How to overcome all these obstacles and develop a liberal, self-supporting spirit in the native church is a difficult problem with which the mission boards are at present grappling. The Congregational Church has more nearly solved it than any other, yet its number of independent churches fell off considerably during the past year. The native church must not be judged too harshly for its failure in self-support. It has not yet been educated in giving as the home churches have, and its resources are very limited. Most of its members are exceedingly poor and have all they can do to provide for the support of themselves and families. Our proper attitude toward them in this matter is one of patience, sympathy, and help. How shall the native church be provided with a competent ministry? This is a perplexing question to the churches in the home lands; how much more so in a mission field! It is necessary to provide pastors, evangelists, catechists, teachers, Bible-women, etc.--a whole army of workers. {296} The first question in this connection is, How is the material to be provided? Shall bright, active boys who seem adapted to the work be selected out of the mission schools and especially trained for this work at the expense of the mission, without waiting for a divine call? This is the usual method, but it is far from satisfactory. Such, not having sought the ministerial office, do not feel its dignity and responsibility as much as those who are brought into it by a personal call. Some of the brightest and most promising, after having been educated at the expense of the mission, are easily enticed into other callings. Men so chosen and educated are very apt to consider themselves, and to be considered by others, as simply paid agents of the mission. Often their labors are performed in a mere routine and perfunctory manner, they evidently caring more for employment than for conversions. These are serious objections, and yet many good and noble men have been so trained; it does seem that in the early stages of mission work there is hardly any other way of providing a native ministry. So soon as a native church is developed, with its accompanying Christian sentiment, the personal call to the ministry can be relied upon to furnish the material. An effort is then made by most of the larger missionary bodies to give a broad training to many men, and to rely upon a {297} certain number, in answer to a divine call, seeking the ministerial office. In this way the mission schools supply a portion of the theological students, but in Japan the larger portion are not graduates of the mission schools.