se the
moral character of the man who made such a survey.

2. The survey here treated of is missionary survey, that is to say, it
treats of missions and is governed by a missionary purpose. And it is a
survey of Christian missions; therefore it is governed by the purpose of
spreading the knowledge of Christ. This statement is of great importance
and needs to be carefully conned before it is accepted, because by it
missionary survey will be distinguished from all other survey. For
instance, medical boards survey medical institutions. Their sole
concern is whether those institutions are well found and efficient.[1]
But when a missionary surveys a missionary hospital (if the principle
which we propound is accepted), he surveys it not _qua_ medical
establishment but _qua_ missionary utensil. The object is not to find
out the medical efficiency of the hospital, but its missionary
effectiveness. It may be answered that a medically inefficient hospital
cannot be truly effective from a missionary point of view. That may be
true; but it is not certainly true. Whether it is true or not, that does
not alter the fact that an efficient medical establishment is not
necessarily effective from a missionary point of view; it is not
necessarily either missionary or Christian at all. Then to survey
medical missions simply as medical institutions is to ignore their real
significance. Missionary survey must relate the information asked for to
the missionary purpose; and unless it is so related the survey is a
medical survey, not a missionary survey. The same holds good of
educational work, and of pastoral work.

[Footnote 1: We could produce surveys of medical and educational mission
work which are essentially of this character, dealing solely with
medical and educational efficiency.]

3. The survey here proposed is designed for all societies so far as the
societies can be persuaded to supply the information. It would perhaps
be more simple to provide statistical returns for one society of which
the ecclesiastical organisation is known and the ecclesiastical terms
used consequently fixed. But survey of the work of a society, invaluable
and necessary as that is for a society, is not sufficient by itself. It
is essential to-day that we should be able to place our work in the
world in relation to all the missionary work done. We can no longer
afford to ignore the work of others and to plan our missions as though
other missions did not exist