Missionaries Compared with Other Men
Are not these missionaries a remarkable series of men? Are they not to be noted as noble among the noble, as evidenced in their spirit and personal character, in their ability and attainments, and in their achievements in their sphere of life?
Yet these missionaries have not been selected from the long roll of missionaries in the foreign field because they were exceptionally noteworthy. They are simply spoken of as those among the early modern foreign missionaries whom I was brought to meet or to know, and therefore to become specially interested in. Do not they compare most favorably with the better instances of clergymen, or physicians, or lawyers, or college professors, or editors, or officers in the army or navy, or men prominent in political life, or bankers and capitalists, or manufacturers, or men who in any way influence public opinion or promote the public welfare?
Do not these specimen missionaries in their work and in their story show the baselessness and the absurdity of the too common statement that the men sent as foreign missionaries from America are men who could not have filled ehgible prominent places in home pulpits, in business life, or in any other sphere where personal ability and influence are essential?
It may be worth while in this connection to recall the estimate of missionaries in the foreign field made by men who are obviously more competent to make’ a fair estimate than the average observer. In 1860 the Earl of Shaftesbury in a public address in London, out of his wide acquaintance with the good work done and attempted in different portions of the world, said as to the American missionaries in Turkey, of whom Dr. Goodell was the pioneer:
“I do not believe that in the whole history of missions, I do not believe that in the history of diplomacy, or in the history of any negotiations carried on between man and man, we can find anything to equal the wisdom, the soundness, and the pure evangelical truth, of the body of men who constitute the American Mission [in Turkey]. I have said it twenty times before, and I will say it again — for the expression appropriately conveys my meaning — that ‘they are a marvellous combination of common sense and piety.’ Every man who comes in contact with these missionaries speaks in praise of them. Persons in authority, and persons in subjection, all speak in their favor; travellers speak well of them; and I know of no man who has ever been able to bring against that body a single vahd objection. There they stand, tested by years, tried by their works, and exemplified by their fruits; and I believe it will be found that these American missionaries have done more towards upholding the truth and spreading the gospel of Christ in the
East, than any other body of men in this or in any other age.”
And this statement is not from a fellow-countryman of these missionaries, nor from a member of the same denomination of Christians, having therefore special inducements to see the bright side of them and their work and to give it prominence. It is from an English statesman, a member of the House of Lords, and a prominent member of the Church of England. Yet it is unequivocal and unstinted while fairly won praise.
While the Earl of Shaftesbury spoke with such positiveness as he did as to the superiority of the missionaries in Turkey, an equally competent authority spoke with like hearty praise of the missionaries farther east in India. Lord Lawrence, the eminent and honored Governor-General of India, was familiar with the best work of the English in that part of their empire; and he surely would not undervalue the civil and military representatives of the government to which he looked up. He was in the service of the East India Company from the time he was twenty years old. He was knighted for his services in subduing the Sepoy mutiny, when a brother of his fell in the defense of Lucknow. After forty years of experience in India, he said unqualifiedly of the missionaries in comparison with other men: “Notwithstanding all that England has done for the good of.India, the missionaries have done more than all other agencies combined.” Could more positive or more competent testimony on this point be asked for?
Mr. W. T. Stead, who from his position and opportunities of observation as an English journalist and the editor of the Review of Reviews is familiar with the world’s progress, speaks positively as to the work and influence of these men. Although having no special preference for Americans as Americans, or for missionaries as missionaries, he sees and notes things as they are. He says that “the missions and colleges which the Americans have planted in the Turkish Empire are destined to be potent factors in shaping the future of what was once the great Byzantine Empire.” He points to the fact that the quasi-independence of Bulgaria is largely due to Robert College. The administrators and educators of that little state, and the men who framed her constitution, were trained either in Robert College or under the influence of graduates of that institution; and they have never hesitated to acknowledge their indebtedness to it. He evidently counts those missionaries above ordinary men in their ability to plan and to perform in their sphere.
As to American foreign missionaries in the Western hemisphere, at about the same time when the Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Lawrence spoke thus warmly of those in the Eastern hemisphere, the Hon. Richard H. Dana, an eminent Boston lawyer and statesman, a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, said heartily after spending some months in the Sandwich Islands, where Hiram Bingham was the pioneer missionary:
“It is no small thing to say of the missionaries of the American Board, that in less than forty years they have taught this people to read and write, to cipher and to sew. They have given them an alphabet, grammar, and dictionary j preserved their language from extinction; given them a literature, and translated into it the Bible and works of devotion, science, and entertainment, etc. They have established schools, reared up native teachers, and so pressed their work that now the proportion of inhabitants who can read is greater than in New England [and therefore far greater than in any other portion of the United States].
“And whereas they found these islanders a nation of half-naked savages, living in the surf and on the sand, eating raw fish, fighting among themselves, t)T:annized over by feudal chiefs, and abandoned to sensuality, they now see them clothed, recognizing the law of marriage, knowing something of accounts, going to school and public worship with more regularity than the people do at home, and the more elevated of them taking part in conducting the affairs of the constitutional monarchy under which they live, holding seats on the judicial bench and in the legislative chambers, and filling posts in the local magistracies.”
It is true that while Christian missions thus uplifted the standards of life and living among peoples in the Eastern and the Western hemispheres and opened their countries to the commerce and trade and manufactures of England and the United States, the money-lovers and the money-getters of the two latter countries followed the missionaries and in a measure neutralized some of their best work by rum and opium and the peculiar vices of so-called “civilization.” But this is only another illustration of the undeniable truth that the Christian missionaries of the nineteenth century were of the best and finest specimens of the peoples from whom they came out, and that while they remained abroad or when they returned to their own lands they were above the best and highest average of their countrymen.
Among the earlier American missionaries of whom sketches are herewith given, some won honor and did important service to their country and to mankind at large in the realm of statesmanship and diplomacy; as much, indeed as was done by any of the politicians or office-holders who had their entire training in home life or in a commercial sphere. Some of them gave up prominent college professorships when they went to the foreign field, and some were heartily welcomed to such professorship when after years of missionary service they returned to America. Some surrendered a lucrative practice as physicians and surgeons in prominent cities when they went out to the foreign field. Some were already successful pastors of important churches, and some who came back from missionary work were called to important pastorates in such cities as Hartford and Philadelphia and Chicago, and were there recognized as in no respect second to the best members of their profession about them.
As showing that those men were of the best and noblest stock and sort, able to compete with their best fellow-citizens in point of ability or influence, look at their children in comparison with the children of other men. It will hardly be admitted that a boy or girl born in a non-Christian land, to which missionaries ere sent ’ from the United States, had any special advantage in the place of birth. Nor even if he or she were as a child sent from a non-Christian land to the United States to receive education, can it be said that the child was thus made superior to the better class of American youth through his training. If, then, the sons and daughters of American foreign missionaries are found to be above a high average of children born and trained in the United States, it is an indisputable testimony to the superiority of the children as a class in this particular line of service.
What are the facts as to the children of the twoscore or so of American foreign missionaries before named, who were selected not because of their exceptional ability or prominence, but simply because I happened to be personally acquainted with them among the foreign missionaries of fifty years ago or more? Children of these sons of missionaries have been spoken of individually in connection with my memories of their fathers. But I now refer to them collectively, in order to show them as a class. Let such an illustration as this be taken as indicating what would be shown by. a fuller comparison of the facts in the case if we were able to make it. Let the attainments of children of missionaries born in benighted lands as they compete and compare with children of other American men of mark be accepted as an indication of their parents’ superiority. Is not such a test a fair one?
Take for example the children of missionaries born in the Turkish Empire, — not an exceptionally hopeful field. We find such men as Justice Brewer honoring a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States at the same time that he honors his father’s good name by being a prominent Bible class teacher in a well-known church in our national capital. A son of another of those missionaries to that empire, Senator Wolcott of Colorado, has graced a seat in the United States Senate and been prominent enough in the country to be Chairman of the National Convention that put in nomination President McKinley and President Roosevelt. And the sons of that missionary son have won a good name in Yale University for scholarship and athletics. That is keeping up the standard.
Still another of those missionaries to Turkey, William Goodell, of whom I have spoken, has one son who is President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, having before this promotion won a good name as an officer in our Civil War. And a brother of his was distinguished as a specialist and as a professor in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania. One daughter of his married the Rev. Dr. E. D. G. Prime, editor of the New York Observer, and another daughter was the wife of the principal of a well-known boarding-school for boys in New England. A son and a daughter of yet another of those missionaries, Isaac Bird, were prominent and successful as teachers in important educational seminaries in New England, and put their impress for good on some of the brightest students in our well-known colleges and universities. Those students stood better in after life because of their thorough training under a missionary’s son and daughter born and reared in the Turkish Empire.
A son of Henry J. Van Lennep, yet another of those missionaries in the Turkish Empire, is Dr. W.
B. Van Lennep. He is an eminent surgeon and specialist in connection with the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, while other members of this family are doing an excellent work in a well-known boarding-school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in which, among the choice workers, are members of at least three of the families of that circle of missionaries, all of them above average workers in their sphere.
And a son of Dr. William M. Thomson, another of that corps of missionaries, was a prominent professor in the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, in New York City. At the same time this son was conducting an extensive Bible class for young men in the hall of the Young Men’s Christian Association on Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, the good influence of which was felt all over the country. A son of Dr. Cyrus Hamlin began his collegiate course in Robert College, Constantinople, which his father founded. He took further courses in Amherst College, in the Institute of Technology, Boston, and in Paris. He was chosen a member of the Architectural League of New York City. He wrote a valued History of Architecture, and he became Professor of Architecture in Columbia University. He is recognized as at the forefront in his profession in America. Three of his sisters were superior among young ladies of higher education and those distinguished as raising the standard for young ladies in the United States, in well-known educational institutions. One of these daughters became the wife of President George Washburn, who has done so much for Robert College and for the world. And he won his valuable wife before he was a missionary, although he has better realized her superiority since.
The band of missionaries who went out to the Sandwich Islands three-quarters of a century and more ago, led by Hiram Bingham as I have pointed out, did not seem to have a peculiarly attractive or advantageous position for the training and educating of their children. But the children of those missionaries illustrate and evidence the superiority of their parents. Not only have those children put their impress for good as successful missionaries in Micronesia and Japan and the Spanish possessions, as have young Bingham and the Gulicks, but others of them have done more than this. They have shown their superiority in other ways. When Hawaii became an independent republic, its people chose as their first president, Sanford B. Dole, the son of Daniel Dole, one of those early missionaries.
After those islands were attached to this country, the son of a missionary was appointed by our President its Territorial Governor. When interested politicians and money-grabbers found that his patriotism and integrity were a barrier to some of their self-seeking schemes, they combined for his traducing and overthrow, and for a time they seemed successful. But President Roosevelt took the matter in hand. He sent for Governor Dole, and after a thorough examination he reappointed him Territorial Governor, as the people of the young republic had before chosen him to be their first President.
Another son of one of those early missionaries was
Samuel Chapman Annstrong. He graduated with honors from Williams College. When our Civil War broke out he enlisted in the Union Army, and doing excellent service there rose to the rank of a brigadier general of volunteers. Then in our new condition of affairs he saw the needs and met them. His missionary training among a needy people of another race made him willing to aid and to do justice to Africans and Indians, as our citizens and government have not been accustomed to in all our history. He commanded a regiment of colored troops and enabled them to do bravely in severe action. After the war he met the new issues with exceptional wisdom and in a way to command the respect and win the cooperation of both the North and the South. He founded the school for Africans and Indians at Hampton, Virginia, and one of the pupils trained and inspired in that institution was Booker T. Washington. And the wisdom and ability thus shown by one son of a Sandwich Island missionary has marked a new era in popular education in the southern portion of the United States.
President Carter of Williams College, who was a classmate of General Armstrong, said forcefully on this subject in a recent address at Hampton: “When the first missionaries sailed from Boston for the Sandwich Islands eighty years ago to begin the work of uplifting and redeeming the Hawaiian natives, not the wildest imagination could foresee that out of that movement and from one of those islands should come the force, the man, who would be to millions of helpless negroes in our southern country the uplifting into the thoughtful, loving, diligent apprehension of their own duties, into a gentle and rational patriotism.” Yet that is a part of the work of one son of a foreign missionary. Was not he above the highest average of the best stay-at-home American citizen?
Nor were merely a half-dozen of these sons of missionaries from the Sandwich Islands utterly exceptional in their superiority. It seems to be in the blood of missionaries’ sons as a class. Titus M. Coan, a son of the missionary. Dr. Titus Coan, who gathered at Oahu the largest single Christian church at that time in the world, showed his marked ability as the literary editor of The Independent, a journal of no minor grade among American periodicals. When I was in Wilhston Seminary as a student, I was in classes with a son and a daughter of William Richards, a missionary to the Sandwich Islands, who laid down his life there. I had occasion, as did others, to regret the lack of ability to keep up with them. And another son of that same family showed his superiority as a missionary in Ceylon among men of marked ability there. A similar high record was won by Hiram Thurston at Williston and at Yale. Could a like record be shown by sons of congressmen or of capitalists as a class?
To go from the West again to the East the record is similar. Of the first little band of missionaries from America to Burmah, a son of Adoniram Judson, Edward Judson, has a church in New York City that is well filled and well supported in a down-town region where most ministers born and trained in a Christian land would feel that they must move up town in order to be where are more pew-renting people. And a son of another American missionary in Burmah, whose widow Adoniram Judson married, is the Rev. Dr. George Dana Boardman, who has been pastor of prominent churches in Rochester and in Philadelphia. He appears well in comparison with the best clergymen born and trained in this country. A son of Samuel Nott, junior, who went out with Adoniram Judson, I looked up to when he was superintendent and general manager of an extensive line of railroad, of which I was paymaster. I knew enough to recognize his superiority to most men in corresponding positions on other railroads in those days.
A son of W. Frederic Williams, the missionary to Mosul, who gave such effective aid to Sir Henry Layard the explorer, is the editor of The Press in Philadelphia, and is prominent as a citizen, a literary man, an archaeologist, and a scholar. Who would be called superior to him in his varied spheres in that city? A son of a missionary in Ceylon, who was not only born but trained in the missionary schools and chief college in that mission field, came to this country as a young man, and quickly won on his merits a fine place in the corps of instructors in Yale University. Then having declined the position of president urged on him by several colleges, he finally accepted the place of Dean of the Divinity School Seminary in Yale University, and he is now recognized in this country and abroad as one of the most prominent of young and competent Old Testament scholars in America. In that same university W. Frederic Williams, a son of the eminent missionary to China, has been called to a place in the faculty, as instructor in Chinese, since the death of his honored father.
The Rev. D. W. Poor was a son of the Rev. Daniel Poor, the missionary ia Ceylon. He was born in that land and came home to compete with the best young men born and trained in this land. He stood high in Amherst College when such men as Henry Ward Beecher and Richard S. Storrs were students there. He filled pulpits in Fair Haven, Massachusetts, and in Newark, New Jersey. He was called to a professorship in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Pacific Coast, and from that post he was summoned to the position of secretary of the Board of Education of the Presbyterian Church of the United States. Dr. John Scudder and Daniel Poor were fellow-missionaries in the foreign field. Their sons were fellowclergymen in this country. Dr. Henry M. Scudder was one of the most prominent and effective pastors in Cincinnati. And from that place he was called to New York to be at the head of an important department of national work in the American Home Missionary Society. And other descendants of John Scudder the missionary, of the fourth or fifth generation, continue to show themselves worthy of their ancestor.
Of the sons of Miron Winslow, the missionary and lexicographer, one was in this country an army surgeon, and another was an able lawyer in New York City. Of the sons of Dr. John W. Dulles, the missionary in India, who married a daughter of Miron Winslow, the eldest is honored and influential in Philadelphia fire insurance circles, and is a ruling elder in the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church; and the youngest is an active member of the Stock Exchange in that city. Another son is, while a practicing physician, connected with the medical faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. A fourth son is a Presbyterian clergyman, having a place in connection with the Theological Seminary in the University of Princeton. A iifth was for years Treasurer of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, is in an influential position in connection with railroad management, and is a ruling elder in the well-known Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York City. A sixth son did an important work in building up a new church on the borders of Detroit, Michigan. Then he was called to the pastorate of a large and influential church in Watertown, in northern New York. He was my associate in Oriental travel. He married a daughter of Hon. John W. Foster, who was our United States Secretary of State, having before this been our ambassador at several European capitals, and who was asked by the Chinese Empire to represent it in making peace with Japan after the unequal war between those two nations. It was a child of the third generation in that missionary family who at eight years old attracted public attention by his remarkable little book on “The Boer War,” written by him in order to secure funds for the Boer Relief Committee. The position taken by him was the opposite of that which he had heard defended in his family circle.
This is by no means a complete record of the distinguished children of American missionaries; nor is it the best record that could be made by one picking
Missionaries Compared With Other Men 247
out the best names on the whole list. It is merely an indication of what would be shown by the facts in the case if we had them all before us. I have spoken out of my personal knowledge of a limited field of labor and of laborers in foreign missionary service. An examination of the records of a wider field would be yet more surprising and convincing.
In short, the facts show unmistakably that so far from there being any basis for the common sneer of the uninformed that men are sent abroad as missionaries who are unable to win a good position at home, quite the opposite is the truth. Missionaries in the foreign field have been and still are, as a class, superior to most in the fields of literature, of scholarship, of finance, of commerce, of politics, of government, and of other spheres. This is beyond fair dispute, and the claim is sustained by incontestable evidence.