Pioneers and Founders

Pioneers and Founders, by
Charlotte Mary Yonge

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Title: Pioneers and Founders or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Author: Charlotte Mary Yonge

Release Date: September 17, 2006 [eBook #19308]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIONEERS
AND FOUNDERS***

Transcribed from the 184 Macmillan & Co. edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS, or Recent Workers in the Mission
field.
BY C. M. YONGE,
Author of "The Heir of Radclyffe."
{i:Portrait of Reginald Heber: p0.jpg}
London: MACMILLAN & CO 1874.

INTRODUCTION.
It has been my endeavour in the ensuing narratives to bring together
such of the more distinguished Missionaries of the English and
American nations as might best illustrate the character and growth of
Mission work in the last two centuries. It is impossible to make it a real
history of the Missions of modern times. If I could, I would have
followed in the track of Mr. Maclear's admirable volume, but the field
is too wide, the material at once too numerous and too scattered, and
the account of the spread of the Gospel in the distant parts of the earth
has yet to be written in volumes far exceeding the bulk of those allotted
to the "Sunday Library."
Two large classes of admirable Missions have been purposely
avoided,--namely, those of the Jesuits in Japan, China, and North and
South America, and those of the Moravians in Greenland, the United
States, and Africa. These are noble works, but they are subjects apart,
and our narratives deal with men exclusively of British blood, with the
exception of Schwartz, whose toils were so entirely accepted and
adopted by the Church of England, that he cannot but be reckoned
among her ambassadors. The object, then, has been to throw together
such biographies as are most complete, most illustrative, and have been
found most inciting to stir up others--representative lives, as far as
possible--from the time when the destitution of the Red Indians first

stirred the heart of John Eliot, till the misery of the hunted negro
brought Charles Mackenzie to the banks of the fever-haunted Zambesi.
We think it will be found that, so far from being the talking,
exaggerating, unpractical men that the critical and popular mind is apt
to suppose, these labourers were in general eminently practical and
hard- working. They seem to us to range themselves into three classes:
one, stirred up by the sight of the destitution before their eyes, and
quietly trying to supply those needs; one, inspired by fervid zeal to
devote themselves; and one, selected by others, taking that selection as
a call, and toiling as a duty, as they would have toiled at any other duty
set before them. Each and all have their place, and fulfil the work. The
hindrances and drawbacks are generally not in the men themselves, nor
in the objects of their labour, but first and foremost in the almost
uniform hostility of the colonists around, who are used to consider the
dark races as subjects for servitude, and either despise or resent any
attempt at raising them in the scale; and next, in the extreme difficulty
of obtaining means. This it is that has more than anything tended to
bring Mission work into disrepute. Many people have no regular
system nor principle of giving--the much-needed supplies can only be
charmed out of their pockets by sensational accounts, such as the most
really hard-working and devoted men cannot prevail on themselves to
pour forth; and the work of collection is left to any of the rank and file
who have the power of speech, backed by articles where immediate
results may be dwelt upon to satisfy those who will not sow in faith and
wait patiently.
And the Societies that do their best to regulate and collect the funds
raised by those who give, whether on impulse or principle, are
necessarily managed by home committees, who ought to unite the
qualities of men of business with an intimate knowledge of the needs
and governments of numerous young churches, among varied peoples,
nations, and languages, each in an entirely abnormal state; and,
moreover, to deal with those great men who now and then rise to fulfil
great tasks, and cannot be judged by common rules. Thus it is that
home Societies are often to be reckoned among the trials of
Missionaries.

But we will not dwell on such shortcomings, and will rather pass on to
what