(h) Organizations for the Special Activities of the Native Christian Community.

Every mission should encourage all forms of wise and necessary organization for the furtherance of the highest life of the community itself. And this chiefly with a view to developing self-dependence in the community. These organizations will be naturally divided into two classes.

Those Which Promote Self-Government.

The Christian Church in the mission field should be organized ecclesiastically and administratively in such a way that it may ultimately, and as speedily as may seem wise, become entirely self-governing. Every mission should aim to so teach the people that they may control and conduct successfully their own affairs. It should establish a Church which sends its roots deep into the soil of the land and which will become, in the highest sense, indigenous. One of the necessary evils of missionary life is the early Western control and guidance of everything. I should like to see the day, when the native Church can establish that polity which is most congenial to its taste and run its affairs independently and on Oriental lines, in such a way as to win more effectively the people of India to Christ. The question is sometimes asked,—“Must our Congregational missions bind, to our Congregational form of ecclesiastical [pg 260] government, the people whom they bring over from heathenism? Must our church polity, in the mission field, be Congregational, or Presbyterian, etc., regardless of its adaptation, or want of adaptation, to the people?” The affirmative answer has usually been given by all societies (and wrongly I think) to this inquiry; and thus every denomination transplants into heathen lands, with renewed emphasis, not only its own peculiar shibboleths of doctrine; it also exalts to a heavenly command the government and ritual which it represents.

Missions in India are conscientiously endeavouring, with varying degrees of wisdom and success, to lead forward their people in the line of self-government. But both love of power and a conviction of the inability of the infant Church to wisely control its affairs, combine to render this transfer of power from the mission to the native Church a very slow matter—more slow than seems wise to many besides the leaders of the native Church themselves. It is a significant fact, in India today, that the Methodist missions, by their compact organization, are able to, or at any rate do, confer more ecclesiastical and administrative power upon the native Church than any other mission; while Congregational missions—the least organized—are the most backward in this matter. A study for the causes of this would be instructive.

Those Organisations Which Promote Self-Extension.

One of the first things that a mission should do, after gathering the Christian community, is to organize, in the community, such activities as are outreaching [pg 261] and self-extending. In the Madura Mission there has been for many years a Home Missionary Society whose aim is to help support weak churches and also maintain a force of evangelists to preach to non-Christians. It is the society of the native Christians—supported and largely directed by them. It has created, maintained and increased the interest of the people in furthering the cause of Christ.

Many such societies exist in India today and they render valuable service in keeping before the mind of the people the deepest characteristics of our faith and the highest privilege of a Christian community—that of outgoing love, and self-extending enthusiasm.

Those Organisations Which Further Self-Support.

How extensively should the idea of self-support be at present urged upon the native Christian community? This is a question which we will discuss later on. There is no question however but that every mission should so organize its benevolences that the infant Church may, at as early a date as possible, cease to seek support from a foreign land; and that it cultivate at the same time a spirit of self-denial and of self-reliance. The poverty of the people is, and will long remain, a serious barrier to this consummation. But the evil of poverty may be counterbalanced by a careful system whereby the benevolent feelings, generous impulses and the sense of obligation of the people are conserved, strengthened and made fully effective. This matter should not be left to haphazard or to spasmodic appeal. Every Christian, even the poorest, should be so directed and [pg 262] inspired in his benevolence that he may effectively contribute to the worthy object of self-support.

These three desiderata of the native Christian Church—self-support, self-propagation and self-government—are to be desired above all other blessings by the missions and should be sought with a persistence and a well-organized intelligence, which will mean advance and ultimate success. When these three have been attained, missions, with all their expensive machinery, may gladly disband and feel that their end has been accomplished and that they are no longer needed.

[pg 263]