Chapter VII.
The Missionary.
The present missionary force in India represents, according to the “Indian Missionary Directory,” a body of nearly 2,500 men and women who have been sent from Europe, America and Australia to instruct the people in the blessings of our faith. This body is constantly increasing in numbers and is sent forth and maintained by some seventy societies.[11] They are a noble band of Christian workers, of no less consecration and faith than those in the past, and of the highest training and broadest culture ever known.
The missionary furnishes to the home churches the chief interest in missionary work and is the link which connects them and the home society with their enterprise abroad.
His work at present is not what it once was in India. In earlier days the missionary had to be a man of all works; every form of missionary endeavour came under his direction. In mission work, as in every other line of effort, specialization has become a feature and a necessity. There must be men of as varied talents and special lines of training as there are departments of missionary work. But every missionary should be preëminently, a man. [pg 194] He should be a man of large calibre. There is much danger lest the church become indifferent to this matter, and send to the mission field inferior men—men who would be unable to stem the tide of competition and attain success at home. If a man is not qualified for success in the home land, there is little chance of his attaining much usefulness upon the mission field. And an inferior class of men sent out to heathen lands to represent, and to conduct the work of, the home church must necessarily react upon the church through want of success, discouragement and defeat in the missionary enterprise. A church whose missionary representatives abroad are wanting in fitness and power cannot long continue to be a strenuous missionary church; it will lack fuel to keep burning the fire of missionary enthusiasm.
And in speaking of the missionary I include the lady missionary. Missionary ladies today are more numerous in India than are the men. More than a thousand single ladies have given themselves to the missionary life and are labouring with conspicuous success in that land. They meet almost the same conditions of life and require the same qualifications for success as their brother missionaries do. Of course, in certain details, they differ; but into such matters I cannot enter at present.
I desire to enumerate the qualifications of a missionary for highest usefulness in India at the present time.