MISSIONARY EFFORT AND CHURCH PARTIES.
THE Report of the Committee of the Lambeth Confer- ence on Foreign Missions deals with a subject which Englishmen, do what they will, cannot quite ignore. They may dislike, or distrust, or despise missionaries, but, brought as they are in contact with them in every part of the world, they cannot but accept them as a fact. Nor, if they have any religious sense, can they wholly put aside the religious condition of the various races now compre- hended in the British Empire. To put it on the lowest ground, they must sometimes ask themselves, Is it best for our new subjects that they should retain their own religions, or accept Christianity, or remain hung up between the two states and so have no religion at all ? No serious politician can dismiss this question as one unworthy of consideration. He may be an agnostic of the purest water, but he cannot shut his eyes to the great part which the ideas he himself has outgrown are still playing in human affairs. The moment this is admitted he is forced to give missions and missionaries a distinct place in his thoughts. We are confronted in India at this moment by the consequences of a decision taken years ago on this very point. We have brought up a small section of the population in entire detachment from religious influences. The Baboo has shaken himself free of the religion of his fathers without assimilating the religion of his conquerors. Is the result one with which it is possible to feel entire satisfaction ? It was inevitable, we suppose, that the Lambeth Com- mittee should say nothing about the curious fact that in the Church of England missionary fervour burns much more hotly among Evangelicals than among High Churchmen. This omission is merely an incident in the decorous determination of dignified ecclesiastics not to recognise the existence of parties in the Church of England. The utmost they can bring themselves to speak of is "schools of thought." But as the undignified laity are not hampered in this way they wed not ignore the obvious superiority of the Church Missionary Society over the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the matter of subscriptions. In part, no doubt, this is due to the marked distinction there is between the aim and working of the two Societies. The Church Missionary Society is a frankly partisan Society ; the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel is, in theory at least, the very reverse. The one originates and supports missions ex- clusively of its own way of thinking ; the other leaves the complexion of each mission to be determined by the Bishop of the diocese in which it is situated, or by the particular missionaries who compose it. There are many excellent, and wealthy, ladies throughout England who would draw their purse-strings very much tighter if they were not assured that the truth taught by the Church Missionary Society is the truth as it is in " dear Mr. So-and-So." Subscribers to the Society for the Propaga- tion of the Gospel lack this incentive to liberality. The religion they help to spread will be simply the religion of the Church of England, and this as interpreted by in- dividual missionaries may easily include much that they are not at all anxious to spread. Still, this explanation does not cover the whole ground. If it were only greater theological definiteness that were wanting, the various special missions that have been founded on distinctly High Church lines would be better supported than they are. There would be a contest among High Churchmen whether the Universities Mission to Central Africa, or the Oxford Mission to Calcutta, or the work of the Cowley Fathers at Poona should show the best balance-sheet. We are not aware, however, that the missionary zeal of High Churchmen has taken this competitive form.
There is another explanation which also covers a part of the field, though only a part. It is that of late years circumstances have tended to the concentration of Evangelical zeal upon foreign missions. Though the Evangelicals as a party are very far from that painless extinction which many people at one time thought they foresaw for them, the drift of things at home has undoubtedly made for the High Church party. There are, of course, many instances to the contrary, but we need only note the complaints that fill the correspon- dence columns of Evangelical newspapers to see that the diffusion of High Church opinions and High Church practices is both wide and increasing. The flowing tide of which we have heard so often is for the moment with the High Church party. One result of this is that the zeal of Evangelical young men is rather deadened. An enthusiastic candidate for orders looks out for a title, and sees many of the incumbents who would once have suited him advertising for a " moderate" man, a man "of no party views," a man of "sound Church principles." These are not the qualifications he has to offer ; indeed, he would despise himself if he could so much as wish to offer them. But if he turns to the Church Missionary Society he finds an immediate welcome. Moderation, absence of party views, sound Church principles, are not held in very high veneration in Salisbury Square. Nor, indeed, is it to be desired that they should be held in very high veneration where missions are concerned. They may be excellent things in their place, but that place is not in the van of a forlorn hope. Consequently, the heroism that sent Mr. Lowden or Mr. Doffing to evangelise a slum in London or Portsmouth more often takes their Evangelical counterparts to Africa or China ; and the zeal of the Evangelical party more and more concentrates itself on the great organisation which gives these ardent spirits the means and opportunity of work.
There remains a third, and, as we believe, a more vital and far-reaching, explanation of the different attitude of the two great parties in the Church of England than either of those we have mentioned. It is that the High Church party has been more leavened by the change of mental attitude towards the non-Christian world which has fol- lowed upon the decay of old-fashioned orthodoxy. Seventy years ago religious people had very little doubt upon the ultimate fate of the heathen. At that time missionary effort was simply an effort to rescue people from hell. The non-Christian world deserved hell, and, unless Christians interfered, was sure to get what it deserved. A nobler view of the divine nature and a more accurate perception of the vast variety of human character have greatly weakened both the force and the extension of this theory. Christians have bethought themselves that every soul will be separately judged, and that this judgment will be in strict accordance with each soul's separate re- sponsibility. We do not mean that this change is confined to any one party in the Church. But we suspect that its practical influence has been very much greater among High Churchmen than among Evangelicals, and if we are right in thus thinking, it is evident that this difference goes a long way towards accounting for their different estimate of missions to the heathen. The man who has undergone itwill be likely to think much more of the uncertainty of missionary.enterprise, of the very limited success with which it often has to be content—and that not in amount only, but in quality—of the greater responsibility which the knowledge of a higher creed lays upon the convert, of the absence of any correlative probability that his conduct, will improve with his knowledge. Is it not wiser, the man we are thinking of will be tempted to ask himself, to leave the heathen alone rather than try to effect conver- sions of the value and consequences of which we know so little ? We are quite aware what answer he will give to this inquiry. He will say at once that we have nothing to do with consequences, that missions are undertaken in obedience to a direct command of Christ, and that the- duty of his followers is to obey, not to reason. But ideas that have been formally rejected will often remain to exercise a paralysing influence upon those to whom they have occurred, and this is the function we are disposed to assign to them in the present instance. Those who. have gone through the process will not cease to work for missions, but they will work languidly,—with less enthusiasm, with less self-devotion, with a greater dis- position to recognise the superior claims of work at home.. It is quite true that none of these things need happen. There was never a more ardent missioner than St. Paul, yet St. Paul knew as well as the most intellectual of - contemporary Christians that "them that are with- out God judgeth," that every man stands or falls to his own master. But, then, to St. Paul the Gospel meant not only escape from a great danger, but entrance into a great inheritance. He burned to make converts in order that they might become sharers in the effect conversion had had upon himself in this life, irrespective of any safeguards it might furnish for the life to come. He had a, sense of the joy of religion which his spiritual descendants seem often to want. No doubt it may be hard to keep it alive amid the noise of the- " machinery in motion" of subscription-lists and standing committees. But where it is absent we need seek no further for the cause of a decline in missionary zeal.
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