The modern missionary challenge : a study of the present day world missionary enterprise : its problems and results

Front matter

* p^—^^mrn'mmnw* f* th1? canadian school of missions

compliments of:

tip: student christian movement

Preface

THE substance of this book was prepared as a course of lectures which were in part delivered before the Divinity School of the Yale University and before Bangor and Oberlin Theological Seminaries in the autumn of 1910.

The purpose of the book is to give a fresh and modern presentation of the missionary enterprise from the standpoint of the missionary. It thus furnishes a discussion of the problem more with an eye to the mission field than to the home base.

This fact probably constitutes the strength and also the weakness of the book. The missionary may be too near and too much a part of the missionary work to possess a right perspective of the work as a whole. He is necessarily confined to one field which largely absorbs his sympathies and constitutes his deepest interest. For years at a time other parts of the world are practically beyond his horizon. So that his judgment upon the general work may be inadequate and warped and his general conclusions unsafe.

His may be more the glowing vision and stirring call of the prophet rather than the sane conclusions of the statesman.

But these are days when prophet and statesman

8 Preface

alike need to be represented in our missionary literature.

I claim, however, to have enjoyed, the last two years, an unusual opportunity, during my many thousand miles of travel among the home churches, to come into closer touch with the missionary problem as a whole and to study it also in its home aspect.

I have taken the whole non-Christian world as the illustrative background of the present discussion. It is, of course, inevitable that, here again, my own field of work, India, will figure more conspicuously than any other country.

It is difficult, in these days of progressive thought and life, to maintain the right balance between old and new ideas in the missionary enterprise. This great work is rapidly changing its issues and its emphases. It is therefore important that one explain and impress this adequately upon the reader. It may be that I have been too anxious, in the following pages, to emphasize the new aspect of things and the up-to-date claims of our missionary work. If I have erred in dwelling too much upon this, I trust that I have not allowed it to overshadow the presentation of that unchanging element in the problem— the supreme need of the world for the same old sovereign remedy of salvation in a crucified, a risen and a ruling Lord.

I am glad to be able to present, as an appendix, a valuable series of statistical tables, and I here call attention to the preface which I have placed before these.

Preface 9

I desire to express here my appreciation of the light and inspiration received by me in the recent World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh. It is not only that the masterly reports of the eight commissions, with the discussion thereon, brought light and intelligence concerning all the field and every subject pertaining to the work; the whole atmosphere of that wonderful gathering was so surcharged with inspiration and imparted such an uplift that I am sure the following pages will, in many ways, directly and indirectly, reflect it.

The author bespeaks the kindly sympathy and patience of the reader, in view of the fact that the book is the product of leisure moments stolen from the strenuous days of a busy " furlough." But he has put his best into it in the brief time at his command and prays that the blessing of God may follow it into every home and heart and bring light and blessing to many who need it concerning the missionary work, so that the great missionary cause may have free course and be glorified among all who love the Lord and His creatures in sincerity.

J. P. JONES.

Contents

I. Its Subjective Source

I. The Universal Fatherhood of God .

II. The World Saviour

II The New Conditions Which it Furnishes

IT is less than a brief century since nearly every nation was fenced in by a thousand idiosyncrasies and gazed with jealousy, suspicion and surly defiance, if not with hatred, upon every other people. At that time, to be a foreigner was to be an enemy. Nations were then largely ignorant of each other, or knew only what was worst, and interpreted what they knew of all outsiders in the most uncomplimentary way. Selfishness was supreme in the inter- racial attitude. Even among Christian nations this was largely true; but, for non- Christian people the terms used were " infidels," " pagans," " heathen," " barbarians," and such like. And the sentiments expressed by these words were heartily reciprocated, with compound interest, by the non- Christian world in such epithets as "mletchas," " foreign devils," etc.

To-day a marvellous change has overtaken Christendom in this respect.

I

Consider the modern cosmopolitism of the Christian. He has become, generally speaking, a new man with a world vision and a world sympathy. For him, outsiders are no longer to be religiously shunned, or to be consigned, en masse, to eternal perdition. Though not exactly on equal terms, yet in a remarkably new way and in a modern spirit, he is prepared to consider men of other faiths and nations of other cults with a consideration and an appreciation that he never knew before.

This is owing to several significant facts and modern conditions which have overtaken him.

(a) Through scientific discoveries and inventions which have brought the whole world together. Forces, which a century ago, were entirely unknown, have been discovered, and others, which were only partially understood and dreaded, have been compelled to give up their secrets, and have been harnessed to the car of human progress. Steam, light, electricity and even the impalpable ether have each and all been reduced to servitude in the interests of human progress, and have become the messengers of man to transport him in comfort and with ever accelerating speed to the uttermost parts of the earth. They are also utilized in novel and surprising ways to communicate his thoughts and purposes in briefest moments to his antipodes. When the American Board, less than a century ago, began its work in the Hawaiian Islands, it took months to send its missionaries to that field, as it did to send all communications to them. To-day, instructions can be sent to those islands by cable, not only in inappreciable time ; but a message sent from the Boston headquarters arrives at its destination five hours before the recorded time of its departure 1 The election of the President of the United States was known to the writer some years ago in a hamlet in South India, when it was yet but midnight of the election day in California, and before the result was known to most of the inhabitants of the United States 1 The evening offerings of a New York gathering for the famine sufferers of India were distributed the next morning in food and raiment to famishing thousands of that land. This afternoon's riot in China comes to us upon electric wings and is communicated to us in this morning's paper 1 How few are the portions of the world which are not now thus bound to us by the mighty, timeless, ceaseless forces of nature. They draw near to us, by their multiplying agencies, all the far-off lands of our small planet ; they annihilate distance and make a mock of time.

Or, consider that which has become so prosaic and universal, the railroads of the world. What changes they have wrought ! Merchant and missionary alike travel, to-day, in comfort on well-built railroads and, perchance, in Pullman cars, in countries and through regions which, a generation or a decade ago, were either inaccessible or reached only with great difficulty. Think of the modern conveniences of Africa where railroads carried in comfort ex-President Roosevelt and his party nearly a thousand miles into the interior, taking only two days to convey them to regions which required months of unspeakable toil, danger and deprivation to reach, by the missionary, twenty years ago. There is now hardly a section of India which does not listen to the whistle and rumble of the modern iron god of travel, and which is not reached by the messenger of the Cross with none of the vexatious trials and discomforts of his predecessor, a half century ago.

{b) The growing habit of travel among the people of Christian lands is remarkable. A decade ago a resident of New England, and a man of prominence in the community, died and was laid to rest, who never had slept a night outside the walls of his own home. How impossible to find such a man at the present time ! He who had crossed an ocean was a rarity a generation ago ; now it is hard to meet one who has not crossed the boundaries of his own land and sojourned among strangers. Multitudes in our days pass from one continent to another and even encircle the globe ; and they compare notes and write books of their experiences with such frequency as to make every reader familiar with the sights and scenes, the life and habits of these far-off lands. Thomas Cook and Son is not only a name to be conjured with in every port on the habitable globe ; it is a firm which has wrought wonders in stirring up within men a passion to see foreign lands and in enabling hosts of people to visit, with ease and comfort and to understand with fair intelligence, regions which were yesterday unknown except to explorers, missionaries and distinguished travellers. This is but one among many firms which have come into existence, during the

5<D The Modern Missionary Challenge

last few years, to satisfy the modern ambition to see the world and to know regions and peoples which were absolute strangers to civilization a few decades ago.

The result of this modern spirit of unrest is witnessed in an amazing way at the present time in America. This land is the modern Mecca of millions from the many nations of Europe and the East, men who were pressed and driven, in their own countries, to the verge of poverty and destitution. They seek release from their bondage, and are ambitious for a broader life, with a larger horizon and greater possibilities of blessing and power. The spell of the great land of the West is upon them. Every month brings thousands of these people of many civilizations and of no civilization, of many languages and divers habits and inherited antipathies — they all come to America, the new land of promise and of strange potentialities. They meet together, mingle with each other, and, through the influence of the public school system, our intoxicating civilization, religious freedom and human equality, they form a new race amalgam and are creating, as they are solving, problems before unknown, or at least never solved, in the development of the human race. What an astonishing gathering of the races, what a wonderful working out of the problem of human destiny, what a strange evolution of a new racial product, and what a mighty, modern, national entity we are permitted to witness in America to-day ! All this has been made possible by modern conveniences of travel ; and who knows whether it is to result in unspeakable blessing or in an unexampled disaster to our country ?

(c) With this, and partly because of this, we are now witnessing a marvellous growth of knowledge concerning the non-Christian people of the world.

Stanley went forth, as a man of affairs, to find Livingstone, and he discovered Africa. How wonderfully the discovery transformed that intrepid explorer himself; and how much more did his narrative of the life of the Dark Continent bring a new impulse, a new sense of duty and a glorious consciousness of opportunity to the whole Christian world. How profoundly it stirred men everywhere and led them to understand and seek to remedy " the running sore of the world."

A very few years ago Korea was a hermit nation, whose chief ambition was to be let alone. But the time came, partly through the sordid and base ambitions of other nations, when that sleepy, innocent and helpless people had to be shaken out of their isolation, and their country be made the arena of the ambitions of foreigners. But, out of the turmoil and the grasping avarice of the three nations which exploited her, God has brought, or is rapidly bringing, Korea unto her own. He has opened her eyes to her backward condition, and has given her a new and living touch with modern civilization, and also with the most advanced type of Christian life and activity. Thus she is being prepared for national self-direction, independence and power.

It was only yesterday that that other hermit land, Tibet, rested peaceably in its own seclusion. What country seemed more surely destined by nature to remain the home of a hermit people? There, perched on "the roof of the world" and protected by mountain ranges and forbidding cold, it seemed an ideal abode of the mysterious Dalai Lama and his Buddhistic host. Yet, even Tibet could not be exempted from the penalties of modern curiosity and racial ambition. The great nations of the earth had their eyes upon it, because it was supposed to be in the way of their progress. Thus, in a few short years, the stubborn Lama was compelled to flee from his own land — a flight which has terminated just now in his ignominious pursuit by the Chinese government into British territory 1 All this is cruel injustice to an innocent people. But hereby God is opening the doors of that strange land, and exposing, to the camera of the world, that erstwhile unknown and misunderstood country. Through this new knowledge of the people a new door of access and of power has been opened to make known the message of Christ and His salvation to them.

One part of this method of contributing to the knowledge of non- Christian people is the activity of the many publishing houses which are pouring forth a mighty, and an ever-increasing, stream of literature concerning the far-ofE lands which are beyond the pale of civilization. There is hardly a land concerning which modern, up-to-date books have not been written by expert missionaries, statesmen, explorers and travellers. They reveal a careful analysis of the life and thought, and a full description of the habits and customs, of nearly all the tribes and peoples of the distant and inaccessible portions of the world.

(d) A new commercial interest in foreign and non-Christian peoples has become a prominent feature of modern enterprise, as it is becoming an important element in the attitude of the civilized world towards those lands. Our Western kings of commerce are seeking new lands to conquer for trade, new populations to exploit for their valuable resources, and fresh markets to receive the marvellously multiplied products of the West. The great commercial nations of the world are eagerly sending forth their consular and other agencies, even to the remotest regions, with a view to urge those awaking peoples to open doors of trade for their growing, greedy commerce. There is no other interest in the world which is more active and aggressive and more wide awake to its opportunity than that of trade and commerce. With excess of zeal, with cruel persistence and with haughty, threatening mien, manufacturers demand an open door among all these people to sell the many articles of their factories. And with these products of their mechanical ingenuity, they export also much of the base, immoral elements of their civilization.

But, thanks be unto God, the man of commerce is rarely unaccompanied by the missionary. It has been said, to our shame, that the same ships have carried the missionary and rum into Africa. Commerce has not been an unmixed evil to any of those lands. Even when not preceded by the missionary, the man of commerce is a forerunner of the messenger of the Cross, and often prepares the way for him to exercise his influence and power for the redemption of the people.

(<?) Besides this there has grown an increasing familiarity with, and a thorough study of, the religions of the non-Christian races. It is only the brief stretch of one generation since all the non- Christian faiths were classified together. There were tribes and races in Africa and in Asia, which, a generation ago, were supposed to be without any faith, and devoid of any religious ideas and purposes. They were supposed to be the godless brutes of a day, the denizens of this world only. It is astonishing to think what dense ignorance prevailed, the middle of the nineteenth century, concerning the religions of the people who were not a part of Christendom.

But the new science of Comparative Religion has brought to us the dawn of a new era of religious knowledge. We no longer believe, as our fathers did, that all faiths which did not find their origin in our sacred Scriptures are the offspring of the evil one and are his mighty agencies in debasing untold millions, and in consigning a moiety of our race to eternal perdition. We live under the growing light and effulgence of this modern science which compares intelligently, and classifies wisely, the faiths of the world. It not only analyzes and classifies the many ethnic and other non-Christian religions ; it also dignifies them by ascribing to them a message and a mission in the religious progress of our race ; and by showing them to be not of satanic origin, but the pathetic and blind groping of sin-sick souls, seeking after God and craving right relationship to Him, It shows every one of these religions to be in possession of teachings worthy to be conserved and utilized, as well as of others which should be discarded and overthrown. The science of Comparative Religion reveals in these faiths some genuine worth — elements which should be properly correlated to Christian truth and brought into subjection to the Christ life and ideal and to the Christian scheme of redemption. What a wonderful light is thus thrown, even upon our own unique and divine religion, by comparing it with the inadequate and unsatisfying teachings of the other great faiths of the world ; and by revealing its supremacy and power as a system of truth and of life !

{/) Through all this there has come into the spirit of man that sense of universal brotherhood which is so characteristic of our day. A growing knowledge of the people of all lands not only creates an interest in them and in their affairs ; it also generates a neighbourly interest and a sense of kinship, which is not only novel and striking, but which is revolutionary in its influence upon man everywhere. It raises the question whether these erstwhile strangers and foes are not, after all, our kith and kin — whether there is not, deeper than the discords of colour, language and custom, an undertone of consanguinity and of close human relationship whose vibrations, subtle as the ether, play, and must increasingly play, upon human hearts the world over. Joseph Cook said that " the nineteenth century made the world one neighbourhood ; the twentieth century should make it one brotherhood." There is nothing so marked in the trend of Christendom as this growing Christian consciousness of the essential unity of all the races of men ; not only in their origin as the sons of one Father, but also in their destiny, as the members of one great family who are to work together in loving sympathy and in genuine harmony for their mutual uplift and ultimate salvation.

II

The world has been marvellously opened, during the last fifty years, to the gospel messenger and to his message. A few brief years ago the most common missionary prayer offered was that God might open the closed doors of heathen lands in order that His messengers of truth and grace might enter therein. That prayer is now rarely offered, because God has answered it and has thrown wide open the doors of opportunity for Christian service and for the propagation of our faith in most lands even unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

It is not true that all nations and tribes are eagerly, or even consciously, seeking the gospel message. As in apostolic days, so at the present time, the

Macedonian cry is heard in all parts of the world. It is the call of God for service and the cry of human need for help which comes to the Christian Church from every land. And yet it comes now, as it came to the apostles of old, " with stripes and imprisonment." The Macedonians persecuted, beat and imprisoned the very men who responded to the call of their need. The same experience comes to the missionary messenger, as he enters the needy fields of the world to-day. He must expect to be reviled.

Shall the missionary carry to a people his message and urge upon them his new faith without receiving any invitation from them ? Has he a right to thrust upon them his message and to compel them to listen, against their will, to his Gospel ? It is the same old question that has recurred throughout the centuries. We read of One who, twenty centuries ago, " came unto His own and His own received Him not." The all-sufficient reason why Christ came into the world was the desperate need of the people of that day. He was despised and His message was spurned ; and He was finally killed for His service. Yet who would ask the question whether it was right for Christ to come, under those circumstances, with His new faith and message of life unto the Jewish people ? At the present time it is enough that the servant follow his Lord. To the true missionary, the real question is not whether a people want him, but, rather, whether they need him. It is not their invitation that must be the doorway of his service to them, but rather their spiritual condition. The patient whose condition is such that he seeks not a physician and asks for no remedy, reveals thereby that his condition is a desperate one and that his need is supreme and most urgent.

There is martyrdom awaiting many a messenger of Christ at the present time in Turkey, in China and in other lands. There is scorn, contempt and opposition in India. There is persecution from the hoary institutions which are attacked, and from the vested rights which are antagonized by the Christian faith. There is Roman Catholic opposition awaiting him in Europe and in South America. Everywhere prejudice and hostility lurk for the man whose business is " to turn the world upside down." The sinful hearts of men, the jealousies of hierarchies, priestly rage and the bitterness of the organized forces and religious institutions which are being overthrown — all of these are as common to-day as they ever were, as the reward of faithful Christian service. In Mohammedan countries the aggressive mien of Islam is perhaps more noticeable than ever before, especially at some of its great centres of activity and power.

Yet there are a few significant facts which are very encouraging to all those engaged in the Christian propaganda in non-Christian countries.

The governments of the world, generally speaking, guarantee to the missionary of the Cross welcome and protection. More than a hundred years ago the first English missionaries to India, and, a little later on, the first American missionaries to that land, were not permitted to enter, to live or to work in the territories of the Honourable East India Company. They had no place for the missionary ; and they regarded his message as an impertinence. They drove him out of their borders mercilessly, and gave him no quarter. To-day, the government of India not only welcomes the missionary, but cordially protects him and has nothing but hearty words of appreciation for the noble services which he is rendering to the land and the people. Even in Japan, in China, in Turkey, and in other non-Christian lands, the missionary is a persona grata with the powers that be, because they know that he is a messenger of peace, of light and of life. And, above all, they know that they have no right as a people to deny him a hearing and to refuse audience to his message. The non- Christian peoples of the world are increasingly ready to listen to the gospel message. In China, the missionaries tell us that the people reveal, in ordinary times, great friendliness and furnish abundant liberty for the preaching of the Gospel. Where opposition was encountered in the past, attentive audience and growing appreciation are now revealed. The stolid indifference of the past is gradually giving way, and new thoughtfulness concerning religious things, and a new breadth of vision are taking its place. Missionaries in Manchuria and in Mongolia are encouraged with the same popular attitude of appreciation. In Korea there has been a wonderful change during the last few years. Nearly the whole population of that land have their ears open to the Christian message. Never in all the history of that country have they revealed such a lack of confidence in their old faiths and interest in Christianity as at the present time. Not only the common people, but those high in position and power, are attentive to the Christian message.

" Turkey is another striking example of change. In some respects the recent Turkish revolution has been the most remarkable which has ever taken place in any nation. Autocracy has been done away with, and a modern constitution has been granted. The key-notes of the revolution have been ' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Justice.' Great social and educational changes have resulted. The whole population is awake and thinking as never before. The bondage of custom has been shaken. New literature is pouring into the country. The mails have more than doubled in volume. Meetings for the discussion of topics pertaining to the development of the country are being held " (Commission I).

Even in darkest Africa, where so much of gross superstition, barbarism and even cannibalism are rife, wonderful changes have taken place since the days of Livingstone, who gave his life for that sorely depressed and oppressed people. To-day there are remarkable movements all over that continent, revealing the fact that the day of Christian opportunity has already dawned. Even kings and chieftains are seeking light and blessing for their people. How striking the message of King Ndombe to King Leopold and President McKinley, a few years ago!

" Ndombe requests the great white kings to send out to his country men who have good hearts to help the black people, to teach them, to keep the peace with them, and to be their friends. To such men our hearts are open, and behold 1 the land is theirs. When these things shall be done all shall be well in the country of Ndombe, from the waters of all the great rivers even unto the mountains of the setting sun."

Ill

The present attitude of non-Christian peoples is deeply interesting.

The Asiatic peoples, who, for a few centuries suffered almost total eclipse, both on account of their own decadence and because of the modern arising and military assertion of the Occident, are now again revealing a new consciousness of power. We, of the West, have long regarded them as our helpless wards ; but they are no longer willing to be dominated or driven to the wall by the arrogant young races of the West. There is nothing more striking in modern times than the new attitude of these people of the East.

Japan, under compulsion of American guns, a half century ago, opened her doors to Western life and influence. How strangely has she, out of her past immobility, suddenly leaped into progress and world-wide prominence ! She has achieved this largely because she has copied from the West, and has even improved upon its method, and has added, to all these, her own unique patriotism, which has always distinguished her, and which, upon the recent battlefield of Manchuria, gave her a new prestige and power among the leading military races of the world. Japan is to-day an apt pupil in the modern worldschool, and is trying to realize in character that which she has achieved through arms, and to capitalize her valour and military prowess in terms of educational advance and moral worth. And, what is both significant and pathetic, Japan is trying to build a new faith without a God, and a system of ethics without divine sanction. In the thrill of her modern excitement she has wrought out for herself a new religion of the name " Tenrikkyo." It is a strange compound, different from Buddhism and non-idolatrous. Already nearly four millions of the inhabitants of that land have accepted the new faith which has been definitely recognized by the State as one of the religious forces of the country.

China, also, is coming to her own in a remarkable way. For millenniums she was content to go on in her good old way. During all these centuries she surpassed many peoples by her culture, her faiths, and her ethical standard. But her equipment sufficed only for a benighted and stagnant past. In the throbbing new life and unrest of the modern world China had no message, no inspiration, and no uplift, for her own teeming millions. She is conscious of her helplessness, and realizes that she has fallen back most pitifully in her race and conflict with the West. In all things she had become stereotyped and lifeless. Under these circumstances China is beginning to do the only thing possible for her. She has entered upon the great quest of the Eastern world, after more light and a new source of life and power. For thousands of years she was self-centred and selfsatisfied. To-day she has embarked upon the sea of change and unrest. And who knows the harbour into which she will finally enter and find peace and plenty to her soul ?