Lord Cairns made a very good speech on Monday at
Bourne- mouth in defence of Missions, disfigured by one omission. He argued quite justly that the duty of converting the heathen must rest on all who believed Christianity, and pleaded -quite sensibly, though a little bluntly and harshly, that if we are to do the work of evangelists vicariously we must contribute in cash. But he wholly omitted to point out the per- manent drawback to that method of exertion, its tendency to turn missionary labour into a profession. He says there were once -only 120 Christians, and they converted the European world. -Quite tam, but the deduction from that is that men should become missionaries at their own charges, not that everybody should subscribe to keep them. As a system, Missionaries must be paid, but we should be more hopeful of the success of the -cause, if we saw even twenty men enter on the career who asked nothing from the community except its sympathy. There is a root of weakness in all this "organisation," unavoidable as it appears.
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