sending out missionaries to fields not yet evangelized, the work of foreign missions in their behalf is ended. If things are as they should be, these native churches will, of course, continue in fraternal fellowship with the "home churches," but will no longer be dependent upon them as they were before.

When all the mission fields of the world have been thus evangelized and developed into self-supporting Christian churches, the foreign missionary enterprise as such will have come to an end, but there will still remain, particularly in the larger countries, such work as still devolves upon us in our own Christian land, and which we call home and inner missions.

I.

CHAPTER XV.

TEMPORAL BLESSINGS RESULTING.

The Real Aim of Missions is not Civilization and Culture.

As the secretary1 of one of the larger foreign mission boards has so well and forcibly said, the purpose and aim of the Church in sending out missionaries is not to alter the style of dress of the heathen, not to improve the industrial conditions of Asia and Africa, not to reform politics, not, primarily, to reform morals or check social abuses. The assertion of one who claimed that the foreign mission must aim at the total reorganization of the whole social fabric of the heathen world he very properly declares to be "a mischievous doctrine." The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the heart and soul, the radiating center and inspiring force of the Christian missionary enterprise. And the Gospel does not aim primarily and directly at the improvement of the temporal, the social, civil, political and industrial conditions of mankind. The distinguishing characteristic of Christ as the founder of a new religion is that He came not to be a Reformer in temporal matters, but to be a Savior in matters pertaining to immortality and eternity.

The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. It is the divine seed which brings forth a new life, that vital godliness which "is profitable unto all things, hav

'Read Speer's Missionary Principles and Practice, on the topics: "What are Christian missionaries trying to do?" and "The aim of Christian missions."

227 ing promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come."1 Accordingly, the spread of the Gospel is accompanied and followed by vast changes and improvements in temporal conditions, moral and social transformations in the lives of individuals and of nations, while the aim of the Gospel is far higher and has to do with matters of far more serious import.

2. Christian Missions Show Large Results along the Line of Civilization and Culture and Moral Improvement.

These are so vast and important and striking that it is worth our while to stop at this point long enough to take a brief survey of the ground. But it is of vital moment to note that the changes wrought are results, not the aim,-effects, not causes of the missionary enterprise, that they are incidental, not essential to Christian mission work as such, as divinely planned and Scripturally executed. In order to clearness of view, purity of purpose, and permanent success, it is of great importance to distinguish properly both between the aim and the results and also between the aim and the methods which may be pursued in order to accomplish the purpose.

If anyone has any doubt or question about the results of foreign missions in the sphere of temporal improvements and gains he should consult and read the classic work of Dr. James S. Dennis, entitled, "Christian Missions and Social Progress." In the perusal of these three royal octavo volumes comprising some 1,600 pages, with their wealth of accredited facts gathered from all missions fields and showing something of the fruitage of Christian missions in the sphere of civiliza

1 Rom. 1, 16; 1 Tim. 4, 8.

tion and culture, touching temperance, social purity, the elevation of woman, the suppression of polygamy, adultery, infanticide, cannibalism, the slave-traffic, and many other cruelties and crimes, with reference to the promotion of commerce, industry and trade, agriculture, sanitation and cleanliness, besides the large and varied blessings in the way of healing the sick, caring for the infirm and helpless, abolishing ignorance and superstition, and promoting the interests of general knowledge and universal peace, in the contemplation of such an array of authenticated facts the questioner will be likely to get a comprehensive and cumulative impression of the significance of the missionary enterprise from this point of view. As another writer says: "Volumes might be filled with the testimonies of statesmen, travelers, military and naval officers, to the value of missionary work from this viewpoint."

1

The Foreign Missionary, Brown. Read also: Modern Missions and Culture, Warneck (translated from the German); and "Social Evils of the Non-Christian World" (a cheap reprint from the first volume of Dr. Dennis's work. Sir H. H. Johnston, who had traveled extensively in Africa, wrote: "Indirectly, and almost unintentionally, missionary enterprise has widely increased the bounds of our knowledge and has sometimes been the means of conferring benefits on science, the value and extent of which it was itself careless to appreciate and compute. Huge is the debt which philologists owe to the labors of British missionaries in Africa! By evangelists of our own nationality nearly two hundred African languages and dialects have been illustrated by grammars, dictionaries, vocabularies, and translations of the Bible. Many of these tongues were on the point of extinction, and have since become extinct, and we owe our knowledge of them solely to the missionaries' intervention." "It is they who in many cases have first taught the natives carpentry, joinery, masonry, tailoring, cobbling, engineering, bookkeeping, printing, and European cookery; to say nothing of reading, writing, arithmetic, and a smattering of general knowledge."

3. How these Results Should be Estimated.

Our estimate should be just and fair. These results, incidental benefits and indirect fruits, must occupy their proper place in the study of missions and must be estimated at their true worth, neither too high nor too low. It is only a sign of our times, that there is apparently a growing disposition unduly to exalt this whole class of missionary facts and to marshal them as missionary motives. "Our humanitarian, commercial and practical age," writes a missionary secretary, "is more impressed by the physical and temporal, the actual and the utilitarian. The idea of saving men for the present world appeals more strongly than the idea of saving them for the next world, and missionary sermons and addresses give large emphasis to these motives." But this is due largely to the fact that many professedly Christian ministers and churches have lost their grip upon the vital and fundamental truths of the Gospel, and mission work, when pursued from this motive, is carried on at the cost of shifting the missionary enterprise from its Scriptural foundation and "cutting the nerve of missions." It is a sad and ominous fact that in some of the large and influential foreign missionary societies there are leaders who are leading the churches astray along this line. When the vital truth and power of Christianity as the only saving religion of the world is denied, while the glaring spiritual insufficiency of the

'The Foreign Missionary, p. 25. A notable example is a secretary of the London Missionary Society, who, in an address in June, 1908, before a missionary gathering in London, is reported to have "closed that audience's eyes to the supposed lost and ruined condition of the heathen and their hopelessness in the life to come without a saving knowledge of Christ, and opened the door to a more optimistic outlook."