DISC 
 
 A Worthy New Era 
 Program For Foreign 
 
 Missions 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
 Address delivered at 
 STONY BROOK CONFERENCE 
 July, 1919 
 
 The Board of Foreign Missions 
 of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 
 156 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 
A WORTHY NEW ERA PROGRAM 
 
 FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS. 
 
 A really worthy New Era Program for 
 foreign missions would be nothing less than 
 an effort to determine and to do our whole 
 foreign missionary duty. If it is a five 
 year program which is contemplated the 
 right way to arrive at it would be first to 
 decide if possible upon our whole obligation 
 and then to determine how much of this 
 whole obligation could be undertaken and 
 accomplished in five years. It is easy in 
 such discussions to draw up mathematical 
 statements of calculated duty and these are 
 not without their value, but let any one try 
 to apply such modes of statement to the 
 Apostolic Church and its work and he will 
 realize how inadequate and irrelevant they 
 may be. One Saint Paul is worth a whole 
 arithmetic. 
 
 And yet if duty is to be done in a real 
 world it must be capable of being stated. 
 There are four terms in which it may be ex¬ 
 pressed. These can not confine the free 
 action of the Spirit of God, but they can 
 unfold the lines of human obedience. 
 
 1. A worthy New Era Program can be 
 stated in geographical terms. The foreign 
 mission fields of our Church fall in six 
 great areas, in each of which there is need 
 for lateral expansion. 
 
 (1) Latin America. We are at work in 
 six Latin American lands, Mexico, Guate¬ 
 mala, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Bra¬ 
 zil. By the new plans allocating respons¬ 
 ibility for the work in Mexico to the differ¬ 
 ent Boards, we are made responsible with 
 the Southern Presbyterians for all the work 
 in eight great states south of Mexico City. 
 There are no other strong church missions 
 in Guatemala and Venezuela, and, with the 
 
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exception of one station of independent 
 workers in Colombia, that great field is left 
 wholly to us. The Methodist and Presby¬ 
 terian Missions divide Chile ,and in the im¬ 
 mense states of central and southern Brazil 
 alloted to us we are almost wholly alone. 
 Matto Grosso is a state the size of Texas, 
 with more live stock than Texas and with 
 room for the population of an empire. From 
 Bahia our missionaries itinerate westward 
 from the Atlantic Ocean to the Andes 
 Mountains, across a territory as far as from 
 New York to Omaha. In this Latin American 
 area there ought to be at least six new 
 stations in immediate contemplation. The 
 doors are wide open and the heart of Latin 
 America is friendly to us and will grow 
 more friendly if we are just and brotherly 
 and self-controlled in our political and com¬ 
 mercial relations with Mexico and all our 
 other Southern neighbors- 
 
 (2) Africa. Our mission in Western 
 Africa is in the territory which belonged to 
 Germany and is now in the possession of 
 France. The Peace Treaty provides as 
 follows with regard to the German missions 
 in Africa and elsewhere: 
 
 “The Allied and Associated Powers 
 agree that where Christian religious mis¬ 
 sions were being maintained by German 
 societies or persons in territory belonging 
 to them, or of which the government is 
 entrusted to them in accordance with the 
 present Treaty, the property which these 
 missions or missionary societies pos¬ 
 sessed, including that of trading societies 
 whose profits were devoted to the support 
 of missions, shall continue to be devoted 
 to missionary purposes. In order to en¬ 
 sure the due execution of this undertak¬ 
 ing, the Allied and Associated Govern¬ 
 ments will hand over such property to 
 boards of trustees appointed by or ap- 
 
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proved by the Governments and composed 
 of persons holding the faith of the mis¬ 
 sion whose property is involved. 
 
 “The Allied and Associated Govern¬ 
 ments, while continuing to maintain full 
 control as to the individuals by whom the 
 missions are conducted, will safeguard 
 the interests of such missions. 
 
 “Germany, taking note of the above 
 undertaking, agrees to accept all arrange¬ 
 ments made or to be made by the Allied 
 or Associated Governments concerned for 
 carrying on the work of the said missions 
 or trading societies and waives all claims 
 on their behalf.” 
 
 In accordance with this provision, it ap¬ 
 pears to be the purpose of France to exclude 
 the German missionaries from Cameroun. 
 In that case the great work of the Gossner 
 and Basle missions will have to be taken 
 over until their readmission, by the French 
 Evangelical Church or by ourselves. .That 
 will mean a great growth of our work north¬ 
 ward in addition to the steady development 
 which should be required interiorwards. 
 
 (3). Japan and Chosen. The need of 
 Christianizing Japan becomes every year 
 more clear and urgent. The immense power 
 for good of a Christian Japan and the im¬ 
 mense power for evil of a pagan Japan 
 constitute an appeal and a warning to the 
 Christian Church. The Japan mission wants 
 to be able to occupy adequately its great 
 field in central and western Japan and in 
 the rapidly developing new section in the 
 Hokkaido. The Chosen mission wants to 
 cover its field both in Chosen and in Man¬ 
 churia, whither the Koreans have emigrated 
 by the hundred thousand. And such mis¬ 
 sions want to occupy, not new territory 
 only, but accessible and unoccupied regions 
 of the life and thought of the people such, 
 
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for example, as the press in Japan, which 
 reaches the whole nation and through which 
 an efficient newspaper evangelism would 
 touch millions of people who will never 
 hear a preacher. 
 
 (4) China. There are seven missions of 
 our Church in China, two in the north, 
 North China and Shantung; three in the 
 center, Central China, Kiangan and Hunan; 
 and two in the south. South China and 
 Hainan. Two new stations have been asked 
 for for four years and should be opened at 
 once in Shouchou in Anhwei Province and 
 in the Lien Chow peninsula in Kwang-tung 
 just opposite the Island of Hainan. Nearly 
 one-third of our whole foreign missionary 
 staff is in China, but one-fourth of the popu¬ 
 lation of the world is there, and this gener¬ 
 ation should see the outposts of the Chris¬ 
 tian Church established in every city of 
 China which should be occupied by foreign 
 missionaries. 
 
 (5) The Philippine Islands and Siam. The 
 two are not grouped together arbitrarily. 
 Their similarities are significant and their 
 dissimilarities—free peoples Doth of them, 
 though Siam is the most absolute govern¬ 
 ment in the world and its people slow to 
 use their liberty. Almost all of the Visavan 
 group, save part of Panay and Occidental 
 Negros and all of the southern section of 
 Luzon below Manila—the whole heart of 
 the Philippines have fallen to our respons¬ 
 ibility. The central points have been 
 touched, but the network of occupation 
 needs to be doubled. And in Siam are some 
 of our largest untouched obligations. Of 
 the eighteen provinces of Siam, which is 
 left to us as our exclusive field, only six 
 are entered with mission stations, and north 
 of Siam in Burma and southern China are 
 millions of the Tai people, among whom a 
 new and efficient mission should be at once 
 established. 
 
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(6) India, Persia, and Syria. Here is 
 nearly another quarter of the population of 
 the world. In India there are scores of dis¬ 
 tricts, each needing its own staff, and there 
 are whole levels of population now ductile, 
 and to be won or lost within a decade. In 
 Persia a new mission should be developed 
 from Meshed, which would reach Turkestan 
 and Afghanistan, and another one in south¬ 
 western Persia which would cover now un¬ 
 touched tribes. The ravages of the war 
 must be repaired in Azerbaijan, where the 
 Urumia station has been destroyed, and in 
 western and central Persia three new sta¬ 
 tions should be developed. The Syria mis¬ 
 sion calls for an extension ot its work north 
 and westward to embrace Aleppo and Mar- 
 din and to reach onward to join the West 
 Persia work at Mosul and the Dutch Re¬ 
 formed work at Bagdad. 
 
 Here there are calls for lateral extension 
 demanding the opening of three or four new 
 missions and a score of new stations. And 
 these are not far away calls nor conjured 
 up needs. For years the missions have been 
 urging these advances. They demand their 
 place in a worthy New Era Program. 
 
 2. A worthy New Era Program must be 
 stated also, and most of all, in terms of 
 men and women. 
 
 Twelve years ago, when the men of our 
 Church sought to face our full foreign mis¬ 
 sionary responsibility in the Omaha Con¬ 
 vention, they estimated that there would 
 be need of 4,000 men and women. That 
 meant quadrupling the present staff. For 
 the next five years it would not be too 
 much to propose that the staff should be 
 doubled if a really worthy program is to 
 be carried through. We have now 1364 
 missionaries. In 1896 there were 668. In 
 other words it took 23 years to double the 
 staff of 668. Is five years too short a time 
 in which to double the staff of 1919? The 
 
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China missions asked last year for 213 new 
 missionaries; the India missions for 76; the 
 Persia missions are asking for 66. In June, 
 1919, at the time of the New Missionaries’ 
 Conference, the following cablegram was 
 received from Tabriz; 
 
 “Send this summer four evangelistic 
 men, five women, two educationally 
 trained men, two women, one trained 
 nurse, one agricultural man, one short 
 term woman, two men teachers, (addi¬ 
 tional to Labaree, Coan, Wilson, McKin¬ 
 ney), latter evangelistic not educational. 
 Opportunities unprecedented.” 
 
 The Japan mission asks for 65 new mis¬ 
 sionaries in the next five years. There are 
 great differences in responsiveness in differ¬ 
 ent fields and in the same field at different 
 times. A great deal depends also on tne 
 strength of the native forces. They are the 
 central element in the whole problem. Our 
 task is not to send out and support from 
 America enough foreign missionaries to 
 evangelize the world. It is to plant the Gos¬ 
 pel as a living power in each land and race, 
 and let it work out through the people of 
 each nation by its own divine and vital 
 force. It is to the initial work that foreign 
 missionaries are called, and for our Church’s 
 foreign missions to do their part we should 
 doubtless double the staff in five years and 
 quadruple it in ten. 
 
 3. A worthy New Era program must be 
 stated also in terms of agencies and equip¬ 
 ment. 
 
 The first agency and the first equipment 
 is the foreign missionary himself, but be¬ 
 yond him are the native agencies just re¬ 
 ferred to. There are now 6806 native 
 preachers and teachers and other workers 
 connected financially with the missions, and 
 there are hundreds more who are employed 
 by the self-supporting churches. Among 
 these men are some of the ablest and most 
 
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devoted Christian men in the world— 
 Uemura and Ibuka in Japan; Kil in Chosen, 
 Ding li Meh in China; Sirai ud Din, 
 Mukerji, and Roy in India; Alvaro Reis, 
 Pereira, and Erasmo Braga in Brazil; and 
 scores of other good men and good women. 
 These are the rich fruitage of missionary 
 work in the past and the surest promise of 
 its future. Such workers should be multi¬ 
 plied in a far greater ratio than the foreign 
 missionaries. 
 
 Besides this increase, the educational and 
 medical and literary agents should be in¬ 
 creasingly strengthened. In the foreign 
 field we are maintaining in whole or in part 
 20 colleges and universities and 92 high 
 schools, and, in addition, not less than 15 
 theological seminaries, 6 medical schools, 
 and agricultural, engineering and industrial 
 schools. These institutions need equipment 
 and endowment, if they are to be adequately 
 and solidly established, of not less than 
 $10,000,000 as our share of their support. 
 Our 79 hospitals and 110 dispensaries are 
 caring for 365,000 patients annually. We 
 have single hospitals in America which care 
 for one-tenth this number annually and re¬ 
 quire ten times the entire budget of all the 
 medical work of the Board. The new con¬ 
 ditions which are setting in will require a 
 trebling of the expense of this work at least. 
 An adequate enlargement of the work would 
 double that again. And the call for an in¬ 
 crease of the literature agencies swells each 
 year. In Japan 98 per cent of the children 
 of school age are in school, and the whole 
 population will soon be literate. Christian¬ 
 ity ought to use the press to carry Christian 
 truth into every home in Japan. In many 
 Latin American lands printed matter is car¬ 
 ried postage free to encourage reading. A 
 half million a year would be a modest sum 
 to spend on the press and the publishing 
 house as agencies of Christian propaganda. 
 
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And there is the additional property 
 equipment needed—missionaries to be 
 housed in unsanitary lands, hospitals and 
 schools and churches to be built. The mis¬ 
 sions are asking for more than $10,000,000 
 worth of new property in the next five 
 years. 
 
 4. And now in terms of money what does 
 all this mean? 
 
 The figures which have been submitted 
 to the Executive Commission of the Gen¬ 
 eral Assembly and approved by its Budget 
 Committee for the year 1920 are as follows: 
 
 Missionaries now in Service.$2,000,000 
 
 150 additional missionaries an¬ 
 nually . 250,000 
 
 Native work and workers... 1,250,000 
 
 New property . 1,867,759 
 
 Higher educational endowment 1,169,833 
 
 New Stations . 25,000 
 
 New Missions . 200,000 
 
 Administration . 240,000 
 
 Deficit of 1919 . 468,538 
 
 $7,462,130 
 
 This does not represent nearly all that 
 the missions are asking under the inspira¬ 
 tion of the hope that the Church now in¬ 
 tends to deal adequately with its foreign 
 mission task, but it is a careful and temper¬ 
 ate requisition for the opening year of 
 a worthy New Era program for foreign 
 missions. 
 
 5. Does the Church now intend to deal 
 adequately with its foreign mission task? 
 
 The present conditions which we confront 
 call us to do so. The letter which the 
 Board addressed to the New Era Commit¬ 
 tee in setting forth the budget above, men¬ 
 tioned some of these conditions: 
 
 io 
 
(1) It would seem from our experience 
 this year that we will be able to find a 
 larger number of missionary candidates 
 than were available before the war, and 
 that we can plan, accordingly, for an in¬ 
 creasing reinforcement of our missions 
 with the confidence that the men ana 
 women can be found. 
 
 (2) The effects of the war on the non- 
 Christian people are still impossible of 
 calculation. We can already see evil re¬ 
 sults as well as good. The central fact, 
 however, is that the whole mission field 
 is more open and accessible than it has 
 ever been and that even in the Moham¬ 
 medan world the opportunities, as the 
 West Persia mission has cabled, are un¬ 
 precedented. 
 
 (3) It seems likely that the Treaty of 
 Peace most unfortunately, will greatly 
 curtail, if not in large part prevent, con¬ 
 tinuance of the foreign missions of the 
 German churches. If the German Chris- 
 tions are not allowed to carry on this 
 work for the present, it must be main¬ 
 tained for them by other Churches until 
 they can take it up again. This will in¬ 
 volve our missions in enlarged respons¬ 
 ibilities in West Africa, Persia, Syria, and 
 perhaps in China and India. 
 
 (4) The element of exchange is more 
 unfavorable than it was a year ago and 
 requires the Board to secure a large 
 amount of American gold to meet obliga¬ 
 tions which a few years ago could be 
 calculated at one-half the present ex¬ 
 change rates. In addition to the heavy 
 exchange loss in China and Persia which 
 continues, the yen in Japan and the 
 rupee in India have both advanced in 
 cost. 
 
 (5) The cost of living, of travel, of sup¬ 
 plies, and of almost all other items of ex¬ 
 pense have increased in the mission fields 
 
 il 
 
far more rapidly even than in America. 
 Travel and freight charges should of 
 course fall, but other costs are likely still 
 further to increase. 
 
 (6) The new moral responsibilities 
 which have come to America in conse¬ 
 quence of the war, the absolute need ol 
 inter-racial sympathy and justice, products 
 of the missionary enterprise, if the League 
 of Nations or any peaceful international 
 order is to be established, the clear dem¬ 
 onstration of the Gospel as the sole sal¬ 
 vation for the peoples, all increase the 
 obligation to plan the foreign Mission¬ 
 ary program of our Church with courage 
 and faith. 
 
 The tradition of the fathers calls to us 
 out of the past with a new and clear insist¬ 
 ence. They dared to plan boldly at tne 
 beginning without our resources at home, 
 without our opportunities abroad. They 
 thought in terms of continents and of all 
 mankind, and the Church to them was in 
 the world for the purpose of world evangel¬ 
 ization. This was their normal declaration 
 in the General Assembly of 1847—“The 
 Presbyterian Church is a Missionary So¬ 
 ciety, the object of which is to aid in the 
 converson of the world, and every member 
 of this Church is a member for life of said 
 Society and bound to do all in his power for 
 the accomplishment of this object.” And 
 in 1867 the Assembly declared again—“This 
 Assembly regards the whole Church as a 
 Missionary Society whose main work is to 
 spread the knowledge of salvation.” What 
 was the Church’s business, then is its busi¬ 
 ness now. It is worthy of recognition as 
 Christ’s Church just so far as it marks out 
 for itself and carries through a worthy pro¬ 
 gram of obedience to the missionary pro¬ 
 gram of our Lord. 
 
 ROBERT F. SPEER. 
 
 November, 1919 
 
 Form 2689