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| |
| Occupied. | Unoccupied.
Province.|__________________________|___________________________
| | | | | |
|Cities.| Towns.| Villages.| Cities.| Towns.| Villages.
_________|_______|_______|__________|________|_______|__________
| | | | | |
_________|_______|_______|__________|________|_______|__________
We ought here to repeat that we do not imagine for a moment that the Foreign Missions are to occupy all the villages or even all the cities and towns. We believe that a careful statement of work to be done in this form would very speedily force us to realise, with a clearness and power never before experienced, the truth which we often repeat, that the conversion of the country must be the work of native Christians.
2. The force at work in relation to the work to be done. Here again it would not be sufficient to add together the figures returned from the stations, because in a large area like a province or a small country there are often many missionaries not at mission stations but at some large centre engaged in work for the whole province rather than for any particular mission district; as, for instance, translators or journalists; men engaged in hostels or Y.M.C.A. work; or in large institutions, such as training colleges, medical or educational or industrial; or in some special form of Christian philanthropy, such as work amongst lepers, blind, deaf and dumb, and other infirm or defective persons; or men engaged in assisting the missionaries all over the country as directors, or forwarding agents; and all these must be taken into account in considering the foreign force in the province. Including all these we should get a table for the foreign force similar to that which we had for the station, and that force we could relate directly to the work to be done.
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| | | | | | | | Re-
| | | | | | | |marks
Popu- | Total |Propor-| |Propor-| |Single|Propor-| and
lation.|Foreign|tion to| Men. |tion to| Wives.|Women.|tion to| Con-
| Force.| Popu- | | Popu- | | | Popu- | clu-
| |lation.| |lation.| | |lation.|sions.
_______|_______|_______|______|_______|_______|______|_______|______
| | | | | | | |
_______|_______|_______|______|_______|_______|______|_______|______
We cannot sacrifice the proportions, because the life is in them. Comparison of conditions in different areas can only be made on proportions. The mere statement of the figures with the suggestion that anyone can work out the proportions would reveal a singular ignorance of human nature.
For the native force all that we need for the present purpose is a table that will show us the Christian constituency, communicants, and workers in the whole province in proportion to one another. Here also we must include many workers and some congregations in large towns which the station district survey may have omitted.
——————————————————————————————————- |Total.| Proportion| Proportion |Proportion |Remarks | |of |of Christian |of |and | |Population.| Constituency. |Communicants.|Conclu- | | | | | sions. ——————————————————————————————————- Christian | | | | | constituency| —— | —— | | | ——————————————————————————————————- Communicants| —— | —— | —— | | ——————————————————————————————————- Paid workers| —— | —— | —— | —— | ——————————————————————————————————- Unpaid | | | | | Workers | —— | —— | —— | —— | ——————————————————————————————————-
3. It is important to consider carefully the proportions in which the force is engaged in different forms of work since, as we have already explained, these different forms are often, if not generally, treated as distinct and separate methods of propaganda, and men want to know what is the effectiveness of each. They ask, what are the fruits of medical and educational work, and they expect an answer in terms of additions to the Church. If the dominant object of missions is the establishment of a native Church this is indeed not unnatural; but, as we have already said, many educational and medical missionaries might resent this demand, for they have other ideas of the nature and purpose of their work. Nevertheless, since this native Church is constantly presented to us as the dominant purpose of all our efforts, it is only right that we should make the inquiry here, as we did in the earlier chapters, and ask how the force in the field is divided. It seems almost absurd that we should have no idea in what proportion medicals, educationalists, and evangelists should be employed in any field. In some countries medical work is by far the most effective, if not the only possible form of propaganda; in some fields the evangelists can work effectively almost alone, and medical institutions are not the same necessity, and their establishment does not produce great results in the building of the Church when compared with the work of evangelists and educationalists. In some places their aid was at first apparently necessary to success, but as time went on that first desperate importance ceased. We have not so large a medical force that we can afford to use it for any but the most important and necessary purposes; yet, if the establishment of a native Church is the dominant purpose, large numbers of medicals are doing work which is (from this point of view only) of second-rate importance, whilst work which only they could do is left undone, and cries aloud for their assistance. Similarly, if the establishment of a native Church is really the dominant object, educationalists are often wrongly directed and placed. They are not producing fruit in this regard (of course in this regard only) in anything like the abundance which they might produce if they were free to attack the real questions of the education of the native Church. In many centres they are doing splendid work for the enlightenment of the people, but close beside them are large bodies of Christians who from the point of view of the establishment of a native Church need their help much more.
We ought then to know in each province how the force is divided and what is the fruit of the labours of each class of missionaries viewed from the standpoint of the building up of the native Church.
Now if we know the proportions of the workers in each class in each country, and if we could have a table which told us with any degree of accuracy the numbers of the inquirers, communicants, and places opened by the labours of each class, we should surely have some facts from which we might gain light on this most practical question, in what proportion the work of each class of workers was most effective in each country as an evangelistic and church-building agency. We propose then two tables (see opposite page).