Theological seminaries also give a part of their time to this excellent work. The seminary, with which I am connected, gave, during the year 1900, five weeks to village work. Teachers and students travelled hundreds of miles among the villages of the neglected part of the field and carried the message to more than 50,000 people. This was not only a joyful service, it was also a most helpful experience to the young students while undergoing their theological training.
But, as the native Church, in a mission, grows in numbers and in intelligence, the work of evangelism becomes its special duty. If the Church does not enter, with added joy and power, into this department of its work; and if it does not voluntarily assume, with ever increasing fullness, this form of Christian activity, there is something radically wrong about it. It should be the prayer and purpose of the missionary that every church and congregation established by him become a centre of evangelistic power, whence will radiate divine light and heat into adjacent hamlets and villages. I am glad to say that, so far as my observation goes, the native Church is undertaking this work with increasing zeal and with a growing impulse from within, rather than by pressure from without. In the Madura Mission, through the Home Missionary Society and its auxiliaries, and through the organizations of the native women, at least eighteen men and women are being supported for this especial work of evangelism. And the number of members of churches, who engage voluntarily in this work, is every year growing.
The character of this preaching is a matter of importance. In India it should be, largely, if not exclusively, constructive rather than destructive. Forces destructive to a belief in Hinduism and its numberless superstitions have multiplied wonderfully in that land during the last fifty years. So that there is no necessity, today, that the Christian preacher spend any of his time in attacking the errors and evils of the ancestral faith of the people. He should give himself to the more agreeable and blessed work of imparting the living truth of the Gospel in all directness and simplicity. The destructive agencies of the civilization, knowledge and religious institutions of the West have accomplished their work and have made straight the pathway of the Gospel Messenger into the mind and heart of the people. Thus, it is not the abuse of the old, but the exposition of the new, faith which should occupy the time of the preacher to Hindus today. It has been my own custom, and I always urge it upon my students, to avoid the temptation of attacking Hinduism, and to preach a simple Gospel of salvation.
(b) Pastoral Work.
The rapidly increasing number of churches and congregations has added much to the pastoral duties of a mission. Formerly missionaries themselves acted as pastors and shepherded the flocks in the villages. Even today some of the German missions have missionary pastors. But this is now exceptional. Missions generally have learned that, for native congregations, native pastors are essential. They not only are better adapted, by nature and by [pg 246] training, to meet the needs of the native Church; they are also the only ones that are within the range of the financial possibilities of self-support. And self-support must be ever held before the church as a high future blessing and duty of the Christian community.
Theological Students With Their Families.
Group Of Madura Pastors.