Why is More 
 Money Needed 
 for Foreign 
 Missions ? 
 
 By THOMAS S. BA RBOUR 
 
 FOREIGN BECHETART 
 
 American Baptist Missionary Union 
 Boston. Massachusetts 
 
NVhy is More Money Needed 
 for Foreign Missions ? 
 
 T he question is timely. At the close of 
 last March a great deliverance came to 
 the missionary interests of American 
 Baptists of the North. Great debts were lifted 
 and the peril of disastrous retrenchment was 
 averted. There is danger that this deliverance 
 may be thought of as assuring to these interests 
 an ideal prosperity. The Budget of the 
 present year is rightfully recognized as repre¬ 
 senting a first demand upon denominational 
 loyalty. But if this were to be regarded as 
 adequately presenting needs in the work of 
 our missionary organizations the mistake 
 would be great and deplorable. 
 
 Appropriations vs. Opportunities 
 No one who has followed the work .of the 
 Missionary Union will need to be told that it 
 has long been held to a basis far below its 
 true possibilities and demands. The standard 
 regarded in the appropriations made has been 
 that of immediate and imperative necessity. 
 The plan for adoption of a joint budget found 
 this condition, and its basis of estimated 
 expenditures was confessedly the same to 
 which the work had so long been restricted. 
 The adoption of such a basis in the initiation 
 of the plan was wise, but the need for advance 
 upon it was urgent. 
 
 In presenting their estimates for the present 
 year to the Finance Committee of the North¬ 
 ern Baptist Convention, the representatives 
 
 2 
 
of the Missionary Union wrote as follows: 
 “ The Executive Committee would still 
 further express their conviction that the 
 figures of this preliminary schedule, based 
 upon a stringent effort to hold appropria¬ 
 tions to the lowest practicable basis, represent 
 a painfully inadequate approximation to a 
 just provision for the work in our mission 
 fields. The provision made seems to the 
 Committee scarcely to touch the' fringes of 
 the work which divine providence is indicating 
 as the due share of our Baptist churches in 
 the great movement for evangelization of 
 the non-Christian world.” 
 
 Increasing Need Inevitable 
 The demand for continually increasing 
 offerings is inherent in the very nature of the 
 missionary enterprise. The districts first 
 occupied by Christian workers are sur¬ 
 rounded by vast regions destitute of Christian 
 influences. Each station becomes an ex¬ 
 panding work. Missionary work enters, as 
 it were, at the apex of a triangle; the area 
 broadens as the work advances. The basis 
 of bare necessity is farther and farther re¬ 
 moved from an adequate response to op¬ 
 portunity. The pressure upon the mission¬ 
 ary, through his unwillingness that the life- 
 giving streams for which channels have been 
 opened at great cost shall be lost in the sands, 
 his sense of the irrecoverableness of unused 
 opportunities, is increasingly powerful. The 
 marvelous changes now swiftly transforming 
 the East intensify the embarrassment of the 
 situation. They affect the status and the 
 
task of Christian missions. Opportunities 
 throng, but what is done must be done 
 quickly. 
 
 The Need of Men 
 
 There is need for more men in our mission 
 fields. A few only have been sent from year 
 to year, and sickness and death have done 
 their work. The need cries aloud from 
 almost every section. Appeals just now at 
 hand powerfully illustrate this. In Japan 
 sad inroads upon the mission company have 
 been made by death and illness. In South 
 India almost every man is doing “ double 
 duty ” and in some instances three stations 
 are under the care of a single worker. In 
 Assam “ recruits of the past three or four 
 years have not filled the places left vacant by 
 enforced withdrawals.” In Africa Dr. Sims, 
 whose work as physician and mission treasurer 
 has been of inestimable value, cannot leave 
 his station though his furlough is long overdue 
 because no one is at hand to take his place. 
 In China illustration of the lack in men is 
 found in the fact that an offer of $2,000 for 
 erection of a hospital, made and earnestly 
 urged upon the Union by Chinese citizens 
 at Hopo in vSouth China, could not be 
 accepted because the calls for available men 
 for indispensable work are so greatly over¬ 
 taxing resources. 
 
 It is an underestimate to say that forty 
 new families should be placed at once in our 
 mission fields and that one hundred would 
 be required for an adequate improvement 
 of existing opportunities. The appeal to 
 Christian young men and women to consider 
 
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the claims of missionary service is powerful, 
 but equipment, transportation and main¬ 
 tenance of the needed recruits will require a 
 great increase in missionary offerings. 
 
 There is great need of increase in the 
 provision made for the missionary’s work. 
 Additions to the number of native workers 
 and advance in provision for missionary 
 touring are indispensable if the precious 
 investment of missionary life is to count as it 
 should. 
 
 Evangelism and Education 
 
 The direct work of evangelism should be 
 greatly reinforced. The sudden opening of 
 great opportunities in educational and medi¬ 
 cal work compels diversion to these vital 
 interests of a part of the meagre supply of 
 missionary recruits, and work of a dis¬ 
 tinctively evangelistic type is weakened. 
 Yet this work was never so important as now 
 because never before offered so open and un¬ 
 bounded a field for its extension. 
 
 The opportunity in educational work is 
 without parallel in the history of Christian 
 missions. It invites to the Christianizing 
 of the educational ideals of great peoples, the 
 training of teachers for their schools, and thus 
 to perpetuation of Christian influences in 
 their life through all coming generations. 
 Particularly as relates to China, the era 
 must be known forever as one in which 
 commanding influence upon the intellectual 
 life of the great empire was proffered to 
 Christian churches of the West. By our 
 acceptance or refusal of the opportunity, 
 
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our sagacity, not to say our Christian fidelity, 
 will be judged. Commanding centers have 
 been chosen by the Union at strategic points 
 in China and in British India. The college 
 and seminary supported at Shanghai by 
 northern and Southern Baptists, the school 
 about to be opened at Hankow by our 
 mission in conjunction with that of the 
 London Society, the institution established 
 at ChentuUn West China by the Union in 
 cooperation with three other mission bodies, 
 are offered a service indefinitely great. 
 But these schools have only the beginnings 
 of equipment. All will require large provision, 
 of men and money if the service opened to 
 them is to be accepted. In Japan a notable 
 opportunity is afforded by the union work 
 of northern and southern Baptists in theo¬ 
 logical instruction, and the call for immediate 
 expansion in academic, and possibly in 
 collegiate work, is pronounced There is 
 need of additional teachers and a suitable 
 building at Jaro in the Philippine Islands, 
 where the work of the school is already of 
 splendid influence. An urgent need in educa¬ 
 tional work illustrated at Mandalay, Bassein 
 and Moulmein in Burma, at Kurnool and 
 Nellore in South India, and at each of the larger 
 stations in the great fields of China is that 
 of appointment of American principals for 
 leadership in work of the academic grade. 
 The policy has the strong approval both of 
 mission bodies and of the Executive Com¬ 
 mittee of the Union, and is obviously of vital 
 importance, yet its adoption has thus far been 
 prohibited by the inadequacy of resources. 
 
In connection with^ educational interests a 
 new form of work of great promise has 
 developed—that of the Christian dormitory 
 in which students of governmental institu¬ 
 tions are offered a home. In Tokyo, for 
 example, this opportunity is afforded under 
 conditions which guarantee favorable access 
 to the great student body of Waseda Uni¬ 
 versity,—an institution now wonderfully open 
 to Christian influences. 
 
 Medical Work and Mission Buildings 
 
 There is need in medical work. Physicians 
 are needed both at hospitals already opened 
 and in centers where their work is urgently 
 solicited. In medical work, too, as in that 
 of general education, a new and unique 
 opportunity is given. The future physicians 
 of China may be trained in Christian medical 
 schools. In East, Central and West China 
 we should not fail to participate in this work. 
 
 The need of new buildings is very great in 
 each of our mission fields—the need of 
 mission houses, school buildings, hospitals 
 and chapels. The list of property needs, 
 definitely considered and approved by com¬ 
 mittees, upon the field and by the Executive 
 Committee of the Union, reaches an aggregate 
 of $250,000. Not less than $400,000 is 
 required at once for an adequate care for 
 property interests. 
 
 Following up Opportunity 
 
 There is need of extension of the work in 
 our mission fields to points immediately 
 
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related to the work already accomplished, to 
 the great unoccupied sections reaching out 
 from stations in Japan, particularly in the 
 Hokkaido region,—to strategic points inter¬ 
 mediate between widely separated stations 
 in East China and South China,—^to tribes 
 of Assam long inaccessible but now open to 
 Christian agencies,—to destitute districts in 
 the Philippine Islands. In the Kengtung 
 State, in northern Burma, the miraculous 
 results already realized compel the following 
 up of the initial work. The nine thousand 
 converts must have Christian guidance, and 
 the kindred races extending into West 
 China must not be denied the bread of life. 
 The position of these peoples, races of excep¬ 
 tional promise, is of thrilling appeal as they 
 await their place in the kingdom of God. 
 The people of hundreds of villages are known 
 as the “ Was with the changed hearts ” 
 through their acceptance of the strange 
 traditions which prepared the Lahu people 
 for their swift reception of the gospel. This 
 required extension of work is not an occupying 
 of new fields in the proper sense—it is the 
 following out of plans represented in the 
 existing work, the legitimate crowning of 
 past labors. 
 
 Other demands involving advance to 
 lands as yet unreached are forcing them¬ 
 selves upon the attention of thoughtful 
 men. Some of these have been brought 
 powerfully to the notice of the Board of 
 Managers of the Union. The claims of the 
 Sudan in Africa in particular are regarded 
 as so commanding that the Executive Com- 
 
 8 
 
mittee of the Union are instructed by the 
 Board of Managers to appoint at once a 
 commission for investigation of conditions in 
 this field. 
 
 The World’s Claim 
 
 It is apparent that no review of the claims 
 of the work of Christian missions in the 
 present day can be complete which fails to 
 recognize the duty of participation by all 
 Christian bodies in the effort now enlisting 
 wide attention,—that of giving the Gospel 
 at the earliest possible time to all peoples of 
 the earth. The motto, “ The Evangelization 
 of the World in this Generation,” can 
 no longer be ^thought to represent undue 
 youthful ardor. Christian laymen are widely 
 recognizing that its appeal to intelligent, 
 conscientious Christian manhood is irre¬ 
 sistible. There can indeed be no excuse for 
 indifference to this simple noble ideal that 
 will not shrivel if brought to the test of 
 God’s love for every human soul, and the 
 immeasurable depth of the human needs 
 which must remain unmet except as it is met 
 in Christ. 
 
 The call of the present day in the wonderful 
 success of Christian missions, in the new 
 conditions inviting advance, is of intense 
 solemnity; yet it may well awaken con¬ 
 gratulation and rejoicing. God is inviting 
 us to acceptance of a supreme privilege and 
 honor. Would it not be an unspeakable 
 blunder, as well as a dreadful recreancy, if 
 any Christian man were content to live 
 selfishly in such a day? 
 
 9 
 
1 £d.-20 M*Jan. ’10.