THE

CHRISTIAN REVIEW.

No. CXIII.-JULY, 1863.

ARTICLE I. MISSIONS OF THE AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS.

[BY REV. A. N. Arnold, d. d., weSTBOROUGH, MASS.]

Memorial Volume of the first Fifty Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Boston. 1861.

The Christian Examiner for March, 1862.

The North American Review for April, 1862.

Article VII.

Article IX.

The Boston Review for May, 1862. Article III.

In most human undertakings, half a century of persevering effort is amply sufficient to test their practicability, and to determine with what measure of success any further prosecution of them will be likely to be attended. There are, indeed, great national enterprises, schemes of policy, institutions of government, scientific enterprises, and works of art, which may require even a longer time than this, before they can be properly said to have succeeded, or to have failed; to be practicable, or to be impracticable. And there are some minds inspired with such a lofty enthusiasm that they labor with all the more zeal on a work which they never hope to see completed, or even advanced much nearer to completion, in their own day. So short, however, is human life, and human faith Vol. xxviii.-23.

and patience as well, that works which depend for their continuance upon popular co-operation must be able to show proof of practicability, and evidences of progress, or they will not long be prosecuted with vigor.

What then are the results of fifty years of effort in the missionary work? Are they such as to repay, in any adequate degree, the toils and sacrifices that have been given to it, the treasure that has been expended, the precious lives that have been offered upon this altar? Are they such as to afford any encouragement to the hope that the Christian religion can be extended, by such methods as these, over the whole habitable globe? These are fair questions; they are questions which sensible and practical men will ask; and unless they can be satisfactorily answered, it is easy to foresee that the cause of missions will decline, in spite of any efforts which can be made to sustain it by those who are bound to it by the tie of official position, by the feeling of denominational pride, or by the nobler sentiment of Christian enthusiasm. There is, indeed, a higher and more sacred view of the missionary work, a view which lifts its obligation and its prospects above all merely human calculations of expediency, balancings of probability, and comparisons of profit and loss, and plants it securely in the precept and purpose and promise of the Most High; and it is by these higher principles that the enterprise must finally be judged, the last appeal is to the Court of Heaven. Yet we are fully persuaded that it will abide the lower test, that with a fair trial its cause will prevail in the court of earthly judgment, and we shrink not from submitting it to the common and just rule of being judged by its fruits. Yet we are entitled to demand for it deliberate and impartial judgment, and to protest against a hasty, passionate or prejudiced verdict. When a writer, like the reviewer of the Memorial Volume in the Christian Examiner, declares it to be an error to say that missions to the heathen are obligatory, and a serious mistake to inaugurate them without waiting for a clearly defined good opportunity, he virtually proclaims his own disqualification for the work of criticising them. He pronounces himself beforehand out of all sympa

thy with this Christian enterprise; and we need not wonder to hear him speaking of the result of half a century of missionary labor as an "unquestioned il success," a "most ghastly failure."

What, then, in a fair and candid estimate, are the fruits of this half century's work of the earliest and largest of the missionary societies on this continent? During this period the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions received and expended a constantly increasing amount of contributions, beginning with less than one thousand dollars in, 1811, and reaching a fraction less than four hundred and thirty thousand in 1860. The total contributions of the half century amounted to more than eight and a half millions of dollars. The board sent out as missionaries and assistantmissionaries to the heathen and semi-heathen of various lands, more than twelve hundred evangelical laborers, including more than four hundred ordained preachers. These missionaries have reduced to writing twenty languages which they found utterly destitute of any literature; they have caused to be printed more than eleven hundred millions of pages of Christian literature, in more than forty different languages or dialects. They had under instruction, at the close of the period, more than ten thousand pupils in Christian schools, and had at an earlier period nearly twice that number. They had gathered into churches, formed on the principle of requiring evidence of conversion of each individual before admission, more than fifty thousand persons whom they believed, upon examination, to have passed from death unto life.

These figures must, of course, from the nature of the case, be a very inadequate expression of the results of such a work. But they are suggestive, to the candid mind, of anything rather than failure. They afford strong encouragement to the expectation that the whole world will ultimately be Christianized. For although what has already been accomplished is but an insignificant item in the great work of universal evangelization, yet it must be remembered that this item is but the work of one among more than a score of similar societies engaged in the same work; that this work is but recently

begun, and that, as in all beginnings, much time and labor have been lost in making experiments, and learning wisdom for the future; and that steady development and progress are, in an uncommon degree, the characteristics of the modern missionary enterprise. Already the older missions have become wholly or partially self-supporting, and have begun to send out missionaries to the regions beyond. Indeed, one of the most wonderful things which this Memorial of fifty years brings to view, is the remarkably uniform expansion of the work, from the beginning until now. If the whole period be divided into portions of four years each, the receipts for each of these quadrennial periods show an advance upon those of the preceding, with only a solitary exception. If the whole time be divided into five periods of ten years each, the result is similar in all but the exception. The second decade. shows a sum total nearly four times larger than the first; the third, nearly three times larger than the second; the fourth, an advance of more than fifty per cent. upon the third; and the fifth, an advance of more than twenty-five per cent. upon the fourth. As the sum total rapidly enlarges, the ratio of increase of course diminishes.

But while the receipts of the board have thus been increas ing in a remarkably uniform manner, there have been, as in other societies, financial crises and heavy debts. In 1841 the Board found itself burdened with a debt of three or four years' growth, amounting to nearly sixty thousand dollars. The receipts of the year following were nearly seventy thousand dollars greater than in any preceding year. Indeed, the great permanent advances in the receipts of the Board all stand in immediate connection with its larger debts, and would seem to have resulted from the effort to throw them off. This is probably true of other benevolent societies. It seems to be the plan of Divine Providence to make use of such exigencies, as the means of teaching Christian people the practicability and the blessedness of enlarged giving. The result is only what might be expected, allowing that the debts in question are not incurred by any extravagant, injudicious, or unauthorized expenditures on the part of those who have the immediate

management of the pecuniary affairs of these societies. Assuming that they use their powers discreetly, in accordance with the instructions of their constituents, the indebtedness ought not to be an occasion of censure against them, and may prove an occasion, not only of drawing forth larger contributions to meet the immediate exigency, but of securing a permanent increase in the regular receipts of subsequent years. All benevolent enterprises which depend mainly upon voluntary contributions for their support, must be liable to occasional financial difficulties and debts. This is an unavoidable result of the uncertainty of human affairs, and the liability of all communities to periods of commercial depression. It is therefore almost indispensable to the security of benevolent societies, and to the maintenance of their financial credit under such periodical pressures, that they should have some permanent fund, as a resource in any sudden embarrassment. The American Board have felt this necessity, and have provided for it, by the creation of two classes of permanent funds, the one for general purposes, and the other for the salaries of officers. The two combined amount to more than one hundred thousand dollars. We are pleased to see that our own Missionary Union has had the financial ability and wisdom to increase its reserved resources by a considerable appropriation.

The annual receipts of the American Board for the last half of the fifty years, ending with 1860 averaged more than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and for the last quarter of this period, nearly three hundred and seventy thousand. As the total receipts increase, the relative cost of agencies is reduced in a rapidly diminishing ratio. In the case of the American Board, it now amounts to only between six and seven per cent. Those who complain of this expenditure, and express so much regret that the heathen should be deprived of the direct benefit of so large a portion of their Christian liberality, have a very obvious recourse. If they would double their contributions, and persuade others to do the same, they would reduce the percentage deducted for agencies by one-half. This is not said to justify or palliate