A service was held on Friday night in several of
the Established Churches of London, to offer up special intercession with the Almighty for the increase and success of Missionary work. The move- ment is specially favoured by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the sermons seem to reveal a strong impression that Missionary work has been falling off, and that it is more and more difficult to obtain missionaries. This is true, at least as regards the Church Mission Society. And there is one explanation we should like to hear a little discussed. Has not Missionary work become too much of a profession, so that as the salaries, owing to the rise in prices, become more inadequate, volunteers become fewer? Genuine enthusiasts dislike entering what is apt to become in all but name an organised service. Our supposition may be inaccurate, but we should much like to see the experiment tried of a Mission whose agents were unpaid, and either lived on their means as several successful missionaries have done, or earned their own living as the earlier Baptist missionaries did. The present prac- tice injures the revenue of all the Missions. All experienced collectors know that where missionaries are more highly paid than the average of the working clergy or ministers at home—as is now the apparent case in India—the zeal of the Churches cools.
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