India alone contains 66,300 lunatics, 153,000 deaf and dumb, 354,000 blind and 400,000 lepers.
All missionary hospitals (Protestant) in the world can accommodate 100,000 in-patients and 2,500,000 outpatients annually.
These facts point to the need of men and means in order that the world may be Christianized.
(2044)
See [Medical Missions].
MISSIONARIES’ MISTAKES
Prof. Harlan P. Beach, in an address before the Fifth International convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for foreign missions on the subject “Efficiency is limited and the kingdom is retarded by violating reasonable standards of taste or propriety,” said:
In speaking on this subject, I can show its importance, perhaps, by an incident which happened about twenty years ago near Peking. One night I heard a loud knocking at the outer gate of our compound. The gatekeeper went out and was astonished to see a dust-laden, wobegone new missionary. He had arrived at Tientsin, his station, about four days before. He found himself in a new community, where he could not get his bearings, and had come to our station to learn what to do from two of our prominent missionaries. I was glad to meet the newcomer, but I said, “Why did you arrive so late?” “Well,” he replied, “I couldn’t help it.” I looked at his cart; he had three mules attached to it tandem by a great tangle of ropes. He added: “The trouble is, I had hardly gotten started from Tientsin when this front mule, who is young, took a notion that he would desert the beaten track. He left the roadway suddenly before the carter could prevent it and made a dash straight for a china-shop. There was a terrific crash. The ropes got caught between the legs of the second mule and dragged him over into a great lot of jars which went to pieces, and even the wheel-mule, hemmed in by the vast timbers that do duty as shafts in China, yielding to the shock, crashed into the china-shop.” It took a long time to get that difficulty righted, and hence he was late.
This incident illustrates my subject in six respects: (1) Missionaries, like those mules, make many breaks; (2) they usually make them at the start; (3) the breaks are generally due to ignorance, or to wilfulness; (4) the work of missions is retarded greatly by these mistakes, just as my friend was delayed until late that night; (5) mistakes of missionaries involve their associates, as the action of this frisky front mule brought the whole outfit into disrepute; (6) what is most important of all, they bring loss to superiors. Those mules were mere animals, but there was a carter there and also my friend, who was anxious to hasten the coming of the kingdom that he took the trip at great inconvenience for that very purpose. Tho we missionaries are only rarely mules, we are all and always servants of a great Master, and are retarding His cause and bringing reproach upon His name and upon the Church of God, if we are guilty of such breaches of etiquette as are suggested by this parable.
(2045)