missions has
not been the one dominant directing principle in their administration,
and the consequences have been confusion of aim and waste of power. Nor
has any other dominant purpose taken control; no other purpose,
philanthropic, social, or economic, ever will take control so long as
the vast majority of the supporters of foreign missions are people whose
one real desire is the salvation of men in Christ. But the admission of
another purpose has blurred the aim.

Because they have been pioneers in education, missions earn large praise
and not in-considerable support from governors and philanthropists; but
they have sometimes paid for these praises and grants dearly in
confusion of aim. Many of them started with the intention of relating
their educational work very closely to their evangelistic work; but
because the evangelistic idea was not dominant, a government grant
sometimes led the educational mission far from its first objective.
Similarly, the establishment of great educational institutions altered
the whole policy of a mission over very large areas, because no dominant
purpose controlled the action of the mission authorities. The
institutions demanded such large support, financial and personal, that
when once they had been founded they tended to draw into themselves a
very large proportion of the best men who joined the mission. In this
way a great educational institution has often altered the policy of a
mission to an extent which its original founders never anticipated, and
a mission which was designed primarily to be an evangelistic mission has
been compelled not only to check advance, but even to withdraw its
evangelistic workers and to close its outstations. But that was not the
intention of the founders of the institution. The difficulty arose
because there was no dominant purpose which governed the direction of
the mission. There was no purpose so strong and clear that it could
prevent the foundation of, or close when founded, an institution which
was leading it far from its primary object.

Again it is notorious that what we call the work of the evangelistic
missionary is so manifold and variegated that it includes every kind of
activity, every sort of social and economic reform. Our evangelistic
missionaries are busy about everything, from itinerant preaching to the
establishment of banks and asylums. Can we afford it? What purpose is
dominant, what aim really governs the policy of those who send