To the Editor of the Noxrn-Cumva Darcy News, Sin,—Will you allow mo to offer a remark or tivo candid and kin self-supporting missionaries and missions, in the Daily News of Wednesday last?
Your argument in their justification was based partly on the fact—vouched for by a London paper—that "the public interest in missions is declining rapidly at home"; upon which you observed that you "believed it was by no means 40 easy now as it was," when a certain halo of romauice' surrounded the word missionary,' "to collect sufficient funds to keep a large and well-educated sot of men in heathen countries."
Te has certainly not been easy at any time to find either the funds or the men adequate to the enterprise contemplated by the Missionary Societies. But Ido not think the financial statistics of the year Jately reported upon in London bear out the assertion of a rapid decline of interest," The following sentence is from the Abstract of the Report of the Church Missionary Society for its 83rd year presented at the Annual Meeting on May "at a period when (according to the Times newspaper) the agricultural in-forests of Groat Britain are poorer by eight millions sterling than they were three years "ago, the Committee are enabled both to report an extension of the Society's work and to present a balance sheet unexpectedly of the whole trut T have attended mi: more than forty years, and been a missionary for nearly twenty-five; and so far as my experience goes, the staple of missionary meetings, and the motive that usually avails to stimulate pecuniary devotions, and to overcome love of country and dislike of foreign travel, is, not romance, but duty; duty and grateful obligation to the Saviour, whose command set the whole series of missions on foot. I have not the reports of the other Church Societies, the Propagation Society and the Colonial and Continental Missionary Society, at hand. Otherwise I have no doubt I could produce from them also satisfactory evidence of a condition of things certainly not to be described as a rapid decline in mi is The same remark appli the Missionary Societies of other Christian communities in Great Britain, America, and elsewhere.
Your obedient servant, G. E. Mouxe, Missionary Bishop of the Church of England. Ningpo, 21st July. o the Editor of the Noxra-Cutsa Daruy News.
Sm,—In your issue of the 19th inst, in one of your leaders you have given expression to views touching missionary policy and procedure. Lo some of these views many of your readers will no doubt assent; but to ethers I fancy there will be some demurring. To two or three of these, with your permission, I should like very briefly to refer.
And first, you appear to endorse the Position taken in an article published in a London paper, and reproduced in your columns, "that the public interest in missions was declining at home." If by this it be meant that returned missionaries and missionary converts attract less attention now than formerly at public meetings, the position is very likely true, As such things become more common this would be the natural result. But this state of things, in my opinion, is not at all to be regretted. Missionaries are like other men, and their work is like other evangelistic work, And the sooner they are looked at in this light the better. It is true, that the missionary work, more particularly in earlier days, involved a great deal of sacrifice, and developed a great deal of heroism, which always attract attention and awaken interest. I i all matters, secular as well as religious, To what extent these have been relied on, or made use of, to secure funds for mission purposes, no one is authorized to say, because no one can know, 'That faults may have been committed in this direction is very likely, for to err is human, and we are all human. Yet undoubtedly' the missionary enterprise of the present century had its origin, and has, and has had, its main support, in a deep conviction of Chins tian duty. But if by decline of missionary interest it be meant that the missionary work is receiving less attention than formerly—that its supporters are doing less in it—then the position taken is, I think, mistaken. And it would be very easy to show this by referring to the reports of the various missionary societies, These all show that their work is increasing, not declining.
Again, you ask: "Is it not far bettor that missionary society should have its own income from its own property, and thus be independent and s i instead of relying for the bare nec of life upon the bounty of rich pie the pennies of Sunday-school children and old women?" Tam at a loss to know how jon ary society can be the contributions What other resources has it? What other can ithave? Then it should be borne in mind that these contributions lie back of the society; and that the society is only an agency fixed upon by these donors to receive and transmit their money, and to see that it is expended for tie object which they have in view. A missionary society is not in theory, and it should not be in fact, a begging instit It la simply a piece of machinery which those interested in missions find it convenient to use in carrying on their work.
Again, you "'go further and say that the charity-system has tendencies which are wholly demoralizing and bad." it be meant that all charitable i and chaftable work is demoralizing, your statement is one which I think few will accept. But if it be meant only, as I suppose, that the charity-sts in the mi work la demerol ing, then this charity. been defined. Because in one souse all mission work might be regarded as charitable work; while in another sense, no part of it is such. People who contribute funds to the support of missions do it from love and good will, ora desire to benefit those to whom their missionaries are sent, In this sense their work is charitable. Again, those who except appointments to labor in these missions are supposed to do it from the same motives, as no one can look to employment in the mission field as the source of gain. So far the missionary work is a charitable work, but no further. The ionary himself is in no sense a pauper, in no setise a beggar. He engages in the mission work from choice, He is sent to the work by his friends, because they think him fitted for it; and they agree to support him so long as he does his work, and does it to their satisfaction. And this support he receives, not as alms, but as
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.