progress towards self-support is simply a
progress towards a line which the foreigner prescribes. Just as each
father among us here in England, according to his class and standard of
living, fixes a standard for his son, saying, "When he earns so much he
will be able to maintain himself," so the society, or the individual
missionary, fixes the standard for converts. In this case, the foreigner
insisted on the salary for the pastor, he created the building, its
ornaments and expenses; and where this is done the day of self-support
must be more or less delayed. More or less, for what one man considers
abundant another thinks hardly decent, simply because each has learnt in
a different school different ideas of what is necessary or desirable.
Consequently one man makes the day of self-support easy of attainment,
another loudly proclaims that his people are so poor that they cannot
possibly be expected to provide for themselves.

Furthermore, we must observe that in the first case the converts
arrived speedily at self-support because the foreign missionary never
for a moment allowed them to be anything else, whilst in the second the
missionary provided what he thought necessary until such time as the
Church was sufficiently wealthy to pay for it. The one Church decided
for itself what it needed, and what it needed it took the necessary
steps to supply: the other accepted what was given to it and was asked
to subscribe more and more to pay for it. But when the provision is
first made largely from some more or less mysterious foreign source, the
converts will never subscribe to a fund so organised as they will to a
fund which they raise and administer themselves to supply what they
themselves want, and cannot have unless they provide the necessary money
to get it. Self-support then, as the word is most commonly used, means
anything but genuine self-support, and does not represent the power of
the people to supply their needs. It means only the subscription of
money sufficient to pay for certain things which are more or less
arbitrarily fixed by the missionary or his society.

Neither is it any sure evidence of the zeal and liberality of the Church
which is called self-supporting. The existence of self-supporting
churches is indeed sometimes used as an argument to show that the Church
is growing in this Christian virtue. But this is largely deceptive. The
existence of self-supporting churches does not necessarily prove
Chris