Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

In Southern Asia there has been the famine, far more terrible in its consequences than the mobs and wars in China. But the famine has been greatly relieved, and the impress of Christianity and civilization relieving its worst distress has been wholly good. Many thousands of converts are presenting themselves to the Church. Baptisms were discontinued in the famine districts during the year of greatest distress. But since the famine has ended, we hear of two conservative brethren baptizing eighteen hundred in three days in Gujarat, with the prospect of eight or ten thousand others coming into the Christian community after them in that district alone.

All over the vast Indian field people hitherto counted difficult of access are ready to listen to the gospel. The Burmese were counted, until recently, so fortified in their Buddhism that they could not be induced to accept the gospel; but we find it is not so now. One missionary, new to the field too, baptized more than one hundred last year, and he might easily have added many more if he had been properly supported. What could not a mission, aggressive and large enough to have momentum, do? It would be easy to add to the young Church in Southern Asia, being gathered by Methodism, twenty-five thousand converts annually, if we could be re-enforced only slightly. Yet, as it is, we must keep accessible people waiting for years till we can receive them.

There is just now an important movement going on in far away Borneo, the Southern limit of this vast field. There has recently been established a colony of Chinese Christian immigrants in the island. Bishop Warne visited them, and placed a preacher in charge. They are immigrants from Southern China. Other Christians will follow these pioneers. They are in immediate contact with the Dyaks, head hunters of the island, and must have much to do in influencing and probably beginning a work of conversion among these savages of the Borneo jungle.

All eyes are upon the Philippine Islands, where a new reformation appears to be going on. Thousands of Catholics, who have never known the comfort of a pure, simple faith, nor the joy of reading the Word of God, are crying out for the full gospel light. They are appealing to the Protestant missionaries for instruction, and they are being led to a purer faith.

All this array of current mission facts declares that God is owning his messengers in every land; that he is fairly crowding success on to the missionaries, to cheer them and quicken the Church in home lands into something of a true conception of the magnitude and urgency of his plans for giving the gospel to every creature, and to lift the age-long night from the Christless nations.

Thus success of missions throws a great burden of work and responsibility upon the missionaries at the front. It can hardly be understood in America. In the home land most pastors have Churches, the whole machinery of which has long been in working order, and they pursue that work along well-established lines. Their entire surroundings are of, or are influenced by, the Christian Church, and at least a Christianized civilization. The pastor is not required to go outside of the well-known methods of carrying on our Church work.

In the foreign field the contrary is the case. The missionary is compelled to be a pioneer in methods of work. He is against a living wall of idolatrous humanity, and he often feels very sorely the lack of human support and sympathy. He has to carry the finances of the mission as well. Oftentimes he is the only resource the mission enterprise has. In the Methodist mission in Southern Asia more property has been secured by the unaided missionary than through Missionary Societies. In addition to all the burdens of a surrounding heathenism and of mission business, the missionary has charge of more Church members than the average pastor at home. In the Methodist Episcopal Missions of Southern Asia the members of Annual Conferences, including missionaries and native members, have more than twice as many Church members to care for, per man, than the pastors at home, the average being taken in both cases.

The greatest need of every mission with which the writer is acquainted, and pre-eminently so in the Methodist Episcopal Mission, is more well-equipped missionaries. Yet this is exactly what we can not get. We can only hope that we can maintain about the number of missionaries on the whole field which we now have. This means if there is any extension of the field so as to require missionaries in new places, they must be thinned out in the older parts of the mission. The Church has candidates for the foreign field, but the Missionary Society has no money to send them. Recently some of the finest candidates have been refused for the lack of money for their support, while the missionaries on the field are fairly staggering under the load they carry, hoping for delayed re-enforcements, who do not arrive. The disproportion of work actually in hand, to the men and women who do that work, is most distressing.

There are great questions of missionary policy to settle. A strong force of missionaries, adequately superintended by men who are acquainted with the work they superintend, is the least that can be asked in our missions. A close and detailed oversight of all mission interests, working out a far-sighted policy, which changes only by light that comes by actual experience in mission work, is of the greatest value. It is clear this superintendency can not be accomplished by periodical visits of some official whose whole life has been spent in the home field. A secretary or a Mission Board is of little account in determining the internal management in any far-distant field. An occasional visit by some such official may do incidental good in acquainting the missionaries with the condition in the home Church, and in bringing to the people at home fresh facts from the field. But for administrative purposes on the field such visits are of little or no value.

The Methodist Episcopal Missions in Southern Asia have been most highly favored in thirteen years of the missionary episcopacy, with Bishop Thoburn to fill the office of superintendent and leader. His administration is sure to become more and more monumental as time reveals its scope and character. It is now clear that no other episcopal supervision hitherto provided by Methodism is equal to this missionary episcopacy for the far-distant mission fields.