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\ STUDIA IN / 



THE LIBRARY 

of 
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY 

Toronto 



THE CALL, QUALIFICATIONS AND PREP- 

ARATION OF CANDIDATES FOR FOREIGN 

MISSIONARY SERVICE 



PAPERS BY MISSIONARIES AND 
OTHER AUTHORITIES 



STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT FOR FOR 
EIGN MISSIONS, 3 WEST 2 9 TH STREET, NEW YORK 

1901 



BV 

207O 



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, LJ 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introductory Note i 

What Essentially Constitutes a Missionary Call ? 
By Robert E. Speer, M.A 3 

Christ's Call to Foreign Missionary Service. By 
Rev. George Wilson, M.A 7 

The Call to Foreign Missionary Work. By Rev. 
Jacob Chamberlain, M.D., D.D 10 

Who Ought Not to Go as Foreign Missionaries. By 
Rev. Henry H. Jessup, D.D 14 

Essential Spiritual Qualifications of the Volunteer. 
By Rt. Rev. M. S. Baldwin, D.D., Bishop of 
Huron 23 

Three-fold Preparation for Foreign Missionary 
Work. By Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, M.D., 
D-D 33 

Qualifications in Missionary Candidates as Indi 
cated by a Tour of the Fields. By Robert E. 
Speer, M.A 41 

All-Round Preparation for Foreign Missionary 

Service. By Rev. James L. Barton, D.D 48 

The Intellectual and Practical Preparation of 
the Volunteer. By President J. C. R. Ewing, 
D.D 52 

The Practical Preparation of the Volunteer By 

Rev. Harlan P. Beach, M.A 62 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Practical Preparation for Women Student Volun 
teers. By Isabella Thoburn 71 

The Training of Character. By Eugene Stock. 

M.A 76 

Mental Preparation for Missionary Work. By 

Principal T. W. Drury, M.A ". 81 

The Need of Thinkers for the Mission Field. By 

Rev. John Clifford, D.D., LL.D 91 

Some Studies Suggested for Missionary Can 
didates. By Rev. J. H. Bernard, D.D 102 

Broad Culture Demanded of Missionaries. By 

Rev. J. H. DeForest, D.D 109 

Preparation for the Mission Field Gained Through 

Personal Work. By Rev. H. P. Beach, M.A. 115 

Personal Dealing, the Great Missionary Method. 

By Rev. S. M. Zwemer, F.R.G.S 119 

Advice to Volunteers. By the Ven. Archdeacon 

Moule, B.D 123 

Advice to Missionary Volunteers. By Bishop J. 

M. Thoburn, D.D 127 

Practical Suggestions to Missionaries. By Rev. 

J. G. Brown 133 

The Importance to a Missionary of a Knowledge 

of the People. By Rev. A. H. Smith, D.D. . 137 

Hints Concerning the First Study of Language 
on Missionary Soil. By Rev. Chauncey 
Goodrich, D.D 141 

Missionary Efficiency and Service. By Luther 

Gulick, M.D 147 

Medical Advice to Outgoing Missionaries. By 

Herbert Lankester, M.D 151 

The Young Woman's Missionary Outfit. By Mrs. 

Lucy W. Waterbury 155 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

THIS is not a systematic treatise on the call, qualifica 
tions and preparation of candidates for foreign mis 
sionary service. It is simply a collection of papers 
prepared, with one exception, for The Student Volun 
teer, New York, The Student Volunteer, London, The 
Inter collegian, New York, and the Conventions of the 
Student Volunteer Movement in Great Britain and in 
the United States and Canada. Each one is by an 
expert who is fitted to give helpful advice to those 
preparing for work in the foreign mission field For 
the convenience of student volunteers these papers are 
published in this form, as the original sources are 
accessible to very few. The reader will discover repeti 
tions. This is to be expected in a collection of mis 
cellaneous papers on the call, qualifications and prepa 
ration of missionary candidates prepared by different 
writers independently of each other. Each paper, how 
ever, treats the subject under consideration in an 
original way, and merits being given some permanent 
form. 

These articles will be of value to students who are 
endeavoring to decide what their life work shall be. 
The various phases of missionary work and the quali 
fications necessary for successful missionary service 
are clearly presented. Any student, whether thinking 
of giving his life to foreign missions or not, will be 
profited by a careful reading of these papers. 



It is believed that the volume will furnish a basis 
for a series of studies on the call and preparation of 
missionary candidates in the regular meetings of the 
Volunteer Band. Such a course will not duplicate the 
work of the mission study classes or the subjects pre 
sented in the regular missionary meetings of the Asso 
ciation. To aid Bands in such studies a brief outline 
has been prepared. It will be sent on application to 
the General Secretary of the Student Volunteer Move 
ment, 3 West 29th street, New York. 

FENNELL P. TURNER. 



WHAT ESSENTIALLY CONSTITUTES A MISSION 
ARY CALL? 1 

ROBERT E. SPEER, M.A., NEW YORK 

THERE is an assumption underlying this question, 
which almost justifies the reply that that which essen 
tially constitutes a call to the foreign field is the absence 
of a call to stay at home. And although that answer 
would be altogether too summary, yet, from one point 
of view, it would be fair to give it. The man who 
assumes that some special kind of call is required to 
send him out to the mission field might properly be 
answered by the inquiry as to what special call other 
men ought to have to justify them in staying at home. 
The fact that a man is born in a certain condition does 
not carry the assumption that he is bound to continue 
forever in that condition, for he may be born a klepto 
maniac. Being born here or there only lays upon us 
the responsibility of ascertaining whether that is the 
place wherein we are intended to spend all our lives. 
However, the answer suggested would not be a fair 
one. Life is a very complex business, and the Holy 
Spirit does not work in mechanical grooves. We can 
not draw up any brief formula which shall infallibly 
direct the life. This matter of the missionary call is a 
complex thing. It involves, for one thing, God's will ; 
and, for another, man's discovery of that will. Possi- 

x Report Student Volunteer Convention, London, 1900. 
3 



4 WHAT CONSTITUTES A MISSIONARY CALL ? 

bly, God may have a will for a man which that man is 
not willing to discover ; or the man may desire to do a 
certain thing and pursue a given course which is not 
God's will for him. 

There are two points which may help to answer the 
question in a negative way. First, we cannot assume 
that the absence of a desire to go to the mission field is 
an indication that we are not to go. Many proceed on 
the assumption that, unless they want to go, they are 
not called to go ; but that does not follow. One of the 
best of our old missionaries in China told me, during his 
fourth visit to the United States, that he never came 
to America without meeting dozens of ministers who 
told him that they had made the great mistake of their 
lives in not answering God's call to the foreign field; 
yet they did not discover that they had made the mistake 
until it was apparently too late for remedy. God will 
not coerce men. He works along the channels of per 
sonal desire and inclination. If we refuse to have sym 
pathy with His Son and with His world, He will not 
drive us into the mission field. I do not believe that a 
man has any right to ask for a call to missions which 
shall be of a character or quantity different from the 
call to practice medicine or law, or to lay bricks, in his 
own country. A man has a right to take up any kind 
of work, only so far as God assigns it to him. We have 
no right to ask, for missionary work, any leading of a 
kind different from that which we receive as we look 
toward this or that occupation at home. 

Having said these things by way of clearing the 
ground, I may now say that there are three elements 
which enter into the determination of a call to the mis 
sion field. The first is the need. We know that, 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A MISSIONARY CALL ? 5 

clearly, the need constitutes a call. I stand, for exam 
ple, upon a river bank, and some people are drowning 
in the stream. I do not need to have any legal process 
assigning me to the duty of their rescue. It is enough 
for me that people are drowning ; that they are in need 
and that I can help them. That constitutes as much 
and as a great call to me, as if an officer of the law 
were to take me by the throat and say, "Save those 
people, or I will put you into prison for your negli 
gence." Need is one great element. A second is ab 
sence of any personal disqualification ; and we ourselves 
are not the best judges there. A great many men think 
they are too intelligent to go out to the missionary 
field, and others think they are not intelligent enough; 
but no man is able to judge himself either way. All 
kinds of qualifications enter into missionary life; but 
whether we possess the requisite qualifications or lack 
sufficient of them to disqualify us, is best determined 
for us by someone else. The third element is absence 
of any insuperable hindrance, and of course the ques 
tion whether it is insuperable or not depends upon the 
personal ability to get over the hindrance. A great 
many persons are hindered by a difficulty that would 
not hinder others. I think that when once one has 
gained a vision of the world's need, like Christ's vision, 
and a love for it like His love, a great many hindrances 
will no longer appear to be such. 

Take these three things together the need of the 
world, the presence of subjective qualifications for 
missionary service, and the absence of any insuperable 
obstacles in the way, and I think those three will 
constitute a presumption that a man ought to go to 
the missionary field. I think that is not an unfair 



6 WHAT CONSTITUTES A MISSIONARY CALL? 

way of putting it. In that way it was that Keith- 
Falconer dealt with himself just before he went 
out to Arabia. "Whilst vast continents are shrouded 
in almost utter darkness, and hundreds of millions 
suffer the horrors of heathenism, or of Islam, the 
burden of proof lies upon you to show that the 
circumstances in which God has placed you were meant 
by Him to keep you out of the foreign mission field." 

In other words, the question for us to answer is not, 
Am I called to the foreign field? but, Can I show 
sufficient cause for not going? We may be quite sure 
that if we face in that direction God can much more 
easily deter us from going, if He so determines, than 
He can get us out there if we face in the opposite direc 
tion. As a friend of mine said, "God Himself cannot 
switch a powerless engine; but He can use the man 
who is willing to go out as a missionary, who is moving 
all the time right out towards the missionary field, 
trusting God to turn him aside if He sees fit." As we 
read the life of the Apostle Paul, we find that he was 
not like a balking horse, always waiting to be driven ; 
but he was ever moving and expecting to receive direc 
tions as he moved. He tried this door and that; and 
when they were shut in his face, he went around until 
he came to the open door. He did not sit down indo 
lently until God forced him along His way and until 
he came to the single open door for which he looked. 

I think one might properly answer this question by 
saying that the essential element of a missionary call is 
an openness of mind to the last command of Christ and 
to the need of the world ; and then one needs only to 
subject himself to the judgment of the proper authori 
ties as to whether he is qualified to go. 



CHRIST'S CALL TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 1 
REV. GEORGE WILSON, M.A. 

WHAT constitutes Christ's call to a Christian man or 
woman, personally, to leave home and home-land, to 
live and labor in some "uttermost part of the earth"? 

We take two things for granted. ( I ) That you are 
scripturally, radically, and consciously converted. If 
you are not this, or if this is to you short of a humble 
certainty, then you are neither qualified nor called to 
be a missionary, either at home or abroad. (2) That 
you are absolutely surrendered to the will of Christ; 
that in relation to Christ you are in the position of a 
ready "bond-servant," waiting on Him and on no one 
else for the sphere of your service, and for your serv 
ing orders. This is the only attitude in which you can 
hear, understand, and obey Christ's call to the office 
of a missionary. 

i. Do not settle your staying at home as a mere mat 
ter of course ; you may take for granted that you have 
no distinct call to go abroad. Have you had a distinct 
call from Christ to stay at home? Christ has no un 
called servants, and His servants have no self-chosen 
spheres. Do not drift to a home sphere on the current 
of circumstances. The parting of the ways of your 
life is with the Lord, and be quite sure that you stay 
at home only under direct orders from the Master. He 



1 The Student Volunteer, London, February, 1897. 
7 



5 CHRIST'S CALL TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 

has given you grace and gift to be a preacher, a 
teacher, a doctor, and these are given for the sake of 
the world. He who gave the gifts must choose for 
you the sphere in which they are to be used for Him. 
It is, therefore, as important for you to have a call 
from Christ to stay at home, as to have a call from 
Him to go abroad. 

2. In waiting on Christ for the distinct missionary 
call, begin by asking Him to show you where He has 
most need of you. Do not begin by telling where you 
would like to go, but by asking where you can best 
serve. Has He more need for you among the Christ- 
refusers in the home-lands than among the millions 
in the heathen world, who have never heard His name ? 
Do not settle that question for yourself. Let Christ 
settle with you. But face it bravely, trustingly, and 
obediently at His feet. He holds the disposal of His 
forces in His own hand, and will settle with you where. 
He has most need of you. If you thus set yourself 
to be placed by Him in the sphere where you can best 
serve Him, then we are sure that you will find your 
personal liking lying directly in the line of His need 
of you. You and the Master will be perfectly at one, 
and if He points out to you that He needs you in some 
remote sphere of a far-off land, that sphere will be 
dearer to your heart than home or friends or father 
land. His sweet and gracious call is far more than 
compensation for all we have to give up in obeying. 
The thought that He calls you to where He most needs 
you, is not only your highest honor, but your purest 
joy. 

3. When Christ by the in-shining and in-pressing 
of His blessed Spirit beckons you to some far-off field, 



CHRIST'S CALL TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 9 

do not be cast down with difficulties. Remember that 
the questions of health, gift to acquire a foreign lan 
guage, capacity for guiding men, strength to endure 
hardship and ability to get on with others are impor 
tant, but they are secondary questions. I do not think 
the Holy Spirit will move your mind to go, if you are 
not fitted to be taught by Him and qualified for the 
work. We have seen men sent on the plea of splendid 
natural gifts and utterly fail. We have seen men 
thrust forth by the Spirit with what seemed weak 
natural gifts, and prove wonderful witnesses and the 
instruments of a wonder-working God. Do not des 
pise common sense, but in the Spirit-guided life there 
is an uncommon sense. If God lays it upon your heart 
by a calm and continuous inward pressure to go to 
the mission-field, obey the call and believe that He 
will see to the imparting and the culture of all the 
needed gifts. Place His will with you, and for you 
first, and you will go forth in the strength of His en 
dowment. 

4. Settle the missionary call with Christ now, what 
ever be the stage of your studies. The declaration 
which the members of the Student Volunteer Move 
ment sign contains this condition, "if God permit." 
This is ample provision for all the contingencies in the 
life of faith. And it is of immense advantage to have 
an early missionary outlook. The Spirit then brings 
all your reading to bear on the life work to which the 
Lord has called you. While you are seeking the train 
ing of a wide and generous culture, the Spirit will pre 
pare you to be a specialist in bringing souls to Christ. 
Settle the matter with Christ, and settle it now. 



THE CALL TO FOREIGN MISSIONARY WORK 1 

REV. JACOB CHAMBERLAIN,, M.D., D.D., OF INDIA 

THERE is, I believe, a widespread misapprehension 
on the subject of the call to be a missionary. Many a 
young man and young woman has said to me, "I think 
I would be willing to be a missionary if I felt a call to 
that work, but I do not feel that God has called me. 
He has never indicated to me that I should go." A 
special call from God seems to be waited for by many 
even earnest young Christians. They will never get it. 

There is no doubt that in the opening up of the 
foreign missionary work in this century, and for enter 
ing upon new and untested fields in later years, God 
has issued special calls to individuals. He has felt it 
necessary Himself to select the leaders, the pioneers, in 
each field. He has sent into their souls such a "call" 
that they have felt "Woe is unto me if I preach not the 
gospel" in that particular field. Many of the heroes of 
missions have been thus "thrust into the harvest/' and 
we have been thrilled by the story of their "call" no less 
than by the story of their achievements. God may thus 
call special leaders in the future. But those are the 
exceptions, not the rule. God does not waste His 
special providences, His special calls. 

Our Commander-in-Chief, when He had completed 
His work on earth, and was ascending again to be on 

*The Inter collegian, New York, November, 1900. 
10 



THE CALL TO FOREIGN MISSIONARY WORK II 

the throne, did not feel it necessary to send an indi 
vidual or special call to each one of His believers; but 
addressing the multitude around Him, those bought 
by His blood yes, all believers He said, "All 
power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go 
ye therefore and disciple all nations." Ye every one 
looking for redemption through My blood, go ye and 
pass on this news to all those in all the world who know 
it not. That is thy call, O young man, young woman. 
Will you say, "O crucified One! that is not enough 
for me. Unless you send me a special letter, a special 
providence unless you speak directly to me, in my 
individual soul, so that I shall hear Thy special sum 
mons, I will not go"? Treat not thus the once given 
positive command of thy Royal Master, or leanness 
may shrivel thy soul for thy neglect. 

Every young man or woman entering upon life's 
opportunities owes it to his Lord, who bought him, 
to open his New Testament and put his finger on that 
verse where it says in positive tones, "Go ye," and 
loyally ask, "Why not I? Is there any reason that I 
can give, which Christ would consider sufficient, why 
I should not obey that behest ?" 

Not all can go. Even in the conscription for the war 
of all able-bodied men for the army, the examining 
boards rejected full many who reported for service. 
Certain physical defects incapacitated some; certain 
mental ailments disqualified others; certain filial or 
family duties, certain social or professional obligations, 
certain official responsibilities were held to absolve 
others. So in Christ's order to the front in the 
foreign missionary enterprise He says to all believers, 
"Go ye, evangelize all nations." But woe to those 



1 2 THE CALL TO FOREIGN MISSIONARY WORK 

who in this case give a false excuse, for He knows the 
inmost soul ; He measures the validity of each excuse. 
And the loving, tender son of Mary said, "He that 
loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of 
Me." And to those who would keep their sons, their 
daughters, back from His special service comes that 
earnest warning voice, "He that loveth son or daughter 
more than Me is not worthy of Me." Alas, alas ! for 
that man or woman, young or old, of whom that voice 
should say, "He, she, is not worthy of Me." 

Physical, mental defects, filial, family duties, social, 
official complications must indeed be taken into account, 
but let them be weighed with the consciousness that 
the loving eye of Christ is peering into thy inmost 
soul, and then, whatever be thy decision, joy of heart 
and a fruitful life may confidently be anticipated. 

But what are the needed qualifications for being a 
successful missionary? I presuppose such physical 
condition as would enable one to obtain an insurance 
policy in a first-class life insurance company, and such 
intellectual capacity as to pass through college and 
professional school with credit. 

What further is needed may all be summed up in the 
old minister's "three royal G's" Grace, Grit, and 
Gumption. Grace means here consecration to Christ 
and ardent love for man. Without these a missionary 
would be a sad misfit. Grit is a dogged perseverance 
in the performance of one's work, even if one sees no 
immediate fruit, relying implicitly on Him who said, 
My word "shall not return unto Me void." Gumption 
implies a fair quantity of that somewhat uncommon 
quality, common sense the ability to adapt one's self 
to circumstances, to make the best of one's surround- 



THE CALL TO FOREIGN MISSIONARY WORK 13 

ings, while judiciously, zealously endeavoring to better 
them; the capacity to work in harmony with one's 
fellow-workers, and the ability to seize and wield every 
available weapon for the prosecution of our warfare. 

With health, mental capacity, grace, grit, and gump 
tion, no one need fear that the Master cannot use him 
or her as a mighty force for the pushing forward of 
His kingdom, even in the most difficult fields. 

Possessed of these, the work in all lands will 
itself furnish round holes for round men, square 
holes for square men. Every kind is needed 
and can be utilized. The eloquence of a Paul, 
or the quiet persuasiveness of a Barnabas, or the blun 
dering energy of a Peter will tell in evangelistic work. 
The skill of a Gamaliel in educational work will find 
its scope, for we must, on the ground, train up in each 
land native Pauls and Timothys, Aquilas and Priscillas, 
Apolloses and Salomes for founding, instructing, and 
extending the native Church. 

The most expert linguists will find their place in 
translating and revising translations of the Bible and 
in preparing needed vernacular Christian literature; 
the most highly qualified physicians in following in the 
footsteps of the Great Physician in healing all manner 
of diseases and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom ; 
trained nurses in nursing the sick back to life and into 
the life in Christ Jesus. 

All and more than all of these qualifications are to be 
desired, but no one with health, capacity, and "the 
three G's" need fear to undertake this royal service in 
any land, for he goes in the service of Him of whom 
the Apostle Paul, who had tried it, said, "My God shall 
supply all your need." 



WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO AS FOREIGN MISSION 
ARIES l 

REV. HENRY H. JESSUP, D.D., OF SYRIA. 

WHO, among Christian students ought not to go? 
As the result of an experience of nearly forty years at 
the front I can mention twelve classes of men who will 
be justified in remaining at home. 

1. Those in infirm health. It is not wise to send 
invalids so far away from home. The expense is so 
great and the risk so severe that none but those of 
mens sana in corpore sano should go abroad. No 
one should go who cannot pass the examination of a 
medical examiner of a reliable life insurance company. 

2. Those too old to learn a foreign language. It is 
not often that one over thirty can master a difficult 
foreign language. Mr. Calhoun of Syria began to 
study the Arabic language at nearly forty and suc 
ceeded, but he had had previous experience with the 
modern Greek. Good linguists can learn a foreign 
language at thirty-five or even forty, but such cases 
are the rare exceptions. Some foreign tongues are 
easier than others, but as a rule it is better to send the 
young to grapple with Zulu clicks, Arabic gutturals, 
and Chinese characters. 

3. No one should go who is unwilling to go any 
where. There should be complete self-surrender. The 

*The Student Volunteer, New York, February, 1895. 
14 



WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO 15 

wise and experienced officers of our Mission Boards 
are always ready to consider the personal preferences 
of candidates for special fields. But the true spirit of 
a missionary is one of readiness to go "where duty calls 
or danger," making no conditions. 

4. Those who believe that the missionary enterprise 
is doomed to failure. Mr. Moody once said at a meet 
ing of the American Board, "Pessimists have no place 
in the Christian pulpit. We want hopeful men." And 
we can say with equal truth, Pessimists have no place 
in the foreign missionary work. We want hopeful men 
in this glorious aggressive warfare. Our King and 
Captain is going forth "conquering and to conquer." 
It is a winning cause. Expect to succeed. Omnip 
otence is on your side. The Eternal Spirit of God is 
with you. Christ is "with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world." The Dispensation of the Holy 
Spirit is not a failure, and was not intended to be a 
failure. You go to lead men to Christ, to organize 
churches, to train a Christian ministry, to lay founda 
tions for a glorious spiritual building to the praise and 
honor of Christ. If you expect only disaster, retro 
gression and final collapse, and can only look on the 
dark side, do not go abroad to cast the gloom of your 
pessimism over your fellow laborers and finally sink in 
despair. You can do little at home with such a spirit. 
You can do still less abroad. 

5. Impatient men. It is a long hard work and needs 
patience. You must prepare the soil, sow the good 
seed, water it with your tears, and then wait for the 
harvest. The Baptist Board of Missions got tired of 
waiting for the seed to germinate in the Telugu soil of 
India and were ready to give up the work and with- 



1 6 WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO 

draw. But a few patient, faithful workers refused to 
withdraw, and soon after, 10,000 were baptized in one 
year ! Be willing to sow and to let others reap. How 
many missionaries have lived and toiled and died with 
out the sight of fruit! But others entered into their 
labors and gathered the harvest. An impatient man is 
easily discouraged. The Lord's patience is great. If 
He can wait for the harvest, His servants can. 

6. Men without common sense. This is a virtue the 
want of which nothing else will supply. Brilliant tal 
ents, great linguistic gifts, impetuous zeal, all, alas, 
will fail without mental balance. A man without level 
headed common sense will do more mischief in a day 
than a whole mission can undo in a year. A person 
calling himself a missionary went from England to 
India. After some months he wrote to his home com 
mittee, "I should get on very well if it were not for 
these wretched natives who come crowding in upon 
me, but now I have got a bull-dog and hope to keep 
them away !" Religious enthusiasm has led some to go 
abroad, despising the means God has given us for pre 
serving life and health, and they have sacrificed their 
own lives and the lives of others and given occasion to 
the enemies of God to blaspheme. Some of them have 
become a charge on other missionaries. What would 
St. Luke, the beloved physician, have said to the mod 
ern school of enthusiasts who denounce doctors and 
medicines as of the Evil One ? Common sense in every 
day life is a sine qua non in the foreign mission work. 

7. Intractable men. Such men cannot yield to a 
majority vote. They are not needed abroad. The 
work needs tractable, courteous men, willing to take 
advice and to work with others. One self-opinionated, 



WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO 17 

arbitrary, wilful man will bring disaster upon a mis 
sion. Missions are self-governing bodies, and the 
majority must decide every question. Intractable men 
make trouble enough at home, yet in a Christian land 
they soon find their level, under the tide of public opin 
ion. But in a little organized self-governing body in a 
distant corner of the earth, such men work great 
mischief. 

Dr. Anderson of the American Board told me in 
1857, that a young man once came to the mission house 
in Boston as a candidate for the foreign mission field. 
Dr. Anderson invited him to spend the night with him 
in Roxbury, and as they were walking together the 
young man suddenly said, "I prefer to walk on the 
right side." Dr. Anderson said to him, "May I ask 
why you walk on the right side? Are you deaf in one 
ear?" "No," said the young man, "but I prefer to 
walk on the right side and / ahvays will walk on the 
right side." That young man was not sent abroad. 
It was evident that a man who was bent on having his 
own way without giving reasons would be likely to 
make mischief, and his right side would be pretty sure 
to be the wrong side. 

8. Superficially prepared men. No one can predict 
what duties may devolve on a foreign missionary: 
Bible translation, organization of churches, the mould 
ing of a new native Christian social fabric, dealing with 
subtle philosophies, preparing a Christian literature, 
founding institutions of learning, and perhaps a whole 
educational system, guiding the ignorant, and often- 
time dealing with kings and rulers. Surely such a 
man should be well trained. If a physician, he should 
be thoroughly equipped, and not be satisfied with any 



1 8 WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO 

short, hasty course of preparation. He should be able 
not only to secure the diploma of a medical college, but 
pass the test of examination by the New York or Mas 
sachusetts State Board of Examiners. The most com 
plete all-round, theological or medical training is the 
best preparation for the foreign missionary work. To 
this should be added, experience in personal Christian 
work in the cities or the country. 

9. Men of unsettled religious views. The foreign 
mission work needs men who believe something, who 
are anchored to the Rock, who believe in the Bible, and 
in Christ as the only Saviour. Not men who regard 
the Bible as one of the sacred books, and Christ as one 
of the Saviours. The world wants something positive. 
It is tired of feeding on ashes and wind. If you do 
not know what you believe, stay at home until you do. 
Preach the old, old story without modification or dilu 
tion. The Gospel is what the nations need. Redemp 
tion through the blood of Christ is the only revealed 
way of salvation. There is not wisdom enough on 
earth or among the angels of heaven, to devise a better 
plan of salvation than that given us in the gospel of 
Jesus Christ. 

10. Men who are afraid of torrid climates and hard 
languages. There is nothing in these to alarm a Chris 
tian soldier. When Stanley advertised for men to go 
to Equatorial Africa, twelve hundred men offered to 
go, fearing neither serpents, savages, cannibals, mala 
ria, starvation, nor death itself. The British Govern 
ment has thousands of candidates applying for posts 
in the East India service, though it involves exposure 
to that trying climate and an expatriation of at least 
twenty years. And shall we do less for Christ and our 



WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO 19 

fellow men ? And as to languages, if the native babies 
in Asia and Africa can learn those hard guttural lan 
guages, you can. Grace and grit will triumph over 
the hardest language. You will make mistakes, morti 
fying, shocking mistakes, but no matter, try again. 
You will need the humility of a. little child and his good- 
natured perseverance in learning his mother tongue, 
but any young man or woman of good health, and 
habits of mental discipline, can master any Asiatic 
or African language, as others have already done. 

ii. Men who hesitate to condescend to the lowly, 
depraved and besotted. The unevangelized nations are 
not all besotted and repulsive in their habits, but there 
are tribes of half-naked, filthy and imbruted children 
of nature from whom a civilized man involuntarily 
shrinks. Yet they are men for whom Christ died. Can 
you go and live among such men and women ? Do you 
say, I am not called to such a degradation, this is too 
great a sacrifice, too exacting a condescension ? Think 
what Christ has done for you. In the year 1854, the 
Rev. Dr. W. Goodell, of Constantinople, said in a 
charge to a young missionary just setting out for 
Western Africa, "When your whole nature revolts from 
contact with degraded and naked savages, and you feel 
that you cannot bear to associate with them, remember 
what a demand you make every day, when you ask the 
pure and sinless Spirit of the Eternal God to come 
not to sojourn but to abide in your vile, sinful heart !" 

Think what Christ has done for you. You need a 
heart full of love to men for Christ's sake. If you love 
men, you will see their nobility and the beauty of God's 
image in them, in spite of the scars and deformities of 
sin. And if you love them they will see it and feel it, 



20 WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO 

and will love you in return. Love them and you will 
win them, and they will love you, and then how easy 
to lead them to Christ ! 

12. Lastly, men who think of the missionary work as 
a temporary service, or a convenient way of serving 
themselves. Some men have entered the foreign mis 
sionary work in order to study foreign languages and 
fit themselves for a position at home; or in order to 
travel in foreign parts; or to engage in mere scientific 
exploration or commercial pursuits. 

Such men do not deserve the name of missionaries. 
The missionary work should be, if possible, a life work. 
If you go abroad, expect to spend your life among the 
people and to identify yourself with them. Let nothing 
turn you aside from your work. Missionaries are 
sometimes tempted to leave their work by the allure 
ments of literature, diplomacy, or commerce. Their 
familiarity with foreign languages, with the treasures 
of Oriental literature, and with the mineral resources 
of distant lands, render them peculiarly liable to temp 
tation from these sources of emolument. But none of 
these things should move them. If you go abroad, 
hold on to your work until the Lord Himself separates 
you from it. 

If then the Christian student finds that he is of sound 
health; of proper age; willing to go where God shall 
call ; hopeful ; patient ; with good common sense ; tract 
able; thoroughly trained; of settled religious views; 
willing to go to the most trying climate and the most 
difficult language; ready to love the humblest and the 
most degraded; and to make his work a life service; 
it is evident that he is called of God to go. He needs 
no voice or sign from heaven. The call of lost men 



WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO 21 

and the command of Him who came to seek and save 
the lost, alike urge him to go. 

Let such a Christian ask himself these questions : 
Has the religion of Christ been a blessing to me? Is 
it adapted to all men? Does the unevangelized world 
need the gospel now as it did when Christ gave His last 
command? Am I a debtor to myself alone? Do I 
owe a duty only to my own family or my own country ? 
Is the voice of Christ still ringing with the command, 
"Go, teach all nations" ? Are the heathen still crying, 
"Come and help us"? If I am Christian should I 
not be like Christ? If I am soldier should I not obey 
marching orders? If I am a workman should I not 
make the best use of my life ? If I am a scholar, should 
I not make my education most effective? Where am 
I most needed to-day ? 

Can a fair-minded Christian young man or woman 
then fail to consider these questions honestly? It is 
not honest to shut our eyes and ears and disclaim all 
responsibility. We shall thus only postpone the inevi 
table day of reckoning. Be honest to yourself, honest 
to your Saviour, honest to your perishing fellow-men ! 

It is wise to settle it while you are engaged in your 
course of study. If you can do it while in college or 
high school so much the better. If you have sufficient 
reason to justify your remaining at home it will always 
be a blessing to you that you considered the question 
ot duty fairly, fully and faithfully. You will be more 
useful as a pastor at home, if you were willing to go, 
and found yourself detained at home by the constraints 
of the Divine Providence. But do not think that such 
a question can be decided without a struggle. The 
thought of a life separation from home and friends and 



22 WHO OUGHT NOT TO GO 

country, from father and mother, brothers and sisters, 
will cost you many a pang. And the thought of what 
they will suffer will be more bitter than any anxiety 
about yourself. You may have had cherished ambi 
tions, even in the thought of the Christian ministry at 
home. These must be set aside. Am I willing to give 
up all for Christ? Where will you decide this ques 
tion? There is but one place on your knees before 
your Saviour, in prayer, in holy, rapt communion with 
Him. Let Him into the secret council chamber of your 
soul, set Him on the throne, ask His decision, His 
counsel, His help, His command. Then all will be 
right, and you need not fear to go ahead in the strength 
of God to this blessed and glorious service. 



ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS OF THE 
VOLUNTEER 

RT. REV. M. S. BALDWIN, D.D., BISHOP OF HURON 

THERE is a modern astronomer who tells us that this 
planet of ours consumes only the two-hundred-mil 
lionth part of all the rays which issue from the sun, 
and we can none of us believe that in the economy of 
nature a beam of light is ever lost. There are other 
planets they must illuminate, other fields they must 
fructify, other plants they must nurse into exquisite 
beauty and loveliness ; and the question comes : Does 
the whole church throughout the world consume as, 
much as the two-hundred-millionth part of all the full 
ness that is in Christ? No, by no means. He is the 
brightness of His Father's Glory and the express 
image of His Person. In Him dwelleth all the full 
ness of the Godhead bodily, and all that we can take 
is but a drop in the ocean of His grace. The super 
abundance that we cannot possibly use is for the dying 
world about us ; for the uncounted millions who are 
sinking on every side, unsaved, unknown, unwept for 
want of that glorious gospel of which we have not 
only enough, but abundantly to spare. Such being the 
case, the important question at once arises : Who are 
the fit men to preach the gospel to a dying world ? 

Report Student Volunteer Convention, Cleveland, 1898. 
23 



24 ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 

They are, first, those whom God the Holy Ghost has 
called. 

The first mission the Gentile church ever sent forth 
was from Antioch. On that occasion the Holy Ghost 
said: "Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work 
whereunto I have called them." We cannot fail to 
notice that the Eternal Spirit in His infinite wisdom 
first chose these holy men, then called them, then en 
dowed them with superabounding grace, then sent 
them forth to sow the seed and reap the harvests of 
the Lord. Who were these men? They were, first of 
all, men who had set their seal that God was true. St. 
John says: "He that hath received His witness hath 
set his seal to this, that God is true." In the midst of 
a crooked and troubled world, with paganism and in 
fidelity on every side, these men had set their seal to 
the testimony of God the Father, concerning His Son, 
our Saviour, Jesus Christ. They not only believed that 
testimony themselves, but they exhorted all others with 
whom they came in contact to do the same. They 
lifted up their voices throughout the highways of the 
world, and said to those who sat in darkness: Your 
idols are a lie, your philosophy a sham, your power 
weakness, your life a breath. Behold the Lamb of 
God who taketh away the sin of the world. Repent, 
believe, be saved. They affixed their seal to God's 
truth by saying Christ alone was the Truth. They 
showed the reality of this faith by laying down their 
whole being in attestation of it. Dear students, be 
assured God will not choose those who are airing their 
doubts as to the eternal truthfulness of His inspired 
Word. If you belong to what is called the destructive 
school of criticism and think you have discovered 



ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 25 

cracks and flaws and fissures in the Bible, no doubt 
you may hereafter be chosen to minister to some 
splendid church where the stipend will be beyond the 
dream of avarice, and cushioned splendor lie in rich 
profusion all about you, but certainly God will not 
choose you for the foreign field. He only wants those 
who set their seal that God is true. Again, they were 
men who were themselves sealed by the Holy Ghost. 
They were so filled with His holy presence, and so 
enriched with all His precious fruits and glorious 
charismata that men took knowledge of men that they 
had been with Jesus. Whatever inward joys God's 
sealing bestows upon the individual Christian, its out 
ward manifestation to the world is the miracle of a 
life in union with the ascended Christ, and rejoicing 
in that divine liberty from sin which was forever ef 
fected on the cross. Grace dwelt within and the glory 
of God shone down upon them. They had not only 
life, but life abounding. Dear young men and women, 
the unction of the Holy One is what you need most. 
Without this your ministry will be "as idle as a painted 
ship upon a painted ocean." With this it will be the 
ministry of power. "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem 
until ye be endowed with power," was the Saviour's 
command at the first ; it is His command now. It is a 
power you cannot obtain from schools of learning, from 
the lips of the wise or the precepts of man. You can 
only obtain this power in one place, and that is alone 
with God at a throne of grace. There, in deep solitude 
with Him, resting believingly on the availing interces 
sion of our great Melchizedek Priest, ask and ye shall 
receive, seek and ye shall find, for "if ye then, being 
evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, 



26 ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 

how much more shall your heavenly Father give the 
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ?" 

Secondly, God chooses a man who believes himself 
unfit for the work given him to do. 

God never wants the self-sufficient. They are not 
the material He wishes to employ. St. Paul gives us 
a marvelous list of the extraordinary forces which 
God employs for the discomfiture of the world. They 
are five in number : The foolish things that He might 
put to shame them that are wise ; the weak things that 
He might put to shame the things that are strong ; the 
base things, and the things that are despised did God 
choose ; yea, and the things that are not, that He might 
bring to naught the things that are. When we through 
grace reach the point that we esteem ourselves as noth 
ing we are eligible for God's eternal election. 

Let us look for a moment at Moses at the dawn of 
his manhood. He felt perfectly sure in his own mind 
that he was just the man to lead Israel out of Egypt. 
He had great learning. He was taught in all the wis 
dom of Egypt. He had been brought up in the court 
of Pharaoh. What could he possibly want more? 
Acting on this assumption, he proceeds to the vindica 
tion of his people, only to learn that he had to fly the 
country and escape for his life. God's plans were 
deeper far. He sends him to school for forty years 
in Midian, there to learn God's power and his own 
nothingness. Forty years is a long time longer far 
than any of you propose to spend at college yet I am 
sure it was all needed before the man Moses was fitted 
for God's work. 

At last the time for action came, and as he is tend 
ing his flock he sees a strange and unprecedented 



ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 27 

sight a thorn bush and a fire. The fire was within 
the bush, and the bush was not consumed. Two 
antithetical truths were here before his eyes. The bush 
was to represent the weakness of man, the fire the 
omnipotence of God. The bush itself was the dry 
acacia of the wilderness, almost valueless, but a fit 
figure of Moses a fit figure indeed of every man that 
God intends for service. Only a poor thorn bush in 
a dry and desert world. On the other side, there is 
the fire, emblem of consuming power and disintegrat 
ing might. This is not all. The fire is in the bush 
and the bush is not consumed. What was the lesson 
God intended him to learn ? The fire in the bush was 
infinite strength dwelling in utter weakness. God, the 
omnipotent One, was about to dwell in the poor thorn 
bush Moses, and make him efficient for his holy work. 
Now, fire has many qualities. In the darkness it will 
illuminate, in cold will warm, in contamination purify 
and in might consume. Here, God said to Moses : It 
is quite true you are all weakness and irresolution; 
only, as the thorn bush, a thing of naught, but I am 
with thee, and My power shall supply all thy need. 
Young men and women, it is the same to-day. God 
prizes most those who only esteem themselves as weak 
and helpless as the thorn bush. God, not you, will be 
the fire. You want to feel fit. He wants you to feel 
unfit; our extremity is always His opportunity. A 
modern expositor has pointed out that the man who 
was given the greatest work in the Old Testament 
dispensation was a man who offered no less than seven 
objections to prove his own unfitness. Certainly he 
was wrong in making any objections when God gave 
the command, but the facts prove the lowly estimate 



28 ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 

Moses had of himself and the high regard in which 
he was held by God. 

Goliath clothed himself with an immense amount 
of armor. His spear was like a weaver's beam and 
his sword a terror to his foes, but what did it all effect ? 
Absolutely nothing. A smooth stone in the sling of a 
youth who went against him in the name of the Lord 
felled him like a cedar. And so it always will be. If 
you are going forth in the presence and power of 
God, it matters not how high are the walls, or how 
mighty the Anakim, all opposition will give way 
before you. 

Thirdly, another and most important qualification 
is that we should bear the image of the Lord Jesus 
Christ in our life and character. 

The most stupendous and irrefragable proof of the 
truth of Christianity is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. 
Infidels, who have rejected all revelation, find them 
selves at a loss to explain the solitary grandeur, the 
sublime character, the divine teaching of this to them 
Mysterious One. The one question that they cannot 
possibly answer is this: If Christianity is not true, 
who in the past ever invented the character, spake the 
words and did the works of this infinitely Holy One? 
Chadwick, in answering these infidels, asks : "Did this 
eagle, with sun-sustaining eyes, emerge from the slime 
of the age of Tiberius, the basest age in history? 
Whence is the trumpet, and whose is the breath in it, 
which has blown that dying supplication round the 
world and down the ages : 'Come unto Me, and I will 
give you rest' ? Who built the throne, and reared the 
pillars of it, which knows no change amid the revolu 
tions of centuries? 'Truly this was the Son of God/ 



ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 29 

Christ, our Divine Redeemer, is the Sun of Righteous 
ness and if you bring a blind man out at midday and 
find that he is utterly unable to see the sun shining in 
its strength, it is idle to bring him out at midnight to 
see whether he can see Vega or Capella." And, dear 
students, it is this mysterious, sublime Christ; this 
effulgence of His Father's glory and express image 
of His person we are to resemble. Not some glowing 
seraph who stands beside His throne, not some great 1 
archangel who flies to do His will ; but like Him who 
is the chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether 
lovely. Now, when you go to the heathen to preach 
the gospel of the grace of God your words have to be 
the words of Jesus and your character the character 
of Jesus. Your words will be only weighty when they 
see Christ shining out of you. Now, what was the 
appearance of Christ? St. John tells us that he saw 
our Lord when the heavens were opened, and that by 
the throne He stood a "Lamb as it had been slain." 
Now we ourselves never saw a man who had been 
dead and was raised to life again, but when St. John 
saw our Lord He bore the marks of death. He not 
only looked like a "Lamb/' but as one that had been 
slain and was risen to life again. To be like Christ, 
therefore, is to look like one who has died, been buried 
and raised to life again in the image of His resurrec 
tion. How many of us look like those who have died 
and been buried? What the world sees is the old 
unslain natural life, and unsatisfied they turn away 
and say: "Is this Christianity?" That which im 
presses men when they see and hear us is the hunum; 
what impressed men when they saw and heard Christ 
was the Divine. Now, why is this? It is because so 



3 ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 

many professing Christians exhibit in their daily life 
the old unslain natural man, with all his sins and evil 
propensities. When they are offended the law of the 
jungle obtains. Blow is met by blow, insult by insult, 
wrong by wrong. When self-interest is concerned, 
trickiness in trade, deceit and fraud betray the exist 
ence of that nature to which by profession they are 
dead. What the world needs is to see a man abso 
lutely dead to the mind of the flesh a man who will 
give good for evil, a blessing for a curse, a prayer for 
a blow ; in other words, the character of Christ, which 
is divine, and not his own, which is human. People 
are never so impressed as when they see God in you. 
They may doubt your arguments, dispute your con 
clusions and oppose your progress, but in some way 
they will believe in you. And when you place a mis 
sionary, with the character of the Lord Jesus manifest 
in him, amid all the impurity, idolatry and shams of 
heathenism, he shines like a meteor in the midnight- 
sky. It is not only what he says, but how he lives; 
his life is to them a miracle. If you are to do the work 
of the Lord, live much in His presence, bury yourself 
in His infinite fullness and there stay until when at 
last you go forth on His errand, people will say: 
"These men look like those who have died forever unto 
sin and risen again unto righteousness look like the 
Lord Jesus Christ." If some of you ask, How can we 
become like Christ ? I answer : Kneeling down, in the 
solitude of your room, plead this promise: "Whom 
He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be con 
formed to the image of His Son." It is God's eternal 
purpose to make you not like the beloved John, the 
mighty Paul or even like some glorious seraph near 



ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 31 

His throne but like Him that sits upon the throne; 
like Jesus Christ Himself. 

Fourthly, another qualification is that those who go 
forth should understand thoroughly what their mes 
sage is. 

They are to understand first of all that the gospel 
is a message; not a scheme of philosophy, not a vast 
system of human reasoning, not a poem or guesses at 
the truth, but a simple message sent down by God in 
heaven to man on earth. The message is: "God so 
loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but 
have everlasting life." This they are to proclaim. No 
human mind can understand the Infinite, and there 
may be many deep things in Revelation which we can 
not now fully grasp, but we can all give a message. 
A fact people forget is this: We are not advocates. 
The advocate of the Father is the Son, and the advo 
cate of the Son is the Holy Ghost. An advocate is a 
much higher being than a mere witness; an advocate 
has to be one learned in the law, but a witness may 
be a poor, unlettered man. He has not to explain law ; 
he has to witness to a fact. Now God says : "Ye are 
My witnesses." God the Son will vindicate to the 
uttermost God the Father; and God the Holy Ghost 
will vindicate to the uttermost God the Son. We are 
to say : "God is light and in Him is no darkness at 
all" that all truth dwells in Him, and that the Lord 
Jesus Christ has been lifted up upon the cross that 
whosoever believeth in Him might have everlasting 
life. 

They are to have no hesitating message, but one 
clear statement to a dying world Christ and Christ 



32 ESSENTIAL SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS 

only. They are to tell the heathen that the most 
precious thing in the whole world is the precious blood 
of Christ ; that Christ is able to save to the uttermost 
all that come unto Him, and that He is the Rest where 
with God causes the weary to rest, and He is their 
refreshing. 



THREEFOLD PREPARATION FOR FOREIGN MIS 
SIONARY WORK 1 

REV. JACOB CHAMBERLAIN, M.D., D.D., OF INDIA 

THE preparation should be threefold : Of body, of 
mind, of heart; or, physical, intellectual, spiritual. 

I. The first of these often receives far too little at 
tention. Many a consecrated student, in college or 
professional school, gives himself with intense earnest 
ness to his studies and to his religious duties, both 
closet and public, while paying scant attention or 
none at all to the cultivation of his physique. This 
is a mistake: it is a crime. Under the Mosaic dis 
pensation, the sacrifice looking to the coming Messiah 
was to be a lamb without physical blemish. So should 
our offering to that risen Messiah be a body with all 
the powers He has given thoroughly developed for His 
sake, for His service. 

I do not say that the best athlete always makes the 
best missionary, but I do say that the careful, tem 
perate training of a college athlete will necessarily fit 
that man for more royal service in God's foreign war 
than if he had moped along in inactivity and lack of 
physical culture, while giving all his thought to the 
intellectual and spiritual. Indeed, physical prowess 
always stands the missionary on the field in good stead, 

*The Inter collegian, New York, December, 1900. 
33 



34 THREEFOLD PREPARATION 

and often saves him for farther service. When, be 
cause of the conversion of a young Brahman whom 
I knew, the mob sought his life and that of the mis 
sionary, and, though not daring to strike a blow, 
sought to hustle them to death, the football tactics of 
the stalwart young missionary, which he had practised 
when captain of his university team, enabled him to 
get himself and the convert through the mob to a place 
of safety. 

The missionary may oft-times be called upon to 
undergo great physical toil, endurance, and privation, 
and with a physique well developed he can render far 
better service yes, use to far better advantage his 
intellectual and spiritual gifts. Not only mens sana 
is needed, but, for the most royal service, it should 
be in corpore sano. 

To every student volunteer I would say: Take 
plenty of vigorous exercise; cultivate every physical 
power to its best; look well to your digestion. Some 
dyspeptic missionaries have, it is true, done excellent 
service; but they have done it in spite of their dys 
pepsia, and, but for it, could have done far better. 
With all, cultivate a cheerful disposition. It can be 
cultivated. It will be needed. Cynics do not accom 
plish much as missionaries. Do not be afraid of a 
good healthy, hearty laugh. I knew a consecrated 
missionary of whom it was said, "He died because he 
could not laugh." He always took a gloomy view of 
things. He could see no humor in anything. He sank 
tinder the climate and died. A good hearty laugh 
now and then might have enabled him to throw off 
depressing symptoms and disease, and made him live 
longer to win many more souls. One of the most con- 



THREEFOLD PREPARATION 35 

secrated, spiritually minded missionaries I even knew 
was one of the best laughers. 

Beware of any personal habits that sap the vital 
energy. These are insidious. They are often known 
to one's self alone and to his God. Each one must 
study well his own case, and hunt them out for the 
Master's sake; and here I wish to say a word on a 
delicate subject the use of tobacco. I am not a crank 
on that subject. I willingly admit that some of the 
most spiritually minded, most devoted men I have 
known, do use tobacco. At their feet would I gladly 
sit and learn, but not learn the tobacco habit; for I 
am sure that it would stand in my way in effective 
service on the mission field. Indeed, I have known 
even devoted missionaries in the tropics whose ser 
vice yes, whose lives have been declared by their 
physicians to have been cut short by that habit. It 
is more seductive in a tropical climate than in a cold, 
and the very loneliness, often, of a missionary's life 
in any foreign land encourages it. Many a missionary 
who has come out to the field a smoker have I known 
to give it up there, for Christ's sake, and for years 
after to feel the satisfaction of doing better work be 
cause of giving it up. To any prospective missionary 
who has formed, or is forming, the habit I would, with 
brotherly earnestness and love, say, "Don't." Be 
pure in all things : "Know ye not that your body is 
the temple of the Holy Ghost?" The temple of God 
must be pure and holy. 

2. The intellectual preparation should be the very 
best attainable. We are, none of us, responsible for 
the amount of intellectual ability with which we have 
been endowed, but we are responsible for its thorough 



36 THREEFOLD PREPARATION 

culture. The intellect is the mighty weapon which 
we are to wield for Christ. We should sharpen it, 
develop it, strengthen it to our utmost. When I was 
about to enter college, my sainted mother, having first 
consecrated me to the missionary work, thus charged 
me : "My son, if you are to be a missionary, you must 
stand high in scholarship. Do not let it be said that 
seconds are palmed off upon the Lord for missionary 
service." It was good advice. I pass it on to you. 
If any man needs to be well equipped, it is the mis 
sionary. He often has intellectual giants to contend 
with, and though he has the promise, and now and 
again realizes the fulfillment of it, "I will be with thy 
mouth -and teach thee what thou shalt say," God 
gave not that promise to encourage intellectual lazi 
ness either in preparation for, or in fulfilling, His 
commission. 

The missionary should be a well-read, well-equipped, 
"all-round" man, obtaining all the knowledge he can 
on all subjects. History, science, philosophy, psychol 
ogy, mathematics, languages, poetry, travel, geogra 
phy, art, mechanics everything will come into use 
on the missionary field. Fiction even, should not be 
entirely avoided, but it should be utilized judiciously, 
temperately. We have all known students whose col 
lege standing was much lowered by excessive novel- 
reading. Alas, I have known missionaries on the field 
of whom it has been said, and I fear justly, that their 
work and their influence was much lessened by the 
excessive reading of novels ! In reading fiction choose 
only the best, and read with moderation and thought. 
It will then be not harmful, but helpful. 

The study of other religious systems, especially of 



THREEFOLD PREPARATION 37 

the country where one's missionary life is to be spent, 
should by no means be neglected. We should at once 
dismiss the thought that there is no truth to be found 
in non-Christian systems. God has not left Himself 
without a witness in any age or nation. Zealously 
culling all that we can of truth in that system we are 
combating, we should utilize that truth as a common 
ground on which to stand in pointing out how Chris 
tianity, with its loving God the Father, its atoning God 
the Son, its enlightening, sanctifying God the Spirit, 
supplies what is still lacking in their system, and puts 
a capstone on all the truth contained in all the systems, 
and is itself alone able to raise the sinful soul to God. 

Here let me give a word of caution and of cheer. 
Many a prospective volunteer has held back because of 
a fear that he, or she, will not be able to acquire the 
language of the country to which they would be sent. 
That is a bugbear put forward by Satan to frighten off 
recruits whom he does not want sent. 

Can an uneducated Scandinavian, German or Pole, 
who comes to America to better himself, acquire that 
most difficult of languages, the English, so as to use 
it not only in trade, but in social intercourse as well 
many becoming very fluent in its use and shall we, 
the educated children of the King, fear to go to any 
land to which He calls us, to attack any language His 
children there speak, that we may tell those wandering 
sons and daughters the way back to Him? One who 
goes thus, goes not at his own charges. God, who 
formed the ear, the tongue, will help the ear to catch, 
the tongue to enunciate, the memory to retain the 
strange sounds until they become the familiar mes 
sengers of the message of love. No one who has the 



38 THREEFOLD PREPARATION 

ability to obtain an education at home need fear to 
attack any missionary language if he or she is willing 
to do it energetically, persistently, prayerfully, as unto 
the Lord. For a missionary has a right to pray over 
the grammar and the sounds and the idiom of his new 
language, and to count on God's helping him to con 
quer it. I speak that I do know. 

3. We discuss, last, preparation of the heart, not 
because it is the least important, but the most; for the 
missionary work demands men and women of strong 
faith, who have learned to take God at His word, and 
to rely implicitly upon it. 

"Brother Lawrence" never uttered a truer word 
than when he spoke of "the practice of the presence 
of God" as a reality and as a thing to be zealously 
cultivated. A missionary who does not believe in the 
literal truth of Christ's promise which was coupled 
with His commission, "Go ye," viz., "Lo, I am with 
you alway," misses much of his possible power. That 
presence becomes very real at times. On one occasion, 
when I stood facing an angry mob in a large city in 
a native state, who were gathering stones to put an 
end to "those preachers of another God," the presence 
of the Christ at my side seemed very real. I could 
almost feel His hand upon my shoulder as He whis 
pered, "Say this, and they will listen"; "Say that, and 
they will hear." And when the mob had become an 
audience, and had with deep attention listened to the 
story of redeeming love, I felt that it was not I that 
had been speaking for no words of mine could have 
quelled that mob but that the Saviour's word had 
been fulfilled, "For it is not ye that speak, but the 
Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." Mission- 



THREEFOLD PREPARATION 39 

aries of to-day in India, China, Turkey, in all the 
world, need, and should learn it young, to take God 
at His word. 

To do this, one must be a diligent student of God's 
Book. That is God's secret place, where we may al 
ways find Him, and "He that dwelleth in the secret 
place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow 
of the Almighty." Ay, there are we safe and strong. 
Those who have studied Greek will do well to make 
a specialty of Biblical Greek, and to make the New 
Testament in the original, containing the very words 
used by our Saviour and His apostles, their daily de 
votional reading. I speak from a life experience when 
I tell what new and helpful ideas one thus daily finds 
in his closet reading of his Greek Testament. 

Take the whole Bible with you to India, to China, 
to Japan. No emasculated substitute will there answer 
your purpose. When the Revised English Bible first 
appeared, an old lady went to a book-store and inno 
cently inquired of the clerk if he had any copies of the 
"Reversed Bible." No reversed Bible does for us on 
heathen soil. Christ, the one atoning Saviour, the 
God-man, whom Paul preached with all his hard doc 
trines, is the only one who can lift up the heathen of 
to-day. The missionary needs the whole panoply of 
God. 

Cultivate an intense love for the Saviour and for 
your fellow-man. It is not the one who reaches down 
with tongs to take hold and says, "You poor wretches, 
come up out of that pit of mire," but the one who 
clasps the hand of his brother-man as a brother and 
says, "Come with me and I will do thee good," that 
will succeed as a missionary. 



40 THREEFOLD PREPARATION 

Finally, in all this preparation, in all this service, 
let us "ask great things of God, expect great things 
from God," and we shall not be disappointed. God 
will fulfill His word to us, in us, by us, and when our 
missionary career is over, be it long or be it short, the 
ecstatic words will greet our glad ears, "Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant/' More than this, no 
human heart could crave. 



QUALIFICATIONS DESIRED IN MISSIONARY CAN 
DIDATES AS INDICATED BY A TOUR 
OF THE FIELDS l 

ROBERT E. SPEER, M.A., NEW YORK 

THE conditions under which the foreign missionary 
does his work have a great influence on character. He 
is alone, among people of standing inferior to his. It 
is true that in some countries there are many who affect 
to despise him; Mohammedan mollahs, Confucian 
scholars, Hindu priests, Japanese of different sorts 
but most of these have at bottom a real respect for him. 
Even where he disavows and denies it, he is still re 
garded as a representative of the powerful and pitiless 
Western nations which are back of him with mailed 
hands. 

Yet, though respected, and by the common people 
and the poor often unduly exalted, he is isolated. He 
has come with something to give. So coming, he as 
serts his superiority. Yet no influence about him con 
tributes to feeding the springs from which his superi 
ority flows. There is much to encourage dictatorial- 
ness, dogmatic assertiveness, slothfulness, spiritual in 
dolence, mere formality of service, weakening of moral 
fibre and tone, degeneration of standard and ideal for 
self and others, a general professionalism of work 



'The Student Volunteer, New York, March, 1898. 
41 



42 QUALIFICATIONS DESIRED IN CANDIDATES 

touched with kindness and forced conscientiousness 
and a little despondency. Missionaries testify to the 
reality of these perils. The men and women who go 
to the mission field must be able to stand against them. 
The ability to stand can not be acquired by mere geo 
graphical transplanting. Whoever would resist all 
such temptations must have the qualifications therefor 
in this country before ever setting forth on his mission. 
And on the positive side the missionary should be 
able to make a definite spiritual impression on the lives 
of men, many of whom have been devoid of all save 
the most elementary spiritual notions, and to whom 
all our spiritual world with its ideas is unintelligible. 
Perhaps even words are lacking in which to express 
our notions. Or old systems of belief are to be con 
fronted, whose standards run fair athwart the teach 
ings of the Gospel, and have in some cases so woven 
themselves into the social and civil life of the people 
that Christianity is literally a revolutionary assault 
upon the very foundations of their institutions. Prob 
lems of intricate perplexity need to be solved. Hard 
ships, the more difficult because they are not romantic 
and bear no kinship to martyrdom, must be endured. 
Hard, trying w r ork must be done. Little by little, 
spiritual impression must be made; surrounded all 
the time by the grossest materialism and superstition, 
the spiritual ideals must yet never be clouded or lost 
for an instant. The people of the world are ready to 
have their bodies cared for, and to be put in the way 
of greater material prosperity. They do not wish for 
spiritual revolution or the holiness of Christ. The 
temptation to spend life in giving them what they are 
willing to receive, and to constrict or to neglect the 



QUALIFICATIONS DESIRED IN CANDIDATES 43 

effort to give them what they need, what Christ came 
that they might receive, the Revelation of the Father, 
the Way, the Life abundant, the Heavenly Calling, 
what our mission exists for, must be sternly throttled. 
That men may be able to resist these temptations, 
and do the vital spiritual work, which is our supreme 
business, they must have qualifications of character 
and capacity, assured and vindicated here before they 
go. And among these qualifications should be set first, 
the need of a deep and holy life. There are two words 
of Christ which must be familiar to every missionary 
and which should have been received and -absorbed 
into the life by the missionary candidate. One He 
spoke first to the woman of Sychar : "Whosoever shall 
drink of the water that I shall give him shall never 
thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall become 
in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life." 
The other He cried as He stood in Jerusalem on the 
last, the great day of the Feast of Tabernacles: "If 
any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink. He 
that believeth on Me as the Scripture hath said, out of 
the depths of his life shall flow rivers of living water." 
The new missionary joins some little company of men 
and women who are already under the fullest strain. 
He dare not draw on them for spiritual life. There 
is none in the surrounding hopeless, lifeless people. 
If he has no springs within him where the Living 
Water is flowing, woe to him ! Can he give to others 
if his own supply is scant? And the missionary's life 
must be a holy life, a life of holy gentleness, holy pur 
ity, holy love. It is to be subject to fearful strain. It 
will have to give to others at times when in heat, dis 
comfort, fever, dirt, it is needing most to receive, when 



44 QUALIFICATIONS DESIRED IN CANDIDATES 

endurance is tested to the uttermost. It will break 
under this trial if not profoundly held by the power 
of Him before Whom the Seraphim called to one an 
other through the smoke of the temple while the pillars 
rocked to and fro, "Holy, Holy, Holy." I know of a 
missionary whom the natives called "Mr. Angry Face," 
because at times he so lost control of himself, as to 
blaze on them with wrath. It may not be so with the 
man who would please Christ. 

A second qualification is the spirit of willing sacri 
fice, in the sense of endurance, of hardiness as a good 
soldier, and of surrender of all devotion to comfort 
and ease. The lot of the missionary is much easier 
in these regards than it used to be, and in many places 
is devoid of special privation. But where men would 
do what needs to be done in reaching the people, in 
thorough and far-reaching itinerating work in coun 
try and villages, in energetic and unresting activity, 
they will have to esteem home and the companionship 
of loved ones and ease and pleasant surroundings, as 
of less account than Christ and souls. Men are wanted 
who will be willing to be absent from home most of 
the time, and who will regard themselves as on a cam 
paign and not as sitting down in a parish. And this 
spirit must be ready to count life as lightly as Paul 
counted it. I do not mean that martyrdom awaits us, 
but we must be ready to spend ourselves utterly. 

"Sin worketh, 

Let me work too. 

Sin undoeth, 

Let me do. 

Busy as sin my work I ply 
'Till I rest in the rest of eternity." 



QUALIFICATIONS DESIRED IN CANDIDATES 45 

We must not only be willing to burn up for God, if 
that impossible fate should befall. We must be ac 
tually burning out for God now, toiling, striving, driv 
ing; knowing that we must work the works of Him 
that sent us while it is day ; for the night cometh, when 
no man can work any more. And this qualification 
must be put in evidence by the missionary candidate 
here and now. Is he likely to be a flaming fire in the 
service of his God in Asia, if he is not one here in the 
United States and Canada? 

If I have set these spiritual qualifications so promi 
nently in the foreground it is because I believe that we 
are in danger of magnifying other aspects of the mis 
sion work above its primary spiritual character, and 
that the world's evangelization is a spiritual work, a 
work of spiritual influence, and that the man who is 
not fit for it spiritually in the fullest sense, though he 
may do much good, is not a man after God's own 
heart, doing all His will. But next to these require 
ments I would place the need of a solid, balanced judg 
ment, and of a clear, grave, alert mind. A man can 
not have more brains in quantity than God has given 
him, but he can improve their quality, and if they be 
phenomenal or not is of little consequence, if so be that 
only he has disciplined them and got them in hand, 
so that they go square at any problem set for them, 
and are reliable and true in their judgments, and 
honest and unflinching. The mission work demands 
thought and study and the faculty of decision and 
determination on the basis of facts examined and con 
ditions understood. The missionary candidate must 
learn how to use his mind, delivering it of all fancies 
and caprices. There are many men who are not de- 



46 QUALIFICATIONS DESIRED IN CANDIDATES 

ficient in mental gifts who are deficient in that steady, 
well-tempered adjustment of will to mind wherein the 
former holds the latter true to the demands of each 
given task, and then taking the results pushes all life 
and work up to them. Good, grave sense ; solid, clear, 
unexcited action; quiet, steady will these are quali 
fications which, with a deep, holy, devoted life, make 
up the required man. 

He should be a free man belonging to no prejudice, 
and no person, save to the One who bought him, and 
to those who have been given him to love; open to 
large ideas and yet also to fidelity to the good that has 
already come. The candidate will have a vast deal to 
learn after reaching the field. Let him believe this, 
and not go as though knowing all. One of the dangers 
of the Volunteer Movement is that its members may, 
with their fine preparation and great advantages, for 
get that they are only preparing to learn, and scarcely 
learning as yet. To be sympathetic, humble, large 
minded, progressive on the foreign field, the mission 
ary candidate must be these now. 

And there is no new Gospel with which he needs to 
familiarize himself, or which is desired on the mission 
field. The old Gospel is the only Gospel. No men are 
wanted whose theologies have lost hold of the divine 
Christ, the Cross of Calvary, and the Holiness of God. 
It is true that many men with weak and unarticulated 
convictions have been forced in the face of heathenism 
and the evident sin of the world, to a Biblical and sub 
stantial faith ; but it is a risk to send such men. Men 
rather are needed who have experienced the Gospel of 
Christ, and know and believe it as the only Gospel of 
God. Such men will not be blown to and fro by every 



QUALIFICATIONS DESIRED IN CANDIDATES 47 

wind of doctrine, but will stand calmly and peacefully 
with their feet on the Everlasting Rock; and their 
calm and peace will enable them to do in one year what 
others do in three, and to spend on the mission field 
three years where others spend one. 

Some may feel that these qualifications are too high. 
I have no words of apology for that. I have spoken 
of no qualifications which are not wholly within the 
reach of every missionary candidate. He should, of 
course, have a good constitution physically and the 
will to learn the language, but that has been assumed. 
These other requirements are such as are denied to no 
man who will receive them. Christ stands ready to 
give them to any man who will enter His fellowship 
and in the education of the abiding life submit to be 
taught and endowed. 

These qualifications are as old as the Day of Pente 
cost and the Upper Room and the shores of Gen- 
nesaret. There are no nostrums, no short cuts, no 
outer embellishments worth a moment's thought. We 
are to do the work our Lord began in Galilee. We 
need for it the qualifications He possessed, none others. 
Let us find them where He found them : "I came 
down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the 
will of Him that sent me," and "He that sent me is 
with me. He hath not left me alone ; for I do always 
those things that please Him/' With these qualifica 
tions, we shall be workmen not needing to be ashamed 
at the day of His appearing. 



ALL-ROUND PREPARATION FOR FOREIGN MIS 
SIONARY SERVICE 1 

REV. JAMES L. BARTON, D.D., BOSTON 

IN entering upon the discussion of this subject, let 
us lay down two self-evident, though oft-forgotten, 
propositions which are counterparts of each other: 

(1) When the Lord calls one to a particular field and 
work, He does it with the expectation that the one 
called will prepare himself for that place and work. 

(2) The Lord calls no one to a work for which He 
does not give a sufficient time for adequate prepara 
tion. The question turns then upon what constitutes 
an adequate preparation for foreign missionary service. 
When this is clearly settled it will be easier to decide 
whether a call to this service has come, and if so, 
whether the present preparation is sufficient. It is safe 
to declare that the old idea, "That all who are com- 
mendably devout and are ready to go abroad are called 
into this work," has long since been exploded. There 
is no doubt that the Lord can prepare anyone for any 
part of His service, but the fact is, He does not do 
it. The Lord calls, and the one receiving the call pre 
pares himself with divine help to meet it. The ques 
tion of preparation is as important as that of the call. 



*The Inter collegian, New York, January, 1900. 
48 



ALL-ROUND PREPARATION 49 

It is of great moment that all volunteers settle clearly 
the question of a call, and at the same time be clear 
in their minds as to what constitutes adequate prepara 
tion for the work to be done. Each individual must 
decide for himself upon his knees alone with God, the 
question of the call to the mission fields abroad, but 
after that he must bestir himself to secure the necessary 
preparation. Better be ready to go and not receive a 
call than to be called and never get ready. 

Perhaps I can do no better than to direct attention 
to what is expected of the foreign missionary that each 
one may decide for himself what kind and how much 
preparation is imperative. 

1. To-day in nearly every foreign mission field in 
the world, a missionary is an educator, a creator of 
literature in various languages, a preacher of the Gos 
pel, an evangelist, an organizer of a new society, the 
personal representative of the best Christian civiliza 
tion and life, a director of native forces in every kind 
of Christian work, a foundation-layer of future Chris 
tian institutions, and a multitude of other things be 
sides. 

2. Missionaries are compelled to assume the position 
of leaders and directors ; even when they do not appear 
so to do, they must be able to wisely shape the Chris 
tian thoughts of the people and lead them into right 
methods of work. In most fields they have as their 
associates, well-educated native men and women, some 
of whom have taken university courses in Europe and 
the United States. Colleges and theological seminaries 
have been planted and are filled with native students 
who are not one whit behind in ambition, mental 
acumen, and intellectual ability the students in Ameri- 



50 ALL-ROUND PREPARATION 

can seminaries, colleges, and universities. The mis 
sionary must command the respect of such men and 
their native teachers so as to exercise the right influ 
ence and leadership over them in matters of education, 
religion, and in Christian work. 

3. No missionary, except possibly the physician can 
select, before going to his field, any one department of 
work with the expectation that it will be possible for 
him to devote his energies to that alone. In every mis 
sion field conditions are liable to sudden and extensive 
changes. Such changes are constantly taking place. 
Every missionary must be prepared to meet all emer 
gencies and turn them so as to make them aid in the 
advancement of the Kingdom. No department of the 
work exists for any man or woman, but every mission 
ary is at the front to do what needs to be done at that 
time, without reference to what he was sent out to do 
or what he wishes to do. Every missionary is a minute 
man ready at a minute's notice to undertake anything 
and make it count most for the kingdom. 

4. The name "missionary" has come to have large 
significance among the people in most mission-fields. 
The sum of the virtues of all preceding missionaries 
are looked for in every new-comer. All that they have 
done, he is expected to be able to perform, and even 
more. It is important that, so far as possible, these 
not unworthy expectations be met. The present gen 
eration of missionaries enters upon work whose foun 
dation was laid by men of breadth, wisdom, and power. 
The conditions that surround the work are such that 
only those of the broadest, all-round training can meet 
the requirements. 

I have mentioned but a few of the leading reasons 



ALL-ROUND PREPARATION 51 

why candidates for missionary service should have 
the most complete training. The foreign missionary 
work is the broadest, all-round Christian work the 
world offers, and only broadly trained men can expect 
to make the greatest success in it. I have never seen 
a missionary, among the hundreds whom I have met, 
who gave the impression that he thought himself too 
broadly trained, while I have heard many of the best 
men and women express regrets that they had no more 
opportunities for obtaining for themselves a better 
mental and spiritual equipment for the work they must 
do. Medicine is about the only specialty mission work 
tolerates, and that department now calls for the college- 
trained physician. It is expected that as soon as 
natives can be trained in the medical profession, the 
necessity for foreign doctors will practically cease. 

The foreign missionary of spiritual and mental 
power, with a thorough, all-round training, will never 
fail to find unlimited opportunity to use his every talent 
for the Master. He will always and everywhere make 
a place for himself and gain a hearing for his message. 
He becomes an ambassador for Christ, recognized even 
by multitudes who do not yet accept his preaching. 
This largest, broadest work to which the Lord calls 
His disciples, demands the consecration of the best 
Christian talent, prepared for the service by the broad 
est training our best institutions can afford 



THE INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARA 
TION OF THE VOLUNTEER 1 

PRESIDENT J. C. R. EWING, D.D., OF INDIA 

THE work of winning the world for Christ is a veri 
table warfare with principalities and powers. The evan 
gelizing of the nations is no light and insignificant task. 
For its accomplishment the best gifts of the Church are 
demanded. For the successful missionary certain defi 
nite qualifications are essential. 

He must be one who can say, not only at the outset, 
but always, every day throughout the years: "The 
love of Christ constraineth me." He is giving his life 
to a work which has in it vastly more of monotony than 
of romance. To live amidst conditions that have a 
tendency to depress rather than to stimulate is the lot 
which he has deliberately chosen. If, then, the love of 
Christ constrain him not, nothing else in the world can 
do so. 

But, aside from this spiritual equipment, the call of 
the Spirit to the work, and the indwelling of the Spirit 
in the worker's heart, without which the missionary 
will be a disappointment to himself and a disappoint- 

l Report Student Volunteer Convention, Detroit, 1894. 
52 



INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 53 

ment to those who send him forth, is there not some 
thing else upon which emphasis ought to be laid? Is 
mere personal devotion to the Lord Jesus always suffi 
cient to guarantee efficiency in the missionary? The 
obvious reply to this question is precisely that which 
would be given were it to be asked concerning the work 
of Christian leadership in our own nominally Christian 
country. 

The thorough presentation of God's word to the non- 
Christian world this is what the Church has under 
taken to do. Side by side with our dependence upon 
the Holy Spirit to enlighten the dark mind is the human 
side. It is ours to strive to show the reasonableness of 
the faith which we profess and preach. To accomplish 
this the brightest and best intellectual gifts to be found 
in the Church are needed, and anything less than that 
we surely will not dare think it meet to give. 

The missionary goes to stand face to face with hoary 
systems of faith, some of which have not a little to say 
for themselves. The disciples of Confucius and Bud 
dha and Mohammed and Laotze and Dayanand Saras- 
wati are by no means ready to accept our statements 
as to the superiority of Christianity merely because we 
utter them. The preacher not seldom finds himself 
confronted by representatives of these faiths whose 
familiarity with the doctrines of the Christian Scrip 
tures startles him. There are those amongst them, too, 
who have become familiar with most of what has been 
urged against the teachings of the Bible by sceptics of 
this and earlier ages. It is amazing how quickly any 
thing which may seem to militate against the authen 
ticity or genuineness of any portion of God's Word 
finds its way to non-Christian lands and gains utter- 



54 INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 

ance from the lips of those who would oppose the mes 
sage of the preacher in school or college or market 
place. The marvelous spread of the knowledge of our 
English tongue has made it easy for any one who fan 
cies that he has anything new to say against Christian 
ity to say it in quarters where it will meet the mission 
ary Western agnosticism and all forms of sceptical 
speculation have encouraged in some quarters a revolt 
against the propagation of the gospel. The Brad- 
laughs and Ingersolls, the Blavatskys and Olcotts and 
Besants, together with the Humes and Voltaires and 
Paines of the past, are striving with an activity 
scarcely less than that of the Christian missionary to 
influence great sections of the non-Christian world. 

As illustrating the desirability of the best possible 
intellectual and educational equipment on the part of 
those who contemplate entering upon the work of a 
missionary, I would suggest: 

i. Ability to master a strange and difficult language 
is of the utmost importance. While it may be admitted 
that a very imperfect acquaintance with the language 
of the people to whom you go, familiarity with a few 
words, supplemented by vigorous gesticulation, may 
enable one to convey something of his thought to the 
patient and polite Oriental who is all the while man 
fully resisting the temptation to burst torth into laugh 
ter, nevertheless the fact remains, and can scarcely be 
too strongly emphasized, that the preacher or teacher 
of Christian doctrine falls far short of the highest effi 
ciency who is unable to meet, on the common ground 
of familiarity with the speech of the country, those for 
whom he believes himself to have God's message. As 
a rule, those who are conscious of marked inaptitude 



INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 55 

in the direction of linguistic study would do well 
earnestly to question whether, after all, they are not 
called to put forth their energies in the service of 
Christ on this side of the ocean. 

A well-known missionary, when asked how long a 
time was required to gain the mastery of the language 
of the country in which he labored, replied : "Oh, 
about thirty or forty years." It is a lifetime's work. 
No person with less than five years of hard study can 
speak to the peoples of oriental lands as he should. 
True, he may begin to speak in the language after a 
few months, but he is almost certain to share the ex 
perience not once, but many times of the Indian 
missionary who, after having discoursed for a quarter 
of an hour to a street audience, using what he imag 
ined was intelligible Hindustani, was startled and dis 
comfited by his leading hearer's respectful request that 
he speak Hindustani, as they were not familiar with 
English ! 

Imagine a foreigner taking his stand in the market 
place of one of our great American cities to preach to 
a waiting crowd the doctrines of a strange religion. 
He hesitates, stammers, violates every rule of English 
grammar and idiom, and brings good old words into 
new and strange and ludicrous positions. Think of 
the effect upon his audience, and of the inevitable and 
pitiable failure to secure for his message the candid 
consideration of even the most thoughtful and earnest 
of the people. Something quite as ludicrous and sad 
as this characterizes every attempt of the missionary 
who fails to use, and to use well, the speech of the 
people amongst whom he labors. 

2. Again, a good degree of familiarity with the 



56 INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 

faiths which it is our aim in Christ's name to under 
mine and to overthrow is essential. The mere mastery 
of a language will not suffice. The spirit or genius of 
the people must be understood. Their institutions, 
philosophy, literature and faith we dare not ignore. 
These must be studied. There can be no effective and 
true preaching of the gospel without such study. To 
pass rapidly from village to village with the announce 
ment of certain great and precious truths, but which 
the inhabitants fail to understand because the preacher 
is unable to appreciate their attitude of mind and 
spirit this, I protest, is not preaching the gospel ef 
fectively or in such way as to discharge our responsi 
bility. We must know the main currents of thought 
in order that we may bring the truths of the Bible to 
bear upon them. Pantheism, polytheism, atheism, 
idealism, fetichism, materialism, in their baldest and 
in their subtlest forms, have to be met. Representa 
tives of one, or it may be of all of them, are before 
the preacher as he stands to deliver the formal dis 
course or sits amid the little group to talk to them of 
Christ. Power to understand and appreciate in very 
considerable measure the workings of those minds, 
imbued as they are with ideas which are the product 
of the thinking of many generations of thinking 
people, is an indispensable condition of real efficiency. 
A Hindu was heard to express himself thus : "It is 
an insult to our intelligence that a man should preach 
to us and expect us to accept his religion when he him 
self is unable to give any real reason for supposing 
our religion to be inferior to his own ; since he knows 
of our religion nothing at all !" 

3. Furthermore, ability to reason intelligently with 



INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 57 

objectors who are often honestly troubled over some 
of the great mysteries of our blessed faith is another 
important qualification. Questions of the most tre 
mendous import are often fairly hurled, one after an 
other, upon the missionary. "Who died upon the 
cross? Was it God, or was it man? If He was God, 
why did He cry out and say: 'My God! Why hast 
Thou forsaken Me ?' If He was man, how can we sup 
pose that a man's death could atone for the sin of a 
whole world full of men?" "Explain to me, please, 
the doctrine of the Trinity." "You say that the doc 
trine of the transmigration of souls is not true; will 
you give me any argument outside the Christian Scrip 
tures to prove your position on the subject." "Some 
of the greatest of the Christians say that a part of the 
Bible is not God's Word ; which part is that, and how 
do you know that the rest is inspired?" "Will you 
give me any reason for believing that there is a state 
of conscious existence after death? Of course I want 
a reason outside the Bible, for that book is not with 
me an authority." These questions are but typical of 
a whole host of the keenest inquiries which meet the 
missionary at every turn. No sophistry will be ac 
cepted, were the preacher so foolish and wicked as to 
descend to that. In some countries of the world, at 
least, he is in perpetual contact with a people who can 
detect a flaw in an argument as readily and who ap 
preciate candor in discussion as highly as we ourselves 
do. Objections to the faith for which he stands, of 
every conceivable type, are placed before him, and an 
answer expected; and if he fail to give reasonable 
answers to reasonable questions, it would seem as 
though it would have been the part of wisdom not to 



5 8 INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 

have assumed the part of a teacher, when his failure 
must result in almost incalculable injury to the cause 
which he represents. 

4. Regarding the great fundamental truths of Chris 
tianity the young missionary should have definite, set 
tled views. We cannot afford to export doubt to 
foreign countries. Those lands have enough and more 
than enough religious speculation of their own. Faith 
and a system of vital truth as opposed to doubt and 
profitless speculation must be the substance of our mes 
sage. In a very real sense must the messenger speak 
that which he knows and testify of those things which 
he has seen. If it be otherwise, how pitiable his blind 
attempt to lead the blind! 

In view of what has been said it is obvious that mis 
sionaries should be thoroughly educated men and 
women. The best natural gifts disciplined and de 
veloped by the training of years are in demand. Let 
there be no short-cuts into the mission field. Seven 
years of literary and theological training may seem 
long to some of you whose hearts are throbbing with 
enthusiasm for Christ, and who contemplate with 
horror the rapid rate at which the unevangelized mil 
lions are passing into eternity without having heard a 
word of the world's Saviour. To you I would say: 
Wait ! Here God is fashioning you into workmen who 
need not to be ashamed. Toil on at that Greek and 
German and Hebrew and Latin. Master as best you 
can the philosophies and histories and sciences of the 
schools, studying all the while to know more and more 
of the mind of the Master. Every fact learned now 
will count for something by and by, and you will ex 
ceedingly rejoice over this equipment when in the 



INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 59 

future you discover how very inadequate, after all, that 
which you gain through your years of patient prepara 
tion is to enable you to accomplish what your heart 
prompts you to attempt for Him whose service is your 
joy. 

What may be termed the practical preparation of the 
missionary is perhaps of but little less importance than 
that which consists in an adequate intellectual equip 
ment. You are proposing to engage in spiritual work 
abroad. Have you ever tested your powers at home? 
Much of your life is to be spent in personal dealing 
with individuals; in striving to guide men to a point 
where they will recognize their need of a Saviour, and 
in pointing them to Christ as the Great Physician. I 
venture to believe that skill in thus dealing with men 
is rarely, if ever, born with us; neither does it neces 
sarily accompany the highest intellectual attainment. 
On the contrary, it is a thing distinct, an attainment 
of itself. Experience in practical Christian work, in 
the teaching of God's Word in the Sunday school or 
the Bible class, personal contact in the Young Men's 
and Young Women's Christian Associations, with 
those who need help and guidance here is a training 
school for the missionary, second in importance and 
fruitfulness to no other. We would all unite, doubt 
less, to deplore the going forth as a foreign missionary 
of one who himself has had no definite experience of 
the power of Christ to transform a human life. Such 
an experience we feel to be an essential qualification. 
But of the utmost importance, second only to our own 
personal experience, is the ability to guide others over 
the path which we ourselves have trod. The great 
work of life is to be that of winning souls for Christ. 



60 INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 

The ability to do this should be fully tested as an es 
sential preliminary to the going forth of the mission 
ary. Those who do not succeed in showing some apti 
tude for this in their own country give little promise 
of better success in a strange land. Tact in dealing 
with men is a quality the value of which in every place 
is obvious. In treating with peoples of national or 
racial tastes, habits and affinities other than our own, 
practical common sense is mightily effective. In your 
own land your countrymen may overlook and forgive 
the most pronounced idiosyncrasy or failure to adapt 
one's self to special conditions. In the foreign land such 
lack of adaptability to circumstances often stands as a 
barrier between the Christian and those whom he longs 
to influence. In dealing with the great problems of 
morals and religion he will, of course, persistently 
follow the same great lines which are marked out for 
him as well as for the pastor or other Christian worker 
in America, but in numberless details of his work, of 
his dealing with people, he will if he be wise adapt his 
plans and methods to the conditions of the people 
whom he seeks to guide. If he fails to do this much 
that he might do will remain undone, while his nervous 
system is being rapidly enfeebled by useless friction. 
It is not always best to insist upon doing everything in 
the English or the American way. The missionary 
who has learned the art of making friends possesses a 
powerful adjunct to his efficiency. This faculty is of 
immense importance here. It would seem to be even 
more essential abroad. To repel men is a fatal be 
ginning to our task of influencing them. I could name 
to you to-day those who have gone to live and labor 
amongst men of tastes, race and customs wholly 



INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL PREPARATION 6 1 

diverse from their own, and who have won for them 
selves not only the highest esteem, but the genuine 
affection as well of that strange people. Such men 
are mighty. 

The work of organization is a prominent element 
in the life of the missionary. Non-Christian countries 
are not, I believe, to be evangelized by foreigners. 
Chinese, Indian, African and Arabian Christian 
heralds are the only messengers of Christ who can 
ever adequately convey the tidings of salvation to the 
hundreds of millions of the countries which they repre 
sent. The foreign preacher reaches the few, he gathers 
about him the little company; to instruct and to guide 
these so that they in turn may influence the masses of 
their countrymen, this is to be your task. Questions 
the most delicate and perplexing connected with the 
organization of churches, the pecuniary allowances of 
helpers, the discipline of offenders against those rules 
which are necessary to the effective working of the 
organization, are perpetually pressing for solution. 
And, as we contemplate the calamitous consequences 
which must follow the course of the missionary whose 
judgment is of the haphazard sort or the one who 
measures men and things by unreasonable standards, 
can we hesitate to believe that the practical man and 

woman are the ones all else being equal to whom 

the call to go far hence among the Gentiles comes most 
loudly ! 



THE PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE 
VOLUNTEER 1 

REV. HARLAN P. BEACH, M.A., NEW YORK 

i. I WOULD call your attention first to the importance 
of knowing your own Board. You will love that Board 
when you get ten thousand miles away from it, and will 
wish you had cultivated its acquaintance a little more 
while in America. Do you know the policy of the 
Board to which you have committed yourself? Are 
you acquainted with its officers? That acquaintance 
will be of the utmost importance to you, you will find, 
when you get too far away to make it. 

There are two officers especially whom I think you 
can practically help here before you go out. One of 
those men is the Treasurer of your Board. If you talk 
with him you will find that mission money is very care 
fully expended and religiously accounted for. Can you 
keep accounts? If not, I would advise you to learn 
how before you launch out upon that great sea of 
foreign accounts and exchanges and different kinds of 
silver, where you are to be cheated day by day by 
every man. Drop into the office of your Editorial 
Secretary, and you will find that it is a very valuable 
thing to be able to illustrate the foreign field. The so- 
called camera fiend is not supposed to be a friend of 
missions; but if you will learn how to use a camera, 
you will find it of service to your Board. 

Report Student Volunteer Convention, Detroit, 1894. 
62 



PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE VOLUNTEER 63 

2. A second line of preparation has to do with your 
field. It is obvious that in order to prepare for your 
field in the way of outfit, you need to know something 
about its topography, its climate, its prevailing diseases. 
In case you are one of the early missionaries in a coun 
try, you will need to be a follower of the Apostle Paul, 
and know where your strategic points are. But when 
you get in a heathen land there are few means of com 
munication between different parts of the country ; so 
that you can learn a great deal more in your college 
libraries about the strategic points to be occupied than 
you can out on the field. 

I would advise you to learn a great deal about its 
people. Learn how they think, what their religious 
views are, what forms of government and civilization 
you are going to live in the midst of. So also I would 
suggest to you to learn very definitely just what portion 
of your country your Board occupies. Learn what 
other portions are already occupied by other boards; 
and then, if you are fortunate enough to go to a land 
where missionary conferences have been held, I would 
advise you to get those conference reports. If there 
are none, get the periodicals published by missionary 
boards in your field, and study them ; learn the methods 
employed and the comparative results, and you will 
find them of great assistance to you when you get out 
there. 

I want to emphasize the value of biographies. The 
periodicals do not give accounts of the failures of mis 
sionaries, but biographies, if true, will show you where 
all sorts of men have blundered. Now, missionary 
failures are the stepping stone to missionary success. 
It is not necessary, however, for you to lay that founda- 



64 PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE VOLUNTEER 

tion when others have done it for you. You should 
have success from the start, if you can. 

3. A third line of preparation which I would suggest 
has to do with the material needs of yourself and your 
fellow missionaries. You want to make some prepara 
tion for food and raiment and habitation, for disease 
and death; for man is very human, and you will have 
all kinds of experiences to meet, and might as well be 
ready for them. I suppose that Dr. Nevius in China, 
and the Catholic missionaries throughout the world, 
have not only benefited themselves, but the countries 
to which they went, simply because they believed in 
carrying something along to eat. You can do some 
thing for humanity, you can gain the friendship of 
many men who might be opposed to you, by a simple 
knowledge of gardening. 

Many a man who has been called upon to go abroad 
to be the dispenser of the Water of Life, has had his 
life cut short simply because he partook of the waters 
of unsanitary wells. I would commend to you that 
apostle to the New Hebrides, Dr. Paton. See what you 
can do with a well. Remember, too, that in heathen 
cities there is generally no satisfactory water supply, 
and that life may depend upon your knowledge of how 
to make a simple filter or a condenser. It is something 
worth looking into now. 

I would suggest to you in this connection also that 
clothing has to be provided. Just think of that culti 
vated man, the Bishop of New Zealand, sitting on the 
back of that vessel of his, making garments for women 
who wished to leave the ways of heathenism! You 
will find that nakedness is one of the evils you must 
fight against. You young women know how to cut 



PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE VOLUNTEER 65 

and make your own dresses; but you young men, can 
you cobble a pair of shoes? I remember that I prac 
tically was obliged to retire for about a week while my 
only pair of shoes were carried at a slow walk eighty- 
three miles and brought back. Since that time I have 
had the greatest respect for the Church Missionary 
Society College, which has a class in cobbling. 

You are to live in a house. Do you know anything 
about building one? Can you plane a board or do 
anything in the line of mason's work? If not, you can 
watch masons and carpenters, and can at least direct 
that line of effort in your new home. You will find 
that furniture is a desirable thing, and that freights are 
enormously expensive. If you will spend some Satur 
day afternoon in a furniture maker's factory you will 
learn enough about the principles of cabinet making 
and upholstering so that at a greatly reduced expense 
you can have furniture made by native workmen. 

But life is more than any of the things I have spoken 
of, and I exhort you, men and women who are expect 
ing to go abroad, not merely to feel your way there 
with just strength enough to get off the steamer; but 
go there with the fullness of strength. Patronize the 
gymnasium; get as strong as exercise can make you. 
Remember that you are temples of the Holy Ghost, and 
that you can make your temple a very efficient instru 
ment. Some women, going to countries like Persia, 
for instance, have almost wrecked their lives simply 
because they didn't know how to ride horseback. A 
tooth may make you useless for several days, because 
you didn't learn how to extract teeth or bring with you 
a pair of forceps. When common diseases arise in your 
family or among your native friends, and there is no 



66 PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE VOLUNTEER 

physician within a hundred miles, perhaps you will 
wish that you had learned a little about medicine. Very 
frequently a life dear to you and important to mis 
sionary work hangs in the balance, and a little knowl 
edge of nursing would carry that life through. 

One other point in this line it is an important one : 
death is the means by which a great many missionaries 
glorify God. It is a sad hour for you when you close 
their eyes in death, but it is a sadder thing still if you 
don't know how to perform the last rites for them. I 
would advise you to ask a few questions of an under 
taker ; it will help you wonderfully in that sad hour. 

4. A fourth line of preparation : practical educa 
tional preparation, I will call it. A great many lines 
of work have to be done for mission purposes solely, 
and perhaps the commonest are bookbinding and print 
ing. Nearly every mission has a press. Are you going 
to know enough about the work so that when the man 
ager who has technical training is called to America 
you will be able to take his place? Suppose you are 
five hundred miles from a book-bindery, can you bind 
a book ? You can learn enough about it in an afternoon 
to bind your own books and periodicals ; get the prac 
tice now. 

But the industrial education is the special thing 
which I wish to speak of under this head. It is a 
practical necessity in a great many countries where the 
arts of civilized lands are unknown, or where competi 
tion is so great that the men or women becoming Chris 
tians are practically thrown upon the church for sup 
port. If you willread the story of Lovedale in South 
Africa, or of Mangalore in India, or of Norfolk Island, 
you will see what a wide field this opens up before you. 



PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE VOLUNTEER 67 

If your Board, in the field to which you are going, 
happens to have industrial schools, learn carefully all 
you can here about those lines of work which are 
favored by your Board. 

I wish you would look up that passage in the life of 
Mackay and see what he says about normal training 
as the key to the solution of many problems in Africa. 
Kindergarten work I want to speak of. You young 
women, many of you, will go into thousands of heathen 
homes; you will come into contact with multitudes of 
young lives. Have you ever been in a kindergarten 
and asked yourself, Would not this same work be of 
even greater value on the foreign field? I think that 
over the door of every kindergarten of heathenism there 
should be the same inscription that there is over a para 
dise of children in Kobe, Japan, "Glory Kindergarten." 
Not only is the life of the children made glorious, but 
the great God is made glorious in their thoughts. 

You will have to teach music whether you sing or 
not. You might just as well learn to play an instru 
ment and sing in some sort of fashion now. I would 
advise you to take steps immediately to do that. Music 
suggests time, time suggests watches. Heathen coun 
tries of course know nothing about eternity, conse 
quently they care little about time, and it is a great 
part of the missionary's work to make them feel its 
value. I spent a solid day once in mending the main 
spring of my watch. Now, if I had known what you 
may know, that it is a valuable thing to learn how to 
put in a watch spring, and if I had carried one along 
with me, I would have saved a day of missionary time. 

5. Another line of preparation that I would suggest 
has to do with evangelistic work. A magic lantern 



68 PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE VOLUNTEER 

is an instrument of the Lord if you know how to use 
it. Another suggestion in this same line is the value 
of street preaching. Now, it is not an easy thing when 
you only half know a language or are liable to be inter 
rupted, as St. Stephen was, to learn how to do street 
preaching. You would better do it right here in this 
country; you can prepare yourself for that kind of 
work here. 

6. A sixth line of preparation has to do with organi 
zation. You are to be the leaders of a new church. 
You can use the training you have in your societies 
here to prepare you for the work of organization. 
There is a young people's society which ought to be 
established in your church ; it is a hard piece of work. 
Take it up and follow up that line until you become 
thoroughly familiar with it. I suppose that home mis 
sionary work during a summer vacation would give 
you an all-round preparation which perhaps would be 
of greater value than anything else. 

7. A seventh kind of preparation which I wish to 
suggest has to do with shepherding the mission flock. 
It is not a flock which is easily shepherded ; much will 
have to be provided for. The Sunday school is the best 
agency so far discovered to do that work. But do you 
know the best methods of conducting a Sunday school ? 
All your church, remember, will be in the Bible school. 

The work which a great many of you might profit 
ably do, that of house to house visitation, is of great 
value abroad. I can't tell you how much that will help 
you in the work of shepherding the strange flock that 
is to be committed to you. 

8. The last point that I wish to speak of is this 
preparation for personal work. The time has passed 



PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE VOLUNTEER 69 

when a man will simply go out and harangue a great 
crowd of heathen. That has its place, of course, but 
missionaries have found out, what the Young Men's 
Christian Association discovered years ago in America 
and England, that the most effective form of effort is 
hand to hand work. Have you ever thought of debate 
as a means of preparation for that? If you have not, 
and you have much to do with Mohammedans, or the 
Brahmin pundits, or the Japanese philosophers, you 
will say, "Oh, that I had been taught to think on my 
feet!" 

Another art to be acquired is that of making friends. 
You must get hold of men before you influence them. 
Heathen men and women are hard people to get hold 
of. It is easy to make friends with persons who are 
congenial to you, but have you the power to go to a 
man or woman differing from you in culture or nation 
ality or religious views and make that person love you ? 
Can you pour the great love of your heart out upon 
persons indiscriminately? If you have not that power, 
learn something about it. And I would suggest that 
you learn how to do this in the slums of our great 
cities, for there are your foreigners, your men of dif 
ferent creeds. 

Personal work with your own fellow students is a 
most valuable preparation for missionary work. Oh, 
fellow students, if I could only live over again my four 
years in Yale College, I tell you, under God, more men 
would be brought to Jesus Christ than were brought to 
Him by me. I did not realize the value of personal 
work then as a preparation for future service. You are 
not sure that you will ever touch foreign shores ; God's 
plan for you may be very different. But you have a 



70 PRACTICAL PREPARATION OF THE VOLUNTEER 

mission field wherever you are. Just say, "O God, I 
want to do Thy work among the perishing heathen; 
but help me to do this work here and now. I will take 
any success in it as an indication that Thou wishest me 
to do a wider work." 

A great many of these things you will never be called 
upon to do. There are a multitude of things not men 
tioned that you would give a great deal to know how to 
do when the time comes. My only plea then is this: 
you must touch humanity at a multitude of points ; pre 
pare to do so now, and don't suppose that it necessitates 
a lowering of your consecration. You remember that 
the usual Hebrew word for consecration means "to 
fill the hands." For this great work of the Master in 
the world-wide field I urge you to fill your hands as 
well as your heads and hearts. 



PRACTICAL PREPARATION FOR WOMEN STUDENT 
VOLUNTEERS > 

MISS ISABELLA THOBURN, OF INDIA 

THE preparations which a volunteer may require 
must depend upon what she has already received ; that 
is, she may have, or be receiving an educational prepa 
ration so far as books or a course of study can give it, 
and yet have no practical training of the kind that 
every foreign missionary feels the need of. But she 
may have had this preparation during or before begin 
ning her college course. A case comes to mind of a 
young woman who earned the money that carried her 
through college by such various industries as were 
found possible or convenient at the time. When she 
graduated she was sent out to superintend an orphan 
age which in a few years, under her leading, developed 
into an industrial school of the most practical kind. 
Another had had unusual opportunities for Bible study 
and had prepared herself in the part which is often the 
most neglected. 

The preparation required will also depend somewhat 
upon the character of the college in which the vol 
unteer is studying. In some too few a Bible course 
is provided ; in too many the book has no place in the 
curriculum. In some there are live branches of the 
Young Women's Christian Association, which keep 
its members alert in direct Christian service; others 

*The Inter collegian, New York, May, 1900. 
71 



72 PREPARATION FOR WOMEN VOLUNTEERS 

have not this agency for practical training. In some 
colleges the atmosphere is charged with missionary 
spirit. A sense of personal responsibility to those 
around is impressed upon all serious students; in 
others the intellectual life is so all-aborbing, or the 
preparation for pleasant forms of worldliness, that one 
gets no sense of self-denying Christian duty to others, 
either from the lecture-room or from the social life 
of the school. 

Let us suppose a student volunteer without any 
preparation before or at the time, and consider what 
she should set before her as necessary. 

1. To grow in grace. Her Bible will tell her how 
the Holy Spirit will help her prayer will keep her 
heart open to that help. The danger in Christian work, 
from preparation to finish, is that the letter is held 
more essential than the spirit; not intentionally, but 
method and routine make such demands upon time and 
strength that we give these and do not notice or know 
that we have failed to give that without which they 
are nothing the life within us, which is not our life 
but Christ's. 

2. She should make perfect health of body second 
only to perfect health of soul. Happily the gymna 
siums and tennis courts of the modern colleges give 
opportunity for this. Not only there, however, but 
in the dining-room and bed-room should this object 
be kept in view. An appetite for plain, wholesome 
food at regular hours should be cultivated, and nature's 
demand for eight hours of sound sleep gratified. It 
should be held a sacred duty to bring the body under 
the will to this extent. A missionary who suffered 
from dyspepsia and nervousness was advised to take 



PREPARATION FOR WOMEN VOLUNTEERS 73 

daily walks no other kind of exercise being available. 
She replied, "I never could walk just for exercise. I 
must have a place to go or an errand to do." The 
dyspepsia and nervousness continued and marred her 
work and her happiness because she had not learned to 
make her will and her body serve each other. 

3. Next to the practice of prayer and of healthy 
habits should come the practice of helpfulness. Some 
favored natures are spontaneously thoughtful and help 
ful for others, and are blessed with tact that tells them 
what and how to offer service; others are naturally 
selfish, and some who are not selfish are timid or awk 
ward about helping. What to do for others' need, how 
to do it, and the daily practice that forms and fixes 
the habit of serving, should be kept in mind by the 
volunteer. There is opportunity for this in college 
life. There will be the sick or lonely, the dull and 
discouraged to help, and there will be students who 
do not know Christ. No one ought to expect to be 
sent to save the heathen who has not first saved some 
one at home. This proof, or seal, of her ministry 
(service) each volunteer should claim and strive for. 

Young men and women have undertaken to be mis 
sionaries who had not this preparation, and they could 
tell you of sorrowful failure. Only the other day it 
was said to me, "I should like your work. People 
there do not seem so hard to reach as they do here 
they are more open to influence." It is a mistake. We 
tell you of those who hear and respond, but there are 
multitudes so joined to their idols that they are deaf 
and blind ; and those who do hear and see have much 
to learn and to unlearn before they become useful, re 
liable Christian workers. All the personal qualifica- 



74 PREPARATION FOR WOMEN VOLUNTEERS 

tion required for success in Christian service at home 
is required there, and much more. 

4. And that brings us to the consideration of the 
books to be read. The course of reading suggested 
for student volunteers provides what is needed. The 
reading should not be confined to the prospective field 
of the reader, but should include other countries and 
be a study in comparative missionary methods as well 
as in comparative religions. It should also include 
histories of philanthropies and biographies of phi 
lanthropists. There have been many missionaries in 
the world not called by that name such as George 
Miiller, Florence Nightingale, and Mary Lyon. 

5. Then will come the question of the special line 
of work to prepare for. That should depend upon per 
sonal adaptations. There is use for every talent on the 
mission field as well as in America. "Should I study 
medicine?" one asks. Yes, if you believe you have 
the gift of healing that is, if you believe you could 
work more successfully in that department than in 
any other. One who has the gift of teaching and 
teachers "are born, not made" should take a normal 
course and qualify for that work. Music is not 
thought necessary for missionaries, except the ability 
to sing hymns, but in both India and Japan music 
teachers are called for. In all lands there is place for 
industrial schools; and everywhere there is room for 
the evangelist. If I mention last that which should 
seem to come first, it is because the evangelist must so 
often stop and be something else. She will find quinine 
and other simple medicines called for as she goes 
among the villages ; and she will find that in order to 
make her work permanent and able to bear fruit in 



PREPARATION FOR WOMEN VOLUNTEERS 75 

itself, she will sometimes need to stop and teach. 
Some knowledge of business methods every missionary 
candidate should have. A course in bookkeeping 
should be a part of one's training. 

When possible, she should spend a year or two in a 
missionary training-school after the collegiate course 
is completed. Happily there are schools now which 
make this possible, where one may learn something of 
everything desirable. That is, there are lessons and 
lectures on nursing, teaching, kindergarten, and indus 
trial methods, house-to-house visiting and all with 
daily practice. And throughout the course there are 
daily Bible lessons, with the best helps in exposition 
and books of reference. As it was said in the begin 
ning, one may have had a personal experience or op 
portunity that supplied this need, but in nineteen cases 
out of twenty the training-school is needed to complete 
the preparation of the student volunteer, and the time 
thus spent is well worth while. 



THE TRAINING OF CHARACTER 
EUGENE STOCK, M.A., LONDON 

IN the mission-field abroad, as in fact at home, too, 
character counts for more than learning, for more than 
skill. Character, humanly speaking, is almost every 
thing. In speaking of character I am going to take 
three points. Character is tested by the consideration 
of three things : "I and my work/' "I and my com 
rades," "I and my Lord." 

i. "I and my work." I have been asked often by 
missionary candidates, What country shall I be suit 
able for? But how can I tell you how can you tell 
either? Testing is needed before you can tell what 
practical work a man or woman is fit for. 

First I want you to recognize diversities. Look at 
that famous passage I am so fond of quoting in I. 
Corinthians xii.: "There are diversities of gifts, but 
the same Spirit. And there are diversities of minis 
trations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities 
of workings, but the same God who worketh all 
things in all." Diversities of gifts, that is personal 
characteristics ; diversities of ministrations, that is the 
conduct of missions ; diversities of workings, that is 
variety of work in the field. 

Secondly, while you recognize diversity, believe in 
your own work and do it. Let a man when he is ap- 

x Report Student Volunteer Convention, Liverpool, 1896. 
76 



THE TRAINING OF CHARACTER 77 

pointed to do some work for Christ, do it and believe 
in it. Do not envy somebody else because he has some 
other special class of work, and do not imagine that 
the other class is more important than yours; thank 
God for what you have, and ask Him to bless it. 

Then, thirdly, take the lowest place. Oh, to be ready 
to do that! We often sing, "Anywhere with Jesus," 
but we do not always like our locations. But a man 
must be ready to take the highest place, if necessary. 
There is such a thing as over-humility, and sometimes 
a man is called to rise to the responsibility of his posi 
tion. Ask the Lord to fit you for either place, and 
think of it soberly. That is a remarkable verse in the 
twelfth chapter of Romans, where St. Paul says, "I 
say, through the grace that was given me, to every 
man that is among you, not to think of himself more 
highly than he ought to think, but ... to think 
soberly." We have to make a fair, reasonable, humble 
and yet rational estimate of ourselves, according as 
God hath dealt to every man the measure of capability. 
Men miss opportunities for usefulness sometimes by 
not believing they can do a thing which God can enable 
them to do. 

Fourthly, do the small things first and do them faith 
fully. This is the best training for character that can 
be found. Yes, do the small thing first, trade with 
your pound faithfully, and the Lord will perhaps give 
you the talent by-and-by and say, "Have thou author 
ity over ten cities," and then after that, "Enter thou 
into the joy of thy Lord." 

2. Then we come to "I and my comrades." My 
fellow-workers, I come back to that text in I. Cor. 
xii. 4-6. As there are diversities of workings, so there 



78 THE TRAINING OF CHARACTER 

are diversities of gifts. Again in Rom. xii. 4-5. "As 
we have many members in one body, and all the mem 
bers have not the same office; so we, who are many, 
are one body in Christ, and severally members one of 
another." Then, in the same chapter, the natural and 
necessary consequence of being of one body comes out 
in practical details. "Be tenderly affectioned one to 
another; in honor preferring one another." Is there 
any lesson we need to learn more than that ? Brethren 
and sisters, ask the Lord to teach you to be able in 
honor to prefer one another. It is one secret of suc 
cess in home operations, and in the foreign field most 
emphatically. Further on we have, "Be of the same 
mind one toward another. Set not your mind on high 
things, but condescend to things that are lowly . . . 
if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably 
with all men." Yes, learn to fit into your places. Let 
the arm do the arm's work, not the leg's work, not the 
brain's work, nor the work of the finger. Let us fit 
in with the work of others, prefer them, love them, 
help them, appreciate them, and speak well of them 
behind their backs, not whispering nor backbiting. 
One might make a speech on every one of these topics, 
and there is not a word I am saying which could not 
be illustrated from any part of the mission-field. 
When the devil has failed to keep people back from 
going out, his next device is to set them by the ears. 
The Lord save them from it. 

Do not expect your fellow-workers to be perfect. 
We shall not find them so ! But let us bear with one 
another. And then oh, must I refer to it ? I dare not 
omit it ! if there should arise, and God forbid it, fric 
tion between those who ought to love one another in 



THE TRAINING OF CHARACTER 79 

the Lord, oh, fellow workers, what then ? Well, I have 
had years and years of experience with colleagues in 
our great home office without a single note of discord ; 
therefore, my experience is very small on this point. 
But I would say to those dear friends who are suffer 
ing in this way, do not let it sleep. Have it out, hum 
bly, prayerfully, and quietly, face to face, blaming 
yourself more than the other side even if you think 
you are not in fault, and express your sorrow for any 
pain given. And if you fail after all to move the other 
brother, you can still lay it before the Lord, saying, 
"Thou must deal with this, for I can do no more." 

3. "I and my Lord." That is the wrong way of 
putting it, but it is so put for convenience. The work 
is not mine, it is my Lord's. But there are two sides 
to all great truths. There is a striking passage in Acts 
xiv. i. Paul and Barnabas came to Iconium; "they 
entered together into the synagogue of the Jews, and 
so spake that a great multitude . . . believed." We 
are to speak and work as if all depended upon us, and 
yet know all the while that it does not. There is such 
a thing as fatalism in leaving all to God and forgetting 
our responsibility. But Faith and Fatalism are not 
the same thing. "Trust in the Lord," said Cromwell, 
"and keep your powder dry." Many interpret this 
by saying, "Take care that the powder is dry," and 
they care little about the trust. But that is not it; we 
must trust wholly in God, and yet at the same time do 
all as if it rested on ourselves. 

"My Lord." He is my Lord, and I am at His dis 
posal. I am to do as He bids me. I am not to have 
my own will. He is entitled to my loving, loyal, con 
tinuous, and perpetual service. He is My Example. 



80 THE TRAINING OF CHARACTER 

Take the Gospels; go through them chapter by chap 
ter, verse by verse, and put down the practical way 
the Lord acted in dealing with other people. As an 
example in the training of character see how He 
trained His disciples' characters, and how His own 
character came out during the course of that training. 
Lastly, He is My Saviour. Back again to Romans xii. 
How do these exhortations begin? You know the 
chapter; it follows on after that grandest theological 
treatise ever given to men, those first eleven chapters 
of Romans. And what is the theme in them? The 
theme is our salvation from the penalty of sin, by the 
atoning sacrifice of Jesus; salvation from the power 
of sin by the daily indwelling of the Spirit ; and salva 
tion from the presence of sin, when we are taken up 
to be with the Lord. And then there comes that mag 
nificent argument: "I beseech you, therefore, breth 
ren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a 
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your 
reasonable service." Then follow those beautiful pre 
cepts about our being tenderly affectioned one to an 
other, and so on. But something else first. "Be not 
fashioned according to this world, but be ye trans 
formed." We need it, do we not, fellow students? 
We want now the transformation. God grant it to us 
by the power of the Holy Ghost, for Christ's sake. 



MENTAL PREPARATION FOR MISSIONARY WORK 1 
PRINCIPAL T. W. DRURY, M.A., LONDON 



THE first thing that strikes one in the question be 
fore us is the unique position of the missionary. In 
many ways his work lies parallel to that of the home 
worker, but in many it widely differs. We should face 
the problem fully before we try to solve it. I am not 
sure that this is always done in the matter of foreign 
missions. 

There is the difference of language. The mental 
energy, which at home is on the whole free for other 
uses, must partly be employed in hard linguistic study. 
To use a phrase with which we are unhappily too fa 
miliar, the new language is a "containing force" which 
must for some time detach a considerable part of a 
man's mental power from direct missionary effort, and 
let us remember that often two or more new languages 
must be learned. 

Moreover, the thoughts which the missionary has 
to express are such as demand most careful expres 
sion. Every student of the early centuries of the 
Christian era is only too well aware of the danger of 
neglecting this fact, and it is confirmed by the experi 
ence of those who have been called to act on com 
mittees of Translation or Religion. The historic 
Creed of Christianity may, it is true, be simply ex- 
Report Student Volunteer Convention, London, 1900. 
81 



32 MENTAL PREPARATION 

pressed. But those who really try to get behind the 
barrier of indifference or prejudice which stays the 
advance of Gospel truth, know that, in order to find 
the human conscience, God the Holy Spirit works in 
many ways and in divers manners according to na 
tional and personal characteristics. And in doing so 
He is pleased to honor and bless human thought. 

Next, there is the religion, or religions of the people. 
We live in an age when weapons of precision are revo 
lutionizing the strategy of armies. The same principle 
affects our attack on Satan's strongholds. We must 
study his tactics if we would conquer his legions. It 
is increasingly certain that a missionary must not only 
know the Gospel, but that he must know the systems 
of religion which the Gospel is destined to supplant. 

Hardly less important are the habits and ways of a 
foreign people. Imagine that one of the most essen 
tial factors of successful missionary enterprise is a 
knowledge of the people. To deal with them as if they 
were the population of an English city or village is to 
face a problem of which you have not mastered the 
most elementary details. Side by side with the study 
of language and religion, there must be the study of 
the social habits, and of the thoughts and cravings of 
the natives of a foreign land. "Get to know what 
people are thinking about/' was a piece of advice given 
at Islington College by the Bishop of Victoria, which 
I trust we have never there forgotten. 

These and many other things press upon us the cer 
tain fact that the choice and the probation and the 
training of our missionaries are matters which require 
much thought and much prayer, as well as much com 
mon sense. We want more and more men, and we 



MENTAL PREPARATION 83 

want more of our best men to face the difficult task 
that lies before us. It is God's task, the task which 
he has set us, and success is sure, but it may be de 
layed by human slackness and error. 

In a letter just received from India, the writer (a 
missionary of much experience) presses on us the need 
of careful training. The Twelve, he says, were called 
to be disciples, before they were called to be Apostles, 
to be p.a.9rjrai, "learners," before they were fit to be 
axoffrolot, "messengers." In other words "the call" 
came some time before "the mission." And this is 
the lesson which these considerations enforce. 

Let me first make this preliminary remark. If the 
mental training is to be healthy and vigorous, it must 
have its proper place in relation to other kinds of train 
ing. There must be a right proportion in our educa 
tion. True education is not one-sided. It is the draw 
ing forth and putting into healthy action of all the 
powers of man, whether they be of body, mind, or 
spirit. True education may be described in the lan 
guage of St. Paul as "exercise unto godliness," and 
it is profitable unto all things. All partial exercise 
whether it be of body or of mind has but a partial 
profit. It is folly to train the mind of a young mis 
sionary at the expense of the body, and it is not need 
less to say, even to those training for spiritual work, 
that bodily exercise may occupy a place disproportion 
ate to other interests. 

It may be asked, Is it, then, possible to overtrain 
the spiritual faculties? The true answer is that such 
training cannot be at its best if other interests are for 
gotten. You cannot neglect the mens sana in corpore 
sano, even in the highest and holiest experiences of 



84 MENTAL PREPARATION 

life without distinct loss. The aim of the Christian 
teacher is so to train that the whole man may be grow 
ing in all his parts "unto a full-grown man, unto the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 

Again, much of our education is misdirected. 
Teachers frequently aim at informing the mind, not 
at education in its true sense. It is not what you learn 
but how you learn that really tells. 

What then is to be the aim of our training? It is 
the formation of character. It is not so much the mes 
sage as the man that must be prepared. The message 
may be all that can be desired in simplicity, directness 
and form, but it is such a message when backed by a 
life which calls forth sympathy and trust, that hits the 
mark. It is the story of Jesus Christ and the doctrine 
of the Cross, told from a heart that is itself "lightened 
with celestial fire," that will kindle the hearts of other 
men. There have been many cases where the daily 
life of the missionary has won converts even "without 
the Word." This, then, is our aim. We must so 
train the mind as to form the character, that is, we 
must so apply the "discipline of Christ," as to mould 
the habits after the example of Christ. It is not, there 
fore, a matter of imparting information, of cramming 
the mind with facts, but what is far more difficult, of 
setting the current of a man's intellectual life in a right 
direction, of teaching him to be a true learner, a dis 
ciple in the school of Christ. 

It is easy to criticise, and still more easy to talk 
vaguely of true ideals of education. I will at least try 
to be practical and to explain my meaning, when I 
say that the aim of our education is the formation of 
character. 



MENTAL PREPARATION 85 

There must be mental discipline. "Think hard" was 
the advice given to the boys of the South Eastern Col 
lege by Lord Kinnaird, at a recent prize-giving. It is 
a tendency of modern education, says a thoughtful 
writer of to-day, to make study smooth and pleasant; 
"the grooves and channels of life are made to tend 
easily and naturally towards good;" and the "educa 
tion of the will, the power to breast the current of our 
desires, and to do what is distasteful is much less 
cultivated." 

We do not deny that the older form of training was 
too severe, and retained unconsciously too much of the 
asceticism of medieval study, but there is a great dan 
ger of going too far in the other direction. Sir John 
Lubbock, it is true, places study among the "pleasures 
of life," yet no one knows the real pleasure of study 
who does not put good hard work into it. And for the 
missionary this is all-essential. The conditions of 
study are for him very trying. There is the climate, 
there are the insects, and so forth. He above all men 
must have formed at school, in college, and in the 
home, the habit of hard work. He must have learned, 
by God's help, so to discipline the will as to breast the 
current of his desires, and to do easily and gladly what 
is often distasteful. Mr. Ruskin strikes the same note 
when, in his complaint of recent architects and build 
ers, he says that our modern work "has the look of 
money's worth, of a stopping short wherever and 
whenever we can, of a lazy compliance with low con 
ditions: never of a fair putting forth of our strength. 
Let us have done with this kind of work at once." 
And so I plead that our first aim should be genuine 
discipline of the mind. We must teach that, however 



86 MENTAL PREPARATION 

pleasant work may be, we cannot be really cultivating 
our powers if we are not habitually touching the line 
of sacrifice, and following the toilsome, if not painful, 
path of patient, concentrated, and sustained study. 
There is no royal road to true knowledge 



There must be a true student spirit. Not to be 
"learned," but to be fond of learning, is our aim. Many 
make a great mistake as to the end of education. They 
regard it as completed when the doors of school and 
college have closed behind them. One has heard of 
"finishing schools," and of a young lady I never 
heard it of a man going abroad to "finish her educa 
tion." And this is not merely an inaccurate phrase. 
Many young men do regard school and college work 
as something to be endured for a time, while certain 
useful facts and methods are learned, and then to be 
gladly dismissed forever. Now this view of education 
will not do for the missionary. You must be students 
to the end of life. I have been ctruck with this fact in 
university life. No one has completed his education. 
We are a body of learners. Masters and professors, 
tutors and principals, graduates and undergraduates, 
are all students. Of course, there are exceptions, but 
I think you will find them less among the teachers than 
among the taught. 

Some may take alarm at the thought that all mis 
sionaries must be students ; but there is a love of study 
which the most active evangelist cannot dispense with. 
Preaching which draws only on past stores of knowl 
edge, or even from present spiritual experience apart 
from learning, will, save in exceptional cases, wear thin 
and lose its force. 



MENTAL PREPARATION 87 

The following words were spoken at the foundation 
of the Church Missionary College by one of the Found 
ers of the Church Missionary Society, and they show 
what importance those heroes of missionary enterprise 
laid upon a love of study as a qualification of mission 
ary work : "The union of sound learning with Scrip 
tural piety is of the last importance. If the cause 
of missions is to flourish there must be a charac 
ter of solid judgment and competent knowledge in 
the missionaries we employ. The leaders of the 
Reformation were men of deep piety, of devoted love 
to the Saviour, of holy zeal, but they were men of 
learning, too." 

Now one of the highest aims of the teacher is to 
teach men to love to learn. What men love to do, that 
they will generally find the means of doing, and if we 
who have to teach can only get men bitten with the 
delight of learning, depend upon it they will to the end 
of their days remain students still. That is what I 
mean by the student spirit. 

Let us train men to be seekers after truth. That 
does not mean a jelly-fish kind of training, which 
makes a man believe that everybody is right, and no 
body is wrong. It does not mean that we are not to 
teach distinctive lines of doctrine, and warn against 
what we believe to be positions hurtful to the doctrine 
of the Atonement, or the authority of God's Word. 
But while we use the lines of order and canons of in 
terpretation which we believe to be right, we must 
never tamper with a man's conscience, or with our own 
in applying them. If we are to persuade men to adopt 
our position there must be conspicuous fairness of 
statement, and the absence of that vicious habit of try- 



88 MENTAL PREPARATION 

ing merely to score a point rather than to arrive at the 
genuine truth. 

There must be sympathy in our study. Love to God 
and man must be the predominant factor. The mere 
student I mean the man who shuts himself up with 
his books and shuts himself off from the common in 
terests of life is almost sure to become narrow; he 
loses the true perspective of study, and believes in no 
methods but his own. "Knowledge puffeth up love 
edifieth." 

You who are going to be missionaries must, there 
fore, be trained not only in the class-room, but also in 
the parish. You must live in touch with real present- 
day life. First of all for yourselves you must learn to 
translate your newly acquired thoughts into actual 
practice, and test your conclusions by the experience 
of your daily life with men, and your daily walk with 
God. Directly a man comes to believe in any truth, 
that new-born faith should work by love, and should 
begin to influence his own life and his relations to 
others. You must remember that bookworms are not 
ideal students. You must not only study books, but 
men. Strive to solve the problems of life which con 
front you by getting at the mind of those with whom 
you have to do. Find out what people are reading 
about and thinking about, and see how the Gospel 
bears a message which can adapt itself to present 
needs. 

We work at men's consciences too much at random. 
The most common hindrance to the Gospel, we are 
told, is indifference. Of course it is, but why are men 
indifferent? There are various causes and we must 
find them out, and sympathy coupled with careful 



MENTAL PREPARATION 89 

thought alone can do it. Don't be content with saying 
a man is indifferent, just as doctors are content with 
telling us we've got the influenza, but get to the root 
of the matter if you can. This was the mind which we 
see in Christ Jesus, as we watch Him dealing with the 
anxious or indifferent soul, and the missionary must 
let this mind be in him, if he is to get at hearts which 
Satan is closing against the truth. 

At these three things then you must aim, mental dis 
cipline, a love of learning, and a spirit of sympathy. 
Let me say three words in conclusion : 

The study of all studies for the missionary is the 
study of God's Word. That is the training ground for 
mind as well as for spirit. I remember the words of a 
missionary to us at Islington, "Steep your minds in 
Scripture." I say to all young missionaries, "Steep 
your minds in Scripture." Learn all you can about 
the Bible, but above all, learn the Bible itself. I know 
something about examinations for Holy Orders, and I 
am sure that these popular books of introductions to 
the Bible, and helps to the knowledge of every fact 
about the Bible, however useful in their proper places, 
are hindering men from learning the Bible itself. The 
Bible must, of course, be studied as a whole, but it is 
after all the whole Bible that is the Word of God, the 
Sword of the Spirit, which we have to wield. 

The teacher of all teachers is God the Holy Ghost. 
I counsel all students to pray definitely, daily for His 
help. Kneel down for a few moments before you open 
your books for study, seek His aid, and you will never 
study in vain. His gifts are sevenfold, that is to say, 
they are such as to equip the humblest, the feeblest, the 
most peculiar mind for sacred study and consecrated 



90 MENTAL PREPARATION 

service. You are to love God with all your mind. 
Don't forget this. Offer your minds to Him, yield 
your powers of thought to His impulses, then do your 
best and He will bless you. 

They are weighty words in the Ordinal of the 
Church of England "As much as lieth in you, you will 
apply yourselves wholly to this one thing, and draw all 
your cares and studies this way ; and that you will con 
tinually pray to God the Father, by the mediation of 
our only Saviour, Jesus Christ, for the heavenly as 
sistance of the Holy Ghost; that by daily reading and 
weighing of the Scriptures, ye may wax riper and 
stronger in your ministry." 

Above all and last of all we must let our mental 
training lead both teacher and taught direct to Christ. 
My old friend, Dr. Dyson, who was a fellow worker 
for many years at Islington, used often to tell us that 
what, after all, told in converting men to God was not 
logic, not eloquence, not philosophy, but the simple 
story of Jesus Christ coming into the world to save 
sinners. Yes, that is the first thing and the last thing 
that mental training is valueless for missionary work 
which does not teach men to know more and more, as 
day by day of study passes by, of Jesus Christ. 

And so I will close with the hexameter lines of some 
old monk: 

Si Christum discis, nihil est si cetera nescis, 
Si Christum nescis, nihil est si cetera discis. 

In study, as in everything else, make Christ your all 
in all. 



THE NEED OF THINKERS FOR THE MISSION 
FIELD > 

REV. JOHN CLIFFORD,, D.D.,, LL.D., LONDON 

WE feel acutely that " thinkers " are urgently called 
for on the mission field, and that every missionary 
must seek the highest education, and prepare himself 
to understand the mental habits and mental stock of 
the people whose salvation he seeks. We have arrived 
at a moment in the development of the missionary 
work of the churches when we need more men who 
will do what Bacon and his successors have done for 
the study and interpretation and use of Nature ; what 
Alessandro Volta did, exactly one hundred years ago, 
for the electric current, and what Faraday and his col 
leagues have achieved for electrical science since. 

We need students men who will work upon the 
facts of religion as Richard Owen amongst fossils and 
Sir Joseph Hooker on plants ; scientific students, exact, 
severe, painstaking, hating inaccuracy as they hate a 
lie, and devoted to truth; rigid in their scrutiny and 
flawless in their reasoning, never passing a single 
datum however repulsive, nor accepting an illusion 
however full of charm; eliminating the possibility of 
error by the repetition of experiments and the accumu 
lation of observations, and so furnishing the churches 
and their workers with that knowledge of the realities 

Report Student Volunteer Convention, London, 1900. 



92 NEED OF THINKERS 

of life without which energy is wasted, mistakes are 
made, and work is marred. 

1. The thinker is primarily an observer. To-day he 
must be scientific or he is of no use ; and to be scientific 
he must begin with the observation of what is, and of 
all that is, in religion. Sitting in the study spinning 
theories may be exhilarating, but it is not scientific. 
We want facts facts in the lives of the founders of 
religions, Confucius and Zoroaster, Buddha and Mo 
hammed; facts in the literature of religion, the sacred 
texts of the Sanscrit, the "Conversations" of Confucius 
and the Koran of Mohammed; and the authoritative 
commentaries of their most distinguished disciples 
i. e., we must have scholars, men who know the natural 
history of religion, of Confucianism and Parseeism, 
Buddhism, and Islamism, as Huxley knew the biology 
of the horse or Tyndall the laws of light. 

2. But he must not be merely a scholar, stored with 
the lore of the sacred literature of religions; he must 
be, in Emerson's phrase, a " scholar thinking/' not a 
bookworm, not an emendator nor a bibliomaniac ; not a 
" worker subdued by his own instruments," but a 
student of religion as it appears in the lives of the 
people, in their curious customs, in their acts of wor 
ship, their moods of mind, ways of thinking, and above 
all, in their individual and social conduct. The interval 
between the religion of the book and the religion of 
the life is often ghastly. The sayings of the sages are 
luminous and inspiring ; the emptiness and sorrow and 
misery of the people are unutterably pathetic. He who 
has mastered the sacred books of the Chinese knows 
that the ethic is lofty in standard, pure in tone, and 
unimpeachable in its truth ; but when he puts into the 



NEED OF THINKERS 93 

crucible the concrete Confucianism of the Chinese of 
to-day he finds that it is a spent force, and has no vital 
ity. It is conservative, that is, it is inert, dead, and 
therefore it must go, displaced by the throbbing, ag 
gressive vitality of the Gospel of Christ. 1 

3. Nor is this all ; not, certainly, if we take as our 
pattern the great missionary of the ages the Apostle 
Paul. He was not only an eager student of the whole 
of God's revelation, and a scholar trained in the schools 
of Tarsus and Jerusalem, but also a philosopher a 
man who penetrated to the secrets of thought and life, 
sought out the underlying unities of the religion of 
Christ he had accepted, and the Mosaism into which he 
was born; and so discovered the ideas by which he 
could not only aid the Jew in his transfer of allegiance 
from Moses to Christ, and the Greek in realizing by 
the Cross the power of God and the wisdom of God, 
but could bring Jew and Greek, bond and free men 



"The student of religions who has tried to compare those 
of India with those of other peoples and places soon finds that 
religions wear a very different aspect when seen on their own 
soil and under their own sun from what they have when studied 
in a library, as ancient or alien systems, through the literatures 
they have created, or in books written to describe their growth 
or decay. . . . The literary side of the religion suffered an 
eclipse, or, rather, was set in a context which seemed to de 
mand a revised interpretation, when viewed through its actual 
forms or in the concrete and complex system it had created 
for the collective life. In the face of the religion regarded as 
worship and custom, and the attitude to it of the higher Hindu 
thought, I had many a hard struggle with myself, criticized 
myself for lack of insight, for intolerance, for failure in judi 
cial faculty, for indulging inherited instincts and interests, for 
applying standards to another race and religion which I dared 
not apply to my own ; but, do what I would, I could not escape 
from the dominion, or, rather, the tyranny, of these first vivid 
impressions." ("Race and Religion in India." By A. M. Fair- 
bairn, D.D. Contemporary Review, Vol. 76, pj>. 155-56.) 



94 NEED OF THINKERS 

and women, into one great and ordered social unity in 
Christ. The unities of life are deep though obscured, 
and real though difficult of interpretation. The affini 
ties of religions are facts. The soul of man is the soul 
of man all the world over, and everywhere it is restless, 
save as it rests in God. Ideas are our real world, and 
they rule us as with a rod of iron. Wherever we go 
they go, and they hold us in their thrall. Hence the 
Eastern mind is closed to the Western, and the West 
ern is not, except in the rarest cases, and after long 
study, penetrated by the Eastern. 1 It is the work of 
the missionary to dig down to the fundamentally 
human, to the unquestionably Divine, through all the 
superimposed strata of historical religious customs, 
superstitions, corruptions, social practices, and politics. 
We need and must have more men to do this for us, 
to save us from being misled by appearances, and from 
applying false standards of judgment ; to abate an 
tagonisms, economize resources, feed patience, and 
facilitate progress by enabling us to see facts as they 
really are. 

4. A fourth function grows out of these three. The 
missionary who is a scholar, a student, and a philoso 
pher should also be a master builder, gifted with con 
structive ability, capable of solving the problems of 
social life and development that rise up in the mission 
ary field, a master of missionary strategy, skilled in 
" understanding of the times " at home and abroad, and 
able to tell Israel what to do, so as to secure in the 
most abiding way, not only the evangelization, but the 
regeneration of mankind. 

*Cf. Dr. Fairbairn, ibid., pp. 154 et seq. 



NEED OF THINKERS 95 

Erskine said the working-men of his day had not 
had the message of Christ presented to them, " except 
in immoral form/' and therefore were not chargeable 
with rejecting it. However that may have been, the 
Christian Churches to-day are keenly awake to two 
facts (i) that in order to preach the Gospel we must 
know it, in its intrinsic significance, and in its variety 
and fulness, so as to be able to place its wealth over 
against the specific needs of the souls of men; and (2) 
that we must know, as far as we can, the mind of the 
listener; his ideas of God and religion, of sin and 
duty ; his habits of thinking, and moods of feeling ; the 
investing religious atmosphere in the home and State, 
and thus discover the way in which Christ Jesus should 
be presented so as to inspire his confidence and win 
his love. 

Two unveilings are taking place just now: one is 
of the measureless wealth of the Gospel of Jesus, and 
the other is of the wonder, variety, complexity, mystery, 
and misery of the world of man; of the multitude of 
races, so different in blood, in capitalized ideas, in 
inheritance, in moulds of thought, in industrial effort, 
in political achievement, and in social order ; and of the 
terrific grip of the religions we are seeking to displace 
by the Christianity of Christ. The veil has been lifted. 
We see man in his multitudinousness as we have never 
seen him before. Our missions have opened our eyes 
and forced upon us the wide range and the unexpected 
difficulty of the task. We see the radical differences 
of condition in the mission fields, and the amazing 
variety of the work required. Our classification of the 
world into " heathen " and " Christian " no longer con 
tents us. We cannot lump together Buddhists and 



96 NEED OF THINKERS 

Hindus, Taoists and Brahmins, Congoese and Maoris 
as though they were all to be treated alike, and the 
man who was fitted for Bechuanaland was equally suit 
able for Shantung. There are innumerable kinds of 
heathen, and though all need and must have the Gospel 
of Christ ; yet each tribe has its peculiarity, its special 
inheritance of religious custom, and its special diffi 
culty in separating itself from the existing religion and 
accepting the message of Christ. 

We are surprised e. g., to be told that the Hindu 
thinks the one thing the Englishman lacks is religion. 
He confesses that he is a ruler, a magistrate, a soldier, 
a statesman, but a religious man he certainly is not. 
So totally opposed are our conceptions and theirs of 
what religion is. But that is the fact, and it is ex 
tremely helpful to know it; it supplies us with a 
measure of what we have to do in evangelizing the 
polyglot, metaphysical and contradictory tribes of Hin 
dustan. Half a century ago the missionaries' work 
was not understood. The impenetrability of Hindu 
and Chinese men and women to Western thought was 
not realized. The hoary religions of the wonderful 
East had not been interpreted. The science of com 
parative religions was hardly born, and it is to be 
feared that Christian missionaries were, sometimes, 
inspired by a blinding contempt for the faiths they 
sought to supplant. 

That is of the past. To-day the churches under 
stand their work better. We know more, not merely 
of the geography and commerce, of the climate and 
customs of the myriads of the East, but of their mind 
and heart, their yearnings and aspirations, of the roots 
and fruits of their religious practices and customs, and 



NEED OF THINKERS 97 

therefore we look forward with deepening interest to 
the arrival of God's gift of men, called and equipped 
and drilled by His spirit to utter the Gospel, not only 
in its fulness and sweetness, but also with such fault 
less aptitude that it shall have free course, and be 
glorified in the Christianization of all the people and 
all the nations of the earth. 

Of the special and immediate aids the churches need 
from these thinkers in the mission field, I may mention 
two or three. Take Africa. However it may be with 
politicians and merchants, the Churches say, we go to 
Africa not for our own sake, but for the sake of the 
people, and of all the people. The "White Man's Bur 
den" is to save his brethren, black and white alike ; and 
what a gigantic task it is! To weld together these 
increasing and conflicting tribes with the Dutch and 
English, in one just, free, and mutually helpful brother 
hood, to bring seven or eight millions of blacks out of 
their tribal antagonisms, to lift them to the level of the 
white races in thought and ideal, to fuse all of them 
together so as to make them a redeemed people, and 
good and useful citizens of the great Empire. That is 
what has to be done, and that is what the churches must 
do for the sake of the African people. Expansion of 
Empire is vanity and death without the evangelization 
of the Empire. Who, then, of you is ready to follow 
in the train of Moffat and Livingstone, Mackay and 
Hannington, and give his whole redeemed being to 
this difficult task ? 

Dollinger says, " No founder of a religion has ever 
encountered a people or society who in naive sim 
plicity would allow themselves to be moved by his 
preaching if it contained an entirely new and strange 



98 NEED OF THINKERS 

revelation. Nobody, indeed, has ever undertaken sim 
ply to set aside or eradicate the received religion, and 
to substitute a totally new one in its place." But what 
an amalgam of religions is presented to the missionary 
in China! We talk of Confucianism as if it were the 
only road marked on " the map of life " for a China 
man. But there was a Confucianism before Confucius. 
Taoism was there, and Buddhism entered six hundred 
years after the birth of Confucius. And these three 
faiths, though discordant at many points, have been 
blended together; and temples are found all over the 
Empire in which the founders of the three religions 
stand side by side. If Dollinger is right, and history 
asserts the truth of his doctrine, then our " thinkers " 
must find out the stones in the old religions which 
may be used as the foundations on which to stand in 
winning disciples to Christ, just as the writer of the 
letter to the Hebrews seizes upon the abiding principles 
of the Old Testament and shows how they are set to a 
nobler work in Christianity, in order to fortify the faith 
of the converts to Christianity in their allegiance to 
Christ. Who, then, will follow in the train of Morison 
and Legge, Burns and Timothy Richard, in the effort 
to discover the points of contact between the three 
religions of China and Christianity; in showing pre 
cisely what Christianity does and does not reject, what 
corrections and qualifications it introduces, and what 
is the character and content of the addition it makes, 
and so facilitate the transition from the inherited faith 
to the clearer and fuller teaching of Christ ? 

But it is impossible to enumerate the subjects in the 
mission field calling for the immediate service of 
thinking men; such as (i) the best treatment of the 



NEED OF THINKERS 99 

rapid changes of thought and method in Japan; (2) 
the effect of the recent introduction of the Theosophy 
of the United States and England into the dead body 
of religion in India and Ceylon, rousing Buddhism to 
a momentary power, and clothing it with a fleeting 
authority; (3) the demonstration from a century 
crowded with experiments conducted in the laboratory 
of missions, of the true, the most economical and 
effective methods of work in such different fields as 
amongst the Maoris of New Zealand, the Agnostics of 
Calcutta, the Mahatmas of Thibet, and the Indians of 
North America; (4) the proof from "fruits" as to 
what doctrines are harmful and what helpful to indi 
vidual manhood, the creation of a new social order and 
the advance of the Kingdom of God; and (5) the 
preparation of a convincing argument for the measure 
less superiority of Christianity by accumulating and 
arranging the evidences which show that it omits no 
good quality in any religion, is free from the errors 
and defects of each religion, and has in its Founder 
qualities and forces which no other religion possesses, 
and which all other religions together do not equal. 

I read a day or two ago that the " greatest need of 
our missionary societies is men, fully qualified men. 
When would-be missionaries seek appointment to the 
foreign field, it is discovered in many instances that 
there is some reason for not commissioning them, 
either because of lack of full preparation or of fitness 
in other ways." Is that true? Do the men of highest 
education hold back ? Is not Christ winning the think 
ers? I know the campaign for money cannot be 
dropped; but the most urgent campaign is for men, 
Christian men; out and out Christian men; men like 



100 NEED OF THINKERS 

Moody, ready to say, they " will show the world what 
God can do with a wholly consecrated man" ; men who, 
like Paul, have faith and patience enough to go to 
Arabia, and meditate on the revelations of God to their 
souls, and adjust them to all they knew before; men 
like Buddha, who spent six years of probationary 
studies into the mysteries of life, reading over and over 
the tear-stained book of poor men's souls ; men who will 
not " muddle through " their work, but will find out 
the strategic points and occupy them, and so make the 
best and biggest of themselves for the God who has 
redeemed them by the sacrifice of His Son, and con 
secrated them to the service of the world by the gift of 
His Spirit. God Himself says, " Who will go for Me, 
and whom shall I send? " 

"When the first Napoleon suddenly found himself 
among the quicksands of the Red Sea, he ordered his 
generals to ride out in so many opposite directions, and 
the first who arrived on firm ground to call on the rest 
to follow. This is what we may ask of all the various 
schemes and agencies all the various inquiries after 
truth now in work in all the different branches and 
classes of Christendom ' Ride out amongst those 
quicksands ! Ride out in the most opposite directions, 
and let him that first finds out solid ground call out to 
us ! It may perchance be the very ground in the midst 
of their quaking morass where we shall be able to stand 
firm and move the world.' m 

Mary Lyon said : " If you want most to serve your 
race, go where no one else will go, and do what no one 



1 Dean Stanley, in "dips from a German Workshop." Max 
Miiller. Vol. iv., p. 37- 



NEED OF THINKERS IOI 

else will do." Look for positions that will make the 
heaviest demands on your self-sacrifice, test the fibre 
of your sainthood most severely ; and remember every 
inch of your journey that " God can accomplish won 
ders through a man if he will only get low enough to 
let Him use him." 



SOME STUDIES SUGGESTED FOR MISSIONARY 
CANDIDATES 

REV. J. H. BERNARD, D.D., DUBLIN 

IN the case of men who have undertaken, if God 
permit, to consecrate their lives to the foreign field, we 
may assume that their sympathies have already been 
enlisted, and that therefore they will naturally read a 
good deal of missionary literature, and gain a good deal 
of information as to the details of what is being done. 
There is no need to tell them to do that. But there 
are probably three lines of reading which they ought 
particularly to keep before them : 

I. They should not neglect the study of the ancient 
missionary work of the Church, in the days when the 
Church was young and rejoicing in the new life which 
she had received, in the days when she was the only 
witness for truth and goodness and purity in a world 
which had lost faith, even in itself. History often re 
peats itself, and it may be that the methods of mission 
ary work which were so marvelously blessed in an 
cient days may be methods which we could apply with 
profit to our own. It will be a real advance in mission 
ary education to have gained a clear view of the 
methods adopted by the Heralds of the Cross in the 
past. The method of St. Paul for he had a method 
have we tried to understand that? His work was not 



Report Student Volunteer Convention, London, 1901. 

102 



SUGGESTED STUDIES 103 

taken up in any haphazard fashion, but we cannot doubt 
was organized with the most anxious care. Or, again, 
it has often occurred to me I may be wrong, but let 
me put it to you that the methods adopted by Chris 
tian teachers in the second and third centuries as they 
labored in the face of the prejudice, hatred and con 
tempt openly expressed for them by the official au 
thorities of the Roman Empire may have deep lessons 
for those of our brethren who are now working in a 
country like China, where the conditions seem to be 
not wholly dissimilar. How to sow the seed of the 
Gospel without exciting the open hostility of the many 
enemies to which a strange religion must be exposed, 
in a land where tradition and custom have consecrated 
much that is base and cruel and impure that is a 
problem upon which the study of ancient missionary 
method may throw much light. Or, once more, an 
Irishman may be forgiven if he thinks that the study 
of the methods pursued in the middle ages by his own 
countrymen, St. Columba in Scotland, St. Aidan in 
the north of England, St. Columbanus and his eager 
band of comrades on the Continent of Europe, methods 
so signally blessed by God, may be not without lessons 
for us all. How to live, and if need be, how to die. 
As we look back, we find the answer suggested by the 
lives and deaths of the great cloud of witnesses, with 
which every missionary of the Cross is compassed 
about. 

2. That is the first thing I would venture to sug 
gest the study of ancient missionary organization. 
And the second is the study of the great non-Christian 
religions of the world, the religions which, we believe, 
are in the end to give place to the religion of the Cross 



104 SUGGESTED STUDIES 

and the Crucified. For we dare not forget, while we 
call attention and rightly call attention to the imper 
fections, the superstitions, the corruptions plain to see 
in these ancient religions we dare not forget, I say, 
that they are religions that no matter how bad or de 
graded they may seem, they are still religions. They 
are the expression of man's longing after the Eternal 
Power, above and around us, which is planted by the 
Eternal Father in the heart of man. And before we 
begin to expose all that is evil and base in these poor 
thoughts of God, let us in God's name try to under 
stand them. Let us try to find the grain of gold in the 
dross which hides it. I know that this is hard enough 
at times to find ; but it must be there, if it be true that 
God has never, never left Himself without a witness 
among men. " All truth," said St. Augustine, " comes 
from Him Who said, ' I am the Truth.' " That is it. 
Though there be only fragments of truth elsewhere, 
yet in Christ we have the very Truth itself, and all the 
Truth, could we but discern it. The study of the 
ancient religions of the world, so far as it is possible to 
learn it from books, cannot but be an important equip 
ment for the missionary of the Truth. 

It is not given to every man to be a master of lan 
guages, other than his own, and there are often diffi 
culties in the way of attempting the study of languages, 
like Chinese or Arabic, before the foreign field is 
reached. Yet there must be, here and there in our Uni 
versities, among the Student Volunteers, one or two 
men who could do more profitable service to the cause 
of missions by a diligent, thorough and patient study, 
let me say of Arabic, than in any other way. Indian 
missionaries have told me it has been said in print 



SUGGESTED STUDIES 105 

that one of the great needs at present of those who are 
engaged in the controversy with Mohammedanism is 
a critical edition of the Koran by a Christian scholar, 
which shall point out the sources from which its puerili 
ties are derived. It is all but impossible for men 
who are struggling, short-handed, to get through the 
day's work abroal, to find time for such an enterprise. 
Is it unreasonable to think that in this great assembly 
of students there may be one perhaps of our own 
race, perhaps from Germany, that nursery of scholars 
one who could take up this sorely needed task in 
downright earnest and consecrate the talents with 
which God has endowed him to furthering the advance 
in missionary education in this way ? 

3. I pass to the third point, more important than 
either of the two of which I have spoken. And that 
is the great value to a foreign missionary of a syste 
matic and close study of Christian theology. Much has 
been done in the past, of course, by uneducated or half- 
educated men. There is no weapon but may be used in 
this warfare. But if a man is to preach the Christian 
Creed with effectiveness in the teeth of opposition, it 
must not only have touched his heart and conscience, 
but his intellect as well. He must have tried to master 
its exact meaning, its exact proportions. He must be 
able to explain it, as well as to preach it. 

More than once it has happened to me to have re 
ceived letters from missionaries in the East, asking for 
advice as to points which had been raised in argument 
by Mohammedans ; hard questions as to our Lord's 
twofold nature, His Divinity, His sinlessness, His free 
dom from temptation, and the like. They were ques 
tions which my correspondents, though well educated 



106 SUGGESTED STUDIES 

men, had not seriously considered before. They are 
not problems which present themselves as a difficulty 
to the practical intellect of the West. Now what was 
the fact ? Every one of these questions had been raised 
and argued about and answered so far as they can be 
answered 1,500 years ago, during the great intellec 
tual upheaval which distressed the Church in the fourth 
and fifth century. I know that many men think the 
problems raised at the great Councils of Christendom 
at Ephesus and Chalcedon are quite irrelevant to pres 
ent needs. They will not say so when they have had 
some practical experience of controversy with Moham 
medan scholars. The Eastern mind is just the same 
now as it was in the days of Athanasius, and we shall 
do unwisely, if we think that we can escape, in India 
and Africa at least, from facing the difficulties which 
Christian men had to face then. 

We might well learn a lesson from the Mohamme 
dans in this matter. For Mohammedanism is a great 
missionary religion; its adherents believe in it with 
fervor and practise its precepts with devotion. And 
their efforts to spread the creed of Islam might often 
put us to shame, who prefer to believe the Creed of 
creeds. At the great Mohammedan College in Cairo, 
where there are said to be 10,000 men, all preparing 
for active missionary work in the future, there is, as I 
am informed, the most anxious labor expended upon 
teaching the students, with painful and minute accu 
racy, every jot and tittle of the creed of the Koran. 
We shall not be wise if we send forth our men less 
perfectly equipped in regard to the Creed of the Bible, 
the Faith of Christ our Saviour. 

There is only one other thing I want to say. There 



SUGGESTED STUDIES IO? 

is need of advance in missionary education for us all, 
whether we work at home or abroad, in one other 
direction I mean in the enlargement of our missionary 
ideal. What is the ultimate ideal which we are setting 
before ourselves in all this missionary enterprise? 
What is it we hope to do? To preach the Gospel all 
the world over in this generation ? Yes, but is that all ? 
Is that the ultimate ideal? Nay. The evangelization 
of the world is not the Christianization of the world. 
It is only the first step, and though it is the first step 
which costs, we must not stop short here. What do we 
look for and pray for? That the world may be won 
for Christ. Aye, surely, but that is not to pray that the 
world may be won for any particular form of Western 
Christianity. To win the world for Christ; that is a 
larger ideal than to gain it over to our own way of 
thinking. We have failed to understand the magni 
ficence of the thought of the Kingdom of Christ, if we 
are accustomed to hope, as the end of our efforts, for 
the establishment in every quarter of the world of 
Christian communities in all respects like our own. 

Do we then suppose that we have the whole truth, 
that we have exhausted the fulness of the revelation 
made in Christ ? Something of it we know and under 
stand, and it is enough to live by enough to bear us 
beyond the gates of death with courage. But surely 
we cannot think that any single branch of Christ's 
Church here on earth has so fully entered into the 
mind of her Lord that she understands all His message, 
that she has extracted from His revelation all the good 
news it contains ? Nay, as Bishop Westcott once said, 
when we go, in person or by our delegates, to heathen 
lands, we go not only to bring a gift, but to claim an 



108 SUGGESTED STUDIES 

offering. We go to unlock the Temple, the treasure 
house from which each race of man may appropriate 
the truth which it can use best. And it is the sum of 
these treasures, the sum of these truths, that is the full 
Gospel. 

The Christianity of the East can never be exactly 
the same as the Christianity of the West, for every 
race of men has its own needs, its own talents, its own 
powers. Japan is not Africa, any more than it is 
England. And no member of the body can say to any 
other member, " I have no need of you." Each is 
essential to the perfection of the whole. The ideal of 
missionary effort is not only that we may " tell it out 
among the heathen that the Lord is King," but, as the 
Psalmist says elsewhere, that " the kings of Arabia 
and Saba may bring gifts," that they may bring back 
to the treasury of Christ, multiplied a thousandfold, 
the gifts that they have received. It is for us to do our 
part with the gift which is our own. And it is by each 
nation, each national Church, each household in the 
family of God, offering its own gift for the good of 
all, that the Kingdom of Christ shall be set up on earth, 
even as it is in heaven, that the peace of the Church, 
the unity of Christendom shall be reached. That is 
our ideal, and as we hope and pray for it, the splendid 
phrases of the Benedictus ring in our ears with a joyful 
message of hope, for they tell us that to carry the light 
to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death 
shall at last guide our feet our feet into the way 
of peace. 



BROAD CULTURE DEMANDED OF MISSIONARIES 1 

REV. J. H. DE FOREST, D.D., OF JAPAN 

BEFORE saying anything about the culture needed, 
it is necessary to have some clear ideas of the condi 
tion of these great historic nations of the East. Japan, 
of course, is the most progressive. So well up-to-date 
is this nation in its system of laws, in education, in 
moral ideals, that all the great nations of the West 
have contracted equal treaties with it. This is a most 
remarkable fact. Here is the first non-Christian nation 
that has ever been acknowledged by Christian States 
as a political equal. Here is the first nation outside of 
Christianity to have a constitution that recognizes re 
ligious liberty as among the natural rights of man. 
To be a missionary in such a land is something quite 
different from the old idea of "going to preach to the 
heathen." 

China also, with her four hundred millions, is a na 
tion whose beginnings are lost in dim antiquity. 
Though not progressive like Japan, the Chinese largely 
gave Japan the intellectual and moral stimulus without 
which modern Japan would never have been. The 
culture of which China justly feels proud necessitates 

"The Student Volunteer, New York, November, 1896. 
109 



HO BROAD CULTURE DEMANDED 

culture on the part of all who would teach the supreme 
revelation of God through Christ to that people. Then 
there is India, with its vast mixed populations, in 
which is found every degree of culture as well as of 
degradation. All these peoples of the East have their 
standards of civilization, their ethical systems well 
wrought out, and their religious ideas that are older 
than our Christianity. And though their moral stand 
ards are different from ours, and below ours, yet theirs 
have had a conserving power by which family and 
social life has been maintained, and in the strength of 
which immense nations have been developed and held 
together longer than any others on the earth. 

Such peoples should have missionaries of the broad 
est culture. Not that it is impossible for an occasional 
man or woman of limited intellectual attainments to 
develop into a splendid missionary, but such are rare 
exceptions, and no Board will weaken itself by de 
liberately sending out such people. Without attempt 
ing to exhaust this great subject, I will briefly mention 
a few things that, in my judgment, should form a part 
of the intellectual equipment of the modern missionary. 

He should have some knowledge of international 
law. It was my privilege some years ago to meet Dr. 
Cyrus Hamlin, and after hearing his inimitable stories 
concerning the beginnings of missionary work in Con 
stantinople, I said : "Dr. Hamlin, I see now why you 
are called a great missionary. It isn't because you 
know the Bible better than others, nor is it on account 
of your preaching ability, but it is because you know 
the methods of international intercourse, and the in 
fluence of the legations, and how to use them." His 
reply was, "Well, I knew nothing about international 



BROAD CULTURE DEMANDED III 

law when I went out, but I soon discovered that if I 
was to accomplish anything, I must learn it." 

The missionary lives as an alien in a land that has 
treaties with his own, and he must at least know the 
kind of treaty under which he is permitted to work, 
and something of the authority and duties of his min 
ister, the consul-general, and the consuls. In ex 
territorial lands this is especially important, not so 
much for the sake of standing up for his rights, for 
the missionary who forever insists on his rights is a 
poor stick, but for the opportunity it gives for acquir 
ing influence, of avoiding embarrassing mistakes, and 
of enriching his teaching and preaching with telling 
illustrations. There are a few missionaries whose 
ignorance of these things has led them into serious 
errors that have nearly ruined their influence for life. 
There are others who, had they known the principles 
of international law, might have doubled their Chris 
tian influence by some timely publication in a native 
paper, or by public addresses. There are some treaties 
that discuss the classes "missionaries and merchants," 
and there are others that do not mention them. No 
man can study the development of the treaties of the 
nation in which he works without being a broader 
minded man, and, it is well to add, without being 
better able to teach the great and inspiring doctrine of 
the brotherhood of the race. 

The missionary of to-day should understand com 
parative religion. We can no longer treat the old re 
ligions according to traditional methods. The time 
was when these religions were regarded as instruments 
of the devil to hold the people in darkness and in 
bondage to superstition. Later on they were treated 



112 BROAD CULTURE DEMANDED 

as merely natural and as obstacles to the acceptance 
of revealed religion. Under these views, to destroy 
seemed to be the aim of the missionary. But the re 
ligions of these great Eastern nations are being studied 
with the newer thought that, in the Providence of God, 
they have a place in the education of the race. God has 
put in man universally an imperishable religious spirit, 
a light that lighteth every one. And though these re 
ligions have fostered much of error and superstition 
and cruelty and sin, yet they contain gleams of light 
that prove them to be, to some degree, revelations of 
the one living and true God. They have done much 
good. They have supported systems of ethics that, 
in spite of their imperfections, have enabled the people 
to come up out of savagery and barbarism, into social 
and national life. So the missionary has a profound 
and practical problem before him : What is God's plan 
in these great religions? Of what use have they been 
so far? Have they aided in the development of the 
conscience, in the upbuilding of the family, in produc 
ing peaceful relations between communities, in quick 
ening virtues, in fostering art ? What have they failed 
to accomplish, and what positive evil have they 
wrought? The modern missionary must deal with 
these questions with the deepest sympathy and not 
merely as a philosopher. He must have the spirit of 
the Master who came "not to destroy but to fulfill." 

Another important branch of study is the character 
istics of the people. To assume that human nature is 
the same everywhere, and then to preach to Asiatics 
just as you would to your own people, is to labor for 
nought. Human nature is the same at the bottom, but 
it appears in endless variations. To study the language 



BROAD CULTURE DEMANDED 113 

so as to be able to use it with power, is a duty that is 
always emphasized. But to study the people is fully 
as necessary. To learn their characteristics is the work 
of years of thoughtful observation and careful reading 
of their history. No teacher in his own country is a 
marked success unless he studies his pupils. Every 
good preacher must know his parishioners. None the 
less essential to the missionary's success is an exact 
knowledge of the characteristics of the people about 
him. That this is no easy task is seen from the fact 
that it took Emerson years of contact with Englishmen 
by correspondence and by repeated visits to England, 
before he ventured to write his English Traits. Vastly 
harder is it to learn the traits of these Eastern races, 
whose traditions and customs, language and laws, 
morals and religions are so different from ours. To 
get accustomed to their ways of looking at things, to 
think as they do, to enter into their real life, and see 
as a native sees, this is as necessary as it is to have a 
divine message to deliver. 

Modern theological thought must be taken into con 
sideration. The missionary cannot afford to ignore 
evolutionary philosophy, new historical knowledge 
or advances in psychology. His library should keep 
abreast of the times. He should and I cannot say 
it too emphatically know the fundamental truths in 
such a way that no changes of thought can rob him 
of their power and glory. Nay, he should make 
every advance of knowledge contribute to the rich 
ness and inspiration of his message. The mission 
ary ceases to be a missionary as soon as he doubts 
that he has a message that is eternal. But move 
ments in the religious world have come to be world 



114 BROAD CULTURE DEMANDED 

movements, and people of intelligence out here feel 
their force almost as soon as they are felt at home. 

No one need be discouraged by these demands. It 
is not meant that one should be proficient in all these 
great lines before he goes to a foreign field. "A man 
of consecration and average ability can accomplish 
wonders." Brilliance and oratorical gifts are not neces 
sary. But patience, perseverance, a yielding yet deter 
mined mind, a purpose to conquer difficulties, the 
knack of making friends instead of enemies, the art of 
being polite, are all necessary parts of the culture every 
missionary should have. 



PREPARATION FOR THE MISSION FIELD GAINED 
THROUGH PERSONAL WORK 1 

REV. HARLAN P. BEACH, M.A., NEW YORK 

THE phrase, "personal work," as here used does not 
signify, merely, effort with individuals looking toward 
their conversion, but in addition such other forms of 
individual work as missionary candidates will need to 
do on the field. 

1. Convincing persons not interested in missions or 
openly hostile to them of the importance of the cause 
is a part of the missionary's duty on shipboard, in 
foreign ports and oftentimes at interior stations. It is 
the supposed value of the testimony of such critics that 
has largely brought missions into disrepute. Prepare 
your strongest batteries for such opponents, and use 
them in personal conversation with similar sceptics in 
America. Many of them are hostile through ignorance. 
Dispel that ignorance by cogent arguments based on 
telling facts gathered from general missionary reading 
or massed in Liggins' "Great Value and Success of 
Foreign Missions." 

2. Prepare for future usefulness by learning the art 
of raising funds for special enterprises abroad. When 
in India and China, or in a locality where foreign mer- 



l The Student Volunteer, New York, June, 1895. 
"5 



Il6 PREPARATION GAINED THROUGH PERSONAL WORK 

chants reside, much work can be sustained by soliciting 
personal contributions for specific objects. Study your 
man here just as you would there, and secure money for 
that which appeals to him. Such experience will aid 
you also when home on furlough and obliged to do 
more or less financial work. 

3. Learn how to deal with individuals who have 
backslidden. Many such cases will be yours when a 
strange language and foreign modes of thought hamper 
you. Any cases successfully dealt with at home will 
prove so much capital abroad. For this work the same 
admonitions and Bible passages can be used there as 
here. Study, therefore, as many cases as possible in 
the full light of the Word, and then work and pray 
them through to a successful issue. 

4. Another frequent duty of the missionary is that of 
settling differences among Christians. Do you not 
know some such cases in your own church? Great 
wisdom, unbounded tact, the help of third parties, skil- 
full use of Scripture, are needed if you would succeed 
as a church peacemaker. Work out some hard problem 
of this sort before next term begins and you will have 
anticipated a month's work on the other side of the 
globe. 

5. Sympathy will prove the key to many hearts in 
your future field. If you fail to exercise it, your labor 
will be largely fruitless. If sympathy is lacking, it 
should be sedulously cultivated. Your lot will be cast 
among people who are oftentimes repulsive, and rarely, 
in their unconverted state, attractive. Their social con 
dition, habits, thoughts and religious views will be 
almost diametrically opposed to your own. To cultivate 
sympathy for these, it will be profitable to attach your- 



PREPARATION GAINED THROUGH PERSONAL WORK 117 

self to the lowest classes in your community. Enter 
individually into their cares, perplexities and sorrows; 
imagine your way into their hearts, and then think out 
your plan of relief. A month at a college settlement 
or in a city mission will help you greatly. 

6. A cognate art is that of making friends with those 
much inferior, perhaps hostile to you, and it will prove 
extremely helpful abroad. Do you not know some 
crabbed Ishmael of the town? Practise on him for 
your own and Christ's sake, as well as his own. A 
victory now may mean many victories in your future 
field. 

7. Among non-Christian peoples sympathy and abil 
ity to make friends will best pave the way for that most 
important phase of personal work, winning souls. The 
temptation, when the candidate begins his labors 
abroad, is to rest satisfied with a wide proclamation of 
the Gospel and to neglect mouth to ear and heart to 
heart effort. To fail in this is to bring forth thirty fold 
when an hundred fold is possible. Determine, God 
helping you, to prove your fitness for soul winning 
abroad by fruitful summer months. While personal 
work of this sort varies little from that in the field, it is 
well to remember that differentia. The quotation of 
appropriate texts, so honored in Christian lands, has 
less force among men who have just learned of our 
Scriptures and who only half believe in their truth and 
authority. Hence, instead of exploring your Bible for 
convincing texts, search it from cover to cover for prin 
ciples and illustrations which can be brought to bear 
upon a soul just touched by the gracious Spirit. John's 
blind man and Samaritan woman may prove more con 
vincing than his Nicodemus. The experience of a 



Il8 PREPARATION GAINED THROUGH PERSONAL WORK 

neighbor whose changed life is the town talk may be a 
more potent weapon than any quotation from Romans. 
While the above program will prove a valuable 
preparation for service abroad, adopt it rather be 
cause of present privilege and because of Christ's daily 
call, "Son, go work to-day in my vineyard." 



PERSONAL DEALING, THE GREAT MISSIONARY 
METHOD * 

REV. S. M. ZWEMER, F.R.G.S., OF ARABIA 

PERSONAL spiritual dealing is the great necessity. In 
my mind this is the fundamental idea of missions. 

Volunteers going into foreign fields will not have 
large audiences, as ministers have in this country. The 
bulk of the work is personal dealing with a few. The 
preaching in Arabia and China and India is not after 
the style of Peter at Pentecost, but of Christ at the 
Samarian well-side. We must learn to do the personal 
work with one or two, in the same spirit in which the 
well-prepared address that will reach hundreds is deliv 
ered, bringing them the message of the gospel. 

There are two ways to fill a barrel of apples. One 
way is to send a boy up and shake the tree and the 
apples will fall, and you put them in the barrel, good, 
partly decayed and bruised, but they won't stand ship 
ment. The other way is to climb the tree and pick them 
one by one and put them carefully one by one into the 
barrel. And from the evidence of missionaries I believe 
it has been proved that these are the kind of converts 
those gained by personal effort that will bear ship 
ment. 



'Report Student Volunteer Convention, Cleveland, 1898. 
119 



120 PERSONAL DEALING, THE MISSIONARY METHOD 

The work in the foreign field is a work of faith, the 
labor of love and the patience of hope. 

It is a work of faith much more than at home. At 
home there are larger results. The barrier between 
you and the world is not as high, not as thick, not as 
long lasting. It is a work of faith. If I were to write, 
"There is no use of trying to convert the Moham 
medans in this generation," where would my personal 
faith be? If I were to think only of trying to reach the 
next generation by opening a school, and not try to 
bring the gospel to bear right on their hearts now, 
where would my faith be? You need faith in God, in 
the people, and in yourself, and ability to tell the simple 
gospel story, after you have mastered the language. 

It is a labor of love. I have written in my Bible the 
word "Arabs" in the I3th chapter of Corinthians. Put 
there the word "native" -that Chinese woman or that 
Arab, and then read: "Though I speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels and have not love for 
the Arabs, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling 
cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and 
understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though 
I have all faith, as a missionary in Arabia, so that I 
could remove mountains, and have not love for the 
Arabs, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my 
goods to feed the poor in China, and though I give my 
body to be burned in China and have not love for the 
Chinese, it profiteth me nothing." And then read right 
through the chapter and try to live that the next day. 
I know it is hard. It is the severe, difficult practice 
that brings the tears to your eyes and the confession 
from your lips as you kneel down and say you have 
not been a missionary after the pattern of Jesus Christ. 



PERSONAL DEALING, THE MISSIONARY METHOD 121 

Again, it is the patience of hope. Faith is not enough 
in this world ; love is not enough. The Arab you spoke 
to and believed he would receive the Word goes away 
with a smile, and you think it has been for nothing. 
The inquirer whom you wrote home to the Board about 
disappears entirely and you never see the man again. 
It is a work of patience, the patience of hope, to keep 
on hoping for a convert. You must bear with the in 
firmities of the natives and love them, in spite of their 
filth and their sin, and have patience in awaiting results. 

I received a letter from a fellow-worker and he wrote 
me, "When you get new volunteers for Arabia, find 
men of the evangelistic type." If they have not that 
feature at home they will not get it in the field. We 
need to pray for that spirit and toil for it if we are to 
evangelize the world in this generation. To evangelize 
the world in this generation it must be a day-by-day 
and hour-by-hour collision of souls. I believe this 
personal work is necessary, because it is all the work 
that is bearing results. I believe that all the conver 
sions recorded in the mission fields have been the result 
of personal spiritual dealing, and not preaching. Of 
course, there have been cases where the printed Word 
has brought converts, but, as a rule, it is the personal 
spiritual effort. The Bible says, "Knock and it shall 
be opened unto you." We are not to pray for an open 
door. The only way the hardened heart is opened and 
the only way a closed country or a closed village or a 
closed home is opened is the way Christ tells us, 
"Knock and it shall be opened." Not praying or seek 
ing, but knocking. It is much more than asking or 
seeking. Knocking means to be at the door, to touch 
the door, to make ourselves felt at the door, to be 



122 PERSONAL DEALING, THE MISSIONARY METHOD 

heard behind the door, and after we have done that we 
are told, that Christ "openeth and no man shutteth." 
He tells us, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world." That is personal spiritual dealing. 
God grant us all, missionaries and volunteers, more 
of that spirit of Christ. 



ADVICE TO VOLUNTEERS l 
THE VEN. ARCHDEACON MOULE, B.D., MID-CHINA 

I FEEL it a very great privilege, and at the same time 
a very solemn responsibility, to offer any advice to 
missionary volunteers. I volunteered thirty-eight 
years ago, and have been connected with the force in 
the field thirty-four years; but I could wish myself 
rather to be a volunteer once more, listening to advice 
from some missionary veteran. Would that I could 
begin my mission life over again, with eyes open 
open I mean to danger and possible mistakes and 
falls and yet wider open and fixed on my Lord's love 
and power. 

I will not attempt a very orderly or elaborate ex 
hortation, but state briefly some few thoughts which 
have occurred to me. 

I. Many years ago, in our Ningpo Mission, an aged 
convert named Simeon burnt into his wrist, with a hot 
iron, the sign of the Cross, explaining his action in 
these words: "I am an old man, and my memory is 
failing ; I wish to remember continually my Lord's love 
in dying for me." Well, now, let every missionary 
volunteer have this thought burnt into his heart by the 
sacred fire of the Holy Ghost, that he volunteers for 
the service and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ alone. 
"Jesus only with themselves." This thought, in the 

*The Student Volunteer, London, March, 1895. 
123 



124 ADVICE TO VOLUNTEERS 

center of spiritual life, will be the sure antidote (a) 
to despondency, for who can despond with such a Cap 
tain and Leader? (b) to hurry, for the Almighty 
King of Kings is in no need of my hasty service, 
though He accepts, and will honor, my vigorous and 
prompt devotion; (c) to the fear of ridicule from 
former friends and acquaintances at home, from un- 
sympathizing fellow-countrymen abroad, or heathen 
opponents in the field for ridicule on His behalf at 
whom the enemies round the Cross "wagged their 
heads," is glory; (d) to disappointment and apparent 
failure, for He must reign; (e) to the deadly poison 
which alas! lurks near to, if not in the hearts of 
workers sometimes in the hour of success rivalry, 
envy, or harsh criticism of those who fight near, under 
the same banner, though perhaps not in the same regi 
ment; (f) to pride, for high though the honor be, 
there is not one particle of merit in being the Lord's 
messengers. 

2. By all means ascertain from reliable sources, in 
formation on the subject of the religious systems of 
the countries where the army in which you volunteer 
is fighting. A fair and accurate knowledge of this 
kind is not only valuable, but indispensable; but avoid 
the veriest whisper of a hint that any of these systems 
can compare with Christianity as Light of Asia or of 
any land. "There is none other name under heaven, 
given among men, whereby we must be saved." 

But the examination of these systems will reveal in 
some cases the pathetic yearnings of the human race 
after some hope, and some way of escape, from the 
mystery and the sorrow of this mortal state. You will 
find as Hardwick points out in his "Christ and Other 



ADVICE TO VOLUNTEERS 



I2 5 



Masters," and as Archbishop Trench elaborates in his 
Hulsean lectures thoughts which may be called 
adumbrations of Christianity, but which, were their 
thinkers living now, so far from rivalling or rejecting 
Christianity, would rather hail and adore the Divine 
revelation, as the great realization of their far-off and 
obscure guesses. In China, for instance, there are 
three religious systems professed, all three of them, 
in countless instances, by the same individuals; and 
these three, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, may be 
called guesses at the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 1 

3. Do not expect to be free from the assaults of the 
world, the flesh, and the devil, when you reach the 
mission field, because you are a missionary; but, on 
the contrary, be prepared to find these assaults some 
times redoubled in virulent force. Lay hold then now 
on God's strength, and be at full peace with Him. Be 
accustomed now to hold the Saviour's hand fast. 
Know by blessed experience now the power and the 
peace of those dear familiar words, "the communion 
and fellowship of the Holy Spirit." 

4. Do not allow the question of service to come be 
fore you too often thus, "Why should I go to the for 
eign field?" but rather thus, "Why should I not go?" 
And do not allow yourselves too quickly to withdraw 
your offer of service from the fear that you have not 
the proper qualifications. Possibly you may be right ; 
but let competent Christian judges rather decide this 
point, and let God's providence guide you. Only pray 
for complete readiness to be guided. Do not rebel or 
repine if God says stay, when you want to go. A mis- 



a Cf. "The Glorious Land." C.M.S. House. 



126 ADVICE TO VOLUNTEERS 

sionary, now far advanced in life, before going into 
the field, could find no reason in himself for his suit 
ability, except this, that he had acquired, through the 
Blessed Spirit's gracious teaching, a kind of instinct 
which led him to wish to speak a word of spiritual 
good to everyone whom he could reach. 

5. There are, indeed, problems of profoundest mys 
tery connected with the past history and present state 
of the heathen, and the long supineness of the Church. 
These may try your faith while waiting for the fight; 
but you will find these problems either vanish or fade 
when in contact with individual souls, and with your 
Lord's great marching order, "Go teach all nations," 
ringing in your ears. 



ADVICE TO MISSIONARY VOLUNTEERS l 
BISHOP J. M. THOBURN, D.D., OF INDIA 

i. Don't be in a hurry. Some young men, when 
they are called, want to go right off. Some men know 
so much that you cannot add to their knowledge ; they 
are too well equipped to be trained. Now, the larger 
the amount of your secular knowledge, the more need 
to have it assorted. It is the man with the sharp sword 
who needs to be careful how he uses it. You are not 
in college to learn only book knowledge. That is all 
right, but not the main object. There are many uni 
versity graduates who have an education they cannot 
use. You are here not so much to study as to learn 
how to study, for when you get to the field your studies 
begin. I am studying still, and the problems to be 
solved are greater now than any I learned in college. 
It is a great mistake to say : "Oh, he is all right ! he 
is well informed; he is a graduate." That may mean 
anything or nothing. It is not what he knows, but 
what he can learn. Can you learn a language? Don't 
let any man persuade you that you will make a success 
ful missionary if you cannot learn a language. The 
common people will not trust a man who cannot speak 
their tongue. If you want the natives to trust you, 
learn to pronounce their language well. The average 
young missionary has not patience to do this. 

'Notes of an address given to the students of Harley Col 
lege, printed in Regions Beyond, London. 

127 



128 ADVICE TO MISSIONARY VOLUNTEERS 

2. Before you go to the field be sure that you can do 
something at home. Have you ever led a soul to 
Christ? This is the essential work for you in every 
country. Can you take an inquiring soul to Christ? 
If you cannot do it at home, you cannot do it in a 
heathen land. 

Supposing you can do that, can you nurture them 
afterwards? You must learn to deal very tenderly 
with young, weak converts. How tenderly the eye 
surgeon deals with his patient if he is to effect a cure ! 
And what kind of surgery must it be when the heart 
needs a surgeon ? Jesus said : "I come to bind up the 
broken-hearted." We need great delicacy of touch to 
deal with young disciples. 

If a young lady applied to me to be sent out as a 
foreign missionary, I should inquire not so much from 
her teachers, but go to the place where she had been 
living and find out what her young associates thought 
of her. Do the children care for her? Can she be 
well spared, not missed at all? If so, I should not 
want her. Has she made herself useful? 

What have you done at home, brethren ? Have you 
ever brought one soul to Christ? Have you ever 
helped one Christian on the way? When you find an 
inconsistent Christian, do you feel like kicking him 
out of your way, or like taking him tenderly by the 
hand and showing him a better way? 

3. You must guard your health. They say in 
America that, as a preacher, a man's life is practically 
done at fifty. That is nonsense. So far from saying 
that, I think the average of life is increasing, and that 
we should aim to put in fifty working years from 
twenty-one to seventy-one, or twenty-five to seventy- 



ADVICE TO MISSIONARY VOLUNTEERS 129 

five and it can be done in the main, when God does 
not call us home early. But for this you must pay re 
gard to health a sacred gift, for which it is our duty 
to care. We must respect the commandments of God 
not because they are in the Bible, but because He gave 
them. We feel we must obey the command, "Thou 
shalt not steal"; but suppose He says, "Thou shalt 
not wreck thy health" and He does say it. It comes 
under the teaching of stewardship. We are respon 
sible for whatever God gives us, health, money, abil 
ity, etc., responsible to Him. In the tropics especially 
you must study the laws of health. In India we get up 
at sunrise and work till n A.M., when the day's work 
is done in the hot season. Then we have a substantial 
breakfast. After that we sit round the table talking 
a little while, and then go to bed for a solid sleep for 
at least two hours. On getting up again we are as 
ready for work as in the early morning; but we sit 
indoors, doing light work until 5 P.M., then, after even 
ing service, work on to 10 or n P.M. 

I had a colleague in India who did not believe in 
"wasting" his time in bed. I reasoned with him in 
vain; he would study in the afternoons. One day 
while sitting with a Hindi book, trying to study, the 
book fell out of his hand, he was so tired out. He 
was overtaxing himself, but would not listen to reason. 
He would run across the courtyard without covering 
his head; he was not going to be effeminate. One 
day he complained of a peculiar feeling in his head, 
the top seemed lifting off. Soon his memory failed, 
his imagination became excited. Well, he had to leave 
the country, and has been broken down ever since. 

Now, that man did not obey God's command to take 



130 ADVICE TO MISSIONARY VOLUNTEERS 

care of his health. I do not think many persons can 
live and keep their health in tropical countries without 
seven or eight hours' sleep, and men of certain tem 
peraments require eleven hours. 

Wherever you go, study the matter of food. Do not 
misunderstand me when I say I think there are graves 
in Africa that ought not to be there. It is no use say 
ing, "Oh, the Lord will take care of our health!" 
He will, but only if we obey Him. If you do not obey 
the laws of health, you cannot expect to live in a bad 
climate. If possible, find a place free from malaria; 
and by degrees God, in His providence, will raise up 
men who are malaria proof; for men do become so. 
I am, happily, myself indifferent to questions of 
malaria. Don't rush unnecessarily into danger; at 
the same time, don't shrink from a dangerous post 
when it is the call of duty. 

4. When you get into the field don't be in a hurry 
to be put .in charge. Moses served forty years in his 
school of theology. It does not matter if you spend 
three years, six, ten, in getting ready, so long as you 
get ready. Jesus waited thirty years before he began 
His ministry. We do not know why, but He did. And 
the disciples waited ten days for the Spirit. Why did 
He not come down on the first morning? We don't 
know. How those disciples seemed to be wasting their 
time at Jerusalem ! We don't understand God's plans, 
but He is never in a hurry. Be men in haste, but never 
in a hurry. There is a difference. 

5. Lastly, seek in constant prayer that strong and 
perfect self-control which springs from the realized 
presence of God. You are His messenger. Above all 
other preparation, you need constant communion with 



ADVICE TO MISSIONARY VOLUNTEERS 131 

Him. Your supreme equipment is personal piety 
communion with God. Abroad, you live in danger of 
getting your conscience seared. There is no Sabbath, 
no prayer, none of the associations of your childhood, 
and before one knows it one becomes just a little care 
less. You are so hurried, you are wanted all day ; you 
are tempted to omit your Bible reading one morning. 
After awhile this happens every morning, and before 
you are aware of it you get less prayerful than you 
used to be. Without Christian friends and fellowship, 
living amid the deadening influences of heathendom, 
missionaries are in danger spiritually. But at your 
peril you must look after your spiritual life ; you must 
keep everything right between your soul and God. 
And you can only do that by talking with the blessed 
Master himself. 

Brethren, do you know Jesus Christ as your elder 
brother? When you go into foreign lands and begin 
to preach, it will be everything to you to know Christ. 
This is the miracle that will go with you: that when 
you are among the enemies of Christ, speaking to them 
in His name, He Himself is with you always. It is 
your part to give the message; it is His to apply it, 
to make people know that you speak the truth. That 
is the miracle of Christian testimony. 

Preaching in the great squares of Calcutta, with a 
listening crowd around, I have said: "This is the 
message God has given me; and if it be His, He will 
make you feel it in your heart. If any man does not 
believe that I have been speaking God's message, let 
him come forward and contradict me." 

Not once or twice, but often I have made this chal 
lenge, and it has never been accepted yet. No man 



132 ADVICE TO MISSIONARY VOLUNTEERS 

has ever attempted to deny my assertion. But if I 
had said, "I am here to affirm that Jesus Christ is the 
Son of God, and if any one here does not believe me, 
let him say so," twenty men, especially Mohammedans, 
would have come forward at once to say they did not 
believe it. They would contradict me on almost every 
statement; but, strange to say, no Hindu or Moham 
medan has ever contradicted me when I have simply 
preached the gospel as an appeal to the human heart 
and conscience, and affirmed that God gave me the 
message. This is the miracle of Christianity, the 
power you are to wield. 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS TO INTENDING MIS 
SIONARIES l 

REV. J. G. BROWN, OF INDIA 

1. SET out to the mission field with a purpose but 
with no plan. Let your purpose be the highest and 
purest, namely, to glorify God in the salvation of the 
souls of the heathen, but have no plans. Life and 
work on the foreign field are so different from life and 
work at home that you really have no data on which 
to form any plans for work abroad. Get into contact 
with the older missionaries, put yourselves in the posi 
tion of learners, gather all the facts and data possible 
and then form your plans. 

2. Be very careful of your spiritual life on the way 
and especially after you reach your station. From the 
time you leave till you reach your destination you will 
be on the go. There will be much to excite your in 
terest and absorb your attention. The temptation will 
be for you to neglect prayer and communion with God. 
On board ship you will be in the company of people the 
great majority of whom will be very worldly and un 
godly. Beware of your life and influence among them. 
Don't feel it to be your business to convert all of them. 
Preach Christ by your life, but if a suitable opportunity 
to witness for Christ presents itself, embrace it. 

'Report Student Volunteer Convention, Cleveland, 1898. 
133 



134 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 

But especially after you reach the field guard care 
fully your spiritual life. Remember that it is going to be 
hard to live a holy life. Remember that while heaven 
will be nearer to you than at home, hell will be nearer 
too it will be not only beneath you but all around you. 
Moreover, remember that the devil will be after you. 
How well he knows how much of blessing and grace 
he can rob the heathen of, if he can only get you into 
his control and destroy your influence. He would 
rather get hold of you than 10,000 heathen. As they 
are already his he can afford to neglect them and go 
after you. Beware of him ! Moreover, expect to find 
the first year of your life as a missionary the most try 
ing of all. You will have to learn how to adjust your 
self to an entirely new physical, moral and spiritual 
environment. The climate will search you through and 
through. No physician in Cleveland can make so care 
ful and accurate a diagnosis of your constitution as the 
climate of India, for example. If you have any latent 
weakness the climate will find it and draw it out. Then 
the new environment will be a great test of your char 
acter. It will test your moral and spiritual fiber. It 
will reveal to you how much you have been dependent 
upon external influences for your spiritual vigor. It 
will test the depth and reality of that missionary enthu 
siasm under the spell of which you set out for the 
foreign field. You will need to give yourselves much 
to prayer and to the study of the Word if you expect to 
keep your hearts pure and warm while living in an 
atmosphere so depressing and demoralizing. 

3. When you reach the field avoid a spirit of criti 
cism. Don't criticise the older missionaries. They 
know more about mission work and mission methods 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 135 

in one day than you do in a year. Don't criticise the 
native Christians. Don't set up a standard for them 
and then, if they fail to come up to it, turn around and 
say : " I don't believe any of them are converted." Be 
easy on the poor native Christians. You don't realize 
the generations of vice that are behind them, the awful 
environment that surrounds them and the depths of 
their ignorance of God and spiritual things. 

In this connection let me advise you not to flood the 
home papers with long letters descriptive of your ex 
periences and impressions, especially during the first 
few months of your stay. Wait till you know what 
you are writing about. 

4. Let nothing come in between you and the lan 
guage. Give yourself wholly to it. Don't try to " pick 
it up." Make it your own. Learn it so well that if a 
person were hearing you but could not see you, he 
would think you were a native. You will find the 
acquisition of an Oriental language a hard and trying 
task ; but at the same time one of the finest of mental 
drills better to you than any two years of a university 
course. 

5. Take with you a sound heart in a sound body, but 
don't forget to carry with you a good temper, and if 
you have not got one wait on the Lord till He gives 
you one. You need a good temper for the sake of your 
health. The climate and your surroundings tend greatly 
to produce irritability. Chronic irritability will ulti 
mately lead to nervous prostration. Worst of all, to the 
slow-going lethargic Hindu, getting angry is the great 
est of sins. He defines goodness not as holiness or 
purity, but as good-nature. To him the good man is 
the good tempered man the man who never gets 



136 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS 

angry. If you are known as a violent tempered man 
you need not expect to wield much influence. 

6. My last bit of advice is very simple beware of the 
sun. In America you look upon him as your friend. 
After you enter the tropics look upon him as your 
enemy. Beware of him on board ship and on landing. 
Buy a pith hat on the way. Many a promising mis 
sionary career has been cut short by carelessness or 
ignorance in regard to exposure to the sun. 



THE IMPORTANCE TO A MISSIONARY OF A 
KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE x 

REV. ARTHUR H. SMITH, D.D., OF CHINA 

IT is a common notion among candidates for the 
foreign field, that the acquisition of the language will 
be a main difficulty; this often proves to be the case. 
There is some reason to think that Americans learn 
foreign languages with more trouble than other Occi 
dentals, albeit quite as well. Not less important, how 
ever, than an acquaintance with the tongue of the 
people, is a knowledge of the people themselves; and 
the latter acquirement is the harder of the two. 

Perhaps the most essential qualification for this pur 
pose is a true sympathy with the people whom we wish 
to comprehend. Such sympathy is developed by Chris 
tianity, yet it is not a strong point of the Anglo-Saxon 
race. Americans, as such, have slight relations with 
Orientals, while Britons have many and complex rela 
tions with many Oriental races. But the Briton lacks 
sympathy. I once saw a group of African stokers on 
the deck of a British steamer in the Indian Ocean. One 
of them was a born orator and actor, and entertained 
the rest for hours with his evidently absorbing tales. 
An officer of the ship referred contemptuously to the 
habit which this man had of telling stupid stories. 
That remark was a window into the relations between 
Great Britain and the East. 



*The Student Volunteer, New York, June, 1897. 
137 



138 IMPORTANCE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE 

To all Oriental peoples, etiquette is a matter of far 
more importance than we can, at first, comprehend. 
It is well to make it a point, to understand its principles, 
however incapable we may feel of adopting them. It 
was the wise advice of President Wayland to his son, 
to observe wherever he went what things were taken 
for granted. Nothing in the East is more "taken for 
granted" than the rules for social intercourse. They 
are often intricate, perplexing, wearisome, maddening. 
But we must know them, or run fatal risks. It was a 
just complaint of a Chinese teacher, that when he made 
his salaam to his missionary the latter would often 
have gone far past him, before the elaborate bow was 
ended ! The honorific terms of many Oriental tongues 
are appalling. The designations of relationships which 
we never conceived of as such are past imagination, 
previous to experience. But we must know the sub 
stance of them, or be set down as barbarian boors, a 
position which all our efforts may not enable us 'to 
escape altogether. In the Orient, a neglect is an insult. 
Not to do something is a species of crime. 

Perhaps the most pressing wonder to a new comer 
among the thronging masses of the Asiatic races, is 
the query, "What are all these people thinking about ?" 
To the reader of Cervantes' inimitable story, it is quite 
clear what Sancho Panza was thinking about; for, as 
soon as he opened his mouth, a proverb was born. 
Proverbs and popular sayings have in all the East a 
currency and a value, which they never had with north 
ern races. There is no better rule than to fill one's self 
full of them, for there is never a time when they will 
not be in demand. To an Oriental, a proverb is an 
argument: it is in itself a major premise and a minor 



IMPORTANCE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE 139 

premise, and the auditor is irresistibly led to cap the 
citation with the desired conclusion. By what possible 
means could labor be more economized? One thus 
shows that he is at least endeavoring to understand his 
people, and those are at once alive, who before were 
dead. 

The common sayings of an Oriental people are, in an 
important sense, a key to race traits, and race traits 
are among the most mysterious and significant phenom 
ena in this mundane existence. It was an eminently 
wise suggestion of the most philosophical of the many 
writers on China, that one should take note of every 
thing which strikes him as at all singular, and then 
endeavor to extract from a native explanations of the 
reasons for the procedure in question. A "sufficient 
reason" there most certainly is, for what we often dub 
"stupid." 

I once heard a cultivated educator in a literary soci 
ety of Honolulu remark, that he "never saw a Chinese 
without wanting to kick him." This was a case of 
what has been styled "imperfect sympathy," and there 
are many such. The cure is to endeavor to comprehend 
the kickee, and you will refrain from kicking, and be 
content to learn many things which he can impart in 
the most unconscious but effective manner. There is 
a danger of becoming so much accustomed to our 
ignorance, that we make no effort to mitigate it. An 
active mind ought not to fall into this frame, yet it is 
by no means an imaginary danger to be guarded 
against. 

The first few years of one's missionary life are in 
every way crucial. It is important to begin right. I 
think a special set of note-books for the collection of 



140 IMPORTANCE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE 

the kind of material in question would prove a mine of 
wealth. At first all impressions are vivid, but varied 
iteration destroys the force of our perception, and the 
faculty of perceiving is itself wounded. Nourish it by 
constant use. Compare notes with other similar col 
lectors, and exchange rare specimens as Mark Twain 
in "the awful German language" swapped long- 
jointed Teutonic polysyllables for others new to him. 
The owner of a carefully developed collection of such 
materials as this, will never be at a loss for spicy 
illustrations for his missionary talks when at home on 
a furlough. 

Persistent following of the plan here suggested will, 
in time, make the Occidental more of an authority even 
upon some phases of Oriental life, than the Oriental 
himself. Familiarity with the life of the people will 
go far toward atoning for inevitable infelicities in the 
use of strange and perverse forms of human speech. 
It is said that if you want to interest people you should 
talk to them about men and women. Study men and 
women and you will know something about men and 
women, and will be able to teach them something about 
themselves and their needs. 

Common sense is a prime qualification for a mis 
sionary. A mighty love for men is the prerequisite 
for successful work for God. No earnest worker need 
despair, because the things to be learned are many and 
hard. They will grow easier. Something can be done 
in the home land, and as all one's life is to be spent in 
the course, there is no occasion for haste, much less for 
impatience. Read much and widely, if you can; but 
expect to find the best text-books in your people. 



HINTS CONCERNING THE FIRST STUDY OF LAN 
GUAGE ON MISSIONARY SOIL 1 

REV. CHAUNCEY GOODRICH, D.D., OF CHINA 

ONE day long ago a language gift was made to 
the preachers of the new evangel. But all the days 
since men have worked for the new tongue they were 
to use, and have acquired it through a long and stam 
mering process. There are two principal methods of 
study, which may be spoken of as the old and the new. 
The old and common method of learning a language 
may be briefly described as sitting down with a native 
teacher, spending several hours each day in reading 
after him from a book of colloquial lessons, and in 
practising those lessons with him, the meanwhile labor 
ing over the sentences and struggling to master them. 
This method, as a rule, is painfully slow and disap 
pointing. 

The new method may be called the child's method, 
which is, in fact, the oldest of all methods. It is a curi 
ous fact that almost any child learns any language, that 
is, the ordinary colloquial, in a comparatively brief 
time ; learns it so as to pronounce correctly, and speaks 
idiomatically and generally with accuracy. His mis 
takes are chiefly the fault of his teachers, in other 
words, of his environment. The mimetic powers of the 

1 The Student Volunteer, New York, June, 1896. 
141 



I4 2 HINTS CONCERNING STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

child are in continual exercise. What he hears he re 
produces with astonishing accuracy. And thus in a 
year or two the child of four or five years learns the 
language of everyday life. 

In striking contrast to the ease, rapidity and accuracy 
of a child in mastering the superficial contents of a 
language, may be noted the generally slow, difficult and 
imperfect acquisition of a language by an adult. If 
he be on his feet in six months, and speak with com 
parative freedom in a year, his progress is deemed 
phenomenal. When we remember that the child is 
undisciplined, while the adult is often trained by a score 
of years spent in various mental gymnasia, the contrast 
becomes the greater marvel. 

I have often watched a child in his language study 
for it is a study curious to learn his secret. And I 
have noted that the study of language enters into every 
nook and cranny of his life. Does the child play? He 
learns the vocabulary of the play. Does he dress ? He 
learns the language of dress and the name of every 
article of clothing. The same is true of everything 
where his life touches the world. Suppose the child 
of five or six wishes to use the word come in any one 
of a hundred combinations, he would not stumble, nor 
hesitate for a moment, as many a student with twenty 
or forty years' study of the language behind him might 
sometimes do. 

Whether the child has been sitting, walking, retiring, 
rising, dressing, eating, working, playing, doing no 
matter what of a thousand things, the sentences have 
been flying all around him like bees about a hive. He 
has heard and repeated them with tireless iteration and 
manifold combinations, till they have become his per- 



HINTS CONCERNING STUDY OF LANGUAGE 143 

manent possession; and, so to speak, they are on de 
posit, ready to draw out at a moment's notice. Granted 
that herein lies the child's success, we may inquire, 
Can the adult imitate successfully the child's method? 

I am certain that he can. I well remember how a 
Mr. Maulmain surprised me by the great advance he 
had made in speaking Chinese during an absence in the 
interior of six months. His idioms, the structure of 
his sentences, and his intonation were all thoroughly 
Chinese. And yet Mr. Maulmain was an uneducated 
man, who possessed the linguistic sense to a very lim 
ited degree, and whose chief work was the distribution 
of Bibles. What might be done by a scholar, with the 
aid of a teacher, pursuing the study of the language 
with undivided attention and unwearying ardor ! 

As to the manner in which the child's method may 
be pursued we will venture a few suggestions. Begin 
by securing, if possible, a live teacher. Buy also the 
best available books. I would not entirely reject books 
even at the beginning. Buy also blank books for the 
pocket. 

Commence your first lesson with talking. Your 
teacher knows never a word of English. The new 
language is to you a tangled and sunless forest. Never 
mind talk. Perhaps some good friend will give you 
the phrase, "What is this?" Here are at least three 
words. This is ample vocabulary to begin with, enough 
to set you bristling all over with interrogation points. 
You begin with whatever may be in your room : table, 
chair, clock, watch, door, etc. You repeat the names 
over and over, again and again, after your teacher, 
imitating him in sound, pitch and accent. 

Suppose you begin with the table right in front of 



144. HINTS CONCERNING STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

you. Play table with your teacher. Tell him in sign 
language, table, tablecloth, above the table, under the 
table, beside the table, lay on the table, take off from 
the table, -lift up the table, set down the table, push the 
table, pull the table, turn the table, set the table, brush 
the table, wash the table, wipe the table, round table, 
square table, etc., etc. Use pantomime freely, and 
without fear of losing your dignity. There is nothing 
in the above .sentences which you cannot give your 
teacher without the aid of an interpreter. He will give 
you back your sentences. If he is a live man, he will 
also play at pantomime and give you other phrases. 
Now, with your teacher, repeat these phrases over and 
over, back and forth, up and down, throwing them up 
like dice, to come down in miscellaneous confusion, all 
your senses being on the alert. Play table say for an 
hour and a half. You will by this time have earned 
a recess of fifteen minutes. 

When you come back to your work, perhaps you 
would like to write for fifteen minutes or half an hour. 
If the language you are learning chances to be the 
Chinese, daily practice in writing with a pencil or 
brush, as you please will be invaluable. 

After writing, repeat your "table" lesson, using the 
vocabulary you have gained for all that it is worth. A 
half hour will do. Now go and practise on the first 
person you meet. From the beginning mingle freely 
with the people, talking with them and learning, not 
only the language, but also a great deal beside. 

For the afternoon, repeat the lesson of the morning 
with endless repetition and constant variation. You 
may finish the day with an hour from your book of 
lessons, spicing the reading as much as possible with 



HINTS CONCERNING STUDY OF LANGUAGE 145 

conversation. If you find tones, as in Chinese, you are 
to master them, but still chiefly by the imitative method 
of the child. 

Let the second day's work proceed as the first. Make 
large demands on your memory. It will be strangely 
perverse and unreliable at the first, proving a sieve, 
and dropping too many words through it. But by hard 
work, constant insistence, and continual repetition, 
words will by and by stick to you like burrs to a coat. 
Day by day take up new things, things right around 
you, things in which the language impinges on daily 
life, anything not abstract that interests you. 

After the first fortnight ( ?) you may take a reading 
lesson in the morning, as well as in the afternoon, 
always mixing in conversation freely with the reading. 
Some single sentences may suggest a dozen others. 
Count it as nothing that you can read the lesson. MAS 
TER the lesson by making its sentences ready coin in 
your pocket. Talk, repeat, everywhere to everybody, 
till the sentences have become a part of yourself. You 
will not long complain of the method being too easy 
for your disciplined mind ! 

Be always on the watch for new words and sentences, 
and write them in your pocket note-book. Then take 
them to your teacher at the first opportunity. Attend 
service from the first Lord's Day you are in your new 
home, and onward, jotting down in your note-book 
(as unobserved as may be) words and phrases, making 
them the first order in Monday morning's lesson. You 
will follow the preacher with some pleasure in two or 
three months, and will afterward rapidly master his 
principal vocabulary. Never lose a sentence from be 
ing ashamed i. e., too proud to ask for its repetition 



146 HINTS CONCERNING STUDY OF LANGUAGE 

or interpretation. Think of every sentence as a nugget 
of gold. You will rapidly grow rich. 

After a few months you will learn new phrases with 
every visit to the street: in the shop, at the fortune 
teller's stand, from a sleight of hand performer, at a 
small theatrical show, from persons in a quarrel, from 
the sellers of small wares, from some ragged beggar- 
looking vagrant who gathers a crowd and harangues. 
From all these you will get capital sentences for daily 
use. Shut your hand on them. Do not say, I have no 
faculty for catching sentences on the wing. You never 
will seem to possess such a faculty till you cultivate it. 
You will do well to drop in to other chapels than your 
own and hear other preachers. They will have pet 
phrases and choice idioms which you will soon learn. 
By hearing many persons you will enrich your vocabu 
lary. Wherever you go, talk and ask questions. It is 
your business everywhere and nearly always. 



MISSIONARY EFFICIENCY AND SERVICE 1 
LUTHER GULICK, M.D., NEW YORK 

USEFULNESS upon the mission field depends largely 
upon staying power. How misdirected the consecration 
that allows one, in the first four years of missionary 
life, to get into a condition where efficiency for the 
balance of one's life is diminished ! 

The winning of the world is a campaign, not a skir 
mish. Superficial loyalty leads to thoughtless rush; 
deep abiding loyalty leads to the holding of one's self 
steadily in hand, so that the maximum of efficiency may 
be secured. The second takes more and deeper con 
secration than the first. To give one's self for Christ in 
one enthusiastic onset is easy, as compared to living 
steadily and strongly from year to year for Him. 

There is, however, a deeper demand for the con 
servation of vitality than that of mere policy. The Old 
Testament gives us a clear statement of God's estimate 
of the man who, in apparent excess of zeal, violated 
God's direct command obedience first, sacrifice sec 
ond. And the man who will not obey, cannot sacrifice 
with approval from God. It is His clear message to 
us, that the laws of our physical natures are His laws, 
and are not to be violated any more than are moral 
commands. The bodv and its laws are not removed 



l The Student Volunteer, New York, April, 1897. 
147 



148 MISSIONARY EFFICIENCY AND SERVICE 

from the moral world. There are no sins which so 
blight the soul as does so-called "lust" of the flesh. 
One's spiritual insight and ability to understand God's 
message are related in vital ways to physical well-being. 

What more pathetic sight than that of a devoted mis 
sionary removed from service in the prime of useful 
ness after the language has been well learned, after 
the love and confidence of the natives have been won, 
after school and church have been established and 
relegated to a life of continued struggle with nervous 
disease? "A mysterious dispensation of God's provi 
dence?" Not at all; overwork, over-worry, lack of 
vacation, lack of home life all conditions at variance 
with God's will, and so God removed him. He would 
not obey, so he could not sacrifice. And we may fairly 
judge of the comparative estimate in which God holds 
these things by the way in which He enforces His laws. 

This leads us to speak of marriage and the mis 
sionary's home life as related to his effectiveness. The 
Christian home is the center, the focus point of the 
activities of a missionary's life. To establish Christian 
homes is to establish a Christian atmosphere. An 
individual rarely makes an atmosphere ; a home always 
does. What one really means is shown by the way in 
which one acts in the home. Long sermons on the 
dignity of womanhood, of wifehood, had in a certain 
case little effect, but the stooping of the husband to tie 
up his wife's loosened shoe-string set a whole neighbor 
hood talking of the position of woman in that mis 
sionary's home. Family worship, the love of one's wife 
and children, the education of children, hospitality, the 
fact that one is a normal man on a plane with other 
men and has a family all point to the great advantage 



MISSIONARY EFFICIENCY AND SERVICE 149 

in service to those who marry, establish a Christian 
home, and have a family of children. 

What can one do as a student to enable one to best 
stand the change of climate, change of food and change 
of habits involved in going to a missionary land ? The 
bodily processes should all be kept active, for then 
adaptations readily take place. The body seems to be 
adaptable to changes in inverse proportion to the age 
of the cells of which it is composed. Physical exercise 
promotes change and rejuvenation of tissue; accord 
ingly, this is one of our chief means of maintaining 
bodily efficiency. In most fields there is no call for 
great muscular power or skill; reasonable, all-round, 
regular, unexcited bodily exercises are called for. The 
mind needs bodily exercise as well as mental recreation. 
Have some play available wheeling, kodaking, bota 
nizing, swimming, etc. Formal, set gymnastic exer 
cises are good, but are inferior to those games which 
enlist the interest of the mind. Nervous people should 
avoid games of the kind in which great efforts are 
demanded, or extreme attention. Nervous breakdowns 
have been hastened by the playing of match games at 
sanitariums. The nervous exhaustion was more than 
the muscular gain. Bolting and skin friction are also 
valuable. 

Symptoms of overwork are badges of dishonor. 
Many seem to be proud of them, as of scars received 
in honorable combat. They are rather the marks of 
parental discipline. May the time soon come, when 
we shall be as ashamed of violating physical as moral 
laws. To take care of one's self, year after year, is 
prosaic. People admire those who forget themselves 
and rush in, overwork and break down "such devo- 



MISSIONARY EFFICIENCY AND SERVICE 



tion!" "such self-sacrifice!" they say. In reality these 
missionaries did not have enough devotion to do the 
harder thing, and live simply and truly before God 
every day. We often wear ourselves out by taking 
responsibility which belongs to God. This is God's 
world. He is God. Things are going His way. We 
are to live His life fully and freely. Results belong to 
Him. The Father says obey. The child may not know 
why, but if a true child, he obeys and trusts the father 
for the result. 



MEDICAL ADVICE TO OUTGOING MISSIONARIES x 

HERBERT LANKESTER, M.D., LONDON 

So often ill-health, an utter breakdown, or even 
death itself is the result of some carelessness in what 
may be thought to be a comparatively small matter, 
that we feel that too much stress cannot be laid upon 
the importance of these things, and we hope that 
student volunteers will not forget these hints when 
they go to the mission-field. It can be no more right 
to unnecessarily fight a bacillus than to walk into a 
lion's den, unless something is to be gained by do 
ing so. 

You are going to do God's work in the place you 
believe God has sent you ask Him to give you wis 
dom by His Holy Spirit, but He expects you to do 
your part. It was not right for our Lord to cast Him 
self down from the pinnacle of the Temple, it is not 
right for you to run unnecessary risk that ordinary 
knowledge and common sense would make quite avoid 
able. 

While there are occasions when it may be right to 
run risks, yet remember that God does work mainly 
through human agents, and that therefore it is part of 
your sacred duty to keep, as far as you can, your body 
fit for His service. To this end I would call your 
special attention to two or three points : 

*The Student Volunteer, London, November, 1897. 



152 MEDICAL ADVICE 

(a) Exercise and Recreation. I can say without 
hesitation that those missionaries who have had the 
best health in the field have taken a good amount of 
regular exercise. Sometimes regular exercise may be 
difficult to obtain, but it is of the utmost importance. 
Exercise may or may not be recreation. Some hobby 
that takes away the mind from the worries and routine 
of the daily work is a great help in the preservation 
of health. 

My attention has been drawn to the fact that some 
missionaries, especially ladies, have greatly neglected 
these important matters during the early months when 
engaged in language study. 

(b) Diet. With regard to diet, ever remember that 
because A. B. can live on this or that article of diet, it 
does not follow that therefore you can. Many who 
can digest without any difficulty the mixed diet to 
which they have been accustomed in this country, 
would fail at once on one consisting exclusively of 
vegetables and fruit. For good health the great ma 
jority of men and women need a good amount of exer 
cise, and a good supply of wholesome food. It is not 
wise to try and save money, even for the work, by stint 
ing the quality or quantity of food, as I know has been 
done by some. If there is any tendency to diarrhoea, 
it is of the greatest importance to be careful with re 
gard to eating fruit. Some residents in the tropics 
have to avoid it almost entirely. Never on any account 
neglect an attack of diarrhoea. 

(c) Water. There is now no doubt that such 
diseases as cholera, typhoid, dysentery, tropical diar 
rhoea, and various forms of "worms" are due to certain 
specific organisms which gain their entry into tihe 



MEDICAL ADVICE 1 53 

human body mainly through drinking water. Malaria 
is also due to a living organism, and is probably very 
frequently conveyed in a similar 'manner. 

It is therefore of the utmost importance to all resi 
dents in the tropics that no water should be drunk con 
taining the germs of these diseases. The great ma 
jority of filters are worse than useless; there are, in 
fact, only one or two that will remove these extremely 
minute micro-organisms. They can, however, all be 
destroyed by boiling the ivater for several minutes, and 
I strongly recommend that a missionary in every house 
should make it part of his or her duty to see that this 
is actually done. It is not sufficient to order a native 
servant to do it. Before boiling it may be passed 
through a filter, to remove obvious impurities, before, 
not after, boiling, as it will in the latter case possibly 
wash out of the filter some of the very elements you 
wish to avoid. It is important that, as far as possible, 
water should be boiled as required, and should not be 
allowed to stand in uncovered vessels. 

(d) Sun. I know of missionaries who have died 
or have been invalided home, either permanently or 
temporarily, who, humanly speaking, would have been 
still at work if they had taken the advice of older 
workers with regard to exposing themselves to the 
sun's rays. I would impress upon you in the strongest 
possible manner, with regard to this point, that you 
must not judge for yourself from your experience of 
European heat. Rays of the sun in a tropical land, 
which may not seem to you hotter than many you have 
fully exposed yourself to at home, have vastly greater 
power to injure, and even when the sky is cloudy may 
do great harm. With regard to details, I would say, 



154 MEDICAL ADVICE 

take the advice in this matter of old and experienced 
residents who know what is best. 

(e) Clothing. Protect head and spine from the sun 
and wear some clothing that will allow the excessive 
perspiration to pass off slowly, so as not to cause a sen 
sation of chilliness. If the clothing is really wet by 
rain, river, or even perspiration, it should always be 
promptly changed. 

Remember especially the great change of tempera 
ture at sundown, and therefore the risk of chill, and 
the fact that the malarial attacks do very often come 
on after exposure to the mists that often rise at that 
time. Chill alone will not cause malaria, but it un 
doubtedly is very frequently the determining cause of 
an attack, the germs of the disease being already in the 
system. 

If going to East or West Africa, I would advise you 
to take daily a small dose of quinine, say half a five- 
grain tabloid, morning and evening, three weeks before 
reaching the coast, and if living in a malarious district, 
continue it regularly. If going to other parts of the 
world, take five grains a day whenever you may be 
going to itinerate in a distinctly malarious district. 

Generally, I would say, without in any sense "cod 
dling" yourself, take care of your health. If you are 
feverish, it must in ordinary cases be more right in the 
sight of God for you to keep quiet in bed, or in the 
house, rather than to go about doing your ordinary 
work. 



THE YOUNG WOMAN'S MISSIONARY OUTFIT 1 
MRS. LUCY W. WATERBURY, BOSTON 

EVERY out-going missionary should be provided with 
an outfit, certain necessaries in her comfort and her 
work. There will be emergencies when she will need 
to draw heavily on her stores. Be sure, dear girl volun 
teers, that you secure the essentials, as you prepare this 
missionary outfit. One worker in Africa wrote pa 
thetically, "Our supplies are nearly gone, we haven't 
enough of anything but lard." So you may find in your 
spiritual equipment a full stock of courage, but a small 
supply of patience and an utter lack of the "oil of 
gladness." 

Let us go over the list of essentials. We shall find 
such a comprehensive one in Gal. v. 22, under the 
heading: Fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, 
temperance. You believe that the Holy Spirit is abid 
ing in you. What proof have you ? "He that abideth 
in Me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit." "If 
we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk." 
Preceding this ingathering of souls, which we are apt 
to think the real fruit-bearing, must come this fruitful- 
ness of our own lives. 

"Love, Hope, Patience; let these be thy graces, 
And in thine own heart let them first keep school." 

*The Student Volunteer, New York, March, 1896. 
155 



156 THE MISSIONARY OUTFIT 

We cannot preach love and live hate ; we cannot bring 
joy and peace to others if we have them not ourselves. 
Surely we must secure every one of these dear, homely, 
work-a-day graces if we would win this weary world 
to Christ. 

We begin with the greatest, Love; which seeketh 
not her own, hopeth, believeth, endureth. "Seeketh 
not her own." Watch two little children playing. Even 
though they may not seize each other's toys, it is quite 
enough to mar the happiness if each clings tightly to 
her own. Our own way our own rights, so often 
prove our undoing. Love shares ; love gives up and out 
and away; love is the unfailing test, for "God is love," 
and "he that loveth i.s born of God." 

Joy. Fill up every crevice and corner with this 
bright, golden fruit. Do not be discouraged if you are 
not naturally joyous, for you can learn to be. You need 
not be frivolous, but do, oh, do be cheery ! Live a life 
of pure gladness, you child of a King. There are a few 
"Aunty Dolefuls" among the missionaries, only a few, 
but we do not want any more. Life is sorrowful ; most 
of us have woes, but the world does not need them. It 
needs sunshine and smiles and comfort, so put in a 
good supply of joyousness and use it freely every day. 

Peace. Surely you who are to preach a gospel of 
peace must be peacemakers in the most beautiful sense. 
Peace is not merely the absence of strife, not a dead 
calm ; it is power and harmony; it is a possession. The 
meaning will dawn upon you as you toil alone in a 
far-off land. 

"Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away, 
In Jesus' keeping we are safe and they." 

Long-suffering! which means patience. You may 



THE MISSIONARY OUTFIT 157 

summon all your fortitude to meet lions and snakes, 
and lo, a tiny red ant or an infinitesimal flea proves to 
be your foe, and you have no weapons with which to 
meet them. We so often prepare for the great trials 
which never come, and leave unguarded the daily en 
trance to find that some trivial slight or repeated un- 
kindness has stolen all our patience. Does the Spirit 
within you help you to bear sweetly and patiently the 
disagreeable habit of your room-mate, or the cutting 
criticism of your friend? Can you endure petty trials 
as bravely as you think you could bear great ones? 

Kindness! Is your attitude toward people in general 
kindly and sympathetic? Do children read their wel 
come in your face ? Do the girls want you in sickness 
or in trouble ? You cannot borrow at will this grace of 
kindliness. It must be your everyday garb or you will 
wear it awkwardly. 

And Goodness! The active expression of the kindly 
feeling will follow naturally. But "There is none 
good," says our Master, and in the light of Perfect 
Goodness how our own lives lie in shadow ! And yet 
we may, we must, follow the example of Him who 
went about doing good. The good child may not 
attain to her high ideal, but she strives, and almost un 
consciously the unselfish service is bringing her char 
acter into likeness to the only true ideal. 

Faithfulness. Which rules, impulse or duty? You 
may be bright, enthusiastic, zealous, but if you be not 
trustworthy, how can God or humanity depend on you ? 
A trustworthy servant may lack many desirable qual 
ities, and still be a profitable servant. Faithfulness in 
preparation will precede faithful work on the field. 

Meekness. What shall one do with this old time 



158 THE MISSIONARY OUTFIT 

fruit, this negative virtue? You will learn that in not 
doing, not saying, you are achieving your greatest vic 
tories. It is a rare fruit and a sure sign of the divine 
Spirit. You have known unselfish, brave, earnest men 
and women. How many truly meek ones have you 
met? Just because this fruit is not often brought to 
perfection, let us, if possible, secure it for our outfit. 

Temperance; or the better marginal reading, self- 
control. Peter struggled for it John attained to it 
after many years. We find our need of it in a hundred 
ways. Let us seek it, not in a vain battle against cer 
tain besetting sins. Let us find it in a perfect union 
with One who is "your Master, even Christ." Self- 
control is fine, Christ's control is sublime, and only in 
the greater mastery do we find the lesser. 

It is a long list and contains some costly fruits. 
Which will you leave out ? You need not leave any out ; 
for the One who sends you goes with you, according to 
His promise. Your missionary outfit may be complete ; 
for "All (things) are yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and 
Christ is God's." 



BOOKS FOR MISSION STUDY 

World-wide Evangelization, the Urgent Business of the Church. The 
Report of the Toronto Convention 1902. 691 pp. and cloth bound ; 
net price, postpaid, $1.50. 

"We have been profoundly impressed by the contents of this volume and 
especially by the dominance of the spiritual tone which pervades it." The 
Missionary Herald. 

" These reports of the Volunteer Conventions have proved invaluable as 
reference volumes to students and pastors, missionaries and editors." Mis 
sionary Review of the World. 

The Call, Qualifications and Preparation of Missionary Candidates. 

Net price, postpaid : in cloth binding, 40 cents ; in paper, 25 
cents. 

41 It would be a good plan for every one who knows of a young friend at 
home in whose mind the question of entering the army of foreign workers is a 
live one to see that a copy of this booklet is put in his way." The Chinese 
Recorder. 

A Geography and Atlas of Protestant Missions. By Harlan P. 
Beach, M.A., F.A.G.S. Two volumes, cloth bound; net 
price, postpaid, $4.00 per set. 

A distinct mission land is presented in each chapter. There is given a 
vivid picture of its geography and its races, its social and religious condition 
as unaffected by Christian missions, as well as an account of the Protestant 
mission work as it is being carried on in the opening years of the twentieth 
century. The statistical tables, not yet from the press, will present the latest and 
most detailed missionary statistics of the missionary societies of Canada, 
United States, Great Britain and the Continent. The station index shows the 
missionary force and work in nearly five thousand stations. The maps, on 
which are marked the stations of all societies, are artistically and geograph 
ically correct, having been prepared for the work by well known British car 
tographers. 

Effective Workers in Needy Fields. By W. F. McDowell, D.D., 
R. P. MacKay, D.D., W. F. Oldham, D.D., C. C. Creegan, 
D.D., and J. D. Davis, D.D. Bibliography, analytical index, 
portraits, illustrations. i2mo, 195 pp. ; paper, 35 cents ; cloth, 
50 cents. 

This book contains the record of five remarkable lives, all of them, with the 
exception of the first, written by persons who were intimately acquainted with 
the life whicti they so admirably portray. The reader is brought into a sym 
pathetic knowledge of the lives and works of these modern missionaries: 
David Livingstone, Africa ; George Leslie Mackay, Formosa ; Isabella Tho- 
burn, India ; Cyrus Hamlin, Turkey, and Joseph Hardy Neesima, Japan. 

Introduction to the Study of Foreign Missions. By Edward A. 
Lawrence, D.D. Being Chapters I., II., VII., VIII., IX. of 
"Modern Missions in the East." i2mo, 143 pp.; paper, 25 
cents ; cloth, 40 cents. 

It contains a striking historical survey, which is followed by an exceedingly 
valuable discussion of the aim, scope, motives, etc., underlying the missionary 
enterprise. Then come chapters on the various forms of missionary effort, 
the missionary on the field in his various relations, and the problems that con 
front him. Such a course is the best sort of preparative for those who are 
about to begin the study of missions and also will be of the utmost value as 
the student takes up, later in the year, a survey of the world. 

STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
3 West 29th Street, New York 



BOOKS FOR MISSION STUDY 

Daiyn on the Hills of T'ang : or Missions in China. By Harlan P. 
Beach. Bibliography, analytical index, missionary map, 
statistics, and outline scheme for studying missions of any 
Mission Board in China. I2mo, 181 pp.; paper, 35 cents; 
cloth, 50 cents. 

This hand-book vividly describes the land, people and religions of China, 
and gives an interesting account of missionary operations in the Empire. 

It is a terse, compact and serviceable manual about missions in China. The 
Congregationalist. 

It is a valuable treasury of information in itself, and, if desired, can be 
made the basis of minute and extended study. The Christian Advocate. 

Furnished with a good map and well indexed, it is a very handy reference 
manual. The Outlook. 

Mr. Beach has done his work with characteristic thoroughness; his authori 
ties are most trustworthy. Arthur H. Smith, in the Chinese Recorder. 

Japan and Its Regeneration. By Rev. Otis Gary. Bibliography, 
statistics, index, and missionary map. i2mo, 137 pp.; 
paper, 35 cents ; cloth, 50 cents. 

Written by a Japanese missionary of long standing and rare discrimination, 
it presents in compact form Japan's past and present history, her people and 
religions, and the work of missions in that Empire. It is lucid, trustworthy, 
and certain to interest every friend of missions and all students of contem 
porary history. Japan Evangelist. 

A better manual upon the Japanese Empire and its evangelization coulr 
scarcely be produced. Church Missionary Intelligencer. 

A compact, comprehensive, and excellent summary of what is most necei 
sary to disseminate in the way of information about the country. Congrega- 
tionalist. 

Protestant Missions in South America. By Rev. Harlan P. Beach, 
Canon F. P. L. Josa, Professor J. Taylor Hamilton, Rev. 
H. C. Tucker, Rev. C. W. Drees, D.D.; Rev. I. H. LaFetra, 
Rev. Thomas B. Wood, LL.D., and Mrs. T. S. Pond. Bibli 
ography, missionary map, analytical index, general anci 
missionary statistics. I2mo, 230 pp.; paper, 35 cents; cloth, 
50 cents. 

The only volume describing the work of all Protestant Missionary societies 
laboring in the " Neglected Continent." Having been written by recognized 
authorities in different sections of the continent, it meets an urgent need. 

The reading or study of this volume and its accompanying tables of general 
and missionary statistics, together with its missionary map, will surely produce 
strong convictions as to Protestantism's debt to this promising continent of 
republics. The Intercollegian. 

Africa Waiting; or The Problem of Africa's Evangelization. 
By Douglas M. Thornton. Bibliography, missionary statis 
tics, and map. i2mo, 148 pp.; paper, 35 cents. 
The only comprehensive and recent book of small compass concerning the 
people and missions of Africa. 

It takes a wide range geography, languages and races ; the special prob 
lems of each of the four great sections of the Dark Continent ; the slave trade 
and the drink traffic. The Sunday School Times. 

STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
3 West 29th Street, New York 



BOOKS FOR MISSION STUDY 

A Hand Book of Comparative Religion. By Rev. S. H. Kellogg, 
D.D., LL.D., Missionary to India, and Author of " The Light 
of Asia and the Light of the World." Analytical index; 
184 pp.; paper, 30 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 

This volume is one of the latest and most comprehensive discussions of the 
fundamental agreements and divergences of Christianity and the great ethnic 
faiths. 

The Cross in the Land of the Trident. By Harlan P. Beach 
I2mo, 108 pp.; paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 40 cents. 

A brief and accurate account of the land, history, people, and religions of 
India, together with the marvelous work accomplished by Protestant Missions. 

While very brief, it contains a remarkable amount of condensed informa* 
tion in regard to the geography, history, religions, and peoples of India, and 
the various phases of missionary work. Public Opinion. 

Missions and Apostles of Mediaeval Europe. By Rev. G. F. Maclear, 
D.D., Warden of St. Augustine's, Canterbury. i6mo, 149 pp.; 
paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 40 cents. 

A study of the mission fields of the Middle Ages and of the heroic Apostles 
who have been the makers of modern Europe. It is interestingly written by 
the highest British authority on Mediaeval Missions. 

Modern Apostles in Missionary Byways. By Rev. A. C. Thompson, 
D.D., Rev. H. P. Beach, Miss Abbie B. Child, Bishop Walsh, 
Rev. S. J. Humphrey, and Dr. A. T. Pierson. Bibliography, 
analytical index, portraits. i2mo, 108 pp.; paper, 25 cents ; 
cloth, 40 cents. 

This collection of biographies brings before the reader the story of the 
heroic deeds and frr : *ful service of Hans Egede Greenland, Allen Gardiner 
Patagonia, Titus Coan Hawaii, James Gilmour Mongolia, Eliza Agnew 
Ceylon, and Ion Keith-FalconerArabia. The story of their lives is more 
thrilling than romance. Baptist Union. 

These biographies will be found very interesting and profitable. ^* 
Christian Guardian. 

Knights of the Labarum : a Study in the Lives of Judson Burma, 
Duff India, Mackenzie China, and Mackay Africa, By 
Harlan P. Beach. I2mo, in pp.; paper, 25 cents postpaid. 
No better book for classes just beginning the study of missions. 

Social Evils in the Non-Christian World. By Rev. James S. Dennis, 
D.D. Numerous illustrations; analytical index. I2mo, 
172 pp.; paper, 35 cents. 

Reprinted from Volume I of Dr. Dennis's great work, " Christian Missions 
and Social Progress." An exceedingly strong argument for Christian Mis 
sions derived from the awful social conditions prevalent in non-Christian 
countries. 

The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches. By Rev. 
John L. Nevius, D.D., Late Missionary to China. I2mo, 
92 pp., with portrait; paper, 15 cents; cloth, 25 cents. 

A statement by one of China's leading missionaries of methods of work. 
While not beyond criticism, success is claimed for it in portions of China, and 
especially in Korea. 

STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
3 West 29th Street, New York