"Trail of the Serpent"

Zealous and sturdy, the oldtime missionary stepped confidently into a hero's role. He had no backing of wealth, no organization of boards and committees. But behind him was a fresh, vigorous British and U. S. religious awakening; before him the duty, as held by nearly every Protestant church, of carrying the Word to the ends of the earth. Famed are such pioneers as Adoniram Judson (1788-1850), who put a sign "Is It Pleasing to God?" in his room at Brown University, spent a year and a half in traveling to Burma. Ordained a Congregationalist, he espoused baptism by immersion, became an independent missionary, finally received full Baptist support. He translated the Bible into Burmese, compiled a Burmese grammar and dictionary, suffered in prison, lived for a time in an empty lion's cage with a testament for his pillow, died at sea after building 63 churches and 163 missions, baptizing 7,000 heathen in 37 years.

No less able were a second and third generation of missionaries. Presbyterian Calvin Wilson Mateer (1836-1908) dabbled as a child in machinery and electricity, liked to make things "go and then go faster." He went to China, a six-month journey, spent 45 years there with only three vacations. Missionary Mateer studied Chinese, wrote "Mandarin Lessons" which simplified learning the language, built a foreign scientific museum, and with six students founded Shantung College, today the Arts College of Shantung Christian University.

Methodist Henry Gerhard Appenzeller (1858-1902), described as "bold as a lion, tender as a woman, aflame with zeal," found Korea reactionary and pagan, gave it a school, a religious newspaper, a tract society, a printing and publishing house.

Full-bearded Baptist John Everett Clough (1836-1910) scorned religion until he was 22, then went to India and built up social and evangelistic organizations which lasted because their roots were native. Presbyterian Dr. James Curtis Hepburn (1815-1911), slight and shrivelled, mastered Malay and Chinese, was for 33 years a surgeon, oculist, translator, healer and teacher throughout the Orient. Methodist Bishop James Mills Thoburn went to India, was joined by his sister Isabella (1840-1901) who founded Lucknow Women's College (India's first for females), held her first class of seven while a sturdy boy with a club guarded against intruders. Long afraid of street cars, she died of cholera. . . .

Conscious of this tradition of oldtime missionary virility, the Appraisal Commission which surveyed foreign missions for laymen in seven U. S. Protestant Churches (TIME, Oct. 17), looked critically at those who carry on the work today. Said its reports during the past fortnight :

"Of the thousands of missionaries, there are many of conspicuous power, true saintliness and a sublime spirit of devotion, men and women in whose presence one feels himself at once exalted and unworthy. The greater number seem to us of limited outlook and capacity; and there are not a few whose vision of the inner meaning of the mission has become obscured by the intricacies, divisions, frictions and details of a task too great for their powers and their hearts. . . .

"As a member of a church, sent out by a church, the missionary is prone to conceive his task as primarily that of promoting this organization. His Board, as a rule, embodies and intensifies this conception; and the missionary is likely to be dominated by the expectations of his Board. . . . The trail of self-interest within the organization lies like the trail of the serpent over the missions of Asia within our purview. . .

"Missionaries who are to go out in the future ought to leave all their sectarian baggage behind and go out to work for a unified Christianity and a universal Church . . . toward a religion focused upon the vital issues of life for the individual and for the social environment in which the individual lives."

Shall Christian Churches in the missionary field be subsidized by home churches? No, says the Commission, "no church in any land will be robust and virile until it supports itself." Burma leads the Orient, with some 80% of the Baptist churches and 50% of the Methodist on their own feet. In China and Japan, about one-third are selfsupporting; in India even less.

How much should evangelism figure in Christian missions? It should be in a subservient position, says the Commission, critical of the sort of missionaries who merely succeed in impressing a number of individuals, collect scores or hundreds of 'signatures,' count baptisms as so many substantial additions to the Church of Christ; but . . . neither see nor consider the other multitude, the more reflective and morally deeper spirits, who by this spectacle may be set against the Christian movement for the rest of their lives "

For foreign mission schools and colleges the Appraisal Commission recommends a change which has not even been made in many a U. S. institution: that "the religious life of the school should be a privilege offered, not a duty required."

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