The Social Aspects of Foreign Missions

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface v-vi

Introductory vii-x

Preface

On returning from a journey through the Farther East I was asked to prepare this book as an aid to people in their study of the missionary enterprise. My oriental journey was not intended as a "tour" of the mission stations. My chief desire was to meet the natives themselves, to look through their eyes, and gain some glimpse of their racial characteristics and their point of view. But I soon found that the best possible approach to the soul of India or China was not through the Euro-^ pean government official or the European trader, both of them aloof and sometimes cynical, but through the missionary, whose life has been poured into the lives around him. Through the courtesy of missionaries I found windows everywhere opened into native life, doors flung wide, and hands outstretched.

I have not attempted to set forth facts except as they illustrate principles. The facts have been collected in amazing number and variety by Dr. Dennis in his three encyclopedic volumes : Christian Mis-* sions and Social Progress, But the very wealth of facts now available may hinder vision. Our real need is a clearer definition of what we are trying to do. Each generation must redefine its object. The preaching of the glad tidings must ever occupy

VI

Preface a foremost place in missionary enterprise. Evan- » gelism is the cutting edge of effort. The persuasion of the human will to righteousness is indispensable. But a complete message is a message to the whole man, and aims at the entire transformation of both the individual and society.

A large part of what is here printed was delivered in April, 1914, before the students, faculty, and friends of Crozer Theological Seminary, as " The Samuel A. Crozer Lectures."

I cannot adequately express my indebtedness to many friends throughout the Orient, to the officers of the Missionary Societies and the Missionary Education Movement, to Mrs. John E. Clough for permission to quote from Dr. Clough's Autobiography, now in press, and to Dr. James Quayle Dealey, Professor of Social and Political Science in Brown University. All of these, without assuming any responsibility, have given me much helpful counsel.

Brown University, Providtnce^ R, L May ig, igi^.

INTRODUCTORY

In this book we are to study one phase of the contact between East and West. The most momentous fact of modern times is that the East and the West are coming physically nearer to each other every year, and yet intellectually and spiritually are still separated by a great abyss. The distance between any two points on the earth's surface — ^measured by the time required to travel that distance — is rapidly diminishing. We live on a shrinking globe, whose surface, measured in time, is not one half as great as it was fifty years ago. We can go from New York to Peking in much less time than our grandfathers needed to go by " prairie schooner '' from New York to Chicago. Thirty years ago " Around the World in Eighty Days " was a fairy-tale. Now the journey has been completed in less than thirty-six days. London and Bombay are to-day near neighbors. Vancouver and Yokohama are gazing into each other's eyes. San Francisco and Hongkong are conversing by telegraph, and soon may be communicating by telephone and aerial ships. The Mediterranean through the Suez Canal flows into the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean ; the Atlantic and Pacific have mingled their waters in the Panama

Canal. All the oceans have become one ocean, and all the world is physically one world.

Vll viii Social Aspects of Foreign Missions

But what will happen if the nations draw steadily closer geographically, and remain far asunder in sympathies and ideals? What will happen if the races clash together in mutual suspicion and hostility? What shall be the result if we bring the nations together with swift ships and throbbing wires, but leave them alienated by the natural— or rather unnatural — hatred of white men and black, of Mon-^ golian and Caucasian ?

Already incalculable harm has been done by the sudden influx of the white man and his ideas among the weaker peoples. We all know what havoc was wrought even in the Western Hemisphere by the first European conquerors and settlers. In Hayti the entire native population died out within forty years because of the harshness and cruelty of Spanish mis** government. The atrocities wrought by the white man in the Kongo State, driving the blacks to pro-» duce rubber, are still fresh in our minds. Africa has been robbed for many centuries of her material treasure, and of her flesh and blood, to satisfy European and American greed. The mere photographs of what the white man has done to the natives in central Africa, and more recently in Putumayo, Peru, are such that we dare not bring them into a civilized home.

Even when no deliberate wrong is done, when the white man goes to the weaker races with honest and kindly spirit, still his coming has always brought about a critical situation. He has carried with him novel ideas, more penetrating and powerful than

Introductory ix

bayonets or cannon. He has carried and spread abroad his own curiosity and unrest. He has undermined hoary customs, shaken up stagnant minds^ made the thrones of native tyrants to totter, and with his ideas of liberty and law and popular rights has roused from slumber whole nations. Thus a crisis has recently been produced in every Far Eastern land. India, hitherto a " land where it is always afternoon," is now uneasily stirring. Japan has become more modern than her teachers. China has thrown off the Manchu yoke, and may with it lose her respect for parents, for institutions, and for morality. Egypt is demanding larger share in her own government. The Philippines are seething with a social and political ferment that we ourselves have introduced. The nations of the world have been, for good or for evil — usually both — infected by the white man's presence. Mr. James Bryce, perhaps the keenest of all students of our modern civilization, says : " This is perhaps the most critical moment ever seen in the history of non- Christian nations and races. ... In half a century or less that which we call European civilization will have overspread the earth. . . . All is trembling and crumbling under the shock and impact of the stronger, harder civilization. . . . Things which have endured from the stone age until now are at last coming to a perpetual end and will be no more." ^

* University and Historical Addresses, 147.

X Social Aspects of Foreign Missions

It is richly worth our while to ask how far these momentous and far-reaching results have been brought about by the foreign missionaries who represent us abroad, and what sort of changes these men and women have introduced. First, however, we must inquire as to the general relation of the individual to the social order, and what Christianity has to say about that relation.

k

RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL

TO SOCIETY

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do. Not light them for themselves; for if our virtties Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not.

— Measure for Measure,

The essence of Jesus' teaching consists in the proclaiming of a new order of the world and of life, i.e., the ** Kingdom of Heaven." which should be far removed from, indeed in positive opposition to, existing conditions; in fact, opposed to all the natural doing and contriving of men, to the ** world.** In Jesus' conception, this new order is by no means merely an inner transformation, affecting only the heart and mind, and leaving the outer world in the same condition. Rather, historical research puts it beyond question that the new kingdom means a visible order as well, that it aims at a complete change of the state of things, and hence cannot tolerate any rival order. Never in history nas mankind been summoned to a greater revolution than here, where not this and that among the conditions but the totality of human existence is to be regenerated.

'-'Rudolf Eucken.

Chapter I Relation Of The Individual To

SOCIETY

Social Organisms. When hundreds of students are closely associated in a single college, does the college itself become a living organism? When hundreds of voices are singing of alma mater, " benignant mother,'' are the singers using a mere figure of speech? Or does the college have a life of its own, far longer and deeper than the life of any student who comes and goes? Is there such a thing as " college spirit," distinct from the separate spirits of individual students?

Social Methods of Approach. When we see hundreds of workers coming out of a cotton-mill at nightfall, we sometimes speak of them as " hands." Are they really hands, members of a huge body, possessed of a common consciousness and a common will, and working together as hands and feet and eyes and ears cooperate in the human body? Or are all the workers really as separate from one another as the separate pieces in a game of chess? If we want to uplift and inspire and educate those mill workers, shall we approach them one by one, or as a mass ? Shall we study the individual need, or shall we provide for the whole group better sanitation, better ventilation, better wages, better schools ? Which method did primitive Christianity adopt when it conquered the Roman empire in the first three centuries ?

Three Theories. Three theories have prevailed in the past as to the relation of the one and the many, the individual and the group.

Society Viewed as a Magnified Man. The oldest of these is the organic theory of society, which conceives the social order as a sort of magnified human being. We find this view among the ancient Greeks, who made the state immensely more important than the single citizen. Plato tells us that if we want to understand justice we should first study it on a large scale, as embodied in a just city. Then we may later understand the just man — as children learn to read large letters before they are able to read small ones. To him the Greek state was the Greek man " writ large." Aristotle cannot conceal his scorn for the . isolated individual, owning no allegiance to the state. " The state," he says, " is a creation of nature, man is by nature a political animal, and he who by nature, and not by mere accident, is without a state is either above humanity or below it. He is the

whom Homer denounces — ^the outcast who is a lover of war, and solitary as a bird of prey." ^

Force of This Idea, Late and Early. This idea of the social order finds later echo in the striking

* Politics, Book I, Ch. II.

I phrase of John Milton — ^himself a stanch individualist : " The state is one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man." From that standpoint a state, or any kind of society, is vastly more than an aggregation of atoms, more than the sum of the persons composing it It has a character, good or evil, a common consciousness, a corporate responsibility. It is a sort of artificial or metaphysical person, a mighty superhuman being, to be served by every citizen whose little life is included in the larger life of the entire social order. This theory minimizes the single man, and exalts the unity of the group. It built Athens, the superb " city of the violet crown," and it slew the questioning, critical Socrates.

Pervades the Old Testament. This vivid sense of the nation as a living being pervades all the Old Testament. Israel, addressed as *'my servant," is invited, entreated, warned, punished, rewarded by Jehovah. If one member of the community sinned — like Achan — the entire nation was held guilty, just as when a human finger is poisoned the whole body is poisoned through that finger. The nation was responsible, not only for all living members, but for the deeds of its ancestors as well. If the fathers had " eaten sour grapes," the children's teeth were " set on edge." The iniquity of the fathers was visited " upon the children, and upon the third and upon the fourth generation," and it did not occur to the prophets to question the justice of such a principle. The Hebrew nation was to them a living being enduring through the ages. It had its period of infancy : " When Israel was a child, ... I loved him, ... I took him on my arms." It needed comfort, like a forsaken woman : " Thy Maker is thy husband. . • . For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee." It grew old and feeble : " Gray hairs are upon him, . . . and he knoweth it not." But the nation could not die : " Shake thyself from the dust ; arise, sit on thy throne, O Jerusalem."

Attitude of Prophetism. Such vivid conceptions are not mere figures of speech. To the Israelite his nation was "one huge personage," chosen of God, called out of Egypt, led through the wilderness, heir of all the promises. The individual in the Old Testament has little or no hope of immortality, but his nation should endure forever. " The prophets," says Professor Walter Rauschenbusch, "were not religious individualists. During the classical times of prophetism they always dealt with Israel and Judah as organic totalities. They conceived of their people as a gigantic personality which sinned as one and ought to repent as one. . . . It was only when the national life of Israel was crushed by foreign invaders that the prophets began to address themselves to the individual life and lost the large horizon of public life." ^

A Defective Conception. If we to-day should accept this idea of a nation as a real person, our

* Christianity and the Social Crisis, a teachers and reformers would of course deal mainly with national sin and national redemption, and we should place small emphasis on any attempt to reach the individual. But the conception is obviously defective. Neither ancient Greece nor ancient Israel realized the meaning and value of the individual personality. Both peoples conceived slavery as essential to society; both merged the parts of society in the whole. They could not realize, at that period, what Christianity has so decisively proclaimed,

"This main miracle, that 'I am 1/ With power on mine own act and on the world."

A nation is not, strictly speaking, a person, or true organism of any kind. In an organism like the human body, or like a vine or a tree, a single member is not an individual. A leaf plucked from the tree cannot live; but Robinson Crusoe, cast out of all human society, can still live on his lonely island. A single member of the human body, like an eye or ear, has no separate consciousness, no will of its own, no responsibility for anything. But a single member of society is in himself a complete individual, with volitions, hopes, fears, responsibilities as real as if there were no other man alive. Hence we cannot fully accept the statement that society is an organism, or that the state is literally a person, and religion can never remit its effort to reach the individual personal life.

Social Contract Theory. Under the influence of a complete reaction from the ancient view of society there arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the so-called "social contract" theory. Hobbes and John Locke in England and Rousseau in France expounded this theory and spread it through Europe and America. According to this extremely individualistic view, society is merely a contract among certain persons. Each individual is an independent, self-governing being, possessed of certain " natural rights " which cannot be taken from him except by his consent. Men were originally in a " state of nature," free from all government, roaming about as lions roam in the desert or eagles in the air. Then for the sake of mutual advantages these primitive men came together and formed a society, each member surrendering individual rights in return for a share in common benefits. Thus every society, every village or city or state, is a mutual benefit association, based on a contract voluntarily made. Thus the " noble red man," the Iroquois chief, who had surrendered few or none of his natural rights, seemed to Rousseau a far more admirable type than the modem city-dweller, absolutely dependent on policemen, firemen, shopkeepers, and middlemen of every kind.

Large Place in History. This theory of social contract has played a great part in modem history, and echoes of it are heard in the Declaration of Independence. The " consent of the governed " has become a very familiar phrase to the people of the United States since Admiral Dewey's victory in Manila Bay. The great movement of modem democracy has made the will of the people the supreme law. And the popular will is concerned not only with protection of life and property, but with all human welfare. Perhaps the noblest description of society as a compact among individuals was given by Edmund Burke, when he said of the state : " It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection."

Now Plainly Inadequate. But can the citizen withdraw from such a partnership ? Surely no one would affirm that. The American Civil War settled the great fact that America is more than a voluntary association of sovereign states — it is a "union now and forever, one and inseparable." If any single citizen, whether philosophical anarchist or common tramp, should decide to retire from all social control, society with a strong hand would show him the error of his way. Society is something vastly deeper and more divine than a mere agreement based on selfish advantage.

Superficial. The theory of " social contract," which has fascinated so many brilliant minds, is after all superficial. It leaves men essentially " dissevered," if not " discordant, belligerent." It says nothing of the deeper unities which produce the love of home and kindred and native land.

Third Inclusive Theory. But the third theory, which may perhaps be called the corporate theory, contains the truth that the other two theories haltingly attempt to express. It affirms that there is a lo Social Aspects of Foreign Missions

real analogy — not identity — ^between social life and animal life. As society is a real unity of real persons, the whole must not be sacrificed to the part, nor must the part be sacrificed to the whole. Each develops in and through the progress of the other. While the individual is the basis of society, and our primary business is with him, yet we are dealing also with a collective will which is over and above all the little individual wills that compose it. Just as the tree is something more than the sum of all its leaves and branches, so a nation is more than the sum of all its citizens. Just as a human body could never be made by gluing together legs and arms, so a nation can never be produced by merely adding up separate individuals with no common purpose. The " social mind " is a vital reality. The " psychology of the crowd " has taught us that a mob of a thousand men is vastly stronger and more cruel than a thousand men acting each one alone. A congregation of a thousand worshipers on Sunday morning will rise to heights of devotion no one of them alone could attain. When we combine chemical atoms in a test-tube we often get an entirely new substance. When men unite to form a true church, there is a union of all single personalities in the larger body, there springs into being a new social consciousness, a corporate responsibility.

Cities Have Character. We willingly grant that a city is not a person. But we are also sure that a city is not a list of names in a directory, or a hundred thousand separate and detached individuals, like a heap of rounded pebbles on the shore. A city has a character. Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece were only a hundred miles apart. But the two cities were thousands of miles asunder in temper and ideal. Each of those two city-states had a quality of its own which spread through all its citizens, as the oak has a quality different from that of a maple, and diffuses that quality through every twig and bud. There were doubtless lonely saints in Sodom and Gomorrah, but the cities as a whole were " wicked and sinners against Jehovah exceedingly." There were doubtless defiant spirits in Nineveh when the prophet Jonah preached there. It was the city which put on sackcloth and ashes and cried " mightily unto God." When Jerusalem was addressed as one " that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her," we cannot believe that Jesus was indulging in mere poetic personification. Jerusalem had acquired a character and a responsibility of its own. Individual saints were doubtless found there, individual minds were open to light. But the city as a whole had shut its eyes, stopped its ears, and hurled stones at divine messengers. Therefore, though individuals should be saved, the city should be trampled down and scattered abroad.

Consciousness of Community. While therefore we cannot admit that the social order is a mere contract, and we cannot affirm that it is an organism, we do believe that human lives are united into a "social tissue" as closely related as the cells which make tip a living tree or a human body. Every human life is the offspring of the great human stock. In each man flows the blood of millions of ancestors. " I am a part of all that I have met," said the much-traveled Ulysses. But each man is part of millions he has never met, millions who lived before him; in whose vital blood he shares, whose inventions and achievements he inherits. And each man is part of millions around him, united with them all by a " consciousness of kind," by sharing in common hopes and fears and struggles. It was this sense of the union of the individual with his social order that led Moses to the audacious prayer: "If thou wilt forgive their sin — ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book."

What Was Jesus' Attitude? What, now, was the attitude of Jesus toward this idea of corporate existence and corporate responsibility which pervades the Old Testament? Was the message of Jesus primarily an individual gospel, or was it a social message? Did he seek only the rebirth of separate men and women, leaving to other teachers all questions of unity and fraternity and social reconstruction ? Or did he make it his primary aim to establish a divine society, in which each individual life might find fulfilment and nourishment and joy? No more weighty question can be asked to-day by Christian men and women. According to our answer will be our modem theory of life and our program of effort.

Case for Individualism. If Jesus is our spiritual master^ his insight in such a matter will be for us conclusive and controlling. If we believe that he sought primarily to save a few souls from a wrecked world, if he despaired of any real reign of God on earth and sought merely to rescue individuals from a hopeless social order and transport them to heaven, then our attitude toward all reforms, charities, governments will be affected profoundly by our belief. A Christianity based on that belief will be intense, insistent, devoted, but will care little for social and political changes, and will regard all the problems of child labor, better housing for the poor, improved sanitation, organized charity, as outside the true sphere of Christian effort. It will consistently relegate all such problems to secular organizations, while it devotes itself to the task of making individual Christian disciples. Recently an active Christian "Woman, being asked if her church maintained a kindergarten, answered: " Certainly not ; we leave all such modern notions to worldly people, while we preach the simple gospel."

Case for Communal Life. On the other hand, if we believe that Christ's primary desire was to establish a new social and spiritual order called the kingdom of God, that the Old Testament vision of a purified and saved Israel was Christ's vision also, and that the primitive message was a summons into a divine fellowship, then such a belief will shape our whole attitude toward the burning questions of our day. We shall then hold that " nothing which is human is alien " to the Christian Church. We shall supplement the evangelization of the individual by the preaching of a social gospel. We shall hold that Christianity is concerned, not only with the transformation of single lives, but with the creation of a social atmosphere in which single lives can unfold in beauty and power. We shall conceive that our aim is not only to rescue certain souls from a wrecked world, but to save the wreck itself, repair its broken spars, and send it on a happier voyage. We shall hold that the growth of Christian character is vitally related to civic betterment, to medical attendance, to intelligent philanthropy, to honest public service. We shall hold that the good seed needs the good soil, that the individual Christian ' needs a Christian civilization around him if he is to " bring forth an hundredfold " in moral and spiritual achievement. The character of the whole missionary enterprise is absolutely dependent on our answer to this question. Christ's Message Primarily Spiritual and Personal. The moment we open the New Testament we perceive the " inwardness '' of the primitive Christian message.

This at least is clear — Jesus was no mere political or social reformer. His was a spiritual, not an economic message. His omissions and silences are eloquent. Clearly he aimed primarily at a new experience rather than a new environment. He was concerned chiefly, not with the symptoms, but with the causes of human sorrow and suffering. In all the nations around Palestine slavery was wdl established; Christ organized no revolt or crusade against it. Among all the government officials of Palestine corruption flourished; Christ hardly seemed to notice it. On the throne of Judea was intrigue and tyranny, such as caused John the Baptist to cry out to the tyrant's face: "It is not lawful." But Christ had deeper tasks on hand than publicly rebuking one unlawful marriage. His great work was a revealing — unveiling — of the spiritual world. He revealed the character of God, and portrayed a character to be attained by men. Repentance, faith, love, forgiveness, prayer, growth into the divine image — these things lay at the heart of his message. An inward and spiritual change in human hearts and lives — ^this was the immediate aim of every word Jesus spoke and every deed he did. The great cry, " Repent ! " means simply ^' Change your mind ! " Jesus was not content with a change of clothes, or a change of diet, or a change of rulers ; his demand was far more fundamental — a change of mind. He refused to be side-tracked into petty reforms; he declined to dissolve religion into what we now call sociology. ' But He Adds the Collective Message. Shall we admit, then, that Jesus had no social message ? On the contrary, all his message is throbbing with social impulse, all his life is aflame with social passion. In him was achieved the synthesis of the two great impulses of our human nature. For him the second commandment was "like unto" the first, and the two great laws, " Thou shalt love thy God," and, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor," were simply hemispheres of the same globe. John Bunyan wrote his Pilgrim's Progress to set forth the experience of the individual, pressing through all dangers and forsaking even wife and child that he might win his own place in a heavenly city. Then Bunyan was obliged to write another allegory to set forth the experience of a family group journeying together toward the distant goal. But in the teaching of Jesus the egoistic and the altruistic exist side by side, disciples swiftly become apostles, and the transformed individual begins at once to transform the world around him.

Jesus as FulfiUer. Jesus claimed to " fulfil " — ^to fill full of meaning — ^the ancient law and the prophets. But all Old Testament law and prophecy is aglow with the demand for social justice. The " laws of Moses " are full of care for the fatherless and the widow, full of prohibitions of usury, monopoly, oppression of wage-earners, cheating in trade, and land-grabbing. Could Jesus fulfil that law if he cared for none of these things? The prophets of Israel thundered for centuries against licentiousness, greed of gain, the ostentatious luxury of wealth, the exploitation of the poor, the corruption of rulers, and religious worship divorced from loving human service. Could Jesus fulfil the prophets and be indifferent to these things ? " Wo unto them that decree unrighteous decrees," cried Isaiah (Is. x. i). ^'O princes of Israel," cried