Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions | Page 9

appear as
nothing but the ill-organised, fragmentary and indefinite efforts of
pious people to propagate their peculiar schemes for the betterment of
humanity. Without some such statement we do not know how anyone
can take an intelligent, though he may take a sentimental, interest in
foreign missions.

CHAPTER II.
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.
1. We need a survey of the missionary situation in the world which will
express the facts in terms of the relationships between the different
missionary activities and between them all in relation to a dominant
idea or purpose. Such a survey is strictly scientific. All scientific survey
is properly governed by the end or purpose for which it is made.
It is this purpose or end which decides what is to be included and what
is to be excluded from the survey. If, for instance, we are making a
survey of the acoustic properties of church buildings in England, it is

not scientific to introduce questions as to the character of the gospel
preached in them. A scientific survey is not necessarily a collection of
all possible information about any people or country; that is an
encyclopaedia; a scientific survey is a survey of those facts only which
throw light on the business in hand. A scientific survey of foreign
missions ought not then necessarily to look at the work carried on from
"every point of view". The point of view must be defined, the end to be
served defined, and then only those factors which throw light upon that
end have any place in a scientific survey. We cannot be too clear about
this, because in survey of a work so vast and so many sided as foreign
missions we might easily include every human activity, unless we
defined beforehand the end to be served and selected carefully only the
appropriate factors. Carefully defined, missionary survey is not the
unwieldy, amorphous thing which people often imagine. There is
indeed a dangerous type of survey which starting with a hypothesis
proceeds to prove it by collecting any facts which seem to support it to
the neglect of all other facts which might disprove it. The procedure
advocated here is the adoption of a definite and acknowledged purpose
for which the survey is to be made and the collection of all the facts
which bear upon the subject in hand. The facts are selected, but they are
selected not by the prejudices or partiality of the surveyor, but by their
own innate and inherent relationship to the subject.
A scientific survey can only be a collection of facts; but inferences will
certainly be drawn from the facts which will direct the policy of those
who administer foreign missionary societies. The drawing of these
inferences from the material collected must be carefully distinguished
from the collection of the material (i.e. the making of the survey). The
latter precedes the former and is independent of it. Inferences hastily
drawn, or prematurely adopted, would only tend to discredit missionary
survey as a means to the attainment of truth. The adoption of a
hypothesis and the making of a survey in order to prove it by a careful
selection and manipulation of facts would not discredit survey as a
means to the attainment of truth; it would only discredit and debase the
moral character of the man who made such a survey.
2. The survey here treated of is missionary survey, that is to say, it

treats of missions and is governed by a missionary purpose. And it is a
survey of Christian missions; therefore it is governed by the purpose of
spreading the knowledge of Christ. This statement is of great
importance and needs to be carefully conned before it is accepted,
because by it missionary survey will be distinguished from all other
survey. For instance, medical boards survey medical institutions. Their
sole concern is whether those institutions are well found and
efficient.[1] But when a missionary surveys a missionary hospital (if
the principle which we propound is accepted), he surveys it not qua
medical establishment but qua missionary utensil. The object is not to
find out the medical efficiency of the hospital, but its missionary
effectiveness. It may be answered that a medically inefficient hospital
cannot be truly effective from a missionary point of view. That may be
true; but it is not certainly true. Whether it is true or not, that does not
alter the fact that an efficient medical establishment is not necessarily
effective from a missionary point of view; it is not necessarily either
missionary or Christian at all. Then to survey medical missions simply
as medical institutions is to ignore their real significance. Missionary
survey must relate the information asked for to the missionary purpose;
and unless it is so related the survey is a medical survey, not