Christian Progress 
 in the Far East 
 
 A Report of a visit to Baptist Mission 
 Fields in Japan, China and the 
 Philippine Islands 
 
 1920-1921 • 
 
 By 
 
 HENRY B. ROBINS, Ph. D. 
 
 Professor of Religious Education and the History 
 and Philosophy of Religion and Missions, 
 Rochester Theological Seminary 
 
 AMERICAN BAPTIST FOREIGN MISSION SOCIETY 
 
 TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-SIX FIFTH AVENUE 
 NEW YORK 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/christianprogresOOrobi 
 
I N the spring of 1920 the Board of Managers of the 
 American Baptist Foreign Mission Society learned that 
 one of its members, Professor H. B. Robins, Ph. D., of 
 Rochester Theological Seminary, would find it possible to 
 spend the greater part of his Sabbatical year in a study of 
 missionary work in the Far East. The Board was glad 'to 
 take advantage of this opportunity of having one of its 
 members visit unhurriedly its missions in Japan, the Philip- 
 pine Islands, South China, East China and West China. 
 Professor Robins is well qualified for a discriminating 
 study of conditions affecting missionary work, and he was 
 therefore invited to undertake this service. He spent the 
 greater part of the year 1920-1921 in a most thorough in- 
 vestigation. His report indicates unusual discernment and 
 practical apprecation of many of the pressing problems 
 connected with the missionary enterprise in the Far East. 
 The Board gratefully records its appreciation of the notably 
 fine service rendered to the cause of Christian missions by 
 Professor Robins and has authorized the printing of his 
 report for private circulation among missionaries, repre- 
 sentatives of Boards and others who are especially inter- 
 ested in the questions that are treated therein. 
 
 James H. Franklin, Foreign Secretary. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 T hese lines are being written some two months after the pre- 
 sentation of the accompanying report to the Board. The decision 
 of the Board to print the report for private circulation makes it 
 seem desirable to incorporate briefly some of the more general con- 
 siderations offered in the address which accompanied the presenta- 
 tion of the report and in a short address made at a later meeting of 
 the Board. 
 
 The missionary enterprise can never be viewed wholly apart from 
 the personal factors which condition its successful presentation. The 
 missionary is organized Christianity’s point of contact with the non- 
 Christian world. No organization of missions which abridges this 
 function or tends to mechanize it can for a moment be contemplated, 
 for the final answer to the appeal of the non-Christian world is not 
 institutions but Christian manhood and womanhood. The real ques- 
 tion at issue is how the human element in missions may best be ap- 
 plied. One who by force of circumstances must stand outside the 
 missionary inner circle as an onlooker and whose view is necessarily 
 ex parte hesitates to speak in matters so intimate and personal to 
 the missionary as those involved in such a report as is here offered. 
 It seems very much as if the whilom visitor were trying to tell the 
 family how to order its affairs. Yet the discriminating visitor who 
 travels widely enough to gain some perspective of values may be able 
 to trace tendencies and to discover factors which, while in the end 
 they intimately concern the particular station and the individual mis- 
 sionary, are of most immediate and urgent concern to the Board as 
 that agency which must formulate general policies and direct the 
 financing of the entire project. 
 
 There are two inherent and essential tendencies in missionary 
 work, a centrifugal and a centripetal — a tendency to expansion and a 
 tendency to intension. It is perhaps natural to assume that they may 
 be left to look after themselves, that the one will in fact regulate the 
 other. And yet the emphasis upon one or the other of them depends 
 no little upon the view of the enterprise which is held. If a hasty 
 itineracy be thought sufficient, the expansive tendency is frankly 
 emphasized; if, on the other hand, it is seen that far more is involved 
 than this policy can assure, an intensive policy follows. Something 
 approaching the former view seems often to have prevailed among 
 missionary groups. 
 
 Without confining our outlook to our own denominational missions, 
 we may broadly state that the last two decades have seen a very rapid 
 institutionalizing of missionary effort. In this movement our own 
 missionary interest has fully shared. This institutionalizing ten- 
 dency is due in part to the natural demands of a growing work and 
 in even greater degree to a recognition that the bulk of evangelization 
 must ultimately be cared for by trained native leaders. But we have 
 moved thus far in the institutional direction without a corresponding 
 modification of our general expansive tendencies. And we have moved 
 much further in the direction of an institutionalized program than in 
 the development of a responsible self-maintaining native constituency. 
 The question is not therefore so much whether the native constituency 
 can catch up with this growing institutional overhead as whether the 
 Foreign Mission Society can keep up with it. It is true that our 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 3 
 
 Board some years ago tentatively formulated what was termed “the 
 intensive policy” and took an initial step at no little cost. But the 
 fact remains that our work has never been upon the minimum, basis 
 of efficiency required by that policy. The present epoch in our 
 history requires more courage of the same sort which it took to deal 
 with the Central China situation. 
 
 The report as submitted to the Board was, nevertheless, framed 
 upon the assumption that we should be able to proceed actively in 
 those directions in which our work has already been extended and in 
 other directions scarcely as yet attempted. But the current financial 
 involvement of our Society serves to emphasize the critical situation 
 in which our entire venture is placed. We are engaged in a series of 
 growing missionary projects the peak of whose financial demand we 
 have not yet reached. Not in one mission only but in all of them this 
 rapidly augmenting demand is in evidence. Our resulting problem is 
 not that of a mere modus vivendi. Such projects, unless they are 
 enabled to move with the tide of interest, lose their opportunity and 
 settle down to a minimum level of value and efficiency. Not a few 
 such sections of our undertaking bear a close analogy to the business 
 enterprise in which, for a period of time, increasing amounts must be 
 invested, until at length the balance is struck in favor of the investor 
 and acutal dividends begin to flow in. Our problem is not therefore, 
 in these instances, that of “keeping things up,” it is rather that of 
 building them up until they reach their potential maximum. The 
 status quo will not long answer. 
 
 In this situation I am oifering the following suggestions, not 
 with the thought that they are original with me, but because they 
 sum up a definite policy. Our policy should include: 
 
 1) The very frank recognition and reaffirmation of the intensive 
 policy — the policy of concentrating upon certain manageable units 
 most vitally related to our main objective, which is, as we understand 
 it, the planting and development of an indigenous, self-supporting, 
 self-propagating Christianity. 
 
 2) The serious resolve to bring all our missions under review, 
 both as to their immediate productiveness and as to their relation to 
 the application of the intensive policy ; such inquiry to involve a study 
 of the various lines of endeavor in each mission, asking both as to 
 their fruitfulness and as to the relation of each to our main objective. 
 
 3) The decision to concentrate, in at least two definite respects, 
 upon manageable projects, viz: 
 
 a) In _the_ training of native leadership in certain key institu- 
 tions — a limitation and solidification of our work with relation to these 
 institutions. 
 
 b) In the development of strongly manned and well-equipped 
 laboratories of evangelism, centered in vigorously developed key 
 churches of a type adapted in each instance to outstanding community 
 needs. 
 
 4) The consequent positive limitation of outstation work in the 
 various fields to those outstations best capable of being integrated 
 with a policy of decided concentration. The projection of pioneering 
 work to be in the future more conclusively a responsibility of the 
 native constituency under trained native leadership and so far as 
 possible at the expense of the native churches. 
 
 5) That such study of our missions as is suggested in the above be 
 carried through in distinct and close conjunction with the administra- 
 tive organization of the several missions. And that, since otherwise 
 contemplated reductions would be undertaken merely as items in an 
 opportunist program, we offer them rather as incident to a construe- 
 
4 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 tive policy of concentration, based in its particulars upon the closest 
 possible ascertainment of the current situation. 
 
 6) That a thorough canvass be made of the relation of new mis- 
 sionary appointments to adequate work appropriations, with a view 
 to ascertaining more completely the ratio which ought to obtain. 
 It would seem that with the development of trained native leaders 
 and the cumulative transfer of responsibility from foreign to native 
 staffs, the proportion of work appropriations to missionary salaries 
 must, for the time at any rate, be increased: that is, that we must 
 invest more in working budget in proportion to what we invest in 
 men. 
 
 These suggestions are offered in the belief that if we do not shortly 
 bring our work in conspicuous instances up to a level of greater 
 efficiency, one more commensurate with the splendid courage of the 
 men and women who serve at these difficult posts and more in keeping 
 with the opportunity, we shall not only see that opportunity slip away 
 but shall subject our devoted representatives to the bitter psychology 
 of defeat. Unless we can more adequately meet the abounding future 
 with our present expansion of base, we would far better narrow the 
 base of operations to the limits of manageable achievement. He is 
 the man of faith, by Jesus’ own definition, who first sits down to 
 determine whether, having once begun his building, he will have 
 wherewith to finish it. No illusory appeal to sentiment should blind 
 up to this sober fact. With the increased general cost of operating 
 and with the fact to consider that even upon the old pre-war level 
 we should be far from the peak of expenditure, we must soberly ask 
 ourselves what probability there is that our denomination, which has 
 actually reached a comparatively high level of per capita giving in 
 the New World campaign, will in the determinable future strike a 
 yet higher level of permanent and dependable support. 
 
 Although we are not excused from the exercise of our best judg- 
 ment and the application of our soundest business sense to the prob- 
 lems involved in the future of our missionary project, we must rec- 
 ognize that we face a task which is humanly impossible. Only the 
 faith that God has been at work hitherto and that He is still at work 
 will carry us through. Our main responsibility is to make sure that 
 we are workers together with Him. May His Spirit illumine our 
 spirits in the face of our common task so that we may be wise unto 
 the winning of souls and building of the Kingdom of the Son of His 
 love! 
 
 Henry B. Robins. 
 
 November, 1921. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Members of the Board, 
 
 Dear Brethren; 
 
 A little more than a year ago, at your invitation, I set out to 
 visit the five missions of the Society in the Far East, viz., the three 
 Missions in China, thd Mission in Japan and the Philippine Mission. 
 In the providence of God the tour has been completed, although I 
 must remark that the misgivings with which I embarked were con- 
 firmed. The representatives of the Society in the Far East deserve 
 far more than I could bring them and the Board needs a more dis- 
 passionate observer and a more competent reporter than I. How- 
 ever, for all the good which may accrue from this visitation, and for 
 the privilege of representing you upon this errand, I am deeply 
 grateful. 
 
 I wish at the outset of my report to say how much I appreciated 
 throughout my months of travel the forethought and constant counsel 
 of Doctor Franklin. But for his insight and advice, the visitation 
 must have counted for far less than it did. Everywhere I went, he 
 had prepared the way and had anticipated all the major demands 
 of a somewhat exacting itinerary. I have a growing appreciation 
 of the fact that our secretaries live with their tasks and know 
 them, if I may use the term in unwonted sense, hy heart. 
 
 I must also confess, here at the beginning of my report, that I 
 am debtor to the whole missionary fraternity of the great fields which 
 I visited, as indeed to not a few representatives of other mis- 
 sionary bodies than our own. One could not travel far, amid situ- 
 ations so varied and at times so disturbing, without coming to feel 
 most keenly the value of the funded wisdom of the missionary group, 
 so continuously and so freely at his disposal. While I thank God for 
 health and for journeying mercies, I know that these good gifts were 
 mediated for my brethren and sisters of the missions. Perhaps the 
 finest gift of the journey was the felowship it afforded with our rep- 
 resentatives. They are a picked company, with a measure of maturi- 
 ty and a degree of originality in religious experience most refreshing 
 to discover. 
 
 The Plan of this Report 
 
 The preliminary reports sent from time to time during the year 
 followed of necessity the order of my itinerary. In the interest of 
 coherency, I shall in this report depart from that order. The brief 
 paragraphs with which I preface each of the main sections of this re- 
 port are not an attempt at a fresh contribution to knowledge. My 
 purpose is simply to bring to your attention situations and move- 
 ments which have direct bearing upon the missionary enterprise, as 
 these situations and movements have come to my attention. Any 
 suggestions as to policy which I may offer are not to be construed 
 as in any sense a criticism of policies which have hitherto prevailed. 
 We are engaged in a great experiment and the earlier stages are 
 entitled to the same respect which we ask for current phases. No con- 
 clusion of worth could be reached but for the experiment, and in a 
 great humanistic field such as missions there is less waste than we 
 sometimes imagine, because conditions are less rigid than in the field 
 of exact science. 
 
 After some general considerations having to do with each country, 
 so that we may have freshly in mind some of the elements in the set- 
 
 5 
 
6 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 ting of our problem, I shall take up the missions one by one and dis- 
 cuss briefly what seem to me the main issues involved. The order of 
 oresentation will be as follows: 
 
 I. CHINA. 
 
 1. The South China Mission. 
 
 2. The East China Mission. 
 
 3. The West China Mission. 
 
 II. JAPAN. 
 
 The Japan Mission. 
 
 III. THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 
 
 The Philippine Mission. 
 
 IV. CONCLUSION. 
 
 I 
 
 CHINA 
 
 Even although it is perilous to attempt generalizations concerning 
 a land so extensive and so varied as China, there are certain facts 
 which apply broadly to the whole country and people. The impor- 
 tance of facts so elementary is sometimes overlooked by missionary ad- 
 ministrators, but at their peril or the imperilment of their trust. 
 
 Racial Inertia 
 
 When I emphasize the vast inertia of China, it is not to say that 
 there are no signs of change; such signs are evidenced in every part 
 of the land. But the culture of China, her fundamental notions and 
 practices, are far more deeply rooted than we are wont to think. 
 This fact qualifies all our successes. The mental and spiritual ca- 
 pacities of the people are already prepossessed. To effect any great 
 change in the life and estate of such a people, we must modify the 
 whole complex of their mental and spiritual existence. This is a tre- 
 mendous undertaking. Christianity must penetrate their daily liv- 
 ing; but how can it do so, when common morality rests to so large a 
 degree upon fundamental misconceptions, when the common daily 
 practices, which have behind them ail the unreasoned force of taboo, 
 are dictated by beliefs often so completely irrational and unethical? 
 
 Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism have a past far more splen- 
 did than anything contemporary, but they are not dead. It is quite 
 impossible to estimate their relative hold upon the people, for what 
 is true in one section is not true in another; but the cardinal notions 
 of these systems, often in inextricable complexity of interrelationship, 
 enter into all the prudential, social, ethical and religious thinking of 
 the people. Here they are : the politico-ethical ideas of Confucianism, 
 the religio-philosophic concepts of Buddhism and the mysticism and 
 magic of the Taoist system — all of them overlaid and interpenetrated 
 by a vast conglomerate of primitive beliefs whose biggest concept is 
 demonism. No one is readily won away from the mental and spiritual 
 context of the common life of his people; our problem, in consequence. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 7 
 
 becomes that of dominating and idealizing ever-widening areas of his 
 experience, so that he may be Christian in all his chief relationships 
 and may not live under the' terrible constraint of heathen taboo. 
 
 National Unrest 
 
 In spite of the inertia of which I have spoken, China is not in 
 repose. Without her consent, the outside world has made her neigh- 
 bor. The more or less incidental contacts of a century ago have been 
 replaced by the continuous pressure and interpenetration of Western 
 life. The occidental in China may still in some cases be a “foreign 
 devil,” but he is not a stranger. Trade has brought to the Far East 
 growing communities of western folk, western methods of doing busi- 
 ness, western educational standards and technique, western indus- 
 trial processes. The foreign communities in the port cities, chiefly of 
 tradesfolk, have spread the leaven of unrest by very force of continu- 
 ous contact. Foreign educators and foreign-educated Chinese have 
 been even more responsible for the unrest, for returned students and 
 Chinese educated in the western learning have become exponents of 
 a new order. Although political upheaval retired the ancient sys- 
 tems of education and government, it is still true that, taken by and 
 large, the political notions of the masses have not materially changed. 
 The new ideas are not so much directly as indirectly responsible for the 
 chief unrest which one today discovers in China. That unrest is an 
 unrest of the masses, due to social and economic causes. The uncer- 
 tainties and oppressions of contemporary government, coupled with 
 the new and acute economic liabilities of the Chinese people, are chief 
 causes of popular unrest. The temperamental passivity of the Chi- 
 nese people has, of late, been repeatedly strained to the breaking 
 point. Thus while the new ideas which at present hold the attention 
 of the student world are becoming popularized to an unprecedented 
 degree, and because of the current stress are finding a more ready 
 hearing than ever, the ultimate causes of popular unrest are eco- 
 nomic, political, social- — not so much the result of agitation as of re- 
 morseless experience. 
 
 Even although republican ideas have had some vogue in wide cir- 
 cles, under the conditions which obtain, the best that can be hoped 
 for is a benevolent oligarchy. You cannot have a true republic. Edu- 
 cation has been popularized in ideal, but the possibility of universal 
 education is comparatively remote; the masses are still illiterate and 
 ignorant beyond belief. Enlightened religious views have been widely 
 promulgated, yet China is still obsessed by demons and the whole 
 machinery of her religious systems is organized to control them. 
 The opium traffic has been made the subject of repeated drastic pro- 
 hibitions, but the traffic goes on today over ever-widening areas. It 
 is easy to note changes, yet China as a v/hole has but begun to change. 
 The restlessness of which I have spoken is not, therefore, to be taken 
 as an omen of conscious dissatisfaction upon the part of the masses 
 with the fundamental Chinese view of things. The oppressions of con- 
 temporary government and its uncertainties keep the people stirred 
 
 up- 
 
 Everywhere in China one meets with soldiery, and an irresponsi- 
 ble militarism is in no small measure to be charged with China’s un- 
 rest. This unrest, it is true, has to a degree broken up the rigidity of 
 the old order; it has created a fresh opportunity to get a hearing, 
 whether for the social theorist or for the religious propagandist. And 
 yet, the masses of Chinese can never quite fix their attention upon 
 that hearing while the stress of present conditions obtains. Conse- 
 
8 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 quently, when we think of missions in China, we need to remind 
 ourselves that the setting is one of ferment, that their appeal is made 
 to a people who are restless, unsettled in their ordinary preoccupa- 
 tions, eager for a new day, when China, or at any rate, their own 
 neighborhood, shall enjoy peace and when trade shall have fresh op- 
 portunity. Not the competitive spirit of trade, however, nor the ma- 
 chinery of western society can meet China’s need; only a new spirit 
 of righteousness and good will, the spirit of Jesus in the common life, 
 can make China Christian. The enkindling of that new spirit is our 
 primary task. 
 
 Renaissance 
 
 Is there, then, a Chinese renaissance? That depends. It is quite 
 possible to take too gloomy a view of the situation. There are distinctly 
 hopeful elements in it, yet I am not sure that the view commonly re- 
 flected by literature upon the Chinese renaissance is in true perspec- 
 tive. There is, to he sure, a wide-spread student movement. To an 
 unwonted degree, this movement has organized and united the student 
 world of China. This group has achieved perhaps the most effective 
 relation to public opinion of any group in China. In a matter like 
 the Shantung issue they have crystallized that opinion and have 
 brought heavy and continuous pressure to bear upon government. 
 They have even secured the removal of high state officials. Even 
 although their activities have now and again been both puerile and 
 abortive, there are the stirrings of a genuine patriotism among them. 
 
 The observer of the student movement should learn to discrim- 
 inate between its political and its cultural aspects, for the two are 
 not quite co-extensive. The cultural phase of the movement has of late 
 received great stimulus from the presence in China of Professor John 
 Dewey. And Bertrand Russell made a very effective contact with the 
 student groups during his recent visit to China. Professor Dewey is 
 the active exponent of a theory of organized life, of society, which is 
 not dependent upon supernatural sanctions. Although he does not 
 array himself against Christianity as such, and not seldom speaks 
 with some genuine appreciation of the educational work of the mis- 
 sions, his influence upon the student group will not be to confirm them 
 in their confidence in the validity and efficacy of Christianity. Bertrand 
 Russell’s influence is, of course, far more iconoclastic and revolution- 
 ary. The infant journals of the new cultural movement carry on 
 incessant warfare upon the existing order and upon all archaic insti- 
 tutions and ideas, among which they are quite apt to catalog Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 It is very evident, therefore, that the Christian students of China 
 do not control the student movement. The mandates of the student 
 organization compel action only in a political sense, so that no student 
 group is under such compulsion to accept new ideas. Yet, at the same 
 time, the influential position, of the revolutionary cultural group has 
 tremendous effect even upon the students of Christian institutions. 
 Thus far Christian schools have been able, in the main, to carry their 
 student bodies for Christianity and for the Christian interpretation 
 of social relationships and functions. Whether they can continue in 
 like measure to succeed in this is open to question. Certain it is that 
 for some years these institutions enjoyed a unique opportunity to 
 shape student opinion, an opportunity of which they made good use. 
 Nor has that opinion passed. Yet the proportion of China’s leaders 
 who are being educated in Christian institutions grows continually 
 smaller. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 9 
 
 If there is a Chinese renaissance, the student movement is at the 
 heart of it; for it is these men who in education, in business, in in- 
 dustry, in journalism, in public office, are helping to make a new 
 China, for these are the fields which they enter when they finish their 
 education. With these facts before us, we may recognize why and 
 how China is yielding to a new order and the China of yesterday, not 
 to say classic China, is ever receding. Whether the new China shall 
 be Christian will depend in no small measure upon our relation to the 
 leadership of new China. 
 
 The Economic Factors 
 
 The framers of the Consortium were right in the view that the 
 financial element in China’s rehabilitation is of primary importance. 
 My reference to the matter is merely to point out that the spiritual 
 and the economic condition each other. A chief difficulty confronting 
 the banking groups behind the Consortium is that of a sufficient guar- 
 antee of good faith on China’s part. Certain it is that more money 
 will not alone give us a new China. Under existing conditions the 
 money would almost inevitably follow the vast sums already squan- 
 dered by an irresponsible government. On the other hand, the new 
 wants to which western training and the stimulus of western trade 
 have given rise cannot be supplied under the old economic system. 
 Vast as are the natural resources of great sections of China, China 
 as a whole is poor. The reorganization of communities into sanitary, 
 modern abodes of humanity lays an entail which the present economic 
 system will not support. It is for this reason that the elimination 
 of graft and waste from government and the pooling of China’s re- 
 sources of leadership for the reorganization of the common life are 
 imperative. We should not suppose that the Christianization of 
 China can be consummated without this economic reorganization. Our 
 whole missionary endeavor is most intimately conditioned by the abil- 
 ity of the people to realize new ideals, once they have in some meas- 
 ure grasped them. The practicability of a real home for the average 
 family ; the possibility of guaranteeing to young womanhood the right 
 to an education and to Christian marriage; the hope of a business era 
 in which the Christian can eliminate the evils of “squeeze” from his 
 own practice; the dream of a day when we shall have a Chinese 
 church able to support and to project Christianity with virile strength 
 — these are all economically conditioned. 
 
 A Social Christianity 
 
 _We are well aware that China must be Christianized in the 
 Chinese language; we are coming to see that she must be evangelized 
 in the end by her own people; but we have not so clearly seen that 
 China’s vast political and social and economic problems are the 
 milieu — the specific setting— of our task, the definite conditions of our 
 spiritual ministry. We shall not plan our stewardship wisely, if 
 we project it irrespective of these great major factors which condition 
 the life of the people. We are bound, it seems to me, to show what 
 Christianity comes to for the plain man, the business man, the family, 
 the community, in the new China that is making; to make Christian- 
 ity clear to them in the terms of every-day opportunity and obliga- 
 tion. Otherwise we have not interpreted Christianity fully; for 
 Christianity is a plan of action, a rule of life, as well as a great hope. 
 Let us preach a whole gospel I 
 
10 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 1. THE EAST CHINA MISSION 
 Comparative Opportunity 
 
 No part of China has, for the past few years, offered a more sta- 
 ble field of action than the provinces of Kiangsu and Chekiang, in 
 which our East China Mission' is located. Movements of armies and 
 official tyrannies have complicated our endeavor less in this field 
 than in the fields of our other missions in China; yet we ought not to 
 suppose that there are no soldiers nor official constraints in East 
 China. 
 
 Industrial Expansion in this Region 
 
 One result of the comparative freedom from military operations 
 and official graft has been the remarkably rapid industrial expansion 
 of East China. It is true that this has not proceeded at equal pace 
 throughout the region, but what we behold in certain sections is an 
 indication of what we may expect eventually in many others and in 
 general throughout the rich and fertile coastal plain. Shanghai has 
 had a marvelous industrial expansion within the last half dozen 
 years, yet she is not unique. The city of Wusih is an outstanding in- 
 stance. There are six flouring mills in the city of Wusih, producing 
 annually 7,000,000 bags of flour; six cotton mills, fifteen silk fila- 
 tures, eleven seed-oil factories, sixteen cloth-weaving mills, four soap 
 factories, eleven rice mills, ten sock-weaving factories, and numerous 
 other industries — all financed and operated by the Chinese themselves. 
 
 Relation of Economic Ability to Mission Policies 
 
 The economic ability of a region in which a mission operates has 
 some bearing upon mission policies. It is the aim of missionary effort 
 to plant autonomous, self-propagating, self-supporting churches. The 
 recent policy of the Board has involved the development of institu- 
 tions, especially for the work of higher education, whose overhead 
 will call for an increasing proportion of its annual appropriation to 
 the Mission. That measure of self-support, therefore, which suc- 
 ceeds only in pastoral and local maintenance — a goal still remote 
 enough — does not meet the demand for self-support. It is probably 
 true that we shall have to continue appropriations for educational 
 institutions on an increasing scale for a great while to come, yet we 
 should hope and plan for a time when the greater burden of support 
 shall pass to the Chinese. 
 
 The career of such a school as the Southern Methodists have de- 
 veloped at McTyeire (one of the oldest and best schools for girls 
 in China) has shown that a definitely planned program, directed 
 toward the securing of a financially competent patronage, can meet, 
 even in conservative China, with a marked degree of success. To be 
 sure the number of such schools will always be limited, for the appeal 
 is limited; and, moreover, it is true that it is our glory to preach the 
 gospel to the poor. But the best way to reach the poor is through the 
 great self-respecting, self-supporting middle class. It is, I judge, 
 the policy of our Mission to cultivate a prospective middle class pat- 
 ronage rather than any other — people not too far removed from the 
 level of poverty to have become a social caste, while not, on the other 
 hand, of the abject poor. It is a source of gratification to President 
 White that just this class of students has been attracted to Shanghai 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 11 
 
 College. While we naturally think of our student bodies as furnish- 
 ing the potential future religious leadership of our churches, we 
 should remember that in time to come a very large proportion of the 
 annual output of these institutions will not enter specifically Chris- 
 tian forms of service, but will in this region be increasingly attract- 
 ed by business and industry. 
 
 Our Future Lay Leadership and Financial Strength 
 
 In our educational work we should plan to train these men for 
 their manifest future. We cannot hope to extend our facilities to 
 cover the whole range of need, particularly in the technical field, but 
 in one or two outstanding directions we can develop our institutions 
 so that they shall train future business and industrial leaders. The 
 School of Business Administration looks in the right direction. If it 
 can be projected effectively on a cooperative basis, so much the better; 
 but it must be under auspices so constantly and earnestly Christian 
 that its students shall be brought into the faith and confirmed in it 
 through the very atmosphere of the institution; and it must be so 
 effectively correlated with our other educational work that students 
 from our higher schools shall be easily and effectively directed to it. 
 There is no crying demand and indeed no justification for our entering 
 this field, in my opinion, except upon the confessedly and ardently 
 evangelical basis. We want to see a generation of Chinese business men 
 who shall also be Christian; but beyond that, we want to raise up a 
 financially able lay leadership for our churches, able to carry on 
 some day without aid from overseas. 
 
 Conserving the Output of our Schools 
 
 We must so place, equip and man our churches that they shall en- 
 list the continued interest of these business laymen of whom I have 
 just spoken and shall develop their stewardship and utilize their abil- 
 ities. It is a fact that until recently we did not have a type of leader- 
 ship that could command the interest of the student group to any con- 
 siderable degree. But our educational venture is bearing fruit and 
 the prospect is that we shall have well-trained men of good ability 
 for all our pastorates in the not far distant future. Shanghai College 
 has already justified the faith of its founders, and yet, the institution 
 is only upon the threshold of its greatest service in the field of trained 
 pastoral leadership. To mention only instances which readily come 
 to mind, we have in such men as Pastor Bao of Hangchow ( Shanghai 
 '15), Pastor Ni of Ningpo (Shanghai ’16) and Pastor Wu of Shang- 
 hai North Church (Shanghai ’13) the leadership that can win and 
 hold laymen of ability. 
 
 We shall have the men, but we must move wisely in the equipment 
 of our churches. If you ask why we do not at once look to these lay- 
 men for the funds to erect adequate churches, my answer is that 
 they are not to any large extent as yet men of wealth. Many of them 
 receive from their graduation very good compensation for their ser- 
 vices, so that they can go far toward financing a church; but they 
 have not at this early stage the independent means from which to 
 draw large gifts for the erection of church buildings. It is true that 
 there is almost no enterprise which Ningpo Chinese cannot finance, 
 once we are in position to tap their resources. And yet the number 
 of men of wealth in the church membership is limited; most of the 
 wealth is with the friendly citizens, who are beginning to prove a 
 
12 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 reality in China. There should, in my judgment, be an adequate 
 church of an adapted institutional type at the West Gate in Ningpo, 
 such as would provide the facilities for a multiple point of contact 
 of the church with the needs of the community. Plans have for a good 
 while been under consideration for an institutional church in Hang- 
 chow; and at the North Church, Shanghai — ^there most assuredly, 
 I should say, there ought in the not far distant future to be a com- 
 munity church plant, which under the very aegis and roof -tree of the 
 church itself should exhibit manifold applied Christianity such as 
 would seize the talents and kindle the imagination of these educated 
 young business men whom Wu is assembling. I cannot easily overes- 
 timate the enormous strategic importance of aiding these earnest 
 young business men in the North Church to make an adequate start 
 toward a working home for their church. It is along this line, too, 
 that we should move, that we may conserve the potential lay leader- 
 ship of our College output and enlist it in the activities of the King- 
 dom of God. 
 
 If at these important business centers we can develop a series of 
 well-equipped and strongly-manned churches, we can then hope to 
 rally behind the work in our many smaller centers and out-stations of 
 the Shanghai-Chekiang Association, and behind our institutional work, 
 which is ultimately to become theirs, a strong group of business men, 
 who will in time become, as they are in every successful Christian ven- 
 ture, the veritable backbone of the church. 
 
 Application of the Intensive Policy 
 
 The considerations I have urged concerning the development of 
 a responsible and responsive lay leadership seem to me at the basis 
 of our whole East China problem. It is of direct bearing upon the 
 question of an intensive policy. The reason for an intensive policy 
 is that we may be able to put on its feet and equip for aggresive cam- 
 paigning a Chinese Christian community, a group of churches, which 
 shall be able to win China for Christ. 
 
 Such issues as that of the intensive policy are primarily matters 
 to be determined in their broad outlines by the Boards here at home. 
 The home office has a breadth of outlook absolutely indispensable for 
 their formulation. Presumably we know better than any mission 
 can know what the inauguration of such a policy should mean for the 
 whole enterprise. We are not discharging our duty unless we are con- 
 tinually looking ahead to gauge probable results and to evaluate con- 
 temporary tendencies in relation to ultimate objectives. The mission- 
 ary upon the local field, for example, feels the urge of a particular 
 opportunity, say in education; he enters the open door and soon the 
 enterprise levys an extraordinary tax upon our common treasury. 
 Others do likewise; the whole movement becomes an intensely cum- 
 ulative one; and soon the treasury is embarrassed and the work so 
 auspiciously begun is crippled and hampered, and reaches that second 
 stage in its history wherein undertakings languish for want of funds 
 to place them upon a minimum basis of efficiency. No work should 
 be initiated the probable volume of whose demand as a successful 
 enterprise has not been taken into account by the budget-makers at 
 home. Yes, we ought to have faith; but the children of this world 
 are wiser in their day and generation than the children of light. 
 The fiscal argument is not the chief argument for the intensive poli- 
 cy, but it is a very real one. The Board has to carry the weight of 
 fiscal responsibility; it should, therefore, for that reason alone, have 
 the chief voice in formulating general mission policies. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 13 
 
 Making the Intensive Policy Work 
 
 The application of the intensive policy, once its broad general out- 
 lines have been determined, is chiefly a matter for the mission. The 
 mission is in much better position than the Board to know whether it 
 is better to send out another missionary for a given work or to in- 
 crease the work appropriation of the missionary already there. Our 
 constituency at home is inclined to feel, I judge, that we must send 
 out great numbers of new missionaries. We do need the continual 
 tide of new blood flowing into the missions ; but in a given case it may 
 be of far greater significance to add to the work appropriation of the 
 missionary in charge — especially when, as in East China, we are 
 graduating yearly numbers of capable Chinese who should be set to 
 work in the field of the mission. The fact is that East China may soon 
 face the necessity of placing a surplusage of workers, graduates of 
 College and Seminary; and it should be remembered that these men 
 cannot be expected to live upon the stipends which the older untrained 
 men are receiving. It will be high folly to expend our resources in 
 training these men for our own Christian work and then to lose them 
 for want of funds which a different policy might afford us. While 
 this is a vital issue in East China, I am simply using it here to illus- 
 rate the fact that the mission is not seldom in better position than the 
 Board to know how to apply a principle of administration. 
 
 Kinhwa 
 
 It is such considerations as those I have just urged which give 
 me satisfaction when I view the action of the East China Mission with 
 reference to Kinhwa. It is a brave facing of a situation which 
 sooner or later all our missions must face—that of putting trained 
 Chinese in charge and of doing it without being pushed into it, of 
 experimenting that we may find out how best to do it. The trained 
 output of our schools will themselves increasingly demand it, and if 
 we are not ere long to be embarrassed by the insistence of that de- 
 mand, we must arrange for just such first steps as the East China 
 Mission is taking at Kinhwa. The danger is that in other missions 
 the demand may arise before we have adequate native leadership in 
 prospect. I have been profoundly impressed during my whole trip 
 and in this instance as well by the immense difficulties of adminis- 
 tering an enterprise so complex and so plastic as the missionary enter- 
 prise, especially the difficulties of long range administration. With 
 all its limitations and risks, local administration is imperative; yet 
 it must be so applied as to fund the wisdom of the entire mission 
 upon the issue involved ; it must avoid falling into the hands of strong- 
 minded individuals, and must leave reasonable executive freedom for 
 those who are held responsible for results. Local administration 
 must be so organized that it can take over from the home office all 
 but the broadest matters of policy and questions which by their 
 nature remain to be handled by the Board. The East China Mission 
 has gone far in the direction of such an organization and is gaining 
 an invaluable fund of experience as well as securing results. Kinhwa 
 will afford an excellent tryout of this theory. 
 
 Chief Argument for an Intensive Policy 
 
 It may seem, since we have talked so many years about an inten- 
 sive policy, and have also suffered for our faith in it, that its thor- 
 nugh-going application is assured. The fact is that we have an em- 
 
14 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 barrassment of riches in the extensive development of our work, and 
 the limitation of our resources has down to the present prevented 
 us from putting our work in general upon that minimum basis of 
 efficiency which is the objective of the intensive policy. The chief 
 argument for the intensive policy is one which over and over again 
 has had demonstration in the experience of the various missions. 
 One need not withhold one jot of his admiration for the heroic rep- 
 resentatives of the China Inland Mission when he declares that the 
 China Inland Mission has given the most significant demonstration 
 of the futility of a diffusive policy. Doubtless it has greater signifi- 
 cance for a pioneering stage of missionary endeavor than for any 
 later stage, but even there its superiority is open to gravest question. 
 It is far better to do one piece of mission work well than to under- 
 take a half-dozen, which, for very limitation of strength and re- 
 sources, must be indifferently done. In the end one piece of work well 
 done will net the Kingdom of God more than all the rest. This princi- 
 ple holds with reference to the opening of outstations, the establish- 
 ment of schools, the organizing of churches, the founding of acade- 
 mies and colleges, the building of hospitals and the like. Just where 
 the principle should be applied in a particular mission, the mission in 
 question may be in better position than the Board to determine; but 
 that the principle should govern all our forms of endeavor cannot, to 
 my way of thinking, be questioned. 
 
 Maximum Educational Efficiency 
 
 Even when an institution has less equipment than we could wish 
 for a minimum efficiency basis, it may face the question of maximum 
 efficiency: that is to say, there is a point beyond which the multi- 
 plication of students lowers efficiency. And, again, we may multiply 
 schools to a point where we cannot maintain average efficiency. Our 
 mission schools are still able to maintain educational respectability. 
 But this is always a relative affair: what is today’s respectability 
 may be tomorrow’s shame. So long as China continues in turmoil 
 and her funds are diverted from educational and constructive chan- 
 nels to military outlay and graft, her schools, dependent upon private 
 generosity to supplement the meager government grants, will not be 
 difficult to equal nor even to surpass. Yet even now, in some instances, 
 such schools have gone far ahead of neighboring Christian schools in 
 material equipment and the technical training of their staff. The 
 only point, then, at which these schools surpass them is in morale 
 and spirit. But Christianity will not win its chance to place a reli- 
 gious and moral stamp upon China’s leaders if her schools are upon 
 a lower level of equipment and staffing than the secular and govern- 
 ment schools. But if we are to maintain schools of high efficiency, 
 we shall have to limit their number and concentrate our effort upon 
 a few. If in the prosecution of our endeavor, we find that we have 
 more schools than we can carry on effectively, we must limit their 
 number or reduce the grade of certain of them. The only alternative, 
 and it does not prove to be such in every case, is to shift the financial 
 burden to Chinese shoulders, as at Ding Hae. Even there, we do not 
 seem as yet to have a case in point. The days of opportunity of the 
 half-equipped, meagerly-staffed school in East China are numbered. 
 
 Putting our Middle Schools on the Map 
 
 Once we have decided upon the practicable maximum of middle 
 schools for this region, we must see to it that they have plant, equip- 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 15 
 
 merit and staff which shall make them equal to the best. That is to 
 be done at Ningpo, in the Union School. It must be done elsewhere, 
 as at Hangchow. Figures show that, next to Ningpo, Hangchow has 
 been the largest feeder of Shanghai College of any of our East China 
 stations. Wayland Academy was the second of about twenty middle 
 schools in that district in its, beginning, but has been outstripped by 
 all but a few in both plant and student body. It continues to do ex- 
 cellent work; in fact, it is doing the best work in its history, edu- 
 cationally, and even although its patronage is chiefly local and the 
 number of students actually residing at the Academy is relatively 
 small, it maintains a vigorous and effective Christian life and actually 
 succeeds in doing what we wish such an institution to accomplish for 
 its students. I use Hangchow, or Wayland Academy, as an instance 
 only. Yet it is an outstanding case of institutional need, for its ap- 
 proved plans have long been held in abeyance. 
 
 The Christian Emphasis in our Schools 
 
 The only sort of school which a missionary organization is jus- 
 tified in maintaining is a school of positive Christian tone. While 
 we must have technically competent teachers, we need to make sure 
 that these are also warm-hearted, well-trained Christians; for pos- 
 sibly the most significant factor in school life is what we may call 
 “atmosphere.” Our justification is not that we impart knowledge 
 alone but far more that we propagate the Christian spirit, infuse 
 knowledge therewith and motivate its possessors thereby. I have 
 reason to believe that this view of the case obtains almost universally 
 among our missionary educators, yet, with the demand for a higher 
 average of specialized preparation upon the part of our teachers, 
 we find a tendency to slur over this demand. In the beginning, mis- 
 sion schools were manned almost wholly by men of general training, 
 usually of the ministerial type. That type of missionary was usually 
 warmly Christian in his approach, even although he possessed no 
 technical training and perhaps little teaching ability or experience. 
 Today we must have specialists; yet I know of no reason why the 
 specialist should be any less a warm-hearted Christian. But in as- 
 certaining his technical qualifications, we may be in danger of failing 
 to ask the even more urgent question whether he is an enthusiastic 
 Christian and able to project his faith as well as to teach the facts 
 of his department. We must see to it that the educationally compe- 
 tent man whom we send out is also spiritually competent and a 
 trained Christian. Every piece* of educational work we do should be 
 an irreproachable demonstration, but above all we must demonstrate 
 the life of the Kingdom of God in the midst of our schools. 
 
 The Upper Limit of Shanghai College 
 
 The College has made an enviable record. It is true that we have 
 run perilously near the line of understaffing at times, and it is true 
 that here, as elsewhere in our educational work, we have placed very 
 grave responsibilities on the shoulders of very young and inexperi- 
 enced professors. They have done very good work and met this 
 challenge nobly, but without doubt it is just this thing which has 
 tended in some instances to minimize the effectiveness of mission in- 
 stitutions. The better institutions at home follow a different course. 
 But in addition to these problems, Shanghai is even now facing the 
 question of maximum limits. How large an institution can be effec- 
 
16 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 tively maintained? It would be possible within a very few years to 
 enroll scores of students above the maximum limit. This should 
 mean that to a large degree the College can pick its student body, 
 and thus obtain the type of student most desired. 
 
 Co-education and Graduate Schools 
 
 Even if it should mean some limitation upon the ability of the Col- 
 lege to proceed in other desirable developments, I am convincd that it 
 should go ahead with the experiment of co-education. Co-education 
 is no experiment in America and need not long be such in China, with 
 the vast preponderance of approval among those now concerned. In 
 any case, the financial reason for co-education in China is an over- 
 whelming one. If we in America have been practically forced to it 
 in our public school and state university system, what shall we think 
 of China’s ability to maintain parallel systems? And there is the 
 further social reason, that such a plan will bring the sexes into whole- 
 some social relations and thus help to forestall the social disaster 
 which seems to lurk within the new-found freedom of the Chinese 
 woman. 
 
 But this is only one development which is to be considered. There 
 is a time in its history when every small college is tempted to think 
 of a future when it will be a university, but some small colleges have 
 bravely refused even to dream of such an estate. The mission college 
 has not escaped this temptation and has sometimes expanded far be- 
 yond minimum limits of efficiency. I am fully convinced that we 
 cannot do justice to the future if at Shanghai we obligate ourselves 
 to support a series of graduate schools. There does seem to me to be 
 a very significant demand for the School of Business Administration. 
 I heard talk of a movement to establish by co-operation among the 
 missions a School of Medicine at Shanghai. I believe that there 
 should be a School of Medicine at Shanghai which should serve the 
 whole region. But we cannot aiford to undertake graduate work that 
 will reduce the effectiveness of what we have already undertaken. 
 If we should enter the suggested co-operative scheme for a School of 
 Business Administration, we ought to face the question whether a 
 school dissociated from the colleges and their resident student bodies, 
 and located in the heart of Shanghai, would be likely to maintain 
 an atmosphere in which students could be won to Christianity and 
 would be supported in an active Christian life. 
 
 Our Evangelistic Problem 
 
 In time past there has been a good deal of discussion of the rela- 
 tive claims of education upon staff and budget, and sometimes with 
 the implication that the two are opposed to each other. The only sort 
 of educational effort in which we are justified in engaging is, as a 
 matter of fact, proving our most effective means of evangelizing the 
 people who will have most to say about China’s future and who will 
 mean most for the future of the church. We could easily concentrate 
 upon a policy of diffusive evangelism and by itinerating continuously 
 our missionaries could win a good many adherents to Christianity, 
 and it would be worth while. But we have not and shall never have 
 the means to make more than a good beginning of field evangelism; 
 that, in the end, is the problem of the Chinese church. It is our busi- 
 ness, primarily, as I conceive it, to evangelize a leadership and a 
 working constituency in properly located centers, and thus to es- 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 17 
 
 tablish what will be vigorous propagating churches. At the same 
 time, to nucleate Christianity effectively in a series of live churches is 
 no small undertaking; for those churches must themselves, from the 
 beginning, be evangelistic, and this means that we must, from the 
 very start, over limited areas to be sure, prosecute field evangelism. 
 Otherwise our churches at the center may easily become self-satisfied, 
 non-propagating organizations. But in East China we are now sure- 
 ly at the point where the sending out of large numbers of missionaries 
 to become itinerating evangelists will give place to the employment 
 and direction of the increasing output of trained native workers 
 coming to us from Shanghai. We shall need for this work only so 
 much foreign staff, therefore, as may be required to initiate, organize 
 and direct the work of the Chinese. If for the next few years we 
 should be able to spend more money on what we term station evan- 
 gelistic work, it would be well to ask whether increased work appro- 
 priations and equipment rather than a large number of new mission- 
 aries will not be wiser. 
 
 Transfer of Responsibility: Relation to Self-Support 
 
 All our efforts look to an ultimate transfer of executive responsi- 
 bility. We may very well insist that there is some intrinsic relation 
 between financial and executive responsibility. We should not be 
 likely to question the right of a group of Chinese Christians to admin- 
 ister in entirety any enterprise which they wholly financed. But it 
 will be a long time before that condition will be reached, and if ad- 
 ministrative authority is to be gauged by the ratio of Chinese to for- 
 eign gifts, to say nothing of self-support, the Chinese leaders are 
 likely to become restive under the limitations thus imposed. Self- 
 support seems sufficiently remote, but we need also to take into ac- 
 count that it will be relatively further away, for a time at any rate, 
 as we employ the fully trained men from our college and Seminary. 
 They can command more money and will cost the churches more. In 
 time, to be sure, they should be able to raise more money from the 
 native constituency than the untrained leaders could; but that will 
 not occur at the outset. The Shanghai-Chekiang Association gives 
 limited scope for the administrative gifts of these young leaders, 
 since the Association shares to some extent in the administration of 
 the Mission’s budget. If we whole-heartedly carry out the Kinhwa 
 experiment, we may find that we have here the desired solution and 
 that we shall thus discover the way to further steps in devolution. 
 
 The Function of Medical Missions 
 
 I am heartily glad that in East China our medical policy involves 
 so good a degree of co-operation with other missions. It is not al- 
 ways possible, where territory is completely allocated on a comity 
 basis, to enter into such relationships ; but where missions are situated 
 as ours is in East China, there seems to be no justification of dupli- 
 cate medical agencies. 
 
 I am convinced, however, that we need to think through the ques- 
 tion of the function of medical missions. Unquestionably the dis- 
 pensary and hospital are direct evangelizing agencies; the doctor 
 not seldom gains a hearing which others are denied. What he may 
 make of his opportunity will depend very much upon his gifts and 
 his zeal. It is quite possible to hold that the main objective of the 
 
18 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 medical mission, if not its sole raison d’etre, is the winning of men’s 
 souls. It is equally possible, however, to see the relation of the 
 medical missionary to the community from a somewhat different 
 angle. From this point of view, the medical missionary becomes 
 the most effective preacher of a social Christianity which is destined 
 to carry into the homes and schools, and indeed into the whole or- 
 ganization' of community life, the cleansing force of Christian ideals 
 and of the Christian spirit. In a word, medical missions in this 
 constructive aspect are needed for the complete proclamation of our 
 gospel. If we view our task from this angle, without at all mini- 
 mizing the value of the medical missionary’s opportunity for personal 
 evangelistic appeal, we shall discover that we have a direct function 
 in the field of preventive medicine and of public health. I shall have 
 occasion to refer to this matter again, in my report upon the West 
 China medical work. 
 
 The East China Conference 
 
 As you are quite aware, I was present throughout the sessions 
 of the annual conference of our East China Mission, August 22 to 
 31, 1920. I gained quite as much from the discussions of the con- 
 ference as from my actual visitation of the stations of the Mission. 
 I was impressed by the earnestness with which the missionary body 
 approaches its problems. Differences in point of view and con- 
 viction were at once apparent and opposing policies were not seldom 
 urged with some vehemency; but I found, on the whole, a very fine 
 Christian courtesy expressed in all the activities of the conference. 
 The final attitude seemed to me that of allowing every question to 
 stand upon its merits, sentimental and personal considerations being 
 put one side. My contact with the Reference Committee of the 
 Mission, in the several sessions which I was privileged to attend, 
 made apparent to me the values of the type of organization which 
 we find in the East China Mission. There was a thoroughness and 
 competency in this Committee which gave me assurance that the 
 East China Mission is not likely ever to become a “one-man affair.” 
 The effort is made to fund the wisdom of the Mission upon every 
 crucial point. 
 
 I must also say a word, in this connection, concerning the Sec- 
 retary of the Mission, Dr. J. T. Proctor. His administrative ability 
 is everywhere in evidence. A man of strong convictions, and there- 
 fore likely to be urgent in his attitude toward cardinal questions, 
 he is at the same time endowed with the spirit of fairness and to a 
 high degree with judicial temper. No man in the East China region 
 has higher standing as a missionary administrator, and he is much 
 in demand for counsel and assistance by the general agencies, such 
 as the China Continuation Committee. 
 
 2. THE SOUTH CHINA MISSION 
 
 My opportunity for a survey of the work in South China was 
 less ample than that afforded by my visit to East China. Much that 
 I have said concerning general mission policies in the section dealing 
 with the East China Mission applies here. For that reason, and be- 
 cause I do not feel qualified to discuss some phases of the South 
 China situation in their true perspective, this section of the report 
 will of necessity be somewhat abridged. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 19 
 
 Industrial and Commercial Development 
 
 South China shares the relative accessibility of East China but 
 has suffered more from the uncertainties of the political situation. 
 Military occupancy and operations have to some degree interfered 
 with missionary work, for, although Canton has been the natural 
 objective of contending armies, Swatow and vicinity have not wholly 
 escaped. 
 
 There is a very considerable industrial and commercial develop- 
 ment in Swatow and immediate vicinity. Although the district as a 
 whole is rated as purely agricultural, there is an expansion of trade, 
 due in part to the rise of certain industries at this center. Accord- 
 ing to the Customs report, Swatow stands fifth (or seventh, if one 
 adds Dairen and Tsingtau,' which are semi-foreign cities) in customs 
 revenue returns. As one travels about and notes the relative 
 meagerness of the standard of life which obtains, he is quite sur- 
 prised at the buying capacity of the people of this district. As an 
 increasingly important commercial center, Swatow will see a growing 
 demand for the output of our schools in business, industry and trade; 
 and we shall doubtless find Swatow affording a challenge somewhat 
 similar to that which we noted at Shanghai, with a corresponding 
 opportunity to build up a financially competent lay leadership. 
 
 The Achievement at Kakchieh 
 
 One cannot fail to be impressed by Kakchieh. Nowhere in 
 our missions in China did I find anything approaching the volume 
 of Christian activity which discovers itself on the Kakchieh com- 
 pound. The transformation of this rocky isle into a veritable 
 garden of the Lord, or, to change the figure, a beehive of Christian 
 activity embowered in most delightful semi-tropical setting, is one 
 of the marvels of missionary achievement. The processes of Chris- 
 tian character-building which are under way there are a most heart- 
 ening array. The educational opportunity which Kakchieh now of- 
 fers the Chinese Christian community goes far to make up for the 
 years when such opportunity was lacking. Gradually this Mission 
 is raising up a trained leadership, and the first fruits of college 
 training, at Shanghai or abroad, were evidenced very prominently 
 at the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Mission. The day when a South 
 China church can be content with a pastor who has perhaps not 
 even had full higher primary training will soon pass and the day 
 of the trained leader will arrive. When that day shall arrive, it will 
 mark a new epoch in the history of the Mission. Year by year the 
 Seminary is sending out better prepared ministers and the standards 
 of the churches are correspondingly elevated. 
 
 The Sixtieth Anniversary of the Mission 
 
 Westerners do not appreciate the significance of the sixty-year 
 cycle in the eyes of the Chinese. It marks an epoch, whether in 
 the life of an individual or of an institution. Consequently a great 
 deal more meaning was attached to the celebration by our Chinese 
 brethren than we should be inclined to give it. There was a keen- 
 ness of attention and a very apparent depth of appreciation which 
 were to me most significant. The exercises of that occasion were 
 carefully planned to give the delegates from the churches a well- 
 defined impression of the bigness of our faith and the magnitude of 
 
20 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 our task. Both in the review of achievements, in the addresses 
 interpretive of our Christian faith and especially in the addresses 
 of the young Chinese leaders, there was a rich fund of material 
 for reflection and future reference. The anniversary contributed to 
 the Chinese churches a sense of achievement and of fellowship in the 
 ^eat Christian community which should mean much to them in the 
 immediate future. 
 
 The Future Policy of Swatow Academy 
 
 The Academy in Swatow is an impressive and inspiring piece of 
 educational missions; it is also an aspiring institution, not content 
 to remain a mere academy, but bent on becoming a real Junior Col- 
 lege. Whether, as things are, this is the wise course is open to 
 question. First, there is the financial aspect of the matter; a Junior 
 College involves a much bigger budget than the maintenance of an 
 Academy calls for. Moreover, operating within the probable limits 
 of the budget of the next few years, the Junior College would not 
 be likely to articulate with Shanghai College effectively, for the work 
 there is rather markedly differentiated in the five groups, as early 
 as the Freshman year. It has been suggested by President White, 
 I believe, that it might be better to develop at Swatow a Junior 
 School of Business Administration and to work directly for the 
 meeting of a manifest need of the community as well as for the 
 upbuilding of a strong lay constituency. In view of the commercial 
 and industrial development of the region, this suggestion seems a 
 valuable one. The same outcome as in the case of Shanghai could 
 be anticipated. 
 
 If there were to be a second development beyond the academy 
 courses, it seems to me that it might well be in the preparation of 
 teachers: that is, in addition to the teachers’ secondary courses of- 
 fered at present, it might be possible to develop an advanced course 
 for teachers. Even if, with the suggested School of Business Ad- 
 ministration, this should cost as much as a well-equipped Junior 
 College, it will meet a more direct need and greater values will 
 accrue to the work of the Mission in j'^ears to come. The real 
 question is whether we are prepared to suggest any advance at this 
 time; we must be sure that we are prepared to equip and finance 
 such an institution before we go ahead. Let us not proceed until we 
 are reasonably assured of our ability to carry on. 
 
 Our Educational Crisis 
 
 I was privileged to visit the station schools in Swatow City, 
 Chow-chow-fu, Chaoyang and Kityang, and I saw much of promise. 
 I was not able to see the Academy at Kaying and the High School 
 at Hopo, much to my re^et. It is still true in the main throughout 
 the Mission, as at Kaying, that our schools offer in almost every 
 department better training than can be had in the government 
 schools. But it is also true that there is sad need for more adequate 
 buildings and better equipment and a larger number of really 
 competent teachers. The development of a full-fledged middle school 
 at each of our stations would be an admirable achievement. The 
 missionaries are everywhere saying that the school work must be 
 made more adequate and pushed with enthusiasm. But this con- 
 stitutes for both the Mission and the Board a rather serious problem. 
 There is real risk of an early diffusion of effort which will 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 21 
 
 jeopardize our future school work. This risk is rendered the greater 
 by the fact of an early evangelistic expansion which gave our South 
 China Mission a larger percentage of churches in proportion to its 
 membership than any other of the ten missions of our Society. The 
 policy has been that of evangelistic expansion, although the tendency 
 at the present time is toward intension, if for no other reason than 
 that we have reached the limit of our ability to staff the stations. 
 Now if we are to develop adequate primary and secondary schools 
 in all of these centers, we shall face a large increase in annual ex- 
 penditure for education on this score alone. We have, as the latest 
 report shows, 164 primary schools and only 18 secondary schools. 
 How shall an intensive educational policy be fitted upon the substruc- 
 ture of an expansive evangelistic policy? Or is this crisis only in 
 my mind? 
 
 The Problem Arising from the Large Number of Churches 
 
 One can but admire the evangelistic zeal which has multiplied 
 converts in this field over a very wide area. But the result of the 
 expansive policy in evangelism has been to develop a small work at a 
 very large number of centers, all of which require manning and super- 
 vision. To be sure, since there are 139 churches and but 9^2 preachers 
 (eight of whom are ordained), it is quite impossible that each should 
 have a preacher. In fact no attempt is as yet made to proivde each 
 church with a settled pastor. But at the same time, the very or- 
 ganization of a church looks toward such a time. It will, however, 
 be a good while before we shall have a supply of trained men suffi- 
 cient to man all these centers, even if these small churches could 
 each maintain a trained minister. The twenty churches now re- 
 ported as self-supporting would be a dwindling list if they were 
 to get beneath the support of a settled pastor of full college and 
 seminary type. 
 
 If it is proposed to do more than pay occasional visits to outsta- 
 tions, say in such a field as Kityang, where there are 43 outstations 
 and 42 organized churches; that is, if local schools, adequate housing, 
 more nearly adequate pastoral supervision are to be provided, there 
 will be an amazing increase in the fiscal demand. Otherwise, as 
 heretofore, the pastor will continue to be teacher; the school will 
 be poorly housed and without equipment; and the work will suffer 
 commensurate limitation. If we are obliged frequently, as now, to 
 leave such a station as Unkung, without resident missionary, or to 
 leave such a station as Kityang with but one inexperienced man, it 
 may well occur to us to ask what is likely to happen on these big fields 
 with their 23 and 42 organized churches respectively. 
 
 Our Embarrassment of Riches 
 
 The Mission is grappling with this problem, but it is also a 
 matter for the Board to consider. We have what we may term 
 either “an embarrassment of riches” or “an embarrassment of 
 poverty” according to the way you view it. I do not suggest that 
 it is either possible or desirable to reverse the history of the Mission. 
 I am but suggesting that in the future we consider the problem of 
 maximum limits. When a work of this type reaches a certain level, 
 not determinable in advance but none the less certain, a stage which 
 our South China work seems to approximate, it is a grave question 
 how much further it is likely to proceed successfully without such 
 
22 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 reorganization, increase of staffing and supply of housing and 
 equipment as shall lift it to a wholly new level. The problem of 
 achieving a self-supporting church which shall also possess vigor 
 and initiative must be faced when we discuss whether the future 
 shall be worked out on the general basis of past policy, a rather 
 frankly expansive evangelistic policy. In the event of our inability 
 to put more into the work in the near future, we must seek some 
 other approach to increased efficiency. I wish that it might ^ be 
 possible for us to concentrate upon the making of an effective im- 
 pression at strategic centers, as we are doing in the institutional 
 work at Swatow and are in a good way to do at Chow-chow-fu, where 
 we have a splendid central location. It is quite possible that we 
 may be able to enlist for important phases of our work, certainly the 
 educational and the medical, no small amount of native means from 
 the community outside the church — as we are now doing in various 
 centers. (Note the offers made by the elders of Hopo and of Tong 
 Kang, as reported in the recent Minutes of the Reference Committee, 
 April 14-17, 1921.) 
 
 The Institutional Work at Swatow 
 
 While I did not see the work actually in process within the new 
 building, I saw it in process. The new plant seems to me admirably 
 adapted to the housing of a going concern such as we have in 
 Swatow City. I look for a splendid development at that center. But 
 we should not get the impression that the duplication of that plant 
 or of any other particular type of plant is the key to our city prob- 
 lem. The fact is that an institutional plant must grow up around a 
 group of activities and should take permanent form only when we are 
 fairly able, as here, to discover what we can and should do in the 
 community. In consequence we should expect a good degree of 
 variety in the institutional plants at our various centers. Not an 
 activity was provided for at Swatow which was not already in 
 vigorous process when the building was planned; and yet a plant 
 so extensive gives considerable room for development and modification 
 of program through experience. 
 
 Medical Policy in South China 
 
 The development of a medical policy in South China, which has 
 been a slow process, seems now to have been achieved. The plan to 
 place a central hospital at Kityang commends itself as, on the whole, 
 the most practicable, as Kityang has greater accessibility from the 
 entire field than any other point, and also has the advantage of 
 possessing a developed women’s hospital. It was what I saw at 
 Chaoyang that led me to a rather vigorous statement in my earlier 
 report that the Board is not justified in sending out medical men with- 
 out also providing them with such a plant, whether dispensary or hos- 
 pital, as shall assure maximum usefulness. We have set too many men 
 at work making bricks without straw ; they have vindicated their own 
 worth, as a rule, but not the wisdom of our policy. Neither Dr. 
 Lesher at Chaoyang nor Dr. Newman at Unkung had such equipment. 
 That each of them did a worthy work is not at all the issue; neither 
 could possibly make the impression which he might have made with 
 a different material backing. We can, of course, maintain itinerating 
 medical evangelists, if we wish; but it is quite another thing to es- 
 tablish permanent local centers of evangelism and Christian sociali- 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 23 
 
 zation through the ministry of medicine. We have still to det nine, 
 to a good degree I judge, what we wish to accomplish thro^ . our 
 medical missions. I am hoping that hereafter, when we sena jut a 
 medical man, we shall give him the working basis which a ma i.num 
 efficiency demands. A log with Mark Hopkins at one end may b ^ome 
 a university, but I doubt whether a cowshed, even with Peter 
 Parker in charge, can become an efficient hospital. 
 
 The Secretaryship 
 
 You all know what a vigorous, effective personality Dr. Groes- 
 beck is. But you know, too, how multiplied are the demands upon 
 his time and strength. South China ought, in my judgment, to have 
 the whole time of a man for its secretariate. He might then, in 
 emergency, do what Dr. Groesbeck has endeavored to do for Unkung, 
 even while his chief station responsibility was at Chaoyang. We 
 cannot do justice to the demands of the work in a great city like 
 Chaoyang by giving it a fraction of one man’s time, even if that 
 man is Dr. Groesbeck. The field of the South China Mission is 
 sufficiently compact to enable a Secretary, freed from local station 
 responsibility, to do a good deal of field work with fine results. I 
 trust that the time may not be far distant when Dr. Groesbeck may 
 be allowed his full time for the Secretary’s task. I want to say that 
 this expression is not at all at Dr. Groesbeck’s suggestion. It is 
 wholly my own reaction to the situation in the South China field. 
 
 3. THE WEST CHINA MISSION 
 
 West China, as you will recall, was a principal objective of my 
 trip. The proportion of time which I gave it was, however, due in 
 part to the exigencies of the journey. I judge that if a Secretary 
 of our Board were to go to West China in the autumn, leaving 
 Shanghai in September, he might make the round trip in two or 
 two and a half months and visit all our stations briefly. He would 
 not, however, be able to attend the annual conference unless the 
 date were changed. The season is suggested as affording the 
 possibility of going all the way to Kiating by steamer. 
 
 West China in General 
 
 Your attention should be called to the fact that West China is 
 the most perturbed region in which we are at work in China. The 
 difficulties, the risks, the strain which the women of our Mission in 
 particular must endure, call for an unusual degree of consideration 
 upon the part of our Board. Nor have I reckoned here with the 
 political situation, the perturbed condition of the whole of West 
 China, which increases the missionary burden incalculably. And 
 when one judges of results, he must bear in mind that these have 
 been achieved in spite of all the untoward conditions which, taken 
 together, tend to disorganize the life of the Chinese and to turn their 
 attention away from anything but the merest concerns of safety and 
 subsistence. 
 
 We should also note that the relative degree of commercial and 
 industrial development in West China is slight. It is true that at 
 Chungking and elsewhere one finds the Standard Oil and Asiatic 
 
24 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 Petroleum companies, the Singer Sewing Machine, Western To- 
 bacco and drugs. But so far as Chinese business and industry are 
 concerned, they are still mainly, indeed almost exclusively, upon the 
 old trade-guild handicraft basis. I visited a great silk filature in 
 Kiating, however, where more than four hundred persons were em- 
 ployed, and where the latest machinery was in use, the power being 
 steam. There can be no doubt that there would be a rapid expansion 
 of trade and a very marked industrial development, could there once 
 be an assured pacification of the country. On the whole, however, 
 for the present and for a good while to come, we must face a situ- 
 ation in which the average church will probably lack any high degree 
 of financial ability, for the people, in spite of the vast natural wealth 
 of the province, are, with some notable exceptions, a poor people. For 
 all its vast mineral wealth, Szechuan is as yet an agricultural region, 
 with the advantage that famine is unknown and crops as certain as 
 in any part of China. But agriculture remains upon its old level, 
 while the people face a rising scale of prices. The immediate pros- 
 pect of a strong self-supporting work is limited by this general 
 consideration. 
 
 The Relative Extent of our Field 
 
 I was impressed at once with the “magnificent distances” which 
 West China affords. These distances are actual, for I travelled in 
 my round trip between 2,000 and 2,500 miles inside the province. 
 The distances are also relative, that is to say, the slowness of or- 
 dinary travel multiplies them, so that they are much greater in pro- 
 portion than those which our representatives have to cover in any 
 other of the five missions which I visited. One can see by looking 
 at the map of Szechuan that it is an immense province, but one must 
 also correct that relative greatness of distance by the rate of travel 
 and the comparative topography; so corrected, the relative distances 
 of Szechuan are vastly augmented. We have the advantage that the 
 people, with the exception of the aborigines, speak the same dialect 
 throughout our field, so that you can be understood anywhere if 
 you speak the Chinese of West China. That is an advantage over 
 other districts; but the relative isolation of our West China sta- 
 tions is much greater than that of the average station in East or 
 South China. In West China, taking Chengtu as our base, the 
 nearest station is four days distant and the remotest stations are 
 nine and sixteen days distant. Any station in the Philippines is less 
 than a day’s journey from Iloilo; any station in Japan is less than 
 twenty-four hours away from Tokyo; any station in East China 
 except Kinhwa, is within a day’s journey from Shanghai; and South 
 China remains the only field which has any stations at all approach- 
 ing for isolation the stations of our West China Mission — and there 
 we have five of the most important centers but a few hours’ run 
 from Kakchieh. 
 
 Ningyuenfu and the Intensive Policy 
 
 If we are prepared to face the demands of an expansive policy, 
 we can spread ourselves in West China, for vast areas invite us. 
 Even among the fastnesses of the western mountain ranges there 
 are aboriginal tribes — notably the Lolos and the Miaos — -numbering 
 thousands of people, who are relatively without religious oppor- 
 tunity. But even if one leave these people, whose evangelization is 
 a separate problem from that of reaching the Chinese in the farther 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 25 
 
 West of Szechuan, out of the reckoning for the time being, he dis- 
 covers that the Chinese population of those vast stretches of the 
 west and southwest of the Province is comparatively sparse. We 
 may there spread ourselves more or less ineffectively over wide 
 stretches of country to find the same number of people that we have 
 right at our door in such cities as Suifu and Chengtu, Kiating and 
 Yachow. There are, to be sure, a good many thousand Chinese in 
 Ningyuen itself and yet other thousands in the regions below, toward 
 Hweilichow. Yet I am personally of the opinion that we should 
 have done better not to enter Ningyuenfu. I do not know that I 
 should have been of that opinion had I been in_ the place of our 
 missionaries who received the invitation. I cherish this view, not 
 because Ningyuen is hopeless, for it is not, but because we had al- 
 ready far greater responsibility than we could hope to discharge. 
 
 Ningyuen cannot readily be integrated with our other work, 
 where b^y effective outstation work we are linking station to station. 
 It must always, for topographical reasons and because of the dis- 
 tance, be a more or less detached field. The limitation of our re- 
 sources and the remoteness of Ningyuen from the main body of 
 our mission are the chief reasons why I shall be glad to see it taken 
 over at the earliest practicable moment by the Australian Christian 
 Mission. I do not believe that there is anything in the past history 
 of our work there, open as it may be at certain points to criticism, 
 which it would not be possible by proper staffing and continuous oc- 
 cupancy to overcome. This, I take it, is the view of all who have 
 been for any length of time at Ningyuenfu. It is, therefore, not 
 so much a question of the local situation at it is one of general 
 policy within the Mission. It is true that we have incurred certain 
 obligations toward the Christian community in Ningyuen which 
 we cannot discharge by simply dropping the station. We must seek 
 to carry on until we can be relieved of it by a proper transfer. 
 
 It is qvident, therefore, that I am urging the application of an 
 intensive policy in West China. I believe that it will perhaps be 
 found ultimately in accord with such policy to negotiate with the 
 China Inland Mission the transfer of Kiungchow, a hsien city of 
 some 20,000 lying on the road between Yachow and Chengtu, and 
 thus about equidistant from Yachow, Chengtu and Kiating. It would 
 serve to link up our work effectively in the north end of our district, 
 and is itself a good base of operations. This will fall in with the 
 policy of a compact field far better than the continuation of Nin- 
 gjmen as one of our principal stations. 
 
 The Limits of Outstation Efficiency 
 
 Policy in outstation work has varied, I am led to believe, from 
 station to station and from the individual evangelistic worker to his 
 successor. The Kiating station, for example, has developed but three 
 main outstatioiis, at each of which there is resident a Chinese 
 evangelist. The Kiating field is relatively compact, and these cen- 
 ters are towns of 10,000 or above. Whether it is due to policy or 
 to accident, these have become strong nucleating centers of our work, 
 and one of them— Kia-kiang— bids fair to become the first independ- 
 ent church outside the main stations—for we still have in West 
 China what may be termed “the metropolitan church.” Suifu, with 
 considerably greater distances to traverse, had some fourteen out- 
 stations at the time of my visit. These were in market towns of 
 from 2,000 to 15,000 people. The strongest of these, that at Li-chuan, 
 
26 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 is quite as effective as any of our outstations in the Mission. But 
 it has not been possible to man them all with Chinese evangelists and 
 to exercise adequate supervision over the work. In the judgment 
 of the evangelistic worker now in charge at Suifu, it would be wise 
 to limit our activities to not above nine centers, reserving those 
 where we now have and are likely to maintain the most effective 
 contacts. In the Yachow field, while some seventeen towns, ranging 
 from 300 to 15,000 in population, are listed as outstations, it had 
 not been found practicable to maintain effecti/e touch with them all. 
 As with the Suifu field, probably more than half of them must de- 
 pend upon the occasional visits of the evangelistic worker and his 
 Chinese assistants. The groups of believers number from 6 up to 
 35 or 40 in a place. The evangelistic missionary in charge at the 
 time of my visit was assisted by four evangelists resident at dif- 
 ferent outstations. It was distinctly the policy of the educational 
 missionary in charge of the schools of this station and its outstations 
 to reduce the number of schools to the maximum that could be effi- 
 ciently operated, that is, from nine to six. 
 
 What I am saying is, in effect, that there are everywhere two 
 tendencies contending, the expansive and the intensive. In the de- 
 cision with respect to the application of an intensive policy the wis- 
 dom of the whole mission should be funded ; but the decision to work 
 upon an intensive rather than an expansive basis is a matter for 
 the Board to decide. There are a great many villages in the general 
 district allocated to our Mission which we have not entered and shall 
 not be able to enter; yet now and then some individual or group 
 presents us with an appeal to come over and start work in their 
 village. Will it serve the ends of the Kingdom best if we leave what 
 we are trying to do now and go to them for a while, knowing for a 
 certainty that the effectiveness of the work left behind will be 
 positively reduced? There is a limit which even those who are com- 
 mited to an expansive policy have to draw — the physical limit; that 
 is there for all of us. Would it not be well to operate well within 
 that limit, building up intensively certain evangelistic centers, which 
 may ultimately become centers of a more expansive Chinese evan- 
 gelism? It is the Chinese and not the foreigners who must ultimately 
 do this work. 
 
 Mission Control of Outstation Policy 
 
 I wish to say once more that the wisdom of the Mission should 
 be funded in the decision as to opening new outstations and the Mis- 
 sion should formulate the policy for outstation work. The Mission 
 should also administer its outstation policy, through an effective 
 committee or otherwise. This is to say that we should not leave 
 it to individuals to say whether they will proceed intensively or ex- 
 pansively but should secure continuity of policy by reserving that 
 prerogative for the Mission. The active efforts of the station evan- 
 gelists should be continuously supported and followed by the policy 
 of the Mission and by its administration. Thus we may avoid a 
 situation which has arisen not once but repeatedly in various mis- 
 sions, when a mission worker has retired and another has taken 
 his place. It is for the Mission to have a policy and for the indivi- 
 dual worker to help carry that policy into execution. At the same 
 time, we do not want a scheme so rigid as to repress individual ini- 
 tiative. It should be said that the West China Mission is working 
 in this direction. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 27 
 
 Native Leadership and Independent Churches 
 
 At the present time we have the metropolitan church with the 
 evangelistic missionary as pastor, but we must work for a time when 
 we shall have local churches with Chinese pastors. At the present 
 time the groups of Christians in the larger outstations are organized 
 into what may be called branch churches. And these churches, 
 through their representatives, are brought together in an embryonic 
 district association. I had the pleasure of being present at the 
 annual meeting at Kiating, just preceding the annual meeting of the 
 Chinese Baptist Convention. Here, as at the convention in Chengtu, 
 I was impressed by the lack of outstanding leadership. It was freely 
 confessed that in the past we had not taken the necessary steps but 
 the Mission is very actively engaged in the development of leadership 
 at the present time. Such leadership, it is true, is the product of 
 a rather extended educational process. Our friends of the American 
 and Canadian Methodist missions have quite outstripped us in this 
 particular, but we shall come to our own one of these days. The 
 secret of their achievement lies in the fact that years ago they very 
 definitely shaped their plans to produce an educated leadership. 
 The West China Union University was actually established on the 
 basis of their middle schools, not on ours. While we are in the way 
 of obtaining the type of leadership we need, we have but little 
 available as yet. 
 
 Our Chinese Evangelistic Staff 
 
 The development of independent churches must await a while 
 longer the advent of the adequately trained leader. I took some 
 pains to inquire concerning the personnel of our Chinese evangelis- 
 tic staif. The inquiry confirmed my belief that the movement out of 
 essential paganism into a full-rounded Christian experience is a 
 slow one and frequently not achieved until the second or third 
 generation. I was not surprised that these men were so frequently 
 possessed of little or no modern training. The best trained among 
 them have had middle school training and a year or two at the 
 Bible Training School in Chengtu; but there are only three or four 
 of these. For the most part the fifteen or sixteen men for whom I 
 have data are comparatively simple-minded men who have stepped 
 from other callings into the office of evangelist without any great 
 amount of preparation. It would not matter so much if they were 
 always thoroughly converted to Christian moral standards; but, 
 along with their simple-mindedness, they not seldom carry a consid- 
 erable burden of superstition and the ever-attached heathen mores. 
 In many ways the heathen past and the heathen present conspire to 
 undo them. There is an excellent man who has two wives, both of 
 whom he acquired before he became a Christian and by both of 
 whom he has children. He must maintain them both, and cannot 
 become an ordained preacher for that, if for no other, reason. Here 
 is another man who was once discharged by another body for 
 gambling. Here is a third who has been penalized and discharged 
 once or twice by our own mission. Here is a fourth who received 
 his final discharge about the time of my arrival for fraud and other 
 matters practically unmentionable. But most of these men, accord- 
 ing to their light, have proven honest and useful. 
 
28 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 Future Leadership 
 
 _At the same time, this is not the leadership which can face young 
 China and command either respect or a following. They are not as 
 a rule men of any particular vision, although their natural ability 
 and their Chinese scholarship vary widely. At the top of the scale 
 are men like Chang and Lan of Suifu. Of not a few others, we 
 must confess, in the terms of last February’s Report of the Evan- 
 gelistic Committee, that they were “men of meager training who 
 left the impression that they had not been successful elsewhere,” 
 while some of them were also “of too low morality.” 
 
 It was said at the Conference that there are not over two men 
 now in Mission employ whom the Mission could hope to ordain 
 (there are as yet no ordained men in this Mission). This did not 
 include the young men who are still in training, like Mr. Fay, who 
 is still in America, and others who are yet in West China Univer- 
 sity and our lower schools. Yet there are not as yet many men of 
 promise in immediate prospect for this work. It has to be said that 
 just at present we have rather more adequate leadership in our schools 
 than in our evangelistic ranks. It is an interesting fact that the 
 best men in the ranks of our Chinese evangelists are from that 
 group in Briton Corlies’ little school in Yachow, known some fifteen 
 years ago as “Briton Corlies’ Indians.” 
 
 The Chinese Churches 
 
 It is difficult to transmit the effect which the Chinese churches 
 make upon one. The language is strange, dress and social customs 
 are different, the very buildings themselves have features unwonted 
 about them. The sexes are sharply differentiated, and in Suifu church 
 there is still a relic of response to the sentiment of the older 
 generation of Chinese — that is, a board partition higher than your 
 head, which extends from the pulpit to the rear of the church. To 
 discern behind all the differences the evidences of Christian faith, 
 hope and love is no small task. You can discern a degree of rever- 
 ence respect, attention, and not seldom a mellowing of features that 
 goes with the heart’s response to some peculiarly appealing note 
 in the sermon. Yet you cannot know just how deep the impression 
 is until you follow these people to their homes, to their business, to 
 their life in the Chinese family and clan, with its tenacious claim 
 upon the individual, to their life as citizens and as witnessing 
 Christians. The fact is that, once you carry your inquiry back in 
 this fashion, you gain the impression of a wide disparity: some have 
 gone a long way, others but a little distance. The idols are gone 
 from the domestic' shrine; the little children are perhaps sent to the 
 kindergarten or to school; a break is made with the social dissi- 
 pations of the community, with gambling and wine-drinking; the 
 house may be a bit cleaner, a bit nearer sanitation. But you have 
 to wait for the second generation, who have had the impact of a 
 selected environment such as the Christian boarding school affords, 
 and such as longer habituation to the new ideas and customs^ affords, 
 to gain the greater forward step. We have but little notion, and 
 can have but little, how much these little communities of converts 
 need strong, wise, fearless, convinced leaders, or how much these 
 individual Christians of the first generation need each other in their 
 new endeavor. That is the great reason why I favor the development 
 of a more compact work, the intensive rather than the expansive 
 policy in evangelism. Otherwise we are in grave danger of a hybrid 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 29 
 
 Christianity, such as was the actual outcome of the syncretism of 
 the early Christian centuries and which may be but a few degrees 
 better than heathenism. 
 
 Station and Outstation Schools 
 
 A regular accompaniment of station and outstation evangelism 
 is the upbuilding of our schools. I will not say that we should open 
 no outstations where we are not prepared to engage in school work, 
 and yet I believe that we should not go far beyond that limit. We 
 need the local school, both higher and lower primary, for the sake 
 of the more adequate expression of Christianity and for the sake 
 of the church of tomorrow, in every community we may enter. 
 One of our most serious problems is that of supplying such schools 
 with trained teachers who are also exponents of the Christian faith. 
 I was rather surprised to find that our Mission employs, apparently 
 of sheer necessity, so many non-Christian teachers; that is, out of 
 a total of 98 women and men, there were 35 non-Christians. These 
 were in most cases definitely friendly to Christianity; never, of 
 course, openly hostile. When the time comes that we can staff our 
 schools entirely with active, well-trained Christians, men and women, 
 we shall be in much better position to achieve our primary aim in 
 school work. For the entire success of the Christian program depends 
 quite as much upon a Christian educational leadership as it does 
 upon an educated evangelistic leadership. 
 
 Impression of a Chhiese School 
 
 As with the Chinese church, so it is quite difficult to give any 
 proper notion of a Chinese school, particularly of our more poorly 
 housed schools, destitute of equipment and of all the accessories 
 which serve to make school life pleasurable to an American child. 
 In the first place, throughout all the winter, the school-room is cold. 
 Less sensitive to cold than we, the pupil is nevertheless half-be- 
 numbed by it; and the marvel to me is how anything can be taught 
 children who are half-benumbed by cold, often poorly fed and 
 not seldom half-sick. The average pupil in our West China 
 Schools is below normal in health, as has been shown by the tests 
 which Dr. Morse and Dr. Humphreys have made. The practice of 
 studying aloud gives the impression of continual confusion. Never- 
 theless, the better schools, as for example those at Yachow and 
 Suifu, impress you as real educational institutions. 
 
 Building from the Bottom 
 
 We have had a theory of building from the bottom which we need 
 to justify. The fact is that we have a very broad base in rather in- 
 effective lower primary schools which do not turn out a well-trained 
 product and hence make far less contribution to our higher primary 
 work than we are usually wont to suppose. Dr. Rudd makes the 
 statement that, as conducted, the lower primary school makes al- 
 most no helpful impression upon the pupils. The average teacher 
 obtainable cannot do much for them. At Suifu but 9 out of 48 
 pupils in our higher primary school came from our own lower prim- 
 ary school; at Kiating very few pupils came to the city higher prim- 
 ary from the outstation schools; at Yachow, from nine outstation 
 schools, there were but 12 pupils in the higher primary. We do 
 
30 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 need the broad base, but not a base so broad that it will not bear 
 the superstructure. 
 
 Things are changing rapidly for the better and we now have 
 more qualified material from which to select the teachers in our lower 
 schools. The Normal School holds the key to our educational future. 
 I was glad to find the educational missionary at Yachow taking hold 
 of the outstation school work strongly and to find that the Principal 
 of Munroe Academy is giving as much time as may be to the city 
 schools in Suifu and to the outstation situation. Kiating, with 
 fewer outstations, has in this respect a simpler problem; yet the 
 Kiating educational situation is far from ideal. We should have 
 an adequately staffed well-housed and well-equipped higher primary 
 school at Kiating. If we are to build from the bottom, we must also 
 build from the top. And we must not forget the middle of the 
 structure. We shall never have material for our higher schools in 
 the numbers we desire until we make more of our higher primary 
 work. We must bring the higher primary schools to their maximum 
 development and turn our attention as fast as' we may to the found- 
 ation and strengthening of necessary middle schools. We have at 
 present 186 boys in higher primary schools, 99 in middle schools, 
 23 in training schools and 18 in college. In 1920 one man from the 
 college and seven from the normal school entered mission employ. 
 This year we graduated one man from the university (who became 
 assistant principal of Munroe Academy) and three men from the 
 normal school. (These men passed at once into mission employ.) 
 In addition, this year seven students drop out of their normal school 
 for a year’s teaching in the schools of the Mission. 
 
 The University 
 
 Both in organization and in personnel, the University commends 
 itself to the visitor from America. A fine and substantial beginning 
 toward a permanent plant has been made, and our Baptist share in 
 it is significant. With the completion of Vandeman Hall and 
 the erection of our Middle School Dormitory, we are quite to the 
 fore in the matter of buildings. The University proper has more 
 buildings projected than its builder can care for: the Middle School, 
 the Medical, Library and Biological building' are all urgently needed. 
 Funds for all of these, and provision for a teaching building on the 
 Friends college site, have been for some time in hand; only the 
 unusual conditions of building in West China have delayed their 
 erection. I believe that the Middle School is now in process. It was 
 greatly needed, for the Middle School now has above 200 students. 
 The Medical Building or a section of the Biological Building ought 
 immediately to be built, as the Medical School, which needs laboratory 
 and clinical facilities, now numbers 34 students. 
 
 It is remarkable that the University has been able to carry on 
 its work with conditions so disturbed. My latest information is 
 to the effect that Szechuan now has five governors, or rival claim- 
 ants to supreme authority, each in control of a limited section of 
 the province. 
 
 If the University is to have that early expansion which it de- 
 mands, it must look to the middle schools of the missions for students. 
 Of the 15,000 pupils enrolled in the school system of the West 
 China Educational Union, by far the greater proportion are in the 
 lower primary schools, in many of which teaching is so ineffective. 
 The Union is still weak in effective higher primary and middle 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 31 
 
 schools, and our own Mission is weak here, in spite of excellent work 
 in certain of our schools. Our most significant service to the Uni- 
 versity and to the future of our own work will be the strengthening 
 of our school work at this point. I cannot help feeling that Munroe 
 is not well located. Whether or not it should be across the river 
 from the city, it certainly is true that its present quarters are not 
 adequate for the conduct of a real middle school. There is land 
 enough, I believe, for the necessary plant. With continuous well- 
 directed effort, it should be possible to build up a strong middle 
 school at Yachow. But that will require the continuous upbuilding 
 of the outstation schools at the same time. We ought at least to 
 have a first-class higher primary school at Kiating and might easily 
 in time have a middle school, although I cannot help feeling that co- 
 operation with the other missions ought to be our aim at this center. 
 
 The Medical Work of the Mission 
 
 Once more our hospitals in West China are running. I was sur- 
 prised to learn from a report at the Conference last February that 
 our hospitals in this Mission have been operated only 35.4 per cent 
 of the 20 hospital years since that work began, and then not at full 
 force. That looks like poor economy. They are today more nearly 
 staffed, counting assistants and all, than ever before in the Mis- 
 sion’s history. The greatest shortage just at this time is in the 
 Medical School staffing. There is a claim for three new men from 
 our society for the Medical School staff and one for dispensary work. 
 The fact that we are setting up a medical education for a province of 
 50,000,000 people ought to catch the imagination of the co-operating 
 missions. The plan for the school calls for the full time of 12 men, 
 with six others for the hospitals. There are at the present time 
 only six men in actual service on the staff and in the hospitals — one- 
 third the required number. We ought soon to send our representa- 
 tive, the Dean of the School, relief, for he is burning the candle at 
 both ends. We cannot afford to require that of any representative 
 of ours on the mission field. 
 
 I am a full believei^ in an investment by the missions in the field 
 of constructive and preventive medicine, and there is no finer ap- 
 proach to this service than that afforded by the Medical School. To 
 have this undisputed Christian approach to the coming medical pro- 
 fession of that vast province should call for a bigger investment than 
 we have made. As to the man for dispensary work; I have a sug- 
 gestion from the Secretary of the Mission that here is a line which 
 looks toward a development of self-support. The fact is that vast 
 quantities of medicine in the raw state, particularly of herbs, are 
 shipped out of the province to be compounded in Europe or America ; 
 whereas, if it could be compounded by Christian men in West China, 
 it would afford medicines now beyond the reach of the poor at reason- 
 able rates and would also enhance the fortunes of those who did the 
 compounding. In any case the problem of self-support is keen 
 enough in our growing Christian community. 
 
 The new hospital at Suifu will greatly extend the community 
 service of the Mission and will serve as well for the supplementing 
 of the facilities offered for the graduate training of physicians in 
 their year of interneship. It should be possible from such a center 
 to extend a ministry of community sanitation and preventive med- 
 cine throughout the region. 
 
32 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 Our Building Policy 
 
 The question of what should be our building policy in a given field 
 is not original with me. The mission buildings themselves have 
 wrestled with it. I am not referring especially to the sort of homes 
 which we should provide for our missionaries. Minimum expendi- 
 ture here is not likely to prove true economy, and yet there is con- 
 ceivable an over-ornate type of mission residence. I have reference 
 rather to the type of church building, of school building and 
 of hospital which we should erect. I am not so much concerned 
 with styles of architecture, though the question is important, as 
 with the scale of expenditure. Should we establish models which 
 the Chinese will not be financially able to follow when they take over 
 the support and administration of the great Christian enterprise? 
 
 At the one extreme of foreign building by philanthropic agencies 
 in China we find the buildings of the China Medical Board in Peking, 
 very ornate and costly and wholly incapable of becoming models for 
 the Chinese medical builders of the future. At the other extreme 
 is the unadapted Chinese building, which in some instances we are 
 utilizing. No absolute standard of building could be established, of 
 course. Conditions vary most widely. The port cities witness many 
 adaptations of foreign-type buildings; the interior shows but few 
 such buildings. But it is not so much a question of readiness to adopt 
 innovations as it is a question of financial ability. 
 
 In any case, our buildings must set a high standard of comfort 
 and sanitation, with specific adaptations to the task in hand, whether 
 school, church, hospital or what. But they must set us a realizable 
 ideal for the Chinese. I do not believe that we have quite attained 
 that in West China or elsewhere. This is not, of course, to be con- 
 strued as a criticism so much as it is to be taken as pointing to a 
 future responsibility. We cannot pauperize our constituency by doing 
 everything for them; and large sections of China have not the finan- 
 tial strength of a Ningpo. 
 
 The Annual Conference 
 
 I was priviledged to be present throughout the session of the Con- 
 ference, from January 31 to February 9, 1921, and also to be in at- 
 tendance upon most of the meetings of the Executive Committee 
 during the Conference period. To my mind the Mission is succeeding 
 to a gratifying degree in the shaping of a policy which shall make 
 its work more effective in the future. Large dependence is now 
 placed upon the correlation of Reference Committee and Station 
 Council for ad interim administration, and the plan seems to be work- 
 ing out quite satisfactorily. There is also a tendency toward placing 
 responsibility for the administration of particular lines of policy 
 in the hands of strong committees instead of leaving such matters 
 wholly to the individual missionary. The Conference grappled effec- 
 tively with its major problems and seemed possessed with a good de- 
 gree of ability for self-criticism, an ability so essential to genuine 
 growth. 
 
 With the growth of the Chengtu Baptist College and of the Mission 
 as well, it becomes increasingly apparent that some relief must be 
 afforded the Secretary. Dr. Taylor has for some years carried this 
 double responsibility, being both the President of our College and the 
 Secretary of the Mission. I am not sure whether it would be wise 
 to try to shift the responsibility for the secretaryship entirely. Dr. 
 Taylor fills a place in relation to the work of the entire Mission which 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 33 
 
 could not easily be taken by another. At the same time, he is quite 
 indispensable to the College. Arrangements covering the period of 
 his furlough may have in them the suggestion of a solution. 
 
 JAPAN 
 
 I need not take time to offer extensive observations concerning 
 Japan. I should remark at the outset that I was everywhere re- 
 ceived with the upmost courtesy and I could not escape the feeling 
 that it was genuine. This leads me to remark that I cannot feel 
 that the view cherished by not a few missionaries in China, a view 
 which expresses itself in rather sweeping condemnation of the Jap- 
 anese people as a whole, is justified. I could not become an apologist 
 for Japan in her relations to China during the past decade. But I 
 do sincerely believe that most of our generalizations are too sweeping. 
 One must discriminate types of opinion as to national and interna- 
 tional policy among the Japanese people, for they are not all of one 
 opinion. Intensely loyal to their own nation, sensitive and proud as 
 they are, they nevertheless avail themselves of the right to contrary 
 opinion and there has been a vast deal of criticism, powerful and in- 
 fluential criticism, of the government’s attitude toward China. 
 Sweeping condemnation from without tends rather to discourage the 
 liberal group than to assist it in its effort for a more democratic and 
 popular government and for a happier relation to the rest of the 
 world. 
 
 Industrial and Financial Conditions 
 
 The most superficial view of conditions in Japan reveals the 
 fact of a transition, still in process and probably only well begun, 
 from the old to the new in business and industry. This is revealed 
 externally in the nondescript mingling of types of architecture; it 
 is apparent in the erection of great industrial plants and the mass- 
 ing of scores of thousands in the immediate neighborhoods; it is ap- 
 parent in the mushroom growth of cities, especially of those cities 
 which are centers of the new industry and the marts of the new 
 commerce. One can hardly gain any proper conception of the im- 
 mensity and complexity of this process or of the rapidity with which 
 it is transforming these centers of Japan, unless he is able to spend 
 months in the study of this phenomenon alone. 
 
 Japanese industry and trade profited immensely from the condi- 
 tions precipitated by the War. But that was not an experience of 
 unmingled gain for the Japanese people as a whole, for along with a 
 tremendous elevation in the scale of wants in the average community 
 there was a more than commensurate rise in the scale of costs. Japan 
 became the most expensive part of the Orient in which to live and 
 she remains so. With the end of the War, however, Japan was caught 
 in the undertow of receding values. Panic was but narrowly averted. 
 In place of the profitable side of a war situation, Japan now felt 
 the terrible cost of a war establishment, and there is no questoin but 
 that she is groaning beneath it today. She needs the trade outlet 
 which her treatment of China has in part taken away. She needs 
 the lifting of her excessive burden of taxation and the restoration 
 of a more nearly normal scale of costs. In these regards her situation 
 is not unlike that of the United States; but with the difference that 
 neither her financial organizations nor her industrial and labor 
 world are so well able to endure and cope with it as ours. 
 
34 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 The consequence of an inflation of values and an abnormal scale 
 of costs for our missionary enterprise is just this: that we shall have 
 to pay excessively for whatever we do in the near future and indeed 
 indefinitely. It means also that it will be difficult for us to hold our 
 Mission employees or to engage others at what may seem to us a rea- 
 sonable rate of compensation, for they are continually confronted by 
 more remunerative opportunities in other lines and they are under the 
 constant pressure of the high cost of living. 
 
 The Feeling of Competency 
 
 Japanese pride revolts against patronage. The Japanese, whether 
 Christian or not, feels his own worth; he may even seem to us at 
 times a bit too confident about it. Yet the fact remains: he feels 
 that he is quite capable to running the affair himself. This is every- 
 where evident; you can have a good deal of genuine friendship^ and of 
 real co-operation upon the basis of actual mutuality and comity, but 
 you cannot win or hold it on any other basis. 
 
 This element in Japanese racial psychology imposes upon the 
 missions a pretty definite set of limitations. It means that the Jap- 
 anese Christian community must increase in prerogatives and author- 
 ity, while we must decrease. This fact is well recognized by mis- 
 sionaries resident in Japan, the only question being one of the ap- 
 plication of the principle. Those missions which started in early to 
 train an ample religious leadership are in the better position in this 
 regard, for they have leaders who are quite capable of entering into 
 such a mutual arrangement as the Japanese can fully approve. 
 
 The further fact relative to this situation is that, under the in- 
 ternational conditions now prevailing, more particularly in view of 
 the relations between the United States and Japan, accentuated by 
 the attitude of California, this feeling of entire competency and insis- 
 tence upon complete racial equality is rapidly becoming a primary 
 article in the national creed. No one need hope to get far in Japan, 
 with any enterprise, and least of all with Christian missions, if he pro- 
 ceeds upon any other assumption. On the other hand, the Christian 
 with his doctrine that God has made of one all the nations, should be 
 most readily capable of adjusting himself to this demand. Even so, 
 there are times and situations which must try one’s soul. 
 
 I. THE JAPAN MISSION 
 
 Here, as in other missions, we have had to feel our way toward a 
 formulated policy. In the beginning there was a good deal of em- 
 phasis upon an expansive evangelistic policy as the main feature 
 of the work: to establish centers from which we might itinerate as 
 widely as means and staff would permit. Latterly, however, we have 
 inclined more toward an institutional type of work, yet without 
 writing field evangelism off our program. In this we have doubtless 
 been strongly influenced by the marked currents in Japanese life: 
 the tendency toward the city and toward the educational institution. 
 Whether we have made such adjustments with a full awareness of 
 their significance or not, we have been making them. No one can 
 doubt the alertness of our missionary staff : if they do not know what 
 is going on in Japanese life, it is most certain that none of us can tell 
 them. Yet, in spite of our alertness and our planning, circumstances 
 help to shape our course, too; and we cannot always control them. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 35 
 
 Of the Mission in General 
 
 One who has visited other missions extensively feels at once the 
 differences which Japan presents. There are no medical missions, 
 for the Japanese Empire provides its own trained physicians. There 
 are but few Christian educational institutions and the educational 
 opportunity, especially for the education of boys and young men, is 
 a good deal circumscribed. Only in special cases and in limited fields 
 is there any real opportunity for Christian education. 
 
 Nevertheless one is at once impressed by the unique features of 
 the Japan Mission. It has individuality. With exactly the same 
 chance, or an even greater chance, to enter these fields, it has re- 
 mained for our Baptist Mission to launch a Fukuin Maru, to establish 
 a Misaki Tabernacle, to open a Scott Hall and the like. The result 
 is that our Mission has a prestige in the field of missions out of pro- 
 portion to its numerical stren^h. There are other respects, as in 
 Sunday school work, in the development of self-support, in the im- 
 provement of particular opportunities, as at the Mabie Memorial in 
 Yokohama, where our contribution is not less significant. 
 
 The Churches 
 
 It was pleasing to find in Kobe, my first contact with our Japan 
 Mission, two strong churches, independent financially and well housed. 
 In Osaka as well I found our two leading churches comparatively 
 well housed. There is a very good building in Kyoto. The building 
 of the Central Church in Tokyo- — the Misaki Tabernacle— is of over- 
 shadowing importance. Other buildings I saw, good, bad and indiffer- 
 ent, but on the whole not impressive or adequate, most of them. 
 
 Some of the pastors impressed me as men of really excellent 
 parts, but for the most part they were of only average ability and 
 training— not at all outstanding men, even in their own communities. 
 
 I had the feeling that in too many instances the churches were pro- 
 ceeding upon the policy of opening their buildings on Sunday and 
 perhaps on a prayer-meeting night. The only other significant fea- 
 ture which I found in a number was the conduct of classes in English, 
 quite often in the church building itself. One would say that in a 
 mission land churches ought to seek a widely diversified contact with 
 the needs of their communities and in this service should be open 
 every day. In contrast with such a situation is the continuous minis- 
 try of the Misaki Tabernacle. To be sure, the service of a church 
 to the community will be governed to not small degree by its location, 
 but many of our churches are so located that they could render a 
 larger service in their own building than at present. 
 
 The Significance of Strong Churches 
 
 In my view of it, the churches are the measuring stick of our 
 success. How many vigorous, self-sustaining churches have resulted 
 from our years of labor? That is in the end the test question, for it 
 is only organized Christianity — Christianity organized into churches 
 — ^that actively perpetuates itself. Looking toward a day when we 
 shall withdraw from the field, or shall become associated in a sec- 
 ondary way to the churches themselves, we must ask this question. 
 Are the fruits of our labors being garnered into churches and these 
 churches themselves, led by able Christian leaders, engaging in all the 
 manifold ministry to which their opportunity challenges them? 
 
36 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 When we engage in such a service to the community as that of 
 the Misaki Tabernacle, we need to ask the question: How largely is 
 this in the way of transfer to the church itself? And further: To 
 what extent are those who become interested in this work and are 
 blessed by the ministry of the Tabernacle actually enlisted by the 
 church? At the present time, if I am correctly informed, the pastor 
 of the Central Church is perhaps not the man who can lead in so 
 great an enterprise. To my mind, then, it is not merely a question 
 how diversified a work we can carry on at Misaki Tabernacle through 
 our foreign staff. It is also a question how far we can integrate the 
 fruitage of that labor with the life of the church which houses in the 
 Tabernacle. This suggestion is not by way of criticism; this thought 
 is also in the mind of our missionary staff. 
 
 And, again, when we carry forward such a work as that at 
 Waseda, we of course, understand that we are making a contribution 
 to the life of the University and of Japan; but our further question 
 is: How is the product of this labor related to our churches as it 
 passes from the University community? Have we any effective way 
 of relating these young men to the church, to A Baptist church? It 
 is admittedly difficult to get them into the regular Tokyo churches: 
 Is a student church the solution? And, if so, how shall that stand re- 
 lated to our other churches so that an effective transfer may be made 
 upon the student’s graduation? And, furthermore — an even more ur- 
 gent question, perhaps: — Have we the type of church or the calibre 
 of minister which can command their interest when they have grad- 
 uated? We cannot, of course, say: “Go to, now, let us have only 
 outstanding men in our ministry!” But we can, perhaps, see the 
 significance of strong, well-located, fully adapted churches, as it 
 relates to the conserving of our student output. 
 
 We have a problem of self-support in the churches, to be sure, but 
 our first aim should not be to make a church self-supporting. Our 
 first aim should be to help a church face the claims of its community 
 and prepare to meet them. It is far better to have a church, one 
 church, which is actually getting under the burden of its community’s 
 claim, than to have half-a-dozen nice little churches which are self- 
 supporting but not too much concerned to make their community over. 
 A direct contribution to self-support, as I regard it, is the movement 
 for supplying our churches with parsonages. With the present high 
 costs, no more significant contribution can be made to the mainte- 
 nance of an efficient pastorate. 
 
 The City Problem 
 
 Japan presents all the urban problems of a period of industrial 
 transition. Her mushroom industrial districts are the abiding places 
 of huddled thousands, removed from the former restraints and ex- 
 posed to the exploiting vices of the world. Christianity must pro- 
 claim its solution of the problem of the congested city and must give 
 a demonstration. In other words, we cannot feel that we have met 
 the challenge of contemporary life in Japan if we seek only the 
 comfortable residence suburbs and leave the slums without our minis- 
 try. We cannot, for in that case we should be propagating a Chris- 
 tianity with a blind spot, a Christianity that would never attack the 
 problems of contemporary life, a one-sided, defective Christianity, 
 for the sake of the proclamation of a full gospel, we must attack the 
 problem of the slum. We are doing something in the Fukugawa dis- 
 trict of Tokyo, but that work — so bravely carried on against odds 
 must not be allowed to cross its dead-line for want of equipment and 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 37 
 
 plant. The same challenge, and a set of conditions to which I have 
 seen no parallel in any slum whatsoever, confronts us in Osaka. We 
 have been formally requested to go ahead with this work. Can we 
 meet our responsibility and side-step this challenge when that very 
 challenge called out into Christian activity and the Christian ministry 
 one of the ablest young men in Osaka? 
 
 But the Japanese city is not all slum. The fact is that the great 
 mass of city dwellers are self-respecting, hard-working, family-loving 
 folk; they too, need a manifold and discriminating ministry. And 
 this leads me to speak of the Misaki Tabernacle. 
 
 The Misaki Tabernacle 
 
 The Tabernacle is one of the finest instances in my knowledge of 
 a ministry built up around community needs. No church will find 
 the Misaka program a panacea. There are no panaceas. But any 
 church may well learn from the Misaki Tabernacle how to approach 
 its own neighborhood and discover the potential points of contact. 
 The points of contact were found and the ministry begun long before 
 the present splendid building was to be had. The building literally 
 took form around the life of the Tabernacle: it was built around a 
 going concern. Will a people respond with support and patronage 
 to such an opportunity? Last year the Japanese, through fees and 
 gifts, raised 51 per cent of the total budget, and that in a notably 
 difficult year financially. The building has become a literal communi- 
 ty center and thousands of people are annually brought under its 
 ministry who would not be reached at all by the ordinary routine 
 of a Christian church. There is no more significant type of Christian 
 service as related to the city problem. 
 
 A Trained Ministry: The Seminary 
 
 The imperative need of a trained ministry has for some time been 
 upon us in America. We need to realize that it is not less urgent in Ja- 
 pan. Japan has an overweening appetite for learning. It is quite sur- 
 prising to visit the book-stalls and note the titles of the foreign books 
 toi be found there — not in one stall but again and again. It is true 
 that many fail and will continue to fail of the opportunity for higher 
 education; but the Japanese people are alert, intellectually eager, and 
 not to be led far by one who manifestly lacks what they so highly 
 prize. 
 
 The candidates for our ministry in Japan vary a good deal. It 
 probably cannot be said as yet that they are, as a body, of the high- 
 est average ability. But there are some very able young men among 
 them, and the average is improving, I am told. I myself met the 
 Seminary student body and addressed them on two successive morn- 
 ings, and I gained a very good impression of their intelligent interest 
 in matters which are of great concern to our western theological 
 world. I also met several young men who are entering the ministry 
 in more or lessi extended personal contacts. I regard the outlook as 
 distinctly encouraging. 
 
 The fact remains, however, that we must in time give our min- 
 istry a more ample measure of training than our present arrange- 
 ment permits. We shall probably never have abler men on the fac- 
 ulty, although the younger of these men will grow in experience and 
 ripen in Christian character. But there are many limitations to 
 work with a small student group, seldom more than a score, in a 
 detached institution. And there are also limitations imposed by the 
 
38 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 attempt to cover both preparatory, and seminary work, with — if I 
 mistake not — some Junior College work added. The range is wide 
 when one considers the size of the faculty. We may justly hope that 
 with time we shall be able to claim young men from such a school as 
 Waseda, although not in large numbers. But our main dependence 
 must continue to be upon our own schools. This brings me to speak 
 of Mabie Memorial School for Boys. 
 
 The Kwanto Gakuin 
 
 I have been trying, ever since my first visit to the Mabie Memorial 
 School, to find a full vindication for it in my own mind as a mission- 
 ary enterprise, an undertaking of our Society. I grant that it would 
 be a service second to none to give these hundreds of students an 
 education under Christian auspices and at the hands of Christian 
 teachers. I cannot think of a finer Christian philanthropy. But I 
 am always trying in my own mind to relate these various activities 
 of our Society in the mission field to the upbuilding, rather, may I 
 say, to the creation, of autonomous, self-propagating, self-supporting 
 Baptist churches. No merely diffusive Christianity is going to live; 
 the only kind that will live is the kind that organizes itself into 
 churches. 
 
 Now this is not likely as a middle school ever to become primarily 
 a boarding school. The chances are that it will continue, so long as 
 it is a Middle School only, to be mainly a school attended by day pu- 
 pils. It is more difficult in such a school to integrate an adequate 
 Christian group for propagation purposes; and, moreover, it is a bit 
 difficult to secure permanent decisions for the Christian life from a 
 group so young, who have not had a Christian background. Much 
 depends on what happens to them after they leave as well as while 
 they are still pupils. A strong church at the Kwanto Gakuin would 
 seem to be quite indispensable, but for the reason that the pupils live 
 all over the city, it would not have the significance that it might if 
 the school were mainly a boarding school. 
 
 It seems to me that to conserve our opportunity, we need event- 
 ually to extend the course at Kwanto Gukuin to cover at least Junior 
 College, if not Senior College, work. We have the same reason for 
 conducting a Christian college in Japan that we have in America, and 
 an even greater reason, if I mistake not: that is, that we may train 
 a Christian leadership and give our young people the opportunity for 
 higher education under Christian auspices. 
 
 It seems to me, then, that ultimately it will be the part of wisdom 
 to locate the Seminary work where it may articulate with collegiate 
 work in our own institution, that is near the Mabie Memorial School, 
 or College as it may become. We ought to be prepared to make this 
 enlargement of the institution when it reaches its majority as a mid- 
 dle school, although I cannot see how it will be possible then. 
 
 Student Work at University Centers 
 
 No phase of the work of our Mission in Japan has appealed to me 
 more strongly than the student work at Waseda University. It is 
 so manifest that Christianity must make its appeal to the leadership 
 of modern Japan, if it is ever to win a place of commanding influence 
 in the life of the nation, that I have given unquestioning assent to 
 the experiment at Waseda. That experiment has fully justified the 
 faith which projected it. It has given us a contact with the student 
 life of that great institution even more vital than we had dared to an- 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 39 
 
 ticipate. With the erection of Scott Hall, the new Baptist Guild Hall, 
 this work enters upon a new stage of its history, and, indeed, reaches 
 a fresh crisis. In my judgment, we must now make a strong effort 
 to nucleate our efforts in a Christian church whose ministries shall 
 be closely adapted to the needs of the student group, and to correlate 
 the life of this church with the life and work of our other churches. 
 We could easily continue along the old lines ; indeed, that earlier effort 
 has given us our basis and approach. But our big problem, as a 
 missionary agency, is to link up the young men who accept Christian- 
 ity with the Christian churches, more specifically, with our own Bap- 
 tist churches, so that the weight of their influence and the gifts of 
 their leadership may be turned into specifically Christian channels. 
 I make these observations for the reason that, with ampler institu- 
 tional facilities, we may easily dissipate our effort in other directions, 
 worthy in themselves but not in line so directly with our main ob- 
 jectives. 
 
 I was very much impressed with the real opportunity which we 
 have in connection with the government university at Sendai. Of 
 all the missions in Sendai, ours is located much nearer the University. 
 The same lack of student accommodations which one finds generally 
 in Japan obtains here. It would be possible, with a good hostel as 
 center, to carry on a very strong and effective work among the stu- 
 dents of this institution. I do not know that our representative 
 would be given standing as a professor in the institution, although 
 that might be quite likely. In any case, the gathering of interested 
 Bible classes upon the invitation of Mr. Ross, and their sustained in- 
 terest in the opportunities thus offered them, indicate the possibil- 
 ities of a much larger development of this work. 
 
 The Inland Sea 
 
 I counted it a rare privilege to spend four days upon the Fukuin 
 Maru. The fruitage of Luke BickeFs life cannot be reckoned statis- 
 tically; even so, we have here a splendid basis for future effort in 
 the nearly 300 church members and the more than 2,000 children in 
 Sunday schools in this great parish of 1,500,000 souls, where we are 
 charged with the sole evangelical responsibility. Everywhere the 
 people are friendly; they know the Gospel Ship and welcome it. 
 
 We have now reached a stage where the organization of churches 
 has become imperative: From the one “Fukuin Maru Church,” we 
 must expand to four or five. We can have just such results in the 
 Inland Sea as we are prepared to work for. But, unless we justify 
 our opportunity by increased response, we shall not be warranted in 
 asking other denominations to keep out of this wide region. We 
 ought to bear in mind the fact that the Inland Sea has been and is 
 likely to continue a fruitful source of supply of young men for the 
 Christian ministry. It bears, if I mistake not, about the same poten- 
 tial relationship to our work in Japan as the country churches of 
 America do to our ministry at home. 
 
 Returned Students 
 
 A considerable number of students from our Japanese churches 
 have had advanced training in America and have returned there- 
 after to enter Christian service in Japan. These young men have, on 
 the whole, fully justified the expenditure involved. They are pro- 
 viding us with just the sort of leadership we must have. Probably 
 
40 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 there should continue to be a considerable investment of this sort, 
 yet we must look to a time when the bulk of our leadership shall com- 
 plete their training in Japan. The only real answer to the desire of 
 young men to find training abroad, and at the expense of the Society, 
 is more adequate provision for their training in Japan. Once we 
 have made ample provision there, our responsibility as a Society for 
 the training of students abroad will greatly diminish if it does not 
 entirely cease. I wish especially to commend the returned students 
 whom I met for their attitude and spirit and to indicate how very sig- 
 nificant for the future of our work the presence of these men at 
 this point in the history of our Mission. 
 
 Devolution of Administration 
 
 While I have no particular leading with reference to steps to be 
 taken, I must remark that the peculiar psychology of the times makes 
 highly important a degree of restraint and a measure of consideration 
 for divergent opinion which might at other times and in other sit- 
 uations seem wholly disproportionate. I do not see how the question 
 of relationship between the Mission and the churches could well have 
 been more wisely handled; yet the very existence of such an agency 
 as the Joint Committee carries with it certain liabilities. The Joint 
 Committee must, of course, be continued; we can take no backward 
 step here, nor can we undertake to say who shall represent the Japan- 
 ese churches upon that Committee. Our only recourse seems to be 
 that of a more careful discrimination of the specific powers of the 
 Joint Committee, and, in peculiarly delicate matters which chiefly 
 concern members of the Mission, to take such action as a Board as 
 shall relieve the Joint Committee of responsibility in these matters. 
 
 Members of the Japan Mission are under the peculiarly trying 
 constraint of this situation in many instances of which we are not 
 aware. Willingness to decrease iri authority, while he who was once 
 your subordinate increases; willingness to receive orders, where once 
 you gave them, requires rare discipline of spirit. By all odds, how- 
 ever, we must face the fact that the churches of Japan are to ad- 
 minister their own life and to control their own affairs, at an even 
 earlier date than we may consider them prepared to assume such re- 
 sponsibilities. The logical emphasis is upon the development of a 
 competent leadership. Of the competency of the Mission’s leadership, 
 I cannot speak in terms other than the highest. 
 
 III. THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 
 In General 
 
 One who visits the Philippines for the first time is scarcely pre- 
 pared for the wide disparity between the standard of life which obtains 
 among the more cultured Filipinos and the primitivity of the vast 
 majority of the people. It is true that the excellent service of the pub- 
 lic school system has reduced illiteracy, during the period of American 
 occupation, from about seventy per cent or higher to some thirty 
 per cent — really a remarkable record. But this elevation of stand- 
 ards of living is in no small part an economic question, and the econ- 
 omic ability of the masses has not risen in anything like a corre- 
 sponding ratio. As a whole, the people of the Philippines are poor; 
 they live meagerly, in a tropical situation which does not demand 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 41 
 
 from them that continuous expenditure of energy which the making 
 of a livelihood requires in the temperate zones. 
 
 The deposit of Spanish culture, so far as the masses of the peo- 
 ple were concerned, formed a not very uniform veneer over an un- 
 altered base of primitivity. It is true that three hundred years of con- 
 tact with certain aspects of Spanish civilization left its permanent 
 marks upon the Filipino community, and in these respects the com- 
 munity has not been radically altered by American occupancy. The 
 great invasion of the average Filipino community has been the coming 
 of the public school. In addition, there have come into a great many 
 of these communities the missionary representatives of the free 
 churches. These two forces will eventually radically modify the life 
 of the average community; indeed it may be said that they have al- 
 ready accomplished this result in not a few communities — the public 
 school more generally for obvious reasons, than have the free 
 churches. 
 
 Political Issues 
 
 It is not the purpose of this report to do more than suggest is- 
 sues which have a bearing upon the missionary enterprise. It may 
 not be apparent to a mere visitor to the Islands that the political 
 situation has any such bearing, but one has only to consult expe- 
 rienced residents of the Islands to learn that it has. The Filipino 
 people are clamorous for independence and are inclined to make of 
 it a sort of shibboleth. Whatever may be the missionary’s opinion 
 as to the readiness of the people for complete independence, he can 
 scarcely express a negative opinion without grave loss of prestige. 
 It is not for me to express my own judgment upon the issue itself; 
 I can only say that in this matter, where the missionary is almost 
 sure to have pretty strong convictions, he not seldom finds it impoli- 
 tic to give them public expression. 
 
 The nationalistic emphasis and tendency has manifested itself in 
 the formation of numerous separate churches. First, the Methodist 
 church suffered a secession, the group calling itself Cristianos Vivos, 
 though this movement was soon to be superseded by a more sub- 
 stantial one called Iglesia Metodista de Filipinas, a movement headed 
 by Nicolas Zamora and one which continues to this day with consid- 
 erable vigor. A defection from the Manila Presbytery of the Pres- 
 byterian Church in 1913, on account of utterances reported to have 
 been made in the United States by Dr. J. B. Rodgers of the Pres- 
 byterian Mission, took away into a nationalist movement which called 
 itself Cristianos Filipinas, some of their best churches. There are 
 numerous other groups, as the Iglesia Nadonal, a group in Cavite 
 Province, which illustrate within Protestant ranks the movement for 
 independent organizations, analogous to the movement from the Cath- 
 olic Church which the priest Aglipay headed. Once there is de- 
 veloped a leadership of any considerable strength, this situation is 
 likely to appear. We may be very sure that the home rule spirit 
 will manifest itself within our own field in time to come and the 
 desire find expression to take over all administrative functions. That 
 is in the end a desirable thing; what we must seek is that when it 
 shall become necessary the people shall be prepared, and such a con- 
 dition can be brought about only by the development of leadership, 
 the development of self-support and the inauguration of a policy of 
 progressive transfer. 
 
 The educated group of young Filipinos appear to me totally ab- 
 sorbed in the independence movement. We cannot claim their atten- 
 
42 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 tion while we ignore their supreme interest. We have as Baptists 
 at least a theoretic interest in the principle of independence and its 
 related principle of competency. We can scarcely fail to be interested 
 in the ultimate aspirations of the Filipino people and it may be pos- 
 sible for us to achieve at this point a leadership of vast significance, 
 if we sympathetically approach our problem. To give content to the 
 term “independence” and to the conception of “democracy;” to show 
 the limitations upon even American achievement of these ideals im- 
 posed by popular ignorance, by moral cross-currents, by political job- 
 bery, and — ^by direct application — to point out the perils in the Fili- 
 pino experiment — these, it appears to me, would be steps in an ap- 
 proach to sympathetic relations with the young leadership of the 
 Filipino people. 
 
 1. THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS MISSION 
 The Visayas as a Mission Field 
 
 The Visayans are the most numerous of the so-called “Civilized” 
 Malay tribes. The three islands in which our Mission has been at 
 work are the abode of approximately half of the Visayan population, 
 although our Mission has actually developed only a part of its alloted 
 field, since Samar, with an estimated population of almost a quarter 
 of a million people, has remained practically unoccupied. It is not 
 quite true to the facts to regard Luzon as the Philippine kite and the 
 Visayas as the “Tail”; the fact is that, at the time of the Spanish 
 occupation of the Philippines, the Visayans were more advanced than 
 the Tagalogs of the northern Island, although they did not keep pace 
 with the Tagalogs during the Spanish regime. While it is true that 
 there is some admixture of Spanish blood throughout the Visayas, 
 it is, on the whole, comparatively slight; there is a far larger percent- 
 age of Chinese in certain sections, and the Visayan-Chinese mestizo 
 is a more vigorous and thrifty person than the native of pure Visa- 
 yan ancestry. 
 
 In the beginning of Protestant work in the Philippines, when 
 “spheres of influence” were first tentatively alloted, the entire field 
 of the Visayas was given to the Presbyterians and the Baptists. 
 They were to agree upon a division of the territory, and they did 
 make such an allocation. In the end our responsibility was limited 
 to the provinces of Capiz and Iloilo (as far south as the city of Iloilo, 
 which itself, except for the joint hospital and dormitory work, was 
 reserved to the Presbyterians) and the province of Occidental Ne- 
 gros, with the Island of Samar thrown in for good measure. I am 
 not able to follow all the steps in the relationships between the Bap- 
 tist and the Presbyterian Missons in Panay and Negros, but I recall 
 that Dr. Rodgers told me that as far back as 1903 he has counseled 
 the transfer of all the work in Panay to the Baptist Mission, but that 
 his counsel in the matter had not been followed and that all the suc- 
 ceeding successes of the Presbyterian Mission in that territory would 
 make such a transfer increasingly difficult. 
 
 There are two somewhat distinct fields of work in the Visayas, 
 as elsewhere — the work in the barrios, or small villages in which 
 much the greater portion of the Visayans live, and the work at the 
 centers of population, such as the provincial capitals. While we have 
 undertaken both types, or rather have addressed ourselves to both 
 fields, the earlier history of the' Mission placed the greater emphasis 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 43 
 
 upon the barrio work. Here, as elsewhere in our Society’s efforts 
 upon the foreign field, we did not get at the training of leadership 
 so early or so adequately as some other missions, as, for example, 
 the neighboring Presbyterian Mission. 
 
 The people of the Visayas are a poor people; they have neither the 
 energy nor the leading in industry which seem to characterize the 
 Chinese who have entered this region. As a whole, they do not get 
 on, although doubtless those who have spent some years on the field 
 can report instances of marked improvement. Industrial training 
 in the public schools and agricultural education and direction by the 
 government bureau are slowly having their effect. At the same time, 
 so far as our churches are concerned, statistics of self-support are 
 meager enough, and would be relatively more so were the leadership 
 more nearly adequate and correspondingly more costly. 
 
 The Island of Negros presents something of a contrast with 
 Panay in the concentration of the sugar interests there. There 
 were no less than thirteen sugar mills of the modern type, which are 
 rapidly displacing the old Spanish mills, either in process of building 
 at the time of my visit to Occidental Negros, or recently built, their 
 cost ranging from P 750,000 to P 1,500,000 each. This brings to Oc- 
 cidental Negros a greater inflow of capital than to any other sec- 
 tion of the Visayas and seems to suggest some very marked possibili- 
 ties for future work. Yet in this province the average living con- 
 ditions are poor, infant mortality, as elsewhere in the Islands, is 
 high, and the term of average life as compared with our West is 
 brief. 
 
 The Churches 
 
 I could discriminate three types of church, as it seemed to me. 
 First, there was the old type of barrio church, not so very different 
 from what it was twenty years ago. I visited the church at Janiway, 
 where there was years ago a remarkable ingathering and a compara- 
 tively large membership. The whole barrio presented a rather de- 
 jected appearance to my untutored eye. The quarters in which our 
 Baptist population lived were poor and primitive enough, and their 
 church would have made a good cowshed. I am aware that this 
 might be said of many a primitive situation. But there was almost 
 nothing to relieve the utter barrenness of the surroundings. The 
 benches were simply two or three bamboo poles on stilts; the floor 
 was of mother earth; the pulpit was as primitive as one can imagine. 
 Frankly I looked for a little higher grade of response after these 
 years. I do not know the reason why there is not such a response. 
 Within a dozen miles to the east is the little barrio of Barotoc Nuevo 
 where the little church was a marvel of neatness, though of not more 
 expensive materials. A second type of church is the city church, of 
 which that at Capiz serves as the outstanding example. It has its 
 stone edifice comparing favorably with surrounding architecture and 
 its settled pastor, an elderly man of considerable ability and much 
 devotion. What that church will do when he retires is an interesting 
 question, for it is not likely to find a successor who can make the same 
 material contribution. The third type is the student church: this 
 is the type which we have at Bacolod; although it does not set out 
 to be exclusively a student church, as a matter of fact both its leader- 
 ship and its support are mainly from the student body of the Provin- 
 cial High School. But when one reckons up the number of churches 
 in these three classes, he finds that our churches are mostly barrio 
 churches. In fact, while it is important for us to strengthen both the 
 
44 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 second and the third types of church work, and for reasons which 
 need not be enumerated, we must greatly strengthen the work with 
 and for the barrio churches, for they are both our problem and our 
 ultimate resource. 
 
 The Problem of Ministerial Supply and Trained Leadership 
 
 The fact is that we sadly lack trained leaders for our churches. 
 Men either with very limited training or none at all are in the ma- 
 jority. The reasons for this are to be found partly in the general 
 retardation of the Visayan people, partly in the lack of adequate pro- 
 vision for the training of pastoral leadership, partly in the meager 
 compensation and the general unattractiveness to young men of am- 
 bition of the average Filipino Baptist Parish. The situation in gen- 
 eral is pretty well reflected in what I found on the Pototan field, 
 where there are some 25 churches, in general charge of an evangelistic 
 missionary. There I found four men only who gave all their time to 
 the work of the churches (not including two men who were self-sup- 
 porting). There were ten others, all young men, who were pastor- 
 teachers, that is they conducted private schools from the fees of 
 which they derived their main support. Nor were these young men 
 fully trained for the discharge of the pastoral office; they were but 
 former students or at best graduates of the Jaro Industrial School 
 or of government schools of no higher rank, and without any train- 
 ing for religious work worthy of special mention. 
 
 There are some recruits for the ministry coming from our Visa- 
 yan field, and a part of them have gone to Silliman Institute for their 
 general training, with the result that they have gone on into the 
 Presbyterian ministry. Not a single Silliman graduate is today serv- 
 ing any of our churches, while a number of ordained men in the 
 Presbyterian ministry are Silliman graduates from our field. The 
 simple fact is that Silliman Institute does not serve our field as a 
 resource for the training of pastoral supply. 
 
 Moreover on the present level of compensation for pastoral ser- 
 vice, and with the limited opportunity which an average field in 
 our Mission seems to offer a young man, we are likely for some time 
 to find the more promising output of our schools or product of our 
 dormitory work going into other service or into business where the 
 returns are more lucrative. 
 
 As I see it, the situation calls for rather decided action in several 
 directions: First, we must make adequate institutional provision for 
 the training of the rank and file of our leadership ; secondly, we must 
 make a more concerted and consecutive attack on the opportunity 
 afforded by the great student centers, where we should hope to re- 
 cruit not a small part of our future leadership; thirdly, we should 
 seek to lift the whole of our local church life to a higher level of effec- 
 tiveness — the situation calls, at least for fresh inquiry; and, finally, 
 we should do a better piece of work in field-training for the men who 
 are now serving our churches. 
 
 Our Future Educational Policy in the Philippines 
 
 I wish, first of all, to remark that I am innocent of most of the 
 debate which took place some years ago over the question of educa- 
 tional policy. As I have remarked, I refrained on principle from 
 making inquiry about past situations which had been source of fric- 
 tion and tried to keep my face turned toward the future. What I 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 45 
 
 shall have to say here is not, therefore, an espousal of one side or of 
 the other in the controversy; it is the deliverance of my mature 
 judgment, supported in so far as it has support at all, by the con- 
 temporary opinion of men on the field, but formulated by myself 
 alone. I shall have occasion before I have gone much further to cite 
 the judgment of an informal meeting of the representatives of our 
 Board ■who were in the Philippines at the time of my visit. While that 
 opinion couched in a resolution, points in the general direction of my 
 conclusions, my proposals go several steps further in certain direc- 
 tions than was suggested by the resolution. 
 
 Our educational effort at Jaro took the form of an industrial 
 school. That was quite in line with early formulations of educational 
 policy in the Islands, both governmental and missionary. Silliman 
 Institute was itself projected as an industrial school. The current 
 Report of the Director of Education for the Philippines shows that 
 the public schools are still paying a very large measure of attention 
 to industrial education, with a view to improving the general status 
 of the population. The economic estate of the people among whom we 
 labor was and still continues to be one of great relative poverty. If 
 we are ever to hope for much of an improvement in the situation, we 
 must do something to aid these people to a higher standard of life. 
 It is upon this ground that I should argue that whatever we may do 
 in the future, we should conserve the experience we have! gained and 
 the foundation we have laid in industrial education. 
 
 But there are other factors to be considered. The inclinations 
 of ambitious young men, the leadership of the Islands in years to 
 come, are not predominantly toward the agricultural and industrial 
 pursuits. Whatever we may say of it, for a good while to come, the 
 brightest and ablest young men will go into government service, into 
 commerce, into teaching, into the professions, but not back to the 
 farms. We should like to be able to train some of these men in a 
 Christian school, but we shall train no such proportion as Silliman 
 now does in an industrial school. We have the same reason for con- 
 ducting a Christian school of higher learning that applies even in 
 America, and we have yet other reasons that apply more weightily 
 where the environment is so largely non-Christian or anti-Christian. 
 
 But the chief reason for a different type of institution is just the 
 reason which Silliman herself discovered. Starting out to be an 
 industrial school pure and simple, she found that these students need- 
 ed a broader training and were asking for it. Accordingly she en- 
 tered upon a complete reversal of policy, by which the Institute 
 became an exclusively literary and scientific institution. Only in 1919 
 did they begin again to face their responsibility to restore full train- 
 ing in agriculture and industry. The head of the Science Depart- 
 ment, in that year’s report, said, “Silliman of all schools should pre- 
 pare a large percentage of her students for agricultural and indus- 
 trial pursuits, for a school that does not contribute in some way to the 
 solution of these local problems is missing the greatest opportunity 
 of this age.” Now we shall not repeat Silliman’s mistake: what I 
 am advocating is simply a broadening of our courses, with a change 
 of the name of the institution perhaps such as shall indicate that 
 we are not solely or perhaps even chiefly an industrial training-school. 
 
 I have already given my reason for what may seem a duplication 
 of the work done by another institution. The most the government 
 contemplates, as I understand it, is the full development of a provin- 
 cial high school and of a provincial normal school at Iloilo. If we 
 are able to develop an institution giving collegiate literary, or literary 
 
46 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 and scientific training, we shall be doing a work for which the Island 
 of Panay will offer no competition. Dumaguete, where Silliman is 
 located, is out of the way — rather central for the whole Presb3rterian 
 field, but out of the way for Panay and as things now are even for 
 Occidental Negros, for students can come to Iloilo now more readily 
 than they can go to Dumaguete. We should be able to draw upon the 
 whole of the northern Visayas for patronage. Now I am not think- 
 ing of this merely because I believe it possible to develop such an 
 institution in time but because, without it, we shall continue to see 
 our best potential religious leadership diverted. Let us take Jaro as 
 it stands, broaden its offering, limit and strengthen within those 
 limits its industrial department, and make it the basis for the train- 
 ing of our future religious leadership. The literary courses to be 
 offered can be made to serve all groups of students; there can be built 
 up a strong and effective group of biblical courses ; and the whole can 
 be organized at an early date upon a Junior College basis. Iloilo 
 will be the educational capital of the Visayas and we, at Jaro, shall 
 be well within the central zone. Such an institution will give us an 
 added prestige in whatever work we may undertake at the La Paz 
 student center. 
 
 The Next Step 
 
 What is the first thing to be done with reference to this situation? 
 I submit here the suggestion of the informal group adopted at its 
 meeting last September, at the time of my visit. This suggestion 
 is in the form of a resolution, as follows: 
 
 “Resolved: That we express our opinion that institute 
 work and a Bible School on the field, and Seminary work 
 in Manila, are essential to the development of religious 
 leadership on this field. We wish to reiterate the request 
 for a ‘Bible Institute’ man who shall be qualified to initiate 
 the Bible Training School work, and we believe that this 
 should take precedence over the Seminary work; but it is our 
 opinion that the latter should be undertaken at the earliest 
 possible date that the man for the Seminary work should be 
 qualified to conduct dormitory work as well.” 
 
 The next step indicated by this resolution is the sending out of 
 a man to organize a Bible Training School. The view is couched in 
 these terms because it was not agreed that this work should be cen- 
 tered at Jaro. But in my judgment it should. I see every reason 
 why we should have one strong institution instead of two weak ones. 
 It seems to me also that the men who are going into our ministry 
 should have somewhat more than a mere Bible School training, that is, 
 that they should have a broader general training than is likely to be 
 afforded in its early history by the type of school suggested. The fact 
 is that the young Filipino is educationally alert, and the future will 
 not lie with the half-trained Bible School type of leader. A separate 
 Bible School, as it seems to me, would only represent an opportunist 
 policy. It seems to me that the Bible Training School man should be 
 perhaps our first contribution to the Jaro faculty. If we build up 
 a strong school of our own for general training and then send our abler 
 young men to Manila for final Seminary work, we shall be likely to 
 secure the leadership we want and must have if we are ever to win 
 out in our task in the Philippines. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 47 
 
 As to Manila 
 
 There is every reason why we should be represented in Manila. 
 Manila is the educational capital of the Islands, as well as the politi- 
 cal center and the metropolis. A continuous stream of Visayan youth 
 moves to and from the capital, while many remain there for years,, 
 in the institutions of learning, the various departments of government 
 and in business. The connections are very close. Not only so, but the 
 Visayas supply not a few of the religious leaders of the capital, some 
 of them young men who came from Baptist territory. 
 
 What we need at Manila seems to me twofold, as suggested in the 
 resolution: First, we need a representative who shall be able to 
 organize a dormitory for Visayan students at this University center, 
 and who may also — and at the present time the same man ought 
 to discharge both functions, in my judgment, — ^represent our 
 Baptist interests on the Faculty of the Union Theological Sem- 
 inary. No forward step which we could take would be more welcome 
 to the evangelical forces at Manila, and particularly to our Presby- 
 terian associates, as I am assured by their representatives at Manila, 
 Drs. Wright and Rodgers. Both this step and that recommended in 
 the preceding paragraph should be taken at our earliest opportune 
 moment. 
 
 Work at Student Centers 
 
 The organization of the educational policy of the Philippine gov- 
 ernment offers a very pointed opportunity to the evangelical missions 
 at work in the Islands. Instead of organizing high schools in all the 
 leading barrios, for economic and other reasons but one great high 
 school and an accompanying normal school is planned for each pro- 
 vince. Our position in the provincial capitals makes us participant 
 in three such situations: At Capiz and at Bacolod we have sole re- 
 sponsibility, and we have joint responsibility with the Presbyterians 
 for the work at Iloilo. (La Paz) 
 
 Certainly there is no point of contact with young life more to 
 be coveted than that afforded at La Paz. Here the sheer force of 
 numbers multiplies the opportunity to any agency prepared to take 
 advantage of it. There will be from 2,000 to 3,000 students assembled 
 here within a very short period. The proposed joint effort to be 
 entered into by our own representative and that of the Woman’s 
 Society should mark a new epoch in fruitful effort for the student life 
 of the Islands. 
 
 The work at Bacolod has been marked by a splendid measure of 
 success, but we must redeem the future by a somewhat more ade- 
 quate physical basis of operations. The residence, in whose lower 
 story the religious work centers, and the dormitory itself, seem about 
 to tumble down almost any time. Even the most casual observer 
 would judge either that the young Filipino is very hungry for what 
 the good people who represent us have to offer or that he is not a 
 very particular person as to his surroundings, or both. If the ex- 
 cellent work can be done which has been done, in spite of a make-shift 
 policy in equipment, what could we not hope to do with a more ade- 
 quate base? 
 
 Probably at Capiz for some time to come the student work must 
 be only one of the responsibilities carried by the missionary in charge. 
 It may even be that the interests of the missionary stationed at Baco- 
 lod must continue to be similarly divided; but certainly it is time we 
 were giving a man’s whole time to the student work at La Paz, With 
 
48 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 an adequate base of operations — hut, or what not — such a man could 
 do more evangelization of future leadership than half a dozen itine- 
 rants could hope to effect, or perhaps the whole staff put together. 
 We simply must possess that situation! It is enough to make angels 
 weep to see a man as overburdened as the physician in sole charge of 
 the hospital, effective as he is and would continue to be, obliged to 
 take on this extra burden. 
 
 The General Physical Equipment of the Mission 
 
 The general type of building which has served our Mission down to 
 date represents a first series of experiments in mission building in 
 the Islands, and is, in the long run, an expensive type of building 
 to maintain. The reason for this is partly climatic but chiefly be- 
 cause of the white ants. The most of our buildings are honey-combed 
 by white ants and tottering to their fall. The situation at Bacolod 
 and at Jaro is almost pitiable, not to speak of buildings used solely 
 for residence purposes there and elsewhere. It seems to me that 
 as we replace these buildings, and replace them we must, we should 
 seek to erect a permanent type of structure, generally perhaps of 
 concrete. Small as may be the relative initial cost of the present 
 type, it is expensive to maintain, and, in the long run little short of 
 disastrous. It is not so much a more elaborate type as a more 
 permanent type of building that is advocated. In no other mission 
 did I see so much evident wrack and ruin. 
 
 Possible Transfers from Mission to Mission 
 
 When I was in Manila, as I have indicated. Dr. Rodgers reminded 
 me of his suggestion of 1903 that the Presbyterians surrender the 
 whole of Panay to the Baptist Mission. I ought to say that he 
 volunteered this bit of information and, indeed, the whole question 
 was under discussion at his instance. He could see a great many 
 difficulties in the way of any transfer being made now, but only 
 such difficulties as naturally suggest themselves. The question of 
 possible transfer was informally discussed with some of our mission- 
 aries and they felt that the Mission could deal with the churches 
 to be taken over better than the Board could deal with its constit- 
 uency. That is as far as matters went during my visit. 
 
 However, as you are aware, a definite proposal materialized 
 later on for the transfer of the Presbyterian work in southern 
 Panay to the Baptist Mission, with the understanding, I believe, that 
 the Presbyterians should take up work on the Island of Samar, 
 where we have made only a sporadic effort to establish work. And 
 one very practical difficulty has arisen in the attitude of the Filipino 
 churches involved in the proposed transfer; they have objected. It 
 may be that this is an insuperable barrier; it may be that it is not. 
 It was not an insuperable barrier to the transfer of our Central 
 China Mission, although the cases are not quite parallel — that is, 
 the final decision did not rest with the churches. Such a transfer 
 would tend to simplify matters a good deal, but it may not be the 
 best way out. 
 
 The fact is that it ought to be possible to do a good piece of 
 co-operative work in Iloilo, as it has been elsewhere. At the same 
 time, we are in a rather anomalous situation there, or were at the 
 time of my visit, with the Hospital situation entirely in Baptist 
 hands, the Hostel under Baptist care, and the Baptist staff of the 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 49 
 
 Hospital under the ministrations of a Presbyterian church hard by. 
 I have no intention of trying to go into that situation. I do not 
 know enough about the merits of the case as this matter did not 
 come up for discussion during my visit. I do feel that our situation 
 in the city of Iloilo is somewhat anomolous. We have the most of 
 Iloilo Province and our work brings us right up into the suburbs of 
 the city, so to speak, for Jaro is practically a suburb of Iloilo; yet 
 we are not permitted to share the city proper with the Presbyterians 
 in the church or evangelistic field. To my mind a provincial capital 
 such as Iloilo ought to be open territory for the two missions whose 
 fields terminate at its border^, so to speak. 
 
 As to Samar, if the transfer is impracticable and falls through, 
 we ought either to establish a real center there and prosecute the 
 work, or else we should invite some other body that may be willing 
 to undertake additional responsibility to enter that field. It is a 
 very great pity to keep that Island, with a quarter of a million 
 people, without evangelical privileges. 
 
 Our Medical Policy in the Philippines 
 
 I mention this topic merely to say that I do not feel wholly 
 competent to discuss it. Superficially considered, the Philippines 
 may seem midway between such a land as China, where the medical 
 profession is a mission quantity and Japan, where the medical pro- 
 fession is provided and is relatively competent. Just how rapidly 
 medical education in the Philippines will create a supply of com- 
 petent Filipino physicians, I cannot predict. But I should judge that 
 the date when an adequate staff of competent physicians will be 
 forthcoming is rather remote. 
 
 With the present high rate of infant mortality as an index of 
 comparative need, to say nothing of the needs of the foreign staff 
 of the Mission, under the trying tropical conditions, there is not only 
 room for what we are now doing, but, if I mistake not, room for 
 very definite expansion. However that may be, the physicians in 
 charge of our medical work have not only been the servants of a 
 common and very urgent need of the Filipino community, they have 
 also been evangelists of the first rank. And that is as it should be. 
 In the training of nurses, in personal and mass evangelism, in the 
 work of the student centers, their efforts have been richly rewarding. 
 It should also be called to our attention that the medical work is in 
 the way of becoming more nearly self-supporting than the evangelistic 
 work. 
 
 Whether some new understanding could place our relations with 
 the Presbyterian Mission in the medical work at Iloilo upon a more 
 satisfactory basis, I do not know. Perhaps it is worth trying. 
 
 Reinforcements and Reorganization 
 
 None of our five missions which come within my purview in this 
 report sp greatly needs reinforcements; and these reinforcements 
 should, as I take it, supply first of all the pressing needs which I 
 have indicated — the development of our school at Jaro, the manning 
 of the student work at La Paz, the adequate staffing of our stations. 
 With compelled absence from the field on account of furloughs and 
 for other reasons of so many of our staff, the Mission is reduced 
 below the minimum level for efficiency, ruinously below it. 
 
 And with reinforcements there should be brought about at the 
 
50 
 
 Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 earliest practicable date the full reorganization of the Mission and 
 the complete restoration of function. This should involve the fullest 
 participation of representatives of the Woman’s Board in stated 
 conference and co-operative effort. 
 
 VI. CONCLUSION 
 
 A Word Concerning the Work of the Woman’s Society 
 
 I wish here to record my deep appreciation of all the courtesies 
 shown me by representatives of the Woman’s Society. I was made 
 to feel that I was quite as truly their guest as the guest of repre- 
 sentatives of the General Society. Although I did not enter into 
 inquiries concerning policies and the like, as with representatives 
 of the General Board, I saw the work of the Woman’s Society at 
 every opportunity, and I was greatly impressed by the scope and 
 efficiency of that work. Even when one considers that the Woman’s 
 Society has responsibility rather for selected types of work than 
 for the general conduct of the enterprise in the community, he has 
 yet to say that a really remarkable series of results have been 
 achieved. 
 
 I could wish that it were possible) for me to mention, one by one, 
 the kindergartens, hospitals, girls’ schools and the like, which I 
 had the pleasure of seeing. That is quite out of the question. But 
 I do want to say how much I appreciated the spirit and the con- 
 tribution of the representatives of the Woman’s Society, as these 
 were evidenced in the meetings of the annual conferences, the station 
 councils, reference committees and the like at which I was present. 
 I found the true spirit of team-work and was able a good share of 
 the time to forget that there was a representative of this society and 
 here a representative that — there was so manifest a unity of under- 
 taking. 
 
 As to the Recommendations Embodied in this Report 
 
 I have not seldom ventured rather decided expression of opinion 
 and have recommended policies without alternative. I wish to make 
 it perfectly plain that I do this in no dogmatic spirit. These ex- 
 pressions are merely my own best judgment, based not seldom yet 
 not uniformly, upon the best judgment of one or more missionaries. 
 The most I venture to ask is careful consideration of the measures 
 recommended. Not one of them would I wish to have adopted without 
 the fullest possible discussion and study of the issue and of the 
 situation which conditions it. 
 
 My sole desire in the expression of opinion is that the Kingdom of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ may have sway over the lives of men. If any 
 suggestion of mine looks toward a contrary result, may it be over- 
 ruled. 
 
 A Personal Word 
 
 I have said to you very inadequately those things that have been 
 suggested by my recent tour of the missions. I can but hope that 
 you will push the inquiry much further. If this report shall serve 
 in any degree to that end, I shall be most happy. 
 
Christian Progress in the Far East 
 
 51 
 
 ‘‘And now unto Him that is able to guard you from stumbling, and 
 to set you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceed- 
 ing joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, 
 be glory, majesty, dominion and power, before all time, now and 
 forevermore. Amen.” 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 Your Servant and Brother, 
 (Sgd.) Henry B. Robins. 
 
1 . 
 
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For information regarding the work of the 
 American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, write 
 to the following: 
 
 1. Home Department, American Baptist Foreign 
 Mission Society, 276 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 City. 
 
 2. The State Promotion Director of your state. 
 
 3. The General Board of Promotion, 276 Fifth 
 Avenue, New York City.