Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign MissionsAllen, Roland
Religion
Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions
Allen, Roland
Missions
If we desire to know the influence of our medical and educational work
upon the native Church we ought certainly to have a table which, for the
schools at least, would show us what proportion of the pupils who passed
through the schools became valuable members of the Church. But every one
who has had any scholastic experience, and has tried to follow the
after-history of his pupils, knows that that is not easy, even in
external and material affairs, and when the inquiry is concerned with
internal convictions and religious influence that difficulty is
insuperable. A few specially endowed and devoted educationalists could
indeed tell the after-history of a considerable number of their pupils,
and ideally all schools ought to have a record of the history of pupils
for at least a few years after leaving the school; but there would
always be a percentage of loss; in many cases that percentage would be
very high, and we doubt whether many schools have any record at all.
Under these circumstances to put into an inquiry such as that which we
propose a question concerning the after-life of scholars or patients
seems almost impossible. Yet we cannot be content. There are mission
schools which go on year after year educating boys for a business
career, and generation after generation of boys pass through the school,
large sums of mission money are expended on them, and the results _from
a missionary point of view_ are shrouded in Cimmerian gloom; or the
general darkness is relieved by one or two exceptional pupils who,
because they do very well, appear to justify the existence of the
institution in which they were educated, though they would probably have
been as valuable Christians if they had been educated in any other
school. In this way a very low average is often concealed. If a school
is judged by a few exceptionally good scholars, it should also be judged
by a few exceptionally bad ones. It is indeed of serious importance that
the missionary value of some of our medical and educational, especially
the educational, institutions should be carefully examined and tested by
an appeal to indisputable facts. It is generally supposed that education
in mission schools must necessarily produce a strong, enlightened, and
zealous Christian community. That it produces a large number of
Christians intellectually enlightened is certain: that they are zealous
evangelists is not as certain. We want a statistical table to reveal the
missionary value, not the commercial value, of the education given. But
what table can we draw? The preceding table which sets forth inquirers
and communicants is clearly insufficient though it is better than
nothing. Until every school keeps a careful record of the after-history
of at least a large number of its pupils it seems impossible to get any
clear light on the question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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