sion institutions must
be pecuniarily within the means of the Orient and within the limits of its
ambitions. I ought to say that no mission, to my knowledge, carries out
this principle in its integrity, although there are some missionaries who
urge it and proclaim it at all times.

The other party believes that the principal duty and highest privilege of
a mission, as such, is not immediately to seek self-support or to pare
everything down to the capacity of the people to give; but to push forward
the work energetically; with economy indeed, but regardless of expense,
knowing that vigour and enterprise and a strenuous Western energy today
will be both amply rewarded in results and will also set a pace for the
native Church in coming years. They therefore seek the best trained agents
regardless of the immediate ability of the people to pay their salary. And
they establish schools and hospitals and various other institutions which
are altogether beyond the present ability of the Indian Church either to
found or to maintain.

We must not forget that self-support, _entire_ self-support, is possible
in any mission from the very first day of its organization, if the mission
only makes this paramount and has the boldness of its convictions to shape
its work according to the offerings of the people. And there are some
advantages to that method. Many of the best missionaries have often felt
that they would like to try that system in India. Bishop Thoburn, while
maintaining that it would be impossible to radically change the method of
an old mission, expressed the conviction that it might be well to
establish in India a new mission on the basis of complete self-support
from the beginning. This, doubtless, was the Pauline method; and it
operated well under the then existing circumstances in those lands. And
had our missions in the East been established and conducted by the Orient
instead of the Occident they would have had adequate patience to pursue
the method of self-support _ab initio_. But as we are of the West,
Western, our missions must partake of the characteristics of our nature;
and be imbued with that energy, push, impatience for results which
distinguish us in everything. I am sure that neither the churches at home
nor their missionaries abroad are prepared to limit their efforts by the
poverty, slowness and apathy of the East, and thus perhaps delay for
years, or generations, the results which, through the expenditure