Foreign Missions
The action of the South Georgia Conference of the Methodist Church in voting $65,000 to Foreign Missions, last week, moves the Jeffersonian to say another word upon that subject.
Some time ago, the New York World published a statement to the effect that, out of every ninety dollars contributed in this country to the Foreign Mission fund, only one dollar reached the heathen. This is a sweeping arraignment of the honesty and efficiency of the management of the funds which we are not prepared to indorse.
Our criticism follows a different line. The question raised by the Jeffersonian is this,—What moral right have American Christians to leave their own poor,—unfed, unclothed and unredeemed,—and to drain off into foreign lands millions upon millions of American dollars to feed and clothe and redeem the poor of those foreign lands?
It is a most serious question, Brother.
You tell us, as per formula, that we are commanded to carry the Gospel to all the world. Granted. But where are we commanded to leave our own poverty-stricken wretches to die like poisoned rats in their holes, while we relieve the physical distress of the Chinese?
What moral right have we to deny the beggar at our gate, and to heed the plaint of the Chinese beggar?
One of our private correspondents a little while ago, wrote us that a certain preacher, whose attention he called to our statements on this subject, declared that said statements “were misleading.”
Wherein? They could not mislead. If what we have said about our foreign missionaries furnishing food, clothing, medicine, fuel, etc., to foreign “converts” is the truth, our people are entitled to know it.
If our statements are false, we want to know it.