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 The Scope of The 
 Missionary Enterprise 
 
 An Address Delivered by 
 Professor ERNEST D. BURTO N, D.D. 
 of the University of Chicago 
 
 at the 
 
 Northern Baptist Convention 
 Los Angeles, Cal. 
 
 May 20, 1915 
 
 American Baptist Foreign Mission 
 
 Society 
 
 Ford Building Boston, Mass. 
 
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The Scope of the Missionary Enterprise 
 
 Address by ERNEST D. BURTON, D. D. 
 
 T HE ultimate aim of Christian missions is to bring 
 the whole world under the sway of the principles and 
 spirit of Jesus. Its goal is a human race, living in 
 peace one with another and in fellowship with the 
 universal Father as revealed in His Son, Jesus Christ. 
 It is a task that calls for sacrifice, devotion of lives, 
 consecration of means, and for boundless enthusiasm and 
 courage. But it calls also, and scarcely less, for wise organiza¬ 
 tion, careful planning, broad vision, wide co-operation. It is no 
 longer the work, if it ever was, of a few exceptionally devoted 
 and enthusiastic men and women who from their mountain-top 
 have caught a vision denied to the church at large. It is, and 
 until its full accomplishment, must remain the work of the 
 whole Church — not of one land, or of one race, or of one 
 denomination, but of all who acknowledge the Lordship of 
 Jesus and have enlisted under His leadership. 
 
 Springing from a religious motive and begun with an almost 
 exclusive emphasis upon the religious welfare and the future 
 salvation of the heathen, it has been forced by the very Spirit 
 of Christ which gave birth to it to extend itg activities to every 
 phase of life, — religious, educational, and physical. It con¬ 
 cerns itself riot only with the religious condition of the individ¬ 
 ual, but heals disease, founds hospitals, builds schools, develops 
 industry, creates literature, transforms society. It demands, 
 therefore, preachers, teachers, translators and writers, physi¬ 
 cians, industrial experts, economists, business men, statesmen. 
 It can no more be stayed than the westward march of empire 
 can be turned back, or the onward flow of rivers to the ocean be 
 stopped; nor will it arrest its majestic onward movement until 
 •the name of Christ is known and honored in all lands, the ideals 
 of the nations have been transformed and elevated, and the 
 peoples of the earth are dwelling together not only in peace but 
 in mutual helpfulness. It is not an exaggeration but the sober 
 truth to say that it is at once the greatest and the noblest 
 enterprise in which men are engaged today. 
 
 Within our own day we have witnessed a remarkable change 
 in the esteem in which the missionary enterprise is generally 
 held. Formerly ignored by statesmen, to whom it seemed only 
 the fad of fanatics, hated by merchants, who saw in it an obstacle 
 to the achievement of their own commercial plans, scoffed at by 
 newspaper writers, to whom its chief value was as the butt of a 
 
 [ * ] 
 
joke, it has come to be recognized alike by statesmen, merchants, 
 educators, and editorial writers as an enterprise which, however 
 little they may themselves be disposed to engage in it, is worthy 
 of their respect and must be reckoned with as one of the great 
 forces of modern times. 
 
 If a man travels round the world these days and does not come 
 back with some criticisms to make upon missionary work, 
 some suggestions of respects in which it might be made more 
 effective, you may set him down as an undiscerning enthusiast 
 or as one who has carried with him no powers of observation. 
 If he comes back only to scoff and belittle the work of missions, 
 failing to recognize that in all its aspects it is one of the greatest 
 enterprises in which men are engaged today, you may write 
 him down as a hopelessly narrow-minded globe-trotter. The 
 probability is that he has not gone outside of the foreign settle¬ 
 ments in the port cities, or has met only the most unimportant 
 or ill-informed of the European residents of Eastern lands. 
 
 THE QUESTION FOR US 
 
 If ever there was a time when any denomination of Christians 
 was warranted in dreaming that it might some time fill the 
 whole earth with its members and become the one force favored 
 of God to be charged with the conquest of the earth, that day 
 has passed. To no one denomination can this privilege be given.' 
 No one is adequate for so limitless a task. But to us as American 
 Baptists there has fallen a goodly share in this magnificent 
 enterprise. We do not need, at present at least, a larger or 
 better field than we already possess. The question we have 
 most seriously to consider is whether we are to meet adequately 
 the responsibilities we have already assumed in these lands which 
 we have claimed for ourselves or which by common consent 
 have been assigned to us, and which make upon us demands for 
 men and money, far beyond — I do not say our resources — but 
 our present scale of consecration or of giving. 
 
 OUR TASK IN BURMA 
 
 Turn your eyes for a moment to Burma, that land in which a 
 little over a hundred years ago the sainted Judson and his early 
 companions sacrificed and suffered and toiled that they might 
 lay the foundations of Christianity among the people of that 
 then benighted land. Go now, as many of you have gone, to 
 Rangoon and Moulmein and Henzada. See there the Christian 
 churches that have been gathered, many of them already fully 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
self-supporting, the schools that have been founded, the press 
 that has been established, the college -— the only Christian 
 college and the only college of any kind but one in that land. 
 Here, at least, we have a work which may not only appeal to 
 our Christian zeal and waken our sense of responsibility, but 
 justify us in feeling that we, as American Baptists, walking in 
 the footsteps of our fathers and building on their foundations, 
 have wrought something of which we may justly be proud. Yet 
 even here, how incomplete is our work and how large our 
 responsibility! We have the only Christian publishing house in 
 the land. It must produce the Christian literature for a nation. 
 We have, as I have said, the only Christian college for all these 
 Burman and Karen people. Should its doors be closed, there 
 would be no institution, and little hope of any institution, in 
 which there should be trained the leaders of this great Christian 
 community. The Government college, largely permeated with 
 the spirit of Buddhism, would remain as the only institution in 
 which men might receive an education above that of the high 
 school, and the inevitable result would be that in a compara¬ 
 tively short time the leadership of the nation, the control of its 
 ideals and its future history, would pass in large measure to the 
 educated non-Christian men. Today we are able to maintain 
 a college, but barely able to do so. To keep pace with the 
 situation, to retain our leadership, to meet our solemn responsi¬ 
 bility, a responsibility which rests upon us here as nowhere else 
 in the world, demands speedy enlargement of our work and 
 re-enforcement of our staff. 
 
 INDIA AND ASSAM 
 
 Turn for an instant to South India, that great field in which 
 the sainted Jewett, the masterful Clough, and their many noble 
 associates and successors have wrought so effectively that 
 among the Telugus of that land we have thousands of Christians 
 who still look to us as American Baptists for leadership and 
 inspiration. We are not straitened in the boundaries of the 
 field. There is ample scope for development. We are straitened 
 only in our own resources and in. the consecration of those 
 resources to the realization of the opportunities that are set 
 before us. 
 
 With twenty million Telugus as our parish and sixty thousand 
 Christians still in a condition to need education, watch care, and 
 guidance, the-staff of missionaries has been reduced within the 
 year by twenty-two, and reenforced by only four, thus suffering 
 a net loss of eighteen. 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
Or consider the Bengal-Orissa field in North India, the work 
 in which was-begun by the Free Baptists and passed to us by 
 the union of the two Societies. Here we have a population of 
 over four million people among whom ours are the only mis¬ 
 sionaries. For this great field we have seven missionary families 
 and nine single women. 
 
 Turn again to Assam, that great, though little known and 
 rarely visited country, where our missions are so widely scattered 
 and the means of travel are so imperfect that it sometimes 
 requires almost a week’s journey for the missionary to attend 
 the Conference of his mission, and where there is so great a 
 diversity of races and tribes that 167 languages and dialects are 
 spoken and there is no common lingua franca by which all or any 
 considerable number of them can be reached. Our work has 
 been largely among the Garos and the Nagas, and has reached 
 a point where the development of educational work is a matter 
 of pressing importance. At present there is little education 
 above a high school, and indeed but little even as high as that, 
 and there is urgent need of the development of industrial schools. 
 For the prosecution of our work there are needed immediately 
 at least ten more families, and from fifty thousand dollars to one 
 hundred thousand dollars for the establishment of the most 
 necessary schools. 
 
 MARVELS IN CHINA 
 
 From the lands about the Indian Ocean turn to China, where 
 despite the troublous political situation the doors of opportunity 
 stand wide open, in the south and in the north, in the east, and 
 in the west. It is a marvelous change that has come over the 
 attitude of the people toward Christianity in twenty years. The 
 meetings held by Mr. Mott in 1913-1914, and even more those 
 held by Mr. Sherwood Eddy in 1914—1915, have demonstrated 
 an interest in religion and a readiness to listen to the message of 
 Christianity far surpassing anything that has previously existed 
 in that country in the hundred years since Morrison. And this 
 interest has been manifested, not among the less intelligent 
 classes, but precisely among the best educated, the students 
 and the officials. Special audience halls have had to be built to 
 accommodate the thousands that have come to listen to the 
 Gospel message, and even then two successive sessions have 
 sometimes been necessary to enable all to hear. 
 
 But it is not only when the fame of such a man as Mr. Mott 
 or Mr. Eddy has drawn crowds that there has been a readiness 
 to hear the Gospel. In our own missions in South China at 
 
 [ S ] 
 
Changning, Ungkung, and Kaying, the men of the better edu¬ 
 cated and well-to-do classes have not only listened to but 
 accepted the Gospel, and are asking for the establishment of 
 schools. From the work of Mr. Bousfield in Changning, where 
 three years ago Christianity was practically unknown, thirteen 
 educated men are proposing to fit themselves for Christian 
 service as preachers or physicians. A military commander, when 
 converted, resigned his commission, and is now studying medi¬ 
 cine at Nanking to become a Christian physician. 
 
 At Shanghai, the number of students in the college is increas¬ 
 ing, and from among the graduates a goodly number are passing 
 into the theological school, so that we shall soon have that which 
 we have hitherto lacked — at least a few thoroughly educated 
 ministers. 
 
 In West China, that marvelously beautiful country with its 
 50,000,000 people of sturdy stock, the doors are wide open, but 
 we are greatly straitened both for men and money. Our most 
 pressing need is perhaps well-trained Chinese teachers to take 
 charge of the village and higher schools which shall in turn 
 produce the men to be preachers and leaders of a Christian 
 community. And this again calls for the development of the 
 schools in which such teachers shall be led to Christ and fitted 
 for service. The two Governors of the province of Szechuan 
 have each recently given S3,000 for the endowment of the 
 Union Christian College in which we as Baptists are partners, 
 and the President of the Republic has given S4,000; and there 
 is an urgent call that we should meet these gifts with responsive 
 generosity. 
 
 OTHER OPEN DOORS 
 
 The time would fail me to speak of the opportunities that are 
 open to us in Africa, in Europe, in Japan, and the Philippines. 
 It is the same story everywhere — wide open doors, abounding 
 opportunity, readiness to listen to the message and loud and 
 insistent calls for men and money with which to avail ourselves 
 of our almost limitless opportunities. Here and there one hears 
 the sneer at the failure of Christianity as demonstrated in the 
 terrible war going on between Christian nations in Europe. 
 But for the most part, this war has seemed only to quicken the 
 sense of the need of the Gospel upon the part of Asiatics as well as 
 of Europeans. 
 
 THE GREAT OBJECTIVE 
 
 Now the great objective in all these lands — that for which 
 we ought everywhere to be toiling and to which we should be 
 looking forward — is the development of a native church with 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
competent leaders. No nation can ever be fully or even approxi¬ 
 mately Christianized by foreigners. The force that brings a 
 people to the feet of Jesus Christ must be a force exerted from 
 within that people itself. It is not that the work of evangeliza¬ 
 tion is to cease. So long as men shall be born and generation 
 shall succeed generation, this work will go on. It is not even 
 that we have reached the time when there is no further place 
 for the foreign Evangelist. But it is true that in some of these 
 lands the day is near at hand in which we must call upon the 
 native church to accept as its responsibility and task the work 
 of evangelization; looking to us for advice and inspiration, and 
 for assistance in the development of those institutions by which 
 men who have accepted Christ as their Master are trained for 
 service in His Kingdom and through which the Spirit of Christ 
 shall adequately express itself in efforts for the uplift and 
 transformation of society, but holding themselves responsible 
 for the evangelization of their own people. And it is true that 
 in all these lands this condition of things, in which a large and 
 increasing measure of responsibility for the progress of the 
 Kingdom of God shall be laid upon the native Church, is so near 
 at hand that it is for this especially that we must plan, and to 
 this especially that we must direct our efforts. 
 
 FOUR ESSENTIALS 
 
 Now to realize this ideal and achieve this end means four things: 
 
 First, effective evangelization, whether by native or foreign 
 agencies, by which there shall be constantly added to the 
 Christian community converts truly born from above. 
 
 Second, organization of those who have thus become members 
 of the body of Christ in such way that they may mutually 
 contribute to one another’s edification and be built up into an 
 effective agency for the spread of the truth. 
 
 Third, education, by which there shall be created, first of all 
 a body of men and women, young and old, capable of a large 
 vision and of intelligent activity; and then the leaders to inspire 
 and guide this ever growing company to intelligent and effective 
 efforts for the winning of their own people to acceptance of the 
 truth and to the building of their lives in accordance with it. 
 
 Fourth, the creation of those philanthropic and humanizing 
 agencies which are not only necessary for the improvement of 
 social conditions and the creation of a high type of national life, 
 but are absolutely essential for the effective expression of the 
 Spirit of Christ which has become the dominating force in the 
 life of the new community. 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
THE MAGNITUDE AND DIGNITY OF THE ENTERPRISE 
 
 From whatever point of view, therefore, we look at it — 
 whether our eyes turn to the different countries in which it is 
 our privilege as a denomination and our solemn duty to propa¬ 
 gate the religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, or con¬ 
 sider the breadth and depth of the task which is committed to 
 us in every land — we can but be solemnized by the magnitude 
 and dignity of the enterprise and inspired to our utmost exer¬ 
 tions by the magnificence of the opportunities which are set 
 before us. If indeed it be man’s highest privilege to be a fellow- 
 worker with God, how magnificent and how limitless is the 
 privilege which is given to us as a denomination and how instant 
 and hearty and continuous ought to be our response to the call 
 of God to co-operation with Him. 
 
 THE FOUR FORCES AT WORK 
 
 Now, under God, the forces that are accomplishing all the 
 results which we have been endeavoring to set forth are, broadly 
 speaking, four: First, the resident native Christian community, 
 made up of those who have accepted the religion of our Lord 
 Jesus; -second, the missionaries who have gone out from Chris¬ 
 tian lands to carry the message of Christ and to establish in the 
 lands to which they have gone a Christian community and all 
 those institutions and agencies which inevitably follow where 
 the Christian message comes; and with these we should count, 
 as an element not to be forgotten, all those other Christian 
 men and women who, whether engaged in diplomatic, consular, 
 educational, or commercial enterprises, worthily represent and 
 adorn the religion of Jesus Christ; third, the boards of mana¬ 
 gers and officers of the Societies which have been organized in 
 the home land to carry forward this work abroad; and fourth, 
 and finally, the churches from which both the second and third 
 classes must come and from which there must also come all the 
 financial resources with which to support the work, save those 
 which are contributed by the Christian churches on the field. 
 
 I. THE FORCES ON THE FIELD 
 
 I have mentioned the Christian forces on the field first of all 
 for two reasons: first, because of their vital importance and 
 value in the whole task; and second, because of the danger, often 
 actually realized, that we shall overlook them or treat them 
 rather as material to be worked upon than as forces to be 
 depended upon. It ought never to be forgotten that from the 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
moment we have a company, even of two or three, who have 
 accepted the religion and the lordship of Jesus Christ, from that 
 moment we have the nucleus of a great, all-inclusive Christian 
 community which it is our aim to assist in creating, and that 
 this nucleus is not simply a mathematical or material center to 
 which additions are to be made by accretion, but that in it is 
 the power of God, and in it under God is not the least important, 
 if I dare not say also the most important, of all the factors in the 
 situation. 
 
 “The Kingdom of God is like unto leaven which a woman took 
 and hid in three measures of meal.” And when once there is in 
 any land a Christian community, however small, that com¬ 
 munity, as the leaven in the midst of the lump, is of vital 
 importance and not to be depreciated as compared with any 
 force that may be brought to bear from without. 
 
 But if it is true that from the moment there is the nucleus of a 
 Christian community it must be reckoned with, how much 
 more is this true when the two or three have grown to thousands 
 and among these thousands are men and women who by 
 character, ability, and training are worthy to be compared with 
 any whom it is possible for us to send as missionaries from our 
 own Christian land. It is true, of course, that the converts who, 
 'as the result of the labors of our missionaries, turn from idols to 
 serve the living and true God are often, even though they be 
 in years mature men and women, babes in Christ Jesus, and 
 that they need for a long time the fatherly and motherly care 
 which we are able to give to them. But there is the gravest 
 danger, a danger often realized in fact, that both we at home 
 and even our devoted missionaries on the field shall be too slow 
 to recognize the unmistakable signs of maturity on the part of 
 those whom once we counted babes, that we shall be reluctant 
 to admit them to a position of full equality with ourselves, that 
 we shall be too slow to recognize that the time has come when, 
 the country being their own and we foreigners, the church theirs 
 and we missionaries and by that title outsiders, we should yield 
 to them not only the position of equality but of leadership, and 
 should gladly cease to exercise any lordship over their faith, 
 contented, with the Apostle of old, to be helpers of their joy, 
 serving if need be under them as leaders. 
 
 But whatever the stage of development which the Christian 
 community in these non-Christian lands has reached, it is a 
 mistake of the most serious consequence to forget that they are 
 to be reckoned almost first and foremost among the forces 
 which are to bring about the Christianization of the world. 
 
II. THE MISSIONARIES 
 
 Concerning the second class of workers, the missionaries who 
 go out from Christian lands, I have already indicated suffi¬ 
 ciently perhaps the broad scope of the missionary enterprise and 
 the consequent variety of classes of workers which the present 
 stage of our work calls for. I want only at this point to em¬ 
 phasize two facts, often insisted upon but not too often. 
 
 As I have already intimated, the Christian church in many 
 of the lands in which we are working has already reached such 
 a stage of development that the men and women whom we send 
 to those lands need to possess a combination of qualities which 
 it is a triumph of Christian grace to combine. I mean a high 
 degree of highly trained ability and a humility and self-forget¬ 
 fulness which is willing to put this highly trained ability at the 
 service of the churches in all meekness, gentleness, and courtesy. 
 “Among the Gentiles,” Jesus says, “they which are accounted 
 to rule over them lord it over them, and their great ones exercise 
 authority over them. But it is not so among you. But whoso¬ 
 ever would become great among you shall be your minister, 
 and whosoever shall be first among you shall be servant of all.” 
 The time has come when we must indeed send to these lands 
 across the ocean our great ones, those who are first among us, 
 those who to large native ability and genuine consecration to 
 the service of Christ have added years of training to fit them¬ 
 selves for their responsible task of building the Kingdom of 
 God amidst or upon the ruins of the empires of 'this world. 
 And those whom we send must be great, not only in these 
 qualities which the world recognizes as great, but also in that 
 greatness which only they possess who, following in the foot¬ 
 steps of their Lord, are willing, not to be ministered unto, not 
 to stand in the position of lordship over the Lord’s heritage, but 
 to minister and to give their lives in ransoming men from that 
 vain manner of life which they have inherited from past genera¬ 
 tions. I wish in all honesty to bear my testimony to the fact 
 that we have many such among those who are now representing 
 us in Burma and India, in Assam and China, and Japan. But I 
 wish also to urge that it shall be clearly recognized that it is 
 more and more necessary in choosing men for this service to 
 choose only those who give promise of being great in both those 
 senses of the term of which I have spoken. 
 
 III. THE BOARD OF MANAGERS AND THE OFFICERS 
 
 And what shall I say concerning the work which you have 
 committed to the Board of Managers of this Society and to 
 
 f io ] 
 
its officers? Let me speak first of the latter and, if I can, give 
 to you in a few words a more vivid impression than you have 
 perhaps commonly had of the difficulty, delicacy, responsibility, 
 and breadth of the task which is laid upon the officers of the 
 Society. Consider what it means to be the administrators of 
 a business — to speak of it by this commercial sounding term — 
 whose representatives number seven hundred, and all of whom, 
 when they are in active service, are separated from the office 
 of administration by thousands of miles of land and water. 
 Remember that these men are scattered in many lands and 
 in widely separated provinces; that they are engaged in evangel¬ 
 istic, educational, medical and industrial work; that they are 
 building colleges, managing hospitals, organizing Christian 
 forces of many nations, opening up new territory, co-operating, 
 under circumstances of grave difficulty, with the representatives 
 of other denominations and of other lands; that many of them 
 are obliged to be at once preachers, teachers, business men, 
 educators, statesmen. Consider what is the task of your 
 Foreign Secretary, who must take in the first place a broad and 
 statesmanlike view of each of these great situations; who must 
 know the currents of life, political, intellectual, social, in each of 
 these lands sufficiently to deal intelligently with the problems 
 which come daily to his desk from all these various countries of 
 the globe; and in addition to these tasks, must, most difficult 
 of all, enter into such tender and intelligent sympathy with the 
 peculiar task and difficulty of each missionary that the letter 
 which he sends in answer to that which comes to him shall be 
 not an official document but a genuinely fraternal utterance of 
 a brother’s heart. 
 
 Try then to put yourselves in the place of the man to whom is 
 committed the oversight of the home field, who must know how 
 much money must be raised from the churches in order to meet 
 the urgent needs of the foreign work and the necessary home 
 expenses, and who in order adequately to present the facts to 
 the denomination must himself be informed as to what is 
 happening in all the lands in which we are working; who must 
 meet the representatives of the other co-operating societies and 
 of the convention, and with them work out the best possible 
 plans for presenting the common cause to the churches; who 
 must wrestle with budgets and apportionments; must conduct 
 the correspondence with the district secretaries, keeping them 
 informed about the situation at home and abroad, that they in 
 turn may do their work effectively; who must prepare articles 
 for the newspapers and literature of many kinds for circulation 
 
 [ ii ] 
 
among the churches; and besides all this must endure that 
 which comes upon him daily, the criticism of all the churches 
 that they are each asked to give too much and that the total of 
 all that they give is too little. 
 
 But there are yet two other important functions that fall to 
 the officers. One of these is the task of keeping in personal touch 
 with the young men who are turning their minds to the thought 
 of entering upon foreign missionary service. Did you ever stop 
 to consider how the missionaries of the Society are secured? Is 
 it your impression that when we need a missionary we go out 
 to the nearest employment office and take the best man on the 
 list? Can you imagine a task more delicate, more difficult, more 
 important than the selection of the men and women who are to 
 be our representatives to the Christian churches and to the non- 
 Christian peoples of non-Christian lands? Does it not seem to 
 you that some officer of your Society ought to be in close touch 
 with these prospective missionaries not for a month, but if 
 possible for several years before they are actually sent out, 
 advising them about their preparation, discovering for what 
 sort of work they are fitted, and turning to other occupations 
 those who are really unfitted for the foreign service? It is to 
 the honor of our Society that under the leadership of our Home 
 Secretary we were the first to systematize this part of a secre¬ 
 tary’s duty and work out a plan which is now being followed by 
 other boards. 
 
 The second special task that I wish to mention arises out of the 
 fact that in a work as large as ours, special problems are con¬ 
 stantly. arising and calling for decisive action by the Board. 
 Many of these problems are very complex; their roots reach 
 back into the past history of our missions, involve important 
 relations to the churches in missionary lands, to other mis¬ 
 sionary societies and like bodies. The Board cannot act wisely 
 without full knowledge of the situation. Sometimes it is even 
 necessary to send an officer of the Society to make an investiga¬ 
 tion on the foreign field. Yet often it is impossible either to do 
 this or for the Foreign Secretary to take time from his pressing 
 daily duties to prepare and present an adequate report making 
 possible intelligent action by the Board. I could this moment 
 easily name six or eight such problems on which action ought 
 soon to be taken but on none of which do I, at least, feel prepared 
 to act without a full report based on an extended special in¬ 
 vestigation. If we had a secretary whose only duty was to take 
 up these problems one by one and after careful investigation 
 give the Board a statement of the underlying facts and his 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
judgment as to the action to be taken, I have no doubt that he 
 would be always busy; nor do I doubt that his work would 
 in the end save the Society thousands of dollars in money, and, 
 what is far more important, contribute greatly to the success 
 and effectiveness of its work. 
 
 But I must not fail to speak also of the very important work 
 of another officer of the Society, the Treasurer. Perhaps some 
 of you have supposed that his only duties are to open letters 
 and extract money from them, keep accounts and sign checks 
 as ordered by the Board. If so, to broaden your conception of 
 his work may I mention three facts. First, the Treasurer has 
 general charge of all the property of the Society in all the 
 countries in which we work, including the hundreds of thousands 
 of dollars invested in hospitals, schools, and other buildings, as 
 well as general oversight of the work and accounts of all mission 
 treasurers. The second fact is that his daily mail necessitated 
 by the handling of this business is larger than that of any other 
 officer of the Society. The third is that he is the watch-dog of 
 the treasury — the man whose business it is to keep the Board 
 informed as to the state of the treasury, the relation of income 
 and outgo, and to utter his warning against appropriations that 
 contravene the general policy or the previous decisions of the 
 Board. Even thus I have named only a part of the many and 
 responsible duties of the Treasurer. 
 
 For the management of the affairs of our Society the roster 
 of officers ought then to include: 
 
 The Foreign Secretary 
 The Home Secretary 
 The Field Secretary 
 The Candidate Secretary 
 The Research Secretary, and 
 The Treasurer. 
 
 Into the difficult question whether any of these offices can be 
 combined, as for example that of the Home and the Field 
 Secretary or that of the Field and the Candidate Secretary, 
 and whether in any case the duties of any office are so arduous, 
 extensive and delicate as to require the division of them between 
 two men, as for example in the case of the Foreign Secretary —■ 
 into this question I am not proposing to enter. I am speaking 
 of functions, not of individuals. I am counting offices not men. 
 
 Perhaps it may seem to you that in this definition of the duties 
 of the officers I have left nothing for the Board of Managers to 
 do. But I am sure that none of the officers is of this opinion, 
 
 [ i3 ] 
 
nor do I believe that the experience of the Board has led any of 
 its members to this opinion. They are the appointed repre¬ 
 sentatives of the denomination, charged under such instructions 
 as the Society may give them with the responsibility of defining 
 the policy of the Society in all phases of the work, at home and 
 abroad, and of authorizing the actions which the officers after 
 their study may recommend. 
 
 No one can serve on the Board for even a short time and take 
 his duties seriously without coming to have a very deep sense of 
 the responsibility of the position and of the high order of quali¬ 
 fications that are necessary to fit one adequately to discharge 
 its duties. If one who has served on the Board ventures to 
 name some of these qualifications he will surely not be under¬ 
 stood as claiming that he possesses any of them in full measure 
 or all of them in any measure, or as passing adverse judgment 
 on any of his honored colleagues. But rightly to fill a place on 
 the Board one ought to have a clear conception of the purpose 
 and scope of the foreign missionary enterprise, a good knowledge 
 of the present condition of the Oriental world and of Africa, 
 and of the history of Christian missions especially in the last 
 hundred years, a capacity for grasping quickly the elements of 
 a complex situation,.keen sympathy with the difficulties and 
 perplexities of men in distant lands, many of whom he has 
 never seen, and a judicial temper combined with a capacity for 
 prompt decision tempered by an absolute unwillingness to 
 reach decisions otherwise than on a basis of facts. It would be 
 highly desirable that every member of the Board should, before 
 entering on his office, or soon after doing so, make a journey to 
 one or more of the lands in which our Society is working. The 
 practice of the Presbyterian Board to send a delegation abroad 
 every year and to keep one of the officers always on the field is 
 one which I hope may sometime be possible for our own Society 
 to adopt. Such journeys should not be thought of as junketing 
 trips but as serious investigative undertakings most necessary 
 for the equipment of the Board and its officers with the knowl¬ 
 edge necessary to a wise discharge of their responsible duties. 
 That such journeys will often tax to the utmost the wisdom 
 and resourcefulness, as well as the physical strength of those 
 who undertake them is well illustrated and, as respects physical 
 strength, painfully exemplified by the journey recently under¬ 
 taken on instruction of the Board by our Foreign Secretary now 
 lying ill in a Japanese city. 
 
 It will be.inferred that the present speaker is not much in 
 sympathy with the urgent demand sometimes made that home 
 
 [ 14 ] 
 
expenses shall be reduced. I am utterly opposed to the expendi¬ 
 ture of a single dollar for anything else than the promotion of 
 the work of evangelizing and Christianizing the world. I would 
 not vote knowingly for the use of a postage stamp for anything 
 that would not promote this end, and I freely admit that there 
 is danger of using money at home and abroad unwisely. But 
 the longer I am in contact with the work of foreign missions and 
 the more I know of the work of our Society, the more fully am 
 I convinced that no real distinction can be drawn between home 
 expense and foreign expense, and the more sure I am that we 
 are quite as much in danger of crippling our work abroad by 
 failing to provide an adequate staff of officers, as by curtailing 
 appropriations for work abroad. We have long passed the 
 point when our task can be accomplished by any number of 
 individuals working independently. We are engaged in a vast 
 and complicated enterprise with relations to other Boards and 
 to foreign governments — a work which demands co-ordination 
 of all our forces for clearly defined ends, whether this be evangel¬ 
 ism, education, publication, or medical work, and co-operation 
 with the work of other societies. No more foolish policy could 
 possibly be adopted by an American business house doing 
 business in foreign lands than to reduce unduly the work and 
 staff of the home office. And what is true of such a business is 
 not a whit less true of our Society. In extraordinary financial 
 situations, we must bend our ideals to the temporary pressure 
 of the hour, But we ought never to mistake the necessity of an 
 hour for a general policy. When ammunition is exhausted and 
 officers fallen, it may be necessary to send the army forward 
 unweaponed and unofficered, but it would be the height of folly 
 to adopt the general policy of fighting without officers or 
 ammunition. 
 
 IV. THE CHURCHES AND THEIR OPPORTUNITY 
 
 But my purpose today is to plead not for larger or smaller 
 expense at home, but for the hearty and ungrudging co-operation 
 of all our forces for the achievement of the great purposes for 
 which the Society exists. We have before us a magnificent task, 
 a God-given opportunity and responsibility. We ought care¬ 
 fully to scrutinize all our methods and all our machinery, and 
 remorselessly eliminate every part of it that is unnecessary, and 
 every man or woman who is inefficient. But important as is 
 this work of pruning, vastly more important is it that we all 
 gain a vision of the dignity, the scope, the glory of the enterprise 
 
 [ IS ] 
 
in which we are by God’s good grace engaged, and heartily throw 
 ourselves with all our force into the task of accomplishing it. 
 Of what avail is perfect machinery if there be no enthusiasm 
 behind it? Of what avail a locomotive, complete, polished and 
 oiled and on the tracks, if there be no steam in the boiler, no fire 
 underneath? On the churches of the home land rests in the last 
 analysis the responsibility for the carrying forward of this 
 enterprise, in so far as that responsibility does not fall upon the 
 churches of Christ in foreign lands. From them must come 
 the Board of Managers, from them must come the officers, from 
 them must come the missionaries, from them must come the 
 money. If we, the churches of Christ fail, all must fail. If 
 we rise to the measure of our responsibility in thought, in 
 prayer, in giving, God will not fail us, we must succeed. 
 
 The missionary enterprise, rightly conceived, is, as I said at 
 the outset, the grandest enterprise in which the human race is 
 engaged today. How dreadful compared with it is war, in 
 which millions upon millions in money and thousands upon 
 thousands of lives are sacrificed. How petty compared with it 
 is the acquiring of fortunes for the gratification of personal 
 ambitions. How utterly unworthy compared with it is the 
 devotion of one’s life to the pursuit of personal pleasure, or 
 indeed of any ambition which pertains to one’s own welfare 
 only. Cannot we whose eyes have caught a vision of the incom¬ 
 parable dignity and worth of this noblest of human efforts, 
 forget all differences of opinion, all conflicts of judgment, all 
 criticisms and hesitations, and unite our efforts as one man, 
 with one soul and one spirit striving together for the triumph 
 of the Gospel of Christ in every land on which the sun shines, 
 among every nation of the race of men? God grant us grace 
 so to do, and add His blessing, without which all efforts would 
 be in vain. 
 
 F OR additional copies of this pamphlet or information regarding the 
 work of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, write to any 
 of the following: 
 
 1. The nearest District Secretary. 
 
 2. Department of Missionary Education, 23 East 26th Street, New York City. 
 
 3. Literature Department, Box 41, Boston, Mass. 
 
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