discouraged. It is hardly reasonable, however, to sit down and cry, as one young wife did, because "the people do not appreciate our motives in leaving comfortable homes to work for them," or, as one young husband did, become censorious and disgusted because "the natives have so many imperfections and vices." Even the native Christians are sometimes disappointing. One sorely tried new missionary wrote, after a hard year's work: "This is the most discouraging work I have ever been in. There seems to be no return for the efforts put forth to help the people. What the native lacks is stability of character and honesty." Precisely; that is why the missionary was sent there. If the people were ideal, there would be no need for his presence. Their imperfections are his opportunity. The harder the field, the more evident is it that the gospel of Christ is needed there. No one worthy to be a missionary should want an easy place. Difficulty should beget inspiration to more resolute endeavour. T VI THE MISSIONARY AT WORK HE variety and scope of the foreign missionary's work are in sharp contrast with the work of the min ister at home. The latter hardly realizes to what an extent the effort of the Church is reinforced by the social results of centuries of religious teaching. These helps do not exist in most non-Christian lands and therefore the missionary must create them. He must found not only churches, but schools, hospitals, printing presses, kindergartens, orphanages, and the various other kinds of Christian and benevolent work carried on in this country. He must train up a native ministry, erect buildings, translate and print books and tracts and catechisms. The gospel must be so presented as to touch the lives of men at many points and they must be helped in making the adaptation to new conditions. In some lands, the missionary must even teach the men how to make clothing, to build houses and to cultivate the soil; while his wife must show the women how to sew and to cook, to care for children and to make a decent home. The phrase "missionary at work" is therefore not a misnomer. Those who imagine that "missionaries have an easy time" little realize the heavy and persistent toil that is involved in missionary effort. The fact is that foreign missionaries are among the hardest worked men in the world. It sounds large to state that the total number is 18,591; but this includes wives and mothers with the same family cares as women at home, those at home on furlough, the sick, the aged and recruits who are learning the language. The number available for actual service at a given time is therefore considerably smaller. This force must conduct all the vast activities of Protestant Christianity among the thousand millions of the non-Christian races. Much of this work, too, is done in unfavourable climates and amid conditions that tell heavily upon the strength and nerves. The typical hospital, with work enough for two or three physicians, has but one medical missionary and he must perform every operation and attend every sick patient, save for such native assistants as he may be able to snatch a little time to train. Schools, which at home would have a half dozen or more teachers, have but one or two. The ordained missionary often finds himself obliged to unite the adaptability of a jack-of-all-trades to the functions of an archbishop. One missionary in China, for example, in addition to the care of a large native church and the teaching of a class of inquirers, had to supervise eleven day schools and thirteen out-stations, draw the plans for and superintend the erection of a brick residence, a schoolhouse and several small houses for native helpers. His masons had never seen a foreign house or built a chimney and his carpenters had never made a stairway, so that he had to direct personally every detail from the sawing of the logs and the burning of the brick to the laying of the last roof-tile and the painting and papering. Another missionary has the oversight of six organized churches, forty-five out-stations scattered over a wide territory and including 1,000 communicants and 200 inquirers. He superintends forty-six day schools with 460 pupils, a single circuit of these schools involving a journey by cart or litter of 500 miles. During a famine, he employed all the natives who were willing to work in rebuilding dykes and bridges which had been swept away by a flood. His annual report showed 139 sermons, 116 days spent away from home in country work, and 1,780 miles travelled on missionary duties. He was treasurer of the station and clerk of the Presbytery, and a summer lecturer to a class of helpers on the Old Testament and on recent Egyptian and Assyrian discoveries, a subject in which those twenty Christian natives manifested keen interest. He prepared weekly Bible-lesson leaflets throughout the year, while importunate appeals to settle quarrels and lawsuits and a voluminous correspondence demanded many weary hours. These are typical, not exceptional, cases. The work is so exhausting that, as a rule, the missionary comes home on furlough completely exhausted and, not infrequently, ill. Students who are contemplating application for appointment should realize these things and be prepared to say: "We are not here to play, to dream, to drift, We have hard work to do and loads to lift; The ordinary work of the foreign missionary is along four main lines. Probably the first impression of the traveller is of the EDUCATIONAL WORK This is partly because it is represented by institutions that are more conspicuous, partly because children are much in evidence in a typical heathen city. They are sweet-faced, bright-eyed children to whom one is instinctively drawn. One hears the patter of their wooden sandals in the streets of Japan. He sees their quaintly grave faces in the rice-fields of China. He never wearies of watching their brown, chubby little bodies on the river banks of Siam. His heart aches as he sees their emaciated limbs and wan looks in India. Everywhere their features are so expressive, that he feels that they ought to have a better chance in life and that he ought to help them to get it, while new meaning irradiates the words: "It is not the will of your Father that one of these little ones should perish." In this spirit, one of the first and most loving duties of the missionary is to gather these children into schools and to teach them for this life and the life to come. Day schools of primary grade are, of course, the most numerous and they 1 Maltbie D. Babcock. reach myriads of little ones. Above them are the boardingschools, where children are under the continuous care of the missionary. If he be a benefactor of the race who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before, what shall be said of the missionary who takes a half-naked urchin out of the squalor of a mud hut, where both sexes and all ages herd like pigs, teaches him to bathe himself, to respect woman, to tell It means the truth, to earn an honest living and to serve God. even more for the girls than for the boys, for heathenism, which venerates animals, despises women. In sacred Benares, India, I saw a man make reverent way for a cow and a little farther on roughly push a woman out of his path. I saw monkeys, too, in the protected luxury of a temple, while at its gates starving girls begged for bread. Is there any work more Christlike than the gathering of these neglected ones into clean dormitories and showing them the meaning of virtue, of industry, and of that which does not exist throughout all the pagan world, except where the gospel has made it, a pure, sweet, Christian home? The contrast between the boarding-school graduate and the heathen woman is so marked that in some lands, like Korea and Africa, the former can be easily identified anywhere by the unmistakable signs of superior neatness, selfrespect and character. Colleges and normal, medical and theological schools take the more promising graduates of the boarding-schools and train them for special work among their own people. The equipment of these institutions is often very humble as compared with the magnificent buildings of many of our home colleges; but we may safely challenge Europe and America to show colleges which have achieved more solid results with such limited resources. Many a mission college turns out welltrained men on an income that would hardly keep a home university in lights and fuel, and amid conditions as primitive as those of the famous Log College. These schools and colleges are exerting an enormous influence. |