What Have Foreign Missions Done for Us?
It is an important and a most suggestive truth which Narayan Sheshadri, a Hindoo Brahmin, brought to our attention when he pointed out the fact that American Christians owe their civilization and enlightenment, and their personal and social prosperity and prospects, to the efforts of Christian foreign missionaries, who sought out our ancestors, in their heathenism and degradation and hopelessness, and rescued and uplifted them. In view of this fact it were well worth our while to consider what we personally owe to that cause whose representatives and exponents secured to us, as a free and love-inspired gift, all that we have which we count worth having or worth living for.
Were our ancestors really worth saving, at the cost of their rescue from heathenism, as indicated by their descendants as they are? No people that our ancestors included were uplifted and civiUzed unless Christian or Jewish missions went in advance of commerce and education. Every primitive people and every country known of in the world’s history had to be first reached from outside before renovation began to work inside. Foreign missionaries must ever precede home missions. That is God’s order j and that is man’s necessary method.
Even the Jews and the Hebrew race owed their beginning as a civilized and a civilizing people to the rescue of their founder. Father Abram, or Abraham, began this in Canaan when he came out from a land of pagan idolaters to become a recognized worshipper of the One God. As their leader Joshua said to the Israelites at Shechem, “Your fathers dwelt of old-time beyond the river [the Euphrates]: and they served other gods.” As to all Christians made by faith partakers of the promises to Abraham and his seed, from the days of Paul and Barnabas earliest Christian foreign missionaries to Gentile heathen west of Palestine — Abraham’s mission field — all Christian peoples including our ancestors are recipients, and trophies of successful foreign missionary workers and work.
But apart from these undeniable and sweeping statements of the world-wide benefits accruing from the work of early foreign missionaries, it will certainly be well for intelligent and thoughtful persons to consider the immediate and practical benefits resulting to all from modern Christian missions and from the special labors and the ability shown in those labors of Christian foreign missionaries during the century last passed. In this way alone is it that we can gain the knowledge essential to a fair answering of the practical question. What have foreign missions done for us at home?
In the first place it may confidently be said that American and European foreign missionaries have done more to enable Americans and Europeans generally to understand the Bible — the Book of books — and thus to be enabled to profit by its all-important teaching, than have all other scholars and classes of scholars in all the centuries combined. As has been pointed out the Bible was so written that it not only needed translation out of the original Hebrew and Chaldaic and Greek languages into the language of any new people to be helped by it; but the land and the peoples considered in it, and which is the only key to much of its figurative language and teachings, must be understood and translated in order to make some of its most important lessons not only forceful but intelligible. And it is just here that modern foreign missionaries have done so much good to American and European stay-at-homes.
The “Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mt. Sinai, and Arabia Petraea,” by Dr. Edward Robinson and Eli Smith, first published in 1833, was the first book of its kind, or in its sphere, to be both scientific and popular so as to become an authority in the English-speaking world and in all Occidental climes; and this book owes its inspiration, its completeness, and its accuracy, to American missionaries in Palestine and Syria. Dr. Edward Robinson, a professor in Union Theological Seminary and a scholar interested in Bible geography, visited the American missionaries in Beyroot. As he talked with them on themes of common interest he was urged by them to make a tour of Palestine and adjacent countries, with a view to a more careful study of localities, and to more thorough and accurate writing about them than was then extant. As an inducement to this undertaking, Dr. Eli Smith, who was at the time the best Occidental Arabic scholar living, and also one of the best informed Occidental scholars as to the localities to be considered, promised to accompany and aid him.
Other missionaries, including Dr. William M. Thomson and Rev. Isaac Bird, gave valuable assistance in the way of their personal guidance in certain regions and in furnishing accurate maps of important districts which they had surveyed and studied. As a result we have what is known as “Robinson’s Biblical Researches,” which the world values, and for which the most competent and intelligent scholars are most grateful, while the ordinary Bible reader has occasion to value the practical aid given to him in locating and explaining Bible places and names. In these later days we have the careful and extensive reports of the “Palestine Exploration Fund” and Palmer’s “Desert of the Exodus”; but these are an outgrowth and an extension of the missionaries’ first work, and give full credit to the work that was their pioneer and basis.
As illustrative of the thoroughness and accuracy of the first work, I was told in London at the East India House, by Trelawney Saunders, the hydrographer or map and chart drawer of the East India Company, that he could draw or plot a map from one of Robinson’s descriptions of a locality or route traversed by him. And he added that this was the only book of travels he had ever read of which he could say this. Moreover, the site and the significance of many Bible places, from Mt. Harmon to Mt. Sinai, and from the “River of Egypt” to Arabia Petrsea, are identified and made clear by these travels and their descriptions. These Biblical researches are in fact another Bible translation into Occidental vernacular made by missionary scholars.
Reference has already been made to the suggestion that Palestine is in a sense the “Fifth Gospel “; and to the fact that Dr. William M. Thomson an American foreign missionary, has given to the world the most important and trustworthy commentary on the “Fifth Gospel” in his invaluable work “The Land and the Book.” Scores of other books are now available by popular writers and travellers who have been prompted to an imitation of, or to an addition to, this popular commentary on the “Fifth Gospel” which Dr. Thomson gave to them. And the constant repetition of this kind of popular Bible illustration and Bible explanation supplied by writers in the periodical press in the way of helpful Orientalisms is but added evidence of our indebtedness to foreign missionaries for fuller light on the sacred pages; for the information is primarily almost entirely from the missionaries.
No student or teacher of the Bible thinks of getting on in his Bible study or of preparing for his teaching of the Bible without having access to a Bible Dictionary. Yet few are aware how large a portion of the best Bible dictionaries have been compiled from the writings of modern foreign missionaries. For instance. Smith’s Bible Dictionary and Alexander’s Kitto were until recently the best works of this kind.
And missionaries are the principal authorities, and are announced as such, for the facts as to Bible lands and Bible customs.
Moreover, the Bible itself has been newly translated into more languages and dialects within the past century by missionaries in foreign fields than it had been translated by all other scholars in fifteen centuries before. And in connection with these Bible translations, lexicons and grammars, and other aids to linguistic study, have been prepared by the missionaries, — such for instance, as the colossal “Comprehensive Tamil and English Dictionary of High and Low Tamil”; “A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language”; “A Tonic Dictionary of the Canton Dialect”; “An English and Chinese Vocabulary in the Court Dialect,” already described; and scores of other needed lexicons; so that actually no student of comparative philology with its important involvings can pursue his studies without referring frequently to this branch of work performed by competent and faithful English-speaking missionaries in the foreign field. In this way as in many others these missionaries have performed valuable service for not only pagan, and heathen, and other non-Christian peoples whom they seek, but all thoughtful and studious persons — even though they lack an interest in, or an appreciation of, the Book of books.
Philology owes much. to missionaries. Scores of different peoples have no written language except as the missionaries gave it to them. John Eliot did this for the Algonquins. Hiram Bingham and his helpers did it for the Hawaiians. James Calvert did it for the Fiji cannibals. James G. Paton did it for the people of the New Hebrides. The same was done for the peoples of Micronesia, and again for peoples in South and West and Equatorial Africa. Comparative philology owes much to the study and comparison of such languages. And much light has thus been shed on anthropology by the new material and data for students of the history of early men and races.
Similarly are we indebted to foreign missionaries for service and suggestion in many another line of study, such as primitive cults and beginnings of the race in various portions of the globe. Not merely Christian believers, but persons of all beliefs or of none, must depend very largely on the researches and the writings of modern Christian missionaries in the foreign fields, whether information be desired in order to illuminate Christian truth or be sought for the purpose of discrediting Christianity. No one can ever make a show of knowledge while he attacks Christianity unless he goes for help to the writings of Christian missionaries in outlying fields.
Not merely the understanding of the Bible, but Oriental research generally, has owed much to the missionaries. Prof William D. Whitney, the Nestor of Oriental scholarship and philology in America, known and honored the world over, said, in a meeting of the American Oriental Society in 1867: “I have a strong realization of the value of missionary labor to science. The American Oriental Society has been much dependent on them for its usefulness. There would hardly be occasion for the society at all but for them. I have heard the manager of one of the great Oriental societies abroad speak with admiration of the learning, good sense, and enterprise of American missionaries, and lament that those from his own land were so decidedly their inferiors.” Karl Ritter, the world’s geographer, says explicitly that he could never have written his epoch-making work, the “Erdkunda” without the aid furnished by missionaries.
If a man has occasion, as I have often had in the line of my studies of primitive life, to examine with care such a voluminous work as Herbert Spencer’s “Principles of Sociology” with its accompanying charts of “Groups of Sociological Facts,” he will be surprised to find how much such a man as Herbert Spencer seems to rely on the writings of Christian missionaries in distant and out-of-the-way portions of the world for the facts with which he seeks to sustain his theories. Or if a man pursues his studies, as I have frequently been called to, in the valuable library of the American Geographical Society referring to its several alcoves devoted to particular portions of the globe, he will learn, as he might not otherwise, how much of our trustworthy information of many peoples of earth has been first brought to us by Christian missionaries in those fields. The work, by Dr. Justus DooUttle, and Dr. John L. Nevius and Archdeacon Gray, on the social life and customs of the Chinese, and on particular phases of Chinese life, already spoken of, are illustrations of the work constantly being done by missionaries to extend our sphere and measure of knowledge so as to be of more power for good to ourselves and our fellows in the line of commerce and civilization and personal attainment and possession.
Much of our knowledge of China and Japan and Korea and Siam, and our pleasantest and most profitable relations with those countries, have been secured through the efforts and influence of Christian missionaries with their medical knowledge and skill and their unselfish and tactful endeavors to promote the welfare of individuals and the right relations of communities; and this is in addition or as incidental to the fundamental and all-important work of the missionaries in winning souls to the Saviour. A reference to the recorded labors of such men as S. Wells Williams, and Peter Parker, and S. R. Brown, and Yung Wing and Joseph Neesima, and such missionaries and fruits of missionary work in these fields, and to the unstinted and hearty acknowledgments of help given by such impartial diplomatic representatives of the nations as Li Hung Chang and Commodore Perry and Hon. John W. Foster, our eminent Secretary of State and Ambassador, sufficiently illustrate the abounding and all-sufficient evidence in this sphere.
In Western Asia as in Eastern our pleasantest relations with countries having power there have been largely the result of the labors and influence of Christian missionaries. And the essential aid given by missionaries to travellers and discoverers, who have added to our important knowledge and to the world’s acquaintance with man’s earlier centuries, is something that must ever be considered when estimating what foreign missionaries have done for us, in addition to declaring the gospel to those who need it. Among great modern explorers in the cradle of the human race, Sir Austin Bayard and Professor Dr. Hilprecht stand out as eminent, and both of them bear glad testimony to their indebtedness to Christian missionaries in the line of their important scientific labors. In 1902 Dr. Hilprecht, in reporting some of the important archjeological discoveries of Dr. Belck, the German explorer, speaks warmly on this point, “Like myself Dr. Belck enjoyed the unbounded hospitality of our American missionaries at Talas, who have proved a great blessing to many other European and American scholars visiting Asia Minor.” And this is in the line of the general testimony.
It was Dr. William Wright, a Christian missionary from the north of Ireland to the Jews in and about Damascus, who first pointed out as a scholar and explorer remains of the Hittites, long one of the great world-powers standing between Assyria and Egypt; and this discovery of Dr. Wright’s has led to great changes in the face of now known history concerning Syria, Canaan, and Egypt. We should be in sad ignorance of important history but for that discovery by a foreign missionary. In Turkey, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Ceylon, and other Asiatic countries, the same may be said of what we have gained from missionaries, aside from, or in addition to, their service to the spiritual welfare of mankind.
In Africa, as in Asia, we have gained through Christian missionaries opening up to us and to the world vast regions inaccessible before. But for the labors and the influence of William Moffat and
David Livingstone and Daniel Lindlay and Aldin Grout, English and Dutch soldiers would not have had the high privilege in South Africa of cutting each others’ throats; nor would selfish stay-at-homes even know — if indeed they do now — that there was anything there worth all this strife and carnage. So also as to the regions of Western and Northern and Equatorial Africa.
Among the islands of the sea it is much the same as in the lands of the great continents. Whatever in them is really valuable, even for this world and for the present life, as in the line of material prosperity, is due to foreign missions; while the drawbacks and hindrances in the line of rum and opium and the peculiar vices and diseases of “Christian” lands are a result of commerce and “civilization.” This is illustrated in the Sandwich Islands, as they were when the missionaries first went to them in comparison with the condition to which the missionaries brought them, and as they now are as a valued possession of our great republic. A reference to the sketch of Hiram Bingham the first missionary to those Islands and to the testimony of Hon. Richard H. Dana, is sufficiently suggestive in this line. Micronesia, Tahiti, the Fiji Islands, Terra del Fuego, Borneo, and other islands of the sea occasionally being visited by explorers, or written about as out-of-the-way portions of the earth, or of the sea, are objects of interest because of what missionaries have said of them, and they are capable of being visited or explored as a result of the missionary labors already attempted or accomplished.
The story of Bishop Patteson of New Zealand, and of Dr. John G. Paton of the New Hebrides, sufficiently illustrates the truth as to the constant conflict between light and darkness — both social and moral — which goes on in all the islands of the sea and all other missionary lands. One of the most touching and suggestive incidents of missionary experience that has ever come to my knowledge in the years of my varied life, was that of the venerable John G. Paton turning aside from his prolonged life-struggle with heathenism in the New Hebrides to make a journey to Great Britain and the United States, in order to implore these Christian governments to restrain their money-seeking and man-destroying traders from ruining his converts from heathenism by actually forcing rum and its attendant evils on the islands of his missionary charge; and it is indeed encouraging to know that these appeals of a hero foreign missionary have resulted in definite action by our American government in favor of right doing towards the lands pleaded for.
Exploration and commerce owe more to missions and missionaries than missions and missionaries owe to exploration and commerce. First that which gives life and inspires it; then that which is a result and gain of new and inspired life. There is not even on the lower plane material advantage to humanity in free intercourse with idolaters and cannibals, before they have been shown the advantages of a higher and better life than their lowest and worst. The history of mankind tends to but one lesson as to the true order of human progress and profit.
The real hope of the world is rather Christian missions than commerce and civilization and godless education. Thus it has been, thus it is, and thus it is likely to continue to be. In view of the struggle that goes on as it does, and of the gain that has already come to us as individuals and as citizens, we may well consider whether we have thus far done our part in return for the personal benefits that we have received from and through foreign missions. We should be poor indeed were we to be now deprived of what we have already thus gained.
So it is a simple question of paying our honest debts that we have to consider to start with. After that it will be time for us to consider the question of gratuitous giving to a good cause. Yet there might be a question whether the existing agencies for the employment of foreign missionaries could use or would need just now, any more money than would be at their disposal if the honest debts to them by money-making stay-at-homes were paid in, and put at their disposal. That is a matter worth thinking about. It has been occupying my mind of late, and I find it a profitable theme of thought.