Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions | Page 6

a definition intelligent co-operation is impossible. Unless the objective is understood men cannot estimate the value of their work. They cannot trace progress unless they can see clearly the end to be attained; they cannot zealously support action unless they are persuaded that the action is truly designed to attain the defined end. There may indeed be many subordinate objects, and men may be asked to work for the attainment of any one of these, but there ought to be one final end and purpose which governs all, and intelligent co-operation involves the appreciation of the relation between the subordinate and the final end. Consequently if many objects are set before us, as they are in our foreign missions, it is essential that these many purposes and objects should be presented to us not simply as ends to be attained, but in their relation to one another and in their relation to the final end which the directors of our missions have clearly before their eyes.
Now it is just at this point that we fail to attain satisfaction. All societies publish reports and statistics, but the reports and statistics do not provide us with any clear and intelligible account of progress towards any definite end. They seem rather designed to attract and to appeal to our sympathy than to satisfy our intelligence. They set before us all kinds of work unrelated, indefinite, changeable, and changing from year to year, as though the compilers selected from the letters of missionaries any striking statements which they thought would attract support in themselves and by themselves. No goal is set before us, and the progress towards that goal steadily traced from year to year; still less is the relation between the different methods and means employed to attain each subordinate objective expressed so that we can see, not only what progress each is making towards its own immediate end, but what is the effective value of all together towards the attainment of a final end to which they all contribute.
But would not the definition of one great end or purpose hinder us? Are not all the great ends which we set before ourselves indefinite enough to include a host of different and mutually separate and even occasionally incompatible subsidiary objects, aims, and methods? Would not the rigid definition of the aim of our foreign missions, by excluding a great many legitimate aims and methods, weaken and beggar our missions, which are strong in proportion as they admit all sorts of different aims and methods? There are men who speak and act as if they thought so, and in consequence welcome as a proper part of the missionary programme all Christian, social, and political activities. Anything, they think, which makes for the amelioration of life, everything which tends to enlighten and uplift the bodies, the souls, and the minds of men, is a proper object for the missionary to pursue, and the missionary should assist every movement towards a higher life in the heathen community as well as in the Christian, and should introduce every method and plan, industrial, social, or political, literary, or artistic, which tends to ennoble the life of men. It may be so. It may be true that the introduction of everything which tends to uplift and enlighten is a proper object for missionary activity, but we venture to argue not all at once, in the same place, nor even any one of them at the whim of any missionary at any time, anywhere. Nor all in the same order. There is a more and a less important. And we do urge that if we are to take an intelligent part in foreign missions and to give those missions intelligent support, we must know what is the more important and what the less. We are told that the duty of the foreign mission is to bring all nations into the obedience of Christ, and that "all the nations" means all the people of all the nations, and all the capacities, powers, and activities of all the people of all the nations, individually and collectively, and that any work which tends to bring any part of the collective action of any non-Christian people under the direction of Christian principles is, therefore, the proper work of the missionary, and that the most important is the particular social, industrial, or political scheme which the missionary who is addressing us believes to be the pressing need of the moment in his district.
So long as foreign missions are presented to us in that way, so long as any mission may serve any purpose, we cannot possibly take any intelligent share in foreign missions as a whole. We are lost. We cannot co-ordinate in thought the activities of the missions, as we see plainly that they