Will this deep, elemental, common religion of America come to understand itself, and to recognize its fundamentally Christian character? The answer to that question lies with the churches. And there are clear indications that many of them, at least, will not fail to realize and meet their opportunity.
Not that we shall do without dogmas. Religion cannot maintain itself as mere ethics. It is a way of living; but a way of living that justifies itself by a way of believing about G.o.d and duty and immortality. The point is, that in the natural order of growth life has a certain priority to belief, action to full understanding. And that certainly is the order of growth involved in the present situation.
As the churches share in the expanding and deepening common life and bring their beliefs to bear upon it, in interpretation of its ultimate motives and hopes, there will be growth on both sides. Men elementally Christian in action will come to know what they believe; and on the other hand the churches themselves will discern more clearly which of their customs and beliefs are relevant to the real issues of life and function in essential ways. Our creeds will become simpler, but more vital. And that will make possible a closer unity of the churches. One may well question both the possibility and the desirability of a complete obliteration of denominational lines. We may always have and need denominational loyalty just as we shall always have and need patriotism. But denominational loyalties can be incorporated into a higher loyalty to the inclusive fellowship of Christ"s Church as a whole, just as national loyalties, we now see, can and must be incorporated into a higher loyalty to humanity which will be given expression and body in a world-wide League of Nations.
_We may expect religious education after the war, again, to be more fully Christian in its conception of G.o.d as well as in its view of life._
Jesus, so far as we know, never used the word "democracy." Yet just such a democratic world-community as we are now beginning in a practical way to understand and strive for, he taught and lived and died for. Christianity"s ultimate ideal is no longer a mere ideal. It has become an actual political and social program and possibility.
"The brotherhood of mankind must no longer be a fair but empty phrase," wrote President Wilson to Russia; "it must be given a structure of force and reality. The nations must realize their common life and effect a workable partnership to secure that life against the aggressions of autocratic and self-pleasing power." The world"s choice is between "Utopia or h.e.l.l," is Mr. Wells" striking phrase, which he expounds in a remarkable article in _The New Republic_ on "The League of Nations." "Existing states," he says, "have become impossible as absolutely independent sovereignties. The new conditions bring them so close together and give them such extravagant powers of mutual injury that they must either sink national pride and dynastic ambitions in subordination to the common welfare of mankind or else utterly shatter one another. It becomes more and more plainly a choice between the League of free nations and famished men looting in search of non-existent food amidst the burning ruins of our world. In the end I believe the common sense of mankind will prefer a revision of its ideas of nationality and imperialism to the latter alternative."
Mr. Wells is right. The proposal to establish a league of nations presents itself in our day as a matter of plain common sense. Yet if there is one lesson written with perfect clearness on the pages of history, it is that common sense alone cannot save the world from the tragedies of error, self-will and sin, and that common sense motived by self-interest will in the end defeat itself. In his Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching, Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin has called our attention to the remarkable prophecy of the present world war made by Frederick W. Robertson in a sermon preached at Brighton on January 11, 1852, addressed to a generation that glorified commerce as the guarantor of world unity and sought to establish morality upon a basis of enlightened self-interest. The pa.s.sage cannot be quoted too often, nor too firmly impressed upon the minds of the present generation, for there were those among us who, even up until the invasion of Belgium, kept protesting that there could be no war in a world so bound together by economic and commercial ties, and there are those now who find in such interests the only durable basis for world reconstruction. "Brethren," said Robertson, "that which is built on selfishness cannot stand. The system of personal interest must be shriveled to atoms. Therefore, we who have observed the ways of G.o.d in the past are waiting in quiet but awful expectation until He shall confound this system as He has confounded those which have gone before, and it may be effected by convulsions more terrible and b.l.o.o.d.y than the world has yet seen. While men are talking of peace and of the great progress of civilization, there is heard in the distance the noise of arms, gathering rank on rank, east and west, north and south, and there come rolling toward us the crushing thunders of universal war.... There is but one other system to be tried, and that is the cross of Christ--the system that is not to be built upon selfishness nor upon blood, not upon personal interest, but upon love."
If Wells has stated the world"s alternative, Robertson has shown the way of final and permanent right decision. To common sense must be added love. The brotherhood of man must be established upon a common acknowledgment of the Fatherhood of G.o.d. The world community can ultimately be motived by nothing less than the life within the hearts of men of the G.o.d whom they come to know through Jesus Christ.
This means both that the world must become more religious, and that religion must become more fully Christian. We can no longer believe in any G.o.d less great or less good than the G.o.d whom Jesus Christ reveals. However much it may be tempted to the lower view from time to time, we may reasonably expect that henceforth the world is done with belief in a mere tribal or national G.o.d. The supreme and inmost bond of the world community can be nothing other and nothing less than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who regards all men as his children and who steadfastly seeks, with them and through them, the good of all.
Religious education after the war will be more democratic, more immediately concerned with life, more fully Christian. In so interpreting the present situation, we have had in mind especially the more or less formal religious education in the church and the church school. The same tendencies will influence the more informal and indirect religious education of children in the family. We have reason, indeed, to hope for a strengthening of family ties and a renewal of family religion. The sacrifices of these days are rendering relationships very precious that in a more careless, unthinking time we had accepted as a matter of course. And it is entirely possible that victory may wait until in America, as in England and France, there are few families that do not live in closer fellowship with the unseen world because their sons are there. The gradual disintegration of family life which the past half century has witnessed was but incidental to a rapid change in social, economic and industrial conditions. There is reason to expect that the family will so adjust its life to these conditions as to maintain its character as a social group, wherein genuine democracy and true religion may be propagated from generation to generation by that sharing of interests, occupations and affections which is the most potent and vital of all educational methods. That it should so adjust itself and so fulfill its primary educational function, should be a matter of the utmost concern to both Church and State, for it is hard to conceive how either the Christian religion or a democratic society could maintain itself without the aid of the family.
[1] "The Church in the Furnace," pp. 53-54.
VII
FOREIGN MISSIONS AND THE WAR, TODAY AND TOMORROW
HARLAN P. BEACH
It might seem to the uninformed reader that foreign missions and war have nothing in common; for "what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?" Fuller knowledge of the varied work of missions and of its many helpful contributions to African, Asiatic and Oceanic peoples would remove this misapprehension. Professor Coolidge, of Harvard, suggests some important points of contact between missions and the less developed races, particularly of the enterprise as carried on today in contrast with its earlier objectives.[1] How the races of mission fields that have been thus affected are contributing to the war at home and in the trenches, Dr. Arthur J. Brown has described most vividly in a paragraph upon the cosmopolitan composition of the allied forces at the front.[2] Missionary periodical files abound in references to the war"s inroads upon missionary enterprises, and to the important mediating work of missions. A great volume of testimony would show that while missionaries still regard the upbuilding of the mind and the saving of souls as fundamentally desirable, the enterprise affects every phase of the personal and community life of the peoples to which it ministers.
Statistics of the missionary situation at the beginning of the war reveal the extent and scope of present-day foreign missions. In the latest full collection of such statistics,[3] one finds a series of tables devoted to "General and Evangelistic" data, to "Educational"
activities of missions, and to "Medical and Philanthropic" enterprises conducted by missionaries. It is impracticable to present the totals of the seventy-two columns, suggestive of the many subordinate activities of missions; a few items will indicate the more important contacts established between the Protestant churches of Christendom and the fifty fields which their missions have touched in many helpful ways. In these mission countries 351 Protestant societies had as their foreign staff 24,039 missionaries, including 13,719 women workers and wives. Stationed at 4,094 towns and villages, they directed the activities of a native staff of 109,099 and of 26,210 churches, the communicant membership of which was 2,408,900, with 1,423,314 others under religious instruction. In their elementary schools were 1,699,775 pupils, while in secondary schools were 218,207, and in the colleges and universities 15,636 students were enrolled. In theological and Bible training inst.i.tutions 10,588 were preparing for the Christian leadership of the churches. Their industrial schools had an enrolment of 10,125, and their normal students numbered 7,504.
Mission hospitals and dispensaries were presided over by 1,589 physicians and trained nurses, aided by a native staff of 2,336. In the year reported, 3,107,755 individuals were treated, in single visits or during prolonged residence in hospitals. Orphanages numbered 245, with 9,736 inmates, and 39 leper homes sheltered 1,880 unfortunate outcasts. Such an exhibit, incomplete as it is, will indicate the manifold tendrils which have bound Christian missionaries to the hearts of the nations; and if Roman Catholic statistics for this date were available,[4] the importance of missions as a steadying and reconstructive force at present and in post-bellum readjustments would be even more manifest.
In discussing the war as affecting missions, only a few outstanding facts can be mentioned. Practically all of the mission world has taken sides in the tremendous conflict, most of these nations declaring for the Allies. Many of them have generously contributed the means and man force to hasten the day of peace. In 1917 nearly half a million from India were enlisted, of whom 285,200 were combatants and the rest were employed behind the lines in multifarious tasks. As a result of the recent conference at Delhi, it is hoped that another half million may be secured this year,[5] thus giving that Empire the numerical precedence among Britain"s dominions. From North China alone some 135,000 laborers are serving the British forces in varied ways. "They come, also, from Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and the jungles of Senegal; from Madagascar and Tahiti, and several hundred thousand from French Indo-China and China proper. Black, yellow and white, East and West, educated and ignorant, progressive and backward, are laboring side by side."[6] So important is it that these polyglot a.s.sistants and warriors should be cared for in a Christian way that many missionaries have been called away from their distant fields to a manifold ministry to their adopted countrymen behind the trenches. Many of these recruits are Christian volunteers, especially so in the Indian contingent.
The effects of this European Armageddon upon the mission fields themselves has been less harmful than had been expected and more advantageous than was antic.i.p.ated. German missions have been affected most among the Protestants, and among Roman Catholics France has been the chief sufferer. In the latter country there is no exemption for either Protestant or Catholic ministers of military age.
Missions-Direktor Axenfeld of Berlin, in a recent publication,[7]
states that German Protestant work in Africa has been practically disrupted, in India crippled by enforced withdrawals, in smaller British colonies similarly weakened by the expulsions, and permitted to go on with restrictions in other parts of Asia and North America.
According to later information, about 400 German Protestant missionaries and missionary candidates are in military service, 68 are in hospitals, 120 are prisoners of war in various countries, and about 1,000 missionaries are still working in various fields. Referring to the _Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft_, in the files for 1915 and 1916, one learns that 3,000 Catholic missionaries are estimated to have been called to the colors, and that in 1916 there were 2,336 serving in the army. French Protestant missions, with a much smaller force abroad, have suffered in similar proportion; so that in French and German mission fields the personnel has been greatly reduced, limited, or has been obliterated entirely. British missions have likewise sent to the colors many of their best men from the field and the candidate list, while a number have been transferred from field service to work among their const.i.tuency in Mesopotamian and French camps. Relatively few native Christian leaders have enlisted.
The Christian communities in mission lands have suffered in various ways through the war. The removal of supervising missionaries in part--almost wholly in the case of German societies--has left many flocks without their chief shepherds. Great as has been this loss, it has wrought a greater benefit in churches whose native leaders thus have been brought to the front and have proved to their congregations that the church was so far indigenous as to survive the withdrawal of missionaries. To help their pastors, the people have undertaken responsibilities which without this necessity would not have been borne, thus developing unsuspected gifts and engendering hope for the future. During the war, evangelistic campaigns, largely partic.i.p.ated in by the native church, have been carried on in a number of countries and with marked success.
Partic.i.p.ation in the great conflict by the Christians and non-Christians of mission lands has had mixed results. On the one hand, any delusion as to the civilization and att.i.tudes of so-called Christian countries has been dissipated by the undreamed of savagery and international hatred which they have seen. This has led to opposition to missionaries on the fields, especially in Persia and in Morocco, where a Moslem said to Dr. Kerr: "Why don"t you turn your attention to Christians? With all our faults, we have some religion left, but the Christians have none." On the other hand, it has revealed to the peoples so aiding their European rulers their real values to them. This has given to Indians especially a renewed determination to secure from England _quid pro quo_ in the form of greater political liberty and social privileges. While this has been especially emphasized by Moslems and Indians, it has affected the Christians with so great a spirit of nationalism that the recent All-India Christian Council sent a deputation to the Viceroy requesting the Government to recognize the 3,876,203 Christians of the 1911 census as a community deserving political representation in the Imperial Legislative Council. The increasing demand of all Indians for greater freedom led Parliament to send out a Commission to investigate the situation; and while their report at time of writing has not been published in full, the people of that Empire are a.s.sured of many alleviations of existing disabilities. The independent Powers of the Far East also will be benefited in many ways through their cooperation in the war. A greatly feared backset to the cause of missions in China, through the exposure to fierce temptations and from the harsh treatment unavoidable in war of its labor contingent in France, has been met in part by sending to those camps many successful missionaries from North China, as well as a delegation of Christian Chinese studying in American inst.i.tutions. In Mesopotamia, also, similar work undertaken by Indian missionaries will do much to lessen the ill effects of the war.
Another resultant of the unprecedented conflict comes from the ethical and religious reactions occasioned by seas of Christian blood. An old convert in India pathetically asked his pastor if the great fire in the West were still burning, and a South Sea islander stood bewildered and shaken when he learned that the war was primarily between Christian nations. Keen j.a.panese were at first ready to declare Christianity a failure because of this stupendous crime of Christendom; but their maturer thought and the increasing barbarity in German initiative has convinced them that instead of its proving the bankruptcy of Christianity, to quote Secretary Oldham, "the War has shown the bankruptcy of a society which has refused to accept and apply the principles of Christianity in social, national and international affairs. As has been well said, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and never tried.""[8] So contrary is it to Christian teachings that for a time the churches in one district in China set apart a day each week for special prayer that this demoniacal evil might be divinely conquered.
But it is more than a problem of Christianity. The Moslem world has been fighting against itself. The Jihad, declared by the Sheikh-ul-Islam and the Sultan of Turkey most solemnly in November, 1915, failed to call to arms a body of fifty millions of fanatical Mohammedans, as had been fervently hoped would be the case. "There was no shock, since there was no sympathetic response. Protests were made by the Moslems of Turkey, while the eighty millions under British control proclaimed their unshaken loyalty; and from Persia, Morocco, Egypt, India, Russia, Algeria and other Moslem countries, Turkey was taken severely to task for forming an alliance with two Christian Powers in a conflict with other Christian nations.... Mohammedans are in despair especially since, as a last fatal blow, the Arabs have arisen in open rebellion against Turkey, seizing the sacred places of Islam, and repudiating the right to the office of caliph or of the sultan of Turkey."[9] Similarly an Arabic periodical published in Zanzibar says: "The pillars of the East are tottering, its thrones are being destroyed, its power is being shattered and its supremacy is being obliterated. The Moslem world is divided against itself."[10]
But what have been the effects of this war upon the home base of missions? The financial drafts made by the governments and voluntary organizations of warring nations upon their peoples and the increased cost of everything have affected the treasuries of some of the smaller societies unfavorably. For the most part, however, the mission boards have not only met their expenses but in many cases receipts have been larger than ever before. The contributions thus given have called attention to missions as being both worthy and indispensable elements in the world situation, and hence necessitating their support. Perhaps this is felt most generally among friends of British missions.
Man power causes the societies greater difficulty. Practically the entire German force has been sent from India, or else interned, and to fill their places has made new demands upon other nationalities. The depleted ranks of French societies have not been filled. Great Britain needs all her men for the trenches and has been sorely pressed in trying to supply the foreign fields with the workers absolutely required. Even the United States, since her entry into the war, is experiencing difficulty in keeping missionary candidates from going to the front in Europe instead of re-enforcing the thin Asiatic and African battle lines. Hope for improvement in this recruiting is slight, since the call to arms has laid strongest hold upon college and university men. Thus in 1915, out of 52,000 students in German universities, 41,000 were under arms; in France all students except those physically unfit were called out; in Great Britain and Ireland about 50 per cent of the male students were in the army or navy, in Canada 40 per cent, and in Australia 30 per cent.[11] In the United States volunteering and the draft have emptied the colleges and universities of practically all the choicest men of twenty-one and upward. If this continues long, an interim must ensue before another college generation furnishes a sufficient number of missionary candidates. Yet it may be expected that the present devotion to a cause that ends so commonly in death or lifelong crippling will end forever the old excuse urged against missionary enlistment, that the service is a hard one and often fatal, in certain unhealthful countries. Men will join the colors of the Prince of Peace and of Life even more willingly than they now march under the banners of destruction and death in the hope of establishing once more justice, righteousness and lasting freedom in the earth.
A happy effect of the present stress is found in the growing _rapprochement_ between the missions of a given national group, and to a less extent between those of different nations. This is due to the necessity for cooperation in order to make a reduced force serve for the needs of an increasing work. In a few cases already a desire to economize resources has led to readjustment of fields; in others to a temporary filling of vacant places by missionaries of a different denomination or nationality. The home const.i.tuencies are thus being taught the beautiful lesson of the trenches as related to true brotherhood and essential Christianity. Perhaps one of the best discussions of this war as affecting the international and interconfessional relationships of missions is that of Dr. J.
Schmidlin, a Roman Catholic professor of theology in the University of Munster, found in _The Constructive Quarterly_ for December, 1915, from which we quote two sentences: "Thus that which has served to separate missionaries who were comrades in belief and confession--national solidarity and love of country--has also united and reconciled children of the same country who were separated in their belief. Surmounting all barriers of dogma and church polity, men have learned to love and cherish one another, yes, even to recognize that in spite of all that separates us there is much also that binds us together."
Turning now from the effect of the war upon missions, a few paragraphs may be devoted to considering post-bellum reconstruction in mission lands. The Germans, even more than the Allies, are diligently studying the many problems and possibilities of changes necessitated by the readjustments that must surely come. The economic waste of the past four years is almost inconceivably great; and to restore this waste puts upon every nation an amount of production vastly greater than any known in the past. Raw material, freedom of the seas that the manufacturing countries may buy from every land and carry back for sale and distribution the manufactured products, a new enlistment of labor in countries where climate and primitive living make work irksome and unnecessary, an uplift in desires and ideals that new markets may be created, increasing intelligence and friendliness so that cooperation may be willing and profitable--these are some of the essentials of progress after the war.
In earlier cognate discussions, men like Captain Mahan have emphasized the importance of eastward and westward movements in the temperate zone, while others of Benjamin Kidd"s school have insisted no less strongly upon the importance of the Tropics and the consequent north and south line of industrial life. A score of years ago nearly, Professor Reinsch, in his "World Politics," startled many American readers by his insistence upon the importance of the undeveloped and unoccupied tropical regions of the globe, mainly in South America and Africa. Even more insistently Kidd"s "Control of the Tropics" had, two years before, magnified the same zone, but more particularly the densely peopled tracts with their varied possibilities of production and exploitation. In a recent article by J. A. R. Marriott, M.P., ent.i.tled "Welt-Politik," General s.m.u.ts of Africa is thus quoted: "Formerly we did not fully appreciate the Tropics as in the economy of civilization. It is only quite recently that people have come to realize that without an abundance of raw material which the Tropics alone can supply, the highly developed industries of today would be impossible. Vegetable and mineral oils, cotton, sisal, rubber, jute and similar products in vast quant.i.ties are essential for the industrial world."[12]
Another aspect of tropical Africa is brought out in an article by Herr Emil Zimmerman, writing in the _Europaische Staats und Wirtschaft Zeitung_ of June 23, 1917: "If the Great War makes Central Africa German, fifty years hence 500,000 and more Germans can be living there by the side of 50,000,000 blacks. Then there may be an army of 1,000,000 men in German Africa, and the colony will have its own war navy, like Brazil. An England that is strong in Africa dominates the situation in Southern Europe and does not heed us. But from Central Africa we shall dominate the English connections with South Africa, India and Australia, and we shall force English policy to reckon with us."[13] And again Dr. Solf, the German Secretary for Colonies, has lately proposed a simple solution of Africa"s industrial future. "In redividing Africa those nations which have proved most humane toward the natives must be favored. Germany has always considered that to colonize meant doing mission work. That is why in the present War the natives of our colonies stick to us. England"s colonial history, on the other hand, is nothing but a list of dark crimes."[14] The principle enunciated in the first sentence of this statement is as important and true as the later ones are incorrect, if the present writer"s inquiries and observations in British and German East Africa in 1912 are indicative of the facts in the case.
The political problems of the countries here considered are quite as important and perplexing as is their economic status. Three theories of control have been tried: (1) That of plantations or possessions, worked for the possessor"s profit with little regard for the governed; (2) the policy of vigorous expansion by the whites themselves, despite the perils of tropical environments; and (3) permitting the natives to work out their own development independently, with or without white oversight. Of these the third is the only one favored by the ethics and political sagacity of enlightened nations today. But this demands the consent and good will of the governed, and how may these essentials be secured?
India is the most important, politically considered, of all tropical lands. And that Empire"s relation to England the eminent Indian ruler, Sir Herbert Edwardes, declared in an address delivered at Liverpool in 1860, should be that of a stewardship in Christian hands, a designation echoed in Kidd"s general phrase, "a trust of civilization," and John H. Harris"s "trusteeship vs. possession." How shall this trust be fulfilled? Certainly one must consider the question of India"s poet laureate, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, "Is the instinct of the West right where she builds her national welfare behind the barricade of a universal distrust of humanity?"[15] Such distrust is not removed by the Indian educational scheme alone, or with the addition of civilization. "If we pursue the _ignis fatuus_ of secular education in a pagan land, dest.i.tute of other light," quoting Sir Herbert again, "then we English will lose India without those Indians gaining any future."[16] In a similar vein Sir Alfred Lyall testified: "The wildest, as well as the shallowest notion of all, seems to me that universally prevalent belief that education, civilization and increased material prosperity will reconcile the people of India eventually to our rule."[17]
A partial solution of India"s political problems is found in the deputation to that Empire in accordance with Mr. Montagu"s speech in the House of Commons of August 30, 1917, in the course of which he said: "The policy of His Majesty"s Government, with which the Government of India is in complete accord, is that of the increasing a.s.sociation of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self-governing inst.i.tutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the Indian Empire."[18] The favorable outcome of the deputation"s visit has been mentioned already.
Religious problems and readjustments will also be part of the aftermath of the war. At least six millions of Jews, who rightly or wrongly are the objects of the Christian missionary propaganda, have been released from disabilities in Europe, and new careers and educational opportunities will lie before that remarkable race.
"Jewish influence in the life of the world, already great in proportion to the size of the community, will gain a fresh accession of strength. Religiously the emanc.i.p.ation may be expected to result, as it has done in other countries, in a decay of Jewish orthodoxy, of which the Jews of the Ghetto have been the main support. While the weakening of the forces of conservatism will open new doors of opportunity to the Christian Church, there is on the other hand the grave danger that many Jews may drift into irreligion and cast the weight of their natural ability and energy on the side of materialism."[19] Mr. Balfour"s letter to Lord Rothschild of November 2, 1917, stated that the British Government viewed with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
In the case of missions to Moslem lands, if the Allies are victorious, the work in Turkey will be greatly simplified. Whether this will be the case in Africa depends upon whether the dominant Powers permit missionary organizations to act with greater freedom than they have been granted in the past in North Africa and in certain British possessions. In any case Islam will present strong claims and serious problems for consideration by missionary organizations.
Is the foreign missionary enterprise willing and competent to aid in the reconstruction soon to come in mission lands? Here are a few typical and representative replies to this important question.
Representing in a semi-official way the missionary societies of the United States and Canada, Dr. Robert E. Speer writes thus: "Foreign Missions are the direct ant.i.thesis of the world conditions which men most deplore and the purest expression of the principles which underlie the world order for which men are longing. Foreign Missions represent international friendship and good will. The missionary goes out to help and serve. He bridges the gulf between his own nation and the nation to which he goes. He is not seeking to exploit, or to take advantage, or to make gain. He is seeking only to befriend and aid.
And his aim and spirit are internationally unifying. The missionaries succeed in surmounting all the hindrances of nationality and language in binding different peoples together in good will. Furthermore, they are demonstrating the possibility of the existence of a strong nationalistic spirit side by side with human brotherhood and international unity. They are seeking to develop in each nation a national church embodying and inspiring and consecrating to G.o.d the genius and destiny of each nation. But they are doing this because these are the elements of a yet larger unity, the unity of mankind.
The first is not contradictory to the second; it is essential to it, as the perfection of the State requires the perfection of the family unit, and the family demands and does not exclude the richest individualism. It is out of her perfect ministry to the life of each nation that the Church is to be prepared to minister to the life of all humanity and to achieve its unity."[20]
As editor of _The International Review of Missions_ and secretary of the Edinburgh Continuation Committee, Mr. J. H. Oldham states his views of the world-functions of missions: "Missions are the ant.i.thesis of war. They have created between different peoples relations, not of compet.i.tion, but of cooperation. With all their shortcomings they are an embodiment of the idea that the stronger and more advanced nations exist to uplift the weaker and more backward. They are a vital expression of the principle on which the new society must rest.... The gospel of love must embody itself in act no less manifestly than selfishness and brutality have expressed themselves in the terrible scenes that the world has witnessed. The non-Christian races fear, not without cause, that the object of western peoples is to exploit them.
Missions must convince them that the Church exists to help and serve them, and the desire to serve them must be made evident in ways that they can understand. The task of Missions thus grows broader and larger than we at first conceived."[21]
And such statements are not the claims of interested propagandists merely,--officials employed by missionary organizations, and hence liable to overrate the character and importance of missions to the nations. Few men have traversed the world as extensively and observantly as Sir Harry Johnston, and probably no one equals him in his varied administrative and anthropological services to Africa. In his Introduction to the Cambridge University Maitland Prize Essay for 1915, he says: "Although the writer ... is so heterodox a professor of Christianity, practical experience in Africa, Asia and America has brought home to him ever and again during the last thirty-four years the splendid work which has been and is being accomplished by all types of Christian missionary amongst the Black, Brown and Yellow peoples of non-Caucasian race, and amid those Mediterranean or Asiatic Caucasians whose skins may be a little duskier than ours, but whose far-back ancestry was the same, whose minds and bodies are of our type, but whose mentality has been dwarfed and diverted from the amazing development of the European by false faiths,--false in their interpretation of Cosmos, false to the best human ideals in daily life."
On a later page he upholds with the author "the work of Christian missionaries in general and lays down the rule that our relations with the backward peoples of the world should be carried on consonantly with the principles of Christian ethics--pity, patience, fair-mindedness, protection and instruction; with a view not to making them the carefully guarded serfs of the White race, but to enable them some day to be entirely self-dependent, and yet interdependent with us on universal human cooperation in world management."
And once more this British administrator a.s.serts: "The value of the Christian missionary is that he serves no government. He is not the agent of any selfish State, or self-seeking community. He does not even follow very closely the narrow-minded limitations of the Church or the sect that has sent him on his mission. He is the servant of an Ideal, which he identifies with G.o.d; and this ideal is in its essence not distinguishable from essential Christianity; which is at one and the same time essential common sense, real liberty, a real seeking after progress and betterment. He preaches chast.i.ty and temperance, the obeying of such laws as are made by the community; but consonantly with all const.i.tutional and peaceful efforts, he urges the bringing of man-made laws more and more into conformity with Christian principles."[22]
As representing nations of ancient culture coming under the helpful influences of Christian missions, perhaps no one will command a more attentive hearing than Marquis Ok.u.ma, ex-premier of j.a.pan and one of the world"s foremost statesmen. From a summary of his address, delivered at the semi-centennial of Protestant missions in that Empire, we excerpt the following: "The coming of missionaries to j.a.pan was the means of linking this country to the Anglo-Saxon spirit to which the heart of j.a.pan has always responded. The success of Christian work in j.a.pan can be measured by the extent to which it has been able to infuse the Anglo-Saxon and the Christian spirit into the nation. It has been a means of putting into these fifty years an advance equivalent to that of a hundred years. j.a.pan has a history of 2,500 years, and 1,500 years ago had advanced in civilization and domestic arts, but never took wide views, nor entered upon wide work.
Only by the coming of the West in its missionary representatives, and by the spread of the Gospel, did the nation enter upon world-wide thoughts and world-wide work. This is a great result of the Christian spirit. To be sure j.a.pan had her religions, and Buddhism prospered greatly; but this prosperity was largely through political means. Now this creed [Buddhism] has been practically rejected by the better cla.s.ses who, being spiritually thirsty, have nothing to drink."[23]
These representative testimonies suggest both the fitness and the willingness of Christian missions to partic.i.p.ate in the coming international readjustments necessitated by the war. Such an enterprise supplies what the war-weary world so greatly needs--the _elan vital et creatur_, to borrow Bergson"s fine phrase. And the missionary leaders are alert and at their task. On April 4, 1918, Drs.
John R. Mott and Charles R. Watson, representing the missionary boards of the United States and Canada, met with the Standing Committee of Missionary Societies in Great Britain and Ireland, when it was resolved to form an international "Emergency Committee of Cooperating Missions." Already the British committee had been consulted by the Government concerning certain important matters affecting the mission fields and their problems arising from the war. Such questions are becoming increasingly numerous, and their solution demands an intimate knowledge of missions and of the spirit and aspirations of African and Asiatic races. America is likewise needing such a body of experts to supplement government investigations. This country has a slight preponderance in representation on the Emergency Committee; and in the chairman, Dr. John R. Mott, the foremost Protestant leader of the world, and a man of such diplomatic gifts that President Wilson twice vainly called him to the position of minister to China,--though he accepted appointment upon commissions to deal with Mexico and Russia later,--the committee has a missionary statesman who is equal to the important trusts that will be committed to its consideration. To serve as the eyes, ears and hands of this important post-bellum council, the two largest fields, India and China, have each an energetic Continuation Committee of the Edinburgh Conference of 1910, established as the result of Dr. Mott"s visits and conferences in 1912-1913. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America, and especially its Board of Reference and Counsel, are in annual and _ad interim_ consultation as questions arise from time to time.
President King quotes these words from Lloyd George"s address to a labor delegation: "Don"t always be thinking of getting back where we were before the War. Get a really new world. I firmly believe that what is known as the after-the-War settlement will direct the destinies of all cla.s.ses for generations to come. I believe the settlement after the War will succeed in proportion to its audacity.
The readier we are to cut away from the past, the better we are likely to succeed. Think out new ways, new methods, of dealing with old problems."[24]