Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions | Page 7

are not co-ordinated in action in the field itself. And it is practically impossible for us to imagine that the missions are directed on any thought-out policy, because a policy seems to involve necessarily the sub-ordination of the aim deemed to be less important to another which is deemed to be more important, and the less or the more must depend, not upon personal predilections, but upon closeness of relation to some one dominant idea; and, therefore, the definition of the dominant idea is the first necessity for the establishment of a reasonable missionary policy.
To some minds the idea of a policy in connection with missions seems to be abhorrent; but can a society with an income of something between half and a quarter of a million pounds, or even less, afford to aim at every type and form of missionary activity? Is it not necessary that it should know and express to itself, to its missionaries, and to its supporters what forms of activity it deems essential, what less important, what aims it will pursue with all its strength, and what it will refuse to pursue at all? It cannot afford to pursue every good or desirable object which it may meet in its course. It must have a dominant purpose which really controls its operations, and forces it to set aside some great and noble actions because they are not so closely related to the dominant purpose as some other.
A society with the limited resources which most of us lament cannot do everything. In medicine it cannot afford to aim at a strictly evangelistic use of its medical missions and at a use which is not strictly evangelistic. We hear men talk sometimes as if it were the business of a missionary society to undertake the task of healing the physical afflictions of the people almost in the same sense as it is the business of a missionary society to seek to heal their souls. We hear them talk sometimes as if it was the duty of a missionary society to supplant the native medical practice by western medical science as surely as it is their business to supplant idolatry by the preaching of Christ. And the tolerance of these ideas has certainly influenced the direction of missions. The evangelistic value of medical missions has not been the one dominant directing principle in their administration, and the consequences have been confusion of aim and waste of power. Nor has any other dominant purpose taken control; no other purpose, philanthropic, social, or economic, ever will take control so long as the vast majority of the supporters of foreign missions are people whose one real desire is the salvation of men in Christ. But the admission of another purpose has blurred the aim.
Because they have been pioneers in education, missions earn large praise and not in-considerable support from governors and philanthropists; but they have sometimes paid for these praises and grants dearly in confusion of aim. Many of them started with the intention of relating their educational work very closely to their evangelistic work; but because the evangelistic idea was not dominant, a government grant sometimes led the educational mission far from its first objective. Similarly, the establishment of great educational institutions altered the whole policy of a mission over very large areas, because no dominant purpose controlled the action of the mission authorities. The institutions demanded such large support, financial and personal, that when once they had been founded they tended to draw into themselves a very large proportion of the best men who joined the mission. In this way a great educational institution has often altered the policy of a mission to an extent which its original founders never anticipated, and a mission which was designed primarily to be an evangelistic mission has been compelled not only to check advance, but even to withdraw its evangelistic workers and to close its outstations. But that was not the intention of the founders of the institution. The difficulty arose because there was no dominant purpose which governed the direction of the mission. There was no purpose so strong and clear that it could prevent the foundation of, or close when founded, an institution which was leading it far from its primary object.
Again it is notorious that what we call the work of the evangelistic missionary is so manifold and variegated that it includes every kind of activity, every sort of social and economic reform. Our evangelistic missionaries are busy about everything, from itinerant preaching to the establishment of banks and asylums. Can we afford it? What purpose is dominant, what aim really governs the policy of those who send out evangelistic missionaries? What decides the form of their work and the method by which they pursue it? It is hard