Medical Missions

What new conditions of success are found in the recent development of medical missions! In the Acts of the Apostles, two great aids were granted to the witnessing Church: first, the gift of tongues which fitted the heralds to reach strange peoples without the slow mastery of a foreign speech; and, secondly, the gift of Jiealing which made even opponents favourably disposed toward the herald who first brought such help to the body. In a natural way, the lack of these supernatural gifts is now compensated. Christian scholarship has so far outrun the best learning and training of those earlier days, that grammars and dictionaries of all the leading languages and dialects can be supplied to the student; Morrison could study Chinese in London and Schwartz could learn Tamil at Halle, and Keith Falconer, Arabic at Cambridge — before China, India or Arabia were reached.

Within the hundred years past, at least one hundred tongues that had before no literature, not even an alphabet, have by missionaries been reduced to writing. And the Word of God, in over three hundred dialects, now, like a perpetual Pentecost, speaks to the nations, so that each man may in his own tongue read the wonderful works of God. This reduction of the world’s languages to a written form, to a scientific form, is God’s modern gift of tongues.

And the medical mission, now finding entrance into all fields, and itself having, in many, as at Corea, held the key that unlocked the doors of entrance — what is this but God’s modern gift of healing, which is to go before the gospel to dispose men by the help given their bodies to hear the words which, to all the woes and wants of sinsick souls, bring health!

Medical missions have great capacity of service, both as a means, and as an end. As an end they displace existing systems of so-called medicine, positively useless to reach disease, and positively harmful and cruel to patients. How Christian medical science relieves bodily suffering is shown by such work as that of Dr. Grant in Persia, Dr. Kerr in China, Dr. Post in Syria, and scores of other most successful medical missionaries. No more wonderful story has been written in modern days than that of the St. John’s Hospital at Beirut, as given to the World’s Conference in 1888. But medical missions are also a means to a higher end. They are destructive of superstition and idolatry, for false faiths are so bound up with false science, that to attack one is to attack the other, and they must go down together. The ignorant devotee who finds that his medicine men and conjurors have only been adding to his pains and sufferings, and that the Christian doctor both brings help and cure, naturally feels drawn to the new faith he teaches; and so medical missions are not only destructive of superstition and false religion, but they are constructive of a new faith and life. God is now singularly using this new agency both as a handmaid to the gospel and as a power to unbar long shut gates to the ambassador of Christ. The healing art is still the preparation for conversion to the great Healer.

The sudden emphasis, so singularly laid on medical missions within the last sixty years, has solved one of the greatest problems of missions. Of course there has never been a period in which preaching of the gospel has not been closely allied to the healing art. Mackay, of Uganda, was right when he said, that “All genuine missionary work must be in the highest sense a healing work.” Body, soul and spirit have all been poisoned and diseased by sin, and redemption must bring salvation to the whole man. We cannot sever sin from sickness, and we cannot but feel that there is more than a link of language between holiness and wholeness, or health. Christ went about preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of disease; and in commissioning the seventy and the twelve, healing the sick was conjoined with saving souls.

Yet as a feature of missions, the medical mission is just sixty years old. The first regularly trained and designated medical missionary was Dr. Peter Parker, who, in 1834, went to Canton, under commission of the American Board; followed shortly after by Benjamin Hobson, sent out by the London Society to Macao.

Dr. Christlieb has called attention to the fact that it was an English physician, Gabriel Boughton, M.D., who really laid in the East the foundations of British civilization and dominion nearly 260 years ago. In 1636, a princess of the great Mogul’s court was badly burned, and he was the means of her cure. Whereupon, in his magnanimity declining all personal compensation, he asked as his reward only that his countrymen might have leave to trade with the great Indian Empire. And so the healing art spoke the magic word which caused the iron doors to swing open. Was not Dr. Otis R. Bacheler, sent out to Orissa by the Free Baptists, also one of the first missionary physicians?

The Medical Missionary Society of Edinburgh multiplied its income more than fourfold in the ten years from 1871 to 1881. Before 1861, the number of missionary physicians in all heathen lands did not exceed twenty; and ten years later, not over double that number. Seven years after, the number closely approached one hundred; and in another seven years, there were nearly two hundred regularly qualified medical missionaries; by this time, ten years later, that number has again about doubled. And yet, how inadequate! New York City alone has 3,000 doctors, or one to about five hundred people: the unevangelized world has about one to every three millions! *

* It may be well, in order to make these statements and statistics, so far as practicable, complete up to date, to add, that the British missionary societies, in 1893, reported 139 fully qualified physicians engaged in mission work, of whom 13 were women. The Medical Missionary Record of New York, after gathering with great care a list of all medical missionaries in the world, gave in 1893, the following as facts:

There were in the entire world field, up to 1893, 359 fully qualified medical missionaries, of whom 74 were women.

Presbyterian Church, U. S., has

Methodist Church, ...-. — 30
C. M. S., - - - - -• - - - 25

Free Church of Scotland, - - - - - - 20

United Presbyterian Church, — 10

Church of Scotland, - - -

Presbyterian Church, Canada,

This list apportions: to the U. S.,

*■” to Great Britain,

“” to Canada,

“” to Germany, -

As to Countries, China has
“” India,

“” Africa.

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