 
 support and conduct such institutions as union organisations. 
 
 (6) In the sixth place, this union among missionaries and 
 their missions has issued in some fields, and notably in China, 
 the greatest of all, in a national federation with a national coun- 
 cil and provincial councils, with provision for regular meetings, 
 and the work of this federation is to be " (a) To encourage 
 everything that will demonstrate the existing essential unity of 
 Christians. To watch for opportunities of united prayer and 
 mutual conference between representatives of different bodies 
 of Christians in China; and as opportunity offers, to initiate 
 and arrange for representative meetings for the furtherance of 
 the ideal of one Christian Church for China, (b) To devise 
 and recommend plans whereby the whole field can be worked 
 most efficiently, and with the greatest economy in men and 
 time and money, (c) To promote union in educational work, 
 (d) The encouragement of the consideration of all questions 
 as to how the various phases of Christian work can be carried 
 on most efficiently, e.g., translation and literary work, social 
 work, medical work, evangelistic work, etc. (e) And in general, 
 to endeavour to secure harmonious, co-operant, and more ef- 
 fective work throughout the whole Empire." 
 
 (7) But the ideal of foreign missions is not realised by 
 a federation of separate agencies. It contemplates a united 
 Church, not a compact of separate units, but one corporate and 
 manifested life. The whole body of missionaries in Japan in 
 the Conference in 1900, set forth this ideal : " This Conference 
 of Missionaries, assembled in the City of Tokyo, proclaims its 
 belief that all those who are one with Christ by faith are one 
 body ; and it calls upon all those who love the Lord Jesus and 
 His Church in sincerity and truth, to pray and to labour for 
 the full realisation of such a corporate oneness as the Master 
 Himself prayed for on that night in which He was betrayed." 
 
 And they had in mind in this, their representatives have told 
 us, not simply a strengthening of the bonds " that bind together 
 
350 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 individual believers ; but a corporate oneness, a oneness of the 
 Churches as Churches that shall be manifest to all the world." 
 
 That such a unity [they said] is according to the mind of 
 Christ needs no other proof than His own prayer in the upper 
 room ; and His own reason therein given is one that appeals 
 with constraining persuasiveness to all who are in sympathy with 
 Him in His longing that the world may believe. This has always 
 been true; but to-day the old truth is proclaiming itself with 
 peculiar insistence. The divisions of Christendom are seen with 
 a new clearness to be a stone of stumbling; and many Christian 
 lips are repeating the prayer of the Master as it has not been 
 repeated for centuries. If there are any whom this concerns, 
 it concerns those who have come to this land for the evangelisa- 
 tion of the nation, — " that it may know that Thou didst send 
 Me." For it may be that the pathway to the consummation of 
 that purpose is to be found in obedience to the words, that they 
 may all be one that the world may believe. 
 
 The difficulties in the way of corporate oneness, in whichever 
 form it is contemplated, are manifold. There are old wounds 
 still rankling. There are prejudices that have transformed them- 
 selves into principles. The all but resistless forces of heredity 
 and environment are arrayed in opposition. Pride and fear and 
 doubt and distrust are all clamant. There are differences of edu- 
 cation, of sentiment, of conviction, that insist upon recognition 
 and consideration. The yoke must needs be worn of a meek 
 and lowly spirit. But with God all things are possible. This 
 is the thought of the letter; it is a call to united prayer. Hand 
 in hand with prayer will go effort; and by taking thought, by 
 earnest endeavour, by patience, by charity, by courage, by a 
 closer fellowship with Christ, stepping stones will be found ; 
 but the great hope is in prayer by many for this very thing. In 
 Thy light shall we see light. 
 
 The same noble ideal and longing have filled the minds 
 and hearts of the missionaries in China. In the Centenary 
 Conference they declared : 
 
 That in planting the Church of Christ on Chinese soil, we desire 
 only to plant one Church under the sole control of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, governed by the Word of the Living God, and led 
 by His guiding Spirit. While freely communicating to this 
 Church the knowledge of Truth, and the rich historical experience 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 35* 
 
 to which older Churches have attained, we fully recognise the 
 liberty in Christ of the Churches in China planted by means of 
 the Missions and Churches which we represent, in so far as 
 these Churches are, by maturity of Christian character and ex- 
 perience, fitted to exercise it; and we desire to commit them 
 in faith and hope to the continued safe-keeping of their Lord, 
 when the time shall arrive, which we eagerly anticipate, when 
 they shall pass beyond our guidance and control. 
 
 That in this view we cordially undertake to submit very 
 respectfully to the home Churches which have sent us to China, 
 the following recommendations : 
 
 (a) That they should sanction the recognition by their mis- 
 sionaries of the right of the Churches in China planted by them 
 to organise themselves in accordance with their own views of 
 truth and duty, suitable arrangements being made for the due 
 representation of the missionaries on their governing bodies until 
 these Churches shall be in a position to assume the full responsi- 
 bilities of self-support and self-government. 
 
 (b) That they should abstain from claiming any permanent 
 right of spiritual or administrative control over these Churches. 
 
 No general conference of missionaries in India has as yet 
 embraced and uttered this ideal of one national Church, but 
 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in India, 
 itself a union of all the Presbyterian bodies but one, appointed 
 at its meeting in 1907 a committee of twenty Indians and two 
 missionaries to enter into correspondence with other mission- 
 aries and Churches with a view to a larger than a mere Pres- 
 byterian union, and it prefaced its resolutions with a recogni- 
 tion of " the advantages that would accrue to the cause of 
 Christ in India by a realisation of Christ's prayer that all may 
 be one," and by the declarations that " our aim is to secure 
 a united indigenous Church of Indian Christians, rather than 
 one of foreign missionaries with its peculiarly Western char- 
 acteristics," and " that the Indian brethren, as far as possible, 
 should be responsible for its development, that the future Church 
 may grow in harmony with Oriental rather than Occidental 
 ideas." 
 
 The great organic unifications which these utterances from 
 the three greatest mission lands propose have already begun. 
 
352 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The elimination of denominational lines is now taking place. 
 In at least nine cases they have been already eliminated. There 
 have been three great eliminations in Japan. The Episcopal 
 Churches of Great Britain and America are now one in Japan. 
 All Presbyterian and Reformed bodies have been one in Japan 
 for twenty-five years. All the Methodist bodies were made or- 
 ganically one in Japan a year or two ago. There is scarcely 
 a mission field where there have not been instances of this or- 
 ganic melting together of different denominations. In every 
 country where the Northern and Southern Presbyterian 
 Churches of America are working, outside of the United States, 
 they are working as one organic Church. In the Christian 
 land of America they are two. In every heathen land they are 
 one. In India, three or four years ago all but one of the Presby- 
 terian and Reformed Churches and the Calvinistic Methodists 
 came together in one Church of Christ for India, and only this 
 last year the southern section of that Church separated from the 
 rest with good-will and approval, in order to unite with the 
 English and American Congregationalists of South India and 
 make a larger union numerically, a larger union in the inclusion 
 of different types of denominations, although for a little while 
 it made a smaller union geographically. But it was done as a 
 step to the larger union yet to be. Organic unity is not a mere 
 missionary theory. It is in some measure already an accom- 
 plished fact. 
 
 The foreign missionary movement in these attainments in 
 Christian unity is exerting a powerful influence upon the Church 
 at home. 
 
 ( i ) It is showing the Church at home the possibility of 
 union, not only of co-operation in work or of federation of 
 separate Christian bodies, but of actual union. There are not 
 wanting those both at home and on the foreign field who believe 
 that our divisions are to be perpetual. An editorial in the 
 Baptist Missionary Reviezv of India, for April, 1907, maintains 
 this view : " We do not believe," it says, " that there will ever 
 be any such thing as ' The Church of India.' History is not 
 going to be reversed in India. There have been, are now, and 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 353 
 
 always will be, denominations." But the same article was ad- 
 vocating an unprecedented union of Baptists. If it is possible 
 and right for Baptists to surrender their individualism and in- 
 dependency in favour of denominational union, may it not be 
 possible and right for all Christians to act on the same com- 
 prehending principle and become one with a unity which will 
 comprehend and preserve their freedom? Our denominations 
 did not always exist. What right have we to assume that the 
 sectarian phenomena of the last three or four centuries are to 
 be the permanent characteristics of Christendom, and are of 
 superior validity to the order of the New Testament, and that 
 any hope of rising above them into the unity for which our 
 Lord dared to pray, is vain? The attainments already made 
 in union on the foreign mission field should teach us wisdom. 
 We are uniting there. What we can do there, we can do here. 
 (2) The missionary movement is teaching us also the duty 
 of union. The missionaries have realised that they ought to 
 be one. For similar reasons and for additional reasons we ought 
 to be one at home, and we ought to be one for the sake of 
 the effect of such unity at home on the growth of unity abroad. 
 It is from home that unity should pass out over the world as 
 one of the marks of the Church. In the discussion of Christian 
 union at the Tokyo Conference one of the missionaries asked 
 to whom the proposed resolution of the Conference was ad- 
 dressed. " If to the Japanese Churches," said he, " they will 
 say to us, ' Why are you not united among yourselves ? It 
 is your divisions that keep us separated.' " Happily, our divi- 
 sions at home have not held the missionaries apart, although 
 there are those among them who do not feel free to participate 
 in the great uniting movements of the time because their 
 Churches at home still hold aloof. " They must take the step 
 before we can," they say. History is developing the contrary 
 course, but it is doing so without relieving the home Churches 
 of their duty to participate in a movement essential to the ful- 
 filment of the task of Christianity in the world, to bring the 
 Gospel home to each man and each nation, and to unify man- 
 kind. 
 
354 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 (3) And the foreign mission movement is not only showing 
 the Church the possibility and duty of union, it is also revealing 
 to it the method, (a) It has shown us the uniting power of 
 a great work. The immensity of the common task, the essential 
 oneness of aim of all engaged in that task press the workers 
 together in spite of their unacquaintance and their dissonant tra- 
 ditions. When men are not united in their work, they can easily 
 remain apart, exalting the secondary things into fundamental 
 principles, but when they are seeking the evangelisation of a 
 world, the primary things assert their dominance, and men dis- 
 cover that they are agreed, and their divisions are at once as 
 good as dead because they are forgotten. Dr. Swift, the great 
 spirit who laid the foundation of the foreign missionary organi- 
 sation of the American Presbyterian Church, understood this 
 principle and expressed it in one of the first reports of the 
 Board, referring to the temporary abandonment by the Church 
 in 1826 of her corporate responsibility as a missionary agency, 
 and to the later separation of the Church into New and Old 
 Schools : " Had the commotions which now agitate the Church," 
 said he, " found its ministry and its Churches bound together by 
 the hallowed ties of one harmonious and life-inspiring effort to 
 evangelise the world, those waves whose rockings now threaten 
 her destruction would scarcely have left the trace of their exist- 
 ence. . . . The days of division and inaction cannot last for- 
 ever. The Spirit of God will return in glory and in power to 
 the Churches, and the spirit of love and concord to the Saints." 
 Common aims and honest effort to realise those aims have made 
 us one abroad. They can make us one at home. More than 
 that, they require unity of us. As Dr. Henderson said in 
 his final address as Moderator of the United Free Church As- 
 sembly in 1909 : " Fathers and brethren, may I so far allude to 
 the great subject of Church Union as to say that nothing will 
 so effectively and so truly prepare for it as such development 
 of our spiritual life by active service. If it is to come as a 
 blessing — which God grant it may speedily — it will be as a 
 union of those who labour for it from a supreme desire for 
 fuller and freer service; from a pressing need of developing 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 355 
 
 a free and fruitful life in direct obedience to the will of Christ. 
 Hindrances which thwart such spiritual aspirations will become 
 intolerable, and their removal will be demanded at all costs. 
 And union will come, not by mere good-will wishing for it, or 
 adroit scheming to bring it about, but when an awakened sense 
 of the urgency of spiritual service thrusts out of its way all 
 that opposes itself to the doing of the will of Christ." 
 
 (b) It has shown us the power of fellowship in spite of 
 difference of opinion to dissolve the difference by purifying it 
 of the error on each side, which creates it, and to cleanse men's 
 hearts of the pride and vanity which alone enable them to 
 stand aloof from their brothers. I cannot illustrate better the 
 spirit which the foreign mission movement would teach us 
 all than by the words of one of the most trusted missionary 
 leaders of our day, the Bishop of the American Episcopal Church 
 in the Philippine Islands, Dr. Brent, in his charge of June 26, 
 1907. He has asked where the true Church is to be found, and 
 then he answers : 
 
 " It partly is and wholly hopes to be." One group of men says 
 her hall-mark is submission to Peter's chair; another, loyalty 
 to the Bible; another, adherence to the Vincentian motto, or 
 perhaps to two-thirds of it ; another, acceptance of the belief 
 and practice of the first six centuries ; another, the principles of 
 the Reformation, and so on, each group reaching its decision 
 according to its training, tastes, interpretation of history, or 
 prejudice. If, as Father Tyrrell suggests, any one Church or 
 school of thought within a Church could " point triumphantly 
 to the Christian r)do<; of that Church, to the religious spirit 
 developed by her system as by no other," external marks and 
 claims would merit higher respect than is the case. Neither 
 the Roman, the Greek, any of the Protestant Churches with 
 which I am familiar, nor our own exhibits a superior " Christian 
 t)6oS." Each has its own distinctive type of righteousness and 
 its individual disposition. But the same degree of devotion to 
 Jesus Christ, of hunger and thirst after righteousness, of brother- 
 liness, is found somewhere in each and all of the Churches alike, 
 though in no one exclusively or pre-eminently. Naturally, we 
 ally ourselves with that Church which presents the type most 
 congenial to us. Whatever historic or theoretic necessities con- 
 stitute the qualifications for Catholic recognition, no body that 
 
356 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 manifestly and progressively struggles to put on the mind of 
 Christ, and whose adherents bear those clear tokens of God's 
 Spirit that cannot be simulated — self-sacrifice to the death for 
 Christ's sake, triumph over sin, world-wide love — can be read 
 out of the Church of the living God. To say that Protestant 
 Churches in that they have abandoned a certain historic order 
 are not Catholic according to a fixed definition may be true, 
 but it is idle folly to think or speak or act as though they were 
 not of the Church of the living God Who, although He designed 
 a visible unity, has proved to those who are not too blind to 
 see, that He can and does use the broken order which man 
 has chosen in its place. As well might the gardener who prophesies 
 that a certain plant will not live if reared in unwonted conditions 
 deny that it has true life when experience proves that its vitality 
 is full and its beauty unimpaired. What God hath cleansed, that 
 call not thou common. 
 
 The logic of the situation requires us to look with greater 
 fairness on the things of our brethren, and to put off the spirit 
 of aloofness which Christ exhibited only in the presence of de- 
 liberate wickedness and hardness of heart. The doctrine of 
 separatism cannot but be hateful to God. Out of the very stones 
 will He raise up children to Abraham, as history declares, if 
 Abraham's lineal descendants lapse into Pharisaism, pointing 
 to phylacteries inscribed with the pride of aristocratic descent 
 as their sufficient credentials. Our first duty all around is to 
 cease theological and ecclesiastical backbiting and to be loyal to 
 one another in secret — not to try to win Christians from the 
 allegiance that binds them by sneering at or decrying systems of 
 teaching that we do not sympathise with mainly because we have 
 never been at pains to understand them. It is a poor business 
 tearing down other people's walls to build up our own. On the 
 other hand, it is a great happiness to repair the breach in a 
 neighbour's fabric ; that is to say, to help the member of another 
 Church to lay hold of his privileges with renewed earnestness 
 and reality. I have had many a surprise of late since I have 
 faced vexed questions, with the determination to do full justice 
 to the point of view opposed to mine. There are not a few 
 things that are looked upon as mutually exclusive which, accord- 
 ing to my experience, best fulfil their vocation when they are 
 made to be yoke-fellows. 
 
 The cultivation of the Catholic as opposed to the sectarian 
 spirit is our greatest work at present. I am not opposing frank, 
 open controversy, feeble and unwilling controversialist though 
 I am. Controversy conducted in good temper and in search of 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 357 
 
 the truth is valuable. I am simply pleading for the putting on 
 of the mind of Christ that we may look on the things of others 
 interestedly and fairly. We can best prepare for it by identifying 
 ourselves, when we pray, with those who are separated from us 
 by chance rather than by choice. My hope is that the develop- 
 ment of this temper will lead us by degrees to natural fellow- 
 ship, culminating first in federal, and then, as " state rights " 
 gradually fade, into organic union. Christianity is still very 
 young, the youngest but one of all great religions, and I am 
 looking centuries ahead of to-day. 
 
 But we must labour as well as hope. If our Communion 
 is to justify its boast of holding a strategic position and its claim 
 to leadership, we must shed, more than we have yet seen fit 
 to do, our reserve, and play the part of foremost companion. 
 Consciousness of the possession of large privilege should drive 
 us into the performance of service commensurate with our claims. 
 Truth is not such a delicate thing as to be susceptible to infection 
 from close contact with conscientious error or ignorance that 
 has never had a fair chance to become enlightened. It does not 
 sit passively on a throne in heaven waiting for earth to seek it, 
 or at best stretch down a timid hand from above. Christ Jesus, 
 the Way and the Truth and the Life, being in the form of God, 
 counted it not a price to be on equality with God, but emptied 
 Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness 
 of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled 
 Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of 
 the cross. He consorted with notorious sinners. Him who knew 
 no sin God made to be sin on our behalf. He lived the life of a 
 Jew, obeying its ordinances, sharing in its crude worship — Oh, 
 how crude, in many respects, how repulsive, it was ! He could have 
 won in no other way. Nor can we. Even if we were more sure than 
 the surest of us can be of our denominational contentions, we 
 could not make them a good ground for separatism. Indeed, 
 the more certain we are of our position, the more readily can 
 we afford to occupy every inch of common standing ground in 
 sight. This is not lapsing into Protestantism, but rising to the 
 full stature of Catholicity. If we have the truth, it will abide 
 secure and win the day ; if not, happy shall we be to lose that 
 which appears to be what it is not. 
 
 But I do not believe that all is done when, after poring over 
 our books, we come together and find an intellectual basis of 
 agreement in Melbourne or Shanghai. Actual sharing with one 
 another of our good things as far as conscience permits will do 
 more than anything else to advance God's truth and unite us 
 
358 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 according to His purpose. It is not merely that others are lack- 
 ing in privileges possessed by us which we can lay at their dis- 
 posal, but also that they have that which we have not and where- 
 with they can enrich us. — (The Churchman, February 29, 1908.) 
 
 The missionary motive embodies this ideal of trustful fellow- 
 ship, of confidence without suspicion, of brotherly service with- 
 out selfish ends. It is the family spirit, and when that is with 
 us the family name is near. 
 
 (c) It is showing that the supreme method of dealing with 
 differences is not adaptation or absorption, but transcendence. 
 We do not stay on the level of our disagreements and seek by 
 modification, by surrender, or supplement to fit them together. 
 We simply rise to a higher level, into a unity which comprehends 
 in its completeness all our half-lights and fragments. Our the- 
 ologies are all to be reconciled at last, not by a restatement 
 which will balance them afresh and establish a universal com- 
 promise and equipoise. They are to be reconciled in God. The 
 living God will unify them and supplant them. And so with 
 all our disagreements as Christians. We shall not need to com- 
 pose them. As we move upward into our true air each man 
 will be the most eager of all to lay aside his error, and in the 
 larger knowledge and the larger love we shall find our lost 
 unity in our freshly discovered God. It is no enmity to our 
 past to believe that it did not exhaust God. There is no dis- 
 loyalty to the past in believing that God means the future to 
 be better than it. Unless the past has made ready for a better 
 future, the past was a bad past. Only those things are good 
 that make ready for better things to come after them, and those 
 men are disloyal to the past, not who believe that it made 
 preparation for greater things, but who believe that all the great 
 things are in a golden age gone by. The worst disloyalty to 
 the past is to mistake it for the future. Very great and glorious 
 the past has been, but the past will have failed to teach its 
 lesson to us, the past will have failed to fulfil its mission in 
 the will of God if it binds men forever in the chains of its 
 institutional forms, if it has not made them ready for larger 
 and completer things and led them on to such a unity as Christ 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 359 
 
 Himself, we must believe, longed for while He was here, and 
 waits for now where He is gone. 
 
 (d) And fourthly, the missionary movement is guiding us 
 toward union at home by the principle of nationalism. Its ideal 
 on the mission field is the creation of indigenous national 
 Churches, deadened by no throttling laws of uniformity, free 
 and varied as the spirit of man, but still unified, corporate, 
 animated by one organic life, fulfilling one great mission, and 
 inspiring and answering the national life and destiny of the 
 people. If that is the right ideal for Japan or India, it is the 
 right ideal for Scotland or the United States. It is the ideal 
 toward which the people of Canada are working, and which they 
 seem not unlikely to realise in our own day. The very ideal 
 of missions involves union and suggests the road to us at home. 
 
 It is by this principle of nationalism that we may hope at 
 last to meet the greatest of all problems in the way of Christian 
 union at home and the yet unsolved problem of mission comity 
 abroad — the problem, at which I hinted in the earlier part of 
 this lecture, of the Church of Rome. That Church has either 
 ignored or spurned every effort at fellowship in prayer or co- 
 operation in work or aspiration after unity in the body of Christ. 
 The Bishop of Lahore in 1894 declared what he had found to be 
 her invariable attitude in India: 
 
 I affirm, with a wide experience of North India and Burma, 
 that I have never met with a direct and organised attempt to 
 gather in the heathen on the part of that Church save where 
 the seed had been first sown by others, and they had begun to 
 enter into the fruit of their own labours. Instances of such 
 intervention on the part of the Church of Rome may be found 
 among the Karens in Burma, among the Chols at Chota Nagpur, 
 in the Nadiya Missions of the Church Missionary Society in 
 Bengal, and in the Missions of the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel to the south of Calcutta. No modus vivendi is 
 possible as between herself and other communions. 
 
 She has refused to take part in missionary conferences or to 
 recognise as brethren other missionaries, and for her, principles 
 of missionary comity do not exist. And her principle of unity 
 
360 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 is the exclusiveness of an institution, not the comprehension of 
 the life of Christ. When in 1864 the Roman Catholic Bishops 
 in England asked for the judgment of the Inquisition at Rome 
 on the question of the membership of Roman Catholics in the 
 Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom, 
 which was made up of Anglicans and Romanists, Cardinal Pa- 
 trizi replied for the Inquisition with regard to the association : 
 
 The principle upon which it rests is one that overthrows the 
 divine constitution of the Church. For it is pervaded by the 
 idea that the true Church of Jesus Christ consists partly of 
 the Roman Catholic Church spread abroad and projected through- 
 out the world, partly of the Photian schism and the Anglican 
 heresy as having equally with the Roman Church one Lord, one 
 faith, and one baptism. . . . The Catholic Church offers prayers 
 to Almighty God and urges the faithful in Christ to pray that 
 all who have left the Holy Roman Church, out of which is no 
 salvation, may abjure their errors and be brought to the true 
 faith and the peace of that Church, nay, that all men may by 
 God's merciful aid attain to a knowledge of the truth. But that 
 the faithful in Christ and that ecclesiastics should pray for Chris- 
 tian unity under the direction of heretics, and worse still, accord- 
 ing to an institution stained and infected by heresy in a high 
 degree, can no way be tolerated. . . . The most anxious care, 
 then, is to be exercised that no Catholic may be deluded either 
 by appearance of piety or by unsound opinions to join or in 
 any way to favour the society in question or any similar one : 
 that they may not be carried away by a delusive yearning for 
 such newfangled Christian unity into a fall from that perfect 
 unity which, by a wonderful gift of divine grace, stands on 
 the firm foundation of Peter. — (Quoted in Walsh, " Secret His- 
 tory of Oxford Movement," p. 223, London, 1899, pop. edition, 
 from official Roman Catholic translation in Synod's Diocese of 
 Suthwarcensis, London, 1868, pp. 186-190.) 
 
 And not only has the Church of Rome thus far repudiated 
 our principles of missionary comity and rejected our ideals of 
 Christianity, but in great sections of the world like South 
 America she has created for us some of our heaviest missionary 
 responsibilities. Here is a continent where for more than three 
 centuries the Church of Rome held absolute sway. ' She was 
 the one Church. The governments were under her control. The 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 361 
 
 immigration was all from her own Churches in Europe. The 
 education of the people was entirely in her hands. No Church 
 ever in any land wielded an influence more complete or abso- 
 lute. What are the conditions to-day? The men of South 
 America have no religion. They are enrolled in the census as 
 Catholics, but they neither attend church nor believe in Chris- 
 tianity. The great majority of the people are illiterate. The 
 priesthood is either ignored or feared or despised. The churches 
 have their occasional crowds on feast days, but for the most part 
 are either closed or empty. A priest in the Argentine told me 
 sadly that the conditions made his heart sore. In his parish of 
 130,000 souls not eight per cent., he said, ever attended church. 
 Priests were so reviled that his order had asked to be allowed 
 to lay aside clerical dress in order to avoid insult and to get 
 at the people. The great masses of the people had no religion, 
 and the Church was neither educating the children nor evange- 
 lising their parents. I asked him, for he was a true and an 
 honest man, and a Christian, whether he saw any reason why the 
 Protestant Churches should not be dealing with the enormous 
 problems of South America side by side with good men in the 
 Roman Catholic Church, as they were dealing with them in North 
 America. He said he saw none. His chief lament was the po- 
 litical connection of the Roman Church with the Government, 
 which bound its spiritual liberties and prevented it from being 
 the national Church of the people's life. 
 
 Now, that has been the great historic error of the Church 
 of Rome, the politicalisation of the Church. She has confused 
 this ideal in each nation with the ideal of nationalism, and has 
 lost both her own life and the people's life. She has been in- 
 capable of that comprehension which would make room for 
 all the wealth of each nation's true life within it. And she 
 has held a universal political conception of the Church, which 
 has been at war with the genius and destiny of the separate 
 nations. The one hope for her, and the hope of a true basis of 
 union with her, is in the development of those principles of 
 spiritual freedom and of nationalism which lie within the mis- 
 sionary ideal, and upon which unity is already drawing near. 
 
362 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 Bishop Brent dealt with this hope in the charge from which I 
 have already quoted : 
 
 My reference thus far has been to Protestant Churches, be- 
 cause the Roman Catholic Church sits aloof in proud isolation, 
 coming near the Protestant Churches only to strike them. / 
 labour for peace; but when I speak to them thereof, they make 
 them ready to battle. There is little we can do relative to Roman 
 Catholicism beyond a sincere endeavour to be fair. There are 
 two sides to its character, which are wholly distinct — the Curia 
 and the Church, the one being political, the other religious. The 
 former is to be fought; the latter, though giving ground for 
 controversy, is to be recognised as a Christian ally, however 
 haughty and aloof in habits. That which is baneful in the 
 Church, exaggerated ecclesiasticism, tyranny over conscience, ar- 
 rogant dogmatism, is chiefly due to the constant pressure of the 
 Curia. Nor is it as a Church that we can best fight the political 
 intrigue and pretensions of Rome, but as citizens of a nation 
 whose very existence is prophetic of Rome's final relinquishment 
 of aspiration to temporal power and her lust of domination. 
 The Reformation was the proclamation of the divine character 
 of nationalism to the exclusion of no Christian nation, however 
 feeble. The world has only just begun to feel the commanding 
 force of Christian national life. Slowly but surely it is emanci- 
 pating the countries of Europe and extending its influence even 
 to the Far West. By the time its work is done Apostolic Dele- 
 gates will no longer struggle to parade as ambassadors of a 
 temporal power in worldly courts. If they survive at all it 
 will be as frank-hearted representatives of a Pope resolved to 
 play his part as the spiritual leader of a spiritual Church, backed 
 in his purpose by a representative cardinalate. It needs no pro- 
 phetic gift to forecast the final effect of Christian nationalism. 
 Christian nationalism is an agency of God making for spiritual 
 freedom, and is an invincible force as ever in human society, 
 having in it the power of God's hand which nothing can stay. 
 The emancipation it begets is as sure to come to pass as the 
 rising of the morning sun, and patriotism, sober and whole- 
 hearted, on the part of honest citizens, will greet the day. But 
 at best it must be slow, after the manner in which God's mills 
 grind. 
 
 And by the principle of Christian nationalism embodied in 
 the missionary ideal we may hope at last, even though the day 
 be long delayed, not only to deal with the problem of national 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 363 
 
 Christian unity as related to the Church of Rome, but also 
 to realise the world unity of the Church. As I have said before, 
 it is by the development of national Churches embodying and 
 inspiring and consecrating to God the genius and destiny of 
 each nation that the elements of a yet larger unity are to be 
 prepared. The first is not contradictory of the second ; it is 
 essential to it, as the perfection of the state requires the per- 
 fection of the family unit, and the family demands and does 
 not exclude the richest individualism. It is out of her perfect 
 ministry to the life of each nation that the Church is to be pre- 
 pared to minister to the life of all humanity, and to achieve its 
 unity. 
 
 And it is of this ministry, expressed as yet between the 
 Christian and non-Christian nations by the missionary move- 
 ment alone, or at least best, that we come now to speak at the 
 close of these lectures. 
 
 I quoted, in speaking of the relation of the missions to the 
 native Churches which it was their aim to found, Professor 
 Reinsch's summary of the modern growth of the principle of 
 nationalism. After the passage quoted, Professor Reinsch went 
 on to point out the dangers which lie in this principle: 
 
 The nationalistic principle bears within it the possible source 
 of its own destruction, and unless carefully guarded against 
 exaggeration, will of itself lead to a disturbance of the equilibrium 
 upon which the diversity of our civilisation depends. Within 
 the latter half of the nineteenth century, nationalism has been 
 thus exaggerated ; going beyond a healthy desire to express the 
 true native characteristic of a people, it has come, in some quar- 
 ters, to mean the decrying, as barbarous or decadent, of every- 
 thing originating outside of the national boundary. Within the 
 state itself, there is a growing tendency to enforce, by custom 
 and law, absolute uniformity of characteristics. Languages and 
 literatures peculiar to smaller communities are not encouraged, 
 the effort being rather made to replace them by the national 
 language. In international politics the motives of foreign nations 
 are being constantly misunderstood. Each nation looks upon 
 itself as the bearer of the only true civilisation. France makes 
 wars as a herald of progress ; and when Germany is victorious, 
 she, in turn, announces a triumph for civilisation. Even in art 
 
364 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 and science, perhaps the most cosmopolitan of all pursuits, this 
 nationalising tendency has left its mark. In order to give to 
 a work of art a national tinge, idiosyncrasies are emphasised, 
 while the broad, human way of looking at things, the art that 
 speaks to all ages, is neglected. Historical writers are especially 
 prone to yield to national prejudices, and even scientists may 
 be found who import the " national equation " into their work. 
 Chauvinism is not confined to politics. It is to be found in con- 
 temporary art and science as well. 
 
 There has been a complete change of ideals during the past 
 hundred years. The century opened with a broad humanitarian- 
 ism, with a belief in the saving power of general culture, and 
 the main characteristic of the time was a nationalistic optimism 
 which saw in reason the guiding influence in human affairs. This 
 age of reason, of which Kant, Jefferson, the Humboldts, and 
 Rousseau are the most prominent and distinctive exponents, was 
 followed by what may be called the age of force. Napoleon's ca- 
 reer destroyed much of the first optimism of the Revolution ; but 
 it was the period of 1848 that finally disappointed the hopes with 
 which the century had begun. An age of pessimism then dawned, 
 in which it was recognised that humanity is swayed, not so much 
 by reason, as by the blind and passionate forces of the will. 
 Schopenhauer's great work, which had laid unknown on the pub- 
 lishers' shelves for thirty years, now suddenly attracted wide- 
 spread attention and became the mirror of the times. It is only 
 within the last decade that this pessimism has been in turn 
 replaced by a new optimism, the optimism of force, which sees 
 in triumphant energy the sole condition of happy existence. The 
 serenely quiet and completely harmonious balance of an existence 
 such as Goethe's, reflected in his whole art, has given way to 
 a rush of wild spirits that fight their way through storms of 
 passions where only the strongest will, the most violent energy, 
 can prevail. 
 
 This general character of the age is written plainly in the 
 records of contemporary political life. The nations, having 
 passed through their historical evolution, stand now, with fully 
 developed individualities, face to face. Their competition in all 
 the fields of human activity has taken on tremendous dimensions. 
 On the same overwhelming scale as that of their armaments for 
 war do they now exert their energies in all directions. It is 
 true that in this way they develop greater vitality and ability 
 than could ever be brought about in a condition of world peace ; 
 but their rivalry may become suicidal. — (Reinsch, "World 
 Politics," pp. 6-8.) 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 365 
 
 Nationalism, instead of preparing for the development of 
 human unity, may prove its destruction. There are many in 
 both the East and the West who put an interpretation upon it 
 which is inconsistent with world unity. In the year 1895, when 
 relations between Great Britain and America were shadowed 
 by the difficulty over the Venezuelan boundary question, at the 
 English service on Christmas morning at the American mission 
 Church in Teheran, Persia, the customary prayer for the Queen 
 and the President " that they may vanquish and overcome all 
 their enemies," was omitted, and a prayer for peace substituted. 
 An English officer present was much impressed, and wrote an 
 ingenious prayer in the form of a sonnet, referring to the inci- 
 dent, and closing with the lines: 
 
 Two mightiest nations, may we sheathe the sword 
 
 That our great destiny be not refused, 
 The common faith we hold from common birth, 
 
 To spread Thy glory and to rule Thine earth. 
 
 If that be deemed a flight of poetical fancy, as much cannot 
 be said of Edward Dicey's plain statement in the Nineteenth 
 Century, September, 1899, in an article on " Peace and War in 
 South Africa " : 
 
 " In every part of the world where British interests are at 
 stake, I am in favour of advancing and upholding these interests, 
 even at the cost of annexation and at the risk of war. The only 
 qualification I admit, is that the country we desire to annex 
 or take under our protection, the claims we choose to assert, 
 and the cause we decide to espouse, should be calculated to 
 confer a tangible advantage upon the British Empire." 
 
 We should have to go to militant Islam, it must be said to 
 our shame, to parallel such words in the East, and militant 
 Islam has no longer any nationalistic expression. The worst 
 that we can find in the East would be an occasional irresponsible 
 outburst of some Japanese writer, or the mere assertion by 
 India or China of their desire to be let alone to develop their 
 own destiny without entering the human unity. Mr. Dickinson 
 
366 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 truthfully puts this view into the mouth of his Chinese official 
 of the older order : " We would not if we could rival you, in 
 your wealth, your sciences, and your arts, if we must do so 
 at the cost of imitating your institutions. . . . Left to our- 
 selves, we should never have sought intercourse with the West. 
 We have no motive to do so. . . . We are sufficient to our- 
 selves. . . . We do not require, and we have not sought, the 
 products of other nations. ... A society, we conceive, that 
 is to be politically stable must be economically independent ; 
 and we regard an extensive foreign trade as necessarily a source 
 of social demoralisation. . . ." — ("Letters of a Chinese Offi- 
 cial," pp. 8, ii, 12.) To be let alone, to let all the world alone, 
 to keep China to herself, with no service from the world, with 
 no service of the world — that was the Chinese ideal. And 
 there is a modern Hindu nationalism which, while nobler than 
 our world-conquering or China's world-excluding selfishness, is 
 yet essentially antagonistic to the spirit of world unity. It is 
 that nationalism which, while pretending the contrary, really 
 sets the nationalistic form of truth above the truth, which seeks 
 to lift a nation out of its prejudices by appealing to them, 
 which assumes to find in the very national life that is to be 
 reformed that power of reform whose absence has made the 
 reform necessary. " In Hinduism," said Mrs. Besant, rising 
 " amidst deafening cheers," in her address at the inaugural 
 meeting of the Hindu Association in 1903, " in Hinduism India 
 was born, and if Hinduism be disregarded, India will perish. 
 You will find in the Indian Scriptures all that you really need 
 for the building up of your national edifice." In a sense, this 
 is saying no more than we in the West would say of our re- 
 ligion, but the note of this type of Indian nationalism is national- 
 istic, and nothing more; the spirit of the world unity is wanting 
 in it. 
 
 And not only are our nationalisms in danger of lacking or 
 denying the spirit of the world unity, but in the past hundred 
 years our nations of the West have so acted as to edge the 
 racial divisions with bitterness and distrust. We have looked 
 down upon the non-Christian peoples, and have treated them 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 367 
 
 with overbearing contempt. We have forgotten " that scorn 
 breeds scorn and abiding resentment," and that what Living- 
 stone held of the negro is true of all men, that it is not safe 
 to disregard the manhood of any people. (Wells, " Life of 
 James Stewart," p. 282.) Our national relations with the non- 
 Christian nations have been marked by a sense and assertion 
 of our racial superiority. And it is necessary to add that it 
 is not possible to separate our national relationships from the 
 effects of personal contempt and injustice. Let me cite three 
 illustrative instances. The first is from a letter from a friend 
 in India: 
 
 You refer to the " lawlessness " abroad in the land. Let 
 me tell you how some people account for this. A friend with 
 whom I was speaking of these things told me that she had 
 requested a well-known native Christian gentleman to tell her 
 his ideas with regard to the unrest in India. He replied that he 
 was a Christian and loved his teachers, but he would relate a 
 little incident from his own experience which might throw light 
 on the causes of unrest among the native people of India. He 
 was taking a stroll with two thoroughly educated and well-known 
 Indian Christian ladies (one of them was Ramabai), when a 
 British official passed them on horseback. They paid no atten- 
 tion to him as he was a stranger. The official immediately turned 
 back with his whip raised and demanded they they do obeisance. 
 The Indian gentleman stared at him, but the ladies bowed. Not 
 satisfied with this he repeated his demand. Again the gentleman 
 stared and the ladies bowed. The official was probably afraid 
 to pursue the matter further and passed on his way. Another 
 reason this gentleman assigned for the unrest is the holding of 
 native life so cheap; Europeans not sufficiently punished for 
 causing grievous hurt or even death to natives. Now, I am loyal 
 to the British Government in India. For nearly forty years 
 I have lived under British rule, and I have known more or less 
 intimately a great many British officials. One who occupied 
 a high position in the service always answered the salaam of the 
 poorest native. He was taken to task for this by a fellow official, 
 and gave the reply that Washington gave under similar circum- 
 stances — " Am / to be outdone in politeness by a poor coolie ? " 
 
 The second is a mere incident of mission work in a hospital 
 in Soochow, China. A poor woman who lived on the bank 
 
368 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 of a canal, where she had a tiny garden, came to the hospital 
 suffering from a painful affection of the face. The woman 
 missionary saw her shivering, as though cold, in the waiting- 
 room. When her turn came she was examined, though she was 
 evidently labouring under much excitement. She was advised 
 to remain for an operation, but at once left the hospital and 
 hurried away. After several visits, her excitement disappeared, 
 and she entered the wards and was cured. Afterwards she 
 confided to the missionary that she had been in deadly fear of 
 foreigners. Men from the settlement in Shanghai had been 
 accustomed to come hunting to Soochow, and had tied up their 
 boats at her little property and ravaged her garden, and so 
 terrified her that she had been accustomed to flee when she 
 saw them coming. She had supposed that all foreigners were 
 like them, and it had been hard for her to conquer her fears 
 so far as to come to the hospital. Now she realised that there 
 were good and bad foreigners, just as there were good and bad 
 Chinese. But there are many who have received no such revela- 
 tion at a mission hospital or elsewhere. 
 
 The third is a longer story, and I shall let our friend, the 
 Rev. Donald Fraser of Livingstonia, tell it without comment: 
 
 The following story will show one reason why African mis- 
 sionaries should be ahead of commerce in the rapid development 
 of that continent. Other significant deductions may be drawn 
 from it. 
 
 After the rinderpest in South Africa, and the consequent 
 stagnation of trade in Rhodesia, a number of men wandered up 
 to British Central Africa in search of cattle. Ignorant of the 
 hardships of the long march, they were tempted on by romances 
 of the abundance of cattle to be found in Ngoniland at ridicu- 
 lously low prices. The first men who came were daring young 
 Englishmen, who had walked on week after week in search of 
 this fabled cattleland, which was ever fading into the more re- 
 mote interior. With an endurance through that long journey 
 which was heroic, they had slept on the ground at night, had 
 lived on native food, and had tramped till their boots were worn 
 away and their clothes were in rags. They arrived at Ekwendeni 
 one fine morning, rough, tough, and battered-looking men, unable 
 to speak a word of any native language. They had taken a 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 369 
 
 week to do a two days' march. Their carriers had imposed on 
 them, had made them pay five times the usual wage, and had 
 refused to go any farther, when they were only a few miles 
 from our station, unless an increase of pay was promised. They 
 had pretended weariness, sickness, hunger, anything that would 
 make the Englishmen buy goats and other luxuries for them to 
 eat. The traders stayed in my house for a week or two. Strong, 
 alert, high-toned men they were, making this daring venture, — 
 one that he might soon have a home for his wife; the other that 
 he might return to his mother in England. These first-comers 
 bought about two hundred cattle with their hundred pounds. 
 But only one arrived back in Umtali. The hardships of the 
 way killed the younger and stronger of the two. But the news 
 of the possibility of getting quantities of cattle at about ten 
 shillings a head, and selling again at ten pounds, soon brought 
 a flood of adventurers into the country. The prices began to 
 leap up. At last all the surplus cattle were bought, and the 
 natives, surfeited with calico and beads, refused to sell more. 
 
 When matters had reached this stage, a young man, a native 
 
 of Natal, whose name was Z , came into the country to 
 
 buy for the North Charterland Exploration Company. He was 
 disappointed to find that the people were unwilling to part with 
 their stock, and that those who were ready to sell demanded 
 four and six times the price he expected. So he began to force 
 the sales. He took possession of about forty old guns which 
 he found in a native village. These, and others he had brought 
 with him, he distributed among his followers, and then marched 
 through the country, emptying some of the kraals of their cattle, 
 and giving in return a nominal payment, or nothing at all. 
 
 Rumours of this high-handed proceeding were coming to me 
 from time to time ; but at first I paid no attention to them, think- 
 ing they were merely native exaggerations. At last complaints 
 began to flow in daily ; so I sent a note to some of my senior 
 teachers asking them to go to the affected district, and investi- 
 gate the truth of these reports. Next day a group of teachers 
 and other lads came running into the station, breathless, and 
 some of them bleeding from wounds. They soon told their 
 story. Daniel, the eldest son of the Ngoni chief whose war- 
 party had met Livingstone at the lake, had gone along with some 
 other lads to make inquiries. After having heard many a story 
 of robbery, he determined to remonstrate with the white man 
 himself. This was his mistake. For, knowing well the strong 
 feeling that Europeans have against any interference from a 
 black man, I had only asked Daniel to find out from the natives 
 
370 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 whether the stories were true. But, acting on his own sugges- 
 tion, he and several of his friends went to speak with the white 
 man. Taking off his hat, and sitting down before him, Daniel 
 began by saying : " Why do you go through our country taking 
 
 cattle you have not paid for?" Z replied: " Who sent you 
 
 to speak to me?" 
 
 " My master sent me," answered David. 
 
 " Then," said Z , " tell your master to come here if he 
 
 has anything to say." And he drew his sjambok and lashed 
 Daniel with it. The other lads leaped up, angry at the unpro- 
 voked insult, and, seizing their sticks, struck at Z . He then 
 
 whipped out his revolver and emptied it among the natives. 
 They fled in all directions; but he climbed an ant-hill, and fired 
 shot after shot with his repeating rifle after the runners. The 
 servants of the white man also gave chase, and with clubs and 
 axes left their marks on the terrified men. 
 
 When I heard this story I wrote a letter to the nearest Gov- 
 ernment collector, and sent off some of the boys to the lake 
 with it, urging them to travel night and day. That evening 
 there was a good deal of excitement among the people. But 
 it rose higher when runners came in to report that some men 
 
 were missing, and were thought to be killed, and that Z had 
 
 fled during the night, taking all the cattle with him. My teachers 
 also sent notes to say that the chief and his warriors were going 
 
 out to follow after Z and punish him. I forthwith sent 
 
 off other messengers to the lake, calling on the collector to come 
 as quickly as possible, and telling him that I might not be able 
 to prevent the army from doing harm to the white man. At 
 the same time I sent word to the chief and to the teachers urging 
 them to use all their influence to keep the people quiet until the 
 collector should arrive. 
 
 Next day I heard that a few lads, armed with clubs, had 
 
 started after Z to recover their cattle. They had come upon 
 
 about sixty head in charge of some of Z 's followers ; but 
 
 these men, on seeing the pursuers, had cast away their loads, 
 deserted the drove, and fled. But no blows had been struck. 
 The teachers of the district told the lads to put all these cattle 
 together into a village kraal, and forbade the owners to claim 
 them until they should receive instructions from me. They also 
 gathered together the boxes of gin, and other articles which had 
 been thrown away, and did not allow any one to touch them. 
 
 Later in the evening the chief sent in runners to say that 
 some of his people, who were hoeing in a garden, had been shot 
 dead, and that he was no longer able to keep his warriors from 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 371 
 
 going out to punish the trader. That night I sent back messen- 
 gers to the chief and senior teachers telling them that on no 
 account must the army go out ; that the trader was probably 
 a British subject and must not be harmed; and that on Monday 
 morning early, if the collector had not arrived, I should go out 
 myself to the disturbed district. 
 
 Through these anxious days I had been alone, with no other 
 white man in the country, and I could not leave the station. But on 
 Saturday, to my relief, Mr. Murray arrived from the institution. 
 Leaving him in charge, I started out for the chief's kraal. But 
 we had not gone many miles when a native came running and 
 shouting after us to say that Dr. Scott had arrived from Bandwe. 
 I was glad to have his company. I had sent word to Bandwe 
 to all my fellow-missionaries of the disturbance, and, knowing 
 that I was alone, Dr. Scott, with great kindness, had started 
 off immediately, and had come on, in spite of rain, to be with me. 
 The two of us then went out together. We had waited for six 
 days for an answer from the collector, but none had come. 
 We started out between three and four in the morning, and 
 hurried over the twenty or thirty miles as quickly as we could. 
 As we went along the path the people came out to us with tales 
 of their wrongs, and demanded with vehemence the punishment 
 of the white man. An old man, bent and blind with his ninety 
 
 years, was carried to the side of the path. He told how Z 's 
 
 men had entered his village, had taken all his cattle, outraged 
 the women in the village, and after stripping him of his little 
 trinkets, had whipped him and knocked him down. 
 
 When we arrived at the chief's head village, we found about 
 two thousand men waiting for us in the kraal. We sat down, 
 and the chief called on some of his people to tell their stories. 
 They rose one after another, showing wounds from bullets and 
 clubs, and the long cuttings of the lash on their backs ; women 
 and girls were there who had been outraged ; and headmen told 
 how their cattle, sheep, and goats had been seized, and their 
 people murdered. 
 
 Then when all had finished, the chief rose and spoke. He 
 asked why they had not been allowed to pursue and kill the raider. 
 Were they to understand that our Queen allowed her subjects 
 to come into a friendly country, and commit these atrocities, with- 
 out his having power of redress? And now the criminal was 
 leaving their country with hundreds of their cattle, sheep, and 
 goats, and we would not allow them to arrest their own property. 
 
 I replied that as the trader was probably a British subject, 
 serious complications would follow if they did him harm; that 
 
372 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 I had sent runners to the nearest collector, but no answer had 
 been received. I could only explain this silence by surmising 
 that he recognised that the Ngoni were still an independent 
 people, and were outside his sphere of jurisdiction. But they 
 must not think that our Queen approved of such raiding by 
 white men; that she stands for justice and for peace. Then I 
 suggested that as the collector had not come, and as the cattle 
 would soon be out of their country and beyond their control, 
 a company of fighting men should go out in the morning and 
 stop the cattle, and that Dr. Scott and I would go with them, 
 on certain conditions — namely, that we choose the warriors ; that 
 we alone have dealings with the white man, for they were not 
 going to fight, but to ask him to come back to settle the dispute 
 in open court; and that no beer should be drunk on the way to 
 inflame their passions. These conditions were at once granted. 
 
 Next morning the regiments gathered. They dashed up to 
 the kraal gate, some of them adorned with wild feather head- 
 dress, and all fully armed with spears and shields and old muzzle- 
 loading guns. Before they had gathered, however, a messenger 
 arrived from Mr. Murray, to say that the collector was at 
 Ekwendeni and would start in the morning for the chief's kraal. 
 We sent out a special lot of carriers to meet him and bring 
 him on with all speed. When he arrived he explained that he 
 had been delayed by the rain. The chief and his people gathered 
 together on the following morning, and again went over their 
 tale of woe. And the collector, through his interpreter, made 
 a strong speech to the people denouncing such filibustering, and 
 asked for a company of warriors to go out with him and his 
 
 police to pursue Z 's party. That afternoon they started off, 
 
 and with easier minds Dr. Scott and I returned home, leaving 
 the whole affair in the hands of the collector. It is a rule of 
 our mission that we should not interfere with civil matters, and 
 beyond expounding what we believe to be the laws of justice 
 and peace, we leave the administration of them to the proper 
 native and European authorities. 
 
 After a few days the collector returned without his captive. 
 
 Z had a week's start of his pursuers, and was out of the 
 
 country long before they reached its borders. The new telegraph 
 
 line was set a-working for Z 's arrest. But he had taken 
 
 the bull by the horns, and had lodged a complaint against us 
 at the first Government station he had come to. He told how 
 Ngoniland was in a state of great unrest, and required immediate 
 pacification by British arms ; how the missionary had sent out 
 an impi to attack him, and they had seized a great number of 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 373 
 
 his cattle, boxes of gin, and other things ; how he had been 
 wounded on the head and body, and had barely escaped with 
 his life. Where he told it his story was accepted as truth. The 
 Central Africa Government, however, began to investigate the 
 
 whole affair, and a few months after Z was brought back 
 
 to Ekwendeni for trial before the sub-commissioner, Captain 
 Pearce. Mr. Knipe, the collector whose kindly manner quickly 
 won the confidence of the people, prosecuted on behalf of the 
 Queen. The prisoner was charged with nine serious crimes, and 
 was found guilty of eight of them. A pleasing feature of the 
 trial was that not a single misstatement or contradiction was 
 made by the Ngoni witnesses, in spite of all the cross-examina- 
 tion. It was far otherwise with the native servants of Z 
 
 who came to give evidence in his favour. One of our teachers, 
 
 in telling his story, said that at first he thought Z 's men were 
 
 askari — that is, Government police. " What made you think 
 that?" the commissioner sharply asked. 
 
 " Because they were lifting cattle without paying for them," 
 the witness naively replied. There was a laugh in the court at 
 this unconscious sarcasm. 
 
 The Judge summed up in a long and able speech, in which 
 
 he censured Z in the strongest language. He found him 
 
 guilty of leading an armed party through a country friendly 
 to her Majesty, and that his party had seized cattle, had out- 
 raged, wounded, and killed the natives. He was then sentenced 
 to pay a fine of fifty pounds, was bound over to keep the peace 
 in a recognisance of twenty-five pounds, with a bond of one 
 hundred pounds, and was made to pay thirty shillings com- 
 pensation to the nearest relative of each one who had been killed, 
 as well as compensation to those natives who had been assaulted, 
 outraged, and robbed. The man was subsequently expelled from 
 the country for the repetition of his crimes. 
 
 The effect of his trial was to greatly increase the feeling 
 among the natives that the British Government is there for their 
 protection, and that the whiteness of a criminal's skin will not 
 save him from punishment. 
 
 But when Z left the court with his friend, a gold pros- 
 pector, their remark to one another was : " These missionaries 
 are a curse to the country. They are spoiling it for other white 
 men." — (The Christian Express, June i, 1901.) 
 
 Such tales, thank God, do not tell the whole story of our 
 relation to the non-Christian peoples. There have been many 
 
374 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 noble and true men who have lived among these peoples and 
 represented there the ideals of justice and righteousness, but 
 the problem of unity has been made tenfold more difficult by 
 the spirit of wrong and racial pride which these three tales 
 illustrate, and which has marked in one degree and another 
 much of our contact with the other peoples. " The conduct of 
 most foreigners, the missionary excepted," said Mr. John W. 
 Foster with temperate self-restraint, " in their intercourse with 
 the natives (of China), has been truthfully described as master- 
 ful, high-handed, and generally overbearing," and he quoted 
 General Gordon's words, forty years ago, that the Chinese " have 
 suffered much wrong from foreigners, who have preyed on their 
 country." 
 
 And not only by misconstruction of the nationalistic principle 
 and by individual insolence of race have we made our problem 
 harder, but the problem itself has almost resolved itself into 
 the necessity of justifying, or, since that cannot be done, of 
 atoning for the history of our past national dealings with the 
 non-Christian peoples. We have taken their territory, we have 
 maltreated their immigrants, we have shattered their institutions, 
 we have destroyed their industries, we have ridiculed their cus- 
 toms and sacred institutions. Called of God to weld humanity 
 into a unity, we have done our best to fill it with misunder- 
 standings and deep-seated hates. This is the dark construction 
 of modern history. There is also a noble story of human 
 service and national fair-dealing. And back of all, and over 
 all, a better will has wrought and evil has been shorn of its 
 full power, and in spite of all, the love of God has been com- 
 pacting the world's life, and the end of all, we hold, will be 
 the one family of God. 
 
 In counteracting all that has hindered, and in providing ele- 
 ments which are essential to the perfecting of Christian national- 
 ism and the unification of mankind, the missionary enterprise 
 is charged with the necessary and availing work. 
 
 i. First of all, it is the missionary construction of Chris- 
 tianity alone which proclaims a hope and use for every race. 
 It affirms the dignity of each national genius and destiny, and 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 375 
 
 the necessity of its contribution to the perfected family of God. 
 It denies the validity of the principle of racial separation, and 
 will not believe that any fiat of the Almighty has closed the 
 door or denied the power of the endless life to any race. It 
 takes issue absolutely with Mr. Townsend's view that " some- 
 thing radical, something unalterable and indestructible divides 
 the Asiatic from the European. . . . They are fenced off 
 from each other by an invisible, impalpable, but impassable 
 wall." — ("Asia and Europe," pp. 50, 150.) That is the fact 
 with which the merely political construction of the world con- 
 fronts itself. " Imperialism," as the New York Post put it 
 recently, " is all the while being brought up short with these 
 mortifying inconsistencies. It professes to be going forward 
 with a policy of all-embracing justice. Freedom and self-gov- 
 ernment it cannot promise, but fair and equal treatment it does. 
 Yet it finds that the ugly prejudice of race and colour is ever 
 and again nullifying its fine words. There is no magic in the 
 word imperial to make men abandon greed and deal with a 
 fellow-being as an equal before the law and in the sight of God. 
 And whether we call ourselves imperialist or parochial, there 
 is not much for it but to get it into our heads and our hearts 
 that it is infinitely mean to despise a man, and refuse to give 
 him a fair chance, merely because he is poor or black." But 
 that word belongs to Christianity and to the missionary con- 
 struction of Christianity. Without it our political problem is 
 hopeless, the problem merely of truce among foes, the accept- 
 ance of a perpetual estrangement in humanity. The missionary 
 enterprise gives us the exactly opposite principle. 
 
 2. In the development of a true nationalism and of friendly 
 racial relations the missionary agency is as Mr. Reed, the United 
 States Minister to China, wrote to the Secretary of State in 
 1858, a great conserving and conciliating influence. " Having 
 no enthusiasm on the subject," wrote Mr. Reed, " I am bound 
 to say that I consider the missionary element in China a great 
 conservative and protecting principle. It is the only barrier 
 between the unhesitating advance of commercial adventure and 
 the not incongruous element of Chinese imbecile corruption." 
 
376 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 The service of the missionary enterprise in this regard is varied 
 and it is indispensable to the neighborliness of mankind. The 
 missionaries make the East and West, the North and South, 
 acquainted with one another. " The greatest agency to-day in 
 keeping us advised of the conditions among Oriental races," 
 said President Taft in a recent address, " is the establishment 
 of foreign missions." — (Address at Founders' Day Exercises, 
 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, February 22, 1909.) 
 All other agencies combined do not do as much to introduce the 
 West to the Oriental races. The missionaries bind the peoples 
 in friendliness. They draw after them the love of millions in 
 the lands from which they come, and it is their business to 
 win the friendship of those to whom they go. There they 
 become centres of good-will and kindly feeling. What one of 
 the oldest of their number, Dr. William Ashmore, has said of 
 his associates in China is true the world over: 
 
 The Missionary himself is a very numerous personage. 
 Taken men and women together there are about twenty-six 
 hundred of him in China. Then all speak the language, many 
 of them with very great fluency. In addition to their knowledge 
 of the language is their even more important knowledge of the 
 people themselves, of their local usages and customs, and of 
 their ways of reasoning and of looking at things — quite abreast 
 of the native himself, some of them. They know yamen usages 
 and all the innumerable ins and outs of the whole social ma- 
 chinery. These Chinese-speaking men and women are scattered 
 all over the Empire, in every one of the provinces — some one 
 or more of them in almost every great city. They live among 
 the people, and are in close contact with them every day — with 
 common people, with merchants, with the respectable gentry of 
 the city and, to some extent, with the officials. It is the business 
 of these persons to conciliate people. That is what they are 
 there for. They seek to do it to the utmost of their ability, 
 and the majority of them display some tact in the matter; they 
 start schools and they open hospitals ; they dispense medicines ; 
 they are in the market and in the shops, and along the highway, 
 and talking with people, making acquaintances and making 
 friends — friends not only for themselves, but for their country- 
 men far away whom the town people have never seen, but about 
 whom they have heard that they are ogres and devils. These 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 377 
 
 missionaries show that it is not so, for these missionaries are 
 cultured people and have good manners, and understand pro- 
 priety. They are not rude and rough in their treatment of their 
 servants, and they pay all their debts, and have warm friends 
 among the shopkeepers, who commend them for their fair dealing. 
 An acquired reputation like this is worth something to the 
 entire foreign community in China, and is the more highly to 
 be prized in that it is oftentimes of slow acquisition, and repre- 
 sents a deal of patient living down of the bad reputation which 
 in the minds of most country people attaches to the Western 
 man. We have no means of estimating the amount of this kind- 
 liness and softened estimate towards us as foreigners generated 
 by the missionary body, but we do know that it is very good. 
 One missionary family in an inland town or city will, in the 
 course of a few years, make hundreds of friends, possibly, or 
 if not actual friends, people who will be kindly disposed to him 
 and his little children. 
 
 In time of suffering it is they who enlist the sympathy of 
 the richer peoples and are the almoners of their bounty. Of 
 their services in the last great famine in China, one of the 
 leading English papers in Shanghai remarked : " It must be 
 regarded as a fortunate circumstance that the famine commit- 
 tees have been able to enlist the services of the local mission- 
 aries in the distribution of relief. Their fitness for the work 
 entrusted to them, which they have willingly undertaken, no 
 one will question, whilst their probity and conscientious adminis- 
 tration of the funds are equally beyond cavil. Their knowledge 
 of the language and customs of the people, and their, generally 
 speaking, friendly relations with them, constitute them the most 
 fitting instruments for the work." (The North China Herald, 
 March 28, 1907, editorial, " The Famine.") Many mission- 
 aries, already endeared to the people among whom they worked, 
 have been enshrined in an almost religious reverence for such 
 sacrificial service. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply indefinitely the evidences of 
 the work of sympathy and conciliatory understanding wrought 
 by missionaries. Two concrete illustrations must suffice. One 
 is the case of a missionary in China who, after twenty years 
 of service, was returning home a year ago. Before he left, two 
 
378 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 documents of appreciation were drawn up by the prefectural and 
 county mandarins of the neighbourhood where he resided. The 
 prefectural mandarin wrote of him: " During the past few years, 
 whenever I have interviewed the gentry and scholars, the 
 merchants, and the people generally, in the country around, they 
 all without exception have spoken of his goodness in a most 
 spontaneous fashion. Those worn with age or ruddy with youth 
 all tell the same tale. A refined friendship has been cemented 
 between the missionary and myself, during the whole of which 
 I have never heard him utter an ungenerous word, or seen a 
 frown upon his face. We often chatted together at considerable 
 length, and on each occasion there has been the unconstrained 
 outflow of thought and feeling. I have been glad, indeed, in 
 my wanderings to have met with such a friend. And I have 
 been even more glad to note the manner in which he has aroused 
 the latent sensibilities of the populace to similarity of feeling 
 and a recognition of the essential unity of principles, so that the 
 barriers of East and West have been forgotten, and a valuable 
 contribution has been secured toward cordial international rela- 
 tions generally." And many such words. To which the county 
 mandarin adds much more, saying, among other things : " He 
 has lived here for twenty years, and managed matters so well 
 that there has been no enmity between the populace and the 
 Church. Indeed, the whole prefecture unites as one in his 
 praises — a fact so well known that I need not relate it. He 
 has been pre-eminent in his proclamation of religion, both in 
 its details and in its permeating principles. And he may rest 
 assured that, after his return, his instruction and doctrine will 
 continue to progress more and more." 
 
 The other illustration is the life of Dr. C. W. Forman, for 
 nearly half a century a missionary in Lahore, India. At his 
 death in 1894 The Tribune, a non-Christian paper published in 
 Lahore, summed up the popular estimate of the man : 
 
 It will be long before Lahoris forget the sweet and benign 
 face of the great American missionary, who went to his reward 
 on Monday last. They had affectionately styled him Baba For- 
 man (Grandfather Forman), and whenever he passed through 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 379 
 
 the streets on his way to the school or one of the preaching 
 stations in the city crowds of boys would follow him with cries 
 of " Baba Forman ! " and sometimes, surrounding him, pull his 
 sleeves and coat-tails and beg for more tracts with coloured il- 
 lustrations. It is only a few months ago we met him one evening 
 near Rang Mahal coming toward Lohari Gate. It had rained 
 hard the whole day and the pavement was ankle-deep in mud. 
 The narrow thoroughfare, nevertheless, was crowded as ever. 
 There were the street Arabs playing in the gutters and running 
 between people's legs. There were ladies painfully slipping along 
 rather than walking (on account of their inconvenient slippers) 
 through the jostling crowd. There were the usual assortment 
 of pariah dogs, Brahminy bulls, hawkers of sweets, business men, 
 loafers, faquirs, roughs, students, clerks, etc. Our attention was 
 drawn to an end of the street from where a knot of boys was 
 slowly advancing. When sufficiently near we observed it was 
 the venerable Padri attended by his usual escort. 
 
 No one seeing him for the first time failed to be struck with 
 his magnificent presence. He was over rather than below six feet 
 in height and proportionately broad. A snow-white beard sweep- 
 ing a broad, manly chest, a large Roman nose, small laughing 
 bluish grey eyes, cliff-like brows surmounted by a broad expan- 
 sive forehead, polished as marble, made up a face which a sculptor 
 would unhesitatingly accept as a model for the head of an 
 earnest teacher. Half of our educated young men have been 
 brought up in his school. Almost all Lahoris of the batch, which 
 has just retired or is retiring from service, had received their 
 education under his supervision, consequently there are few 
 sufaidposh people in Lahore who were not personally acquainted 
 with him. And the good missionary did not pass the most in- 
 significant among them without stopping to enquire as to how 
 they were doing, whether anything troubled them, etc. We doubt 
 whether any other man, European or Indian, has taken as great 
 a part in the making of the Punjab of to-day as Dr. Forman. A 
 history of his educational work would be almost the educational 
 history of the Province. He came to this city in 1848 as a mis- 
 sionary of the American Presbyterian Church. Happily for 
 us, while passing through Lower Bengal on his way to Upper 
 India, he had observed the brilliant results achieved by Dr. Duff 
 and his devoted colleagues, and he resolved in his mind to carry 
 the Gospel to the people through the medium of English educa- 
 tion. Arriving at Ludhiana, he received valuable hints and guid- 
 ance from the late Dr. Newton, whose daughter he afterwards 
 married. Reaching Lahore he devoted all his mighty energies 
 
380 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 to bring the torch of knowledge to the people who were steeped 
 in superstition and dense ignorance. He had to fight against 
 appalling difficulties, and one by one removed all. The authorities 
 did not look with favour on his efforts. The parents of boys 
 thought they were conferring a great favour on him by sending 
 the youngsters to him. He had to give scholarships to most of 
 his pupils as an inducement to them to stay in his school. It 
 was by such means that he made education popular here. Look- 
 ing round his assembled pupils, over one thousand in number at 
 morning prayer time, he used often to remark that he had begun 
 with one and had been delighted once on having six together. 
 So long ago as early in the sixties he had opened college classes 
 in his school with a strong staff of professors. 
 
 Afterwards he had reluctantly to close the college, but only 
 for a few years. He established more than a dozen of branch 
 schools in all parts of the city for the teaching of children. For 
 the benefit of workmen and others, who could not afford to read 
 in the daytime, he started a night school, which was formerly 
 known as the Mission Adult School. There are hundreds who 
 owe their rise in life to that school. The night school is flourish- 
 ing and doing its blessed work. Most of his time and attention 
 was given to educational work. But he was not at all remiss 
 in his preaching duties. In every weather, in every season, he 
 was never absent from his post in the Lohari Gate or Delhi Gate 
 Chapels, or Lohari Mandi and Hira Mandi preaching stations. 
 To his flock of the mission compound he was as a father. He 
 was far from a good orator, but he was very effective as a 
 preacher. Whatever he said came direct from the heart and 
 went direct to the heart of his listener. Though he is no longer 
 working in the flesh in our midst, the spirit of his work will 
 beckon us onward. His memory will long be a " pillar of light " 
 to our people. 
 
 The funeral took place on Thursday afternoon. The body 
 was brought down from Kasauli and reached Lahore Station 
 by about 3 p.m. There was a strong muster of pupils, friends, 
 and admirers of the deceased missionary on the platform. A 
 solemn silence fell on the gathering as the train arrived. The 
 large box containing the mortal remains was reverently lifted 
 up by some students of the Mission School and others, and 
 carried up to the bungalow in the Mission compound close by, 
 which Dr. Forman had occupied for over forty years. Thence 
 the body was placed in a coffin and taken to the Mission Church, 
 where touching funeral orations were delivered. Among others, 
 the venerable Lala Chandu Lai spoke feelingly of the great work 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 381 
 
 done by the padri. Then a procession was formed and all 
 proceeded through the city to the Protestant Cemetery. The 
 Rev. Henry Forman and the Rev. John Forman, two sons of 
 Dr. Forman, were the chief mourners. Not less than three thou- 
 sand persons of all classes and creeds followed the hearse. Pun- 
 dit Prem Nath, Examiner, Public Works Department ; Pundit 
 Amar Nath, retired Extra Assistant Commissioner ; Babu Gunda 
 Mai, and many other old pupils of Dr. Forman were visibly 
 moved. In the city hundreds joined the solemn procession. All 
 differences of creed and colour seemed to be forgotten for the 
 moment, and all united to do honour to the memory of the pious 
 deceased. When the coffin was lowered into the grave there 
 were few dry eyes in the vast throng. The hearse and coffin were 
 covered with wreaths of flowers, which were placed upon them 
 by Hindus, Mussulmans, and Christians alike. 
 
 A public meeting of the pupils, friends, and admirers of Dr. 
 Forman was held in the Rang Mahal yesterday evening. Pundit 
 Prem Nath, Examiner, Public Works Department, occupied the 
 chair. Several impressive speeches were delivered expressing the 
 sense of the loss sustained by the community by the death of the 
 veteran educationist and preacher of the Gospel. Several pro- 
 posals were adopted for keeping his memory green in the Punjab. 
 Another great meeting will be held on Sunday. 
 
 These are not isolated and exceptional cases. The mission- 
 ary enterprise everywhere is itself only when it is a movement 
 of good-will and friendship. It is in this that the secret of 
 its power to promote peace and order resides — a power greater, 
 where it is allowed to work, than any other power the West 
 possesses. " I have relied," said Sir Peregrine Maitland, Gov- 
 ernor of Cape Colony, " more upon the labours of missionaries 
 for the peaceful government of the natives than upon the pres- 
 ence of British troops." " For the preservation of peace be- 
 tween the colonists and natives," said General Sir Charles War- 
 ren, Governor of Natal, " one missionary is worth a battalion 
 of soldiers." " In my judgment," said Sir Augustus Rivers 
 Thompson, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, " Christian mission- 
 aries have done more real and lasting good to the people of 
 India than all other agencies combined. They have been the 
 salt of the country and the true saviours of the empire." 
 
 No small part of the conserving work the missionary has 
 
382 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 done has been to war against the hateful forces which are 
 destructive of racial as well as individual character, and thus 
 to save national character and its power to fulfil its mission. 
 It was the missionary movement that checked the annihilating 
 traffic in liquor in Africa and the South Seas, and stopped the 
 slave trade. What success in the anti-opium campaign has 
 been attained, said Mr. Wong at the reception given to the 
 members of the International Opium Commission in Shanghai 
 on February 3, 1909, was largely due to missionaries. In- 
 directly, he thought the Commission would draw the nations 
 represented closer together, as nothing drew peoples together 
 more than united action for a righteous cause. And of the 
 service of the missionary movement in saving a whole race, a 
 competent witness has borne testimony : " The Esquimaux 
 are all Christians," said Dr. Grenfell of Labrador. " The 
 Moravian missionaries converted them long ago. In general 
 morality, I should say, that they rank higher than most Christian 
 communities. Christianity is a saving influence with them; but 
 for it I am sure that they would have been extinct long ago 
 from the vices which follow trade." It may be said that such 
 a preservation is trivial, that these marginal races have no con- 
 tribution to make to the united life of the family of God. The 
 Christian view is different, but even so, if we are to let these 
 indifferent races alone, it must be on fair terms. If they are 
 to be denied our Gospel, they must be spared also our lusts 
 and the diseases which we have never hesitated to propagate 
 throughout the world. 
 
 But it has been not only among the feeble peoples and in 
 the destruction of the predatory forces of the West that the 
 missionary enterprise has made its contribution. It has been 
 doing all over the world the solid work at the base of the new 
 civilisation. Mr. McKinley bore witness to this in one of his 
 last addresses: 
 
 I am glad of the opportunity to offer without stint my tribute 
 of praise and respect to the missionary effort, which has wrought 
 such wonderful triumphs for civilisation. The story of the 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 383 
 
 Christian Missions is one of thrilling interest and marvellous 
 results. The services and the sacrifices of the missionaries for 
 their fellow-men constitute one of the most glorious pages of 
 the world's history. The missionary, of whatever Church or 
 ecclesiastical body, who devotes his life to the service of the 
 Master and of men, carrying the torch of truth and enlightenment, 
 deserves the gratitude, the support, and the homage of mankind. 
 The noble, self-effacing, willing ministers of peace and good- 
 will should be classed with the world's heroes. 
 
 They count their labour no sacrifice. " Away with the word 
 in such a view and with such a thought," says David Livingstone ; 
 " it is emphatically no sacrifice ; say, rather, it is a privilege." 
 They furnish us examples of forbearance, fortitude, of patience, 
 and unyielding purpose, and of spirit which triumphs not by the 
 force of might, but by the persuasive majesty of right. 
 
 Who can estimate their value to the progress of nations? 
 Their contribution to the onward and upward march of humanity 
 is beyond all calculation. They have inculcated industry and 
 taught the various trades. They have prompted concord and 
 amity, and brought nations and races closer together. They have 
 made men better. They have increased the regard for home ; 
 have strengthened the sacred ties of family ; have made the com- 
 munity well-ordered, and their work has been a potent influence 
 in the development of law and the establishment of government. — 
 (Report of Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions, Vol. I, 
 P- 39 f) 
 
 And one who through tragic experiences came to know 
 the missionary and his mission well, the late American Minister 
 to China, Mr. Conger, in an address not long before his death, 
 bore his authoritative testimony : 
 
 For seven years I was most intimately associated with the 
 American missionaries in China, and I take genuine pleasure and 
 pride in certifying to all the world, and particularly to those 
 who support and stand behind them, that they are a body of men 
 and women who, measured by the good they do, by the sacrifices 
 they make, the trials they endure, and the risks they take, are 
 veritable heroes, whose absolutely unselfish devotion to humanity 
 is surpassed nowhere on the face of the earth. They are the 
 pioneers in all that land. They are invariably the forerunners 
 and forebears of all that is best in Western civilisation. It is 
 they who, armed only with the Bible and with school-books, and 
 
384 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 sustained by a faith which gives them unflinching courage, have 
 penetrated into the darkest interior of that great Chinese Empire, 
 hitherto unvisited by foreigners, and blazed the way for the on- 
 coming commerce which everywhere has quickly followed them. 
 It was they who first planted the banner of the Prince of Peace 
 in every place where now floats the flag of commerce and trade. 
 The dim pathways which they traced, often marking them with 
 their life's blood, are being rapidly transformed into great high- 
 ways of travel and trade, and are fast becoming lined with 
 chapels, schoolhouses, and railway stations, where heretofore 
 were found only idolatrous shrines and lodging places for wheel- 
 barrow-men and pack mules. — (The Spirit of Missions, Novem- 
 ber, 1906.) 
 
 In these and deeper ways the missionary movement has been 
 a great constructive and conciliatory power. 
 
 3. In the third place, Christianity in the missionary enter- 
 prise introduces the new principles from without which are 
 not found in the non-Christian nations, and without which they 
 cannot take their true place or fulfil their missions, or be ready 
 for human unity. The non-Christian nations are realising that 
 they do not have these principles and must find them. Some 
 seek them in a reinterpretation of their ancient oracles ; some 
 in the secular instructions of the West. But the leaders know 
 that they are wanting and must be found. " It matters noth- 
 ing," said the Gaekwar of Baroda, at the Indian National Social 
 Conference in his inaugural address in 1904 ; " it matters noth- 
 ing where the truth comes from. If it serves a national purpose 
 or helps national ends, then it is national, whether the form in 
 which we find it is modern or Vedic, European or purely Indian. 
 And we must be eager to find the knowledge and apply it, 
 whether it has the sanction of the older ideas or not. We have 
 to look forward to the future of India ; we are not going to 
 revive the past. . . . What we need now is action — common- 
 sense practical measures, and not discussion as to whether this 
 or that reform is justified by older traditions or the sacred 
 writings of our ancestors. . . . We must not only accept knowl- 
 edge intellectually, but have the moral courage to alter our 
 actions and customs in accordance. Otherwise, our knowledge 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 385 
 
 is of little use; for the true test of knowledge is its practical 
 utility in equipping the society for the actual problems of life. 
 If then, our customs put us at a disadvantage in the struggle 
 of life, it is useless to persist in them merely because they 
 are our own or old." Now, these new principles for which the 
 nations are feeling have their origin and their full life only 
 in the missionary interpretation of Christianity. 
 
 It alone fits men for freedom, by teaching them self-control 
 in liberty, and making them fearless followers of the truth which 
 makes men free. These two great gifts of the Gospel — truth 
 and freedom — are the needs of the non-Christian peoples. On 
 his return from his recent visit to Europe and America, the 
 Gaekwar of Baroda pointed out their needs in a notable address 
 to the Indian Industrial Conference in Calcutta : " The most 
 frequent criticism offered against us as a people by candid 
 critics is that we are disunited, many-minded, and incapable of 
 unselfish co-operation for national ends. . . . The atmosphere 
 of the West is throbbing with vigorous mental life. The pur- 
 suit of new truth is the first concern of every stalwart mind of 
 the West, while the mass of our people are content to live 
 stolid, conventional lives, blindly following the precepts of the 
 fathers rather than emulating the example they set by intellectual 
 independence and constructive energy." One of the best friends 
 and truest servants India ever had, Sir Herbert Edwardes, told 
 her where she could have her needs met. " Till India is leavened 
 with Christianity," he said in an address on " Our Indian Em- 
 pire " in Manchester in i860, " she will be unfit for freedom. 
 When India is leavened with Christianity she will be unfit for 
 any form of slavery, however mild. England may then leave 
 her, with an overthrown idolatry and a true faith built up; 
 with developed resources ; and with an enlightened and awak- 
 ened people, no longer isolated in the East, but linked with 
 the civilised races of the West." A modern student and friend 
 of India has told her the same thing, and the principle which 
 he sets forth is true of all the true life and true freedom of the 
 world. " The one essential," says Bishop Lefroy, " without 
 which any hope of such independence and larger national life 
 
386 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 appears an empty dream, is the infusion of a spirit both of 
 unity and of vigorous, healthy, new life, of which as yet there 
 is but the barest commencement in India, and which, as I 
 believe, can be looked for from nowhere except from the spread 
 of Christianity in the land." — (Charge to Clergy, November 6, 
 1906, p. 27,.) 
 
 These nations need Christianity to fit men for freedom. 
 They need it also to teach men service, which is the divine end 
 of freedom. Until men are unselfish freedom is only an en- 
 larged opportunity for action hostile to human unity. And 
 Christianity, uttering itself through one channel or another, can 
 alone teach the nations this law of ministry, which is a new 
 principle to the non-Christian peoples. An article in an In- 
 dian paper, "The United India and Native States" (November 
 14, 1908), is a candid acknowledgment of this: 
 
 This kind of public spirit is entirely a Western product. 
 India has known from time immemorial the virtue of charity, 
 especially of the pious kind, but public spirit is very different 
 from charity. The underlying principle of public spirit is that 
 the best and surest way of raising the individual is to raise 
 the society of which he is a member. Charity, on the other hand, 
 looks to the individual and is not infrequently exercised regard- 
 less of its effect on the community as a whole. The individual- 
 istic conception of religious life in India was not favourable 
 to the growth of public spirit. The socialistic conception of 
 Christianity, to which the West owes all that is most vital in its 
 civilisation, may be regarded as the parent of public spirit. Sacri- 
 fice as a means of self-development is at the root of Indian culture 
 and civilisation. Protestant Christianity, claiming rightly or 
 wrongly to be the true interpreter of Christ's teaching, has 
 definitely abandoned sacrifice in favour of service as the true 
 means of individual development. India has not accepted Chris- 
 tianity, but it has accepted its central doctrine of Service as 
 being of superior national efficacy to its ancient principle of 
 Sacrifice. This momentous change has been effected through 
 the medium of English education ; and to the mind which sees 
 history only as the process of man's moral and spiritual evolu- 
 tion, the task of England in India would seem to be finished 
 when — and not until — the theoretical acceptance of the principle 
 of Service by the best minds of the country has found expression 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 387 
 
 in the structure of its social and national life. A thousand sedi- 
 tious and anarchical movements cannot hasten the arrival of 
 that time by a single hour, a hundred thousand repressive laws 
 will not delay its advent by a single minute. All these are " but 
 trouble of ants in a million of suns." Each race has as its 
 appointed task the uplifting of another race than itself. Its 
 strength, its wisdom, its power, are all lent to it for that purpose 
 and are withdrawn from it when they cease to fulfil it. The rise, 
 growth, and decay of empires from this point of view are full 
 of practical lessons to mankind. The gift of England to India 
 is the principle of Service, of public spirit, of nationalism. 
 
 Furthermore, it is the missionary construction of Christianity 
 which must give the world the principle of equality of man and 
 woman, of man and man. The non-Christian principles of class 
 and sex inequality have ruled the whole world except as Christ 
 has changed it. The conditions which in one degree or another 
 have prevailed throughout the world, and the protest which the 
 Christian spirit has awakened against them, — for all the protest 
 has come from that spirit, — are set forth by the Gaekwar of 
 Baroda, who is not a Christian, in one of the addresses from 
 which I have already quoted : 
 
 Let us now examine our two great problems — caste and the 
 status of women — in more detail, endeavouring to understand 
 what they are at present, what are the defects which they impose 
 on the society, and what is the reality which they conceal or 
 obscure. 
 
 The evils of caste cover the whole range of social life. It 
 hampers the life of the individual with a vast number of petty 
 rules and observances which have no meaning. It cripples him 
 in his relations with his family, in his marriage, in the education 
 of his children, and especially in his life. It weakens the eco- 
 nomic position by attempting to confine him to particular trades, 
 by preventing him from learning the culture of the West, and 
 by giving him an exaggerated view of his knowledge and im- 
 portance. It cripples his professional life by increasing distrust, 
 treachery, and jealousy, hampering a free use of others' abilities, 
 and ruins his social life by increasing exclusiveness, restricting 
 the opportunities of social intercourse, and preventing that in- 
 tellectual development on which the prosperity of any class most 
 depends. In the wider spheres of life, in municipal or local 
 
388 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 affairs, it destroys all hope of local patriotism, of work for the 
 common good, by thrusting forward the interest of the caste as 
 opposed to those of the community and by making combined 
 efforts for the common good exceedingly difficult. But its most 
 serious offence is its effect on national life and national unity. 
 It intensifies local dissensions and diverse interests, and obscures 
 great national ideals and interests, which should be those of every 
 caste and people, and renders the country disunited and in- 
 capable of improving its defects or of availing itself of the 
 advantages which it should gain from contact with the civilisa- 
 tion of the West. It robs us of our humanity by insisting on 
 the degradation of some of our fellow-men who are separated 
 from us by no more than accident of birth. It prevents the 
 noble and charitable impulses which have done so much for the 
 improvement and mutual benefit of European society. It pre- 
 vents our making the most of all the various abilities of our 
 diverse communities ; it diminishes all our emotional activities 
 and intellectual resources. Again, it is the most conservative 
 element in our society and the steady enemy to all reform. 
 Every reformer who has endeavoured to secure the advance of 
 our society has been driven out of it by the operation of caste. 
 By this rigidity, it preserves ignorant superstitions and clings 
 to the past, while it does nothing to make those inevitable changes 
 which nature is ever pressing on us more easy and more pos- 
 sible. . . . 
 
 It is not necessary for me to dwell upon all those familiar 
 questions which cluster around the question of the status of 
 women. I would merely point out that what we may most 
 legitimately object against each is that they involve a bad economy 
 of social forces. 
 
 Early marriage, especially now that the checks on early con- 
 summation are breaking down, must increase death and disease 
 among the mothers, swell infant mortality, and injure the phy- 
 sique of the race. It interferes, also, with the proper education 
 of women. 
 
 A too strict purdah mutilates social life and makes its current 
 dull and sluggish by excluding the brightening influence of 
 women. 
 
 By the denial of education to women we deprive ourselves 
 of half the potential force of the nation, deny to our children 
 the advantage of having cultured mothers, and by stunting the 
 faculties of the mother affect injuriously the heredity of the 
 race. We create, moreover, a gulf of mental division in the 
 home, and put a powerful drag on progress by making the 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 389 
 
 women a great conservative force that clings to everything old, 
 however outworn or irrational. . . . 
 
 The existence, side by side, of customs like polygamy and 
 the prohibition of widow remarriage similarly shows a bad or- 
 ganisation of society. The one keeps up an unduly low standard 
 of morality among men, the other demands an impossibly high 
 standard from women. To enforce the standard we suppress 
 our feelings of humanity and affection and inflict severities upon 
 widows in order to keep their vitality low and make them less 
 attractive; yet the impossibility remains, and the laws of nature 
 we have ignored avenge themselves ; for, in spite of our harsh 
 measures, we fail to preserve even an ordinary standard of 
 morality in this much ill-treated class. 
 
 We should, however, realise where the evil lies. It is in the 
 lowering of our ideas about women and the relation of the 
 sexes. — (Report of Indian National Social Conference, at Bom- 
 bay, 1904.) 
 
 These are needs which must come to Christianity for their 
 supply. 
 
 And one other principle which the Christian ideal has to con- 
 tribute from without is the ideal of a true nationalism. " The 
 very idea of nationality has come to the educated mind of India 
 under the auspices of Christianity ; it has been undoubtedly 
 quickened by the unconscious assimilation of ideas and prin- 
 ciples essentially Christian. Split up hitherto into a number of 
 separate and conflicting races and castes, a corporate life is 
 now beginning to stir." — (Slater, " Missions and Sociology," 
 p. 14.) It is Christianity and the Christian principles embodied, 
 with whatever obscuration, in British rule in India, which have 
 created this stirring and given it the life of hope. And through- 
 out the world the missionary movement as we have sought to set 
 it forth has been one of the great educative ideas, and is the 
 true norm and illumination of the Christian nationalism which 
 is the divine principle of the next stage in the development of 
 humanity. 
 
 4. And Christianity not only introduces from without the 
 principles required for the development and unity of humanity, 
 but it presents in doing so the only possible method of achieving 
 unity. It deals directly with the individual and moves upon his 
 
390 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 personality and will, and so rests the new movement where alone 
 it can stably rest, upon the redeemed character of persons. " The 
 mightiest civilising agencies," says Dr. Fairbairn, " are persons. 
 The mightiest civilising persons are Christian men." And it 
 appeals through the mind and heart of the individual to the 
 reason of the world. "If our people are ever to be moved," 
 says Mr. Dickinson's Chinese official, " their reason and their 
 heart must be convinced." — (" Letters from a Chinese Official," 
 p. 42.) That is true of all the peoples, and that is the method, 
 and the only method of the missionary enterprise. It is speak- 
 ing to the reason and the heart of nations. By the purely per- 
 suasive agencies which it uses, the voice of the friend, the steady 
 upheaving transformation of the school, the tenderness of sym- 
 pathy in suffering, by dissolving prejudice and incarnating the 
 truth of human oneness, it is convincing the world's reason, even 
 when it is unaware, and has already penetrated every nation 
 and permeated some with the principles by which the people are 
 to fulfil their separate destinies and attain their heavenly ordered 
 unity at the last. 
 
 5. Yet once more, the missionary work of Christianity is 
 essential and effective because it provides the adequate moral 
 basis which is necessary for the life and institutions of the 
 peoples. All the non-Christian peoples have lacked the moral 
 basis of a national life. The Chinese have come nearest to pos- 
 sessing it, and what was strong in China's neighbouring nations 
 was borrowed from the Chinese, but even there the want of 
 what is elementary in Christianity deprived the Chinese people 
 of the central power of a great nationality. As the foreigner 
 wrote, who knew the nation as well as any foreigner has ever 
 known it: 
 
 Even among a people like the Chinese, who are possessed of 
 the conveniences of life and held together by an organised gov- 
 ernment founded on the consent of all classes, the want of truth 
 and integrity weakens every part of the social fabric. Moral 
 ethics, enforcing the social relations, the rights and duties of the 
 rulers and ruled, and the inculcation of the five constant virtues 
 have been taught in China for twenty-five centuries, and yet 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 391 
 
 have failed to teach the people to be truthful. They never can 
 do it, for they have no sanctions calculated to influence the mind 
 and strengthen it to resist temptation. . . . But until truth be- 
 comes even here the basis of society, so that a man sinks in the 
 estimation of his fellows if caught in a falsehood, and is afraid 
 to lie because he will be despised, the Chinese must remain far 
 below any Christian nation. They cannot progress in civilisation 
 until they become truthful. No corporate bodies formed among 
 them for the purpose of carrying out great plans of improve- 
 ment can cohere in consequence of this inherent weakness, be- 
 cause no subscribers will trust their money to such a company. 
 No insurance company can obtain the confidence of the com- 
 munity ; no trust company can succeed, let it promise ever so 
 much. If the government issues coin it is taken for its intrinsic 
 worth, like bullion, because it is so tampered with as to lose its 
 nominal value ; and the case is still worse with its bonds, — so 
 that China alone, of all the nations of the earth, has even now 
 no national silver or gold coin, and no bank bills, the only cur- 
 rency being a miserable copper-iron coin, so debased as not to 
 pay counterfeiters to imitate it. . . . Truth alone is the proper 
 aliment for the mind; on it alone can all the faculties acquire 
 their full development. — (S. Wells Williams, "The Middle 
 Kingdom," Vol. I, p. 352 ff.) 
 
 And so of every nation. Its deepest needs are the moral 
 needs, which must be met before the people can be free to 
 fulfil their divinely ordered ends. " It is the moral sense of 
 the people that has to be elevated," says a Hindu writer of 
 his own nation. (Jwala Dass in the Hindustan Review. See 
 The Literary Digest, February 15, 1908, p. 220.) And both 
 in the nation in its needs, and among the nations in their rela- 
 tions, Christianity, and Christianity alone, can furnish the in- 
 dispensable foundation. It is in Christianity and its principles, 
 which men cannot permanently separate from their historic 
 origin in it and their organic connection with it, that the moral 
 basis of true nationalism and of true universalism is to be found. 
 " Upon her perpetuation in the civilised world," says Bishop 
 Brent, speaking of the Christian Church in which Christianity 
 prosecutes her central mission among men, " depends the main- 
 tenance of common morality, not to mention moral refinements, 
 the achievement of even that moderate success in character- 
 
392 CHRISTIANITY AND THE NATIONS 
 
 building which marks the pathway of Christian history, that 
 buoyancy of hope which casts upon the harsh disciplines of life 
 something akin to transfiguring radiancy. Upon her extension 
 to every corner of the world that is ignorant of the truth, as 
 made known in the good news of the Saviour's message, hinges 
 the consummation of God's beneficent purposes for the human 
 race, the full knowledge of Christ's personality by men, and 
 that unification of the nations of the world which has ever been 
 the dream of philosophers, the labour of philanthropists, and the 
 prayer of the saints." 
 
 6. And lastly, the missionary movement embodies the one 
 supreme uniting power. Within each nation for the perfect 
 development of its character and for the faithful fulfilment of 
 its mission there must be some adequate unifying bond. The 
 bond must relate men in their deepest life, in the foundations 
 of their principles, in the fountains of their ideals, in their 
 eternal hopes. Only a common religion can supply that bond. 
 " Any one realising the importance attached to religion in Asia," 
 says Arminius Vambery, " will easily understand how impossible 
 it is to bridge over [politically] the gulf which separates the 
 professors of these various beliefs in India. Religion absorbs 
 the interest of the Asiatic ; it is stronger than his feeling of 
 nationality." — (" Western Culture in Eastern Lands," Ch. II.) 
 When any land is torn by religious and racial division, as Dr. 
 Ghose reminded the Surat Section of the Indian National Con- 
 gress of 1907, after the unhappy division of the Congress, it 
 cannot realise the unity of its character or its destiny. It was 
 the missionary movement in Christianity which furnished the 
 Roman Empire with this essential bond, and in his discernment 
 of the power and duty of Christianity thus to unite men, Pro- 
 fessor Ramsay has marked the supreme statesmanship of St. 
 Paul: 
 
 In the mind of the ancients no union of men, small or great, 
 good or bad, humble or honourable, was conceivable without 
 a religious bond to hold it together. The Roman Empire, if it 
 was to become an organic unity, must derive its vitality and its 
 hold on men's minds from some religious bond. Patriotism, to 
 
MISSIONS AND UNITY 393 
 
 the ancients, was adherence to a common religion, just as the 
 family tie was, not common blood, but communion in the family- 
 religion (for the adopted son was as real a member as the son 
 by nature). Accordingly, when Augustus essayed the great task 
 of consolidating the loosely aggregated parts of the vast Empire, 
 he had to find a religion to consecrate the unity by a common 
 idea and sentiment. The existing religions were all national, 
 while the Empire (as we saw) was striving to extirpate the 
 national divisions and create a supra-national unity. A new 
 religion was needed. Partly with conscious intention, partly 
 borne unconsciously on the tide of events, the young Empire 
 created the Imperial religion, the worship of an idea — the cult 
 of the Majesty of Rome, as represented by the incarnate deity 
 present on earth in the person of the reigning Emperor, and 
 by the dead gods, his deified predecessors on the throne. Except 
 for the slavish adulation of the living Emperor, the idea was not 
 devoid of nobility; but it was incapable of life, for it degraded 
 human nature, and was founded on a lie. But Paul gave the 
 Empire a more serviceable idea. He made possible that unity 
 at which the imperial policy was aiming. The true path of the 
 Empire lay in allowing free play to the idea which Paul offered, 
 and strengthening itself through this unifying religion. That 
 principle of perfect religious freedom (which we regard as 
 Seneca's) directed for a time the imperial policy, and caused 
 the acquittal of Paul on his first trial in Rome. But freedom was 
 soon exchanged for the policy of fire and sword. The imperial 
 gods would not give place to a more real religion, and fought 
 for two and a half centuries to maintain their sham worship 
 against it. When at last the idea of Paul was, even reluctantly 
 and imperfectly, accepted by the Emperors, no longer claiming 
 to be gods, it gave new life to the rapidly perishing organisation 
 of the Empire and conquered the triumphant barbarian enemy. 
 Had it not been for Paul — if one may guess at what might have 
 been — no man would now remember the Roman and Greek 
 civilisation. Barbarism proved too powerful for the Graeco- 
 Roman civilisation unaided by the new religious bond ; and every 
 channel through which that civilisation was preserved, or interest 
 in it maintained, either is now or has been in some essential part 
 of its course Christian after the Pauline form. — (Ramsay, 
 " Pauline and Other Studies," p. 99.) 
 
 The task which St. Paul performed for the Roman Empire 
 we have now to perform for the world, and in a more compli- 
 cated form, but a form for which Christianity is entirely ade- 
 
394 CHRISTIANITY. AND THE NATIONS 
 
 quate. We have to locate Christianity in the life of each sepa- 
 rate nation for the perfection of its national character and the 
 accomplishment of its national destiny, and we have to set it 
 in the whole life of the world so as to bind into one each per- 
 fected nationality and to cement and complete with its unity the 
 whole varied life of mankind. This is the work that must now 
 be done, and which Christianity alone can do. The privilege of 
 it is ours who believe that God has made of one blood all the 
 nations of men, and has appointed to each the bounds of its 
 habitation and the glory of its own distinct mission, and has 
 also given them in the Gospel of His Son that common life pro- 
 vided for all mankind, wherein there is neither Greek nor Jew, 
 circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman 
 nor freeman, but Christ is all and in all. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen, Earl of, 229 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 184 
 
 Africa, Native Races Committee, 
 120, 121, 147-149 
 
 Africa, present needs of, 44 
 
 Albany, Bishop of, 329 
 
 Ali Illahees, 302 
 
 American Journal of Theology, The, 
 279 
 
 Amherst, Lord, 190 
 
 Ancestor worship, 157 
 
 Anderson, D. L., 263, 264 
 
 Anglican Bishops in India, encycli- 
 cal of, 334; conference of, 344 
 
 Arminian and Calvinistic theologies 
 commingled, 336, 337 
 
 Armstrong, General S. C, 328, 330 
 
 Arrow War, 216 
 
 Arya Samaj, 254, 309, 314 
 
 Asceticism in missions, 85-88 
 
 Ashmore, William, 250, 376 
 
 Ashvagasha, 290 
 
 Awdry, Bishop, 345 
 
 Banerji, K. M., 164 
 Banurji, Kali Charan, 140 
 Baptism, place of, 154-156 
 Baptist Missionary Review, The, 
 
 158, 352 
 Barber, on David Hill, 82-85 
 Baroda, Gaekwar of, 384, 385, 387 
 Barrows, John H., 284, 295 
 Barton, James L., 186, 230, 242 
 Basle Missionary Society, 166 
 Baxter, William E., 186 
 Bayard, Thomas F., 205 
 Bechuanaland, 189 
 Begg, A. Paton, 139 
 Behaism, 258 
 
 Benson, Archbishop, 2t, 291, 323, 331 
 Bentinck, Lord William, 270 
 Bergen, Paul D., 224 
 Berthollet, 179 
 Berthoud, 32 
 Besant, Mrs. Annie, 246, 273, 366 
 
 Bickersteth, 306 
 
 Blunt, Scawen, 245 
 
 Boniface, 201, 323 
 
 Booth, General William, 97 
 
 Bradford, A. H., 286 
 
 Brahmo Samaj, 164, 254, 317 
 
 Brent, Bishop, 189, 355, 362, 391 
 
 Bridgman, F. B., 148, 190 
 
 Brooks, Phillips, 20, 294, 295 
 
 Brooks, Wilmot, 207 
 
 Brotherhood of Man, 279, 282 
 
 Brown, A. J., 147 
 
 Brown, Dr. Alexander, 46 
 
 Brussels Conference, 189, 193 
 
 Bryce, the Hon. James, 27 
 
 Buddhism, 250, 252, 260, 261, 263, 
 267, 268, 273, 278, 281, 282, 283, 
 285, 286, 289, 290, 292, 293, 310 
 
 Buddhist, The, 268 
 
 Calcutta Missionary Conference, 138 
 
 Caldwell, Bishop, 154 
 
 Cape Town, Coadjutor Bishop of, 
 148 
 
 Carey, 34 
 
 Caste, 157-160, 387 
 
 Chalmers, James, 248 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas, 23 
 
 Chapman, George, 340 
 
 Charlton, I. W., 139 
 
 Chatterjee, 313 
 
 China, railroads, 42; post office, 43; 
 treaty with U. S., 204, 216, 225 
 
 China Centenary Conference, 96, 97, 
 222, 334, 341 
 
 China Inland Mission, 212 
 
 China's Young Men, 224 
 
 Chinese Recorder, The, 135, 289 
 
 Christian Express, The, 373 
 
 Christian Unity, Edinburgh Confer- 
 ence on, 340; in Japan, 340, 345, 
 347. 350, 352; in China, 341, 347, 
 350; in India, 351; in the Philip- 
 pines, 342, 347 
 
 Christlieb, Max, 259 
 
 395 
 
396 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Christlieb, Professor Theodor, 330 
 Church a Missionary Society, The, 
 
 23 
 Churchman, The, 235 
 Church Missionary Society, The, 
 
 121, 193 
 Church of Scotland, 23, 193 
 Civilization and Missions, 35-39, 75, 
 
 107, 185-193 
 Clarendon, Earl of, 52, 228, 229 
 Clark, H. Martyn, 298 
 Clark, Robert, 132, 187 
 Clarke, William Newton, 285, 289, 
 
 291, 307 
 Cochran, Dr. J. P., 270 
 Coillard, 147 
 Colquhoun, 121 
 Columba, 201 
 Confucianism, 260, 261, 263, 264, 276, 
 
 278, 282, 293 
 Conger, 383 
 Congregational Deputation to 
 
 China, 219 
 Consular Reports, American, 35, 36 
 Contemporary Review, The, 67 
 Coolidge, 202, 203 
 Cooperation in Missions, 348 
 Craik, Sir Henry, 98 
 Cromer, 37 
 Cushing, Caleb, 190 
 Cust, 85, 90, 107, 167, 197, 323 
 
 Dana, Richard H., 184 
 
 Dass, Lall Bihary, 158, 159 
 
 Datta, 164, 165, 166, 266 
 
 Davis, J. C. B., 215 
 
 Day, 145 
 
 Denby, 192 
 
 Dennis, 184, 290, 302 
 
 Dharam Sindhu, 271 
 
 Dhunda, 271 
 
 Dicey, Edward, 365 
 
 Dickinson's " Chinese Official," 234, 
 
 365, 366, 390 
 Dnyanodaiya, 271 
 Drummond, Henry, 312 
 Duff, Alexander, 77, 98, 145, 342 
 Duff, Grant, 71, 72 
 Du Halde, 181 
 Duncan, " Rabbi," 330 
 Dwight, H. O., 205, 279 
 Dykes, Oswald, 181 
 
 East India Company and Missions, 
 178 
 
 Ebina, 168 
 
 Education and Missions, 91-98; of 
 
 natives in foreign lands, 167, 168 
 Edward, King, to Indian people, 117 
 Edwardes, Sir Herbert, 116, 385 
 Ellinwood, F. F., 63 
 Empire Review, The, 193 
 Epiphany, The, 158, 249 
 " Ethiopian Movement, The," 147- 
 
 149 
 Evangelization of the World in this 
 
 Generation, 41, 76, 77 
 Evarts, Jeremiah, 34 
 Evening Post, The New York, 53, 
 
 256, 375 
 Extra-territoriality, 213-215 
 
 Faber, Ernst, 241, 250, 263, 264, 278 
 
 Fairbairn, 390 
 
 Federation in Missions, 349 
 
 Findlay, 347 
 
 Fish, 191, 215 
 
 Forman, 187, 378-381 
 
 Forsythe, P. T., 340 
 
 Fortnightly Review, The, 213 
 
 Foss, Bishop, of Japan, 345 
 
 Foster, John W., 184, 185, 188, 191, 
 
 203, 227, 307, 374 
 France, Political use of Missions 
 
 by, 179 
 Fraser, Donald, 368 
 French, 187 
 Fyson, Bishop, 333 
 
 Gairdner, W. H. T., 328 
 Germany, Political use of Missions 
 
 by, 179 
 Ghose, Dr., 126, 392 
 Gibson, 70, 73-75, 220-225, 319 
 Glasgow Peace Congress, 197, 198 
 Good, Adolphus, 32 
 Gordon, A. J., 133 
 Gordon, " Chinese," 37, 85, 374 
 Gordon, George A., 302, 316 
 Gore, Bishop, 123 
 Goreh, Nehemiah, 164, 253 
 Grant, Principal, 302 
 Granville, Earl, 207 
 " Great Japan Buddhists' Union, 
 
 The," 252 
 Grenfell, Dr., 382 
 Guizot, 288 
 
 Hall, Charles Cuthbert, 254, 295 
 Hamlin, A. D. G., 196 
 
INDEX 
 
 397 
 
 Hardy, 278 
 
 Harnack, 21, 26, 60, 88, 124, 133, 186, 
 
 300, 301 
 Harper's Weekly, 219 
 Harris, Townsend, 233 
 Henderson, 354 
 Hewett, Sir John, 25 
 Hibbert Journal, The, 315 
 Hill, David, 82-85, 87, 100 
 Hindu Association, The, 246 
 Hinduism, 246, 247, 249, 253, 260, 
 
 261, 264-266, 270, 276, 278, 282, 286, 
 
 292, 304, 305 
 Hornaday, W. T., 48 
 Houghton, Lord, 280 
 Houston, M. H., 208, 209, 210 
 Hume, R. A., 243, 288 
 Hunter, Sir William, 53, 155 
 
 Imad-ud-din, 298 
 
 Independent, The, 286 
 
 India, sanitation in, 25; education 
 
 in, 98 
 Indian Standard, The, 146 
 Indian Witness, The, 138, 144, 257 
 Inglis, 23, 95 
 Ito, Marquis, 37, 38 
 Iwakura Embassy, 58 
 
 James, W. R., 140 
 
 Japan, character of Church, 161 ; 
 Christian philanthropy in, 182; 
 needs of, 28, 43 ; relations of mis- 
 sions and native churches in, 149- 
 152; religious toleration in, 38, 
 227, 228, 251 ; trade of, 42 
 
 Japan Mail, The, 250, 281 
 
 Japan Times, The, 151 
 
 Jewson, A., 140, 141 
 
 Johnston, Sir H. H, 36 
 
 Jones, A. G., 61, 62, 89 
 
 Jones, Griffith, 313 
 
 Jotirnibandh, 271 
 
 Jowett, 295 
 
 Judaism and Christianity, 295, 296 
 
 Judson, Adoniram, 18, 80-82, 87, 178 
 
 Jwala Dass, 391 
 
 Kayastha Samachar, 252 
 Kellogg, 268, 305 
 Kelly, 67, 93, 119, 120, 302 
 Keshub Chunder Sen, 264, 295 
 Kirisutokyo Sekai, 151 
 Koelle, 229 
 
 Korea, missions in, 134; nationalis- 
 tic hopes destroyed, 117 
 Krishna, 278 
 Kyokawai Jiji, 285 
 
 Lahore, Bishop of, 27, 117, 242, 262, 
 
 290, 359. 385 
 Lala Chunder Lai, 380 
 Lambeth Conference, 336 
 Laplace, 297 
 Lawes, 248 
 
 Lawrence, Edward, 154, 306, 308 
 Lawrence, John, 233 
 Le Quesne, W. R., 138 
 Lindsay, 45 
 
 Literary Digest, The, 259 
 Livingstone, 52, 189, 367 
 Lloyd, 267, 274, 311 
 London, Bishop of, 328 
 Low, Frederick, Jr., 215 
 Lowrie, Walter, 34, 35 
 Lucas, Bernard, 105-107, 158, 159, 
 
 162 
 Lucknow, Bishop of, 332 
 Lull, Raymond, 32 
 
 Mahabharata, 278 
 
 Mabie, Henry C, 279 
 
 Macartney, 181, 190 
 
 Macaulay, 98, 116, 266 
 
 Mackenzie, John, 188 
 
 Maclear, 89 
 
 Macleod, Norman, 331 
 
 Macnicol, 273, 315 
 
 Madras, Bishop of, 158, 159 
 
 Madras Mail, The, 286 
 
 Maitland, Sir Peregrine, 381 
 
 Malcolm, Napier, 61, 305 
 
 Manu, Code of, 282 
 
 Martin, W. A. P., 192, 289 
 
 Mattoon, 192 
 
 Maxim, Sir Hiram, 219 
 
 Mayajima, 187 
 
 Mazumdar, 255, 317, 318 
 
 McKinley, 382 
 
 Mencius, 263 
 
 Meyer, F. B., 130 
 
 Miller, Dr., of Madras, 64, 94 
 
 Milman. Hugh, 36 
 
 Milner, Lord, on James Stewart, 82 
 
 Mohammedanism, 260, 261, 262, 268- 
 270, 275, 278, 279, 280, 282, 283, 
 287, 290, 292, 298, 305, 310 
 
 Mommsen, 232 
 
 Monier-Williams, 267, 293, 308 
 
398 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Montgomery, Bishop, 21, 319 
 Mookerjee, P. M., 140, 141 
 Moore, E. C, 66, 67, 69, 234 
 Moravians, 168 
 Morrison, Robert, 65, 216 
 Morrison, Theodore, 116 
 Miihlocker, 258 
 Muller, Max, 283, 315 
 Mutsuhito, 251 
 Mylne, 106, 159, 162, 265 
 
 Nanking, Synod of Central China at, 
 
 146 
 Napoleon, 113, 297 
 Nationalism, and Missions, 113 ff., 
 
 361-394; growth of, 115, 116, 117 
 " Need enough at home," 47, 48 
 Nevius, John L., 290 
 Newcastle, Bishop of, 335 
 Newton, 187 
 Nicene Council, 40 
 Nida-Ye-Vatan, 180 
 Nineteenth Century, The, 365 
 Norman, Henry, 42 
 North China Herald, The, 377 
 Nottingham, Church Conference at, 
 
 335 
 Nyasaland, 39, 193 
 
 Okuma, 43, 281 
 Omar Khayyam, 283 
 " Oriental Consciousness, The," 314, 
 315 
 
 Parker, 190 
 
 Parliament of Religions, The, 257, 
 284, 286, 295 
 
 Paton, John G., 189 
 
 Patrizi, Cardinal, 360 
 
 Paul, missionary method of. 78, 87, 
 91, 101, 210; view of heathenism, 
 296, 297; statesmanship of, 392, 
 
 393 
 Paul, R. I., 126 
 Perry, Commodore, 191 
 Philanthropy and Missions, 98-101 
 Pioneer, The, 155 
 Political rights of missionaries, 195- 
 
 212 
 Polygamy, 156, 157 
 Pottinger, 190 
 Prayer and Missions, 40, 344, 345, 
 
 346 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 
 
 23, 79, 92, 122, 143 
 
 Protection of native converts, 215- 
 
 231 
 Pundit Prem Nath, 381 
 Purushatam Rao Telang, 246 
 
 Ram Mohun Roy, 264 
 
 Ramabai, 367 
 
 Ramsay, Sir William M., 392 
 
 Ranke, 232 
 
 Reed, 217, 375 
 
 Reference and Council, Committee 
 
 on, 346, 347 
 Reinsch, 113-115, 180, 232, 321, 322, 
 
 363 
 Rhys-Davids, 267 
 Rice, Dr., and his Overture, 23 
 Richard, Timothy, 103-105, 290 
 Richter, 128 
 Robinson, Alfred, 207 
 Roman Catholic Church Missions, 
 
 66, 67, 93, 119-121 ; and unity, 355, 
 
 359-362 
 " Ronins, The Forty-seven," 278 
 Roosevelt, Ex-President, 39, 49, 226 
 Ross, John, 144, 181, 211 
 Ruskin, 275 
 
 Saint James Gazette, The, ig7 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, 199 
 
 Salvation Army, 87 
 
 Sandwich Islands, 184, 185 
 
 Sargent, 148 
 
 Sawayama, 166 
 
 Schopenhauer, 245 
 
 Science of religion, 258, 259 
 
 Scotland, Free Church Deputation 
 to India, 97 
 
 Scotland, United Free Church, Mis- 
 sions in Africa, 193 
 
 Scotsman, The, 256 
 
 Scott, 258, 296-298 
 
 Seeley, 67 
 
 Sekeletu, Chief of Mokololo, 52 
 
 Self-extension in native churches, 
 
 133-135 
 Self-government in native churches, 
 
 142 ff. 
 Self-support in native churches, 135- 
 
 142 
 Seward, Consul-General, 193 
 Seward, Secretary of State, 228 
 Shaku Soyen, 286 
 Shanghai Mercury, The, 195 
 Sherman, John, 196, 199 
 Shintoism, 310 
 
INDEX 
 
 399 
 
 Siam, first diplomatic relations with, 
 
 192 
 Slater, 99, 183, 254, 261, 288, 304, 
 
 305, 315, 389 
 Smith, Bosworth, 245, 269, 275 
 Smyth, 39, 268 
 Society for the Propagation of the 
 
 Gospel, The, 199 
 Sons and Daughters of India, 273 
 South America, 44, 360, 361 
 Spectator, The, 204, 227 
 Standard of membership in native 
 
 churches, 154-160 
 Staunton, Sir George, 181 
 Stead, W. T., 189 
 Stewart, James, 82, 87, 148 
 Stokes and the ascetic ideal, 86 
 Stratford de Redcliffe, 228, 229 
 Sukumar, Haldar, 245 
 Sun, The New York, 45, 183, 204 
 Sunday School Times, The, 173, 340 
 Swadeshi, 126 
 Swift, 354 
 Sybel, 232 
 
 Taft, President, 38, 209, 376 
 
 Taiping Rebellion, 75, 173, 186 
 
 Taoism, 263 
 
 Taylor, Canon, 85, 87, 290 
 
 Taylor, Hudson, 64 
 
 Territorial division of field, 342-344 
 
 Thompson, Joseph, 39, 193 
 
 Thompson, Sir Augustus Rivers, 
 
 38i 
 Townsend, Meredith, 42, 68, 71, 87, 
 
 129, 266, 375 
 Travancore, 183 
 Trench, 263 
 Troeltsch, 258 
 Truth, attitude of religions toward, 
 
 278 
 Tuan Fang, 182, 224 
 Tubbs, Norman H., 310 
 Tucker, Bishop, 135, 136 
 Turkey, religious liberty in, 228- 
 
 231 
 
 Uchimura, 28, 30, 264 
 
 Uganda, Missions in, 134, 135, 136; 
 secured to Great Britain by Mis- 
 sions, 193 
 
 United India and Native States, 
 The, 386 
 
 Upanishads, 245, 256 
 
 Uyemura, 147 
 
 Vambery, Arminius, 51, 67, 68, 71, 
 
 232, 251, 392 
 Van Valkenburgh, 228 
 Vedanta, 250, 256, 273, 309, 315 
 Venn, Henry, 127 
 Verbeck, 215, 281 
 Virchand F. Gandhi, 252 
 Vivakananda, 243, 257, 258, 266 
 Von Hoist, 232 
 
 Wade, 207 
 
 Walsh, 360 
 
 Warneck, 128, 133 
 
 Warren, Sir Charles, 381 
 
 Washington, 367 
 
 Washington Post, The, 213, 214 
 
 Watson, 71 
 
 Weightman, Richard, 213 
 
 Wells, 148, 367 
 
 Westcott, Bishop, 288 
 
 Whipple, Bishop, 171, 172 
 
 Whitehead, Bishop, 282 
 
 Wilder, Consul-General at Hong 
 Kong, 29 
 
 Williams, S. Wells, 191, 216-219, 
 390, 39i 
 
 Williams, Talcott, 41 
 
 Winchester, Bishop of, 323 
 
 Woman, attitude of religions to- 
 ward, 279, 280, 388 
 
 Wong, 382 
 
 Wood. 192 
 
 Woolsey, 211 
 
 Yen, 182 
 
 Young, Sir W. Mackworth, 186 
 
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DATE DUE 
 
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