The Possibility of Evangelizing the World in This Generation in View of Some Modern Missionary Achievements

To consider a few among the many modern achievements of the Church on mission fields will serve to illustrate the possibility of evangelizing the world in this generation.

The work in Manchuria of the Irish Presbyterians and of the United Presbyterians of Scotland is a good example of what may be accomplished within less than a generation toward the evangelization of a country by a comparatively small number of foreign workers. Manchuria is about eight hundred miles long and five hundred miles wide. Its area is more than eleven times as great as that of Ireland, and three times that of the entire British Isles. It has a population estimated at from 15,000,000 to 25,000,000 composed of Chinese and of Manchus, the race which conquered China. Manchuria might be considered a colony of China; for there has been a constant stream of immigration from that empire for centuries, and the Chinese now constitute the principal part of the population. The people have great physical and intellectual vigor and are one of the strongest races in all Asia. Chinese is the prevailing language.

Two Irish Presbyterian missionaries arrived in Manchuria in 1870, and two from the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1872. These denominations united their work in a common Presbytery in 1891. The number of foreign workers has been gradually increased until at the beginning of 1900 there were in both missions sixty-six, including the wives of twenty-one missionaries. Ten years ago there were only about half as many foreign workers.

The Manchurian field presented difficulties similar to those encountered by missionaries in China. When Dr. John Ross arrived in 1872 foreign residence was allowed only at the port of Newchwang. With the help of passports, however, tours could be made in the interior. The attitude of the natives was strongly hostile, as all foreigners were regarded with suspicion. Both missionaries and native Christians had to suffer many indignities. The opposition has taken frequently the form of severe persecution. Especially trying were the experiences of the native Christians during the war between Japan and China. The extreme conservatism, gross materialism and stolid indifference and pride of the natives, as in the case of all parts of China proper, have presented a great barrier to the work of evangelization.

In 1873 there were three converts. The number increased slowly but constantly during the first twenty years. During that period there was unwearied and broadcast seed sowing. By 1895 there were nearly 4,000 baptized members of the Church. Only two years later, 1897, there were over 8,000 members. One year later still, 1898, there were more than 14,000. And the latest reports received show that at the close of 1899 the number of baptized members was about 19,000, and the number of catechumens nearly 6,000. The rate of increase of baptized members for the past five years has thus averaged fifty per cent. each year.

Rev. William Hunter, a missionary in Manchuria, expresses the opinion that "about ten times the present membership have done forever with idol worship, and it is likely that those who are definitely moving towards Christianity are largely in excess of that number, and these may be regarded as intellectually accepting as satisfactory the bottom truths of Christianity." While recognizing the difficulty of estimating such matters, he considers it not improbable that half of the adult population of the country know that there is a Christian Gospel. In 1896, Dr. Ross said in a personal interview that one-third of the people had heard of Christ and knew enough to pronounce Christianity the best religion. He also stated in an address that "the Gospel is speedily gaining such a rapid diffusion that we may anticipate at no distant date its contact with every village and town in the country." As far back as seven years one of the missionaries who made a journey of 360 miles into the interior, over the wretched Manchurian roads, could report that on only one day did he fail to meet some member of the Church. There are whole districts in which no one is more than five miles from a church, and there are doubtless very few people in any of these districts who do not know of the existence of one of these churches or chapels. Another missionary, reporting a tour of last year, records that he visited one town of whose existence the missionaries had been ignorant and found thirty-six inquirers. At the next place, although no missionary had ever visited it, he found not only many inquirers but also a Christian chapel — the result of the work of a native convert who had moved there. A little further on he entered another city where also he unexpectedly found a group of Christians. In all Manchuria south of the Sungari River no large town and but few hamlets remain untouched by the Gospel.

What means were employed to accomplish these results? We notice as the first factor less than sixty foreign missionaries, the large majority of whom have been but a few years in the country. A chain of mission stations has been stretched across the entire country from Newchwang to the Sungari, at each of which two or more foreign missionaries are at work. Subordinate to these stations are secondary centers, each having a trained and capable native evangelist. Around these in turn are many still smaller stations each with its preaching place or chapel. The missionaries have devoted themselves largely to itinerating and to raising up, training and directing a force of native workers. Medical work has been and is an effective means of winning the people and commending the Gospel to them. The circulating of the Scriptures and other Christian literature has done much to help spread the knowledge of Christ. The British and Foreign Bible Society has for years given splendid co-operation. Mr. Hunter reckons that not far from 200,000 booklets are sold each year, and that the total number sold must have reached two millions. But the principal and most fruitful means of evangelization has been the presentation of the Gospel by preaching in chapels and by personal interviews.

From the beginning constant emphasis has been placed on using native workers to the fullest extent possible. The stations already established are so numerous that it is impossible for the missionaries to do more than pay them hasty visits. Nearly five hundred natives are now at work as evangelists, teachers, colporteurs, medical assistants and Bible women. They carry on the work of evangelism far more extensively and effectively than could foreigners. In spreading the Gospel the rank and file of the native Christians are a still larger factor than the native evangelists. Dr. Ross says that three-fourths of the church members preach the Gospel every day of their lives without pay. Women come who have been taught by their husbands, and whole families who are led by one member. This self-propagating power of the Church is the most hopeful aspect of the work.

The native Christians are also doing much to make their work self-supporting. They provide their own chapels and give increasingly toward the expenses of the medical, literary and evangelistic work. In 1898 they gave on an average the equivalent of a full week's wages per member— a somewhat remarkable showing when the poverty of the people is borne in mind. So much are they developing in liberality that some think that they will be ready to support pastors more rapidly than pastors can be raised up and trained for them to support. The policy of the missionaries in concentrating their efforts more and more on the preparation of native leaders is eminently statesmanlike and gives promise of large results. With the foregoing facts in mind who can doubt that by a wise enlargement of the agencies employed in Manchuria such a people could be evangelized within a generation?

Among the most remarkable triumphs of missions during the past few decades has been the work of the Church Missionary Society in Uganda. Stanley, in writing about it, says: "I know of few secular enterprises, military or otherwise, deserving of greater praise."

Uganda is a country of 70,000 square miles situated on the north side of Victoria Nyanza. It is one of the most populous, fertile and powerful states of East Central Africa. The inhabitants, called Waganda, number from a million and a half to two millions and are a strong people.

In 1875 Stanley sent a letter to The Daily Telegraph of London appealing to Christians to establish a mission in Uganda. Within two days the Church Missionary Society received an offer of $25,000 on condition that it would undertake the enterprise. The fund soon increased to $75,000. In 1876 the first party of missionaries was sent out. Some of their number died and two were killed before they reached their destination. Two of them reached Uganda in 1877, and were welcomed with honors by the king. The mission had up-hill work for thirteen years. During this early period Alexander Mackay was the principal and, at times, the only foreign worker. As late as 1890 when an appeal was made for reinforcements there were only four missionaries in the country. The number has since been steadily growing until now there are twenty. If laymen, wives of missionaries and other women workers are added, the total foreign force is about sixty.

The obstacles encountered by missionaries in Uganda were many. The inaccessibility of the field has made it extremely difficult for workers to reach the country and to secure necessary supplies. The fact that the missionaries were falsely charged by Arab traders with having political designs has been at times a drawback to their work. The Christians have frequently been subjected to persecution. Bishop Hannington, on his arrival on the borders of the country in 1885, was murdered by order of the king. In the following year the persecution was especially fierce, threatening the extirpation of Christianity. Some native Christians were horribly mutilated or hacked to pieces. Others were tortured and then roasted alive. Thirty-two were slowly burned to death on one great pyre. Probably two hundred native Christians and adherents perished, but it is said that none renounced their faith.

The extreme conceit of the Waganda and the prevalence among them of laziness, falsehood, lust, hatred, murder and barbarous practices rendered Uganda an unpromising field. Polytheism, witchcraft and countless superstitions had a strong hold on all classes. The missionaries were obliged to reduce the language to writing and to develop an entire Christian vocabulary. Add to all these difficulties the opposition of Islam and the plotting of the Romanists, and it will be seen that the evangelization of Uganda was a most arduous task. It makes the achievements of the Christian workers there seem all the more striking.

In 1882, five years after the missionaries reached Uganda, they had their first baptisms. Up to the end of the seventh year less than a hundred had been baptized. In 1890 the tide began to rise more rapidly. Bishop Tucker had meetings in 1891 which were so largely attended that the crush reminded him of Exeter Hall. When the cathedral was dedicated in the following year the audience numbered nearly 4,000. In 1893, during a great revival led by Pilkington, hundreds were converted. The influence of this revival extended far and wide in different directions. At the beginning of 1894 there were only twenty country chapels, but by the end of that year the number had increased to 200. In 1895, when Bishop Tucker made his next visit, he found the work established at ten stations, and 200 buildings thronged with worshippers or seekers every Sunday, most of them on week days also. During the eight months of his stay he confirmed 2,052 candidates in communities reaching to the west 200 miles from Mengo to Toro, and on the islands of the lake.

When Pilkington was in England in 1896 he "was able to write: "A hundred thousand souls brought into close contact with the Gospel — half of them able to read for themselves; 200 buildings raised by native Christians in which to worship God and read His word; 200 native evangelists and teachers entirely supported by the Native Church; 10,000 copies of the New Testament in circulation; 6,000 souls eagerly seeking daily instruction; statistics of baptism, of confirmation, of adherents, of teachers, more than doubling yearly for the last six or seven years, ever since the return of the Christians from exile; the power of God shown by changed lives; and all this in the center of the thickest spiritual darkness in the world! . . . The World to be evangelized in this generation' — can it be done? Kyagwe, a province fifty miles square, has had the Gospel preached, by lip and life, through almost every village in the space of one short year, by some seventy native evangelists, under the supervision of only two Europeans: more than 2,000 square miles and only two Europeans! The teacher on Busi has by this time probably accomplished his purpose of visiting every house in that island with the message of Salvation on his lips. Soon we may hope that there will be no house left in Uganda that has not had God's message brought thus to its very threshold." In 1899 there were over 400 churches, more than 17,000 baptized members, and nearly 900 native agents. Ethiopia has indeed stretched forth her hands unto God.

In speaking at the Student Volunteer Convention in Liverpool, Pilkington gave a valuable estimate, based on experience, as to the proportion of foreign and native workers required to evangelize the regions surrounding Uganda. He said: From various places in Uganda openings can be made into the vast country beyond. The population in an area comprising 200 miles radius all around Uganda is 10,000,000, or one-twentieth of the whole population of Africa, and this could be evangelized in three years if there were missionary stations all over the country, at a distance of fifty miles from each other in every direction, each one supporting one European missionary and 100 native helpers."

What is the secret of the wonderful success achieved in Uganda? The persevering, self-denying lives of missionaries like Mackay and Pilkington, and the martyr deaths of Hannington and of scores of native Christians must be reckoned as an important cause. "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit." Wise use has been made of different forms of missionary work. The printed word of God has exerted an immense influence. Much of the time the demand for the Scriptures has been far greater than could be satisfied, although the New Testament sold at a price equivalent to the cost of a man's food for two months.

The native Church has accomplished by far the larger part of the work. Hundreds of native preachers and teachers have been hard at work for years spreading the knowledge of Christ. To-day, as we have seen, their number is well nigh a thousand. Scores of these leaders are men who refused chieftainships in order that they might devote themselves to proclaiming the Gospel to their own countrymen. Their labors have not been confined to the main centers. They have pressed out increasingly into the country districts. Not a few might be regarded as foreign missionaries; for they are working in regions beyond Uganda, and are supported by their fellow Christians. Although England has given the country its missionary leaders and its version of the Bible, the native workers are supported and the churches are built by the Waganda themselves. Doubtless the deepest secret of the spiritual movement, which has been going on notably during the last seven years, is the fact that the leaders came to recognize their absolute insufficiency to meet the need of the people and yielded themselves to the mighty work of the Holy Spirit.

The study of this example forces upon one the conviction that if so small a number of workers could accomplish so much in a few years, all Uganda might be easily evangelized within a generation. Moreover, if the obstacles to evangelization have been overcome to such an extent in that country, they can be surmounted in all parts of Africa. If the Christian Church would put forth her energies, it is not incredible that the inhabitants of the entire Dark Continent might in this generation be given an adequate opportunity to know Christ. While external difficulties to evangelization may be different among the people of other continents and races from what we have found them to be in the heart of Africa, the essential factors in the problem are the same the world over. Who can set a limit to the achievements of men filled with the Spirit of God, who, wielding the force of prayer, go forth to preach Christ where He has not been named.

In the work of evangelizing the world the native Church must have a large part. It is necessary to raise up and train men and women to lead these forces. This is the great aim of educational missionary work. The problem is not only to increase the number of native leaders, but also to develop workers who will be strong and safe leaders of their people.

The Presbyterian College at Teng-chou Fu, China, is a good example of an institution which is helping to solve this problem. From the first it has stood for quality rather than for numbers. For over thirty years Dr. Calvin Mateer and his wife devoted the best energies of their lives to the comparatively small number of young men admitted to the college. They made much of personal contact with the students and estimated that they could personally and deeply influence but about sixty at a time. The students were carefully selected and were kept as a rule for several years. The education given was very thorough. The spirit and teaching of the college were markedly Christian. Every one of the 120 graduates has been a pronounced Christian, and almost all of them, as well as a number of other students who went out before graduation, are engaged in direct Christian work as teachers, pastors, evangelists and physicians. They occupy positions of influence from Manchuria on the North to the southernmost province of China. It is said that every high school north of the Yangtse has one or more Teng-chou graduates among its teachers. The University at Peking has six of them in its faculty and the Imperial University at Nanking has three. Thus this college is teaching the teachers, and indirectly as well as directly is exerting an immense influence on the extension of Christ's Kingdom among the Chinese. If Dr. and Mrs. Mateer had done nothing more than to make possible these results, they would have accomplished a mighty work toward the evangelization of China.

Another example of fruitful educational missionary effort was the work a generation since of Miss Eliza Agnew of the American Board in the girl's boarding school at Oodooville, Ceylon. During her forty-one years of continuous service, fully 600 girls were graduated. Although a majority of them came from heathen homes every one went out from the school a professing Christian. Hundreds of others who did not graduate were also led to Christ. Nearly all of them became leading women in their home communities. Twenty-five became Bible readers, thirty-nine teachers in boarding schools, twenty-one teachers in village schools, 143 married native pastors and teachers and 166 became wives of government officials and other educated men. What an achievement for one worker in one generation!

The faithful teachers of Oodooville and Teng-chou Fu are not isolated examples. There are to-day scores of men and women of like consecration, purpose and persistency who have molded or are now quietly, patiently and prayerfully molding the lives of thousands of young men and women in such colleges, schools and training institutions as Duff College in Calcutta, the Bareilly Theological Seminary, the Woman's College at Lucknow, Pasumalai College, Jaffna College, the Anglo-Chinese College at Foochow, the Training College at Tung Cho, the True Light Seminary at Canton, the Woman's College at Nagasaki, the Doshisha, the Euphrates College, the Central Turkey College at Aintab, the Training College at Asyut, the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut and many others which have been or are strongholds and propagating centers for Christianity. Who can measure the possibilities of these institutions of higher learning, if their students are filled with the Spirit of Christ and with a passion for the evangelization of the world?

The Moravian Church has, in proportion to its ability, done more to extend Christ's Kingdom in the world than has any other body of Christians. As an object lesson in the development of the missionary life of the home Church it is notable, and should be a guide and inspiration to other branches of the Church of Christ. Within forty years after the establishment of their settlement at Herrnhut nearly two centuries ago, they had started eighteen different foreign missions. During all their history the Moravians have been loyal to the missionary purpose. Missions have always had a large place in all their plans and activities. They have regarded this enterprise, not merely as an incident, but as their main business.

They have sent out more than 2,000 of their members as foreign missionaries. At the beginning of 1899 they had 379 missionaries (men and women), or one in sixty-six of the communicant members of their home churches in Europe and America. Their young men and young women are trained to look upon service abroad as a privilege. No urgency is required. It is never difficult to secure recruits. One of the secretaries of the Student Volunteer Movement made an address in a Moravian college and appealed for volunteers. He was surprised when at the close of his address the chairman of the meeting assured him that every student in the college was already practically a volunteer — willing and desirous to become a foreign missionary. Dr. Augustus C. Thompson tells of the little community of Konigsfeld in the Black Forest which has twenty-one out of 418 of its members engaged in foreign mission service.

In 1898 the members of the Moravian Church gave to foreign missions nearly $80,000. This does not include the amount contributed to their work by members of other churches. Thus the Moravians themselves give on an average $2.10 each. If the members of the Protestant evangelical churches of Great Britain and North America gave in like proportion, their missionary contributions would aggregate over $60,000,000. Theirs is also a praying Church. There is probably no other branch of the Church of Christ whose members devote themselves so earnestly to intercession on behalf of world-wide missions. Even their hymnology to an unusual extent is devoted to the spread and triumph of Christ's Kingdom.

It is not strange in view of the self-denial, consecration and prayerfulness of the Moravians at home that God has honored their work abroad. From 138 stations in twenty-one provinces, scattered throughout the four great mission continents of the world, they are sending forth the Gospel light. They have a force of 1,839 native pastors, teachers and helpers, and a membership of 96,197 — or nearly three times as many as in all their churches in the home lands. In many respects they resemble the Church of the first century. If the members of Protestant churches in the British Isles, the United States and Canada, not to mention other parts of Reformed Christendom, devoted themselves to the missionary enterprise with the energy shown by the Moravian Church, they would have a force of nearly 400,000 foreign workers. No such number would be required to achieve the evangelization of the world in this generation.

Only a few illustrations have been given of recent evangelistic achievements of the Church in non-Christian lands. There are others almost equally striking. The work of the American Baptists among the Karens reads like the record of a war of conquest. The wonderful Telugu revival in the Lone Star Mission, after nearly a generation of quiet work, still serves to lift the faith of the Church. The first twenty years of the Gossner Mission among the Kols presents an impressive example of evangelization in the midst of the difficulties of another Indian field. The achievements of the Church Missionary Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Tinnevelly, especially in view of the prominent part taken by native Christians, abound in instructive lessons as to how to hasten the evangelization of India. The mass movement carried on among the outcasts of Northern India by the Methodist Episcopal Church is unquestionably a work of God and has brought the Gospel to a vast multitude of people. Difficult as is the problem of the evangelization of Mohammedans, there is much of encouragement in the work of the Reformed Church in Arabia. Even more remarkable in this connection have been the triumphs of the Rhenish Mission in Sumatra, where over 2,000 Mohammedans have already acknowledged Christ, and where we find the largest congregation of converted Mohammedans in the world. The Norwegian Lutherans, as well as the London Missionary Society, have accomplished a work of evangelization in parts of Madagascar which is worthy of the most careful study. The Livingstonia Mission of the Free Church of Scotland ranks in many respects with the Uganda mission as suggesting the secret of the wide-spread evangelization of the Dark Continent. Nor should the Southern Presbyterian Mission at Luebo in the heart of Africa be forgotten in mentioning those which have had a large fruitage. The United Presbyterians have covered the Lower Nile Valley with a net-work of evangelistic agencies. After many years of deep preparatory work in the Fukien Province by the American Board, the Reformed Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Church Missionary Society, the past few years have witnessed the greatest ingathering in the history of missions in China. The China Inland Mission in thrusting forth its hundreds of light-bearers into the unbroken darkness of the interior of China, not only has been preaching Christ to those who had never heard of Him, but also has stimulated the entire Church to more prayerful and aggressive effort. The Gospel is being preached to the unevangelized with great success in Korea at the present time by the Presbyterians. The Russian Church Mission in Japan, under the leadership of the able Archbishop Nicolai, has done a work which is not without its important lessons to Protestant societies. The evangelization of the Hawaiian Islands by the Congregationalists and of the Fiji group by the Wesleyans should strengthen and enlarge the faith of every Christian in the power of the Gospel to reach and transform the most benighted and degraded.

To realize how the evangelization of the world has been hastened by the labors of the medical missionaries, one need only recall the Ranaghat Medical Mission in Bengal, the work of Dr. Clark at Amritsar, the marvelous record of the Tientsin Hospital, the abundant labors of Dr. Kerr at Canton and Dr. Post at Beirut and the Christ-like ministry of many other medical missionaries in all parts of the world field.

Nor should we overlook the vital relation which literary work has had and always will have to the evangelization of the world. The patient and thorough work of the hundreds of missionaries who have devoted themselves to the translation of the Scriptures and Christian literature, the ceaseless activity of scores of mission presses like those at Beirut, Shanghai and Calcutta, and the work of the Bible societies in all lands, have multiplied the power and influence of all other agencies, and have sown the seed of the Kingdom far and wide.

It should be noted also that there are a great many fields where the evangelistic efforts of the missionaries have not yet been attended with large visible results. Scattered all over the world are thousands of missionaries, whose names are not associated with conspicuous success, but who, nevertheless, have been proclaiming Christ with a faithfulness, thoroughness and heroism fully equal to that which has characterized the more prominent workers. They also are an essential factor in the world's evangelization; and both they that sow and they that reap shall rejoice together. In view of the extent to which the Gospel has already been thoroughly preached, whether with or without apparent results, by a comparatively small number of workers, it seems reasonable to believe that by a judicious increase and proper distribution of all missionary agencies which have commended themselves to the Church, an adequate opportunity to know Christ as Saviour and Lord might be given to all people within our day. In the words of a veteran Indian missionary, "The largeness of God's blessing on the puny efforts already made for evangelizing the heathen, demonstrate beyond the possibility of a doubt, that we are well able to evangelize the whole world in a single generation."