are you so extravagant for?" They say, "Why are you running into debt, why don't you cut your coat according to the cloth? Supposing you have a boy you send to India, we will say in knickerbockers, and it takes a yard of cloth to make him a coat. A year goes by and there is your cloth and you cut out a coat to send out to him, and out it goes. And the next year again. What a ridiculous looking creature that boy would be in the course of ten years! Now, it is very much the same way in the missionary busiAnything that has life in it grows, and people do not generally understand the condition in which the board is in that matter, and they give them the cloth, but not half enough. That is the first difficulty.

ness.

Now, on the other side. I think, besides the impression of a good many people, that the board is a set of lunatics, there is an impression on the part of a great many missionaries that the board. is a hard sort of trust trying to grind everything down to the lowest point, to get the biggest percentage out of it. Ah, friends, if you were sometimes in our board room when reports come home-we are conservative, we Dutchmen, we retain the old sort of executive committee I have seen actually the jaws of our executive committee fall when the report came in, and they have looked at one another in consternation; I have seen those nine men put their hands in their pockets and raise a necessary thousand dollars without appealing to the Church, because they were so sorry for the missionaries. I have seen that more than once.

I don't ask you missionaries to ask for less, but do not be too hard on us, remember we are only buffers, as it were, between those two things. We are your warmest friends, and if we could we would give you the earth for which you sigh in order that you might present it to Christ.

REV. J. L. BARTON, D.D., Secretary American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Boston, Mass.*

There are three marked constituents in a foreign missionary organization at work. There are the churches at home and there are the missionaries abroad, and between them is the missionary organization itself. It is like an hour-glass. At one end the churches and the constituencies, and at the other end the missionaries, and between them the board.

The sand from the churches goes through the organization out to the missionary. The supplies are furnished by the churches and sent out to the missionaries, supplies both of men and money. Now, what is this organization that stands between? It is not a The missionaries at the front are

board of autocratic control. not controlled by the board at home. They are a part of the board at home and a part of the constituency behind the board, and the constituency behind the board and the board and the missionaries are co-operating in this great work.

Another thing, the board is not a board of strategy.

There is no doubt that the secretaries and the members of the board can * Church of the Strangers, April 27.

form more theories and plans as to the best method of carrying on the work in six months than the whole missionary corps could carry out in a century, and there is no doubt that the advancement of the Lord's cause has been wonderfully helped by pigeon-holing most of those plans. It is as undoubtedly true that the missionaries sent out to the front are as able as the committee which operates at this center; just as able originally, but after they have been at the front they are a hundred times more able to deal directly with these matters, and they will avoid mistakes whenever responsibility is left to them.

One thing more, carrying out this figure of the hour-glass. When you cut off the supplies of money and men, and when knowledge of this dearth of supply reaches the field and the cry comes back for more, you get at once the upper and nether millstones and the men in the field grind, and the Church at home grinds, and the secretaries between are ground to powder.

The work in the field should be left to the missionary, and if the committees at home have not missionaries upon the field to whom they can intrust the administration, they must appoint better men. and better women for their work, and after the best men and the best women are appointed and sent out there they can be trusted with the details of the administration.

CHAPTER X

COMITY AND CO-OPERATION

Spirit and Limitations of Missionary Comity-Co-operation in Special Departments of Work-Division of Fields-Comity in Practice-Federation-General Summary.

The Spirit and Limitations of Missionary Comity

REV. H. M. KING, D.D., Chairman Executive Committee American Baptist Missionary Union, Providence, R. I.*

Missionary comity is, in its essence, the spirit of Christ manifesting itself in all the forms, and methods, and activities of foreign evangelization, and in all the intercourse and relations of those who are seeking to prosecute it. It is the illustration of that spirit which evangelization is professedly seeking to realize in all human society. It is the expression of that courtesy and thoughtful regard for the rights, and the feelings, and the convictions of others which should ever and everywhere characterize the intercourse of Christian gen

tlemen.

In a word, missionary comity is born of the love of Christ shed abroad in the hearts of His disciples, and is the manifestation of the life of Christ in the lives of His followers. It is inculcated with great frequency in the Scriptures, as in the language of the Golden Rule; in Christ's commandment to His disciples, "That ye love one another as I have loved you;" and in His sacerdotal prayer for all believers, "That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us," a prayer which may not necessarily include outward organic union, but must involve a unity of spirit and of life that shall in some manner make itself visible and felt in the world, and be a convincing evidence of the divine nature of Christ and the superhuman character of the Christian religion," that the world may believe that thou hast sent me."

The spirit of comity does not necessitate or contemplate any organit union of churches under one particular form of government or one prescribed ritual of worship. As another has recently and wisely said: "Organic unity, on lines accepted by any one of the existing Christian bodies, is clearly, for the present, out of reach. No plan of union has been or can be suggested, which will not involve the surrender, on the part of some, of truth which they hold vital. The running together of the separated churches, and their reshaping in the outward mold of any existing organization is the dream of unintelli

* Carnegie Hall, April 26.

gent enthusiasm." Differences in polity must be left to the decision of an intelligent and conscientious interpretation of Scripture. The outward forms of worship must be determined by the tastes and the convictions of the worshipers. Compulsory conformity is neither desirable nor possible for any length of time. The enlightened spirit is free, and demands freedom in administration and freedom in expression, subject only to the law of Christ.

Comity implies a lack of uniformity, but insists upon living and thriving and triumphing in the midst of it and in spite of it. It holds fast to the great underlying unities, and derives its strength and its sweetness from these. It declares "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all." "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."

Moreover, missionary comity not only recognizes the great underlying unities among the followers of Christ, but it places the supreme emphasis upon doctrine that is essential to the regeneration and salvation of the soul. The personality and power of the Holy Spirit; the supernatural birth, the atoning death and the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ; the offer of God's pardoning mercy to penitent men through the blood of the everlasting covenant; and the hope of a blessed immortality through faith in the one Divine Saviour; these constitute the burden of the missionary's message, whatever the denominational name he bears, whatever the Board that sends him out, and whatever the people to whom he goes. The preaching of Christ and Him crucified to a lost world, is the primary motive in his consecration to missionary service, this is the paramount aim of all his toil and self-denial, this is the first, and second, and third item in the good news he carries across the seas and over the mountains. He ever keeps in mind the fact that the cross of Christ is far higher than any denominational standard, and overshadows them all, his own not excepted; that personal faith is more essential than forms, and polities, and administrations, and that "blood is thicker than water.' And so he exclaims with the first great missionary to the Gentiles, "Notwithstanding, every way Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.'

There is time only to suggest a few practical applications and proper limitations to the spirit of missionary comity.

I. All branches of the same general church division, and all denominations in which a union could be effected without the surrender of any faith or practice that is held to be vital, ought to unite their work when prosecuted on the same mission field. It seems not only unnecessary, but culpable, to transplant and perpetuate divisions which have resulted from circumstances which have long since passed away or from the laying of emphasis upon unimportant matters.

2. Where a field has already been taken possession of by one missionary body, that body should have the exclusive right to cultivate it, no matter how accessible and attractive the field, or how rich the

promise of the harvest. Great centers of population, too large for any one society to compass, and large enough for the representatives of two or more societies to enter without danger of friction, may be exempted from the operation of this rule.

3. In entering upon new territory there may be, there should be, an amicable division of the field, a careful and friendly drawing of the boundary lines, not for the sake of restricting missionary activity, but for the sake of extending the preaching of the gospel, of scattering more widely the seed of the kingdom, and of bringing more speedily under Christian cultivation the barren wastes of the heathen world.

Our motto as missionary bodies may often be: "Divide that we may conquer, scatter that we may increase, separate that we may compass."

But if so be that any society, by reason of limited resources or the pressing demands of its other fields, finds itself, or is found, unable to cultivate the new field, the responsibility for which it has assumed, it may ask for aid or surrender its claim. Missionary comity must not long be allowed to hinder the carrying of bread to the starving, or water to those who are dying of spiritual thirst. Government grants of land are conditioned upon their being occupied and improved. Missionary titles are invalidated by continued neglect.

4. Among missionaries of different societies occupying the same or adjacent fields, the common love for Christ and the supreme regard for the coming of His kingdom which that love engenders, will prompt to frequent conferences, in which the interests of the common work shall be frankly and fully considered, and all matters which might lead to friction, and about which there is any possibility of misunderstanding, shall be examined in the spirit of prayer and in the holy light of Christ's radiant presence. His spirit regnant in the hearts of His disciples will not only preserve peace and harmony, but will give birth to mutual helpfulness, charity, concession when necessary, and uninterrupted good-will. No problems are conceivable which this spirit has not power to solve.

It should be understood that union and concession are to be expected only so far as they involve no surrender of truth that is conscientiously held. Comity can never demand disloyalty to conviction or the violation of conscience. It has its limitations at this point. It is the business of comity to discover a modus vivendi, when convictions are divergent. To grant to others the same rights of conscience and of private judgment that we claim for ourselves, and still to love them, and honor them, and rejoice in their successes, that is comity, that is liberality, that is Christianity.

Missionary comity also makes allowance for a possible honest change of views among missionaries and native converts and workers. Such changes are not frequent, but they do sometimes occur, and if not rightly treated, are likely to produce alienation and lack of confidence and Christian esteem.

This has no reference to those native converts who are under discipline or have been dismissed for cause, and who offer themselves for membership in another communion, or to those cases of professed change of views brought about by unworthy means, it may be by a