intelligently known to men that they will accept Him as their personal Saviour. We cannot agree with those who urge that the worker has no responsibility for results. It is true that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit and that the number of converts is not always a safe criterion of the faithfulness of Christian work. Stephen preached as earnestly as Peter, but instead of seeing three thousand converts, he was stoned. Paul preached magnificently on Mars Hill, but only a few believed. It is also true that the effect of missionary work is to be seen, not simply in accessions to the Church, but in the changed spirit of communities, and that schools, hospitals, printing presses and churches may accomplish much for God in undermining evils, purifying society and edifying those who are already Christians.

Whatever we may say, however, of the Holy Spirit as the sole author of regeneration, it is undoubtedly true that as a rule God associates conversions with the faithful preaching of His Word and with personal work for the unsaved, and that if conversions do not follow such effort, workers should seek the reason upon their knees. If it be replied that much of missionary work is necessarily preparatory, we grant it. Seedsowing is not only a necessary but sometimes a long and toilsome process. And yet Christian workers both at home and abroad have sometimes unduly solaced themselves for delayed harvests by the thought that they were sowing the seed. "Must we be forever and forever preparing the way and sowing the seed and devising processes, while the centuries roll by? Believe mightily in the things God has promised. Give tremendous emphasis to the idea of expecting and commanding immediate results. Say not ye, There are yet four months and then cometh harvest.' The harvest is now-is now, is always NOW."

In urging large emphasis on the evangelistic phases of the

The Rev. Dr. Herrick Johnson.

work, we are not unmindful of the value of other forms of missionary activity. The missionary is following the example of Christ in alleviating the bodily sufferings of men, while it is absolutely necessary to translate and print the Bible, to create a Christian literature, to teach the young and to train them for leadership in the coming Church. Man must be influenced at every stage of his career and shown that Christianity is adapted to his present state as well as to his future life. Nevertheless, hospitals and schools and presses are means, not ends. The aim is not philanthropic or educational or literary, but spiritual. The boards do not send out mere physicians or school-teachers or business men, but missionaries, and those who are engaged in healing or teaching or translating or printing should take special care to keep the spiritual object uppermost, so that they may be as distinctively missionaries as the ordained ministers of the Word.

The missionary may be of inestimable service to heathen lands and to the world in intellectual ways. He may increase our knowledge of ancient languages and literature. He may introduce the science and civilization and learning of the Occident and so contribute to the material and social awakening of the nations. He may make a name for himself in ethnology or botany, in ornithology or entomology. But whatever he may or may not do in these directions, he should never forget that the supreme need of men is the knowledge of Jesus Christ and that he goes as the bearer of that knowledge.

Every missionary, therefore, whatever his special department, should make a direct, earnest, prayerful effort to lead souls to Christ. Every teacher should seek the conversion of scholars; every physician the cure of souls; every wife the salvation of heathen mothers and children. In the home, in the school, in the hospital, by the wayside, in the marketplace, anywhere and everywhere that opportunity offers or can be made, the gospel should be set forth. No thought of the next generation should blind him to his duty to this one, nor

should the missionary be content with any mere civilizing or educating or healing which, however indispensable as means, yet as ends only make man a more comfortable and respectable animal and leave him on the same moral plane on which he was before. It is a new birth, an internal, not an external transformation, that men most vitally need.

This personal presentation of Christ with a view to men's acceptance of Him as Saviour is to issue as soon as possible in the organization of converts into self-propagating, self-supporting and self-governing churches. This is a vital part of the missionary aim. In the words of Lawrence: "God's great agent for the spread of His kingdom is the Church, and missions exist distinctly for the Church. . . . Then the Church of each land, thus planted, must win its own people to Christ."1 Christianity will not control a nation's life as long as it is an exotic. It must become an indigenous growth. To this end, effort must be put forth to develop the independent energies of the converts. The new convert is usually a spiritual child, and like the physical child, he must be for a time "under tutors and governors; " but the instruction looks to the development of self-reliant character. Missionaries may, at first, do the local preaching, but as fast as suitable natives develop, they should be set to work as helpers, Bible-readers, colporteurs, while the most capable should be put in charge of churches.

Self-propagation, therefore, should be insisted upon as soon as converts appear. They should be taught from the beginning that as soon as they become Christians, the missionary motive should become operative within them, and that they are under precisely the same obligation as Christians in Europe and America to give the knowledge of Christ to others. The missionaries who have most clearly discerned and effectively acted upon this principle have witnessed the most gratifying progress of the work.

1" Modern Missions in the East," p. 31.

This was the way Christ Himself worked during His earthly ministry. He preached both to individuals and to multitudes wherever and whenever He had opportunity; but one of His chief efforts was to train up a band of disciples to perpetuate and extend the work after His departure. Paul also worked in this way. He would go to a city, preach the gospel, gather a band of disciples, organize them into a church, remain long enough to get them fairly started and then go elsewhere.

The modern missionary will have to remain a good deal longer than Paul did, for he does not find such prepared conditions as the great apostle found in the Jews of the dispersion. A land may be evangelized in a generation, but the Christianizing of it may be the toilsome process of centuries. Moreover, when the object has been attained in one country, the responsibility of the missionary and of the home Church will not cease, but simply be transferred to other populations. It is a long campaign upon which we have entered, but we should resolutely keep our purpose in mind.

This is not only wise in itself from the viewpoint of the success and permanency of the work, but it is absolutely necessary from the viewpoint of the men and money that are available. It is impossible for the churches of Europe and America to send out and maintain enough missionaries to preach the gospel effectively to each one of the thousand millions of the unevangelized world. To attempt this would be as foolish as it would be for a government to make an army out of majorgenerals while making no provision for subalterns, non-commissioned officers and privates.

The mission boards are studying this question with a care not unmingled with anxiety. Letters from the field indicate that the outlook is more encouraging than ever before. Doors of opportunity are opening on every side and there appears to be no limit to the work that might be done if the men and the means could be had. Naturally, therefore, the missions are calling for reinforcements. In a single year, the calls upon

the Presbyterian Board alone aggregated no less than two hundred and fifteen new missionaries, exclusive of wives. It is painfully apparent that the boards are not likely to get anything like the sum that would be needed to send out and maintain such an enlarged force. Nor are the men available. In the year referred to, the Presbyterian Board did its utmost to secure them and appointed every qualified candidate. Yet the total number was only forty-two out of the two hundred and fifteen asked for.

Some may wonder why the Student Volunteer Movement, of whose thousands we hear so much, does not supply this need. It must be remembered, however, that the Student Volunteers include young people of all denominations and in all stages of education, so that the number of any one denomination graduating in a given year is not so great after all. Moreover, many of them find that, on account of conditions that could not be foreseen, they are unable to go to the foreign field, while others have to be declined by the boards because they are found to lack the necessary qualifications. The Movement enrolls only those who give reasonable promise of usefulness, but of course it cannot always know what a student may develop by the completion of his course. The Movement is doing a splendid work. It is supplying a large majority of the new missionaries and has undoubtedly saved the boards from what would otherwise have been a disastrous lack of candidates.

Taking the situation as a whole, it is plain that the boards cannot get enough new missionaries to meet all the demands that are coming from the foreign field, that if they could get them, they could not secure the money to cover such a large expansion of the work and that it would not be wise to flood the foreign field with a host of missionaries even if they could be found and supported. An India missionary writes:

"The force that we have in the station at present is such that the united touring possibilities are probably one person for one hundred days each year. At this rate, with the present