.MILLE BV 2060 .M5 1920 Miller, George A. 1868 Missionary morale OTHER BOOKS BY DR. MILLER THE LIFE EFFICIENT CHINA INSIDE OUT PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA Missionary Morale By / GEORGE A. MILLER ILSE»3i£ THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1920, by GEORGE A. MILLER CONTENTS CHAPTER Foreword page 9 I. The Man Behind the grams Pro- 11 Invincible Men— World Plans— A New Hope — The Search for Effective Men— The Task of the Church — The Sources of Morale. II. Morale and Life 19 Morale of the Disciples — The Missionary as a Man — Vic- tory through Quality. III. Paganism and Fanaticism... . 25 Hating Heathenism — Pagan Morale — Proclaim the Better Way — Fanaticism — Social Expectation — Unbalanced Personality. IV. Soldiers, Athletes, and Ex- plorers 35 Morale of the Athlete— The Explorers. 5 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE V. John and Paul 40 John the Apostle — Utter Cer- tainty of Spiritual Things — Paul — Elements of Back- ground — "An Original Expe- rience of Christ" — Personal Identity with Christ — Sense of the Unseen — Christ for the World— It Takes Time. VI. The Call and the Task 50 Why Does a Missionary Go? — 1. Romance — 2. Travel — 3. The Personal Touch— 4. Fruitful Life Investment — 5. A Direct Call— The Best Missionaries. VII. The Missionary in the Mak- ing 57 What Shall the Candidate Do? —What Is Candidate Mo- rale? — The Gift That is Within — Five Essentials to Success. VIII. The Few Who are Chosen. . 65 The Many Called— What Makes the Missionary — Sense of Humor — Enemies of Morale. IX. Artificial Morale 74 Propaganda Methods — Staying Power — Organized Facts — Morale and Life Results. 6 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE X. The Foundation of Faith . . 81 The Foundation — Faith in the Unseen — A Personal Faith — Fear and Love. XL Discipline and Drudgery. . . 87 Majors and Minors — Duplex Efficiency — Bridging the Gap — Personality — Sacrifice and Discipline — Three Disciplines — Formalities — Previous At- tainments — Final Devote- ment of Whole Personality — The Missionary and His Reading — Unique Opportu- nities — The Silent Death — Tragic Miss-Fits. XII. The Home Church 103 Home Backing Multiplies — Sec- ond-Term Success — Perni- cious Correspondents — Tell the Truth — Getting the Facts to the Home Church — Pub- licity — Emotional Appeals. XIII. Missionary Administration. 114 Contact with the Office — 1. The Unified Command — 2. The Whole Objective — 3. The Specific Task — 4. The Stand- ardized Organization. 7 CONTENTS CHAPTER - PAGE XIV. The Mission Family 124 Living in Close Quarters — A Missionary's Recreation — Readjusting Social Standards — Contract Teachers — Un- married Women — A Working Sense of Humor — Social Graces — The Wider Fellow- ships XV. Public Service 135 A Missionary's Influence — Let- ting in the Light — The Mis- sionary not a Propagandist — Dealing with Governments. XVI. The Missionary and His Mission 143 Meeting the Constituency — The Pioneer — Flowers in the Des- ert—The Margin of Reti- cence — The Personal Touch — Language Problems — Na- tive Fellowships — The Art of Command — Living as the Natives — Native Religions — Loving the People — The Vic- tory of Morale. 8 FOREWORD What the morale of the soldier wrought in France the spirit of the missionary must accomplish everywhere. In the days of no equipment the missionary's personality largely accounted for his results. Now that lands, buildings, machinery, funds, and apparatus are being planned and pro- vided on a scale beyond all previous un- dertakings, there arises the urgent need of men and women sufficient for the challenge of a new world situation. The cause is finally to be lost or won on the basis of its working personnel. Where and how shall we provide the supermissionary? CHAPTER I THE MAN BEHIND THE PROGRAMS It is proposed to recreate a broken world. Vast plans are projected and complex or- ganizations arise. Before the smoke of battle had cleared from the skies of suf- fering nations the minds of far-seeing men were searching to and fro throughout the earth, devising means and measures for re- lief and reconstruction. It is now required that civilization be rebuilt in a generation. Old things must become new and new things better. Invincible Men To clear away the debris of the old order and lay foundations for the new earth will call for a great company of men and women of the highest and most efficient type. Only those of finest fiber will be sufficient. For such undertakings men must be strong in 11 MISSIONARY MORALE that fourth dimension that reaches toward the infinite and feeds upon heavenly bread that the world has overlooked. It is the peculiar glory of the gospel that it has ever produced invincible men, sus- tained by unseen forces and filled by the Omnipotent Spirit. Where human reckon- ing has failed, the unconquerable man has gone through. If he failed to save his life, he still could die for the cause. We are thinking and planning in terms of high potentials and world programs. The underlying problem is that of finding enough undefeatable men to go out and translate the great plans into living ac- tualities. We near the margin of a better country. Major prophets are pointing the way. What we need is enough competent guides to keep humanity in step until we cross the border of the promised land. World Plans The sound of the trumpet is in the air. Centenaries and New Eras and Jubilees and Celebrations and World Programs and In- terchurch projects are all about us. For the confirmed provincial mind it must be 12 MAN BEHIND THE PROGRAMS very confusing. We are mounting up on the wings of world surveys and race units and comity and cooperation and united drives and assigned responsibilities. Pro- motion and propaganda and publicity and payments and prayer; organization and operation and conservation and continua- tion are recasting our terminology and re- assembling our activities. The upheavals of a new creation are about us, and we set up and revise and reform our committees and boards overnight and begin over again the next morning with a bigger plan and a more determined purpose to challenge the last man at home and offer the last man everywhere the more abundant life of the gospel. It must have been something like this when the world was young and the continents were remade and shifted into place. A New Hope These great plans bring the thrill of a new hope to every seeing soul. It is good to live and think in the thoughts of men from whose eyes the scales have fallen as they have stood on high places and beheld 13 MISSIONARY MORALE the eternal purposes and then have dared to come back and undertake to realize the kingdom of God on earth. Never was such a day as this, and never have men and women listened to such a call for devote- ment of their lives to highest service of God and men. Never has there been so bright a promise of a hundredfold harvest. No seeing soul can think small thoughts again. The world is melting in the caul- dron. Who is able to shape the mold for the new civilization to be cast before our eyes? The fires of world events wax hot in the furnace of the times. Wherefore the need of men, better men, bigger men, stronger men, men who can stay brave and hold steady longer than any men yet assigned tremendous tasks. The outcome of the new plans and larger measures depends upon the church's power to provide men of world horizons and con- tinent programs. All plans must inevitably settle back to the level of the men who must operate them. Only world men can actualize world undertakings. Calvary would have been but a Jewish-Roman execution without a Divine Redeemer to 14 MAN BEHIND THE PROGRAMS make effective the spiritual potentialities of the cross. The "higher level of experience and life" projected for the church and the new social order planned for the world will be but idle dreams without men and women equal to the tasks of realizing these divine visions in daily life and human interests. Without the grace of higher effectiveness, the most far-flung purposes will yield but meager results. The Search for Effective Men Where and how shall this more effective workman be found? What are the secret sources of his power and where are the hidden springs of his personality? How may a man rise above his own best and become something better, a reincarnation of the undiscourageable purpose in a human soul? This is our problem. What makes men truly able for the business of doing the impossible? Who can name that spiritual intuition beyond mental alertness, that wisdom transcending human judgment, that knowledge outside of information, that 15 MISSIONARY MORALE endurance in excess of human limits, that steadfastness that defies torture and drudgery and loneliness and death? Who can answer these questions holds the key to the triumphant kingdom of God on earth. How comes it that there are men, con- scious, not of greatness, but of being able for the tasks of every passing day? Whence comes the unshaken assurance that all sac- rifices are trifling beside the eternal im- portance of the Great Cause? Who will open our eyes to see the forces that fight for us? The Task of the Church This is the task of the church, to dis- cover and develop those sources of effective personality that lie beyond classroom di- plomas, medical examinations, Binet-Simon tests, and the deepest-laid good intentions. Failure here means the wrecking of the greatest machinery ever devised for world redemption. Careful training may produce a workman meeting every known test, yet later he may falter and stumble over the unforeseen di- 16 MAN BEHIND THE PROGRAMS lemma or the unfamiliar difficulty. The tests have high value, but we shall never find in any laboratory or examination room the measure of a man's resistance under complicated pressures, nor the staying power that will outlast the persistent op- ponent, nor yet the unknown reactions amid untried emergencies. There is no advance test for a man's "kindling ca- pacity" in a new situation. The whole issue may depend on the unpremeditated act of a man at bay. The Sources of Morale What we must find is the fountain of the spirit. Men under strain will ulti- mately do what the inner forces of their own natures impel them to do. Training is valuable, but the inner nature is de- terminative. The value of a man's education is finally measured by his effective contact with humanity. How much does he weigh in the scales of life? Granted the fine steel of inherent ability, what edge has training wrought on his sword? How shall we dis- cover and develop characters that will, by 17 MISSIONARY MORALE force of inner motives, register effectively in the difficult tasks and crises of a mis- sionary's life? To discover the sources of the mission- ary's morale and live by them is to achieve the victory that overcometh the world. 18 CHAPTER II MORALE AND LIFE The training of the disciples of Jesus presented a distinct problem in effective morale. Even in the presence of the Great Teacher they were slow to develop quali- ties fit for founders of the new church. Two or three years of intimate association with Christ were not enough to produce personal stability and moral resistance sufficient for the strain of Passion Week. Morale of the Disciples But ordinary, stumbling, changeable men did become shining examples of the highest morale. To get the same results to-day from similar materials is our responsibility. If we ever succeed, we must begin with a lot of men capable of denying their Lord, and there always will be some who will insist on calling down fire from heaven upon those who do not agree with them. The doubter and the timid and the im- 19 MISSIONARY MORALE pulsive and the persecutor and the ignorant are always with us. But something else is also with us. The Power that made a fearless prophet from a faltering Peter lives and reigns to-day. Back of the condensed statements that de- scribe the day of Pentecost lay factors of preparation and experience out of which grew the results of that hour of climax. When a faltering Peter becomes the fearless prophet of the new kingdom and a perse- cuting Saul becomes the most influential man of his century, the sources of high- power personality have been discovered and utilized. Certainly, here lies our glorious hope. If the last great assurance of Jesus means anything, it means that we have "with us alway" "this same Jesus," and that he is still able to produce men of world-winning caliber. Until the promise of his presence is withdrawn we have no valid reason for discouragement. The Missionary as a Man Napoleon said that in warfare "the moral was to the physical as three to one." Enormous advances have been made in 20 MORALE AND LIFE improvement of the physical condition of fighting men, but the men who won the war in Europe are agreed that, after all, the preponderance of good morale as a decisive factor still holds. The body has been lifted to higher levels of health, and physical "condition" has received close at- tention, but the spirit of the men has come to such prominence as never before. We have learned that in the last analysis it is the soul of the man that does the fighting. At the ultimate point of contact with life, all missionary work is distinctly personal. It is the man himself who counts. The missionary has no greater privilege nor re- sponsibility than the training of his own spirit. It makes a deal of difference whether he is half-hearted or whole- hearted about his work. He may have lost heart altogether, and drag along hope- lessly awaiting furlough or retirement. It is inevitable that we think much in terms of equipment and material values. Appropriations, budgets, askings, build- ings, installments, interest, subscriptions, and collections are well-worn terms in our dealings with the work. What we must 21 MISSIONARY MORALE not forget is the final human factor in every missionary undertaking. We must have the best machine possible, but we must also find the man who can direct the machine, and do something that no ma- chine can ever do, or we shall achieve only machine results. In a locked room of a far-away mission school lies an expensive set of dust-covered chemical laboratory apparatus, useless because there is no one to put it to work. A load of brick would have been more useful. A Sailors' Home in an Oriental port struggled along on scant support, but under the administra- tion of an earnest man did some useful work. A sudden windfall caused inflation of plans. The manager was unequal to the larger purposes, and the institution was ruined and closed its doors. Not too much money, but too little man. Provide the equipment, the best is not good enough. But better equipment means the need of still better men to use it effec- tively. The modern mission plant, with its numerous specialties, will need a specialist in getting results, or it may yet become little more than a dusty machine shop. 22 MORALE AND LIFE Victory Through Quality If Jesus Christ had waited until he could have assembled a host and organized a "drive," the Christian Church would be yet unborn. Every great moral movement of Christian history has been initiated by lonely pioneers, who went out, sometimes without human chart or compass, but always with the vision of the spiritual city of God before their eyes. Few they have been and often forsaken. It is the tragedy of spiritual leadership that it is so lonely. Across the dark pages of human ignorance and perversity they march in solitary sil- houette against the sky. Sometimes they falter and stumble, but they rise and fol- low in the footsteps of Him whom having not seen they love unto the end. This thin red line of pioneers is the en- tering wedge of the innumerable host that always follows in the wake of the spiritual explorers of the universe. There always will be followers. But how shall they follow without a leader, and how shall one lead unless he first of all be led from on high and filled with the invincible Spirit? 23 MISSIONARY MORALE A rudder is a very small part of a ship, say one unit of ten thousand, but the rud- der controls the direction and destination of the ten thousand. The moral heralds and spiritual light-bearers may not be numerous, but they carry torches that illuminate the path of life and reveal values. And the solitary leaders on the far-flung line of march will not travel alone. Theirs is the fellowship of the prophets and priests and redeemers of mankind. Verily it is a goodly company. Who follows in their train? 24 CHAPTER m PAGANISM AND FANATICISM Any effective effort to deal with pagan- ism or fanaticism must deal directly with the problems of morale. It is the inner spirit of the devotee that must be met and conquered. His physical condition and mental processes are secondary to the peculiar self that lies back of all externals. Hating Heathenism The easiest way to deal with the "heathen" is to assume an attitude of belligerent dogmatism and roundly de- nounce his barbarous practices and un- christian beliefs. Since he is a heathen, he is wrong and must be set right at all costs. Being a child of the devil, how can he be other than diabolical? The head-on fight is comparatively easy and leads com- placently to the attitude of the missionary himself, but it is a confession of fatal weakness nevertheless. Shotgun evan- 25 MISSIONARY MORALE gelism requires nothing more than very general marksmanship and produces very indefinite results. When did ever clear vision follow blind antagonism? Pagan Morale The morale of paganism presents a rela- tively easy approach to the Christian propagandist. The spirit of a Chinese Buddhist priest in a far-inland town is decidedly negative and presents but a spongy resistance to the virile approach of Christianity. The moral tone of a faith that centers in filthy and tumbled- down temples and owes its existence to the incantations of illiterate and dishev- eled degenerates cannot stand before the clean and wholesome spirit of the Christian missionary. The morale of hoary and un- intelligent tradition is effective mainly through sheer immobility. It is the re- sistance of a vast sandbank that swallows attacks and blocks the road to progress. This morale of pagan inertia is the harder to overcome because there is no discoverable reason for anything. If there were, it could be segregated and attacked PAGANISM AND FANATICISM and something decided. But lacking ra- tional sanction, there is no reasoning it out of the way. Decisive engagements are impossible with sandbanks and sponges. Proclaim the Better Way What the missionary has to do, then, is not to reason at all, but to proclaim and awaken and inspire a new hope that will plant seeds of spiritual life where they will spring up and produce forms of living faith. Some missionaries have wasted years in trying to persuade people that they had a way that would be better if tried. To inspire with his own personal character and interest a few people to try that which has made the man what he is will soon produce living demonstrations that will supersede mere polemics. The contagion of example will win out. There is little cohesion and almost no organization in the paganism of the South Sea Islands. Japanese monasteries are sometimes little more than begging com- munities. The fetish worship of the hill tribes presents no articulated front. The 27 MISSIONARY MORALE bushmen of Africa have plenty of tradi- tions, and are ruled by them, but they are individually and socially approachable on personal grounds. A stratified social sys- tem in India holds millions, not because it is rational, but because it has become in- terwoven with all social sanctions. Fond of polemic as is the East Indian, he is not won to Christianity through defeat in argument but by persuasion of living results. The battle with paganism is won, so far as effective resistance is concerned. Tasks and problems and heavy burdens there are, but they are not the struggle of encounter with a virile morale that defends itself and fights back to kill. On a great rock beside a beautiful river stands a picturesque Buddhist temple. The scenery from the balcony would lift any receptive soul to realms of the sub- lime. It was the cleanest temple, the most charming setting, and the most intelligent priest I had seen. And the reception was courtesy and dignity personified. After formalities, discussion veered around to the weightier matters of faith, and when 28 PAGANISM AND FANATICISM Buddha and Christ had been discussed, the priest shrugged his shoulders and remarked : "Oh, well, what is the use? We all sin, and human nature cannot be changed. Why trouble further in the matter ?" In the same city stand two large mission schools, a good church, a community house, a great hospital, and a leper mission, all busily engaged in changing human nature. Later on, when the native official had ab- sorbed modern ideas from the mission and had raised funds to provide clean streets, running water, and sewerage, he went to the missionary to secure superintendency of the work. Obviously, the morale of paganism does not constitute a serious ob- stacle to the work of that missionary. Fanaticism The missionary who attempts to estab- lish Christian faith and its resultant insti- tutions amid Mohammedanism, some kinds of Hinduism, and some brands of Roman Catholicism faces a very different problem. When a man will hang by hooks till the muscles tear out of his back, or drag heavy chains through the streets while his 29 MISSIONARY MORALE "friends" flay his bleeding body, we are dealing with something very different from a sponge. Fanaticism fights back, and when a man will torture himself unto death, it is to be expected that he will also be found ready to boil his opponents in oil and burn them at the stake. It is not hard to understand the spirit that tortures its victims, but the morale of self-torture needs a little examination. The power that induces a widow to mount the funeral pyre is not to be lightly reckoned with. Social Expectation The impulsions of a strong social expec- tation have much to do with the case. When "everybody" maintains a closed state of mind on the question, and any other course is regarded as unthinkable and impossible, there is nothing left for the victim but resignation to fate. The sug- gestion of nonconformity comes with a shock as if in our own land it were proposed to cease burying the dead and leave them lying in the streets. To withstand the social prestige of ages of established cus- 30 PAGANISM AND FANATICISM torn requires more courage than to walk into the fire. Fatalism plays its deadly part in the drama of fanaticism. To the reasoning and more or less unfettered mind of the West the closed and bound-for-all-eternity atti- tude of the Oriental is all but incompre- hensible. But comprehend it we must, so far as possible, if we are to meet it with any degree of success. When all examples and conversations and expectations from childhood include the fixed idea that it is a meritorious thing to feed children to crocodiles, any other idea becomes un- thinkable. And where refusal to comply would be followed by compulsory obedi- ence, why resist the whole social order? Probably there is little or no thought of resistance or escape. The victim is under a "spell," and this spell is the active force in fanaticism. Just what is this weird and dominant obsession that dethrones reason and produces the blind fury of the dervish who whirls till he drops dead? Unbalanced Personality Normal balance of personality is a com- 31 MISSIONARY MORALE bination of many factors, each of which has its place. Normal conduct results from a composite of motives under the general dominance of judgment. Beneath the sur- face of volition a hundred impulses pull at the springs of conduct. Every act is the result of a combination of motives. All motives are mixed, and we do what we do because a hundred unseen hands push us out into the sea of action. And the saving grace of the case is just this mixing of motives. Unblended motives are always dangerous. One-idea men are always fa- natics. Sanity is equilibrium, and only when the cargo is distributed and the strains equalized can the ship remain on an even keel. The fanatic is the man who has lost his equilibrator and plunges recklessly, ruled by one impulse at a time. The complex of the single impulsion may be transient or lasting, but it is one-idea control. Some impulse, normally secondary and subserv- ient, springs into the driver's seat and throws all other motives overboard. Un- reason, blind intensity, and determination, wild hatred of nonconformity, loosened 32 PAGANISM AND FANATICISM forces of destruction upon friend and foe alike — these are the traits of the spirit of fanaticism that the missionary must meet, and it behooves him to consider well his methods of approach and plans of cam- paign. Obviously, the first thing is to try to understand this fanatic. Is he moved by blind imitation, or by wild fear, or by al- luring hopes of paradise, or by material rewards for the faithful, or by political considerations, or by dread of innovations, or by fear of a system of Christian ethics that will upset the social order and make harems and illegitimate families impos- sible? The cure for the blind and unreasoning morale of the fanatic lies in the equally vigorous but rational and spiritualized morale of the missionary. Like the de- votee, the missionary can die for his cause, if need be, but unlike him, he can also justify his course by highest reason, and he can win men instead of repelling them. Over and above all else rises the master spirit of the Christian, the spirit of love enough to pay the last price, and before 33 MISSIONARY MORALE this spirit of love the morale of hate must ever fall back in defeat. It is slow work, but it wins. The morale of fanaticism opposes a strong barrier to the progress of the new Kingdom, but what the winds of antagonism cannot blow down the warmth of loving service and personal interest may melt away and reveal the ultimate founda- tions of human nature bare for the build- ing of the better temple of God. It is recorded that "they overcame" be- cause "they loved not their lives unto the death." The morale of sacrifice may be- come the highest devotement of self to the supreme cause, and the glory of the Chris- tian's martyrdom, where inevitable, is its triumphant vindication of his morale and its fruitful results in a quickened church. 34 CHAPTER IV SOLDIERS, ATHLETES, AND EXPLORERS Military morale has come to a new meaning since the year 1914. The world has learned that superb equipment, thor- ough training, near-perfect discipline, and intelligent command could not stand before hastily gathered and imperfectly equipped men with no traditions of world control, but possessed of an unconquerable love of freedom. It was good morale that made these men victors, it was morale that sup- plied the munitions and the food and the labor and the money and determination that won the war. Only a superb morale could have raised and equipped and trans- ported and believed in the army that saved the world to freedom. There is good analogy for Paul's figure of the Christian soldier. Fighting and mis- sionary service are alike in a half dozen particulars. The good soldier must have a 35 MISSIONARY MORALE great cause that will dominate his spirit, or he will become a chronic grumbler and ultimately a defeated man. He must be conscious of vital home connections, or he will lose half of his driving power. He must possess a conviction of moral values. Unless he feels that his side is eternally right, he will never put his whole energy into his work. The good soldier must get the social swing of his cause and be one of a great team. He must be subject to hardship and monotony and drudgery. A soldier good only in charges is a dangerous defense. And while most soldiers would disclaim anything like spiritual conscious- ness, men under terrible pressure come to know that close to the inferno of shot and shell lies the gateway to a very different world, and the sense of the unseen has much to do with the spirit of the soldier. Morale of the Athlete Athletic coaches of the universities have made an intensive study of student morale. Training camps and tables and rules have built up a set of sanctions extremely rigid in form and inflexible in application. \\ oe 36 SOLDIERS, ATHLETES, EXPLORERS to the lazy or gluttonous or selfish member of the team upon which the honor of the school depends. If he fails to do his best, it were better for him that he had never crossed the campus line. For the honor of the team, for the glory of the university, for the standing of the crew, any sacrifice seems small enough. And the missionary who cannot get the spirit of team play, with all its implied self-surrender of inde- pendence and preference, had better never have been sent. "Solo stunts" are small part of a missionary's program. Loyalty to the staff, the mission, the field, the church, the kingdom is worth infinitely more than any possible personal advantage to be gained by pushing oneself in ahead of the larger program. Some brilliant mis- sionaries have made shipwreck on the rock of self-assertion against the larger interests of the whole cause. To maintain peace in a mission let every worker be willing for the others to have all the credit for all successes. Under this rule credit, if it have any value, will be very equitably dis- tributed. There will be glory enough for all and to spare. But the missionary in- 37 MISSIONARY MORALE tent upon results for the cause will not be worrying much about glory. The Explorers After all, the courage required of a modern missionary is a mild affair com- pared with the tremendous odds faced by the men who first sailed around the world and explored the south seas. Most mod- ern missionaries endure no grilling hard- ships. It might be better if they did. Whatever we may think of their morals and motives, the old conquistador es of the New World faced and endured such diffi- culties and deprivations as no present-day missionary is called upon to undergo. It took a Columbus to "sail on" calmly in the face of insuperable obstacles. There is room for more of that splendid spirit of fearless adventure that marked the great deeds of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies. The Pizarros in Peru, Cortez in Mexico, Magellan in the Orient, De Soto and Ponce de Leon, and all the rest, on down to the California forty-niners and the miners of the Rand and the Klondyke, every one of 38 SOLDIERS, ATHLETES, EXPLORERS them possessed courage that a missionary may well study and learn to use in his own efforts to explore and possess the moral and social world for his Lord and Master. There have been pioneers and pilgrims and explorers and early settlers of the ever- receding West. They have wrought and fought and died for gain or glory. For the proclamation of the good news and the establishment of the everlasting kingdom should not a man or a woman go forth as valiantly as the men who fought and risked their all for sheer greed of gold and love of adventure? 39 CHAPTER V JOHN AND PAUL The greatest textbook on morale is the Bible. From Enoch to John on Patmos, the book is a study and interpretation of men who achieved the spirit that overcame the world. To walk with these men is to catch their tireless stride through life. Cer- tainly, the inspiring characters of the book have had more saving power than contro- versies arising over more didactic portions. It is possible to misinterpret metaphysics, it is rare to misunderstand character. Of all the noble army of prophets, priests, kings, soldiers, and saints, two more fully than others have exposed the inner sources of their power. It is no accident that the two great mystics gave us nine- teen out of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament; and the influence of these men on the thought and life of the church has been in proportion to the space they occupy in the Christian Scriptures. 40 JOHN AND PAUL John the Apostle Three characteristics of John are per- tinent to this discussion. John was by nature intense. Weaklings do not try to destroy those who disagree with them. Such natural intensity may become fa- naticism or devotion. Under the unfold- ing and stimulating power of a strong affection John became the great lover of his Lord and of his fellow men. When love had done its work we hear no more about fire from heaven. The wrath of consuming fire is not a foundation for permanent missionary work. If a man love God enough, the glow of his devotion will burn the rancor out of his heart, and leave the fine gold of construc- tive affection. John was the apostle of the inner fellow- ship. Following Christ was for him an intensely personal matter. To love Jesus was the same thing as to love the brethren. In all amazement he asks how a man could do otherwise. So close of kin are the two burning passions of love for God and for men that John became a little ambiguous 41 MISSIONARY MORALE at times in talking about them. And when a man loves God so much that he cannot clearly distinguish between the love he has for his Lord and that for his fellow men, he is not far from the spirit of the apostle who laid his head on Jesus 's breast. Utter Certainty of Spiritual Things In his utter certainty of spiritual things John reaches his climax. Where lesser men falter John walks with steady stride. Where others wonder and conjecture, John shouts in triumph, "We know. 9 ' There is no painful speculation with John. He has his problems and his contacts with things beyond human understanding, but so cer- tain is he of the eternal realities behind these pageants in the sky that he just paints the undescribable as well as he can, and small men ever since have been trying to force mechanical interpretations upon John's clouds of glory, trailing in sublime mysteries across the heavens. There have been failures on the mission fields, but they have not come from too close following of John. 42 JOHN AND PAUL Paul The spiritual attainments of Paul involve much more than the experience on the Damascus road. Only a Saul of Tarsus could have become a Paul through that experience. In his early life four factors appear, each strongly reflected in his after years. Any man with these elements in his life, plus the heavenly vision, will be a good missionary. 1. Saul was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, with a spiritual inheritance. 2. Saul was a Roman citizen, with a world horizon. 3. Saul was educated at the feet of Gamaliel, with broad intellectual sym- pathies. 4. Saul was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, an ecclesiastical aristocrat. Elements of Background True, all of these things were counted as of no value, but at the same time they remained as a background of his new per- sonality and thereafter appear as spiritual capacity, world consciousness, intellectual 43 MISSIONARY MORALE breadth, and high idealism. The inspired and ennobled Paul is the old Saul trans- formed and lifted to his highest person- ality. There are few elements in a man's back- ground that may not become useful fac- tors of his emancipated and energized self. Even dark chapters of degradation have been turned to account and the most crooked characteristics have been purified and transformed into useful traits in a better personality. If the "son of thunder" and the bitter persecutor could become the two greatest men of a century, there is hope that some of our twisted tendencies may yet be turned to good account. How may it be done? "An Original Experience of Christ" Paul attributes his changed life to a transformation linked with a revelation of Christ "in me." He is very jealous of his apostleship and defends it in no uncertain terms. "It pleased God to reveal his Son in me," he asserts. This sense of a special revelation never leaves him. He has been made custodian of a heavenly mystery re- 44 JOHN AND PAUL vealed to men through himself, and if he fails to proclaim it, the world will lose the message. Any man who goes about his work feeling like that will attain results not to be accounted for by training or influence or equipment. There is a divine spirit about a man whose heart God has touched. He is different. His words and walk will speak in clear tones and men will know what the Spirit said to him in the secret place. God has made a con- fidant of him and he must proclaim his message or perish. There is no alternative. Personal Identity with Christ Paul came to an intense consciousness that "for me to live is Christ." Not like Christ, but Christ in him. Mysticism could go no further. Christ walked, talked, thought, spoke, and worked in Paul. What a morale for a missionary! It was no figure of speech. Whether on the burning sands of the desert, or on the trackless sea, or amid a Judsean mob, Christ was in him, and in this consciousness all toil, danger, hardship, hunger, fatigue, and torture fade away into mere trifles of the passing hour. 45 MISSIONARY MORALE Christ is suffering these things with him, and they are not worth mentioning. The secret of Paul's tremendous life and labors is not Paul's polemic, but Paul. As glorious California Shasta rises above the foothills at its feet, Paul rises majestically above his own arguments. The man him- self is the one transcendent argument for whatever made him what he is. And when he throws the whole weight of his illumi- nated personality on the scales of life there must be a registering of results in every life that feels the impact of the man. Persecutions and martyrdom are mere de- tails in a life scheme that counted not any cost if by any means he might win some to the Christ who had transformed him. It is not strange that such a personality made the most profound impression ever registered on human hearts by any man. Sense of the Unseen Both John and Paul have an overwhelm- ing sense of the unseen. They are always conscious of an in-crowding universe, far transcending the limits of human speech. When a man has seen and heard the in- 46 JOHN AND PAUL visible and the unutterable, life can never again be a matter of picking and choosing what may be most agreeable and least difficult. No hour can be idled away. Every moment is precious that may, by even a little, further the business of a life dedicated to the unfinished task of Jesus Christ. With both these men mysticism rises steadily through the years with a growing experience of eternal values. At last this spiritual realism floods all thought, colors every motive, controls every act, domi- nates the whole self. It is not rhapsody, it is conscious experience when Paul ex- claims, "For me to live is Christ." For such men "all things are possible" because they "can do all things through Christ." Their God is always able to supply all their need. All things are theirs and there is a Grace that is always all-sufficient. All things work together for good because they love God, and they have all and abound. There is no lack nor limit to the all- sufficiency of Him whose they are and whom they serve. Further than this it is not possible for a 47 MISSIONARY MORALE human being to go in utter identification with his Lord. And for any man who attains this life that is hid with Christ in God, little needs to be said about the morale of the missionary. Such a man becomes his own standard. Christ for the World Growing out of this sense of identity with Christ follows naturally enough the conviction that only Christ is sufficient for the needs of the world. There is no cure for a very sick humanity. To make men know him and the power of his resurrec- tion is the one business before which all other issues of life fade and are forgotten. When such a man speaks other men must listen and thereafter be divided. We can- not dissect the morale of John or Paul, God forbid, but we may sit at their feet and learn very much from men who have been with Christ and can tell us about him. It Takes Time No missionary can attain to his own measure of the spirit of Christ in a month or a year. Neither Paul nor John reached 48 JOHN AND PAUL their Delectable Mountains at once. But as the path climbs, the air clears and the horizon recedes until clearer vision brings better understanding. It is required first that a man be found traveling in the pathway that leads on toward the heights; and if he faints not by the way, in due time he shall attain. Even to acquire a little of the stature of these spiritual giants is to solve most of the problems of a missionary's life. Such men as these in any age will dominate the spiritual life of the world. The modern missionary who can find the springs from which these men drank, and draw from them, may influence profoundly that part of the world assigned to him as his spiritual inheritance. 49 CHAPTER VI THE CALL AND THE TASK If the most determinative factor in a missionary's life is his own personality, then the years of preparation should in- clude some attention to the development of effective morale. There are things that a candidate should know before he be- comes a missionary. We are now well away from the idea that all the eager volunteer needs is to hear a "call" and forthwith arise and go, trusting to such support and success as "the Lord may be pleased to send." All too evidently some of these "calls" have been but queer noises in the night, much misunderstood. Why Does a Missionary Go? Why is a missionary? What motives lead men and women to exile themselves and readjust their lives at every personal and social point of contact? Why should 50 THE CALL AND THE TASK an adult who has once established a basis of life begin all over again and provide himself a complete working equipment, in- cluding his clothing, house, friends, food, working habits, comforts, recreations, and even speech and social sanctions? Any adequate mastery of a new language means almost a recasting of the habits of thought. The objections to such conduct have been fully stated. Every candidate meets some of them. In some form comes the suggestion that he is doing a foolish and futile and perhaps an insane thing. That many turn back is not strange. The mar- vel is that anyone goes, and stranger still are long lives, wholly and unflinchingly de- voted to such service regardless of every sacrifice involved. Why do they do it? At least five factors appear in the making of such decisions. 1. Romance The romance of foreign missionary work makes a strong appeal to people whose imaginations have been touched by the stories of the heroes and martyrs and leaders whose lives have laid "foundations 51 MISSIONARY MORALE for Christian empires." To help establish a new earth and cause a light to shine among the darkened nations is a wonderful thing. And some sense of the romantic is a good thing. God pity the people who have none of it. 2. Travel Not always consciously separated from other factors is a desire to travel and "see the world." The wanderlust is born in some people and drives them about the earth restlessly searching for some new thing. Missionaries who have been in- fluenced much by this love of adventure are apt to shift about much and never continue long in one stay. And their lives are not often large dividend-payers for the Kingdom. Unless some deeper motive than this actuates men to a decision for foreign mission service their contribution will not be very valuable. 3. The Personal Touch Perhaps the personal touch influences as many people as any other motive. They have come to know some foreign mis- 52 THE CALL AND THE TASK sionary and have listened to his stories, read his letters, followed his work, and through his life have been thrilled with the impulse to go and do likewise. This motive is valid and accounts for more life decisions than can be traced directly thereto. Most human decisions are made on largely personal grounds. 4. Fruitful Life Investment A reasoned desire to invest one's life as fruitfully as possible, and a conviction that mission work shows the greatest discrep- ancy between need and supply of workers, has brought many a candidate to the point of offering himself for such service as he could best render. When one considers the pitifully small supply of workers at home and in foreign fields, the challenge of the unmet needs of the non-Christian world constitutes a sight draft on the best that any man has to give to the most far- reaching and fundamental task ever com- mitted to men. 5. A Direct Call There is a call to missionary service to 53 MISSIONARY MORALE be accounted for by none of these factors. Not every missionary has had such an impulsion, but many have been conscious of an inner urge that rang in their souls like the ceaseless surge of the surf on the shore. A man may get to the field with- out such a call, and he may become a good missionary on the basis of his desire to serve. But for him on whose spirit the mantle has fallen there are but two courses possible. He may follow the voice or he may turn a deaf ear and face a crippled and relatively fruitless life. When a man or a woman has this fire in the bones there is no peace until the ques- tion is settled and the life is aligned with the call. The marked soul may struggle, but there will be no peace. He reads of the sailing of a party of missionaries for their fields, and spends a sleepless night and a wretched week. He reads of mis- sionary plans and projects and goes about like a condemned man because he has no part in it. On all sides news items, mis- sionary meetings, chance remarks, returned missionaries themselves, rise up to meet him and in the night his accusing con- 54 THE CALL AND THE TASK science haunts his dreams. O wretched man that he is until the question is settled ! The Best Missionaries Who make the best missionaries? The called or the chosen? Those who are stricken down by the great impulsion or those who face the issue and deliberately decide to put their lives into the great cause? The best missionaries are those who make adequate preparation and then go to the field and stay there, rendering efficient service throughout the years allotted to them. Some of the great leaders had dis- tinct calls and some never had a conscious call other than their desire to serve most effectively. A missionary call is like any other call of God to a human life. It may be the trumpet tones or the earthquake shock that upsets a man's life to get his attention. It may be the inner whisper of a loving Presence, or it may be the granting of a burning desire to go into all the world and receive a kingdom. The final test is the result of a man's life. If with the heavenly 55 MISSIONARY MORALE light anyone hear His Voice in a focused command, let him not be disobedient unto the heavenly vision, or he may go through life blind. But if no such flash or command is experienced, let him not turn aside from a desire to go out and do a man's full share of the task left us by our Lord. Interest in missionary work and desire to. do one's part may be as valid a call as the voice of the Lord coming in a dream by night, or the restless "Woe is me if I preach not the gospel." 56 CHAPTER VII THE MISSIONARY IN THE MAKING What Shall the Candidate Do? A missionary's life is not a checking off on a round of daily duties ; neither should a candidate be advised and instructed and exhorted to death. Too much rule-making in advance kills the spirit of service. The good missionary must be a man or woman able to make rules and change them over- night if need be. There are plenty of advisers competent to prescribe curricula and mental calisthenics. The serious can- didate obviously will get the best mental equipment possible. He will accumulate discipline and information and ideals, he will make a beginning on the language of his field, he will cultivate acquaintance with every missionary he can reach. The candidate will begin his missionary work with the people about him, which 57 MISSIONARY MORALE does not mean that he will be constantly preaching to his patient friends. But he must get his personal influence into action. If he cannot do effective work with people of his own race and kind, and whose speech he understands, what can he hope to do with aliens and strangers, speaking an un- known tongue and possessing not even ideals to comprehend what he would teach? What Is Candidate Morale? A candidate should maintain wholesome and positive relations with life at as many points as possible. Normality far out- weighs eccentricity as foundation on which to build effective missionary morale. One's contacts with life must be kept in good working order, or he is apt to hear some mixed voices. Human contacts are vital, since all effective output of life goes over those connections. If the man fails here, there will be no useful result, no matter what qualifications he may possess. It is useless to try to be a missionary unless one can make friends with almost everybody. There are a few intense people who gather a very small circle of friends (sometimes a 58 MISSIONARY IN THE MAKING "circle" of but two or three people) and exclude the rest of the world. Let all such broaden their fellowships or stay at home. Wholesomeness affords the only per- manent basis of missionary personality. Hermits, people afflicted with "piousity," and moody souls have no place among missionaries. Missionary conditions are too straight to allow room for up-and- down folks who cannot yield in nonessen- tials. Verily, some good fellows and social desirables and college leaders shall enter into the Kingdom before such tempera- mental aspirants. The Gift That Is Within The good candidate may well stir up the gift that is within him, no matter what that gift may be. Chalk-talks, furniture- making, farming, shop work, trades, slight- of-hand, photography, histrionics, poetry, and entomology — these and a hundred other "gifts" have high usefulness. It is not so much a matter of what one can do as that he may be able really to do something and do it well. Many triumphs of the missionary's work 59 MISSIONARY MORALE have been the products of skill in some trade or hobby peculiar to some worker who found an emergency and used his gift to meet it. One business-loving missionary organ- ized a credit association among Christian merchants and carried them through a crisis when heathen shopkeepers failed on every hand. A militant missionary slew tigers in his territory and brought men by thousands to hear the gospel from the man who had saved their lives. A vigorous propagandist ferreted out opium joints, smashed them to bits, and spread ruin and devastation about the premises. He brought the guilty to their knees and after inaugurating law and order, later established a church. A skilled organizer got control of a tract of land and placed a thousand starving famine refugees on modern farms and made them self-supporting as the first installment of an agricultural scheme that began to revolutionize the lives of several millions of people. It was a medical missionary who enter- 60 MISSIONARY IN THE MAKING tained a passing pilgrim by curing his fever, filling his tooth, mending his watch, repairing the lock on his traveling chest, adjusting his eyeglasses, cutting his hair, and finding guides for his journey. When the traveler departed he left the missionary making a wooden leg for a man whose limb he had amputated three months before. One man left a career as an engineer for mission service, but in the siege of Peking saved the lives of the impounded foreigners by organizing effective defenses. A mechanical genius installed an electric outfit on his automobile and operated a moving-picture machine with which he showed Bible films at night and induced thousands to buy Gospels as the price of admittance. A trained nurse established a dispensary in a leper village and thereby won many to righteousness. A young architect relinquished with re- gret a promising career at his drafting board to become a missionary. Pagan op- position cut off self-support, whereupon he opened a school in architecture and brought in a group of young men for intensive 61 MISSIONARY MORALE training, while the earnings supported the work. Thus was founded one of the unique missions of the Orient. It was a young man with a gift for ex- pression who became the social bright spot for many a dreary evening in a mission station. A host of singers and players have charmed away the evil spirits of loneliness and discouragement till all the world seemed brighter and better — and it was. And what shall we say of the artists and hand-workers and singers and players and embroiderers and engineers and stock- raisers and storekeepers and bookkeepers and preachers and teachers and editors and printers and blacksmiths and carpen- ters and medicine-mixers and business managers and dentists and gardeners and scientific explorers, and all the hosts of others who have used their own particular gifts that by all means they might save some? All of which has to do with the attitude of mind of the candidate and the prepara- tion for his life service. Of all men, the missionary is the last to suppose that he 62 MISSIONARY IN THE MAKING should be a recluse, a "man apart," a specialist in solemnity, a superior being set for an ensample to be consulted. He is first and last a man among other men, and given the reserves and backgrounds of devotion and intelligence, like his divine Lord, will do his best work when he goes eating and drinking among his people, al- ways one of them that he may win some of them to something better than himself. Five Essentials to Success Five things are essential to success. The effective worker must know himself and understand something of his own capacity and limitations. Otherwise he will fight the air with futile gestures. He should know people. Humanity is still the proper study of the man who is to devote his life to the remaking of human nature. All the humanities, philosophy, sociology, biology, and any other 'ology that deals with living people are worth while. He should know enough history and philosophy to get a broad background for his thinking. 63 MISSIONARY MORALE He should know his Bible, for, after all, his message is in and of the Book, and unless he can teach it effectively he will wander about the field of morals and ethics and establish no abiding city of character. He should know, above all else, his Lord and Master, for Paul asserts that, compared with this understanding, all other learning is but foolishness. 64 CHAPTER VIII THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN There is a vast discrepancy between the number of young people who at some time and in some way volunteer for missionary service and the very different number who finally get to the field. And there is yet a different figure for those who stay on the work after they arrive. The Many Called In a general way, out of fifty persons who are "called" sufficiently to express in some way an interest and state a desire to enter missionary service, about thirty- eight will drop out and the remaining dozen will enroll as candidates. Four of these will withdraw their names, four more will drop out as soon as any definite work is offered them, and of the remaining four one will drop out at the last moment, one will return at or before the end of the first 65 MISSIONARY MORALE term of service, one will leave the field for a time and later enter some other mission field, and the last one will settle down, an increasing success as the years go by. What are the causes of this enormous shrinkage? Many impulsive people promptly reconsider when a definite offer is made. To offer one's life for service is such a beautiful thing to do, and brings admiring and sympathizing friends who offer hearty good wishes at the rally services. It is fine to be a sacrifice on the missionary altar so long as the altar is in the dim distance and the service in the remote future. Many candidates have not the slightest idea as to what is required of them as can- didates, or will be expected of them on the field. Occasionally there is friction in the candidate's family that works against good intentions. And in nearly all failures there is preeminently failure to attain the "missionary spirit," which is nothing more or less than morale. Certainly, something more than rapture and good intentions is required to make an effective missionary. The present ratio of those who fail to con- 66 THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN nect with a definite task bears distressing resemblance to the biological ratios of survival. Probably no work is more underesti- mated than that of the missionary. Psy- chological tests cannot determine the ultimate reactions of men to their work, but they can determine something of the quality of raw material with which the training processes begin. And any effec- tive training must include those personal and inspirational factors that develop the highest morale. Before a missionary can become a leader of other men he must come to some rich- ness and satisfactory spiritual experience in his own life. He must have a foundation in a good stomach and steady nerves and sound lungs. He must have training and adaptability. He must possess a sense of order, a capacity for consecutive action, a power to plan and then carry out the plan to its proper terminal. Some very capable men have almost canceled their output by their inability to run on one track for any length of time. "One poor plan is better than three good ones." 67 MISSIONARY MORALE The missionary will properly enough re- sent the imputation that he is a peculiar person in a class by himself. If he is pe- culiar, the world will find it out soon enough without reference to his calling. A man's residual self will work its way to the surface regardless of imposing appearances and high-sounding introductions. Inevit- ably, and sometimes tragically, his inner self will appear projected on the screen of his conduct and attitude toward life. The strains of mission work certainly will strip away all artificialities and leave the naked soul face to face with raw humanity. What Makes the Missionary Allowing for individual variations and adaptabilities, here are a few characteris- tics that ought to appear in some degree in the personal repertoire of every mis- sionary. Capacity for Isolation. A missionary is a long way from his own kind of people, and if he cannot come to be at home with his work he will die at heart. To be a friend of strangers and at the same time be content to live a lonely life is not always 68 THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN easy. He must be in good company when alone. Hobby Riding. No man can spend all his waking hours at one task. The relaxa- tion of a good hobby adds to a man's morale by saving him from the dizzy dis- tortion of the one idea. It matters little what the hobby may be — insect-collecting, photography, horticulture, floriculture, touring, tennis, or trombone- tooting; but if the avocation can have some indirect relation to the day's work, there may be great gain thereby at times. One Oriental missionary experimented for years in bud- ding American fruits onto native branches and at last had the satisfaction of seeing the Chinese steal the buds from his trees that they might grow them in their own gardens. Sense of Humor Mere joking has its value as a social sauce, but for the missionary humor has a far more important function than that of making people giggle. A working sense of humor is one of the prime elements of saving grace. It is not a matter of laugh- 69 MISSIONARY MORALE ing because to laugh is pleasant. It is a question of one's whole attitude toward life. Humor brings relief from tension and allows the overstrained personality to re- turn to normal appraisals again. Humor clears the air for a new start, and breaks the groundings of the circuits of normality. Humor is the balance wheel of per- sonality. No man with a keen sense of the ludicrous can take himself more seri- ously than he ought to take, or think of himself too highly. How could he? Humor is the "measure of a man's mar- gin." Humor calls out the reserves of sanity, when the air becomes obscured by the blue haze of discouragement or the red glare of indignation. Humor opens the closed shutters of the soul and lets in again the sunshine of good nature. There are elements of morale that a missionary can get along without, but humor is not one of them. The list of qualifications required in an available candidate is now pretty definitely 70 THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN ascertained. A board may occasionally re- ject some candidate who may eventually make good when given a chance, but the established rules of procedure have the backing of a century of experience, and a comparison of results attained by the ap- proved candidates of the regular Mission Boards and the self-appointed missionaries sent out independently, establishes the soundness of the accepted principles of selection. Dr. Arthur J. Brown, of the Presbyterian Board, mentions the accepted qualifications of the available candidate in the following order: 1. Health, given first place because fun- damental. 2. Age, 25 to 33 years, with exceptions. 3. Education, varying according to class of service. 4. Executive ability and force of charac- ter. More needed than in work in the home land. 5. Common sense. (Might be put next to health in order of importance.) 6. Steadiness of purpose. To carry on after the halo has faded. 71 MISSIONARY MORALE 7. Temperament, adaptability, relia- bility, amiability — in short, unselfishness. A missionary should at least be a gentle- man. 8. Doctrinal views. Conformity to ac- cepted views, without surrender of private judgment. 9. Marriage, an important factor in ad- justment of work. 10. Freedom from financial obligations. A mission field is not a place to pay debts or lay up bank accounts. 11. Christian character and experience, without which all else must register but failure. (See full discussion of these and other essentials in The Foreign Missionary, by Dr. Brown.) Enemies of Morale There are certain well-defined forces that weed out new missionaries at an alarming rate. To locate and appraise these in advance is to be forearmed against their influence. Monotony saps the vitality and endur- ance of people who live more or less in the enthusiasms of change and excitement. 72 THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN There will be little enough of monotony in a mission field where the missionary is alive to the unfailing interests and reac- tions of native life. And with a forward- moving program of mission work nothing is more interesting than the unfolding of life under the influence of spiritual stimuli. Routine drudgery does its deadly work or it becomes a blessing as indicated in the discussion of "discipline," elsewhere in this book. "If something would only blow up," exclaimed a tired toiler. From a far interior point came a veteran missionary to a seaport. She deposited her baggage in the mission house and exclaimed, "Where is the best moving picture show in town?" Aimlessness, lack of definite objective, general pottering about destroy more mis- sionary usefulness than pestilence. 73 CHAPTER IX ARTIFICIAL MORALE There is a general conviction that pub- lic spirit and personal enthusiasm can be produced at will by certain well-defined and established propaganda methods guar- anteed to cure listless student bodies, inert campaigns, and mechanical-mindedness. Propaganda Methods These regulation promotion policies have a certain value. They seem to accomplish much. The galvanized social nervous sys- tem responds to the programs and parades and rallies and rousements and bonfires and brass bands, and the amused citizens and soldiers and students listen to the fervid exhortations of yell leaders, recruit- ing agents, or four-minute men, and con- sider that more zeal really ought to be shown for the cause. For the current hour it looks as if something had been done. 74 ARTIFICIAL MORALE The next week is very apt to find mat- ters about where they were before the pressure was laid on. Highest morale is unconscious and arises as the result of forces that work within us reactions the more effective because unpremeditated. All genuine morale bears a touch of mysticism, an element of the spontaneous that acts like a spark amid the tinder and starts a blaze. The quality of the flame will depend upon the kind of fuel the fire finds ready. It takes an immense amount of effort to start a fire by sheer friction, the direct propaganda way. Some great shock, some mighty appeal, some steady discipline will kindle a fire directly, and the fire will burn on as long as there is anything to feed the flame. Staying Power In the end it is staying that wins. Early in the world war the French soldier as- serted that he was the bravest soldier in the world, but the British soldier claimed to be brave fifteen minutes longer than any other fighter. If good morale were merely shouting and 75 MISSIONARY MORALE flag waving, we could soon finish the cam- paign. Some machine might be devised that would cry aloud and trail bunting in the air. Experience proves, however, that some great effervescers are poor mission- aries, and it has been known that popular home platform men have themselves con- stituted problems on the mission field. Morale is not fireworks. It is not en- thusiasm. It may be noisy at times and it may be very quiet. Good morale is the spirit that goes steadily on with the work regardless of wind and weather. Good morale plans and prays and labors and waits on till the end. Good morale plows and plants, waits for the ripened grain, and does not pull at the roots or cut off the tops from the growing crops for the sake of an enthusiastic report or a dra- matic speech. The telling of tragic or thrilling stories does not indicate good morale so much as it hints at a spirit of nervous unrest that cannot get on without the stimulus of constant high successes. Too many "stage stories" in an appeal are a bad system. Any assumed quality dies in time and 76 ARTIFICIAL MORALE leaves a bad spot in character. Mission- aries, like other public men, have their temptations to unreality, but the results are especially damaging with the mission- ary. All good workers will develop devo- tion, courage, activity, cordiality, and zeal, but once consciously assumed, these be- come pseudo-characteristics and create an atmosphere of insincerity that prevents the development of genuine originals. Organized Facts But facts, like figures, may be assembled so as to deceive or discourage or distort the real issue. Unorganized facts are confusing. Much depends upon how the emphasis is distributed. An appeal that will stimulate the missionary spirit must be grounded in facts, but the facts must be organized and interpreted, or the grain of principle will be lost in the chaff of details. A mission- ary may be a reporter, which is well, but his reporting will be doubled in value if it be also an interpretation and a prophecy. And valid prophecy must always be closely related to determinative facts of a situation. Any missionary interest arising from re- 77 MISSIONARY MORALE sponse to appeals largely personal in char- acter and emotional in type is apt to be transient. It may be genuine enough while it lasts, but the personal factor changes, the enthusiasm abates, and some other dramatic appeal crowds out the cause that needs assistance. Such is the bane of whirlwind campaigns for funds and workers sometimes carried on by enthusiastic missionary speakers who make dramatic appeals for money to carry on more or less independent missionary enterprises. When "the tumult and the shouting dies," the work that has been suddenly revived, expires with small hope of any permanent resurrection. The measure of value of missionary morale is its staying power. When interest and service go on steadily through the years, we may be sure that it has founda- tions that abide, and that what is builded thereon will stand the strains of times and seasons that come and go with the ebb and flow of the tide of human affairs. Morale and Life Results What accounts for the failure of so many 78 ARTIFICIAL MORALE missionaries to get results adequate to their preparation, labor, and sacrifice? Verily, this is a leading question. The meager outcome of some promising lives suggests the figure of a railway train ready for a journey. Presently a great engine in perfect order and with full head of steam backs down and bumps against the train. Signals are given, the bell rings, and the engine pulls out majestically on its run. But the train remains unmoved on the track. No connection was made. There was impact, the passengers felt it, but there was no coupling established. Re- sults — nothing. What is the vital connection between a missionary and his life result? It is not his age nor his intellect, not his physique nor his schooling nor his previous ex- perience. All these but made him ready to move the train of his task. Neither is it the shout with which he sets out upon his work. The bump moved the train but a few inches and that backward. The living link between the man and his results is the personality, the spirit, the indescribable something that is the man 79 MISSIONARY MORALE himself, back of and greater than any other factor in his life. It is the morale of a man that ties him to his work and moves his share of the load. It is a tragedy that any man has brought a finely equipped life to the task and has effected a worthy jar on his first impact with his work, and later on moved away leaving no results worth mentioning. 80 CHAPTER X THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH Given a consuming belief in the worth of a cause, there exists in human nature an immense capacity for sacrifice. Ther- mopylae and Balaklava and Bunker Hill and Chateau-Thierry were all wrought by faith. The work of Wy cliff e and Luther and Wesley was accomplished through an overwhelming certainty of the invisible. Livingstone, Morrison, Carey, Cox, and William Taylor were carried onward by the forces of faith in the all-necessity of the cause they served. Columbus and Magellan and Winthrop and Jason Lee plunged into the unknown because they lived in the unseen. The Foundation A man's faith is the foundation on which he builds the structure of his personality, and from it come the elements of stability and courage. "It is a man's idea, his philosophy, that fixes the angle of impact 81 MISSIONARY MORALE of all experiences upon him and so decides what effect each experience will have." Morale is a state of faith more than it is anything else. And since faith is the very essence of things not seen, it cannot be tested in advance of experience. Praying for "faith" as an abstraction, in order that, possessing it, one may go forth to meet experience, is a reversal of spiritual processes. Life supplies the tests, while character and conduct measure the reac- tions. A man's work is the measure of the projecting power of his own inner cer- tainty. In the long run a missionary lives on the productive power of his personal relation to the unseen. If life be reduced to visible and audible and tangible things, he is through before he begins. Measured by campaigns and causes, a soldier's faith be- comes a silent but powerful factor in his fighting spirit. It colors all his motives and intensifies his driving power. It keeps him fighting on after lesser forces have weakened under the struggle. In overcom- ing the world it overcomes everything else. The missionary's faith links him with 82 THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH the inexhaustible and preserves and lifts his whole energy on to a higher plane. There is a mechanical sort of preparation that produces a workman correct by rule, but without the divine fire of a living faith he will become confused under a strain, and when the pressure is severe he may be troubled by doubts concerning the validity of his mission. When a man throws his whole life into African jungles to start in motion healing forces for the open sore of the world, there is something more vital than mere schooling or intelli- gence or resolution to account for the results. Faith in the Unseen This is the secret of the ultrahuman en- durance of the missionary under strain; he is upheld by a clear sense of the reality of a Spiritual Presence, for faith at its high- est is faith in a Person. The worker toils on, weary it may be and discouraged often- times, but he goes on and his going on rests back upon his consciousness that Jesus Christ is close by in the hour of need. It makes all the difference in the 83 MISSIONARY MORALE world what his Lord and Master thinks of him and of his work. So long as he is pleased, what else matters? A Personal Faith It is this sense of a close Spiritual Per- sonality that gives its longest dimension and highest value to every man's work. The deeds of one day are small, and of a lifetime are not great. Rut when the day and the life fall into an ordered plan, and become necessary stones in the wall being erected under the eye of the Master Builder, the case is different. To know that the place where we build will con- tinue to rise after we are gone is to make our building worth while. There is an immortality through works that lifts a man above the temporality of his daily tasks and in the smile of his Lord makes him more than conqueror. Fear and Love Fear and faith are mutually antagonis- tic. If "perfect love caste th out fear," then conversely fear dries up the springs of confidence and trust. Man fears above all 84 THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH creatures because he is more intelligent and more imaginative, and the missionary is subject to a whole train of apprehensions that arise to trouble his spirit and reduce his results. The situation of isolation, re- moteness, strangeness, and impossibility of being understood tends to beget a host of fears, and back of them all is the fear of failure. When one is safe in the fold of the home church, to renounce all and set out to follow Christ is a glorious high call- ing, but ten thousand miles away, where no one knows or cares or understands, there creeps in the insidious dread that the great renunciation may, after all, bear no justifying results. The technique of meeting fear is simple enough in theory. To remember that everybody else fears, and to recognize fear as merely a factor in the unavoidable ex- periences of life, and to "take a long breath and go in" — these all help more or less. But the mastery of fear is a matter of faith. Where unfaltering confidence fills a man's consciousness, fear is automatically eliminated. Now, no man can be over- 85 MISSIONARY MORALE whelmingly conscious of God all the time. But lie may cultivate the moments of vision and by regular routine of devo- tional life may frequently find his way to the place where the still small Voice is heard. And before a surpassing love for men and an unshakable certainty of God no fear can stand. It is sometimes supposed that whereas the surroundings of home life are distract- ing and tend to devitalize the spiritual life, the atmosphere of a foreign mission field will be found uplifting and stimulating to the spirit. Surely, for him who renounces all, special grace will lighten the task and the life of the spirit will be more easily attained than in one's own country. Such vain imaginations leave out of account the fact that where social, domestic, and eccle- siastical support is wanting, the worker must rest his morale almost wholly on his own personal consciousness of things di- vine. Without this solid foundation in a healthy and well-developed spiritual life, a mission may become a place of moral and spiritual shipwreck. In any case it is not an infirmary for sickly saints. 86 CHAPTER XI DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY Some one has defined genius as "the deliberate choice of living with major issues of life." Whether this is genius may be questioned, but it is certainly a strong factor in good morale. Majors and Minors Living with the major issues does not avoid dealing with a host of annoying de- tails and a lot of tiresome drudgery. The major issues of life are not realized with- out a lot of mastery of minor issues. To get beyond the minors and into the majors is one of the most pressing problems of a missionary's life. No matter what premissionary ideals may have been, on-the-field experiences must involve constant attention to trifles. Executive officials may turn some of this drudgery over to private secretaries and office staff, but the field man must usually 87 MISSIONARY MORALE be his own secretary. If letters are written, he must "pound them out" him- self. If details about the school or church or mission house are attended to, he is usually the man to do it. And to attend to the thousand details and keep one's soul thrilled by the big main issue at the same time — there's the rub. Duplex Efficiency No man's call includes advance informa- tion concerning the peculiar strains of mis- sion life. Of all the responsibilities that devolve upon the missionary, none is greater than that due to the necessity for his being both a prophet and an adminis- trator. And the secret of success in this double role rests in the personality of the man himself. It is morale at its best, for the successful missionary must be a duplex man; rather, he must be multiplex if he is to do all things. Amid the varied gifts and specializations of the home land, one may plant and another water, but the mis- sionary must do both. At home one may dream and devise while others organize and administer, but the missionary must be 88 DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY equally proficient as a seer of visions and an executive engineer. He must mount up with wings in flights of prophetic discern- ment, but he must also be able to walk steadily through the daily tasks. Bridging the Gap To bridge the gap between ideals and realizations becomes the missionary's pe- culiar test. He must always keep clearly in view the new city of God to be brought down out of heaven and set up on the earth. If the missionary has no such vision, his people will perish with him. This would not be so difficult if there were not always something else in the line of view. To look at a filthy native village and by faith behold clean streets and pure water and modern sanitation re- quires that a man see in the clouds while his feet are still on the ground. To work with crowds of diseased and offensive human derelicts and see in them possible health and intelligence and moral sound- ness generates a nervous strain. To work on with wretched buildings and scant fur- niture and yet see adequate churches and 89 MISSIONARY MORALE schools with worthy equipment means a tightening tension on vital forces, espe- cially if the coming be long delayed. Seeing visions is not the hardest point. Making them come true is another matter. It is not difficult to look over a mission situation and sketch an ideal of the things that ought to be. To cause them to hap- pen is proof of high calling. And hardest of all it is to do three things at once, for the man must see visions and undertake their realization, and meanwhile go on working amid disheartening present-tense conditions. Personality The gap can be bridged ; it is being done every day in nearly every mission station on earth. But the bridging is not a mat- ter of technical training, it is a question of the spirit of the inner life. Flying can be taught, also the science of survey and plan- drawing. Training may produce a good builder and able executive. One may learn to walk and not faint. But to achieve that too-rare versatility that can switch from flying to walking and do both 90 DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY well the same day is a matter of a man's own inner reactions to the challenge of life's emergencies and exigencies. In the last issue it is the thing in a man that can never be measured with a line nor weighed on a scale that determines his overcoming power. There is no logical accounting for a mis- sionary's call, nor is there any rational ex- planation of his results. Both the man and his product belong to a world above the rules of "good business" and beyond the considerations of "safety first." The need is not so much for more missionaries as for a superbrand of missionaries who will achieve the impossible because they are themselves humanly unaccountable. Sacrifice and Discipline From a great French officer comes the dictum that "the soul of the soldier means two things, the spirit of sacrifice and the spirit of discipline." Likewise it may be said that the soul of the missionary is two things, the inspira- tion of the great cause and the mastery of details through the discipline of drudgery. 91 MISSIONARY MORALE With these two wings the missionary eagle soars above the ruts. By them his spirit attains mastery in any wind and weather. The "demons of fear, fatigue, and pain" will be cast out only when the inner spirit rises above its own necessities and lives consciously in the major issues. Three Disciplines 1. The drudgery of small daily details has much to do with steadying personality and producing consecutive effort. To go through the same routine of school work, day after day; to write so many letters, each of small value; to treat so many patients, each of no great importance; to visit so many stations, none of them very flourishing — to do these things day in and day out is wearing, but it is also cumula- tive, and in the end bears ripe fruit in both the work and the worker. 2. The drudgery of regular physical ex- ercise is not an inspiring thing, but it has a very vital relation to the output of re- sults. A dependable physical habit does much to develop a reserve force that will not fail in emergencies. Libraries have 92 DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY been written on the matter of health, and sooner or later an intelligent man must learn the rules by which he can attain and maintain his own body in good work- ing order. From that on it is a matter of playing the game according to the rules. If his spirit cannot master his body and bring it under the drudgery of discipline, the worker and his work must suffer, and to that extent the cause must fail. Morale of the spirit is what sound health is for the body. To drag along at a poor dying rate is to destroy all efficiency and infect the surroundings. The man who sets himself to the task of doing all things through Christ cannot afford to drag about a half-nourished and ill- conditioned body. If one is not to beat the air, but fight effectively, he must take the training and live by the rules. 3. The daily devotional habit sometimes drifts near to formalism, but the regular moments of prayer and thought are the drill that keep the soul fit for the day. The regular fifteen minutes at the regular time has very high value. The difficulty is to find the fifteen minutes, but somehow, 93 MISSIONARY MORALE somewhere it must be maintained during the day's business, if the King's messenger is to represent worthily his Master. Many great missionaries, like Daniel, have been methodical almost to the point of becoming mechanical in their devotions. When a man kneels upon his knees three times a day and does it in the same spot with his face turned toward a certain di- rection, he may be called a formalist, but he is apt to show great stability in emer- gencies. It is a matter of finding one's climax, in the power to "keep on going on," when things are going fearfully slow. Since habit-forming power lies in the individual, and not in the surroundings, there is no security except in the deliberate putting of first things first and living in the major issues. Formalities American informality is a high achieve- ment in a way, but it often interferes with devotional schedules and practices; and frequently it becomes a serious noncon- ductor of influence with the natives who 94 DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY are unable to understand our seeming utter lack of respect for what are to them the common decencies of life. We seem to show small appreciation of official and social values. Here is a good place to turn vegetarian where meat-eating is offensive to those of different standards. It is impossible to overdo the consideration and regard paid to other people's standards where those standards do not conflict with moral prin- ciples. In a general way, "it is impossible to do one's formalities too well," for by these will many be approved or condemned. Previous Attainments There is the driving impulsion of a man's former successes. One outstanding attain- ment forever impels a man to measure up to his best. A background of former effi- ciency and self-respect is armor plate in the day of strain. There is the measure of what has been done to demand still more. A man with such a background will show a steadiness and buoyancy impossible to the navigator of an uncharted sea. Once sure of oneself, the battle is half won. 95 MISSIONARY MORALE Over every mission door should be written, "No doubters need enter here." If they do enter, they will not long remain — as doubters. Dogmatism has its high use on the mission field. But it must be the open-minded dogmatism that is sure of es- sentials and willing to allow full liberty in unimportant things. Final Devotement of Whole Person- ality The climax of missionary service lies in that ripened maturity that at last lays aside every weight and devotes every atom of personality to the one task set before. When young people enlist with so much of enthusiasm and glow they think they are doing just this, but where was ever a lonely novitiate who, in the first hours of rebuff and discouragement, did not hear inner whispers suggesting that he had made a mistake? Surely, some one else can do the work better. Other young people are willing to "try" it, and if they get on well, may continue for a time. Should the work "not appeal to them," they may drop out. Such a state of mind never does effective 96 DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY work. Not until the discipline of the years has eliminated the reservations and brought the steady stride that marks the passing of illusions and halos does real finality ap- pear. Colonel Gorgas is said to have re- marked that three causes sent men home from the Panama Canal. There was ma- laria, there was yellow fever, and there were "cold feet," and the cold feet sent more home than the other two. The Missionary and His Reading The case for the pastor's reading habit has been often and adequately stated. Find the best plea for the faithful reading of good books, new and old, by the man in the home land and then multiply it by three for the missionary. Verily there are three multipliers: 1. Distance from the currents of the world's best intellectual and spiritual life. 2. Isolation from kindred spirits of equal or greater ability. 3. The daily belittling of petty tasks of more or less routine nature, without the social stimulus of virile American com- munity life. 97 MISSIONARY MORALE No man can maintain a keen mind with- out constant replenishing at the springs from which flow the contributions of the thinkers of all times. The missionary may be spared the dissipation of the multipage daily paper, though he is eager to see one when it reaches him; but he misses the undercurrent of stimulus that comes from what that paper represents in his life. And unless he can establish a regular course of self-imposed reading of the things worth while his mental life will inevitably go stale. In many missionary situations books are hard to get, but a man can surely arrange to read at least six new books a year, and less than that means a slowing up of intel- lectual life. Unique Opportunities The missionary has some intellectual op- portunities that are denied to his fellows at home. There are Oriental literatures and philosophies that supply fascinating and fruitful fields of research. There are na- tives with whom he may discuss questions of the spirit and from whom he may se- 98 DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY cure valuable suggestions as to the inter- pretation of some of these long-locked treasures of the ancient mind. But if the missionary is to keep his own spirit fresh and maintain an intellectual morale that will not fail him, he will have to solve in his own way the problem of having always a fresh and partly read book on his desk or in his traveling bag. The Silent Death The insidious mischief about the failing reading habit is that its departure is so silent and stealthy that one is never con- scious of his loss until the guest has fled. And when a man ceases to read and grow, a subtle deterioration sets in that under- mines the sources of his spiritual life, and he begins to slow up. If this were a con- scious loss, it would not so much matter. One might recover the lost treasure and go on with his work. Possibly no man ever knows when his mind has lost its fresh approach to problems, its keen in- itiative in attack and its attractive strength in carrying burdens. But his associates know it and may wonder at the cause. 99 MISSIONARY MORALE The springs have ceased to flow and the mind is going dry. So insidious and deadly is the lethargy that follows the ending of a man's reading life that he may know it only by noting that he has ceased to read. Few of his distressed friends or his per- plexed followers will have the wisdom or the grace to tell him of it. Only while a man stands beside the stream of living water that bears the intellectual life of the world can he minister to his fellow men fresh cargoes of the mind and spirit. Tragic Miss-Fits Discouragement has a decidedly patho- logical bearing and registers in constitu- tional symptoms. Some missionaries have been invalided home on good-looking doc- tor's certificates, whose maladies could have been traced back to general discouragement and unwillingness longer to face the fight. Somebody was unpleasant, some one did not agree with them,' some one else upset their plans, some of the natives did not yield to treatment, some pet projects failed of official approval, some ideals were shat- tered, some "weepy" letters from home 100 DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY brought a consciousness of long distances, some personal differences destroyed peace of mind; and from gloom to tears, and from tears to nerves, and from nerves to sleeplessness, and from insomnia to loss of appetite the illness grew, till the medical man shook his head and said, "Go home." At last they reached "God's country" again. The tragedy was that they ever left it. The veteran missionary has his com- pensations. He may lack the enthusiasm and initiative of youth, but he has at last the steady purpose and rich experience of a devotion not subject to the fluctuations of temperament and the aberrations of inexperience. The cause will be won by the men who have counted as loss what things were gain to them in the life they have left behind, and literally have abandoned all, that they may rest the full weight of their lives on the command of Jesus, and chal- lenge to service in the neediest fields. Such missionaries learned how to endure hardness, to stand up and face life without a whine, to take it rough, if need be, and 101 MISSIONARY MORALE without complaints, "to welcome each re- buff that turns earth's smoothness rough, that bids not sit nor stand, but go." To take things as they come and make the most of them, to adopt any best means at hand to the desired end; or, if need be, get results without means; to man and master any situation — this is the business of the missionary. 102 CHAPTER XII THE HOME CHURCH A missionary is multiplied by his back- ing. His position isolates him from close touch with his surroundings. He is a foreigner and speaks with a brogue. He must learn by patient observation the cus- toms and intimate traits of the native life about him; and not all missionaries suc- ceed in getting the native touch. Without that something that overlaps boundaries and makes the whole world akin he will miserably fail, and to acquire this well takes time, and during this period of re- orientation the greater strains of mission life appear. Home Backing Multiplies A man without a backing at home works without momentum. He is like those rail- way electric lights that shine dimly on storage battery power, but when "picked up" by the generator blaze out in bril- 103 MISSIONARY MORALE liancy. When a man knows that people believe in him he "shines" on the impulse of their faith added to his own. Obviously, when a missionary must get to his field as early as possible he has small chance to cultivate a wide constituency at home. Early furloughs give valuable op- portunity for creating new connections, but the first years are apt to be lonely enough to try the beginner severely. A soldier without connections can never be much of a soldier. He will always fight with a reservation. And when a mission- ary is sent out without a constituency he cannot deliver much more than half of his potential output. A soldier will not risk his life unless there is in his consciousness something worth fighting for, and it makes all the difference in the world whether he knows that somebody is expecting him to do his best. And when a missionary knows that his friends believe in him and expect him to do great things in their name, he is lifted to a higher place of results. Second-Term Success The greater results of the second term 104 THE HOME CHURCH have several explanations. Not only is the experience of the first years available for reference, but the furlough year has given perspective and has made a host of friends. The man returns, no longer an apprentice, but a veteran. Henceforth some one knows him and his work and with sympathetic interest upholds his efforts. There are churches that look forward to his letters, and there are personal greetings sent out that mean much in the midst of his trials and triumphs. In times of discouragement, at that depressing two-o'clock-in-the-morn- ing hour, the thought of the people who are praying for him will have a wonder- fully tonic effect on the morale of a tired man. Too much halo is a hindrance, even to a missionary, but there is compensation in the way the expectations of one's friends do put him on his mettle. Halos have their place and use. When the home base becomes also the source of supply, mixed results appear. Where supplies flow from the constituency to missionary it must be said that the re- action on the constituency is better than 105 MISSIONARY MORALE on the missionary. Nowhere is a better illustration of the superior blessedness of giving over receiving. The home church reads and rallies and collects and prays and pays, and the showers of blessing fall. The results on the field are not always unmixed. It is a fine thing when a mis- sionary can use his furlough in raising funds for this work. But if the large in- crease is used to open new work which must soon be left without support because the missionary cannot remain at home to secure more gifts, the last state of the work may be worse than the first. Ob- viously, all such propaganda work and the distribution of the financial proceeds thereof should be under the direction of the office or authority having consecutive responsibility for administration and re- sults. Under modern conditions the dan- ger here described has been largely elim- inated and the whole level of missionary education and giving in the home church has been lifted to a plane of intelligent undertaking of the whole task. The missionary, moreover, is in a dan- gerous position. The receptive attitude 106 THE HOME CHURCH lurks at hand and may seize him unawares. There is the insidious temptation to close every letter with alluring descriptions of the vast results easily possible if only some one will send just a few more dollars. Even where he eliminates his own esti- mates of possibilities, he is apt to measure the value of his friendships by the divi- dends they will pay to his work; and economic interest is never a secure nor permanent tie with which to bind mis- sionary friendships. When the missionary degenerates into a sentimental beggar the home church is going to get tired of his insistent importunities and everlasting whining about his hardships and bitter loneliness and failing strength. No one needs to know more than he that "whining is not shining." Pernicious Correspondents Soldiers in France did not write home pathetic letters, begging for special gifts. The government saw to it that they did not need to do so. Neither did they de- scribe their depressing surroundings. The writing of many letters may be a weari- 107 MISSIONARY MORALE ness, a power for good, or a nuisance. There is such a thing as a pernicious letter- writer, and he works deadly havoc on the mission field. Unless a missionary can censor his own mail, he had better leave it unwritten. If a man is really enduring hard knocks, his letters will reflect it without emphasis on the tragic side of the story. The mak- ing of significant sacrifices is a creative and stimulative thing, but the stage-set and purposely exhibited sacrifice becomes a ghastly travesty. Worth-while sacrifices restore broken connections, rebuild normal spirits, and awaken determination to do full duty. Tell the Truth What the missionary needs to know is that the ultimate strength of his cause with the home base lies in his facts. Over the desk of every missionary should hang this motto, "Tell the truth," and under- neath might be inscribed, "In this sign, conquer." No man faces greater tempta- tions to careless statements than a mis- sionary. Every subtle suggestion of Jesuit- 108 THE HOME CHURCH ism comes to bear upon him. His work changes rapidly, and what was true yes- terday bears a different value to-day. The voice of the tempter is heard near at hand. Just a little coloring of facts, just a little padding of figures, just a little liberty with the story would make it so much more dramatic. And the cause is so needy. And the good story would bring more money. It is a terrible strain on a literary imagination, and the end would somehow justify the means. The antidote for this tendency, where it exists, is to remember that accuracy is essential for that moral soundness on which all good morale is founded. When a man buys the truth at the price of his life- service it behooves him to sell it not, even for the prize of a few more special gifts for the "greatest opportunity I have ever seen." Shouting, "O Baal, hear us," has never accomplished much with either human or pagan objects of petition. The straight- forward missionary whose virile spirit de- pends on the facts, and who relies upon accurate and organized reports of actual 109 MISSIONARY MORALE conditions, will impress his readers with the sound and constructive grasp of his program. Sweat and tears are not very convincing as compared with accurate sur- veys and statesmanlike projects for ad- vance. And the home church is beginning to require of a missionary that he have an adequate knowledge of his field and a definite program of procedure. Getting the Facts to the Home Church The matter of getting the facts through to the home church is not so simple as may appear. Periodicals, speeches, letters, pictures, exhibit material all have high place. The furlough man is worked to capacity. Occasionally some layman visits the field with excellent results. The tourist visitor, however, is not an unmixed bless- ing. Sometimes he comes to pry and criticize and returns to scoff and scorn. And ever after, "he knows the facts, for he was there." In some cases all he saw was the views afforded by steamer decks, hotel verandas, and car windows. More tragic is the case of the critic, en- 110 THE HOME CHURCH tertained by the missionary at much sacrifice in hope of a good impression. After the carefully hoarded dainties have been brought forth and served liberally in hope of winning another friend to the cause, the visitor has been known to go home and report that the missionaries were living in luxury on the fat of the land and were a worthless lot of parasites anyway. Pictures are good (if they are good), but even pictures may fail to tell the truth. Much depends upon the commentator. Pictures are good, but vision is better. Pictures never can take the place of per- sonality. Hard facts without human char- acter in the midst are no better than dry bones. Every missionary ought to have a good camera and mimeograph, but before he begins to use them for the instruction of his constituency he should be tested for accuracy and measured for imagination. Marvelous is the power to tell an effective story without rubbing in a financial moral at the end. The irrational enthusiasm of blind optimism must give way to strong, constructive, manly statements. Ill MISSIONARY MORALE The field needs men who know them- selves, know their work, and know their goals and bend all energies to reach them. Publicity There is a type of publicity that pre- supposes that one of the requisites for saving all men is to fill enough space in the paper. What is printed is a secondary matter if only the power of iteration may bring the cause again and again before the eyes of those who read newspapers. Cer- tainly, this art has high value, but, after ail, if Jesus Christ had depended on the pagan predecessors of modern publicity ex- perts, he would have closed his life in failure. He got only four inches in a column of Josephus, which lacks much of representing a first-page head. There are forces of the spirit that transcend pub- licity. It may be just as well to have something to advertise before we begin to shout. The first essential to telling a good story is to have a story to tell. And when the story is found, then let it be told far and wide, but for the sake of the cause let it be told accurately. 112 THE HOME CHURCH Emotional Appeals Tearful tales on the part of furlough men have created a suspicion of the whole en- terprise. Isolated feeling is a dangerous guide to conduct, and the man in the pew- knows it. The hearer either swings into impulsive and unintelligent response or he resents the method of appeal and dis- credits the plea. What a man feels himself about his work will tell its story without conscious effort to work up the sensibilities of the audience. Nowhere is utter genuineness more needed than in a missionary speech. The appeal rests back on its genuineness, and this kind cometh not forth except by attain- ment of the spirit of Him who made him- self of no reputation and gave his all that he might redeem a very large and difficult mission field. 113 CHAPTER XIII MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION Missionary administration has more to do with missionary morale than may at first appear. The candidate has not so much as heard that there be any such thing, but the day of his awakening is not far distant. There are too many wrecks along this shore, and we need some chart that will indicate the route of harmonious cooperation between the field and the office. Contact with the Office Since the recruit has slight personal con- nections with the home church, the ad- ministrative office becomes the working contact between the missionary and the home base. It is here that the worker must look for information, direction, sug- gestion, and criticism of his work. Here the entente cordial e comes to its full sig- 114 MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION nificance. Friction between the field and the office, loss of confidence on either side, will reduce the output in extreme cases to zero. In practice the maintenance of this mu- tual confidence is ninety-five per cent a matter of personal acquaintance. If the men at both ends of a pretty long line have had opportunity to know each other, nearly all the kinks in the line automati- cally disappear. Letters sent half around the globe are often strangely affected by the sea voyage and sometimes are warped by unfamiliar climates — when the senders and receivers are not on terms of close acquaintance. A remark made in person with a smile or a humorous inflection, when written minus the smile and the tone, may cause an explosion ten thousand miles away. It may be said that personal misunderstandings with the office or board usually increase in direct ratio to the square of the distance. Long distances in space and time, with a rapidly moving program, bring differ- ences of viewpoint so rapidly that only frequent personal conferences between 115 MISSIONARY MORALE workers and field executives can prevent misunderstandings and disagreements. Every missionary should be given some opportunity to become acquainted with his home office, and every executive ought to know something of his field from per- sonal visitation and some representative missionary experiences. But receptions, prepared programs, conferences, and gala occasions are not representative expe- riences. The general executive who is to get in touch with the actual work of the missionary will need a sympathetic im- agination to get back of the nonconducting formalities and exhibits that are offered him on the occasion of his visit. Four principles of administrative pro- cedure appear to be gaining general ac- ceptance. 1. The Unified Command At the Edinburgh Conference in 1910 Dr. John R. Mott said that the complete coordination of the missionary forces of the world would be equivalent to doubling those forces. This statement he reaffirmed in 1919 with added emphasis. 116 MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION A new basis of procedure has come to prominence. The old days of "doing the best we could" are. forever past. Slowly but surely we are getting together, not to do the best we can with limited means and dim visions, but to undertake the whole task before us. What centralization of command did for the Allies in 1918 the same principle is doing for the allied churches. Elimination of waste, duplica- tion, overlapping, and overcrowding is already simplifying our objectives and in- creasing our effectiveness. The adoption of uniform programs, schedules, methods, and objectives, and the uniting of denomi- national projects into more far-reaching and effective enterprises have changed the petty competitions of former days into the beginnings of master strategy in missionary administration. 2. The Whole Objective On a certain ferry one morning at the rush hour two thousand people were crowded upon one steamer. An observant passenger noticed a lifeboat bearing the inscription, "Capacity, 12 people." Look- 117 MISSIONARY MORALE ing about, he counted a total of four such boats. Evidently, the company had counted on saving forty-eight out of a possible two thousand people in case of accident. That is what the church has been doing. "The Lord could save the heathen without our help," and we read, "Fear not, little flock, . . ." and smugly congratulated our- selves that since the flock was so small we were fortunate to be inside the fold. The day is past when any follower of Jesus Christ can stop his devotional reading after the word "flock" and not catch the challenge of the rest of the sentence. We are thinking to-day in terms of the King- dom. It is proposed definitely and sys- tematically to undertake the whole task. No wonder that some former methods and plans are on the scrap-heap. Some men and some missions will "crumple up" under the strain, and the Great Cause will gain much thereby. 3. The Specific Task To see a goal clearly is to make progress toward it. The man who sets out aimlessly 118 MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION to "serve the Lord" will never form a definite program, and will not know what to do with one when offered him. The whole church is thinking in terms of survey and responsibility and cooperation and definite objectives. A new heavens and a new earth are before us. It is possible to work along for years in a mission with no very clear idea as to what is being at- tempted and with no very definite results. It is easy to follow a conventional routine, but not very profitable. To such a situa- tion the coming of a definite objective has brought new vitality and energy and the little flock has for the first time caught a glimpse of its coming Kingdom. There is a larger and better way than doing the best one can and breathing a thankful sigh that it is no worse. Interdenominational comity is not an exact science, but it is something better: it is a flexible working principle. Pro- verbially futile are doctrinal disputes and quibbles about methods of baptism in lands where people degrade womanhood and worship cows. The native is not without discernment. He does make a 119 MISSIONARY MORALE distinction. In West China, for instance, he is said to discriminate between the 'Big Wash Folks" and the "Little Wash Folks" and the "Don't Wash at all Folks." When the case is stated that way there is little to be said by mere Baptists and Methodists and Friends. 4. The Standardized Organization One of the major embarrassments of missionary administration, and one of the most distressing leaks in efficiency, is the irresponsible, detached, independent "mis- sionary" who declines to recognize or co- operate with any reputable agency in the field or at home. The fact that such people are usually of good moral character and possess good motives does not save their activities from serious interference with larger programs. That they endure occa- sional hardships incident to their defective basis of support does not prevent them from sowing discord and strife on the field. Calling them "faith" missionaries does not avoid vast confusion in the minds of unin- structed natives and a general tearing down as fast as others can build up. These er- 120 MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION ratic prophets go about leaving discord behind them and discrediting all valid missionary work in the eyes of sensible people who come to know them and their ways. Some of the antagonism to mis- sionaries found on ocean steamers has been stimulated by the fanatical manner- isms of people who have made themselves nuisances en route. It is not always ex- pedient to extemporize a rescue mission on a steamer deck. Most of these disturbers claim to be "faith missionaries" — whatever that abused term may mean. In most cases as used by them it means that they have no visible means of support. Frequently they represent detached and peculiar creeds, often weird and irrational in the extreme. They emphasize differences rather than agreements, friction rather than fraternity, and sometimes they set- tle down beside established missions and promulgate their "advanced" teachings among the disturbed members of the na- tive church. The problem of the missionary's rela- tions with these irresponsibles is a difficult 121 MISSIONARY MORALE one and requires much grace and tact. As interchurch comity grows apace the gulf of difference between these wandering stars and the more fixed denominational constellations will widen. No way has been devised of dissuading any man who thinks he is called from starting out at random to be a miniature Paul. So long as a few friends send occasional dollars he will struggle along. Such men must be treated with personal kindness. Anything like opposition pours oil on the troubled flames. The missionary will need all the poise and patience he can possess. As the effort to Christianize the world proceeds apace it becomes increasingly evi- dent that really effective work is to be done largely through the regular denomi- national boards which have strong home constituencies and which are directed by trained and experienced administrators. If missions are a matter ,of faith, the whole church should share the grace. The ro- mance of the independent "faith mission" too often proves but an illusion from which come no lasting results. On the steerage of a trans-oceanic steamer an earnest man 122 MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION and his wife were traveling to the Orient. Between exhortations to their fellow pas- sengers, most of whom could understand but little of the English language used, these self-appointed missionaries explained that they had received a miraculous gift of "tongues" and were going to a country where they could at once begin missionary work with the natives. Some friend had provided passage money and they would trust the Lord for all else. No comment is needed, but in some such cases the devotee has been saved from starvation only by the help of the regular denominational mis- sionary who shared what he had with the stranded fanatics. One such leader gath- ered a band of men and took them to Africa "by faith," but without funds, food, or medicine. They would trust the Lord for all. Most of the unfortunates died within a year, and the returning leader proclaimed that it was all for the glory of God, and has since published a series of pamphlets "exposing" the iniquities of de- nominational missionary work. Such a case is extreme, but indicates what may be ex- pected when fanaticism has run its course. 123 CHAPTER XIV THE MISSION FAMILY Nowhere is the personal equation stronger than on the mission field. Every individual idiosyncrasy and peculiarity is multiplied as many times as there are members of the family. Living in Close Quarters When one wearies of his friends in New York he can readily escape for a time. There are plenty of other people, and most of the personal strains of life relax if we can merely get out of sight of each other for a few hours per day, and occasionally for a few days at a time. The missionary has little opportunity for such relief. Two teachers living to- gether in the same house, teaching in the same school, eating at the same table three times a day, spending almost every waking hour in each other's company, with not another kindred soul within a 124 THE MISSION FAMILY day's journey, have a strain to meet that few people in the homeland can appreciate or understand. In one such case a veteran and a novice were paired off in an isolated location. Incompatibility of temperament developed until something near insanity compelled a readjustment, which at once cured the case. If missionary morale is to be anything more than a name, there must be a way to adjust the personal relations of a mis- sion family. The candidate faces no more important issue than that of making effec- tive personal contacts. The system of housing all mission work- ers in a compound had its value under early conditions. But with assured safety more stress is being placed on the principle of scattering workers about where they may become acquainted with the neighbors and their personal influence may be multi- plied. If missionaries could see less of each other, many of the personal prob- lems would be solved. Whatever the living conditions, mission- aries must get along with each other or the tongues of the best of them may make 125 MISSIONARY MORALE a noise like sounding brass or jarring wrangle. And worse than audible dis- suasion is that profane silence that breaks the spirit of fellowship. It does not relieve the situation to claim that some people are sensitive. Of course they are. All fine souls are sensitive. But sensitiveness of the sort that causes its possessor to mope about with wounded feelings is the mark of a small mind and the sign of selfishness. The new missionary needs the close friendship of a veteran during the years of his novitiate. If he comes to the field with the idea that he represents the latest product of the wisdom of the home church and should enlighten the weary workers long on the field, it becomes a blessing that for a year or two he is perforce dumb. By the time he can express his thoughts in a foreign language he may have ac- quired some conception of the issues in- volved in Christianizing the lives of the natives. A Missionary's Recreation "No play, no missionary," might be 126 THE MISSION FAMILY adopted as a good working motto. Some sort of relaxation is indispensable. And play is a social affair. Jungle-tramping may be a solo performance, but it is much more profitable with a party. Tennis is justly famed as a missionary pastime. Ath- letics of all sorts are valuable, but those that involve a social element rank highest in the scale. Photography is a valuable aid to mission work. Whatever be the hobby, a man or a woman simply must have some way of getting his mind out of the deepening grooves and giving his soul a little air now and then. Like his devo- tions, his recreational life will accomplish most when linked with some general scheme of the day's business. There are ultra- serious people who have no time for play, but they are not the best missionaries nor the easiest to get along with. The gospel records supply a valuable text in the mat- ter of balancing interests and maintaining a normal and sane personal attitude to- ward work and play. Readjusting Social Standards Social readjustments are among the difii- 127 MISSIONARY MORALE culties of a missionary's life. The novice meets a new set of sanctions at wide variance with his own, and needs much time even to understand the often com- plicated customs of his people. To conform to these arbitrary and often disagreeable regulations involves much sacrifice. He did not leave his homeland to conform to irritating nonessentials. At this turn of the road have occurred many wrecks. Where missionaries have not been able or willing to change their ways to conform to strange customs they have often failed to attain personal influence with the natives. No^one suggests that moral compromises be made, but in matters purely social and incidental there is but one thing to do. If the natives eat with hats on, then when the missionary eats with them let him re- tain his hat. If one is to live in Rome for the sake of making Rome and the Romans better, then as far as possible let him be- come a Roman. Social customs and associations vary widely in different countries. American social customs presuppose high standards of moral life and conduct on the part of 128 THE MISSION FAMILY young men and young women. Other countries have found such freedom of so- cial life unsafe, and in defense of daughters have established a system of rigid over- sight. In such cases, where missionaries are involved, there must be unhesitating conformity to native standards. The presence of an American colony near a foreign mission may become a veritable snare, especially if the mission include some young unmarried women and the colony some lonely bachelors. No young man or woman should set forth for a mis- sion field until this matter is well under- stood, and its implications cheerfully ac- cepted. Contract Teachers The employment of contract teachers has sometimes proved a mixed blessing for two reasons. Some contract teachers disclaim any high missionary motive other than a desire to do their work as well as possible in the schoolroom. The contract worker, being engaged for a limited period only, is in more or less of a transient relation and cannot acquire the attitude of whole- 129 MISSIONARY MORALE hearted devotement that comes to the missionary who follows a life calling. The contract teacher is frequently a real mis- sionary at heart and renders highly effec- tive service. Other contract teachers fail to realize the need of social conformity to the standards required of mission workers. These are exceptions, however, and some very high and valuable service is rendered by these teachers. Unmarried Women Young and unmarried women raise a missionary problem because of the divine right of every woman, especially if young and attractive, to marry. All efforts to set a time limit to matrimony, and impose penalties for breaking over too soon, have resulted in little but complications and re- adjustments. There is, and should be, no antidote for the great feminine reservation, but it does play the mischief with a mission at times. The very isolation and loneliness of the situation make matrimony doubly attractive. If there is but one man in reach, it seems too bad to lose the chance. All of this applies equally to the unmarried 130 THE MISSION FAMILY man, with the universal difference that marriage ties a man tightly to his work, but pries a woman loose and destroys her value as a single woman. As a married woman she may remain a valuable member of the staff, but she cannot do what she would have done as a single missionary. A Working Sense of Humor Much has been said elsewhere about the need of a working sense of humor. In the mission family the urgent need of this be- comes vividly apparent. It is doubtful whether any set of people can get along together successfully without an ameliorat- ing capacity for some fun. While such a sixth sense may be cultivated, exhortation will not produce it. Let not the inex- perienced tyro set forth into the unknown without a good joke-appreciator in his per- sonal traveling outfit. Social Graces The missionary needs social adaptability as much as a government diplomat. Too often have social impossibles supposed that in missionary work they could escape from 131 MISSIONARY MORALE the strain of social functions where they could think of nothing to say and therefore sat helpless and abashed along the prover- bial "wall." The mission field is no place for that blank look of helplessness that marks the hermit when trapped in a social situation. Unless the presence of people proves a reliable stimulus to one's social faculties it is useless to try to work with gracious and cultivated men and women. For the degree and kind of influence the missionary develops will depend much upon his social contacts. Between missionaries often have arisen some of the finest friendships on earth. Of Davids and Jonathans there have been many, and of Damon and Pythias there have been numerous examples. The fellow- ship of the worth-while task is the finest flavored on earth. The veterans talk most happily of the years of toil and struggle and adventure. The Wider Fellowships Out beyond the fellowships of the im- mediate mission stretches an innumerable company of saints, prophets, priests, and 132 THE MISSION FAMILY kings, martyrs, heroes, explorers, and foun- dation-layers of the kingdom of God in all ages. It is no small experience to see the mountainside covered with horses and chariots of fire. He to whom comes the vision shows a new morale. To know that the countless hosts of the ages are working with us and for us is a great strengthener of resolution and a mighty stabilizer of conduct when under strain. One man may chase a thousand, but two men can overcome ten thousand. The social sense of comradeship multiplies a man by five. The spirit of the company, the fellowship of the meeting, the kinship of the denomination, the sense of keeping step with the saints, living or dead, sus- tains many a weary worker who would otherwise fall by the way. The cultiva- tion of a personal acquaintance with the innumerable company is a great builder of fighting morale. There is a comfortable sense of brother- hood with other missionaries. Everywhere they are toiling on, over the deserts and up the steep places and sometimes through dismal swamps. Occasionally they emerge 133 MISSIONARY MORALE on the heights and catch glimpses of each other's faces against the glory of the new heavens, and with a shout and a cheer they go on with their work. The world may separate kindred spirits, but the world is a small and shrinking place, and here and there the climbers and lifters meet together and with gladness of heart recount their toils and triumphs and go on their way again. Missionaries are not much given to ex- pression of sentiment or display of emo- tions. Families are broken up and scat- tered never to meet again as parents and children. Wives and husbands are parted for months and years. All family ties are stretched to the utmost. But not many tears are shed, at least not many in public. Partings for years are passed with smiles and cheers. It is the glory of the invisible, the morale of the missionary. The high principles that we live for demand our utmost best, and, after all, in our personal relations we register our mark of efficiency on the scale of service. 134 CHAPTER XV PUBLIC SERVICE If a missionary is anything more than a recluse or the private chaplain of a select few, he will meet public officials and will become a factor in public affairs. Such is the inevitable result of a strong personality dealing with human values. A Missionary's Influence Almost any kind of ability will get a chance somewhere. Many a missionary has proven to be the saving grace of inter- national complications and the composer of internecine quarrels. Men with tact and sense always will find their way into posi- tions of influence where they will have ample opportunity to exercise such gifts as they may possess. Dr. Lyman Abbott says that when he was a young man his father gave him this bit of pertinent advice: "First get your influence, then use it." It might be 135 MISSIONARY MORALE written on the flyleaf of every missionary's Bible. The man who is tempted to play his piece de resistance the first month of his work needs the Abbott motto. Influence is a matter of acquaintance and doing something in the present tense. Former records are useful to the man himself but worthless with his constituency. The less said about them the better. Certainly, a humble and a contrite spirit is the be- ginning of effective personal contacts: The strongest friendships take time to ripen, and any self-exaltation breaks the contact. Nowhere is a superb spirit more needed than in dealing with native leaders of public affairs. An ambitious recruit began his mission- ary career by informing his veteran fellow workers of their mistakes. In his interior province he called on the governor and offered to advise him as to the best method of conducting the affairs of his office. The governor remembered an engagement and excused himself. In his own congregation the militant missionary showed a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, and an- 136 PUBLIC SERVICE nounced that, in general terms, if they did not receive the Book, they knew what to expect next. A few months later the "mis- sionary" was back in his home country bewailing the stupidity of the natives. Reform measures led by missionaries are at best temporary expedients. Not until leadership is raised up from within can any people make very permanent progress in improvements of vice conditions and so- cial situations. The effective missionary keeps himself in the background and di- rects with the unseen hand while native leaders do the shouting and direct the campaign. Anti-opium crusades by the score have been inspired by missionaries, but the poppies were dug out by native hands. Cigarettes were barred from a great province in China, but the mass meetings were addressed by both natives and foreigners, and the actual work of the campaign was done by Chinese. Opium was kept out of the Philippines by the dramatic work of one strong missionary who threw his whole soul into a protest that was availing. A farm colony in one mission was established by a missionary 137 MISSIONARY MORALE who secured the cooperation of native officials and capitalists and guaranteed the success of the work. In another country missionaries diplomatically suggested needed changes in children's clothing that were immediately adopted. 'Temperance instruction in many lands is still confined to mission schools, but in some countries the influence of these schools has been sufficient to cause similar instruction to be introduced into public schools. Medical missionaries have exerted influence far be- yond all computation by their personal access to the homes and hearts of influen- tial people. Women have found their way into thousands of places closed to men, and there have wrought mighty things with the wives and mothers and daughters of leading men. So great has been the per- sonal influence of missionaries with savage chiefs that we almost have developed a tra- dition covering such cases. One missionary leader is credited with having done much to forestall a great war in the Orient. Letting in the Light It is not often that the flash-light method 138 PUBLIC SERVICE accomplishes much toward the bringing of a new day. With the establishment of a comprehensive Christian program and its illustration through a group of people whose hearts God has touched, the native mind slowly begins to work in new direc- tions. As better methods become ap- parent, dissatisfaction with the old order arises and reforms germinate in the mind. Here arises opportunity for skillful leader- ship of moral forces and stimulated per- sonalities. If the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, then any deforming or defiling of the body becomes sacrilege. Suddenly a whole train of supposedly harmless practices emerges as highly repre- hensible. Drunkenness, licentiousness, foot-binding, filth, and gluttony become matters of new concern, to be eliminated by new forces. The Missionary Not a Propagandist The missionary who goes forth with the intention of becoming a professional pro- moter of reform campaigns on the lines on which such movements are conducted in the United States needs to study the 139 MISSIONARY MORALE pathway by which the older civilization has reached the point where such propa- ganda is possible. He may also remember that such campaigns in the United States are not conducted by foreigners, but by citizens of North America. The day of sweeping reform is near at hand in nearly every land, but the leadership of such ad- vances will be largely native. Dealing with Governments Nowhere does the spirit of a man count for more than in his personal relations with officials of the government under which he works. Good judgment, pleasing person- ality, understanding and exercise of native standards of courtesy, sympathetic appre- ciation of the native viewpoint and recog- nition of national ideals, knowledge of national history and traditions, and an attitude of willingness to learn from those with whom he associates are all indis- pensable for the missionary, who must also be a diplomat at large. This does not mean that the missionary is to inject himself into governmental affairs. In all matters political the one 140 PUBLIC SERVICE rule is that of neutrality. Parties, policies, administrations, legislation, and revolu- tions may come and go, but the missionary and his work stay on. One unfortunate alignment of the mission with the wrong party, and the cause may be lost. For the missionary there are no parties, but there are always individual officials with whom he should maintain personal relations to the advantage of his work and often to the benefit of the officials. There are few governments in any coun- try to-day that are officially hostile to the work of the Christian missionary. Per- sonal antagonisms must be dealt with on a personal basis. The educational, medical, and industrial work of the mission has won universal favor. The maintenance of satisfactory personal relations with government officials be- comes a missionary's business as much as teaching or touring. A thousand favors are granted by these officials, and their friendliness has been of inestimable value to missionaries everywhere. As experience widens, the missionary marvels at the generous treatment that he often receives 141 MISSIONARY MORALE from men who have small personal sym- pathy with his religion, but who believe in him and in the practical results of his work. And the value of such contacts de- pends largely upon that unmeasured some- thing about a man that constitutes his "personality." If the missionary is to succeed in this matter, he must learn the rules of the court, or office, or executive mansion, and abide by them. Formal calls must be made, and they must be made so as not to offend the standards and tastes of men to whom these matters are vital. There are a standard of etiquette and a conformity to convention that are essential to success. Clothes and hours and introductions and formalities — let them all be learned and followed; but back of the dress suit and the engraved card and the advantageous introduction and the punctilious observance is, after all, the man himself. Without force of character and effective morale all these externals will go for naught. 142 CHAPTER XVI THE MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION It is not to be expected that the morale of the training camp will be sufficient for the strains of the field. After the candi- date has been trained and tested and in- structed and exhorted and farewelled, his real trial is yet to come. He is at this point high-grade raw material, and the final product is still a matter of some uncertainty. Meeting the Constituency The impact of a missionary's constit- uency does more for and to him than anything else. Between the exalted en- thusiasm of big conventions and heroic farewells and the dull inertia of the un- interested "heathen" there is an awful contrast. When the worker has to face the fanatical onslaughts of Mohammedan or Jesuit communities the case is harder still. With entirely benevolent intentions 143 MISSIONARY MORALE the herald of light goes forth to find that the heathen does not want to be illumi- nated; in fact, he often resents it bitterly. And it sometimes happens that as soon as he can see to walk he sets out on inde- pendent trails and causes no end of con- cern to his spiritual guides. The comparative age of a mission may be tested by the relations between a missionary and his people. In the early years the foreigner does nearly everything. Later he trains "native helpers," who be- come his pride — and sometimes his con- sternation. As the work grows these help- ers grow in wisdom and experience, and often before the missionary is well aware of it he has become a "foreign helper" to the native leaders. The readjustments incident to this third stage are not always painless. There are missionaries who have the same difficulties at this point that parents meet when their children come to face them on a level, instead of looking up for guidance. The day must finally come in every successful mission when the native takes over bur- dens and responsibilities and the foreigner 144 MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION becomes a specialist set to certain tasks to which he is adapted. The Pioneer The typical missionary has a penchant for the frontier. A pack-mule and an un- known trail always challenge him to push on. He has an ingrained propensity to explore and found and initiate and or- ganize. Since Abram went out, not know- ing whither he went, a host of others have followed in his steps to become members of the glorious caravan of moral and spirit- ual pioneers, moving in dramatic pageant across the deserts of life, producing oases at every night's encampment. The mis- sionary is the man of the frontier who resolutely faces society's desert edge and stands against the deadly drifts that would sweep over civilization and destroy its fruits and flowers. The background of a missionary's call always includes a sense of desperate need on the part of those to whom he goes and the infinite value of the remedy offered. The need possibly may be conceived in theological terms, and the remedy may be 145 MISSIONARY MORALE thought to be the adoption of a ritual or performance of a rite, but the essential process is the same. When the need is understood in terms of stunted and dwarfed personalities destitute of the more abun- dant life which can expand the shriveled souls and drive back the whole encroaching horizon that crowds in on every side, then the divine commission rises to the eternal dignity and infinite worth of a heavenly calling. The point of contact with this degrada- tion in practice may be some particular rite or barbarism or superstition, particu- larly offensive to Christian standards. Something like the hatred of the trench soldier for the abominable practices of his enemy may arise in the missionary's heart when he "makes contact" with the various objectionable features of his community. A real horror of heathenism may play a vital part in the equipment of energies with which a man goes about his work in a strange land. Flowers in the Desert In this human desert, with patient culti- 146 MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION vation, some flowers will appear, and with them the missionary will start his oasis. It must be individual attention and in- tensive cultivation, but the garden will grow. The human material is at hand in raw state. To make these bones live there must come the heavenly breath of spiritual vitality, and it comes through the heart of the missionary. Perhaps the "bones" to be clothed may be found near at hand. Friendship may be clothed with spiritual possibilities of high order. There are always native cus- toms, innocent and socially useful, that may be clothed with new significance. Established observances can be turned to good account. There are occasional con- trasts between the acknowledged barbar- isms and the obviously better ways of the Christian faith. In moments of life's climaxes, births, weddings, deaths, and accidents these contrasts stand out viv- idly. Here and there native believers begin to develop definite spiritual expe- riences, and these become wells of water from which the thirsty missionary and the young church may refresh their weary 147 MISSIONARY MORALE spirits. There is a growing fellowship in the new household of faith that binds strong ties about those who enter the little circle of believers who gather, first be- cause they like the leader, and then be- cause they find personal help, and last because they too are impelled to serve. From such materials is builded the mo- rale of the native church. To develop the spiritual life and enlarge the moral vision of a company of believers is one of the highest privileges that life holds for any worker. The Margin of Reticence Whatever of horror a man may feel about the objectionable features of his surroundings, he must learn to keep to himself. Inwardly conscious of a su- periority over his community, he must live on the common ground that always exists somewhere in every social situation. No man and no cause can live on points of superiority over the neighbors. There are sound and sane fundamentals of human life and experience to which we must all come as a basis of building. These funda- 148 MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION mentals exist in all people, even if buried under hoary and sometimes barbarous cus- toms. To find and uncover and develop and build upon these foundations is a mis- sionary's high calling. The Personal Touch Through these fundamentals the mis- sionary will find that personal touch upon which everything else depends. It took twenty-two years for Dan Crawford to produce Thinking Black. Until a man can think in any color that matches his sur- roundings he has not found the key to his constituency. A veteran missionary uni- versity president stood looking over his campus. "These people are just as brainy as we are," he remarked. And the sooner we find it out the better. The personal touch is easier to discuss than to acquire, but given a fundamental liking for folks, it is always possible, even with a faulty language approach. The new missionary can accomplish wonders by "sitting in a rocking chair" in the house of his friend. Just to hang about and show a real personal interest means 149 MISSIONARY MORALE much. American brusqueness and bustle are hindrances to progress in personal ac- quaintance, but we can afford to learn from our pupils in this respect. Language Problems Language problems belong properly to the field of labor, yet much time might be saved if all candidates could be given a couple of years of language training pre- vious to being sent out for work. South American missionaries usually have been given a heavy handicap in being required to begin at once to teach English, and leave the matter of language study to in- cidental hours. The unfortunate result is that years afterward the worker is handi- capped by his faulty command of the vernacular. A year devoted to language work would release many a linguistic crip- ple from his crutches. The only way yet devised to get effective command of a language is to learn it. And, obviously, when a man is careless and slipshod in the use of his mother tongue he is not apt to shine as a linguist in his adopted country. 150 MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION Native Fellowships One of the greatest compensations that come to the missionary lies in personal fellowships with his people. The very dif- ference of national character and personal viewpoint supplies a flavor and interest and variety that make such friendships sources of never-failing enjoyment and surprise. The unexpected has its high charm, and there is plenty of it. In spite of difference in color and speech there arise warm friend- ships that enrich all experience. Where is the missionary who has not parted, heavy- hearted, from a circle of weeping followers? He may have been merely going for a fur- lough, but to them it was a long, long break in their lives. It is high reward to know that even an imperfect investment of life has produced a permanent impres- sion for good in lives that otherwise would never have been touched. There are no rewards in life so priceless as the reactions that come back to us from the hearts that we have helped along the way. Some- times the native shows a sense of gratitude all out of proportion to what he has ac- 151 MISSIONARY MORALE tually received. Sometimes he seems ir- responsive and unappreciative, but, after all, the pathetic gratitude of racial chil- dren gets a tense hold on the heart-strings of the missionary. The Art of Command Command is a difficult art for Americans; we are too democratic and independent for the part. The missionary who goes forth with the idea that he is to take charge and give orders is scheduled for disaster. The missionary must in some way blend com- radeship and control, which is never easy. The position of any leader is an exposed position, inviting criticism and sometimes ridicule. Dignity is not solemnity, nor are pomposity and severity the measure of au- thority. Dignity is essentially a sense of values. It may be very simple and say little. The native church gets its cue un- consciously from the unexpressed value- standards of its leaders. The specialist in American informality has much to learn before he can become an effective leader of natives in any mission field. No position in the world requires a nicer balance of 152 MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION qualities than that of leading, command- ing, teaching, and chumming, all at one time, with one's constituency. Living as the Natives To reach native lives it does not follow that one must live in all things as they do. In fact, the natives do not live very suc- cessfully, and the missionary will not live at all if he tries to subsist on wretched food amid squalor and filth to which he is a natural stranger. An American cannot live as the bushmen in Africa live, nor as the outcastes of India live, nor as the coolies of China live. If anyone thinks he can do so, let him set up a model in a nearby vacant lot and try it awhile at home. There is no reason why the missionary should not maintain his home in cleanness and decency. In fact, if he does try to live like the natives, they will usually mark him down as a failure in his own land who had to come to them and who is no better than themselves. And the church that sends out the missionary has no right to provide its families and pastors with comforts and luxuries of life and ask its 153 MISSIONARY MORALE missionaries to live below the level of domestic pets at home. The experiment has been made with disastrous results. As to the charge that the mission houses are better than those of the natives, it may be said that they are rarely ever equipped with even the simple sanitary conveniences incident to the home of a day laborer in the United States. Back of these externals it is to be said that it is not the missionary's house that determines his success or failure. It is the missionary's spirit. If he manifests the mind that was in Christ, he will find in every place hearts that will respond, and externals will find their level. Native Religions The contact with a native religion is a difficult problem for a missionary. That there is something good in every man's religion, to be sought out and made a starting-point for the clearer vision, needs no emphasis. But in practice the study of comparative religions in a college library is a very different matter from settling down amid people who practice the ethics or 154 MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION nonethics resulting from one of these in- teresting faiths of the world. Nevertheless, the only key to the inner- most chamber of a man's life is his reli- gion. Unless we unlock that long-closed door we may declaim and decry for years with no result. That the native never lives up to the best in his own religion is not pertinent — neither does the Christian. Loving the People It comes at last to this: A missionary can work wonders with people, provided he really likes them. Given a genuine love for folks, the most fastidious woman may be reconciled to a life among the zenanas or in ministry to Chinese woman- hood in the wretched village hovels of the interior. Let him who cannot acquire a real love for the people about him sadly turn back. Love bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all, lives in all manner of conditions, toils on helping many, sav- ing some, showing forth the Master until his coming again. How small a missionary is amid his re- sponsibilities none realizes better than him- 155 MISSIONARY MORALE self. But every act of God's man is multi- plied by the forces that work through him. His small tracing on the plan of immediate action is enlarged and projected in the national, social, and domestic life of the people. It requires an empowered man to become the saving grace among ten thou- sand. The Victory of Morale "Morale wins, not by itself, but by turn- ing scales, developing resources, assembling forces," says Professor Hocking. Here the morale of the missionary registers its final triumph. Greater than a striking person- ality, greater than dramatic narrative, greater than spectacular plans and pro- jects, greater than tireless toil, greater than any other factor in a missionary's life is his final ability to "turn scales, develop re- sources, assemble forces," and to bring about a new and original reincarnation of the kingdom of God on earth. 156 Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01234 4000 Date Due \ mm f>