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Reprinted from Watson’s Magazine
Atlanta, Georgia
1909
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ft
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FOREIGN MISSIONS
CHAPTER I.
N DICKENS’ “Bleak House”, the great-hearted author, who laid
his hands tenderly upon so hana chords of public opinion in the
effort to guide humanity into higher and better paths, drew a lu-
dicrous picture, true to life then and true to it now, of the missionary
enthusiast who allowed her own household to become a tragedy of dis-
order and her children to grow up in scandalous neglect, while her
thoughts were fixed upon the natives of the Borrioboola-Gha.
It was not until a few years ago that we had any definite idea of
the modus operandi of the Christian workers in heathen lands. We
honestly believed that the simple and heroic standards of the pioneer
missionaries still prevailed. Whenever the Sunday came round for the
regular sermon on Foreign Missions, we went along with the others,
and listened with sympathetic admiration to the recital of missionary
sacrifices, struggles, perils, and triumphs. When the preacher men-
tioned the martyrs who had given their lives to the cause, we were
deeply moved; and when the plea for the benighted heathen was made,
we did our share in putting up the money to send the Gospel message to
our distant brothers in yellow, brown, black and red. But in course of
time, we began to hear of things which seriously disturbed our reflec-
tions. Ministers, returning from foreign fields, would drop words -in
private conversation that did not harmonize with the Missionary Ser-
mon. Now and then we came upon a statement in some book that
shook us up considerably. Gradually, we formed our own conception
of what was going on abroad, and we began to write about it. Then,
a friend, who is on the other side of the question and who desired to
convince us of the error of our conclusions, brought us a stack of books,
pamphlets, tracts and denominational papers to prove that we were
wrong. Carefully and patiently, this literature in favor of Foreign
Missions was studied,—with results which will be manifest to those
who read this pamphlet.
We hope that our position will not be misunderstood nor misrepre-
sented. We heartily favor Foreign Missions. But we contend that the
present system of doing the work is unscriptural, unwise, unpatriotic
and unnatural.
If Jesus Christ had meant to command us to carry free school books
and free tuition to the heathen, while our own children are steeped in
poverty and ignorance, He would doubtless have said so. If our Sa-
vior had meant that we must go into all the world and carry victuals
and clothes to foreigners, when our own people have not enough to eat
and wear, He would, in all probability, have told us so. We prefer to
believe that when He said GO and PREACH, He meant just that. He
didn’t say, “Leave your own sons and daughters unconverted, unedu-
cated, bound jn child-slavery, perishing in the crowded dens of vice-
[4] FOREIGN MISSIONS
reeking tenements, growing up in squalid stupidity in the backward
regions of your own land,—leave these, your own flesh and blood, and
hurry abroad to all the heathen nations, and to some of the Christian
nations, carrying victuals and clothes, medicines and_ books, doctors
and pedagogues, and give to the heathen what you deny to your own.”
~ Let us at the start, rid our minds of the hereditary idea of mission-
ary heroism and martyrdom. All that belonged to the early days,
several generations ago. Too much praise can not be given to the fear-
less pioneers who first planted the cross among the nations which we
class as pagan. Theirs were lives of danger, of hardships, of noble
self-sacrifice. That was a long time ago. The going of the European
merchant into heathen lands made more easy the work of the Euro-
pean Missionary. Innate hatred of strangers and inborn reverence for
their own religion ceased to be strong enough to continually feed the
furies of persecution. In our own time, the hardships and the perils
of the foreign missionary admit of no comparison with those of the
soldier ordered to the Philippine Islands. Our foreign consuls have
no better jobs than our foreign missionaries, whose toil is no longer ar-
duous and whose salary is not only good but regular. To teach and
preach abroad is about the same now as teaching and preaching here.
To run the hospital and boss the commissary is no more fatiguing in
South America and the Orient than it is in Europe and America.
Dearly beloved! Don’t weep any more over the hard life of the for-
eign missionary. The chances are that he is having a much better time
than yourself. He wears up-to-date habiliments, lives on appetizing
viands, has comfortable and roomy quarters, smokes good cigars when
he feels like it, and has a corking time generally.
Danger? Why, beloved, your own wife and daughter are always
in greater danger than the wife and daughter of the foreign mission-
ary ever are. You dare not leave your womenfolk alone in your own
home; you dare not allow them to travel alone along the public high-
way. Your child is not safe on her way to school. No white woman
is safe in any by-street of our cities. The fear of the negro shadows
the entire Republic.
Then read this little paragraph clipped almost at random from the
Times-Courier, & newspaper published in Lincoln, [linois, as to the
frightful danger in which our sisters in the Northern States find them-
selves in this enlightened century
“In the New England States the men don’t respect women the same as they do
in the Southern States. A fine-looking woman here has lots to contend with; all
sorts of tricks are done to get the best of them. Girls disappear here and there is not
much said about it; some are found dead and no clew who did the deed. You ean
hardly read a paper without an article of some girl missing or murdered or drowned.
The young men and boys need looking after; they are led astray just as much as the
young girls. Parents want to watch their boys and find amusement for them. I
can’t see where people are any better off here than the negro slaves were. That is,
I mean the poor people that work in the cotton mills and woolen mills, too, and shoe
factories; the wages are not enough to keep the family decent and the consequence
is, the mother goes to the mill—and the children, as soon as they can dodge the school
age.”
FOREIGN MISSIONS [5]
Girls are kidnapped and sold into a slavery that is worse than death.
Women are seized, on the street, hurried away to some cellar or dark
room, and outraged. There is not a heathen land on this globe where
a man or a woman is not safer than in Christian America.
You will, perhaps, hear some one dispute this, and the Boxer re-
bellion in China may be cited. That will be the only episode upon
which he can base a denial, and even that will not serve, for the Christ-
tans provoked that uprising.
The Catholics had forced the Chinese government to concede priv-
ileges which set up a state within a state—a fact explained in another
portion of this pamphlet. Then, again, the Christian nations were slicing
off big hunks of Chinese territory. Russia took some, Germany took
some, Great Britain took some, and so on. Then again, the Christians
were demanding larger trade privileges and were proceeding to gobble
up public utilities, after the fashion of private capitalists in this coun-
try. In short, the foreigners were crowding the monkey, and the na-
tives flamed out in rebellion against the encroachments. The special
ferocity with which the Boxers attacked the Catholics proves what the
natives thought of the source of the trouble. And the huge indemnity
which China had to pay the Roman church will rankle in the minds of
the celestials for generations.
te te ste se te te he
aS * cS a k * a 3
Come! throw aside your preconceived notions and your indiffer-
ence, and think of the matter as an original proposition.
What does the Bible command us Chr istians todo? JESUS issued
the order, not Bishop Bashford, nor any other prince of the Church.
What is the exact meaning of the divine instruction ?
Go among the heathen and preach to them. Deliver Christ’s mes-
sage. Explain the plan of salvation. Let every nation hear the Word
of God. Jesus has come to save the world,—go ye, and proclaim the
glad tidings!
That is the command, clear and positive; and the marching orders
are equally simple and plain.
' This, in substance, was the divine injunction. One of the strongest
appeals which the Fathers of the Church made to the ancient peoples
was based on the contrast between the consecrated poverty of the
Christian missionaries and the riches of pagan priesthoods.
Origen cried out to the Egyptians, “Forsake the priests of Pharaoh,
who have earthly possessions, and come unto us who have none. WE
(CHRISTIANS) MUST BE CONTENT WITH SIMPLE FOOD
AND APPAREL.”
So late as the fourth century after Christ, the great Council of An-
tioch declared that the ministers of the Gospel must “have food and
raiment and therewith to be content”.
How far is the cry from this standard of primitive purity to the
standards which now prevail! Then the motto was, “Let us lve as
Christ lived: let us beware of wealth and the covetous spirit: let us win
a lost world from these luxurious priests of paganism by offering the
[6] FOREIGN MISSIONS
sharpest contrast to them—our unselfish devotion, our purity and poy-
erty and humility and consecrated zeal, winning the hearts of the peo-
ple away from the pomps and sensualities of heathen ceremonial.”
Alas! Papa Pius at Rome now hands over a comfortable surplus of
four million dollars to the Rothschilds to be loaned at usury, and thus
this vicar of Christ uses the Jews to skin the Christians !
No earthly king has a palace so large and gorgeously splendid as
the Vatican, wherein the haughty Italian princes of the church stand
around the papal throne, appareled with a richness surpassing by far
the luxury which Origen denounced.
And when the Protestant missionaries to China filed their claims
for damages, on account of property destroyed in the Boxer riots, the
amount of diamonds and other jewelry listed caused sarcastic comment
in the United States Senate.
One member of the Committee on Foreign Relations remarked that
“the wardrobes of the missionaries must have far excelled those of the
most extravagant actress on the stage today. Taking their claims at
their face values, the diamonds alone must have been worth as much as
the entire stock of the largest diamond dealer in New York City”.
We do not endorse the above statement, for it is a self-evident exag-
geration; but there can be no doubt of the fact that the richness of the
wardrobes and the abundance of jewels, listed in the claims for dam-
ages, did cause much critical and ironical remark. The Mission Board
felt the force of these sarcasms, and deputized two of the brethren to
confute them. We have read the paper which the brethren accordingly
prepared, and we consider it a very weak document. In the first place,
it does not give due weight to the words “at their face value”, and, in
the second “place, it relies entirely upon averages and generalities
There is no specific denial whatever about the diamonds. Evidently,
then, the wives of the missionaries to China did file claims for rich
wardrobes and for much jewelry.
Very far, indeed, are such luxuries from the missionary standards
of Judson and Morrison and Crawford, and thousands of others who
pioneered the Christian work in heathen lands.
*k %* % oo oo %* * % *
In a discussion of a subject like this, a few details are of greater
value than volumes of glossy generalities. The gist of our contention
is that our own ignorant, unconverted and destitute people, should be
the first objects of our benevolence, and that we have no moral right to
furnish food, clothing, medicine, education and employment, to the
heathen of foreign lands, while millions of our. own flesh and blood are
left in squalor, in ignorance, and in a spiritually lost condition.
The book called “Fifty Years in China”, by Rev. L. S. Foster, is a
history of the lifework of that noble and oifted missionary, Rev. T. P.
Crawford, one of the consecrated souls of whose record the Baptist de-
nomination is justly proud. Glancing through the volume, we find
this item:
FOREIGN MISSIONS [7]
“There were already two day schools for boys and one boarding school for girls,
superintended by the ladies of this mission. The Crawfords did not desire the for-
mer, because the Chinese are accustomed to educate their sons, nor the latter, be-
cause it involved too much expenditure of time and money. In mission boarding
schools the girls, as their education is not valued, HAD TO BE FURNISHED WITH
FOOD, CLOTHING AND MUCH ELSE, to induce the poor people to send their
daughters. Without such inducements it had not been found possible to secure them.
But they heard of one lady who had procured day pupils by giving each girl THN
RIN, CASH, or two-thirds of a cent per day, ostensibly to buy lunch. THIS BRI-
BERY (as it certainly was, though they did not then realize it) SEEMED LESS
OBJECTIONABLE THAN GIVING A FULL SUPPORT.”
You will observe that the Chinese children were given free board
and tuition, free clothing, free schoolbooks, AVD MUCH ELSE!
Does anybody believe that the poor children of backward regions
of our own land would have to be hired to come to school and get a free
education? Are not the minds and bodies and souls of the little waifs
of our own land as precious in the sight of God as are the heathen boys
and girls?
Again we quote from “Fifty Years in China”:
“Some years previous to this they had observed a growing belief among the na-
tive Christians that the education and permanent employment of their children was
the legitimate obligation of the Board and the missionaries. To correct this, Mrs.
Crawford began to require'a fee of three dollars per annum from each of the pupils
for defraying his expenses. From the first they had been required to furnish their
own clothing, which was a decided advance upon any boarding school yet in China.
BUT THEY WERE STILL SUPPLIED WITH TEACHER, SCHOOL-ROOM,
BOOKS, STATIONERY AND FOOD FROM THE MISSION TREASURY. When
the fee of three dollars was asked considerable dissatisfaction manifested itself, and
a few dropped out of school. The most of them, however, continued, believing that
at the end of the course they would be given good employment. This was the rule in
the Presbyterian College near them, which was their model.”
Think of this, will you?
Mrs. Crawford adopted a new rule, requiring three dollars per
year, to pay for food, clothing, fuel, books, teacher and school-room!
And because the pupils had to pay about one cent per day for all that,
some of them quit, and the others held on because of the permanent
jobs promised them at the end of the educational course!
Would not thousands of mountain boys and girls thank their heav-
enly Father for such a chance as that?
Suppose the same system had been applied to our own country at
the time when the missionaries adopted it in China,—what might have -
been the inspiring result ?
* * cS #8 * % * *
What is the modus operandi of the Foreign Missions? ow do
they set about converting the heathen ?
Three agencies, co-operating, are relied on,—the church proper, the
school, and the dispensary. To this last, the commissary department,
it is customary to attach the missionary physician.
Very few of the churches, after a hundred years of trial, are self-
supporting. China is regarded as the finest field of achievement in
[3] FOREIGN MISSIONS
missionary work, and yet out of the twenty-seven churches, only four
sustain themselves.
As to the schools, ranging from kindergarten to finishing college,
we understand that none of them are self-supporting. In this, we may
possibly be in error, but we certainly get the impression that, as a rule,
the education of the heathen is given without cost to them. Free books,
free tuition, free board, and, in many cases, free clothing must be of-
fered as an inducement to attendance upon the Christian schools.
The commissary, which is called dispensary in all the missionary
books and tracts, is just what its name would imply. It distributes,
gratuitously, the necessaries of life among the heathen.
The “missionary doctor” is a physician who goes about among the
people of the mission fields and gives them his professional services,
medicine included, free of charge.
“The Uplift of China” is the title of a volume whose author is Rev.
Arthur H. Smith, “thirty-five years a missionary in China”.
With a candor which is refreshing, Brother Smith explains how the
physical necessities of the poorer heathen are made the basis of mis-
sionary effort. See page 175, where he tells us that d SEASON OF
FAMINE furnishes a wonderful opening to the Christian workers in
China. He mentions the great famine of 1877-78 as a pentecostal time
for the Church. Very naively, Brother Smith says, “/amine relief
proves a golden key to unlock many closed doors.” Wow many doors,
in our own land, might not the Mohammedan or Buddhist missionary
unlock with a similar “golden key”?
Then he speaks of asylums for lepers which the missionaries estab-
lish and support, and also asylums and schools for orphans and for the
blind and for deaf-mutes, as well as for the insane.
On page 162 is this paragraph:
“A well-equipped mission station will have a dispensary and a hospital, THE
RESORT OF THOUSANDS FROM NEAR AND FROM FAR.”
To get medicine and medical attention, thousands of poor China-
men flock to the free hospital, are given treatment, are taught the plan
of salvation and are urged to join the church,
How many “converts” might not the Buddhists make, if they put
in practice, in the United States, tactics like those employed by our
missionaries abroad ?
Think of it! The Christians send more than twenty-one million
dollars to foreign countries every year, to maintain asylums, orphan-
ages, hospitals, commissaries, traveling doctors, an elaborate system of
free education, and a system of industrial training.
From what verse in the Bible do we get the command to do this?
What word of Jesus Christ can be twisted into such a meaning?
If we had no starvelings crouching at our own gates, if we had no
illiteracy blotting our national map with huge black splotches, if we
had no domains of spiritual darkness in which the religion of Christ is
an undelivered message, then, THEN, we would do well to succor the
FOREIGN MISSIONS [9]
heathen out of our superabundance. But until we shall have taken
bodily and spiritual care of our own household, we have no moral right
to tax our people to feed, clothe and educate the heathen. To preach
the Gospel to them meets every requirement of duty.
e *k ok aK * * aK * *
China, as already stated, is the field to which the parson who is put
up to preach the missionary sermon always “points with pride”. It is
there that is found the most reassuring harvest of results. In studying
the subject of Foreign Missions, we were especially interested in the re-
ports on China.
And what is the situation in that huge empire? After a century of
effort and the expenditure of stupendous sums of money, what is the
net result ?
China is a country which contains some 400,000,000 souls, and yet
there are only 6,388 working Protestants among them, counting both
sexes. There are but 200,000 names on the church books!
What a small drop im that vast bucket!
We are decidedly of the opinion that a Buddhist missionary, com-
ing to New York with a fund of $21,000,000 to spend, every year, and
offering to supply the poor with every necessary of life and a first-class
education besides, could enroll a hundred thousand “converts” in less
than ninety days.
In Rev. A. H. Smith’s book, after saying every good word that he
could for the progress of Christian evangelical work in China, he
makes this notable admission :
“The masses in China are as yet unaffected by Christianity.”
What? After a century of labor and half a century of free schools,
free asylums and hospitals, the masses of China are as yet unaffected ?
Terrible admission. (Page 199.) .
Another disheartening fact is mentioned by Rev. Mr. Smith: “Dur-
ing the current year (1906) practical war existed between Roman
Catholics and Protestant Christians.” This state of affairs scandalizes
the “heathen Chinee”, He can not understand why sects who worship
the same Jesus should hate each other rabidly. So bitter became the
mutual animosity of the Catholic and Protestant that heathen Chinese
soldiers had to be sent to the affected district to preserve order among
the Christians!
Could any statement be more damaging ?
In 1898, the Catholics put a pressure on the Chinese government
(through the French legation) and extorted a concession which will
forever be a bone of contention and a cause of bad blood. The priests
were given civil as well as ecclesiastical jurisdiction over their con-
verts: Catholic bishops were raised to the rank of Chinese viceroys, and
the lower clergy to the dignity of Chinese mandarins. Thus the mis-
sionaries have set up a government within a government, a foreign em-
pire within the Chinese empire.
[10] FOREIGN MISSIONS
What nation would suffer such a thing if she had her own way ?
Are we not bound to know that this thorn rankles in the flesh, and that
China will come to hate all Christians, if the Catholic Church persists
in her encroaching policy? The Roman hierarchy is absorbing prop-
erty in China just as it did in the Philippines, and as it does wherever
it becomes a fixture. Therefore, it is practically certain that, sooner or
later, the national spirit of China will thrust out the foreign inter-
meddler and become Christianized, if at all, under the evangelical work
of Chinese Christians.
2 * * % % ak * * bs
A refrain which runs through all these missionary books, tracts and
pamphlets is “we need more money”. The language may vary, but the
meaning never. The unanimity with which everybody engaged in the
foreign missions speaks upon this point is pleasing. Harmony could
not be more sweetly attuned. ;
In one of the pamphlets the demand for “more money” displays it-
self in maps. On one of these is pictured the shortcomings of our
Methodist brethren in the matter of tithes. The showing is startling.
According to this map, the members of that denomination were heavily
in arrears in 1900. They owed God tithes to the amount of $29,000,000
and paid only $5,000,000. This particular map is in the form of a cir-
cle; a space is marked off, in white, to show the relative size of the
$5,000,000 to the larger sum which remained unpaid. The balance of
the circle, and much the larger part, is red-inked, and these accusing
words appear:
“Balance due God on the $29,000,000.”
The cool assumption that the members of the Methodist church owe
a tithe to God, and that the churches alone are authorized to collect the
debt, would be ludicrous had it not been lifted into the realms of the
serious by many a sermon and tract.
The writer of this was attending divine services at White Oak
Camp Ground (in Georgia) some years ago, and heard an eminent
Methodist presiding-elder tell the congregation why the farmers were
having such short crops that year. The good parson said that the crop
failure was a punishment sent upon the people by the Lord because
they had not paid tithes to God. Why the farmers should have been
singled out by Jehovah for pains and penalties was not explained. But
Bishop J. W. Bashford is on the same line. In his book, “God’s Mis-
sionary Plan for the World”, occurs a chapter on 7ithes; and in that
chapter of his book Bishop Bashford is surely a mighty good Jew, so
far as church finance goes. Bishop Bashford makes the statement that
there are stronger arguments in favor of doing away with the Sabbath
Day than can be urged for the abolition of tithing!
Then the Bishop harks back to Leviticus and lays down the law to
us. Heavens above! /s the law of Leviticus our law? Tf it is, why
take only one part of it? If any of it binds us, how do we rightfully
escape the rest of it?
FOREIGN MISSIONS r11]
Bishop Bashford cites passages from Leviticus to clinch his argu-
ment. Very well: if Leviticus is good law, binding upon us Gentiles,
then we must look about us, and get our general bearings.
Leviticus is strict with men who wear beards, definitely forbidding
the rounding of the corners of said hirsute appendages. Giving to this
Levitical law a liberal construction, we would say that it meant to pro-
hibit a man from monkeying with his beard at all. He must let it grow
as God pleases. To round off the corners, or to block out a naked chin,
leaving the cheeks parded, or to resort to other vain and fanciful ef-
forts to coax comeliness, are clearly against the law. It must be
stopped.
Again, the higher clergy must quit marrying widows. The Levit-
ical Code is emphatic on that point. Alas! for ambitious widows.
Again, the farmers must not cut all the grain off the corners of the
wheat field, and must not glean after the harvest. It is against the law.
The corners and the grain on the ground must be left there for the
poor and the stranger.
Again, we must not cross-breed our cattle, nor sow any mixed grain,
nor wear clothes of mixed fibre. It is against the Code Leviticus. The
mule industry must discontinue.
Again, we must resort to the law of retaliation to get redress for all
grievances. _An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: if a man knocks
your teeth down your throat, the sheriff must knock his teeth down his
throat, and thus the law be satisfied.
If we must adhere to the law of Leviticus, we shall demand physi-
eal perfection of our clergymen. No man with a cast in his eye, none
who is lame of foot or arm or leg, none who has a flat nose, none who
has lost or maimed a single part of his physical equipment, can be re-
tained in the ministry. No more blind SE no more one-armed
preachers, no more hump-backed preachers !
Besides, Leviticus expressly forbids the shaving of the head, and
every tonsured monk would have to get out.
If Leviticus is good law, we must quit eating lobsters, crabs, eels,
and oysters. This would play havoe with the fish trade, and cause a
riot among the gourmands.
Moreover, if the law of Leviticus is binding upon us in the matter
of tithes, it must also be obeyed in the matter of the Sabbath Year and
the Jubilee. We must let all the farming land lie fallow every seventh
year; and we must, every fiftieth year, iaicel debts, liberate prisoners,
restore land to all who have been forced by poverty to sell it during
the preceding forty-nine years. The year of Jubilee had a profound
economic meaning, its purpose being to prevent the concentration of
wealth and the creation of a pauper class.
We want to be fair with Bishop Bashford, and we therefore make
him a proposition: .
If his mighty denomination will help us bring about some system
to prevent the centralizing of power and privilege and riches, we will
help him get a tenth of the annual increase. Jf the Church will give
[12] FOREIGN MISSIONS
us the Jubilee, we will give the Church the tithe. You know, Bishop,
that the tail should go with the hide.
In 1788, Henry Grattan, the great Irish orator and statesman, de-
livered, in Parliament, an exhaustive speech on tithes. In this ad-
dress, Mr. Grattan challenges and disproves the divine right of the
clergy to a tenth. He points out that the priesthood of the Jews did
not enjoy a tithe. The Levites had a tenth because they had no other
inheritance; but Aaron and his sons had but the tenth of that tenth.
The tithes which were paid by the Jews supported the Levites, the
priesthood, the poor of the country, the stranger within the gates, the
widow, the orphan and the temple.
But how can a Christian priesthood claim under the Jews ? Did not
the old dispensation pass away? Did not the tithe system belong to the
religion which Christ came to supplant? Can we hold on to the finan-
cial part of it and reject the remainder ? ;
Christ was not a Levite, nor of the Jewish priesthood: how is it,
then, that we inherit that one feature of the Jewish religious system,
tithes ?
In one of Alexander Del Mar’s great books, “The Middle Ages”, we
find some curious details relating to the historic origin of voluntary
donations to temples and priesthoods. The Greeks devoted a tenth of
the spoils of war to the temple of Mars. The Gaditan chaplains ex-
acted tithes for Hercules. Herodotus records the fact that the Siph-
nians gave a tenth of the produce of their gold mines to Apollo. The
Brahmin, the Buddhist, Assyrian and Egyptian priesthoods all ex-
acted tithes from the people to support their religious worship. From
the Assyrians and the Egyptians the Hebrews borrowed the system,
and now Bishop Bashford wants to borrow it from the Hebrews.
Before the time of Christ, the Romans had adopted tithes in sup-
port of their paganism and the Catholics appropriated this feature of
paganism as they did so many others.
* oS * *K ok * cS a ok
Upon what theory are American church-members burdened with
the expense of Missionary work in countries that are already Christ-
lanized ¢
Take Italy, for example. What scriptural authority have we for
spending our money on mission work in a land where the message of
Chi'st has been heard for nearly nineteen hundred years, and where
the t‘hristian religion has had absolute sway for centuries?
A ve the Italians heathen ?
Is the Christianity of Papa Pius and his cardinals a mere pagan-
ism? Is the adoration of the Virgin and the prostrations before im-
ages of saints a modernized idolatry? Are the miracle-workings of the
Catholic priests a persistent survival of the trickeries of the ancient
temples?
Tt must be that our Protestant churches hold that these questions
are to be answered affirmatively, else they would not put Italy in the
FOREIGN MISSIONS [13]
same category with China and Korea. All Italy is Catholic, and the
Protestant churches of America are trying to convert Italians from
Catholicism, just as they are trying to convert the Chinese from idol-
worship. In other words, one sect. of the followers of Christ is deal-
ing with another sect as though they were heathen.
What text in the Bible authorizes that?
The Cubans have long been Catholics, yet we are spending much
money there to convert these Christians to another form of Christian-
ity. The same is true of South America.
In these Catholic countries, our Protestant churches are running
the commissary, the hospital, the circuit-riding doctor, and the free
school, just the same as though South America had not been a Christ-
ian territory for generations.
With heroic toil and at great expenditure of life and treasure, Cath-
olic missionaries planted the Christian religion in Mexico, in Central
America, in South America, and in the West Indies. For many and
many a decade, these have been Christian lands,—domains over which
the Cross reigned supreme. Yet, at this time, we find the Protestant
world treating these Catholic countries as they treat India, Korea, Bur-
mah, China and Japan. Catholic South America is put on the same
footing as a heathen land, and is regarded as a fit object of foreign
missions.
This fact suggests the question: “Jf Roman Catholicism is tanta-
mount to paganism, why not combat tt in North America?”
In the United States, Roman Catholicism is sweeping all before it.
Fourteen millions of our people profess its creed. A few months ago,
American prelates assured Papa Pius that our republic would soon be-
long to Rome. Not many weeks since, an American Catholic bishop
declared that his church meant to capture the Presidency. It is already
the power behind the throne. Cardinal Gibbons is a potentate whom
Cleveland dared not offend, and Roosevelt has been notoriously con-
trolled in various instances by the same insidious, irresistible influence.
The greater number of our large cities are ruled by a combination
of the priests and the saloon-keepers. Our municipal governments are
the rottenest on earth. From San Francisco to New York, the cry is,
“Graft, corruption, vice, crime, misery.” Centers of population like
Philadelphia or Pittsburg are the despair of the patriot. In New York
alone, thirty million dollars is the amount annually stolen from the
taxpayers, and under the priest-barkeeper regime the debt of that one
city has been made as large as the public debt of the United States
government.
What, then, is the literal fact?
While we Protestants are reaching out after Cuba, Jamaica and
South America, Rome is conquering North America. We are annually
losing to her in the United States enormously more than we take from
her in all the other Catholic countries put together.
Why not let Italy remain Catholic, and Cuba remain Catholic, and
South America remain Catholic, until we have called home all our
[14] FOREIGN MISSIONS
workers, concentrated all our energies, and put Catholicism to rout 7
our native land? What shall it profit us to redeem South American
republics and lose our own?
ke a * +k % mia ok BS ok
The proposition upon which our republic is founded is that in the
people rests the sovereignty which makes and changes the governments.
We deny the Divine Right of kings. We deny the infallibility and
the supreme power of Popes. We claim that every individual is
“equally as free and independent” as any other citizen, and that no
priest has the right to dictate to us in matters of conscience.
Roman Catholicism threatens the very foundation of our mstitu-
tions, strikes at the very root of our liberties. x
A good Catholic is bound to believe that supreme sovereignty is in-
herent in the holy Papa at-Rome, and that the Papa has the power, as
the vicegerent of Christ, to depose kings and rule nations. That has
always been the Catholic doctrine, and the Church boasts that it never
changes. Tt can wait, it can dissemble, it can wheedle and hoodwink
and deceive, but it does not change. Its purpose is ever the same, and
wherever it has been a master it has been a blight.
So late as 1867, Cardinal Manning, of England, reaffirmed the
papal doctrine of supreme sovereignty over Christian peoples. Says
the Cardinal, “It is necessary that . . . the temporal authorities
should be subject to the spiritual power. . . . Moreover, we de-
clare, say, define and pronounce it to be altogether necessary to salva-
tion that every human creature should be subject to the Roman
Pontiff.”
Bishop Gilman, of Cleveland, Ohio, in a Lenten Letter, 1873, wrote:
“Nationalities must be subordinated to religion, and ire must learn that we are
Catholics FIRST and citizens NEXT. God is above man and THE CHURCH IS
ABOVE THE STATE.”
There you have the Roman Catholic doctrine. Jt is at deadly war
with republican institutions, for we say in our fundamental law that the
Church shall have nothing to do with the State. They must forever be
kept separate. Roman Catholicism contends that they must not only
come together but that the relation between them must be that of
master and servant. What the Catholics are aiming to do is to give us
Presidents and Cabinets that will look to Rome for orders.
When we naturalize a foreigner, we compel him to take an oath
renouncing allegiance to any and all foreign powers; but the Roman
Catholics of America are bound to obey, as their supreme, infallible
master, an old Italian priest, sitting enthroned among the slippery but
powerful politicians of the Vatican. The profession of faith sanc-
tioned by the Catholic Council which was held in Baltimore in 1884
contains the following oath of allegiance: “J pledge and swear true
obedience to the Roman Pontiff, vicar of Jesus Christ.”
In case there should be a conflict between the law of our land and
the laws of the Church, the Catholic must obey his church.
f
FOREIGN MISSIONS [15]
Here is a clause from their Canon law: “Vo oaths are to be kept if
they are against the interest of the Church.”
Who is to decide whether the oath is detrimental to the Church ?
Either the person who took the oath, or his priest, or his Pope. There-
fore, all oaths are subject to be annulled at the pleasure of the
hierarchy.
We Americans believe in lberty of conscience. Our laws safe-
guard it: The Popes deny it, and make war upon it as a damnable
heresy. In Roman Catholicism, the priests are, under the holy Papa,
the keepers of the people’s conscience. Not only does Roman Catholi-
cism declare that Protestants have no rights where Catholicity is
triumphant, but the Bishops’ oath binds them to persecute all who will
not bow to the “our said Lord and his successors.” Our said Lord is,
of course, the aged Italian gentleman who calls himself the vicar of
Christ.
Suppose that Baptist and Methodist clergymen were required to
take a solemn oath to persecute the Catholics—there would be a howl,
wouldn’t there? Yet nobody says a word when Catholic Bishops are
sworn in, as persecutors of the Protestants.
Princes of the Roman hierarchy very frankly declare that they only
allow liberty of conscience where they are in the minority. Where they
are in the majority, they refuse it and they persecute.
As to the public schools, everybody knows where Catholicism
stands. It is waging relentless warfare against the free, non-sectarian
school, the purpose being to put the children i in the power of the nuns
and the priests. W herev er Rome has ruled she has left the people
sunk in ignorance. Never has she favored popular education. Never
has she encouraged the laity to study the Bible. Yn every possible way
she has striven to make learning a sealed book to the masses, compelling
them to look to the priest for guidance.
Against our system of popular education, the holy Papa and his
satellites have launched the poisoned shafts of bitter religious hatred.
Our public schools are characterized as filthy, vicious, diabolical, god-
less, scandalous, pestilential, a social plague, breeders of unresti:ained
immorality.
Our forefathers knew what the Roman Catholic hierarchy was.
/ Its record—reeking with crime and fraud—was familiar to them. Its
enmity to popular rights, its foul partnership with tyrannical kings,
its frightful atrocities of persecution, its devouring greed and its cor-
rupting influence upon nations, were but too well known. The con-
vents which had become brothels, the shameless sale of licenses to com-
mit sin, the peddling of indulgencies which remitted sin, the massa-
cres encouraged by the Church, the ghastly and wholesale murders of
the Inquisition, the broods of bastards that clung around the knees of
Cardinals and Popes, the monstrous impositions and hypocrisies by
which the priests preyed upon the masses while holding them down in
the densest ignorance,—victims of the nobility, of the king and of the
papal hierarchy,—had excited a profound indignation in the men who
[16] FOREIGN MISSIONS
framed our government. Everything that the Fathers could do to
save us from the insidious encroachments of priest-craft was done.
But the children forgot the reason why the Fathers so dreaded
the Catholic Church. The children know not the record of crime and
devastation which caused our forefathers to detest the Roman hier-
archy. Consequently, the Pope has found our republic an easy prey to
his designs. In the year 1800 there were but fifty priests at work in
the United States. In 1890, there were 8,332. At present there are
more than 15,000! In 1800, there were but 10,000 Catholic converts
in the United States. In 1890, there were 8,277,039. At present there
are 14,000,000. In 1800, the Catholics had no foothold in this country,
and no appreciable influence upon public affairs. At present they are
powerful in all our cities; and in the great West, which will rule the
future of this country, the Catholics have grown enormously and al-
most have controlling numbers. In 1800, there were 3,030 evangelical
churches; now there are nearly fifty times as many. But the Catholics
had no churches in 1800, while they now have 12,449. They have almost
doubled the number of their churches in twenty years.
In view of these statistics, the warning of LaFayette, himself a
Catholic, is worth remembering. The “Knight of Liberty” knew the
political record of the Catholic hierarchy, and he predicted:
“If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the
hands of the Romish clergy.”
Already we have members of our highest lawmaking body who
consider it an honor to be allowed to kiss the foot of aman! Already
we have members of the United States Supreme Court, and one mem-
ber of the Cabinet, who would feel incredibly elated at being given a
Vatican “audience,” in which they would humbly kneel before a man,
and touch his slipper with their devout lips. Already we have fourteen
millions of people in America to whom the privilege of abasing them-
selves in the presence of a venerable Italian priest is an unattainable
blessing of which they can only dream, while they from a distance
adore.
God of our Fathers! Isn’t 1t enough to terrify the American pa-
triot, when he sees the unthinking girls who are burying themselves
alive in the convents, sees the priest shackling the press; sees the papal
politician working the wires of public policies; sees the Church of
idolatry and superstition absorbing our people by the million and eat-
ing the heart of independence out of a great nation?
Protestant missionaries! Again we ask you, what will it profit
ourselves, our country, or our God to redeem Jamaica and Cuba and
South America from the Romish priests AND LOSE TO THEM
OUR OWN REPUBLIC?
K * ** * oo * 1 * ae
“God’s Missionary Plan for the World,” is the modest title which
Bishop J. W. Bashford gives to his book and his plan. What a com-
fortable state of mind one must have attained to identify himself with
FOREIGN MISSIONS [17]
Jehovah in that complacent manner! Is it not barely thinkable that
the Bishop’s plan may be the Bishop’s, without being God’s?
Not more than fifty years ago we had a little ‘“one-hoss” Baptist
preacher officiating at our synagogue, and he thought that we were
going to keep him as long as he wanted to stay, and he concluded that
he needed a parsonage. First of all he selected the name “Pastorium”
for this parsonage; and then he opened his campaign to get it built.
He told us that God wanted a Pastorium for our church, and he con-
tinued to tell us that until he got the ladies going,—and, of course, that
settled it. We had to build the house for this little preacher, and never
once had he said that he wanted it. With great unction, fervor, and
deep conviction he hammered us with the assertion that God wanted it,
—so the Pastorium was built and the little preacher, piously pleased,
moved in.
We have not the shghtest doubt that, in this case, our pastor sin-
cerely believed that he spoke the truth when he declared from the pulpit
that the Lord wanted a Pastorium; nor can we doubt that Bishop
Bashford is entirely honest in saying that the mission plan adopted by
himself and his brethren is God’s plan.
Nevertheless, it may not be the divine arrangement. When one
searches the Scriptures, it is easy to find texts which appear to mean
that a man’s duty is to provide first for those who are dependent upon
him. Responsibility has its birth at the hearthstone. First of all, we
owe duties to wife and child, as the wife and child owe duties to
husband and father. Both in morals and in law, every citizen is re-
sponsible first for himself and household. Charity, beginning at home,
reaches forth, expands its scope and makes one love his neighbors. In
a large sense, one’s state is his household, and after his state comes his
nation. In exactly the same sense that the members of one’s family
constitute his household, the citizens of one’s own country are his na-
tional family. One of the national airs of France was inspired by that
very idea. Now, since God condemns the man who neglects his own
household, and classes him as worse than an infidel, it would seem that
national polity should be framed along the same lines.
He who would go forth to carry medicine to the sick of a stranger’s
house, leaving his own wife or child sick and unattended, would be
justly considered an unnatural husband and parent. He who would
carry food and raiment to the naked and hungry family of a stranger,
leaving his own household to perish of want, would be thought a luna-
tic. He who would establish hospitals, commissaries and free schools
for those who were strangers to him in creed and blood, leaving his
own poor unfed, and letting his own child grow up in squalor’ and
brutish ignorance, could hardly expect to escape the scorn and the
indignation of all right-minded people.
This is the charge which the Jeffersonian brings against the present
plan of Foreign Missions.
Brother! In the name of the Most High, study the books which
reveal the awful conditions existing in our own country. Think of the
[18] FOREIGN MISSIONS
illiteracy, of the pauperism, of the orgies of vice and crime, of the
irreligion which has either emptied the churches or fills them with in-
different, perfunctory adherents.
In the State of Alabama there are 66,072 MERE between the ages
of ten and fourteen, who can not read and write. In Georgia, the num-
ber is 63,329. In Louisiana, 55,691. In South Carolina, 51,536. In
North Carolina, 51,190. In Mississippi, 44,334. In Tennessee, 36,375.
In Texas, 35,491. In Virginia, 34,612. In Arkansas, 26,972. In Ken-
tucky, 21,247. One-third of the native whites of the Southern States,
over ten years of age, are unable to read and write.”
Are not those figures an indictment of our present system of Foreign
Missions. HOW DARE, WE. GO ABROAD AWITH Sriee
SCHOOLS, TEMPTING THE HEATHEN TO ACCEPT A FREE
EDUCATION BY GIVING THEM BOARD AND CLOTHING,
WHEN MILLIONS OF OUR OWN: CHILDREN ARE UTTERLY
ITTAITER ATIC? |
Even among those children who can go to school, conditions prevail
which wring the heart. In January, 1909, it was officially stated that
6,000 of the pupils of New York City were hungry all the time.
In this land of the free and of Christ, there are 1,752,187 child
slaves, mostly white children. Their minds and their bodies are being
sacrificed to commercial greed. There are more than half a million
wage-earners killed and wounded every year in the various industrial
pursuits; and the greater number of these “accidents” could be pre-
vented were not dividends so much more highly valued than human
lives.
At least ten per cent. of our entire population is in distress all the
time. We have 125,000 famihes that own one-third of the property in
the Union, and we have thirty million people who own nothing. ‘Ten
per cent. of the dead of our richest city go to the potter’s field.
Brothers, listen! There is a morgue in Christian New York, where
bereaved parents bring their dead babies to be put on ice until the
parents may be able to give them burial. Every year, sia thousand
babes of the poor are brought to the morgue and placed in the refrig-
erator. No corpses are received excepting those who died of natural
causes or accidents. Victims of scarlet fever, or other infeetious dis-
eases, are rejected.
Are the infants, who are brought there because the parents are too
poor to bury them, ever buried? No. It is Denis O’Sullivan who
writes of this morgue in the book which he named “The Cold-Storage
Baby.”
Mr. O'Sullivan visited the place, saw the tiny corpses and talked
with the man in charge. Says the author: “TI asked him where these
babies were buried. His answer was, ‘They don’t last long.”
The dead children thus stored away on ice are from one month to
two years old. Six thousand per year, in one of our Cities!
In the same city murders are committed on an average of three a
day, and the crimes against women roll up a perennial list of horrors.
* = % ok - * * * *
FOREIGN MISSIONS [19]
Professor Franklin H. Giddings says, “We are witnessing today,
beyond question, the decay of republican institutions. No man in his
right mind can deny it.” .
That is a true saying. Our political situation grows worse and
worse; our industrial system is concentrating all power and wealth into
the hands of a few; our moral condition, as shown by the record, is
enough to send a fire-bell warning to every Christian worker in foreign
fields, calling him, Come home! Come home! Wet your Chinese con-
verts finish the work in China! Let the natives of heathen lands whom
you have redeemed, complete what has been nobly begun. But do you
come home, and help us save ourselves!
Members of our own household,—bone of our bone, flesh of our
flesh, are dying of cold and hunger and homelessness,—we want the
dispensaries and the hospitals and the medicines for these. Our own
children need to be rescued from the regions of darkness, clad in decent
apparel, put to school, and taught to know Christ.
Suppose the same amount of money had been applied to Home Mis-
sions, and that the same devoted men and women had toiled for sixty
years in the home field—would we now have the awful conditions
which threaten the future of this republic?
Could not the white-slave traffic be stamped out? Could not the
reeking slums be redeemed? Could not the ravening brutes who pursue
unprotected women be put under lock and key? Could not the de-
pravity which has taken possession of the stage be shamed and checked ?
Could not the ban be put upon women who smoke and drink? Could
not the morals of our young people be elevated? Could not the Augean
stables of municipal government be cleaned out? Could not the news-
papers and the publishing houses be compelled to deny publicity to
items and to books which appéal to evil passions? Could we not hft
the standards of right-living, until it would be impossible for cynics
like Harriman, who boasted that he could buy courts and legislatures,
to be publicly honored by our Chambers of Commerce ?
Who does not know that the asylums, sanitariums, hospitals, and
penitentiaries cover a multitude of sins? Who can be ignorant of the
awful waste of human life in sweat-shops, rolling-mills, mines, match-
factories, railway service and packing establishments? Who does not
know that in every one of our larger cities there are dens of shame
where women are held in bondage for the vilest purposes? Who can
pick up a metropolitan paper without seeing news items and ad vertise-
ments which reveal social conditions that wring one’s heart and almost
stupefy one’s thoughts?
Could we not'CONCENTRATE OUR AIMS AND OUR ENER-
GIES, AND REDEEM OUR OWN LAND, FIRST?
% * * % % oe a * cS
A blessing would it be for Italy, were the holy Papa of our Roman
Catholic friends to devote his treasures to the uplift of the Italians.
[20] FOREIGN MISSIONS
Within sight of St. Peter’s towering dome there is an ocean of vice and
crime and ignorance and irreligion and sordid poverty which would
break holy Papa’s heart, were he indeed the Father of his people.
So it is in England, where Christianity rules with undisputed sway.
The cathedrals are hoary with age and gorgeous in wealth; the cere-
monial is perfect and the lip-service divine: but the spirit of Christ has
gone out of it. The rich Pharisees whom our Lord blasted with his
bitter words of invective thrive marvelously in England; and to the
uttermost regions of earth they send contributions to the heathen; but
there are millions of men, women and children in Great Britain who
live and die in such fearful poverty that the black sea of vice swallows
them up, and they perish without ever having known a school-house,—
without ever having had the chanee to become Christians.
You scout this statement as an exaggeration? You need not. Read
the official reports published by the British government. and you will
never again sneer at such a statement. You will come to know that
there are conditions in London, in the manufacturing towns, and in
the mining districts, which are at least as bad as anything which exists
in any heathen land.
Bo ok *k * ok ke ok * oe
The conclusion of the whole matter is this: We contend that the
delivery of the message of Jesus Christ to all the world does not include |
the maintenance throughout the earth of commissaries and the furnish-
ing of board, tuition, books, fuel and medicine to yellow, brown and
black children of heathen lands; we contend that the establishment
and support of free kindergartens, schools and colleges to give an Eng-
lish education to Hindoos, Chinese and Japanese is altogether a mis-
taken policy, so long as we leave our own children to grow up without
the advantages which we are giving to the heathen.
The little boys and girls of our own land constitute our national
family. The Good Book tells us that “he who provides not for his own
household is worse than an infidel”. Why not take Jesus at His word,
and content ourselves with doing that which he told us to do? Why
not preach the gospel to the heathen, and let it go at that? Japan is
rich enough to educate her own children, and is doing it. China is
wealthy enough to teach her own children, and is doing it. Even India,
bled white as she is by the oppression of the Christian English, is yet
able to educate her own dusky little ones, and is doing it. Where, then,
do we get the moral right to carry free education, hospitals, medicine
and medical service, dispensaries of free food and raiment to these
people of foreign countries and an alien race, until we have first fed
and clothed and educated the members of our own great family?
One of the sayings of Frances E. Willard, whose life was so beauti-
fully devoted to the highest and best ideals, is this: “It is better to stir
an issue without settling it than to settle one without stirring it.” Most
of us have settled this question of Foreign Missions without having
FOREIGN MISSIONS [21]
stirred it; we have been content to hear only one side. Yor the sake
of yourself, your children, your country and your future, stir the ques-
tion before you settle it; examine both sides; reach a conclusion that
satisfies your common sense, and then stick to it and practice it like a
man.
CHAPTER II.
OME time ago the newspapers were announcing, as a glorious
piece of news, that John D. Rockefeller had agreed to give fifty
millions of dollars to the cause of education in the Orient.
China, Japan, Hindustan, Korea, and perhaps other Eastern peoples,
will be among the beneficiaries of the Oil King’s bounty.
As Rockefeller’s millions have been wrung from our own people,
how can we rejoice that so large a part of the loot is to be sent to the
Orient, when there are so many schools and colleges needed for our
own boys and girls?
The Orientals are a cunning people. If once they are impressed by
the notion that they can secure for themselves a large percentage of
American wealth by pretending to embrace the Christian religion,
human wisdom would be baffled by the question:
“Are the Orientals embracing our faith for the sake of the religion, or are they
seeking the religion to get our money?”
Denominational papers seem to think that they make an unanswer-
able argument in favor of the present system of subsidized Christianity
in pagan lands when they present the statistics of American wasteful-
ness, vice and demoralizing self-indulgence.
They argue thus: The American people waste $11,000,000 annually
on chewing-gum; therefore, it is justifiable to furnish free secular
education, free medical treatment, and free medicines to the yellow
men of the far East, while we neglect the destitute and ignorant whites
of North Georgia. The American people waste $750,000,000 per year
on tobacco; therefore it is advisable to ignore the physical, mental and
spiritual wants of the poverty-cursed people of mountainous Tennessee,
Kentucky and Carolina, while we lavish our care, toil and money upon
heathen of an alien race thousands of miles away.
Such logic appeals to nobody but a fanatic on Foreign Missions. It
is so puerile, so utterly childish that it does not merit serious attention.
I would not mention it at all were it not for the deplorable fact that our
denominational papers countenance and encourage the twaddle. So
unaccustomed are clergymen and denominational organs to having
their statements questioned and their arguments answered, that the
Advocate actually endeavored to break the force of the facts cited by
me, and the scriptural texts referred to by me, by. telling its readers
that I live in a “magnificent home,” dictate to a stenographer, and hire
an overseer for my farms. Consequently, my views on Foreign Mis-
sions can not possibly be sound. No matter what I may be able to
prove, about the methods of missionaries, and about the actual mean-
[22] FOREIGN MISSIONS
ing of Christ as exemplified by his disciples, I am not to be heeded, be-
cause of my house, my stenographer, and my overseer !
Well, that kind of logic is fully as good as some people need—and
some people can furnish.
ok Kk *% Kk i DS * BS *
The question of Foreign Missions is of transcendant importance.
First, a Christian duty is involved. We must find out what that is,
if we can. Having learned what it is, we must perform it.
Second, a Christian task is to be done. We must ascertain the na-
ture and the extent of this task, and then we must shoulder it.
SOOCHOW UNIVERSITY, SOOCHOW, CHINA.
Rey. D. L. Anderson, D.D., President.
Made possible by the magnificent offering of $50,000 at the Missionary Conference
in New Ocleans, April 24-30, 1901.
What is the duty which Christendom owes to the heathen ?
In the simplest words, I venture to express it thus: “Z’o go into all
the world, and preach Christ and him crucified.” |
If you use the word preach you arrive at precisely the same scrip-
tural meaning that one gets from the words “to proclaim,” “to herald,”
“to explain,” “to announce.”
In every instance, Christ limited his instructions so that his full
FOREIGN MISSIONS [23]
meaning can be expressed in our word preach.
-
%
*
THE HARADA MURA KINDERGARTEN.
[42] FOREIGN MISSIONS
CHAPTER III.
HY do boys run off from
home to join the army, or
go to sea? Because it
appeals to their imagination. To
put the plow-gear on old Mike,
the mule, and go to the field
where the steady feet must walk one
monotonous furrow after another,
with loose soil getting into the shoes
and the hot sun baking the head,
is honorable but not romantic. Now and then the ploughman may be
a Burns and see the poetry in the upturned clod, moralize over the
ruined home of the field mouse, and bewail the cruel fate of the moun-
tain daisy crushed by the ruthless coulter, but oftener the conductor
who pulls the bell-line over Mike is not sentimental: he finds that life
at the tail-end of a mortgaged mule is strictly prosaic.
But to run away and join the army! To slip off some night and go
to sea! Zhere’s novelty for you, and romance and adventure. The
imagination kindles at the thought, fancy paints such a career in colors
of uniform brightness, and there they go, the Peter Simples and Barry
Lyndons and all their intermediate types,—to learn in due time that it
might have answered quite as well to have stayed at home.
Something of the same feeling tempts men and women into For-
eign Missions. The Orient, especially, appeals to the imagination. The
East,—the venerable, mysterious, poet-sung East,—revives recollections
of the cradle of the race, the dead civilizations of a remote past, the
legends of Patriarchs and Apostles, the traditions of conquerors and
empire-builders, the fabulous stories of boundless wealth, ancient rivers
whose names are interwoven with the mightiest events of time, hoary
cities and monuments and ruins that reach back into the twilight of
history; and languages, customs, manners, beliefs that link one to the
very beginnings of things. 7Z'hese create a profound interest in the
human heart, cast a spell over the mind, and attract us to the East with
that nameless charm which has fascinated men of all classes since the
time of Alexander the Great. The soldier, the mariner, the merchant,
the scholar, the naturalist, the scientist, the tourist, the poet, the law-
giver, ‘the historian, all have been captives to the Orient,—the East
from whose womb have issued the peoples, the ideas, the religions and
the laws, the arts and the sciences which have dominated the world.
Is it any wonder, then, that the Western churches should fall un-
der the witchery of the East? Is it any wonder that the enthusiastic
young evangelist should burn and glow at the very thought of planting
the banner of Christ on the walls of Teheran, of Soochow, of Tokio, of
Benares? By no means. On the contrary, he would be a dullard in-
deed if his imagination were not fired by the prospect.
AMERICAN MINER’S CABIN.
FOREIGN MISSIONS [43]
To toil among the miserably poor and ignorant whites of Arkansas,
or Kentucky or Tennessee or Georgia is not romantic. There is noth-
ing poetic about their rags, their dirt, their mental and physical stunt-
edness. Waving, as so many of them do, in wretched cabins, in direst
poverty, neglected of man and aliens from God, their surroundings are
not only filthy, but repulsive. Missionaries are loath to take hold and
have a general cleaning up. But with the Orientals, how different it
is! Somehow, thei dirt and comprehensive nastiness does not repel.
A MOUNTAIN HOME NEAR TALLULAH FALLS, GEORGIA.
Our delicate women work on those foul Orientals, and clean them up,
as though each reeking heathen hag and vagabond were a rare antique
vase which it is a pleasure to wash.
READ THIS ENTHUSIASTIC DESCRIPTION
“And what a scene was that when nearly twenty-five hundred sat down to eat
together the Lord’s Supper, and what a gathering! The old, the decrepit, the lame,
the blind, the maimed, the withered, the paralytic, and those afflicted with divers dis-
eases and torments; those with eyes, noses, lips, and linbs consumed with the fire of
their own or their parents’ former lusts, with features distorted and figures the most
depraved and loathsome; and these came hobbling upon their staves, and led or borne
by their friends; and among this throng the hoary priests of idolatory, with hands
but recently washed from the blood of human victims, together with the thief, the
adulterer, the sodomite, the sorcerer, the robber, the murderer, and the mother—no,
the monster—whose hands had reeked in the blood of her own children. These all
met before the Cross of Christ, with their enmity slain and themselves washed and
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”
'
The missionary who exhibits these trophies, these cleaned-up bar-
barians, appears to have been prouder of his harvest than if he had in-
vaded the tenderloin of some American city and rescued Caucasian
_slave-girls from a fate that is worse than death.
[44] FOREIGN MISSIONS
In the book, “Mission Economics”, by Rev. C. H. Carpenter, some
very valuable information is to be found.
On page 105, we are told that one out of every ee or ten of the
heathen “converts” is hired to preach to his own countrymen; and that
in Maulmain the missionaries maintained a boarding-school for boys
and girls, and a theological seminary, in which the heathen pupils were
furnished with food, clothing, beds, books, stationery, lights, etc., in
addition to the teachers and the buildings. Page 119: “We were told in
China that some missions were accustomed to pay parents for the time
their children spent in the mission school.” Page 177: Speaking of the
students in the preparatory school at Ongole, India, the lady teacher
said concerning ninety-one out of the one eunibed and twenty- -seven
scholars: “They receive food, clothes, and books from the mission.”
BOYS’ SCHOOL, PERNAMBUCO.
As to the High-school, Dr. Clough reports: “J/ost of the boys are un-
able to supply their own clothes or to pay board or tuttion.”
Further, Mr. Carpenter says:
“The pupils have mostly to come from a distance, where the prices of provisions
of all kinds are extraordinarily high, and where the native -churches can not or will
not aid with a single basket of paddy, or a stick of fuel, without receiving city
prices.”
The reference here was to the school at Maulmain, where the na-
tives would furnish nothing and where everything,—house, furniture,
beds and bedding, food and clothing, light and fuel, books and tuition
—had to be drummed up among the Baptist congregations of our own
country.
Says Brother Carpenter:
“To assist in the education of a native ministry, and to give some aid to con-
verts who are striving, as to the extent of their means, to educate their children, is
one thing. To go beyond this, and make expensive provision for the education of
children and youth, the large majority of whom are from heathen families whose
parents will not accept Christianity for themselves, and are presumably opposed to
having their children accept it; to buy land, erect buildings, provide costly American
FOREIGN MISSIONS [45]
teachers and native assistants, FURNISH FOOD AND ALL THE APPLIANCES OF
A NATIVE BOARDING-DEPARTMENT, and then receive back from some of the
pupils @ tuition of ten, twenty, or forty cents a month, and from some others a dol-
lar or two a month, towards the cost of the food which they eat,—to expend so many
thousands of dollars in this way, I say, that we are unable to send out the men who
are needed to enter open doors for preaching the Gospel in the regions beyond, may
not be absolute waste, but it can not be the highest form of obedience to the last com-
mand of our Lord.”
Reader, what think you of an intemperate, choleric parson who
would publish me as a liar for saying that conditions were as above
These are American breaker-boys. all supposed to be over fourteen. They work in the Johnston
breaker at Olyphant, the building that towers behind them. There they sit on narrow boards laid
across the coal chutes, enveloped in gloom, grime and clouds of stifling black dust, eight or nine hours
a day, bending over the streams of coal that rush between their little feet to pick, with bleeding fingers,
the useless slate and rock from the precious anthracite that may keep you warm next winter. Four-
teen, at least, the breaker boys are supposed to be. Often, however, they begin their drudgery when
no more than nine or ten years of age. ;
described, when the official reports of the churches, and the books writ-
ten by missionaries themselves, reveal such unscriptural methods?
Naturally wishing to know how it is now, with the educational sys-
tem of the Baptist’ Foreign Missionaries, I examined the Annual Re-
port, for 1908, of the Southern Baptist Convention. To my disap-
pointment, I find no detailed information which enables me to say to
[46] FOREIGN MISSIONS
what extent we are still furnishing food, clothing, books, ete., to the
heathen children. Application was made to our esteemed friend, Rev.
Dr. Lansing Burrows, Secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention ;
but he writes that he can only refer us to the Report. It is “the only
source of information.” That’s a pity. The Baptists of the South,
and elsewhere, have the right to know whether they are now, as here-
tofore, being taxed to lodge, feed, clothe and educate the black, brown
and yellow children of heathendom, while so many millions of white
children of our home-land are not well lodged, not well fed, clothed
and educated, and not given the precious benefit of refined, Christian
training.
We hope that some Baptist delegate to the next Convention will
have the spunk to demand more light. .Let them give us the details—
or quit pulling us for money.
Glancing through the reports sent in from the foreign field, one can
manage to glean a fact, now and then. Remember that in writing to
the Home Church, the missionary is personally interested in making
the best possible showing. If he could not “report progress”, he might
get his head chopped off—or have his salary stopped, which is about
as bad. Therefore, when you settle down to peruse these Reports from
the foreign field, put the salt cellar within reach.
Page 173. Report to Southern Baptist Convention on Cheng Chow
Station, China: “At the boarding-school started last fall by the Mis-
sion the girls paid a part of their board.” Don’t you think they might
have told how much it costs to lodge and feed these little yellow girls,
and what part of the expense their parents paid? Particularly, as we
Baptists in the home-land are taxed to give these heathen girls free
books, free tuition and a good schoolhouse.
At the end of the report on this Cheng Chow Mission is a list of
the “needs” of the missionaries which home Baptists are expected to
supply. ;
Cheng Chow needs: ‘Two unmarried ladies in addition to those
they already have; also a doctor and wife to help with the medical
‘work; also $2,500 in cash to buy land and a house for Mr. and Mrs.
Sallee, who have surrendered the house which the church built for
them to Mr. Herring and his family. They also need $1,000 for buy-
ing land for hospital, girls’ and boys’ schools. Also $3,000 for the
girls’ school; likewise $2,500 for the hospital.
For one station, that would seem to be a robust list of immediate
needs, especially when we consider that Cheng Chow is a small city for
China, having only about 20,000 inhabitants.
The medical work of the Southern China Mission is summarized as
follows:
Out patients treated during the year__________________ 7,543
Out calls 2225 utL- ek ek So ee ee 131
In“ patients £22csse3 2 oe ee ee ae a ee eee ee 207
Major ~ operations: {32 e722 e a a ee eee 51
Minor, operations =..5.2) tee ee ee oe ee 320
Receipts from” fees Sons eg se ee
Bo]
aS
or
or
to
—
—
FOREIGN MISSIONS [47]
According to this showing, the Baptists of the Home Church sup-
plied medicines, medical service, surgical operations, and surgical in-
struments necessary for use therein at the nominal rate of 20 cents for
each Chinaman who was treated.
Of course, this medical work is done upon the theory that it aids
the missionaries in the evangelization of these pagans. The report,
however, claims only twenty-one Chinamen baptized as a direct result
of the hospital work. Conceding that each one of these twenty-one
converts became a true Christian because of the medical work, it would
seem that the year’s harvest bears a very discouraging proportion to
the work and money expended. The same investment might have
MISSIONARY RESIDENCES, SHANGHAI, CHINA, BAPTIST COLLEGE AND
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
yielded very much better results had it been made in the slums of one
of our great cities, or in one of our backward rural communities.
From “the Uplift of China”, by Arthur H. Smith, this extract is
taken from page 175
“Asylums or villages for lepers have been established in five different provinces,
where excellent work has been done. There are eight orphanages (one of them in
Hongkong, but conducted by missionaries to the Chinese) caring for a great number
of children—mostly girls. Eleven schools or asylums for the blind—the best known
being that of Mr. Murray in Peking—are working what the Chinese justly regard as
daily miracles, rescuing from uselessness and worse a class hitherto quite hopeless.
A school for deat-mutes, conducted by Mrs. Mills, in Chefoo, is an object-lesson in
what may be done in that wide field. An asylum for the insane begun under great
difficulties by the late Dr. J. G. Kerr, at Canton, is likewise a pioneer in caring for a
numerous but hitherto neglected class.”
[48] FOREIGN MISSIONS
The list of needs is appended, as usual, at the end of the report, and
it appears that in the Southern China Mission they need pretty much
the same that they do at Cheng Chow: More teachers, more doctors,
more money for building missionary residences, more money for
schoolhouses and for chapels.
If I understand the statistical table which appears on page 20 of
the Report of the Southern Baptist Convention, we are maintaining in
the foreign field:
98 Male missionaries,
124 Female missionaries,
85 Ordained native preachers,
198 Un-ordained native male workers,
51 Native female workers,
139 Churches,
226 Sunday schools, with 7,526 children in attendance,
128 Day schools, with 3,194 scholars.
To the support of all these, foreign countries contribute somewhat
less than $3,500. To say nothing of maintaining the expensive home
machinery of administering these mission funds and directing the mis-
sion work, we actually spend in the field, among the heathen, about ten
times more than they themselves can be prevailed upon to contribute.
Reporting to the Mission Board of the M. E. Church, South, on
Education in Korea, Rev. G. W. Cram says:
“It was thought wise to make the students pay the nominal monthly tuition of
ten sen (five cents), which most of the schools in Songdo charge their pupils. The
parents of some of the boys contributed yen 98 in the beginning of the fall term to
get benches, desks, coal, stove, etc., for the school. During the spring term the tui-
tion collected amounted to only yen 20.60 ($10), owing to “the fact that many of the
boys were unable to pay, while some were unwilling to pay, even that modest sum.
We decided to use the twenty yen as remuneration for the service of the two student
tutors.” .
(A yen is, in our coin, about 49 cents: 1 sen is, therefore, about
half-a-cent.)
There were more than a hundred boys in the school, and the teach-
ers were Mr. Cram, Mrs. Wasson, Mr. Wasson, three Korean teachers,
and two student tutors. Not only did the Home Church of America
have to pay the salaries of these six regular teachers, and supply the
books, ete., but Mr. Cram reports that eight of these Korean students
had to be furnished with BOARD, in whole or in part.
Page 53: Referring to the Union Intermediate School, Mr. C. G.
Hounshell reports ninety students, of whom eleven are boarded at the
expense of the Methodist Church.
Page 71: Palmore Institute: Number of students enrolled about
500. The Principal of the school says that “very few of the great num-
ber of pupils that come to us are Christians”. The receipts are given
as $706, whereas the total expense of the school foots up $2,000.
In fact, it elsewhere appears in the Report that the J aps contribute
only $3,927 to help the Methodists sustain fifteen school buildings,
thirteen church buildings, six parsonages, twenty-three missionaries,
FOREIGN MISSIONS [49]
fourteen native workers, twenty-four local preachers, sixty-two Sun-
day-schools, three boarding-schools, seven day-schools, forty-eight
teachers, and one thousand, eight hundred and twelve pupils.
Let us take the Laurens Institute, one of the schools in the Mexican
field. Prof. F. C. Campbell, Director, reports the recent completion of
an enlargement of the building at a cost of $24,390. The homeland
furnished the money. The professor says, ‘While holding rigidly to
our policy not to exclude any worthy pupil on account of 7VAB/L-
ITY TO PAY, we have put forth every effort to make the school more
nearly self-supporting 7ZAN HERETOFORE.” Curious to know
how close they came to making the Laurens Institute self-supporting,
after they had “put forth every effort” to that end, we looked it up in
“Breaker’’ boys and other tiny miners in Pennsylvania. Many are under fourteen years,
althoughthe law forbids employment of children under this age in mines.
the Report, and we find that $2,750 was the amount which “the Board
of Missions” appropriated to this Mexican college for the year 1908-09.
If it hits the brethren for that amount when it is more nearly self-sup-
porting than heretofore, what an elephant it must formerly have been!
Reporting on the Granbery College, Brazil, President J. W. Tar-
boux demands of the Home Church $25,000 for an extension of the
present building; $10,000 for additional furniture and scientific appa-
ratus; $40,000 for a chapel, literary society and Y. M. C. A. halls;
$35,000 for a Pharmacy and Dental school; and $30,000 for more land
to build on and for the students to play on.
Says Bro. Tarboux:
“The (home) Church ought to drive down her stakes for $150,000 for the Gran-
bery within the next five years.”
[50] FOREIGN MISSIONS
A Protestant missionary in Mexico (not a Baptist) writes as fol-
lows:
“ * * * Tam disposed to help in putting thé set in the hands of every Prot-
estant missionary in Mexico. . . In : } —, and ———— we were
saddened by much that we saw: native preachers receiving seventy-five and eighty
dollars per month, while their congregations contributed nothing to their support;
boarding-schools or orphanages, in which the girls received everything 5 theological
training schools, in which boys and young men received hats, shoes, clothing, station-
ery, postage-stamps, money for bath and hair-cutting, and a small monthly present
in cash, besides board and tuition. One lady teacher, weighed down with business
details, etc., remarked that she was really doing more missionary work when she
lived at home in the United States.”
This letter appears in the book, “Mission Economics”, by the Mis-
sionary, Rev. Dr. Carpenter.
In studying the Mexican Missions, we find that our Baptist mis-
sionaries are establishing free literary schools and free doctor-shops.
For instance, on page 133
of the Southern Baptist
Convention Report, we find
a letter from the Toluce
Field. Brother Lacey says,
“Foundation work is being
done at these places and
we may expect baptisms
later.”
Now, what 7s this “foun-
dation work” which is be-
ing done antecedent to con-
versions? It is a complete
system of literary educa-
tion, furnished free to the Mexican children. Brother F. N. Sanders,
from the same field, writes:
A BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAIN HOME.
COURTESY BEREA (KyY.) COLLEGE.
\
“I taught mathematics, ENGLISH, some science, GYMNASTICS, and gave a few
of the boys MUSIC.”
And this is Foreign Missions, is it? That’s what Christ told us to
do, eh? We go about among the congregations of the South begging
for money for the heathen, and when we get it, we hike off down to
Mexico to teach English to people who are perfectly satisfied with
their Spanish language; and we not only spend this mission money
teaching the boys how to skin-the-cat on the gymnastic pole, but we
solemnly teach them to bang the piano, toot the flute, and tweedle-dee
on the fiddle!
To soften the tale, Brother G. H. Lacey assures us that in this
“foundation-work” schools, there “were considerable numbers of pay
girls, which was a great help in the matter of expenses”,
What was the number of these “pay girls”? The Report fails to
state. How much did that free education of Mexicans cost us? We
are not told. We have no native Baptist workers in that field, but in
FOREIGN MISSIONS [51]
the hopes of getting a few, “bymeby”, we shell out cash to furnish the
Mexican children with a literary, gymnastic and musical education,—
and it would seem that we board and lodge them while teaching them.
They tell us that the Bible is authority for that kind of thing! Can
you draw a mental picture’ of Paul and Peter putting up a gymnastic
pole, at Philippi or Antioch, as an
antecedent to evangelistic work?
Can you imagine Barnabas and
Timothy carrying a_ fiddle-case
around, as a part of the apostolic
outfit ?
What’s the matter with us
Baptists, anyway? Have we gone
crazy, or have we just simply
-been hypnotized by the unscrip-
tural methods of other churches ?
DISPENSARY AT CHOON CHUN, KOREA. The Rev. John Hobbs has re-
cently been run out of Mexico. He
was engaged in missionary work for the Seventh Day Adventists who,
as it seems to me, have just as much right to free speech and a fair
chance as any other denomination. Speaking of the hardships to which
he was subjected in Mexico because of his evangelical efforts, Brother
Hobbs says:
“In Mexico even Protestant missionaries persecuted us. The American mission-
ary receiving $100 to $150 in gold each month, pays his native helper, who does
most of the work, only $25 a month and then expects ‘him to support a family. Our
faith is most widely received by the Mexicans of all the other religious beliefs being
taught there by missionaries.
“Three years ago I left Winnipeg, Canada, for Mexico, as all members of our
ehurch have to spend three years in some kind of missionary work, and that, too,
without support from the denomination except from the individual church to which
they belong in case of dire need, such as sickness.
“We differ in our belief from the Baptists in that we believe in feet washing be-
fore communion and in close communion always, as well as in faith healing.
“If the Protestant missionaries’ lives were more worthy of emulation, the Mexi-
cans would flock to their religion the more quickly.”
Take Africa, as an illustration. We know what we are paying to-
ward the education of our negroes in the South, but what are we doing
for the negroes in Africa ?
As yet, we have but made a beginning. But don’t fret: just give
us time. After awhile we will be stuck on the job of making a scholar
and a gentleman out of every nigger boy in Africa, just as we are do-
ing over here. In Africa, we Baptists have already planted our
schools, and we are giving our brother in black a free education over
there, just as we are doing over here. What are we teaching the ne-
groes in Africa? I quote from the Southern Baptist Convention Re-
port, page 147:
“Subjects taught are reading and spelling, in both English and Goruba, writing,
arithmetic, geometry and grammar.”
[52] FOREIGN MISSIONS
On page 148:
“Industrial work. This is the most recent department of our mission work and
consists in combining with other branches of mission work the teaching of certain
trades, such as carpenter-work, blacksmithing, FARMING, and especially modern
methods of farming.”
So we Baptists have allowed our foreign missionaries to saddle and
bridle us with Industrial Schools, in addition to literary education.
We are supporting missionaries who are not only teaching negro boys
and girls in Africa how to speak, read and write in English, and how
to express themselves grammatically, and how to do sums and solve
problems in lower, intermediate and higher mathematics, but our
preachers are training the
African mind in the mys-
teries of the jack-plane,
the turning lathe, the
merry forge, the sulky
plow, and the grain-drill.
That is all well enough as
a matter of brood philan-
thropy, but how does it
avork itself into the ex-
pense account of Foreign
Missions? Does it any-
where appear that Christ
commanded us to go into
all the world and teach
the heathen how to plant
potatoes, sow wheat and
raise cotton? Are we Bap-
apo ce etn of ee eae Ac erleas Sat Ero ena et
bef by Serco eters! t cotton mill. The eldesthasbeen {he expense of educational
and industrial training of
the negroes in both the worlds, the New and the Old?
In Africa, as elsewhere, the doctor-shop cuts a wide swathe. Sick
people love to be cured, and American medicines and methods are so
much better than those of the natives that even the Africans recognize
their superiority. On page 146 of the Southern Baptist Convention
Report one finds a statement of the Medical work. Three days of the
week the Doctor-shop opens for business. The ailing negroes come
flocking, grunting, groaning, howling—some with one complaint and
some with another, but all with “a misery”, somewhere. The “free
cure” empties the woods, and crowds the Doctor-shop. Says the Re-
port:
“From March till December, 2,150 patients have received treatment. ee
During the latter part of the year we began to think that the people should be taught
to help themselves to some degree, and that instead of treating all patients absolutely
free, a small charge should be made for medicines and surgical dressings, and thus
render the medical work partly self-supporting.”
.
FOREIGN MISSIONS [53]
Now, weigh those facts. The free Doctor-shop was established and
operated until more than 2,000 negroes had been given free treatment,
free medicines, and free surgical dressings. Then a small charge was
demanded, to meet 7n part the actual cost of medicines and surgical
dressings. But it is not even proposed to charge a cent for the medical
service.
These beneficiaries of our bounty are not converts. The Report does
not claim that a single patient embraced Christianity. We sent them
good medicines, good doctors and good surgeons: the negroes accepted
GROUP OF MISSIONARIES AND NATIVE WORKERS.
Soudan Mission Christian and Missionary Alliance. John Nicol, Bros. Rapp, Mim, Evans, Patterson
and David Smart; Mrs. Graham, Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Driscoll.
what we offered. A brief religious service preceded the work of the
Medical Missionary, but that part of his labor seems to have been bar-
ren of results.
From the book, “What Hath God Wrought?” we take a picture of
a group of missionaries at work in the Congo Free State, Africa.
Study the group. - The most prominent figure in the photograph is that
of a well-made negro, who looks like he might easily split five hundred
rails a day. He is dressed elegantly in white linen or duck. He ap-
pears to be posing on a footing of social equality with the white ladies
and gentlemen of the group,—as does the coon who stands on the other
side. How much does it cost us to dress up these Africans and put
them tothe work which the negro so dearly loves,—that of preaching ?
The report fails to state.
[54] FOREIGN MISSIONS
Go Forward is the name of a paper published by the M. E. Church,
South, at Nashville, Tenn. It seems to have no other reason for exist-
ence than to continuously beat the drum for Foreign Missions. Every
copy of it is crammed w ith letters from the workers who are wrestling
with the heathen in various parts of the world. According to the Re-
port of the Conference, Go Forward cost the brethren the sum of
$2,600 last year. In other words, our Southern Methodists are subsi-
dizing a periodical whose sole aim_is to pull money out of their pock-
ets for Foreign Missions. q
The letters which are published in Go Forward are written with
no other object in view than to stimulate contributions to the cause.
Therefore, all of those communications are colored as highly as pos-
sible. If Go Forward gives space to any statement which tends to make
the present system lose favor, such a result was not contemplated by
the missionary who wrote the letter or the editor who published it.
Bearing this in mind, let us browse around among some back num-
bers of the paper and note what the foreign workers are saying for
themselves. Let us see what they have done and are doing. Let us
see what they are proposing for the future and what they are asking
of us home-folks.
First of all, consider the point of view of the fanatics who are
proposing to cleanse, cure, educate and Christianize the teeming mil-
lions of heathendom. This point of view has never been more boldly
stated than by Dr. J. S. French,—a very able, eloquent and popular
Methodist minister. In his fine sermon before the South Atlantic
Missionary Conference in 1905, Dr. French takes the “position that a
member of the church has no private and personal property at all.
What such member works for and seems to accumulate is a mere trust
fund which the Christian holds as Trustee. The estate does not belong
to the industrious and fortunate member; it belongs to God. This
estate must be administered as a trust fund for the Almighty. The
Christian who appears to own it, but does not, must apply it to re-
ligious work. And who will tell him the proper uses of this trust fund ?
Wi hy the Church, of course. And who voices the will of the Church?
W hy, the preacher,—who else?
All the property we church members appear to have earned and
made ours must be held as God’s, and the ministers of the Gospel will
tell us what God wants us to do with it. The priest, you know, is
authorized to speak for God in all matters and at all times,—particu-
larly in money matters. Dr. French scouts the idea that the Church
must be content with Tithes. One-tenth isn’t enough. Says the
Doctor:
“Whatever may be in our possession is only held in trust for our Lord. It is
His, to be used whenever and wherever necessity demands. I do not believe in set-
ting apart one-tenth or one-fourth as God’s part of our income, and counting that the
balance belongs to us. There isn’t any of it ours.”
For good, *stalwart, thorough-going clericalism,—can* you beat
that?
FOREIGN MISSIONS [55]
Elsewhere in his remarkable sermon, Dr. French alludes to the
property of Christians as a loan which God has made “on call,” and
which must not be withheld when payment is demanded. Does Jeho-
vah tell us when the time is up on these call loans?) Yes—through the
preachers. They, it would seem, are the authorized brokers who can
always be relied on to know exactly what God wants, in all cases—
particularly money matters. .
This being the point of view of those who establish and support
such one-sided papers as Go Forward, we ¢an not marvel when we
read its editorial demand for $75,000,000 per year for the distant
heathen.
“More money! more money!” is the ery all along the line. They
must have grand churches which in splendor will rival heathen tem-
THE COLES MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL, SOUTH INDIA.
ples: magnificent school-buildings which will compete with the govern-
ment schools of foreign kingdoms; boarding establishments for pauper
pupils; harbors of refuge for lepers; asylums for the orphans, the deaf,
the blind, the insane; kindergartens for the tots; girls’ schools where
the young women are lodged until they can marry; free medicines, free
surgical operations, free treatment for tens of thousands of the sick;
free industrial. training and, very commonly, free provisions and
clothing; and, for the heathen convert: who will pretend to enter
evangelistic work among his own people, liberal pay in hard cash.
You who assemble yourselves together in a plain wooden meeting-
house to hearken to the “Missionary Sermon” might do well to ponder
upon such items as this in Go Forward:
[56] FOREIGN MISSIONS
“The most pressing demands of our Japan Mission in the way of buildings are a
chureh in West Osaka, a church in Kyoto, a chapel at the Kwansei Gakuin in Kobe,
and a large, central house of worship in Hiroshima. It will take at least $9,000 for
cach of these enterprises. We can not hope to intrench Methodism in these great cen-
ters by renting halls on back streets and alleys, as we have been doing.”
Five thousand dollars apiece for churches in Japan, or no chance
for Methodism !
I wonder whether John Wesley ever dreamed that Aes Church
would come to such a point of view as that? No fine church,—no
converted Jap! We come upon the same situation in China, in Hin-
dustan, in continental Europe, in Mexico, and in South America. The
sum and substance of the missionary demand is “beautiful and costly
buildings, or we can’t do business.”
Usually, the missionary is lucky enough to know to a dollar what
the Lord wants at that particular station; and usually the missionary
LUCY CUNINGGIM SCHOOL, WONSAN, KOREA.
makes a written demand for the money,—accompanying the requisi-
tion with the warning that great harm will happen to the cause if the
spondulix is not immediately forthcoming.
The vigor and habituality with which the missionary digs this
spur into the quickening flanks of the Home Church is as noticeable as
the optimism with which the missionary promises glorious results if
the filthy lucre is expeditiously collected and remitted.
For instance, there was the letter of Sister T. W. B. Demaree:
“The eyes of the world are on Japan. The Lord is at work on the hearts of these
people. . . . There is not a moment to lose. Today is the day of salvation in
Japan. Not a Christian but can help in this great work. We want your money.”
The same issue of Go Forward that contained Sister Demaree’s
letter published one from China in which $20,000 was demanded for a
FOREIGN MISSIONS [57 |
new dormitory; also money to erect new residences for teachers. Pra
tically every number of Go Forward contains an urgent call ft
some expensive structure in some foreign country, Bithe money, of
course, to be drummed up among the Methodists of the South. Just
how many millions of dollars have already been sent abroad for this
purpose it would be hard to say, and the demands for larger outlays
are growing wonderfully.
While this article was being prepared, the following item appeared
in the press dispatches:
“Tokio, May 19.—A dispatch from Seoul states that S. A. Moon, the American
Consul-General there, yesterday laid the cornerstone of the Holton Institute for Girls
at Songdo. The institute, which was built at a cost of $15,000, is the gift of the
women ae: the Methodist Church, South, of America.”
No statement of mine has
provoked more wrathful de-
nials than that heathen con-
verts often lose their’ zeal
when the missionaries cut off
the subsidies. The names of
the missionaries who had said
things to that effect were de-
manded. These ministers are
yet living, actively engaged in
church work, and it might
A BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL. prove embarrassing to them to
disclose their identity. But I
have at hand evidence of the same nature, furnished by workers in the
mission field who became so disgusted with the system which I am as-
sailing that they published the facts and their criticisms of the system.
Rev. N. Sites (Methodist) writing of Foochow:
“*No foreign dollars, no work for Jesus’, is the motto of some. In Foochow the
first Methodist class-leader refused to hold office longer, when he learned that there
was to be no pay.”
The missionary, Dr. Carpenter, distinctly states that the subsidiz-
ing of the native converts demoralizes them and retards the progress of
genuine evangelical work. He cites instances and gives names, 3us-
taining the truth of what I have said in regard to the slackening of the
zeal of the “converts” when they are dropped from the pay-roll. (See
page 94 et seq. of “Mission Economics.”)
* Says Rev. R. G. Wilder:
“In our life-work in India, we became so deeply impressed with the serious hin-
drance to the progress of vital Christianity, resulting from the too free use of money
in mission work, that we have been led to much and of equent thought, and to a care-
ful study of the subject in all its bearings. We have seen a mission, after making
fair progress till its converts were reckoned by hundreds, and more than twenty per
cent. of them in mission pay, then remain almost stationary for years, scarcely
enough being added to make up the loss. We have also seen these native helpers and
abs
[58] FOREIGN MISSIONS
preachers bring to their missionaries frequent and importunate petitions for higher
salaries; and, when refused, showing disaffection and wrong feeling enough to more
than negative any good results of their formal preaching and service ; some became
quite heartless. We have noticed in such mission, that when a private Christian, not
in mission pay, is reminded of his or her duty and privilege to speak to neighbors or
friends, and try to win them to Christ, the ready reply has been, ‘Why should I do
that? What pay does the mission give me?? SHOWING THE MERCENARY CHAR-
ACTER OF THE WHOLE WORK IN THE VIEW OF SUCH NATIVE OHRIST-
IANS.” .
Rev. T. P. Crawford writes:
“So long as missionaries do everything for the natives or pay for what they do,
so long will they have churches of parasites; and so long will the better, or moré
HIROSHIMA MISSION GIRL’S “SUNSHINE SOCIETY”.
honorable classes, stand aloof from them. Those members of such churches who are
really born again, are, as Dr. Gulick said of the Italian converts, ‘born paralyzed.’ ”
Dr. M. T. Yates testifies:
“I have, after patient and prayerful consideration of the whole subject, come to
the conclusion that the free use of foreign money in connection with mission works—
such as, in the employment of native agents, in schemes for the education of heathen
young men and women in the English, the sciences and the Chinese classical litera-
ture in order that they may be better prepared for such agency if they become Christ-
ians while in school—is the bane, yea, the dry rot, of modern missions.”
Rey. A. McKenna says:
“One main reason why the native churches do not become self-supporting is, that
our missionaries have been afraid to allow them to become so. Transition might be
FOREIGN MISSIONS [59]
followed by commotion, and that, perhaps, by decrease. Our present paid preacher-
ship stands dead in the way of the independence of our Bengal churches. I have long
ceased to entertain hope of the churches ever becoming self-sustaining while the pres-
ent system continues. They could not possibly afford to pay their pastors anything
like the salaries paid by the societies to their preachers.”
Consider the opinion of Rev. C. H. Carpenter:
“Of the ten million dollars and over raised annually by the Protestant churches
of Europe and America for Foreign Missions, not less than four millions, probably,
are expended on the support of native agents (such as preachers, pastors, teachers,
eatechists, colporters, deacons, medical assistants, chapel-keepers, Bible-women, ete.,)
on Bibles and other books, on the erection, repair and rent of church, school and dor-
mitory buildings, hospitals and dispensaries, for the use and benefit of the natives.
Fifty years ago these expenditures were insignificant in amount but they have grown
like the banyan tree. That which was an occasional practice has become a great
system, which, octopus-like, clutches the whole mission organization in its tentacles.
At the present rate of increase, young people now living may expect confidently to
see the day when fifty million dollars a year will be required to pay these subsidies
to the rapidly increasing communities of ‘converts’ in pagan lands. It is already a
serious question how the funds are to be gathered; and, when one in ten of the thou-
sand millions are tiws converted, two hundred million dollars yearly will be required
for subsidies alone, to say nothing about the support of missionaries. It is a system
unrecognized, and apparently unanticipated, in the New Testament; a gigantic evil
which threatens the native churches with either corruption and worldliness, while im-
posing upon the churches of Christian lands a burden already amounting to millions
annually.”
Rev. J. S. Beacher writes:
“Had you been with us in the Karen Jungle this season to see what we saw of
the evil influence of the hireling system upon native preachers and churches, it would
satisfy you of the correctness of our apprehension respecting donations (for their
support) .” ;
While it is far from satisfactory to read of the manner in which
the poor people of heathen countries are brought within the pale of
Christian Churches, and kept there with money or with other material
benefits which appeal to their cupidity, we consider the facts contained
in the 1908 Report of the Southern Baptist Convention on the Italian
mission to be about the most dismal reading that we have ever encoun-
tered.
Rey. D. G. Whittinghill writes from Rome, Italy. On page 116 of
the report he says:
“The numerous scandals in convents and monasteries brought to light during the
summer by newspapers and governmental authorities, and the continual propaganda
carried on by the social or anti-clerical organizations have almost destroyed faith in
the Roman Catholic Church, and especially the clergy. This is a not unmixed evil.
The nation is turning in great numbers to infidelity or skepticism, and unless God
intervenes by his saving power, Italy will go from bad to worse. May God save her
from moral ruin.”
’
Yet Italy has been a Christian land almost from the time of Peter
and Paul. The gospel has been preached here about as long as it has
been heard anywhere. From what conception of duty, of divine
command, are we asked to take upon our shoulders the. regular annua!
expenses of supporting missionary work among these Italians?
[60] FOREIGN MISSIONS
We Baptists have a Theological Seminary in Rome. I shouldn't
wonder if it is the joke of Europe. We have a faculty of five high-
priced Professors, and a few years ago the total attendance of students
was four. I note that they now have eleven Italian youths being
brought up in this expensive Theological Seminary. Two students to
each professor! Recently our Baptist periodicals have been publish-
ing a photograph of the human contents of our Rome Theological
Seminary, and the Faculty had to stand up with the students in order
to make the picture more realistic and plausible.
Taking up the report of the work in detail: I hardly know whether
we ought to laugh or weep. Perhaps we ought to do both.
Here are a few extracts:
“Avellino has been in charge of Signor Ciambellotti, an ex-student of our Theo-
logical Seminary, for two years. He has doubled the Sunday-school numbers and
has baptized the wife and daughter of an English merchant. The colporteur of the
place was baptized at the same time. There is great need of a larger and better lo-
cated hall.”
“Bari is needing a younger and more energetic pastor. Signor Volpi is too old
for this field. Of late, the work has been made more difficult by scandals in another
evangelical church of the place. Catholics are easily offended at any irregularities
among us, but the boldest sins and most outrageous customs among themselves seem
to be taken as a matter of course. Strange to say, this church has numerous hear-
ers, but none have been converted and baptized for two years.
“Bolleti is evangelized every two weeks by Signor Volpi, but prospects of increase
are few, as four Christians have lately died and two others have removed elsewhere.” ©
“Bassaccia for two years was a very promising field, but an imprudent and sus-
pected pastor arrested its growth for a season. He was promptly removed elsewhere.”
“Cagliarri. This church has been severed by schismatics last year, and has not
yet recovered.”
“Iglessi. Senor Pintis, the pastor, has been greatly afflicted by false brethren
during the year. Two of them have gone elsewhere, and one has died, so ther: is
more prospect of peace than formerly.”
In Rome itself, our mission work has been organized ever since
1872. We now have forty-eight members. Last year we baptized two.
In Florence we have a membership of thirty-four, and we baptized
three last year, but the church undertook to revise the membership
rolls and for that reason we lost twenty-four names. (I would like
very much to know why, but the report doesn’t state.)
In Capri, organized in 1855, we have a membership of eighteen.
Last year we baptized another one. To quote from the record: “The
church seems to be unable to rise above the ill effects of scandals in
connection with two of its former ministers some years ago.”
Ferrara. Not organized. Four Baptists. No baptisms. A beau-
tiful and centrally located hall was procured and fitted up.
Consadolo. Organized in 1904. Membership ten. No baptisms
last year.
Pordenone. Organized in 1904. Membership eighteen. No bap-
tisms last year. The report says, “The work progresses slowly on ac-
count of the two organizations in town. 1 made strenuous efforts to
effect a union of the two bodies but failed, owing to the pastor of the
other body demanding too much money. The outlook is not prom-
ising.”
FOREIGN MISSIONS [61]
Milan. Membership thirty. Two baptisms last year. Church
was organized twenty years ago. The report says, ‘““We have here a
very beautiful and expensive hall.”
Novari. Membership twelve. No baptisms last year. With un-
conscious irony the report uses this language, ““We hope more lasting
good is being done than appears on the surface.” Amen!
Summing up the whole matter, the report concludes:
“The year 1907 has been for the missionaries a year of disappointment, of hope
deferred, of sorrow and anxiety, of joy and consecration, and finally regret at feeling
it our duty to rest for a season that full health might return. ‘Some things, how-
ever, were done.
JUVENILE TEXTILE WORKERS ON STRIKE IN PHILADELPHIA
The 65,000 American white girls who are being sold into bawdy-
house slavery are of greater importance to the future of Christian civ-
ilization than every negro on the face of the earth. The loss to our
national future and to the world’s aggregate of intelligent manhood of
the tens of thousands of white children who are filling the neglected
garden of life with weeds instead of flowers, or who are physically and
morally wrecked by child slavery,—are of more consequence to our
hereafter than all the feet-bound maidens of China, all the child-
widows of India, all the men, women and children of Africa.
In the name of common sense, enlightened patriotism and whole-
some Christianity, will we never so regard it?
* %* % * * * * * * *
He that provideth not for his own household is worse than an in-
fidel. To that effect speaks Holy Writ. My contention is that in the
FOREIGN MISSIONS [97]
matter of furnishing food, clothing, books, medicine, secular education,
industrial training, orphan’s homes, asylums and kindergartens, we
owe our first duty to our own national household.
The brotherhood of man does not make it your duty to feed some-
body else’s children before you feed your own.
First, maintain and educate the boys and girls that you caused to be
brought into the world. First, you are responsible for them—not for
the children that some other man begot.
Have we not a national, as well as an individual household? So I
contend. The people of the American Republic are as truly your na-
tional household, as the inmates of your home constitute your indt-
vidual household. That being indisputably so, why is it not good doc-,
trine to say that inasmuch as the Bible tells us to provide for our indi-
vidual households first, it is analogous that we should fully provide for
our national household, before carrying anything but the Word of God
to the heathen? Just as it is our natural duty to provide for our chil-
dren before furnishing maintenance and support to the children of
others, so it is our patriotic duty to carry relief to the needy of our
own country before making foreigners the beneficiaries of our bounty.
(The press dispatches announced the death of a, beautiful young lady, of Cin-,
cinnati, Miss Elsie Gasser, whose physician attributed her failure to rally from an
operation “to the pernicious effects of the evil custom” of tight lacing.
~ Asked if it was true that one of the physicians was so struck with the injury
that the girl was shown to have done herself by tight lacing that he contemplated a
pamphlet against it, Dr. Strohback said:
“What good would a pamphlet do? Girls just will be so interested in style that
they will lace. No pamphlet will stop them.”
Possibly a few of the Chinese girls who have been persuaded by American mis-
sionaries to defy the fashion which demands small feet for Celestial ladies, might
accomplish good results if they would come over and endeavor to work a change of
American style in the matter of small, round waists, or “tube gowns”’.)
WOMEN INSTRUCTORS WANTED BY CHINAMEN
DENIED FEMALE TEACHERS, THE CHINKS ARE DESERTING CHRISTIANITY
“PrrrsspuRG, September 30.—Chinamen in Pittsburg are deserting the Christian
religion because the Second Presbyterian Church no longer permits a woman in-
structor for each scholar in the big mission conducted by the church. Since the Elsie
- Sigel murder in New York prominent members of the church have been urging that
the tragedy should serve as a warning and that the school should have men in-
structors. The church now has decided that this plan shall be enforced and the Chi-
nese, highly indignant, are deserting the mission.”
The above item of news went the rounds of the papers in October,
1909. :
Comment would but weaken the terrific force of the facts!
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