Spiritual power, in all its forms, is not only greatly needed by the missionary, it is also highly appreciated by the people who are always ready to be led by it. I believe that the people in the East are much more amenable to this influence and much more ready to follow spiritual guidance than are the people of our own land. And this, in itself, is an added reason for deep spirituality in the missionary.
5. The Missionary’s Attitude Towards the Non-Christian World.
This attitude is one of considerable importance to the missionary because it furnishes largely the motive of his life work. Before one goes out as a missionary he should acquire some definite and sound views as to the condition of the non-Christians who constitute three-fourths of our race. This means that he must decide as to his missionary motive,—what motive power shall impel him to leave his native land and go to live among a benighted people surrounded by a thousand disadvantages.
Since the organization of our missionary societies—less than a century ago—there has been an important change of emphasis in the matter of missionary motives. The progress, I might almost say revolution, in theology has worked towards this change. The recent discovery of new sciences, and the utilization of the wonderful modern means of communication whereby a new knowledge of non-Christian peoples has been made possible to us, has affected our consideration of the whole problem of missionary work and has especially modified the missionary motive. Dr. W. N. Clark, in his admirable book on Christian Missions, discusses fully this question. “The difference,” he says, “between our conception of man today and that of a century ago is mainly not that something true has fallen out of it, though that may be the fact with many minds: it is rather that immeasurably much that is true has been added to it. Unquestionably our conception of man is still incomplete, unbalanced and incorrect, but it certainly has been altered within the century by the addition of much that must remain in any true conception. Our knowledge must have experienced true and legitimate growth and from our present conception of the human world we can never go back to that which our fathers held when they began the work of modern missions ... our thought concerning our fellow-men contains elements of truth and justice that our fathers knew nothing of. The best Christian feeling towards the heathen world today is far more true, righteous, sympathetic, Christlike, than the feelings of those who were interested in missions an hundred years ago. But the single motive which, standing alone, led to the missionary enterprise has come to be so surrounded by other thoughts and motives as to lose its relative importance, and be less available than it then was as a controlling influence. This is one of the great and significant causes of the crisis in missions.”